He put the hat on his head, almost laughing out loud as he adjusted it to the same cocky tilt his dad always used. Then he turned the car around, and headed north on I-81.
HOLLY CRIED UNTIL SHE WAS SPENT, AND THEN SHE PICKED herself up, told herself to stop being pathetic, and to do her best to enjoy Christmas. For her mom's sake, she could do that.
She decorated her tree, stringing the popcorn and cranberry garland all over it, and topping it with a foil-and-cardboard star. At 4 p.m. the power came back on. She set her table--an upturned crate in front of the sofa, topped with a bath towel for a tablecloth. She'd brought some real china for the occasion, even had two tall taper candles, one red, one green, in crystal holders to add the finishing touch. And wineglasses, one of which she filled.
Her holiday dinner was keeping warm in the oven. Turkey breast, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, mixed veggies, squash, and pumpkin pie. It was more than one person could hope to eat. More than four or five could probably manage, but she would try to do it justice.
But first, as long as the power was on, she decided to take a long, hot shower, and put on the dress she'd brought along. She always dressed for the holiday. And this one would be no different.
The shower was soothing, but she battled loneliness through the whole thing. If only Matthew would have stayed one more night. If only he would have celebrated Christmas with her.
Oh, but he was right. One more night would have only left her wanting another, and another, and more after that. It was probably better he left when he did.
She lingered in the bathroom, dried her hair, put on makeup and high heels. It was Christmas, after all. She donned the long red dress. It was pretty, slinky and clingy.
And then she opened the bathroom door and heard music. She blinked, wondering if she'd left the radio on, or if her mother was getting even more talented in cross-plane communications. "I'll Be Home for Christmas" was playing on the radio. It brought a teary smile to her face.
She walked slowly down the stairs, humming along, and stepped into the living room. All of her food was on the makeshift table. Her candles were lit, and the other lights were turned off.
Matthew was standing by the fire, staring at the flames, sipping a glass of wine. The hat was perched on his head. She froze, just stood there, staring at him, wondering if he was some kind of an illusion. When he looked up and saw her, he set the wineglass on the mantle.
"I'd have been back sooner, but I had a stop to make."
She wanted to rush into his arms. She wanted to burst into tears. She wanted to kiss his face off. But she forced herself to wait, to walk slowly to him, and not touch him. Not yet.
He took the hat off and said, "Where did you get this, Holly?"
"From my Aunt Sheila. She got it from a homeless man who used to frequent the diner. He found it rolling down the street, he said. I've always liked quirky things like that, so she gave it to me." She shrugged. "When you told me about your dad's hat, I thought this might be like it, so--"
"It's not just like my dad's hat. Holly, this is my dad's hat."
She blinked. "I don't--"
"He put his initials inside. They're there. This is the same hat."
She pressed her fingers to her lips.
"I think it's a sign. I mean, how could my dad's hat make its way from Flint, Michigan, to here? Why would it end up with you? Unless...somehow, we were...meant to..."
"Meant to...what?" she asked.
"I don't know. But I know I want to find out." He handed her a card, in a large envelope, and she opened it. A couple of kids, a boy and a girl, building a snowman was on the front. She opened it and read the inside. "You're why I love Christmas," it read.
Her tears spilled over, and she flung herself into his arms.
"I want to buy this house," he told her, holding her close. "But not to flip it. I want us to fix it up together, and spend time here together, and just...just see where things lead."
"You mean you don't know where they're going to lead?"
He stared into her eyes, searching them. "Do you?"
She smiled. "Yeah. We're going to live happily ever after."
He smiled slowly as he lowered his mouth to hers. "Okay."
CHARLOTTE'S WEB
Erin McCarthy
One
"I JUST HAVE ONE QUESTION," WILL THORNTON SAID CASUALLY as he stood on a ladder and nailed fresh evergreen swags above Charlotte Murphy's front door.
