Christmas At Timberwoods (13 page)
Read Christmas At Timberwoods Online
Authors: Fern Michaels
He was asleep the minute his head touched the pillow. His sleep was deep and peaceful and in the morning his covers were barely disturbed. Usually he slept fitfully and his bed had to be made from scratch.
Two cups of coffee and three English muffins later, Charlie tiptoed back upstairs to Angela’s room. She looked small and fragile in the big double bed and she had kicked off the covers. One skinny leg was actually dangling over the side of the bed. Gently, so as not to wake her, Charlie pulled up the coverlet and stood staring down at her. Her curly hair was sticking up around her face in cute spikes. His eyes went to her hands and for the second time he noticed her fingernails, or lack of them. They looked raw and painful. She must be really nervous to chew the nails down as far as she had. It bothered him, those chewed-down nails, and he didn’t know why. Maybe he should rub healing ointment or something on them. But if he did that, she would wake up and think he was taking liberties with her.
Immediately he backed off a step. He would mention it later in the day when they were talking. That’s what he would do. He’d buy her a tube of something while he was on his break, make it a gift to her. An overpowering urge to touch the spiky curls came over him. Before he could think about it, he moved closer to the bed and reached down. Gently he tried to brush them from her cheeks. Maybe she needed a hairbrush. He turned and went to his room, fetched a brush, and placed it on the night table next to her bed. He wanted to kiss her nose. He bent over and stared at her a second longer before he gave her a quick peck. It was a strange nose, just like the rest of her. He frowned. She didn’t look like she was put together right. In the end, he decided it didn’t matter how she was put together. He liked her just the way she was. And the best part of all was that she liked him; he could tell. Looks weren’t all that important; not to him, anyway.
Charlie went through his day in a state bordering on euphoria. He called Angela on his break, then managed to buy the right ointment for her fingers and get back to work to provide backup for Santa as needed.
Dinner was the same as Wednesday night, only this time Angela had made spaghetti and meatballs. All evening long he prayed silently, as the line of children dwindled, that she wouldn’t bolt out of his life as suddenly as she’d arrived in it.
Please,
he pleaded silently,
don’t let things change. Let me have this. I never asked you for anything before. Just this. Please, let me keep her.
Please,
he pleaded silently,
don’t let things change. Let me have this. I never asked you for anything before. Just this. Please, let me keep her.
That evening Angela suggested they watch an old movie called
Back Street
with Irene Dunne. She said she liked old movies better than the new ones, that the actors and actresses were better and the plots more interesting. Charlie agreed. All of today’s movies were about drugs and crime. He hated them.
Back Street
with Irene Dunne. She said she liked old movies better than the new ones, that the actors and actresses were better and the plots more interesting. Charlie agreed. All of today’s movies were about drugs and crime. He hated them.
Angela made a huge batch of fried onion rings and they drank beer from the bottles. She might be an oddball, and she might not be pretty, but she was a great companion. Charlie couldn’t remember being so happy in his entire life. He hadn’t really been happy since the year he got an electric train set. His father had given it to him and then said he was too young to play with it, that he might get electrocuted, but that if Charlie was a good boy he could watch Mommy and Daddy play with it. Damn, now what made him think of that?
He smiled inwardly. He would get it down out of the attic and he and Angela would put it together and play with it. He’d even let her turn the switch on and off. She’d like that.
He’d get a Christmas tree, too. A live tree in a pot, which you could plant in the yard later. A big one with strong branches so it could hold all the ornaments packed away in the attic. He and Angela would decorate it together, hang lights on it, glittering red balls, popcorn, and tinsel. He would put on some Christmas music, choir music. And they would drink apple cider.
How had he gotten so lucky?
It was early according to the small clock on the night table. Angela stared at the luminous dial, not believing her eyes. Why had she woken up at 5:10 in the morning? She lay back and listened to the driving rain—or was it sleet?—that rattled the windows. She snuggled deeper under the covers, willing sleep to overtake her again. It didn’t work. She was wide awake. She might as well get up and go downstairs. At least she could turn on the TV in the living room and get the weather report off the local news station. Was this the storm the weatherman had touted the night before? He’d predicted six inches of snow by morning, but, as usual, they were getting rain.
