The Man Under The Mistletoe

“One time! I hit a parked car one time!”

“It was a police car.”

She groaned. “The cop forgave me. Isn’t it time you did?”

“It was embarrassing.”

“Oh, get over yourself. It’s time you trusted me.” She put commands into her laptop even as she spoke to him and helped him watch for a break in the traffic. “We’ve been on stakeouts together, we’ve barfed at traffic accidents, we’ve lied our way out of tight spots, we’ve cried together…”

“When?”

“That story on the children’s wing of the hospital. Remember? The little girl with—”

“Oh, yeah.” He raised a hand to silence her. Somehow that little girl fighting lymphoma had reminded him of his own child, who’d never even lived to see the light of day. “I remember.”

The road clear, he sped off, as much to escape the memory as to take advantage of the opening in traffic. “I’m an important photojournalist now.” He faked an imperious air. “I have an image to protect.”

Jenny made a scornful sound. “Well, unfortunately for you, my mother believes that. You’re invited to dinner again next weekend.”

Jenny’s mother had designs on him for her daughter. She tried to be subtle about it and failed miserably. Matt and Jenny smiled at her matchmaking efforts, knowing that nothing more than friendship was possible between them. Matt was too reserved for Jenny, and her hyper behavior made him crazy.

He made the turn toward the department store. Smoke and flaming cinders filled the air. She pointed ahead. “There’s the police barricade.” He pulled over to park.

“Notice how I did that without hitting anything?” he said.

She punched him in the arm.

In the next block fire trucks and hoses were entangled in the street and a crowd of people had gathered to watch the flames. “Please offer your mom my apologies,” he said, reaching for his camera, “But I can’t go. I’m leaving tomorrow for my sister-in-law’s wedding.”

Jenny frowned at him. “You mean, the dragon’s sister is getting married?”

“Who said she was a dragon?”

“Aren’t exes always dragons?”

“I don’t know. Rosie’s the only ex I have, and she’s more of a…” What? he wondered. What described a woman who’d withdrawn so completely he could no longer reach her? “A turtle, I think.”

“You mean she moves slowly?”

“No.” He shook his head to end the discussion. She didn’t get it. But then, he’d been there, and he didn’t get it completely, either. He pushed his door open. “Come on before they put the damn thing out.”

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Rosie’s mother did a turn in her deep pink mother-of-the-bride silk suit. “Imagine silver hoop earrings, a white poinsettia corsage with silver ribbon, and Ferragamo pumps and clutch.”

Rosie opened her mouth to tell her she looked spectacular even without the accessories. But she was interrupted by her aunt Virginia, who’d arrived two days ago for the wedding. Known as Ginger to everyone, she’d earned her nickname because of her sharp opinions on everything.

“Very pretty,” Ginger said, walking around her smaller, more curvaceous sister. Then she swatted Sonny’s backside with sibling familiarity. “But I’m not sure you need two layers of fabric right there where you’ve always had more than the rest of us. You should have gone for a shorter jacket.”

Sonny put both hands behind her and looked over her shoulder, checking her reflection in the mirror over the mantel. She had to walk some distance away before she could see herself.

“It looks beautiful,” Rosie assured her, then said politely to her aunt, “We Erickson women are proud of our curves. And the heels will give her more height. She’ll look perfect.”

“They’ll also give her more jiggle,” Ginger declared. “You are wearing a shape enhancer, Sonny?”

“A what?”

“A girdle,” Rosie translated, then made a point of looking at her watch. “You don’t need one, Mom. And aren’t you two meeting Camille Malone for dinner?”

The ormolu clock on the mantel chimed six as though in compliance with Rosie’s need to get her mother and aunt out of the house—and out of her hair. She had every detail of the wedding under control except for those two.

“We are!” Ginger exclaimed, shooing her sister toward the stairs and the bedrooms. “Hurry up! Let’s get changed.”

“Relax.” Sonny resisted the attempt to hurry her. “Camille won’t be upset if we’re a few minutes late.”

“I want to try to charm her into writing her autobiography,” Ginger said, hurrying around Sonny and starting up the stairs. “Old movie stars are hot stuff these days,” she said.

“But she’s led a very quiet personal life.”

