The Holiday Visitor

“You have no idea how many times we help each other find solutions to challenges we’re facing. We don’t judge each other. We just talk.”

“All things you could be doing with a spouse.”

“Do you and Bob do them?”

Bonnie’s silence was answer enough.

“James is my peace, Bonnie. My solace and support. He’s my kind inner voice counteracting my inner critic who, as you know, so often tries to rule my life. He’s not a romance. Or a partner in life.”

Marybeth finished the stars and the Santas and moved on to help Bonnie with the trees. And because her friend remained silent, she continued to talk. “James is like this ethereal being who, unlike any spiritual, omniscient being, knows nothing of my everyday life, you know? And he shares nothing of his. We share a past, a dark time. We both went through the same thing at the same time in our lives. That’s it.”

“I hope so, my dear,” Bonnie said as they finished up. “I just know that your idea of normal isn’t healthy. You, here all alone, living vicariously through the people who parade in and out of this inn.”

“I take care of them. It’s my job. My livelihood. And I like it.”

“I know you do, sweetie, and I’m thrilled that you’ve found something that satisfies you. I just wish you had a private life, too.”

She did have a private life. Not a single one of her guests had ever stepped foot beyond the public parts of the house. What went on out there was work. What went on back here was her life.

She simply hadn’t found anyone she wanted to share that life with in the way Bonnie meant. Marybeth didn’t really even want to try.

“I’m not lonely,” she told her pseudomother. “But if I ever start to feel that way, I promise you, I’ll find someone. I’ll start frequenting the personal ads if I have to.”

“You wouldn’t have to,” Bonnie assured her. “I know of a half dozen people in this town who’d love to take you out.” So did she. Unfortunately none of them interested her in the least.

CRAIG ANTHONY MCKELLIPS drove slowly by the Orange Blossom Bed-and-Breakfast, every one of his senses reeling with sensation. His mouth watered. He could practically taste the oranges that were pungently ready for picking on the trees that lined both sides of the lot, separating the freshly painted white Victorian home—complete with grand balconies upstairs and an even grander porch down—from the picturesque old homes on either side.

Sweating in spite of the crisp fifty-nine-degree temperature, Craig pushed the button to lower his window a bit and was hit with the sweet scents wafting from the wildly colorful, but perfectly tended flower gardens in manicured rings in the yard and lining the entire front of the house. He could taste a hint of salt in the air, letting him know that he was by the ocean again. By nightfall he’d be feeling the salty residue on his skin.

And the quiet. It amazed him! This California coastal town, maybe an hour’s drive from the Los Angeles he’d known as a kid, was the exact antithesis of the noisy, frenetic southern California he’d grown up in.

A perfect place to spend his first Christmas alone—his first Christmas since his mother passed away.

Satisfying himself that he knew where the house was, Craig drove by for now. Judging by the empty, five-car parking lot down a small hill to the side of the house, none of the other guests had arrived—or else were out for the day. Check-in wasn’t until three.

Would the other guests be there at three, too? Filling the house with chaos and confusion, noise, distracting their hostess? Would he know who she was? She might not look like the photo he’d seen of her in the travel brochure. Maybe she had an employee who handled registration.

Driving slowly through the small town, Craig used the breathing techniques he’d perfected over the years to quiet his mind. After months of constant push to get through all of the commissions that were due by Christmas, he needed this break from the studio that consumed so much of his life.

And from the constant drive to create.

He also needed the inner calm his work brought.

When he couldn’t settle the energy thrumming through him, Craig found a spot close to the water and parked. He thought about calling Jenny. His wife should just about be landing in Paris.

But he didn’t.

Reaching over, he locked his cell phone in the glove box of the rental car.

What he needed was a good long walk on the beach.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS, everyone!” Marybeth turned to wave at the gathering of wheelchairs in the recreation room of the seniors’ center the Saturday before Christmas, bearing the collective weights of people who’d grown dear to her over the three years she’d been catering their Christmas lunch party. This year she’d brought homemade ornaments for them to hang on their bedposts—ornaments she’d crocheted during the evenings while she and Brutus watched television.