Quietly, so as not to disturb Charlie, Angela dressed and crept downstairs. She reached for the aluminum coffee percolator and filled it with the water Charlie had left out. Within minutes she had bacon frying on low and was mixing a batch of pancakes.
Playing house, which she knew was what she was doing, was a comforting obsession that kept much less pleasant things at bay. For this brief time, no dreams had haunted her sleep. She had almost forgotten about her visions.
Almost.
Her mind whirled as she stirred the pancake batter. What would she do with herself all day? Dust. Punch cushions to plumpness. Water the plants and clean the already clean bathroom. She could strip both beds and put on fresh sheets. The towels needed to be washed. She could dust and vacuum and read the paper. After that, television, and then time to make dinner. Normal as could be.
If her mother knew where Angela was and what she was doing, she would totally disapprove.
Who the hell is Charlie Roman? And what do you think you’re doing with him? But . . . you don’t have to come home. There’s nothing here for you. Or me.
Who the hell is Charlie Roman? And what do you think you’re doing with him? But . . . you don’t have to come home. There’s nothing here for you. Or me.
Sylvia Steinhart wasn’t wrong about that. Her parents’ marriage had been rocky for years. Some day, Angela thought, she herself would make someone a good wife. She liked to potter around the house and take her time doing small things. She liked clean things and everything neatly in its place. She particularly liked watering Charlie’s plants with the yellow watering can with the orange flowers painted on the side. It made her feel very domestic. She was enjoying every unreal minute of her stay here. But it wasn’t going to last indefinitely. Sooner or later she was going to have to confess all to Charlie Roman. If good old Mummy ever found out where she was, poor Charlie would be dragged into court for attempted kidnapping or some other trumpedup charge.
She couldn’t allow that to happen to him. He was just too nice. Her face was fierce as she stirred the batter with a vengeance.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asked. She jumped, startled by his sudden appearance. He was alarmed at her strange look.
Angela looked up. “Nothing,” she said calmly. “I was just thinking of something unpleasant there for a minute. Sit down. I’m making you pancakes and eggs and bacon. You need something besides coffee before you go out on a day like this. Didn’t I tell you that weatherman was all wet last night?” She giggled.
Charlie laughed. “Those were your exact words, all right. Do you know what woke me up?”
“Perking coffee?”
He nodded. “From here all the way upstairs. It’s a great smell.”
Angela poured the batter onto the square grill pan. “Yes, it is.”
“And . . . I like the smell of pine, too. Especially at Christmastime.” Charlie paused. “I was thinking, Angela, would you like to take a ride to Cranbury soon and buy a real Christmas tree? We’ll bring it home and decorate it together. There are boxes and boxes of decorations in the attic.”
“Oh, Charlie! Really? Oh, I would love that!” Angela cried, her eyes shining. “I’ve never decorated a tree before. My mother always did it all. I wasn’t allowed. That way it came out perfect,” she added with a touch of bitterness.
“You’ve never decorated a tree before?” Charlie asked incredulously.
“No, but I’ve always wanted to. So do you have a star for the top?”
“Better than that. A gossamer angel!”
“I can’t wait to see it,” Angela said, sliding a stack of pancakes onto his plate. “Your eggs are coming right up.”
Charlie ate like there was never going to be another ounce of food put before him. He savored each and every mouthful, not because he was that hungry but because Angela had made it especially for him. He knew she would be pleased if he ate it all. When he’d finished, he leaned back in the stout wooden chair. “I hate to eat and run, but I’d better get an early start. The weatherman said the roads were freezing over and there were traffic jams. I’ll call you on my break and, if I get a chance, I’ll stop at the grocery store on my lunch hour. Jot down a list of things we need and you can read it to me on my break.”
“Okay, Charlie. Drive carefully.”
He grabbed his heavy jacket and left, musing over her parting words. Drive carefully. No one had ever told him that before. Did that mean she cared if something happened to him? Charlie wished he had more experience with women. But then women were supposed to be a mystery to men.