Ginger nodded greedily. “But I understand there’s a scandal involving her oldest daughter’s father.”

“Jasper O’Hara?” Sonny asked, clearly puzzled.

Ginger continued up. “He wasn’t the father,” she said.

“What? How could you possibly know that? You’ve been here all of two days.”

Ginger shrugged. “It’s a gift. I know where the stories are and who wants to buy them. I met a woman on the train coming in who knew all about her. She was returning from Christmas shopping in New York. Seems Camille told a mutual friend of theirs in confidence and she told me.”

“Some friend.” Sonny chased her up the stairs. “You will not ask her about her…” Her voice faded as a door closed.

Oh, no. Camille’s daughters, Paris Sanford and Prudence Hale, were Rosie’s friends. Rosie knew there were shocking facts about Paris’s father that Camille wouldn’t want to discuss. Rosie trusted her mother to talk her aunt out of promoting the book idea.

Of course, talking Ginger out of anything was a major undertaking. She’s been married at seventeen, divorced at nineteen, married again at twenty-one, divorced five years later—and then married a third time at the age of thirty. She was now divorced again.

The four Chamberlain sisters, of whom Ginger was the eldest, had grown up in Beverly Hills, daughters of a prominent heart surgeon and a gifted cellist. Ginger was now a literary agent in New York City, while the second eldest, Sonny, had given up her plans to study law when she’d married Hal Erickson in her senior year at Princeton. Sukie, or Susan, had been sickly most of her life but thanks to a doting husband, lived comfortably in Palm Springs; Sonny and Ginger planned to visit her together right after the wedding. The youngest sister, Charlotte, had had a brilliant career in music, before dying in a tragic traffic accident when she was only twenty-five.

Rosie still found it difficult to equate the motivated and single-minded mother she knew with the dewy-eyed college senior who’d thrown in her lot to support the brash and ambitious son of a longtime Maple Hill family.

Hal Erickson had built a large, successful construction company in Boston. When his father passed away, he sold his business and took over the helm of his father’s Berkshire Construction in Maple Hill. He’d maintained the company’s reputation for quality work, got involved in bringing business to the community. He’d been serving his second term on the town’s Industrial Growth Committee, and Rosie had been in the middle of her first term, when Jay had the accident. The projects under way at the time were stalled by his death, and Tolliver Textiles had backed out of the deal. The committee had been dormant until its resurrection at the fall festival dinner. She was convinced that if she was staying here, she had to take a hand in strengthening business.

But someone wasn’t happy about the plan, according to a message left on her answering machine several days ago. She hadn’t recognized the voice and caller ID had been blocked, so she’d just erased the vaguely threatening request that she let the textile plant remain in Boston.

It was impossible to please everyone, but she thought once she had Tolliver Textiles firmly interested in moving to Maple Hill, she’d ask Haley Megrath of the Maple Hill Mirror to report on the process of making the project happen from the Environmental Impact Statement on the parcel of land in question, to the construction of the building so that fears were allayed.

Frankly, she was grateful for the challenging project, even though real work wouldn’t begin until the new year.

She didn’t know how long it took other people to recover from loss, but she suspected she wasn’t even halfway there. She kept going because she didn’t know what else to do. And she had the feeling that if she stopped or gave up, her mother and sister might flounder with her.

And then there was her nephew, Chase; all he really had was the three of them. She had to keep going.

Rosie went back to the gift cataloging she’d been doing before her mother had modeled the pink suit. A corner of the large living room had been turned into a receiving area and temporary storage. Francie and Derek Page, her fiancé, had opened gifts as they’d arrived, and left the cards in the item or attached to it as Rosie had advised. Now she was being a helpful big sister and making Francie a list for thank-you notes.

“You’re sure your services don’t include writing the notes?” Francie had said, looking forlornly at the sea of gifts.

Rosie had shaken her head. “Hey, you’re the blushing bride. That’s your job.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“There’s not enough money in the world.” When she’d married Matt six years ago, their treasure trove of gifts had looked a lot like this. And she’d written thank-yous in her spare time from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Matt. She didn’t want to think about him, though when he arrived, she’d be forced to. Until then she was going to pretend, just as she’d been pretending for the past year, that he’d never come into her life.