She lingered, helping lay out all the food, handing out the gifts and chatting with everyone. They pressed her to join them for the meal, but she bowed out claiming her arriving guest as her excuse.

Leaving the seniors’ center she headed over to the Mathers’s to unload the pile of gifts she had for them on the backseat of her Expedition. Though Bonnie had tried all week to get her to change her mind, Marybeth still thought she wanted to be alone this first Christmas without her dad.

“I can’t believe you aren’t coming over on Monday,” fifteen-year-old Wendy said as she helped Marybeth carry in packages.

Her dad was still at work and her mother was at the soup kitchen.

“It’s just this one year,” Marybeth told the teenager who was as much daughter and sister to her as longtime neighbor. “I think it’ll be easier if I’m not following the same traditions, you know?”

“I get it,” Wendy said. “I’m not sure Mom does, but she’ll come around. She always does.”

“Hey,” Marybeth said, nudging the younger girl. “How’d your date go last night?”

“With Randy?” Wendy had had a crush on the boy from their church for months and he’d finally asked her out.

“Who else?”

Wendy’s blush was answer enough. “It was good,” she said and Marybeth knew immediately that this was one of those times when the word was a definite understatement.

Finished with the presents, Wendy walked with Marybeth back to her car. “Who was your first boyfriend? I don’t remember him.”

“That’s because I never really had one,” she said. “And it’s a good thing because you’d have been bugging us all the time if I had.”

“No,” Wendy said, frowning. “Seriously. What about that first time you met someone and just knew you’d die if he didn’t like you as much as you liked him?”

Warning bells ringing, Marybeth stopped by the door of her car. “I never met anyone who made me feel that way,” she said slowly, while her mind raced ahead. “But I knew some girls who did,” she added, remembering how frantic her friend Cara had been their last year in junior high. The girl had even run away from home to be with the guy she’d thought was her soul mate. “And what I can tell you is that as intense as those feelings are, they can’t be trusted until you’re a bit older. Right now, they aren’t just from the heart, but get confused and mixed up with hormonal changes, too.”

Bonnie, don’t hate me. I hope I’m not screwing this up.

“I don’t know,” Wendy said. “I mean, even hearing Randy’s laugh makes me all warm inside.”

No. Not this soon. Please. “Have you talked to your mom about this?”

“Sorta. She likes Randy. She likes his parents, too. She just tells me to be careful, but that’s not the point. I am careful. I’m a good girl. How could I not be with you and Mom in my life?”

Marybeth grinned with the girl.

“I’m not going to do anything crazy,” Wendy said, growing serious. “I’m just going crazy with these feelings. I’ll die if he doesn’t ask me out again.”

“No, you won’t.” Marybeth gave the girl a hug. “You’ll call me and come over for the weekend and we’ll eat tacos and ice cream and watch movies that make us cry and talk bad about Randy and you’ll find someone else to like before you know it.”

“You didn’t.”

“I didn’t find a Randy, either.” Marybeth thanked fate for the little help finding a comeback on that one. “Not all women are meant to fall in love. If you are, then it’ll happen. And if not, no amount of wishing or pushing can make it happen. Wishing and pushing will only make you make mistakes. And bring unhappiness.”

“I don’t get it,” Wendy said as Marybeth climbed into her SUV.

“Get what?”

“You. I mean, look at you. You’ve got it all. Looks, brains, money. You’re skinny and gorgeous. Any guy would be a fool not to fall for you.”

“But in order for it to work, I’d have to fall for him, too,” Marybeth said, wondering if it was her father’s death, leaving her all alone in the world, that was bringing out this sudden urge in the Mathers for her to find a mate. “I’m not opposed to falling in love, sweetie,” she told her friend. “I just haven’t. And I’m okay with that. Most days, I think I prefer it that way.”

“I sure wouldn’t,” Wendy said with a chuckle. “Think about Christmas,” she called out as Marybeth drove off.

She agreed that she would. But she didn’t think she was going to change her mind.

