A Christmas Miracle

“We’re a small community. We tell each other everything—except our secrets. But someone always discovers them and tells those, too.”

“No one’s told you I’m not here to make things right. I’m here to do a job for my grandfather and move on.”

“I remember your grandfather.”

That wasn’t information Jason felt inclined to investigate. He didn’t remember this place. He didn’t necessarily want to remember it later. The only important thing he needed to know was that when he left, his father would make sure a decent loan officer and bank manager took over.

“Thanks for breakfast.” Jason stood up, sliding his phone into his pocket. “I’m going out for a while.”

“Sure.” Lyle smirked a little, as if to say he didn’t mind a dismissal.

Jason felt like what he was. Rude, uncomfortable, and maybe pushed a little too far, because he didn’t know how to react to people here, who didn’t outwardly want to use him. Unlike his father.

He started down the sidewalk, his pace as fast as it would have been in New York. After he weaved around the third stroller, he realized he was racing with himself. At the same time, he almost ran into a harried father holding on to two children and an oversize shopping bag.

Jason caught the shop door that almost hit one of the boys. Toy store. For once, maybe he could choose his own gifts. He knew where to buy wrapping paper and bows and tape, and Fleming could also tell him where to deliver his packages.

Every shop in Bliss seemed to smell as if someone had just baked an apple pie in it. Did the scent of apple pie prompt people to part with their money?

He took a basket from the stack by the door and started by filling the bottom with small cars. Even he could wrap an undersized square. He chose a few foam puzzles and some cylindrical barrels of building logs. He’d loved those things when he was a kid. He’d built ranches for his superhero action figures to live on.

They made superheroes smaller these days. After he topped the basket off with them, he took his purchases to the counter.

“Whoa,” said the young guy waiting to check him out. “Big family?”

“Sort of. Can I leave these here and finish?”

“Sure.” He started unloading. “We’ll push them all to the end until you come back.”

Jason had one more thing he wanted to buy. He loved trains as much as Fleming did. His grandparents had given him one every year. He still had them packed away. Somewhere.

He chose a wooden one, like the one he loved best. The cars were hand painted. Each fitted neatly to its mate via wooden couplings. The train ran on a wooden track that made a neat series of wide turns, accommodating play for a young child not yet completely in charge of dexterity.

Shopping bags in hand, he went on to Mainly Merry Christmas, passing both a card store and a stationery shop that probably carried a wide selection of paper and ribbons.

Fleming looked up from her open laptop when the bells jingled above his head.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

He smiled at her. “Nice to see you, too.”

She grinned, her embarrassment kind of charming. “I meant, welcome. What can I do for you?”

“I need a few things.”

“You have a few things.” She pointed to the bag. “Getting to your Christmas shopping early?”

Her soft mockery left him a little tongue-tied. “I was thinking last night, while you were wrapping your gifts...”

Fleming came around the counter, her smile a welcome into her community the likes of which he’d never been offered. “You bought some things for the shelter?”

“I always ask my assistant to write a check or choose a charity, or even to buy gifts for those trees in the department stores.”

“Oh.”

“You made me feel ashamed last night,” he said.

“I doubt anyone cares how the gifts arrive.”

“Maybe not.” He lifted the bag onto the counter. “But I thought I could put in a little effort.”

“I like to see a rich guy trying to walk in normal shoes.”

“I’m not that rich.” But just for a second, he wasn’t himself. He wished he could offer some of his own money to ease the holiday suffering he was causing here in Bliss.

“Let me donate wrapping paper,” she said.

“Fleming, are you insane?” He walked so close to her that his breath stirred the red strands around her face. “You can’t afford to give me paper. I’ll buy enough to wrap these, and some bows and those little cards.”

She laughed, but then hurried around the counter to a tree, where she touched a shiny, hard plastic candy cane. “If you wanted, you could add a little ornament to the bows. Nothing breakable, but something a child might keep for her own home next year.”

He hardly heard because he was so busy taking in Fleming’s happy face. She might tempt a man to believe in magical holidays.

“You choose,” he said.