He frowned as he steered his car through the streets at a crawl, watching any and all traffic. This was no time to get himself in an accident.
Angela was different, though. When a girl said, “What you see is what you get,” how could there be a mystery? He had never liked mysteries, anyway—they always had unhappy endings, and the characters always got found out on the next-to-last page. But he didn’t have to worry about that now.
Chapter 9
Eric Summers’s head pounded as he clenched and unclenched his brown fists. His stomach was in one big knot. He watched Heather Andrews walk by, glancing over her shoulder every so often, her steps short and jerky.
Fear. It was a living thing touching all their lives. How could the new, endless waves of oblivious shoppers below not sense what was going on? And the damn merchants were so greedy for their holiday haul that they were willing to discount their own lives as well as those of everyone else walking through the giant mall. It was true: the love of money was the root of all evil.
And there was no escaping the brooding sense of menace in the atmosphere. He didn’t have the luxury of not noticing.
Lex came into his line of vision, his face grim and tight. Business as usual. You got paid for eight hours, had to argue for overtime, or you could kiss your job good-bye in this economy.
Bomb threats came under the heading of everyday nuisances. Just something you took in your stride while you hoped you survived the real deal, if it came to that.
Dedicated public servant—that was him. Yeah, right. Eric was edgy and he had every right to be. Downright frightened, if he wanted to be honest. How many hours were left of the seventy-two that the bomb threat referred to? Not many. He hated the absolute helplessness he felt. He should be doing something instead of this aimless wandering around. Another half hour and the Christmas parade would start. Was that when it would happen? When all the people were clustered in one area?
He turned at the touch on his shoulder.
“No, I don’t know anything and no, we didn’t find anything,” he said curtly to Dolph Richards.
“That’s because nothing is going to happen and there’s nothing to find. When are you paragons of law and order going to get that through your heads? The fool hasn’t been born who would have the nerve to blow up my mall. Relax, Summers, and enjoy the parade,” Richards responded urbanely.
“You know, Richards, you’re the fool. A first-class, grade-A, number-one fool,” Eric said, stomping away. He couldn’t look at the man’s face another second.
“Takes one to know one,” Richards said softly to Eric’s retreating back. It annoyed Richards that the mall was already full of plainclothes police and his own security people. What could possibly go wrong? There wasn’t so much as a hint of anything out of the ordinary. If the amount of packages and shopping bags the customers were carrying were any indication, then his projections were on target.
Spend, spend, spend,
he thought happily as he made his way to the make-believe North Pole where the parade was to start. It really was a stroke of genius on his part to agree to feature Nick Anastasios, a real grandfather and a genuinely kind man, to play this year’s Santa. Nick was going to get a healthy bonus.
he thought happily as he made his way to the make-believe North Pole where the parade was to start. It really was a stroke of genius on his part to agree to feature Nick Anastasios, a real grandfather and a genuinely kind man, to play this year’s Santa. Nick was going to get a healthy bonus.
Maybe if everything went off well he would give his helper, that big lug named Charlie, a much smaller bonus. It did pay to show gratitude from time to time. Just look at the two of them. Richards grinned.
Santa was ho-ho-ho-ing with all his might. He waved his arms to signal that the parade was about to begin, then climbed into his sleigh with a boost from Charlie. Wheels camouflaged by white bunting, the sleigh was pulled by eight robust college boys dressed in reindeer costumes. Santa tossed out candy canes as the sleigh cruised through the mall. “Ho, ho, ho,” he shouted to one and all. “Be good, boys and girls, and I won’t forget you.”
The laughing, wide-eyed children scrambled to pick up the brightly wrapped coloring books and boxes of crayons Charlie was tossing from the back. Digital flashes blazed as the newspaper reporters snapped pictures. Charlie knew good old Nick Anastasios would be on the front page of the second section of the morning paper, and he hoped that he would be in the background, blurred.