HE’D STEPPED into a Christmas wonderland. He should have suspected when he’d noticed that the garden stakes interspersed throughout the flowers were of old world Santa and snowman design, and seen the lights hiding in the garland bordering the porch railing. Red bows dotted the garland and the pine smell teased his nostrils with memories of long ago Christmases with his parents at their cabin in Northern California.

The outside of the Orange Blossom Inn was festive. Still, it did nothing to prepare Craig for the spectacular sight as he stepped inside. From the felt and sequined door hangings and stops, to the intricately stitched wall hangings, from the colorful stockings hanging from every door handle, to the various collections of figurines sitting on every available surface, Craig’s gaze moved around the foyer and reception area and beyond to the enormous, heavily decorated Christmas tree adorning the formal parlor to his right. Brightly lit, with the colored lights he preferred over the small white lights that had become so popular, the tree promised hours of sightseeing. It looked like every single ornament on the edifice was homemade.

No porcelain or glass or anything else that appeared the least bit factory influenced. Oddly out of place, considering the rest of Christmas abundance around him, was the bare wood floor beneath and around the tree.

Where were the gaily wrapped and decorated packages the tableau cried out for?

An electric train, much like the collector’s one he and his father had worked on when he’d been a kid—complete with the lighted town buildings and trees and people—filled a table that took up an entire wall of the parlor. It chugged softly along, the only moving entity in the room.

The place smelled like cookies and pine and with a long, deep breath, Craig knew he’d made the right decision. The song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” came to mind and it took him a second or two to realize that it was playing softly.

There was a voice singing it, too, but from a distance. Singing live. With a tone so pure, so solid it gave him chills. Whoever that woman was, she should be in L.A., or on the stage, making millions on recordings.

“Oh! Sorry! I didn’t hear the bell.”

Craig wasn’t sure which he noticed first, that the singing had stopped, or that the owner of that voice he was hearing was speaking another rendition of that angelic gift.

“I’m looking for Marybeth Lawson,” he stated his business, trying, without success, to break gazes with the violeteyed blonde standing there holding a plate of delicious-looking cookies.

The cook? Was his first thought.

And his second—what a waste.

“I’m Marybeth.”

Two words. Innocuous. Everyday.

They changed his life.

Or they were going to.

Craig couldn’t explain the impression. Nor could he argue with it. It simply was. With or without his cooperation or acceptance.

Chapter Three

CRAIG MCKELLIPS was much younger than the doddering, elderly gentleman who opted to spend Christmas alone guest she’d expected. And gorgeous. Tall, with dark golden, slightly long hair he was the epitome of every bronze god Marybeth had ever imagined. Skin, eyes, expression—everywhere she looked the man glowed.

Not that she was looking, Marybeth assured herself a couple of hours after Craig had checked in. The man was her guest. One of the hundreds she’d hosted in the three years since she’d opened the Orange Blossom for business. He was back downstairs, seemingly completely satisfied with Juliet’s room, ready for the evening cocktail she advertised in her brochure and on the Internet.

The only reason she was noticing him so intensely was because of her recent conversation with Wendy. She’d been thinking about the feelings the girl had described for Randy that afternoon.

Trying to imagine how infatuation felt so that she knew how to advise the girl. How to help the teenager keep herself away from temptation and out of trouble.

Craig McKellips stood in the doorway to the parlor, still looking godlike in spite of—or because of?—having freshened up, his eyes trained on the far side of the room and the lump lying in the archway leading to the kitchen and the private part of the house.

“I’m assuming that’s yours?” he asked, staring, hands resting on either side of the open French doors.

“Yeah.” She tried to smile reassuringly, as she did every evening that she introduced her family member to their guests, but couldn’t seem to pull it off. Neither could she walk up to him, shake his hand as he joined her. She was nervous.

And there was absolutely no reason why she should be. She’d hosted many single men over the years.

“His name’s Brutus.” She was supposed to be telling him that the oversize dog was friendly. A sweetheart. She meant to. But stood there feeling like an adolescent with a crush instead.

Or, at least, reminding herself of how Cara had acted in eighth grade. How Wendy had sounded that afternoon.