"What?" Charlotte dragged her gaze off the seat of Will's jeans with a significant amount of effort, refusing to feel guilty. Lord, Will was slow sometimes. Her arms were straining under the weight of the boughs she was holding for him and her feet were getting cold in a hurry. Checking out the view he provided at eye level from his position on the ladder was fair compensation for the discomfort she was enduring.
"Who just grabbed my ass?"
Charlotte almost fell off the front step. "What? What are you talking about?" Okay, so maybe she had entertained the idea once--or nine hundred times--of cupping his backside and giving a nice, hard little squeeze, but she would never act on it. Probably. She was pretty sure. But definitely if she did, she would know it. Savor it. Make it count.
"Someone just copped a feel, and since I can see you out of the corner of my eye, and your hands are full, I was just wondering if you could tell whoever did it that it's not wise to grope a man on a ladder, unless she wants me to break my neck."
Glancing around to confirm what she knew, Charlotte frowned. "I don't know what you're talking about. There's nobody here but us." And her libido.
"Your sister did it, didn't she? That sounds like Bree." Will reached for another swag and Charlotte passed it up to him.
"Bree went shopping an hour ago." Which was classic Bree. Ditch out doing the Christmas decorating for their house with an excuse about getting pomegranates for a centerpiece. Like there were any pomegranates in the tiny grocery in Cuttersville, Ohio. Bree just wanted to peruse the bookstore, gossip at the hair salon, and stay out long enough to avoid having to drag all the boxes of ornaments out of the basement.
"Abby?" Will asked doubtfully.
"Abby! My baby sister, who is only seventeen, need I remind you, did not touch your butt, Will. No one did." For crying out loud, did he want someone to touch it? If she were a little bolder, she'd just reach out and smack it right now to really give him something to think about. But she wasn't bold. She was the opposite of bold--she was pastel pink on the color wheel.
"Someone did. I know what I felt." Now his voice sounded stubborn, his hammer pounding harder.
"Well, I didn't."
"Course not."
That was irritating. He didn't think she could, or would, or didn't think she should? How was it that he could suspect her little sister, a junior in high school, of grabbing him, but she was a no way, never happen? Was she so staid and boring and vanilla that it would never occur to him that she did actually have a sex drive, though it was well hidden and brought out only on special occasions like full moons and when the annual firefighters' hottie calendar hit the bookstore in town?
"Then I guess it was just wishful thinking, Will, because we're the only two people standing here."
"Huh," he said, leaning against the ladder for support and glancing left and right. "That's really weird."
What was weird was that never once in the last eight years had Will so much as suspected she liked him more than was appropriate for good friends. Yet she did. She loved him with a passion and urgency that was just downright embarrassing when she allowed herself to ponder it--or wallow, which was probably more frequently.
But he didn't seem to be on to her. To Will, she was just Charlotte, his best pal. Damn it.
Irritating as hell, but there it was. And she'd never had the guts to do anything but wait for him miraculously to come to his senses and figure out what was standing right in front of him. Which was a really sucky strategy, because so far Will hadn't been
stricken with any epiphanies that they should really be Cuttersville's number one couple.
"Maybe it was the wind."
He scoffed and yanked another bough out of her arms. "Wind doesn't squeeze like that."
"Then it must have been a ghost," she said in exasperation.
She expected him to reject that ridiculous suggestion as well, but instead his brown eyes went wide. "That's a disturbing thought."
"There are no ghosts. I was kidding. Ghosts don't exist."
"Your grandmother said they did." Will took the last strand, much to her relief, and moved down the ladder so he could complete the arch around the door at the bottom left.
"My grandma--God rest her soul--was crocked. Sure she believed in ghosts, but she also said I'm a witch, and we know how crazy that is."
Will grinned at her, revealing his white teeth and dimples. How could he not realize how freaking cute he was? Charlotte thought it defied explanation that he didn't see the adoration that just had to be scrawled across her face. Apparently she'd missed her calling as an actress when she'd decided to open a coffee shop for a living, because Will didn't give so much as a hint that he saw her as anything but asexual.
"Yeah, you're not really the witch type."