She shook her head, touching his arm with her fingertips. “I’ll help you.”

He wanted to cover her hand and pull it to his mouth, to feel her soft skin against his lips and learn what she would say if she knew how her happy warmth touched him.

Instead, he completed his purchases, took his bags and left, reminding her to read the refinancing paperwork he’d given her.

* * *

FLEMING CLOSED THE shop early after Jason left, barely managing not to press her face to the door and watch him walk away. He would not be staying, she reminded herself. He’d always walk away.

And she had to focus on her own work. Sadly, no one was fighting to come inside the shop. Maybe they’d seen her collaborating with the enemy and hadn’t wanted to join them.

She locked the back door behind her and walked to her car, shivering in the cold night air. What she wouldn’t give for one more of those years when she and her mother had held the doors open during the first post-Thanksgiving week until ten or eleven at night.

This year, with an über-efficient businessman putting fear in everyone who’d fallen behind on one of Paige’s loans, people seemed to have locked up their wallets. Her business was an easy luxury to cut.

Driving home, she took comfort from the decorations going up in the heart of town. Snowflakes on Victorian streetlamps. Wire-and-light Santas and snowmen waving from the corners. Eight tiny reindeer grazing on the grassy areas of the courthouse square.

Even as she plunged into the darkness of the country roads she passed signs of the coming holidays. The Hadleys’ fence sparkled with loops of twinkling red and green lights. Blue and white stars loomed on the Petersons’ iron gates. The Bradleys’ Christmas-tree farm was an oasis of holiday decor, inviting passersby to stop in and choose a tree of their own.

Fleming pushed her anxiety to arm’s length. She’d read the refinancing contracts. She hadn’t called her mother during what was essentially a honeymoon. She had to refinance or give up the store, and that wasn’t a choice.

All her anxiety had given her a plan for the pages she needed to write tonight, a scene that cried out for the emotion she was fighting so hard not to feel in real life.

She turned in at her driveway, pausing to collect the mail from the black metal box that still bore the dents from an unfortunate mailbox-baseball incident on Halloween. She should replace it, but every little penny...

* * *

ON THURSDAY MORNING, Fleming waited outside Jason’s office, uncertain whether she was more anxious about seeing him or dealing with the loan.

Voices rose loudly inside the office. Instantly concerned that someone else might be attacking Jason, Fleming glanced at Hilda, who grimaced and stared at her phone. “I have 911 on speed dial now,” the woman said.

“I’m sorry you have to. It’s just a bad time of year for this to happen.”

Hilda scrunched up her eyebrows. “But if he’d waited, some people would have lost their homes and businesses.”

“I’m one of them,” Fleming said without thinking.

“What a mess.”

The office door opened and Jason came out, his arm across the shoulders of a man in coveralls. Fred Limber, who owned a tire shop a few blocks from the square.

“So don’t worry. I’ll send you the terms. I don’t see any reason you can’t meet this obligation, Fred, and if you have problems, you get in touch with me.”

“I can’t afford your advice on my business, Jason.”

“My name is on this bank.” Jason wiped his free hand down his leg, as if it were sweating. “I can spare you the time.”

Fleming stood, and both men looked at her. Jason’s gaze, warm with a smile, made her heart seize in a funny, clenching cramp. She smoothed the skirt of her navy shift dress.

He didn’t believe in Santa? With his offers to help the people who were in trouble thanks to Mr. Paige, it was like he was carrying around a big old sack of gifts.

Fred turned and shook Jason’s hand. “Sorry for yelling at you.”

“Sorry for yelling back.”

“I’ll read those papers and talk to my brother. He’s an accountant. Then I’ll set up an appointment with Hilda.”

“Good. We’ll see you then.” Jason walked Fred to the door, and after he shut it, he leaned against the heavy wood for a second. He might pretend to be detached, but clearly, walking away from the problems he was making for people in Bliss was not as easy as he might have thought. He smiled at Fleming, and then rubbed his hand over his mouth. “I know you don’t make coffee, Hilda—”

“No, I don’t.”