Nodding, Craig stood still, keeping his distance from Brutus, though to give him credit, he looked more respectful than leery.

“Having him here is a good idea,” he said. “With your home open to the public, strangers coming and going, you’re wise to take precautions.”

Very perceptive. Not that any of the guests ever knew that Marybeth stayed in the back part of the house alone. As she’d told Bonnie last week, up until her father’s death two months ago, he’d been there to meet every guest she had. Had insisted she send him her guest register at the beginning of every week.

It had been the only time she’d ever seen him.

“He doesn’t bite unless I give the command.” Her suddenly lame brain was spitting out all the wrong things.

Dropping his arms, Craig advanced slowly, then knelt, his long, gorgeous legs bending beneath him as he called Brutus over. The two-hundred-plus-pound lug took half a minute to drag himself to a standing position and saunter over. Sitting a head above their only guest, Brutus stared the man down.

“Good boy,” Craig said, holding out a hand and Marybeth nearly dropped the glass she’d been holding. Not once in three years had a guest touched Brutus without her right there holding the dog and guiding the introductions.

Brutus, kind being that he was, didn’t rebuke Craig for his insolence. Instead he sniffed the hand beneath his nose and then sat, with only a small frown on his face, and accepted the petting that was, after all, his due.

“White wine or red?” Marybeth asked, turning to the cherrywood bar against one wall.

“White, please.” Even his voice warmed the space around him.

And suddenly, Marybeth heard Wendy’s voice in her head, “even his laugh makes me feel warm.”

What in the hell was going on here?

“Frosty the Snowman” played in the background—an old Partridge Family rendition that sounded more like a love ballad than a friendly rollick—leaving Marybeth embarrassed, though she had no idea why.

She didn’t meet his gaze as she handed him the wine. But she almost dropped the glass when his knuckles brushed against hers.

“There’s, uh, cheese and crackers and, um, fresh fruit on the bar. Help yourself,” she invited, having to concentrate to remember what food she’d just carried out.

She then went to turn down the temperature on the thermostat.

“Aren’t you joining me?” He gestured to the wine. “It’s impolite to drink alone.”

“Not when you’re the only guest it isn’t.” She couldn’t drink with him. He was a guest.

Though the relaxation she might find with a glass of wine sounded heavenly at the moment. She had too much Wendy and teenage love on the brain.

“Well, it’s not healthy,” he said, still holding the completely full glass. “Once you start drinking alone, it gets easier and easier and, before you know it, you’re pouring yourself a glass in the middle of the afternoon.”

Frowning, Marybeth wondered if she should have served any alcohol at all. If he had a problem…

It wasn’t her problem. He was a grown man. An adult—albeit a much younger one than she’d assumed. He couldn’t be much more than twenty-six or seven. Her age…

“You sound as though you’re speaking from experience.”

“Not my own,” he told her. “I used to…know…someone….”

Ah. Someone close to him if she had to guess. Not that it mattered to her.

“Yes, well, in that case, I’ll have one small glass.”

What? She didn’t want any wine. Not really. She was a hostess. Working.

And while she was pouring the drink she didn’t want, Marybeth wasted brain cells wondering what her guest thought of her red, heavily embroidered, beaded and appliquéd Christmas sweater, rather than if he liked the food she’d presented.

“You’re spilling.”

Oh, God. She was. Over her fingers. Setting down the bottle, Marybeth tried to come up with a pithy, logical and sensible excuse for overfilling her glass. To no avail.

But cleaning it up gave her a minute to berate herself. Collect herself. Cool down.

Was she attracted to this man?

Was this…this energy running through her body what Wendy had been talking about?

“So…” she asked, dropping the soaked napkins in the metal bin—it, too, matched the seasonal decor—beside the bar. “Who brings you to Santa Barbara for the holiday?” Busywork done, she faced him.

Craig choked midsip. “Who?”

“Can I get you some water?”

“No.” Another slight cough. “I’m fine. What did you mean, who?” Even though he was still emitting half coughs, his gaze was piercing. Too piercing.