"Who is the witch type?" And why did that suddenly make her feel lousy? It was that excitement thing again...she was neither a butt grabber nor a spell caster in Will's eyes. So what exactly was she to him? She probably didn't want the answer to that.
"Bree's the witch type."
"God, don't tell her that. She already thinks we should take up our 'heritage' and join a coven, and she's forever running on about her so-called empathic abilities." Charlotte stomped her feet a little to get the blood flowing. She wore only ballet flats, not boots, and the cold was seeping in. Ramming her hands deeper into the pockets of her black puffy coat, she waited impatiently as Will slowly pulled the ladder off the house and dropped it down.
"Actually, Abby acts devious enough to be one, too. She does that evil eye thing when she's mad at you."
"Again, don't encourage her, either. She's already gone completely Goth, right along with Bree. And Abby has been known to brag about the well-known fact that she was conceived in a cemetery." A source of mortification since Charlotte had been old enough to understand it, she had often wondered what kind of woman got it on in the graveyard. Finally, she had concluded that the answer was simply that the kind of woman who got turned on in a graveyard was her mother. As for her father, it was no secret to anyone that he happily gave his wife whatever she wanted, which explained both Abby's unusual conception and the fact that her parents were currently on a two-week tour of America's most haunted prisons. There was just no point in wondering sometimes.
Will lifted the ladder sideways and headed toward the garage with it. "Still amazes me that you have blond hair and your sisters are both brunettes. You don't look anything like them."
"I know. And you know how my mom feels about it. It drives her insane that I look like Malibu Barbie. Without the chest. Or the tiny waist. Or the bikini."
Will laughed. "Oh, I don't know. You might give Barbie a run for her money."
If that were a compliment, she'd take it.
"And I'm sure your mother doesn't care that you have blond hair."
"Yes, she does." Charlotte followed him, picking carefully over the snowy ground. "You know that Murphy girls are supposed to be weird. Interesting. Into crystals and piercings and flowing skirts. That's Bree and Abby. I'm odd blonde out who turned the tarot shop I inherited from my grandmother into a Caribou Coffee. That's blasphemy in the Murphy house, you know that."
Will figured there was some truth to that, but he also thought Charlotte worried too much. "They're proud of you, Charlotte. Even if they don't always get you." Will kept the ladder firmly in his hands so he wouldn't touch her. He was frequently tempted to touch Charlotte and almost always managed to control himself. Occasionally he couldn't resist and gave her a nudge or a shoulder rub or a quick peck on the top of her head, and she didn't seem to mind that.
The one time he had given in to hope and tried to kiss her full on the mouth, five years earlier, she had shot him such a look of horror, asking, "What are you doing?" that he had pulled back quick like and had never made that mistake again.
He was in love with Charlotte, and he suffered that knowledge in silence.
It was a hard lot in life and he saw no end in sight to the dilemma. Eventually he figured one of two things would happen. He'd either drop dead of sexual frustration, or Charlotte would fall in love with some schmuck and get married. If it was the latter, well, he'd have to pull up stakes and move out of state, because he could not watch her carrying on with another man. No frickin' way.
"What are you doing the rest of the day?" she asked him, with obviously no idea of the direction his thoughts had been running. "I've got to head to the shop in an hour for the Saturday night rush."
Since Charlotte had defied Cuttersville's fear of coffee with whipped toppings and her own family's franchise disdain, and opened a Caribou Coffee, the Midwest equivalent of a Starbucks, right smack downtown, her business had been booming. It had become a favorite Saturday night hangout for a lot of folks, young and old alike. Will thought her business savvy was amazing.
"I guess I'll just put up my own Christmas tree and call it an early night. I'm on morning shift tomorrow." Not that work would stop him from staying up all night if he had a good reason--he just didn't have a good reason. Unless Charlotte reacted the way he wanted her to his pronouncement, the way he knew she would.
She frowned at him. "You can't put your tree up by yourself! That's...that's..."