“But—”

“Just this once.” She rose from behind her desk. “Want one, Fleming?”

With brandy, for goodness’ sake. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll bring it in.”

Jason went into his office and Fleming followed.

“Where do we start?” he asked.

No need to beat around the bush. “I’m going to save the store.”

“Are you sure?” He took a stack of papers from his desk and then came to the sofa, where she’d already taken the same seat she’d occupied the other day.

“Maybe I can help you, too.” He lifted the first page and glanced toward the doorway. “Like with Fred,” he said.

It seemed clear that he was trying to tell her he didn’t care more for her than he should. She was just another victim of the bank’s bad loan officer.

She knew Jason’s plans. He was leaving town as soon as he finished this unwelcome favor.

“I’m happy to take advice,” Fleming said, purposefully rejecting the idea that it would come straight from him.

“I have a few suggestions.”

“But you won’t be here.” She closed her eyes briefly, determined to fight her own inner demons. Since the day her father had walked out of her life, she’d mistrusted men in authority. And yet let a guy go out of his way to help someone, and she couldn’t restrain herself from being attracted. “And I can’t entirely trust a bank that agrees I can afford their loan.”

“I’m not pretending it will be easy, but maybe we can streamline your processes in the shop to save some overhead. Spend more wisely.”

She lifted her chin. “The shop is still mine. I make the decisions.”

“You have three days to change your mind, Fleming. Don’t let the deadline pass.”

CHAPTER FIVE

AFTER ENDURING FRED’S shouting and Fleming’s prickly mood, Jason ducked past the registration desk in the hotel that night. It usually took a few weeks for him to get this anxious to leave a work site.

He’d made a mistake. He should have stayed downstairs and asked if he had unexpected company, because a tall, thin woman in a worn dress was waiting beside his door. She blushed and smiled at him, but tears welled in her eyes.

“Mr. Macland?”

“Jason,” he said automatically.

“I’m Rachel Limber.”

“Fred’s wife?” Should he brace for a fight or help her down the stairs?

She held out a Santa-decorated tin. “I make homemade fudge,” she said. “It’s really good, and right now it’s pretty much all we have to offer as a thank-you.”

“Oh.” He took the metal container and shook her hand at the same time. “You didn’t have to go to the trouble.”

“I wanted to. Fred came home hopeful, and for that, I owe you. That old shop of his is mud and oil and nasty smells, but only to me. To him, it’s his favorite place in the whole world. I don’t know what he’d do if he lost it.”

That sounded familiar. Fleming had said the same thing—how many times? “I guess some walls and a place with memories can matter that much, Mrs. Limber.”

“It does to Fred. I was ready to give up and move to Knoxville, but our family’s here.”

Jason smiled. “Remind Fred he can call me or email anytime.”

“Thanks.” She looked at him closely. “I knew your grandmother.”

His grandparents had sold their home and moved to New York to help with Jason. Their support had become ever more vital to his father, who’d managed to retain custody of Jason’s younger sisters and brother as he divorced their mothers.

Robert Macland’s parents had given the family stability. Safety.

“I don’t think she ever came back here. She or my grandfather.” Jason had taken his grandparents so much for granted that he’d never thought to ask if they missed the place.

Why hadn’t he asked? Self-absorption must be a genetic trait.

“I wish she had. She was good friends with my mom. I know she would have been welcome.” Rachel Limber hooked her purse more securely over her arm and turned toward the stairs. “People shouldn’t disappear from each other’s lives. That’s what I hate most about this bank thing. You’re helping Fred, but you were too late for some.”

He nodded. “My grandfather asked me to come and to move quickly.”

“Good people, your grandparents, but we all knew your father. This little world was never going to be big enough for him. Merry Christmas, Jason. I hope I’ll see you around town.”

He stared after her, listening to the clack of her heels on the wooden stairs. Hadn’t he said almost the same thing about his father to Fleming? The small town of Bliss seemed to be closing in on him.

In his suite, Jason tossed the big key that weighed down his jacket pocket onto a table in front of the fireplace. He set the tin of fudge beside it.