“Well…” Marybeth led the way over to a conversational grouping of antique sofas in front of the gas fireplace, burning merrily for the occasion. To go with the air-conditioning she’d also just switched on. “It’s Christmas,” she said, sitting farthest from the tree while Brutus reclaimed his spot guarding their quarters. “I can’t imagine you’re here on business. Or for a beach holiday on Christmas Day. I assumed whoever you’re spending the holiday with didn’t have enough beds to accommodate everyone….”

“I’m spending the holiday with myself.”

He was available. Marybeth glanced at the third finger of his left hand. No wedding band.

No rings on those hands period.

“What about your parents?” The question came without her usual forethought and Marybeth wondered if she should escape to her private quarters, lock herself up or something until the craziness that was consuming her passed.

Grace, the woman who came in to help Marybeth clean, had had a cold a week or two ago. Perhaps she’d contracted some latent germ from the woman and the microscopic mite had suddenly decided to spring to life in her groin area.

“I’m sorry,” she added when he hesitated. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” She stood. “I don’t mean to pry. I’ll just leave you to your evening. Remember, if you leave after seven, to take your key with you. The doors lock automatically—”

All information she’d already given him.

“No!” Craig stood, as well, his jeans and sweater a perfect fit on his tall, athletic body. She loved how his hair curled up over his collar. “Please, don’t go,” he was saying while she ogled him. “Unless you have something else to do, that is. I’d…love the company.”

She had to make breakfast. Sometime before six in the morning. And finish gluing together the clay pot snowman ornaments she was making for the refreshment tables at tomorrow night’s Christmas Eve services.

“I mean, I’ve never stayed at one of these before,” he said, sounding not the least bit awkward. “If it’s not proper, or something, for you to visit with your guests, I understand, I just thought…well, it is the holidays and I’m sure you have a million things to do—family that’s waiting for you.”

That was her opening. Or closing, she meant. Her escape.

“No, actually, I generally mingle during happy hour,” she heard herself admit the very thing she’d decided not to mention. “In case anyone has questions about the area, or needs directions or suggestions for dinner. Speaking of which, there’s a binder here filled with all of the places to eat in town.” She grabbed the familiar, well-used book and handed it to him. “I’ve made notes on the ones I think are exceptional. And discarded a couple that I no longer feel comfortable recommending. You’re welcome to take a look. Only a few will be open on Christmas Day, so you might want to choose early. They’re marked. I should make a reservation for you as soon as possible…”

No man should smell so good. It had to be a sin.

“Okay, I’ll take a look,” Craig said when she stopped to catch her breath. And let her brain catch up with her. “I hadn’t really thought about Christmas dinner,” he admitted, opening the black book. “I’ll probably just spend the day on the beach. Or driving along the coast. I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“The trip up State Route One is remarkable.” There. A good answer. “If you’ve never taken it before, you might want to give it a try. It’s slow going in some parts, but follows the coast. You can go all the way to San Francisco without losing sight of the ocean for more than a few minutes.”

“San Francisco. That’s, what, about three hours from here?”

“Three or four, depending on how fast you drive. And on traffic.” No one liked to be rushed, or run out of time. Which would explain why she wanted to stand there with him for…a long time.

He nodded. And she realized that they’d been looking each other straight in the eye for too many seconds. She was going to look away. To take a sip of wine.

“My parents are both gone,” he said, answering her earlier question.

Her heart filled with compassion. Empathy. “I’m so sorry. Recently?”

And as his golden-brown eyes glistened, continuing to speak to her even before he spoke again, Marybeth knew that this man was special. Different.

“My dad’s been gone a long time,” he said with little emotion. And then swallowed. “Mom died this past year. Kidney problems.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” Maybe they were all at spouses’ family homes for the holidays. Maybe they’d invited him and he, not wanting to crash the party, had declined. Maybe he had a sibling here, in Santa Barbara….

The thoughts chased themselves around her mind more quickly than she could keep up with them. She just knew she didn’t want him to be alone. Didn’t want him to have to know how alone felt.

“I’m an only child,” he told her and Marybeth peered across the room. Sipped her wine. Studied the lights on the tree, the patterns in light color repetition. There weren’t any patterns.