The Holiday Visitor

“Me, too.” The words were soft, only half spoken, really. She was breaking cardinal rule numbers one through ten. Marybeth did not speak about her private life to her guests. Ever. Or drink with them. Or open her heart to them. Or feel attraction…

“You’re an only child?” The question was quiet, respectful. His head was cocked slightly as he watched her.

When her usual yes, without further elaboration, wasn’t enough, Marybeth knew she was in trouble.

“My parents are both dead.”

She was really reacting to this guy.

Was she just vicariously living Wendy’s feelings for Randy? Suffering from transference?

Was it the holidays?

“Recently?”

She couldn’t stop looking at him. “My mom died when I was a kid. An…accident. Dad passed just this year. He had a heart attack on the tennis court.”

“Completely unexpected.”

She nodded. “I…have a friend, who lost a parent this year, too.” Thoughts of James while she was sitting here attracted to another man made the whole situation that much more surreal.

James should be sitting in her living room, making her tongue-tied and uneven. Not this stranger. She and James had history. Things that could never, ever be duplicated. They understood each other on levels most people didn’t even know existed.

She needed him this week. More than ever.

And he’d refused to meet her. Ever.

“Someone here locally?”

He’d promised, from the ripe age of thirteen, that he’d always be there for her. “No,” she said. “He’s in Colorado.” Or at least his mailing address was.

“With family?”

She had no idea how to answer that. The truth—that she didn’t know if James had any family other than the mother who’d just died, didn’t even know if he was married, or living with a woman, or gay for that matter—would be too hard to explain in light of the fact that she’d just called him a friend.

And the greater truth—that her best friend since junior high school was a pen pal she’d never met—wasn’t sharing material. Ever. With anyone.

“He’s not alone,” she said in the end. It was the only information pertinent to the current conversation.

“And what about you?” Craig’s lids lowered slightly as he asked the question.

“I…” She parried personal questions. Always. And not just since she’d become the keeper of a house filled with others’ memories in the making, either.

The silence was long enough for him to bow out of the conversation. To let her off the hook.

He didn’t. He simply sat there. Watching her. Waiting.

Time to clean up the cheese and crackers. To call Brutus over. To start breakfast. Or glue something.

“Yes.” Dammit. She’d known the word was coming. Should have tried harder to prevent it from slipping out. She had no idea where any of this could go.

No idea if he even noticed she was alive, other than as a hostess he was paying to take care of him for a few days.

“My surrogate family wants me to come over, as Dad and I have done every year since Mom died.”

“But you turned them down?” He didn’t sound critical. Or even as though he thought her crazy.

“I told them I was working. Breakfasts don’t cook and linens don’t get changed by themselves and I sure wasn’t going to call my cleaning lady, Grace, away from her family.”

Frowning, Craig set his glass on the claw-foot, cherry coffee table. “I’m keeping you away from your friends? I can go—”

“No!” What was it about him? And her? “I’d stay home whether you were here or not. Truly. I already told them I wasn’t coming.”

Her choice to live her life alone might seem odd to most people, but she didn’t have to justify herself. Nor would she. She was all grown up now. An adult. Her life was her own.

And she was happy.

She was also completely turned on for the first time in her life.

Chapter Four

CRAIG TRIED TO CALL Jenny when he went back to his room to grab a jacket before heading out for the short walk to a quaint little diner he’d seen about a block away from the inn. When she didn’t pick up, he stifled his frustration mixed with relief, quickly left a message letting her know that he’d arrived in Santa Barbara, that he was hoping she’d arrived safely, as well, and that he’d call her again in a day or so, reception allowing.

“Love you.” His final words were offered with sincerity.

Her flight might have been delayed. Or she could be out. Or with her family and not able to answer. She could have left her cell phone in her room. Or failed to charge it. One thing was for certain. If Miss Jenny Fournier-Chevalier didn’t end up safely at her folks’ castle situated on richly grown acres of French countryside, Craig McKellips would be hearing about it.

HE DIDN’T SEE his hostess again that night. Though he made eating a business, tackling the task efficiently, rather than lingering and appreciating the anomaly of free time, the door to her quarters had been firmly closed when he returned to the Orange Blossom. The light shining from beneath her door had called to him, though.

He’d thought about knocking. And thought about Brutus and privacy and the fact that he had nothing to offer the young, vibrant woman who lived on the other side of that portal—no matter how much he wanted to be in her presence. He was married. More, he had secrets, things Marybeth Lawson couldn’t ever know, things that prevented them from ever being more than casual acquaintances.

Craig spent more hours than he’d have liked in front of the window in the Juliet room that night, and again, the next morning staring at the ocean in the distance—unwinding, thinking, trying to come to terms with his life—until it was finally time to head downstairs to breakfast. Dressed in baggy black shorts and a white polo shirt topped with a black sweater to protect him from ocean breezes, he forced himself to take the steps one at a time when what he wanted to do was jog the whole way.