Aromas from downstairs drifted up. His stomach growled as he glanced at the mail. He considered phoning down for dinner, but then rejected the idea, striking a long match to the logs and kindling waiting on the hearth.

He turned back to the stack of letters that he’d collected from his temporary post office box. Even in an age where a man did most of his correspondence via email, he still received a bundle of mail most days.

A long, lavender envelope caught his eye. Not the envelope, but the penmanship. Fat, round writing that was familiar because he’d read every line in every one of the day planners his mother had left behind when she’d abandoned him and his father. He stared at the name on the return address: Teresa Macland Brown.

It left him feeling as dazed as if he’d stormed headfirst into a wall.

His mother had written to him?

She’d hardly ever bothered. No cards, no emails, though he’d written to her almost the first moment he’d set up his own email address. He’d searched for her contact information on his father’s computer.

Secretly. Because Robert had been so angry at his wife’s disappearance that he had discouraged Jason from trying to get in touch with her. He’d reminded Jason regularly that she would only hurt him again.

Jason had never forgotten that last morning with her.

After an earsplitting argument between his parents, Jason’s mother had called a porter to take her luggage down to the street, and then she’d left. Jason sneaked into the elevator of their Manhattan loft to follow her, but she didn’t even wait for her bags. She was running out of the building’s other elevator as the doors opened on Jason’s.

He hurried after her, but when he reached the glass doors in the lobby, someone tall grabbed his shoulders and jerked him back.

“Careful, son, that’s a busy street out there.” It was the doorman.

Jason’s mother had run, sobbing, into the arms of a pale-haired man. He’d tipped up her face and wiped at her cheekbones with his thumbs. Then he’d kissed her with a tenderness that made Jason feel sick, because the man wasn’t his dad.

The runaway couple had scrambled into a waiting cab as if they couldn’t escape fast enough. With a jolt, the vehicle had started forward, and his mother and the stranger had disappeared into the flow of traffic.

She’d never looked back.

She’d hardly ever called. Initially, his father had tried to make excuses for her. For that, Jason had been grateful, but that image of her grabbing her new man and running away from their life stuck in his head even today.

No explanations had ever been necessary.

She hadn’t loved his father or him enough to stay. His dad said staying in one place wasn’t her thing, and he couldn’t blame her for that when he suffered from the same affliction. But Jason had never understood what he’d done to make her leave him, too.

Finally, he’d told his dad he understood that his mother didn’t love him, and they’d never discussed her again. She’d called once or twice, and they’d talked like strangers. Then they’d stopped talking at all.

Tightening his jaw, Jason finally opened the ridiculously feminine envelope. A single page slid out onto the floor. He picked it up. Heavy writing had impressed the pale purple paper with a few lines that showed through the back of the sheet. He needn’t have dreaded a long explanation, or an excuse.

But how had she known where to find him? How long had she been keeping tabs on him?

He unfolded the piece of paper. She wrote the way she’d talked all those years ago, as if she still didn’t have a lot to say. Just his name, a diffident request to meet, “I want to talk to you,” and her phone number.

He’d had more emotional communication from the bank’s frightened clients. He dropped the brief note and envelope on a side table with his keys.

After all these years, that was her best effort?

Why now? Why here?

How badly did he want to know?

He changed into running clothes and headed downstairs. The slap of his shoes against the sidewalk felt good. The stretch of his muscles as he ran and the cold air biting into his face reminded him he was alive. He was working. Nothing here was permanent. He just had to keep running to put everything back into perspective.

But then he came to Fleming’s shop, where she was stringing lights along the window. For a second, he considered running on past, but he couldn’t leave her standing on a chair to handle the lights alone.

He stopped, breathing hard enough to cause a cloud of steam to form in front of his face. Fleming, tangled in lights, stared at him as if to ask what he wanted.

If she’d asked out loud, he wouldn’t have known how to answer. He wasn’t even certain how he’d ended up in the one place she was sure to be. “Why don’t you let me help you?”

She looked down at him, considering. “I can do this by myself.”