He didn’t want to be mercilessly teased by the maintenance guys for trying to get noticed. He still hated them, though Angela’s presence in his life had made him forget all about his resentments for a time. Charlie frowned, puzzled by the way his mind seemed to split sometimes. It was as if there were two of him—a robot, more or less, who worked at the mall, and the human Charlie, hiding from life in his shabby house.
The strained faces of the police and security details were not lost on Charlie as he accompanied the sleigh and Santa through the mall. He felt the urge to tell them to relax and not to worry. After all, bomb threats were nothing new.
And everything had changed.
Before Angela, he’d felt more than angry enough to blow up the damn mall. The plan seemed irrational now. Two nights with her in his house and his grudges and hidden rage had dissolved. And it was all due to her—his first and only friend. Because of Angela he wasn’t lonely anymore, and he even had hope. Life could be good.
Not that he was going to confess or something like that. He hadn’t done anything.
He looked at the big clock above that was wreathed in fake holly with sparkly red berries. He’d overheard that the threat specified a time limit—exactly what had Joe said? Seventy-two hours.
Charlie did the mental calculations, more or less accurately—the hubbub and distractions made his mind wander. Okay, he had it. The time would be up in another hour or so, and the mall would still be standing. Meantime, everyone who knew of the threat would just have to sweat it out. He chuckled again. He was almost sorry for their agitation. Almost but not quite. It wouldn’t hurt them to be agitated for a while longer. He had been in a constant state of agitation all his life. Now it was their turn.
He dragged a hand over his brow, wiping away a few drops that threatened to trickle into his eyes. Weird—he was sweating, too, for no good reason. Had they turned up the temperature in the mall or what? Why did he feel burning hot all of a sudden? For a few moments the ranks and rows of brilliant Christmas trees with their winking lights and bright tinsel blinded him. The garlands of greenery swam before his cloudy gaze. He felt light-headed as the strains from “Frosty the Snowman” rang in his ears. And then he was all right. It was just tension and the relief, he told himself. The parade continued.
Eric Summers fixed his gaze on his watch and stared at the hands until they passed the seventy-two-hour mark. He waited another five minutes before he let the cuff of his shirt slide back down his wrist. Safe. For now, anyway. He released his breath in a long, drawn-out sigh.
Richards passed him on his way back to the office. His smirk left no doubt in Eric’s mind as to what the CEO was thinking. There was no need for the guy to say I told you so. Richards’s eyes said it all.
Heather wrapped her arms around Lex’s neck and waited for the clock to strike the hour. The seventy-second hour. Silent tears ran down her cheek. “Lex, if something does happen, I think you should know . . . I mean—I want you to know that I care for you. I meant to tell you sooner, but . . . well, you know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Lex said, pulling her close. “I do. For the record, I feel the same way about you. I just wish to hell we hadn’t waited so long to tell each other how we feel. I wish—” He stopped abruptly when he saw the hour hand and the second hand come together on the wall clock.
Five minutes later they were still locked in each other’s arms, their fear having lessened only slightly. Heather sagged against him, then straightened.
“This is a reprieve,” Lex said softly. “Nothing else. We still have the rest of the day to get through. There’s another twelve hours to go before the mall closes for the day.”
“Take me away from here, Lex,” Heather said. “Take me anywhere. I don’t care where, just as long as it’s away from here.”
“You got it, babe. You got it.”
The Christmas tree lot was full of parents and kids, last-minute tree shoppers like themselves. The best trees were already gone, but Angela didn’t care. Any tree was good as far as she was concerned. She would even have settled for an artificial one.
“What about this one, Charlie? This part is a little bare, but no one will see it because it’ll be in the corner.”
“Looks good to me,” he said, giving the tree an all-over inspection.
“What a thrill. My first Christmas tree!” On impulse she flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. It was a smacking kiss, hard and quick and over almost before it had begun. “I’ll go get someone to ring it up,” she said, dancing away from him.
Charlie stood staring at the tree but not really seeing it. She had kissed him. Kissed him! Charlie Roman. Now there was no doubt in his mind that she liked him. He didn’t quite know what to make of it. But he liked it.