“Have you eaten?” he asked his beautiful hostess as he entered the dining room to see her filling a glass with orange juice from an antique-looking glass pitcher, at a table set for one.

She wore black jeans. A white cotton top that hugged her thin waist and outlined the swell of her breasts, and another one of those adorable Christmas sweaters—this one a cardigan sporting the embroidered design of dalmatians and hearths with stockings hanging from them.

“Good morning!” She seemed to be having just as hard a time not staring at him as he was not staring at her. “No, I haven’t eaten,” she continued, heading over to a heated sideboard that had to be portable because it looked identical to the one he’d seen in the living room the night before—scarred leg and all. “I wait until everyone else is finished and take whatever’s left over.”

“Since everyone else is just me, would it be completely awkward for you if I asked you to join me?” he asked without any remorse at all. “It being Christmas Eve and all, and I won’t eat much if I think I’m taking food from your mouth and…”

Hands in his pockets, feeling plain good for a moment, he was prepared to go on and on.

“Okay!” With a grin, she smiled at him. “But only because it’s a holiday and I’d hate to eat alone, too, if I were you.”

While ordinarily Craig would more than bristle at being a target of pity—even in play—if it meant Marybeth was joining him, he’d accept as much pity as she wanted to hand out.

And then, minutes later, as she glanced at his hand, her smile faded.

“You’re wearing a wedding ring this morning.”

They were just starting the first course—a concoction of fresh fruit and yogurt and he didn’t know what, served in parfait glasses. Or rather, he was. She sat, slightly slouched, frowning, her spoon poised above her dish, watching him.

He nodded. “This is great. Delicious. Did you make it yourself?”

“Yeah. I do all my own cooking. From scratch and I use freshly picked fruits and vegetables whenever possible.” Her voice had no inflection at all.

She took a bite. Chewed, her gaze distant.

“I’m married.”

There. That was done.

“I didn’t notice the ring last night.”

“I didn’t have it on.”

She didn’t say anything. He felt like an A-class jerk.

“Jenny and I…we’re…”

What was he doing? This woman was a stranger to him. Or should be.

“It’s okay,” she said, jumping up in spite of the fact that she’d only taken the one bite. “I don’t mean to pry. I’ll bring in the casserole. Do you prefer sausage, bacon or both?”

“Sausage, please.”

And she was gone, leaving him brimming with frustration at his own inadequacies.

He was no less fretful when his beautiful hostess returned less than two minutes later, two plates laden with an egg-and-sausage concoction, some kind of rosemary-looking potatoes and garnished with more fruit, in her hands.

“Jenny’s older than I am.” He gave her the most innocuous fact of his life. “By five years.”

“Oh.” She sat. Cut a piece of casserole. Put it in her mouth. Chewed. “Coffee?” She held up the pot.

Shaking his head, Craig watched her take another bite. Watched her lips.

And attacked his own breakfast.

“We’re both artists,” he offered, several minutes into the meal when all he could think about was touching his hostess’ hands to see if they were as soft as they looked.

“Painters?”

He reached for the coffeepot. She got there first and filled his cup for him. A wifely thing to do.

“She paints. I sculpt. Sort of.”

“What does that mean?” A small, impersonal smile curved her lips and Craig felt himself sinking again.

“I build things out of metal. Wall scenes. Pictures. Even furniture. Pretty much anything I’m commissioned to do.” A simplistic explanation, but it would suffice. His art, his career, didn’t matter here.

“Do you work under your own name?”

“Yes.” Such a hazy distinction between duplicity and truth.

Trying to follow her lead, to get them back to the level of married guest with innkeeper, he answered all of her questions as they finished the main course, meeting some internal need he didn’t understand as he told her about himself. He didn’t own a retail shop, preferring to sell his stuff at shows, but he did have a studio on his property. No, he and his wife didn’t share workspace. Her studio was the whole upstairs of the cabin they’d had built the year before. He used all kinds of metals in his work and had perfected a way to colorize in a technique similar to ceramics with special paints and repeated firings of the metal. And while he’d been all around the country, these days he had very little time to be out on the road hocking his wares due to the numbers of commissioned orders he was receiving.

“We have a fairly well-known art show not far from here,” she said over her last bite of casserole. She licked her fork. He followed the path her tongue took. “It’s sometime in June and draws artists from all over the States.”

“I know.” He had to look away as his body responded to the innocent stimuli. “I’m signed up for it. That’s actually how I came to be here now. They sent an acceptance packet with local information. Your ad was one of the many offering accommodations.”

Think work, man. Work and secrets. And Jenny.

“Do I have you booked then?” She didn’t seem unhappy about that.

“Not yet.” He’d needed to check things out first. Always. No matter what he did. “But I plan to do that before I leave.”