A cry for help? He was well aware what he was doing, and he should feel pathetic that he was playing off her sympathy, but he was too determined to spend as much time with her as possible to care. He shrugged and tried to look lonely, but stoic. "It's not a big deal."
"Yes, it is. Tree trimming is something you do with the people you lo--family and friends. I'll come over after work and we can do it together. It will be fun. I'll make you watch cheesy Christmas movies with me, because you know how much I love those." She glanced down at his arms. "Are you going to set that ladder down? It must be heavy."
Yes. He was going to set the ladder down and he was going to close the three feet between them and he was going to put his mouth on hers, and slide his hand inside her jacket and cup her breast. His tongue was going in her mouth and taking possession, licking and sliding and mating, until she was weak with wanting him. Then when he stripped her clothes off and took her against the garage wall, she was going to understand, accept, embrace the fact that he wanted her as his friend, his lover, his life partner.
Or he could just shrug and lift the ladder onto its wall-mounted hooks.
But before he could do either, Charlotte's eyes went wide.
"Are you okay?" she asked. "You look sort of...angry."
It was lust, not anger. Pure sexual desire that threatened to make him lose control as she stood in the middle of the garage, her puffy coat covering all her curves, her fur-lined collar up around her ears, and her nose pink from the cold. He wanted her, he didn't know what the hell to do about it, and he was starting to get weird and desperate. But before he could formulate any sort of reply, he felt movement on his chest.
Thinking there was a spider or something crawling up his coat, Will swatted at it, glancing down.
"What are you doing?" she asked, taking a step forward.
"There's something on me." And crazy enough, even though he couldn't see a damn thing, his jacket zipper was actually descending. "What the hell?" It was just gliding right down, like someone was tugging it. It wasn't falling, it was being pulled. By nothing.
"Uh...Charlotte..."
"Your zipper's going down," she said, coming to a halt. "How is that possible?"
If he knew, he wouldn't be freaking out. He grabbed at it and tried to stop it, but the zipper was alre
ady undone at the bottom and the two sides of his jacket had fallen apart. "That was really weird. That's what it was like when I felt someone touch my ass. It felt totally real."
Charlotte was frowning. "There's no such thing as ghosts."
He was starting to doubt that himself, since he was the one being accosted. "I'm a cop, I don't believe in that stuff, either. But this is Ohio's most haunted town according to those paranormal investigators." Will shot an uneasy glance around the garage. It was an old structure, the garage originally a carriage house to the hundred-and-twenty-year-old Victorian Painted Lady that Charlotte lived in with her sister Bree. "And I know what I felt. And you saw what just happened."
"It was just a defect in your zipper." She was still frowning, her lips pursed together.
He would be willing to accept that if it made any sense at all, but it really defied the logic. "Okay, so let's just get out of here and we'll pretend nothing happened. I'm cool with that."
She nodded but didn't say anything.
Will took a step forward right as he felt the unmistakable sensation of his jeans unsnapping and the zipper starting to come down.
"Holy shit..." He stopped in his tracks and glanced down at his pants in disbelief. His black boxer briefs were showing.
Charlotte screamed. "Will!"
And just as fast as the zipper went down, it went back up, and though the snap seemed to struggle a little, it finally closed, too.
"Not only is this garage haunted, the ghost is a pervert," Will said, holding on to his pants with both hands. If Charlotte ever saw him naked, it was not going to be because some frisky spirit yanked his drawers and had him standing in front of her buck naked from the waist down.
"Maybe you should go," Charlotte said, wide-eyed. "I'll finish putting all these leftover lights and boxes away. I'll see you tonight at your place after I close the store."
Then her gaze dropped down to the front of his jeans and the tip of her tongue peaked out and slid across her bottom lip.
Yep. Time to go.
Will almost ran into Charlotte's sisters as he got the hell out of the garage and moved down the driveway, darting a glance back over his shoulder.
"Dude, watch it."
Abby was holding her hand out in front of her, preventing him from slamming into her. They had parked behind him on the street and he hadn't even noticed them getting out of their car.