They put the tree in the car trunk and tied the lid down. Charlie drove slowly all the way home, taking the curves carefully so as not to disturb the tree. Angela chattered like a magpie, telling him how excited she was, that she’d never celebrated a real Christmas before.
“Let’s make cookies when we get home. You do like Christmas cookies, don’t you, Charlie?”
“Are you kidding? I love them.”
“All right then, tonight we’ll decorate the tree and tomorrow while you’re at work I’ll roll out sugar-cookie dough and cut it into Santas and sleighs and stars.”
“Okay.” Angela seemed a little giddy to him, but he kind of liked it.
“You know what else, Charlie?” She laughed. “You’d look good in a Santa suit.” She gave him a playful poke in the tummy. “Go get one.”
Charlie started to say that he couldn’t bring Nick’s suit home, that it belonged to the mall. But he didn’t want to disappoint her. Maybe he could find a suit that one of the walk-around Santas used, somewhere in the employee dressing area. Or he could find a way to sneak Nick’s suit out, then sneak it back in. No one would be the wiser and Angela would have even more fun. He’d deal with that later, though.
It was past midnight when they finished decorating the tree and turned off the overhead light. Hand in hand, Angela and Charlie stood back and admired their work. The CD player, on shuffle, moved to a new song and a huge church choir burst into an angelic version of “Joy to the World.”
“I’ll always remember this night,” Angela said, squeezing Charlie’s hand. “Now I know what they mean when they talk about the magic of Christmas.”
“You’re the magic, Angela. You made all this happen.”
She seemed bedazzled. Almost too happy. He had noticed even in their short time together that her moods ran to extremes, but he wasn’t going to bug her about it and jinx his newfound happiness.
“Oh no, Charlie. You’re wrong. It was you. It was all you.”
As if. She had to be more than a little nuts. But he didn’t care. For the first time in his life, Charlie Roman felt the stirrings of love.
Heather Andrews slowly opened her eyes and was surprised to see Lex’s face above hers.
“Hi there, sleepyhead,” Lex said.
Heather raised up on one elbow, the sheet slipping down to reveal the tops of her breasts. “Oh my God, what time is it?”
Lex pointed to the clock on the bedstand beside her. “It’s early yet. We’ve got plenty of time,” he said with a mischievous smile.
Heather breathed a sigh of relief, then lay back down and snuggled up close to him. After leaving the mall, Lex had taken her straight back to his house and fixed them drinks. She’d calmed down. Then they’d talked and talked and one thing had led to another until they had found themselves in bed. Memories of last night’s wild lovemaking washed over Heather, arousing her all over again. “Okay, if you say so.” She laughed.
Angela worked nonstop, taking a break only long enough to read off another grocery list for Charlie. It was 3:30 when she finished all her chores and her cookie baking. She was so tired she had to drag herself up the stairs.
She took a bath and soaked for over an hour, sloshing around happily in the hot, soothing water. When the water had cooled, she stepped from the tub and lay down on the bed. Within seconds she was asleep.
It was dusk when she woke. She lay still for a few moments, trying to orient herself, then relaxed as she remembered where she was. She crept from her cocoon of blankets and started toward the bathroom. For some reason she felt disoriented as she staggered down the hall.
A bright flash of light suddenly spiraled across the hallway, lighting it up like a fireworks display. “Oh no,” she moaned, “not again, not now. I won’t look, you can’t make me look.” She slid to the floor, her hands covering her eyes.
Colors swam before her, spinning her, catching her, and pulling her into the dreaded vortex of one of her visions. Around and around her consciousness spun, gripped by the maelstrom that wrung every fiber of her being until it left her weak with exhaustion. Helpless, incapable of movement, she felt her perception sharpen.
Her ears filled with a steady drone, the sputtering of an engine.
A small plane . . . writing on the side . . . P-654RT . . . fire . . . plane on fire . . . sky on fire . . . explosion . . . little girl . . . so still . . . dead . . . asleep. So pretty. Dead? Asleep? Not that little girl. She’s too sweet and innocent to die. Her mother will be so sad.
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