He could do this. Have a friend. Jenny had many—both male and female. He’d tell her about Marybeth. Marybeth knew he was married. It was all okay. Whether he was married or not, he could never be more than passing-through friends with Marybeth Lawson, anyway. There were reasons for that, too.

“Good. Now’s the time to do it.” Marybeth cleared their plates, leaving them on the sideboard as she brought over the coffee cake that had been warming. “I’ve only been open three years, but all three summers were completely booked. Every single night from May until September.”

“I hope you have people in here helping you.”

“A woman comes in and cleans, but I pretty much do the rest myself. I like it that way.”

“Seven days a week for three months straight? What about time off?”

“Other than cooking, I’m off a good part of each day unless I’m doing the cleaning. I’m here for breakfast, and for check-in at three. And for evening libations. Otherwise I come and go.”

“But you don’t have a full day off? Not even one?”

Putting a too big piece of mouthwatering cake on a plate in front of him, Marybeth shrugged. “What for?”

The response tugged at him.

HE ATE EVERY BITE of the huge piece of caramel walnut coffee cake she’d made last night after she’d heard Craig come in from dinner. It had been her father’s favorite. A family tradition to have it on Christmas Eve. One of the few that Marybeth had kept up after her mother’s death.

One of the few her father had acknowledged. She hadn’t planned on making it this year. Then Craig McKellips had walked through the door and she’d been doing all sorts of crazy things.

Like sitting down to breakfast with a guest. Like feeling more hungry for the guest than for the food she’d prepared. The guest with a wedding ring on his finger.

“So what made you decide to take a whole week in Santa Barbara right now?” she asked, when what she really needed to know was why he was there alone.

“I wanted to get out of the cold.”

She pulled his plate toward her. Stacked it atop her own.

How could a man who exuded such heat ever be cold? And how could she, knowing that he was married, that he belonged to someone else, still feel so compelled to be near him?

As their gazes met, held, as she couldn’t look away because she wanted so badly to know every single thought behind the searching she found there, Marybeth blurted, “What about your wife? What was her name? Jenny?”

His blinked, and it was as if he left one world for another, but he still looked her straight in the eye. “What do you want to know about her?”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And everything.

And nothing again. He was a guest—albeit one who’d seemingly changed who she was. All these years of waiting to find a man who sparked magic—who sparked some kind of reaction in her—and he comes along married.

“Jenny and I…that’s not something I can readily explain.”

“I understand,” she said, reaching for the coffeepot as she stood. She had to stop feeling things around him.

Craig’s hand on the handle of the pot stopped her.

“Please, I’d like to tell you about her, if you don’t mind. If for no other reason than because I purposely took off my wedding ring yesterday when I got here.”

Danger, Will Robinson. A line from a drama space show she used to watch popped into her brain. A TV show from long, long ago. Pre-twelve years of age. Marybeth could see the robot’s arms flailing all over the place, as though a precursor to what would come if she stayed in that room right then.

His wedding ring, wherever he kept it, had nothing to do with her.

“I don’t think…”

“I want it very clear that I have no intention of behaving with anything but complete appropriateness while I’m away from my wife. I have never, not once, been unfaithful to her. Nor will I be.”

The tone of his voice, so filled with emotion, as much as his words put her butt right back in the chair.

He had to be feeling it, too—this…whatever had overtaken her the minute she’d seen him standing in the foyer of her home. Apparently he felt it, and was trying to be responsible to it.

“I’m listening.”

“I…Jenny and I are friends. Great friends. We hung out together in art school and were buddies for a couple of years before we ever talked about becoming something more.”

Buddies with this man? Marybeth couldn’t see it.

“We’re good together. Good for each other. We understand each other.”

At least he hadn’t given her the classic my wife doesn’t understand me line.

“There’s mutual respect and trust because of that understanding. Most importantly, there are no false expectations. When both of us are free at the same time, we enjoy each other’s company. But there’s no hurt feelings, or longing to be together when we’re apart.”

“Then why did you get married?” God, he looked good to her. Even now she was hanging on his every word. Wanted to know everything about him.

“It was her idea,” Craig said slowly, as though from someplace far away. “Neither of us had a lifestyle conducive to a traditional marriage. Neither of us wanted one. We’re both the type of people who need emotional distance. Yet, we seemed to gravitate toward each other. Taking the next step seemed natural. Right. She was certain that we could make it work.”

“What about you? Were you certain, too?”

“I wanted to believe her.” He shook his head, seemed to come back to the present as he once again looked right at her.

“I did believe her,” he amended. “I wanted it to work.” Past tense? “And now?”

“I still want it to work.” Craig toyed with the edge of his napkin, watching the shape he was forming as though it was some form of art. “I’ve never been in this situation before,” he said, glancing up, then down again. His fingers were beautiful, art in themselves, as he worked on the soft paper between them.