Ignoring her stubbornness, he put his hand on the back of the chair. “Do we really need this?” He reached up to the metal frame of the awning in front of Mainly Merry Christmas. It was about four inches higher than his fingertips. “I guess we do.”

He took off his hoodie so he could see what he was doing and traded places with Fleming on the chair, noticing as they passed each other, just shy of touching, that she couldn’t look away from him any more than he could tear his gaze from her.

Slowly, she handed him a roll of green duct tape that matched the awning. She’d been using it to fasten the light cords to the canvas. She lifted the string of lights, and he took it, leaning back to see how she’d been lining them up.

“Why are you angry with me, Fleming?”

“I’m not.” She said it in such a rush it was obviously untrue. “I’m sorry. Maybe I am lashing out a little, because I find myself in a bad situation.”

“You can afford this loan. You won’t lose the store.”

“Why are you so helpful? You act as if the bank’s at fault.”

“I guess it is.” He probably shouldn’t say that. “According to the attorneys, Paige kept the loans just this side of legal so they’d go through the system. He’ll be going to jail because he got greedy enough to skim the profits.”

“Otherwise, the bank would have been part of his scam,” she said.

“I guess my family does have a level we won’t stoop below.” Jason smiled, but he wasn’t entirely joking. “I’m helping you and everyone else he cheated because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s best for this town if all of you can continue to do business with Macland’s.”

“Now you sound like a commercial,” she said, with a smile that made him feel less insulted, more as if they were back on the shaky footing of their unacknowledged attraction.

“That burns a lot more than being called heartless.”

“You’re imagining things.” Briskly, she handed him the last of the lights, and he put them up, secured them with the heavy-duty tape, and then stepped off the chair.

“Want to turn them on?”

Nodding, she went inside and threw a switch. The lights began to twinkle just as a snowflake landed on his cheek. He looked up and saw blue-gray sky, but when he turned his head to look at the courthouse behind him, he saw more flakes, thickening in the air.

“Snow,” he said, as the shop bells jangled and Fleming rejoined him.

“About time. That should help everyone in business up here.”

He searched her face, impressed that he’d never heard panic in her voice, even the day she’d agreed to sign the loan.

“I swear you’re going to be okay,” he said, taking her hand. “I took into account the slow times. You’re in this for the long haul. If you were only looking to make a quick profit and turn the place over to a new owner, we would have discussed different terms.”

She nodded, tears pooling in her eyes. Her throat moved as she tried to swallow, and he pulled her closer still, wrapping one arm around her.

“Until you close on the loan, nothing is permanent.”

“I need to close. My life here is permanent.” She pressed her cheek to his chest. She was warm and alive and unguarded on this cold day, and she needed his comfort.

It was a potent combination, but when she said the word permanent, it reminded him who she was. He couldn’t tip up her face and kiss the generous mouth that haunted him when he should have been busy with his own plans. He couldn’t put his other arm around her and pretend they could be more than friends.

He did hit-and-run relationships with a mastery he’d learned at his father’s knee. Fleming was not a temporary kind of woman.

“Let me take your chair inside before it gets wet,” he said.

“I hope the snow now is a good sign for more to come.” She held the door, and he carried the chair past her.

Fleming followed him inside, but the bells on the door didn’t sound as cheery as now.

“You know, I don’t think you’re heartless.” She went to the front window of the store as if looking for customers to drag inside. “No one here thinks you’re heartless.”

“Have you been gossiping?” He went to the tall, silver coffeepot she kept behind the counter and poured two cups. He passed one to her, making no effort to avoid contact.

She put one finger through the handle and wrapped her other hand around the cup’s rim. He couldn’t help noticing every little thing she did.

“Maybe it’s gossip,” she said. “Maybe people are grateful, and we’ve talked about it over the doughnut case in the bakery and the egg fridge in the grocery store. When you first arrived, you were all rules and regulations, even when you were sorry you had to do the right thing for the bank.”

“I may still have to do that.” But he wasn’t sanguine as he thought of the number of loans he still had to study.

“You’re accidentally getting to know us, and business as usual isn’t as easy as it’s been in the past.”