“Aunt Rosie!” Chase raced in, arms wide like the wings of an airplane. “Look! I’m a navy Tomcat!”

“Really.” She glanced up from her notes. “You look just like my nephew.”

“Is he fast and maneuverable?”

She smiled at his vocabulary. Obviously he was smart, just like his father. “Yes, I believe he is,” she replied. “But no one else in our family is an airplane.”

“You’re forgetting Uncle Matt,” he said, circling her again, apparently in a holding pattern.

“Uncle Matt’s an airplane?”

“He says he’s a cargo bus,” Chase said between bursts of jet-engine noises. “’Cause he carries around a lot of stuff inside.”

She stared at Chase in surprise as he landed and taxied toward her. She guessed Matt hadn’t been talking about freight. “When did he say that?”

“Just now. He’s parking the car. He said to tell you he was here in case you wanted to hide or something.” Chase frowned. “Does he mean like hide-and-seek?”

Rosie was caught somewhere between rage and horror. Matt was here! After two years of struggling with her bereavement, she was going to have to confront the only other person who’d gone as deeply into hell as she had. Only, he’d surfaced again within months, and hadn’t been able to wait for her to resurface, too. And then he’d left.

He wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow. But…today, tomorrow—what difference did it make? Thanks to Francie, she couldn’t avoid him. Sooner or later she had to look into the face that she’d once loved so much but that now would only remind her of the darkest part of her nightmare.

There was a firm knock on the door. Her heart leaped against her breastbone, then sank again, thudding dully. She wanted to take a moment, draw a breath, prepare herself, but Chase was already running to the front door. He had to use both hands to pull it open.

Matthew Antonio DeMarco stood in the oak-framed doorway. He was big, though in her painful memories she’d made him smaller. Long, jeans-clad legs, broad shoulders in a gray tweed jacket over a blue sweater. Dark hair unruly.

Even from across the room, she found it hard to look into his face. But after he affectionately ruffled Chase’s hair, his dark eyes sought her. He found her, though she tried to disappear into the spread of gifts. She would have sworn she heard the sound of their eyes meeting—metal on metal—like swords clashing.

“I told her you were here!” Chase said, taking Matt by the wrist and pulling him into the room. “But she didn’t hide. Maybe she doesn’t want to play, but I do! Want me to go hide and see if you can find me? Huh?”

Matt had always been one of Chase’s favorite people. Eighteen months did not seem to have dimmed that affection.

Matt gave him a very adult, guy-to-guy look. “Let’s find something to do after I put my stuff away, okay?”

“Okay. Grandma says you’re gonna stay in Aunt Rosie’s old room.”

“Old room?” Matt asked.

Chase nodded. “She lives in the guest house now. But she’s moving in here to take care of me when Grandma goes away. Want me to go put the light on for you and check under the bed for monsters?”

That was a duty Matt had done for Chase when he and Rosie had baby-sat their nephew years ago. But Chase prided himself on his bravery now that he was eight.

Matt laughed. “Yes, please,” he said.

“Want me to take your bag?” Chase reached for it.

Matt held on to it. “It’s pretty heavy. But thanks, anyway.”

“Full of all that old stuff you carry around?” Rosie asked. She hated that the first words out of her mouth were snide. She’d wanted to appear cool and remote, not reveal that he could affect her from the moment he arrived.

Chase, already on his way upstairs, hadn’t heard her. Matt nodded simply, his eyes turbulent.

Then he smiled politely, like a visiting stranger.

“Hello, Rosie,” he said. “Sorry I’m early, but connecting flights from Hartford come in only on Monday and Thursday. I didn’t remember that.” He walked farther into the room and stopped to look around him. Her mother had redone the living room since he’d left. The formal wallpaper and dark wood he probably remembered had been replaced by soft yellow walls, crisp white woodwork, and floral and ivy patterns in the upholstery and draperies. She’d put away Rosie’s father’s collection of sailboat models and had her own trinkets set about— Montovani statuary, crystal bowls filled with flowers, a Victorian lady fabric doll Aunt Sukie had made.

“It’s sunnier in here,” he observed.