“What situation?”

“Being in the presence of another woman…and wanting to stay.”

Marybeth tried not to make more of his remark than was there. She wasn’t for him. Wasn’t ever going to be his woman.

“Whose idea was it to spend the holidays apart?”

“Mine, mostly.” Craig continued to toy with his napkin, rolling, folding, forming something, all with just the two fingers. “Jenny’s the daughter of French aristocracy. She was raised in a castle about a hundred miles outside of Paris.”

Great, Marybeth was competing with a princess. But not really. She’d already lost. Before she’d ever had a chance.

But then, she’d learned a long time ago about the curves life threw.

“Her parents are stereotypically French. As far as they’re concerned Americans are second-rate citizens. Most certainly not good enough to marry their precious only daughter. She doesn’t pay much attention to their attitudes, never has, but she does love them.”

His grin was laconic. “About as much as they don’t love me.”

“And that doesn’t bother you?”

“I know it’s not personal. They hatedmebefore we ever met.”

“So you have met?”

He nodded. “Our first Christmas together. Jenny goes home every December. They insisted on it as part of the deal they made with her before they allowed her to come to the States. Her entire family—aunts, uncles, cousins—shows up that week, no matter where they might be living. The holiday get-together is kind of a sacred thing with all of them.”

It sounded lovely to her.

“That first year, I went with her. And decided never to repeat the experience.”

“Why?”

“Because I hated to see Jenny so torn. She loves her family very much, and yet she sees what they are, too. The entire week, her parents acted as though she was alone. They never once looked at me. If they spoke directly to me, which wasn’t often, they looked past me as if I wasn’t there. I didn’t much care…it left me a lot of time to explore France. I came home with more inspiration than I knew what to do with. But the week took a toll on Jenny. She felt terrible for the way I was treated. And yet she was pulled because that week is her only time with them and she wanted to be with them.”

“Did she try to talk to them about it?”

“Of course. Jenny’s not one to take things sitting down. But her parents think they know best, that their added years of experience have taught them things she has yet to learn. They keep hoping she’ll come to her senses.”

“So this isn’t the first Christmas you’ve spent apart.” She felt better. Less like a sinner. Sort of.

“No. And yes. After that first year, we decided to spend future Christmases with our respective parents. I hated leaving my mother alone and Jenny hated that the seven days she had with her folks had been spent in constant bickering over me.”

Between his fingers an animal was taking shape. A body. Four legs and a blob where a head should be. A blob with points. A reindeer.

“She offered to stay home this year,” he was saying, “because of my mom passing, but I know she misses her family, and they her. And who knows how long she’ll have them?”

They both knew the hard truth within the rhetorical question.

“So,” she had to ask, “do you love her?”

“Sure I do.” This time when he looked up, it was as though he was searching for something from her. As though he needed her to understand more than he was saying. “As much as I love, period.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve just…I’m not a real emotional guy.”

She didn’t believe that. Couldn’t believe it. Not with the charge he’d brought into her home with him. The man seeped from the inside out.

“How can you say you’re in love and think yourself unemotional at the same time?”

“I didn’t say I’m in love. I said I love her as much as I love anyone.”

“Does she know that?”

“Of course. It’s the same with her. Our passion goes into our work. By the time we get to the people in our lives, there’s not much left.”

The theory had merit. It was obvious Craig believed what he was telling her. And just as clear to her that he was one hundred percent wrong.

Which left her wondering—needing to know—why he had to believe it.

“When she’s in the throes of creation, Jenny doesn’t have anything left for herself. She’ll forget to eat, to sleep, to lock the door if she happens to take a walk. That’s where I come in. I make sure she eats.”

Surprised by the prick of jealousy she felt, Marybeth tried to imagine a life with someone watching her back the way she’d watched her father’s. And now her guests’.

Mostly she envisioned herself being irritated, feeling smothered. And yet as she pictured this virtual stranger there, concerned that she wasn’t getting enough rest, strange things happened to her.

Dangerous things.

“Jenny and I are honest with each other,” he was saying, “which is part of what makes us work so well.”

She got that. And wanted to believe that his choices had no correlation with her life. She wasn’t envious. She’d rather be alone than settle for less.

Wouldn’t she?

“I’ve got to get going.” Marybeth stood, gathering things carefully as she tried to put life—him—in perspective before she went down a path to destruction. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Can I tag along with you to church?”

She’d told him the day before that she’d be going, offered to direct him to a congregation of his faith, if he attended at all. She’d not expected this.

There was something intimate about the thought of sitting in church with a man. Attending with him.

She liked the idea too much.

But it was Christmas Eve.

And he was alone.

“Sure. We can have something to eat around five, if you’d like, and go to the early service at seven.”

“I’d like that.”

She nodded. Watched him watching her. And when she made herself leave, she took the memory of his smile with her.

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