“Yes, it is,” she had to agree. “Redecorating gave Mom something…something to do.” Her mother had insisted, furthermore, on doing the redecorating herself rather than hiring the work out.

Rosie had volunteered to help, grateful for something to do to keep her hands and her mind occupied.

Francie had stayed away as much as possible after their father’s and their brother’s deaths and Matt’s defection. She said the house was like a mausoleum and no amount of paint was going to change it.

Matt focused his attention on her as she replied, and now she pulled herself together. If he was going to be here for a couple of days, she had to find a way to cope.

MATT KNEW that gesture, that drawing up of her leggy height, the aligning of her shoulders, the tossing of her long dark hair and The Look. It was a superior angle of her chin, an imperious expression in her bright blue eyes. She was suppressing emotion in favor of appearing controlled. He hated that she could do that so well.

As she stood there, all graceful, slightly disheveled femininity, old anguish tightening her mouth, anger at him in every line of her body, he wanted to drop to his knees and scream his frustration to the world.

But he’d done that two years ago and it hadn’t moved her. And that had been a valuable lesson to him. As much as he loved her, as hard as it was to walk away from all they’d been to each other, she’d dug a hole for herself he wasn’t going to be able to pull her out of. He’d had to save himself, or he wouldn’t be around to try again to save her. And just before her father’s suicide, Matt had stumbled upon information about shady dealings on Hal’s part that could have hurt her further. He’d had to get away.

She looked as remote today as she had then, but he had to believe that the intervening year and a half had had some kind of effect on her.

“How’s the business doing?” he asked, looking for a topic that didn’t relate to family or their relationship. That was difficult. Everything had been so tightly bound together in those days.

“Oh, you know,” she said, dropping a pad of paper on what appeared to be a crystal bowl in a nest of tissue. “Sometimes really good, sometimes not so good. Mom’s convinced I’m going to be bankrupt by spring. But I think I just have to have faith in love and romance and the business it’s going to bring me.”

That remark hung between them like a foot of sizzling fuse. She shifted uncomfortably, obviously wishing she’d chosen her words more carefully. He was tempted to tell her it would have been good if she’d had a little faith in their love and its ability to heal, but instead he smiled politely again, extinguishing the fuse—at least for now.

“Where’s Mom?” he asked.

“She and Aunt Ginger are having dinner with Camille Malone tonight. You remember her?” At his nod, she went on. “They just left. Have you had dinner?”

“No, I haven’t. Is the Breakfast Barn still in business?”

“Yes. And it’s brisk.”

“Then I’ll put my bag upstairs and go get myself something to eat. Has Chase eaten?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Shall I take him with me?”

She nodded. “I’m sure he’d love that.”

He debated the wisdom of inviting her along. It would be foolish to think they could easily pick up the threads of their relationship as it had been before her brother died, before she’d found her father with a .30-caliber hole in his temple, and before the shock of that had caused her to lose their baby. Her rejection of his offer would hurt and pile up behind all the other times since then when he’d tried to touch her, hold her, make her turn to him, only to have her push him away.

But that was part of the reason he was here. He loved Francie like his own sister, and he’d come because she’d asked him. But this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, a way to walk in under cover of some other mission and assess Rosie’s emotional situation and whether he could fit into her life again.

“Want to join us?” he asked intrepidly.

He saw the civility dissolve and the anger come forward in her eyes. “Now, what do you think?”

“I think a lot of time has passed,” he said reasonably, “and it’s time to look at things from a new perspective.”

“A lot of time has passed,” she agreed coolly, “but my perspective remains the same. I lost my brother, my father and our baby in the space of a week, and you…” The anger turned to pain for an instant, but she tossed her head, seeming to shake it off. Being angry at him was apparently more comfortable than hurting. “You left me.”

“You drove me away,” he corrected.

“I had lost…three of the most important people in my life!” Her voice rose. “Did you expect me to be the same perky little debutante you married?”

He had to focus on keeping his voice down. “Of course not. I just wanted you to remember that I was there to offer support, comfort, a way back. But you didn’t want to come back.” He remembered clearly the helplessness that he’d felt then, and that had lived with him ever since. “I know how much you loved Jay and your dad. And I loved our baby as much as you did and would have been happy to be the second most important person in your life. I’d have even dealt with being in line behind your father and Jay if you’d given me some sign you knew I was there.”

“You wanted…sex!” She whispered the last word like an accusation.

“I didn’t want sex,” he said, having a little difficulty keeping his voice calm. “I wanted to make love to you, to remind you that in spite of all the people you’d lost, we were still alive. And that was almost six months after…after that hellish week, and you hadn’t touched me or let me touch you in all that time. I was desperate to get through to you, to make sure you knew we could go on if you wanted to.”

Her response to that effort had made it clear she didn’t want to go on. He smiled grimly and added, “Instead, you slapped me, hard, and told me you never wanted to see me again. I didn’t leave you, Rosie. You sent me away.”

She looked puzzled, almost as though she couldn’t quite remember that.

Chase ran down the stairs, his skinny, lively little body cutting right through the tension. “Aren’t you coming up to unpack, Uncle Matt?” he asked breathlessly. “I put the lights on, and Grandma put towels and stuff for you in the bathroom.”

“Great.” Matt struggled to redirect his attention. He’d known that returning to Bloombury Landing would be hard. He had to pace himself and his emotions. And he was sure it wasn’t easy for Rosie, either. “Want to come to dinner with me, Chase?”

“Yeah!” Chase danced along beside him as he headed for the stairs. “Can Aunt Rosie come?”

“She…” He hesitated over an excuse.

“I have to fix something on Grandma’s suit for the wedding,” she said with a smile for the boy. When her gaze bounced off Matt, it revealed a complex mixture of resentment, suspicion and simple annoyance—a variation of The Look. “You go with Uncle Matt and have a good time.”

“Want us to bring something back for you?” Matt pushed, wanting her to know he wouldn’t be put off by her efforts to hold him completely at bay.

“No, thank you.” Her reply was icy as she picked up her notepad again and looked away.

“Okay.” He handed Chase his briefcase and picked up his brown leather bag. “You lead the way, sport. We’ll wash our hands and be off. Are chicken wings still your favorite?”

“Yeah! Only now I like the hot ones, just like you! And they don’t make me puke anymore!”

Matt followed him upstairs, remembering the time he and Rosie had been baby-sitting Chase and he’d allowed the boy to sample his buffalo wings. When he’d liked them, Matt had bought the boy his own order. Matt had insisted that it was the large banana shake that followed the wings that had made Chase sick most of the night, but Rosie had still blamed him.

Matt walked into Rosie’s old room with some trepidation. After they were married, they’d shared this room whenever they stayed over, and there were memories connected to it he was reluctant to explore.

But it was time. He’d tried not to think about her for the past eighteen months, and he’d been successful only a very small part of the time. So he’d pushed away all the good memories and let himself recall only how difficult those six months before he’d left had been. He’d remembered her as stiff and angry and inaccessible.

This room, though, brought back all the delicious times before that when what ultimately happened to them would have seemed unimaginable.

“Nobody stays here now,” Chase said, “but Grandma had all the windows open all day so it wouldn’t smell funny.”

In the old days, he remembered, Rosie’s fragrance had been everywhere. A friend who worked in a cosmetics company in Boston had developed a personal fragrance for her and had started, of course, with roses. She’d added a list of spices Matt could never quite remember, but the end product pinpointed her personality to perfection—a soft sweetness with a surprising bite.

Rosie must have been away from this room long enough that it no longer smelled of her, but her stamp lingered all the same. The walls were a terra cotta color, the woodwork a creamy beige. The bed, dresser and desk were light oak, and there were plants in colorful pots everywhere, standing on the hardwood floor, on surfaces, hanging near the curtainless bay window that looked out on to the lake.

A window seat was upholstered in a shell-and-sea-birds pattern in shades of white and gold, and matched a wallpaper border that ran around the room near the ceiling. They’d made love on that window seat one night when they’d stayed up late to watch a meteor shower.

“Grandma put some hangers in here for you.” Chase slid open one side of a wardrobe and pointed to the odd assortment of hangers on the rod. “Those fluffy ones are from her closet.” He pointed to a padded white silk hanger. “And the wooden ones are from my dad’s old closet.”