Marry-Me Christmas (7 page)

“I’m not the one going around with a chip the size of Ohio on my shoulder,” she said.

“Maybe I have a good reason for that chip.”

“At Christmas? No one has a good reason to be grumpy at Christmas.”

He released her jaw. “Some people do.”

The clock above them ticked, one second, two. Three. Then Sam’s voice, as quiet as snow falling. “Why?”

The clock got in another four ticks before Flynn answered. “Let’s just say I never stayed in one place long enough for Santa to find me.”

“Why?”

A one-word question. One that, in normal conversation, might have prompted a heartfelt discussion. Some big sharing moment over a couple cups of coffee and a slice of streusel. But Flynn wasn’t a coffee-and-streusel kind of guy. He hadn’t done show-and-tell in first grade, and he wasn’t going to do it now.

The oven timer buzzed, announcing another batch of cookies was done. And so was this conversation. Somehow it had gotten turned around, and Flynn was off his game, off his center of gravity. He needed to retreat and regroup.

“The story is about you, not me,” Flynn said. “When you get a job as a reporter, then you get to ask the questions.”

Without bothering to pack it in the bag, he picked up his laptop, yanked the cord out of the outlet and headed out of the warm and cozy shop. And into a biting cold, the kind he knew as well as his own name.

This was the world where Flynn found comfort, not the one he’d just left.

Today her grandmother thought she was the maid.

Sam told herself not to be disappointed. Every time she drove over to Heritage Nursing Home, she steeled herself for that light of confusion in Joy Barnett’s eyes, that “Do I know you?” greeting instead of the hugs and love Sam craved like oxygen.

And every time disappointment hit her like a snowplow.

“Have you cleaned the bathroom?” Joy asked. “I’m afraid I made a mess of the sink when I washed my face. I’m sorry.”

Sam worked up a smile. “Yes, I cleaned it.”

It took all Sam had not to release the sigh in her throat. How she wanted things to change, to turn back the clock. There used to be days when her grandmother had recognized her, before the Alzheimer’s had robbed her grandmother of the very joy that she had been named for. The smiles of recognition, the friendships, the family members, and most of all the memories. It was as if she’d become a disconnected boat, floating alone in a vast ocean with no recognizable land, no horizon.

So Sam had, with reluctance, finally put Grandma Joy into Heritage Nursing Home. The care there was good, but Sam had visited another, much more expensive facility several miles away from Riverbend. The bakery simply didn’t make enough money, at least with a single location, to pay for Grandma Joy’s care at the other facility, one that boasted a special Alzheimer’s treatment center with a nostalgic setting, an aromatherapy program and several hands-on patient involvement programs designed to help stimulate memory and brain activity. It might not bring her grandmother back to who she used to be, but Sam hoped the other facility would give her grandmother a better quality of life than Heritage Nursing Home, which was nice, but offered none of those specialized care options.

After all Grandma Joy had done for Sam, from taking her in as a child to raising her with the kind of love that could only be called a gift, Sam would do anything to make the rest of Joy’s years happy, stress-free and as wonderful as possible. There might not be any way to bring back the grandmother she remembered, but if this other center could help ease the fearful world of unfamiliarity that Joy endured, then Sam would sacrifice anything to bring that to the woman she considered almost a mother.

Including living her own life. For a while longer.

Grandma Joy looked at Sam expectantly, as if she thought Sam might whip out a broom and start sweeping the floor. Sam held out a box. “Here, I brought you something.”

Joy took the white container and beamed. “Oh, aren’t you sweet.” She flipped open the lid and peeked inside. “How did you know these were my favorite?”

Sam’s smile faltered. Her throat burned. “Your granddaughter told me.”

Grandma Joy looked up, a coconut macaroon in her hand. “My granddaughter? I have a granddaughter?”

Sam nodded. Tears blurred her vision. “Her name is Samantha.”

Joy repeated the name softly, then thought for a moment. “Samantha, of course. But Sam’s just a baby. She can’t hardly talk, so she can’t tell you about my favorite cookies, silly. She is the cutest thing, though. Everyone who meets her just loves her. She comes to the bakery with me every day.” She leaned forward. “Did I tell you I own a bakery?”

“Yes, you did.”

“My husband and I started it when we first got married. So much work, but oh, we’ve had a lot of fun. Sam loves being there, she really does. She’s my little helper. Someday, Sam and I are going to run it together.” Joy sat back in the rose-patterned armchair. As her thoughts drifted, her gaze drifted out the window, to the snow-covered grounds. The white flakes glistened like crystals, hung in long strings of diamonds from the trees. She sighed. “That will be a wonderful day.”

“Yes,” Sam said, closing her eyes, because it was too painful to look at the same view as her grandmother, “it will.”

Sam Barnett was leaving something out of her personal recipe. Flynn had rewritten the article into one more closely resembling the kind he normally wrote—where that poetic thing had come from last night, he had no idea—and realized not all the whys had been answered. There was still something, he wasn’t sure what, that he needed to know. But the bulldog in him knew he’d yet to find that missing piece.

He had to dig deeper. Keep pawing at her, until he got her to expose those personal bits that would give his article the meat it needed. The kind of tidbits
Food Lovers
’ readers ate like candy.

It was, after all, what he was known for. What would put him right back on top. Then why had he hesitated? Normally, he did his interviews, in and out in a day, two at most. He never lingered. Never let a subject rattle him like she had last night.

Damn it, get a hold of yourself. Get the story, and get out of town.

Flynn rose, stretching the kinks out of his back he’d picked up from sitting in the uncomfortable wooden chair at the tiny desk in his room. He crossed to the window and parted the lacy curtains. Outside, snow had started to fall.

Again.

Where the hell was he? Nome, Alaska? For Pete’s sake, all it did was snow here.

He pulled on his coat, and hurried downstairs. Betsy, who was sitting behind the piano in the front parlor, tried to talk him into joining the out-of-tune sing-along with the other guests, but Flynn waved a goodbye and headed out of the bed and breakfast, turning up his collar against the blast of cold and ice. By the time he made it to Earl’s garage, his shoes and socks were soaked through, and his toes had become ten Popsicles.

“Well, howdy-ho,” Earl said when Flynn entered the concrete-and-brick structure. He had on his plaid earflap hat and a thick Carhartt jacket. “What are you doing here?”

“Picking up my car.”

“Now why would you want to do that?”

“So I can go back to Boston.” First making a side trip, but he didn’t share that information with Earl.

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” Earl said. “You got family in Boston?”

Flynn bit back his impatience at the change in subject. By now, he’d learned the only way to get a straight answer out of the auto mechanic was to take the Crazy Eights route. “All I have back there is an apartment and a doorman.”

“A doorman?” Earl thought about that for a second. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of anyone having their doorman over for Christmas mornin’. He must be really good at opening your door.”

Flynn sighed. This was going nowhere. “My car?”

“Oh, that. The part’s on order.”

“It hasn’t arrived yet?”

“Oh, it arrived.” Earl scratched under one earflap.

“And?”

“And I sent it back.”

Flynn sighed again, this time longer and louder. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m getting old. Forgot my glasses on Tuesday.”

Flynn resisted the urge to scream in frustration. “And what would that have to do with my car?”

“Made me order the wrong part. I got my two’s all mixed up with my seven’s. But don’t you worry,” Earl said, patting his breast pocket, “I brought my glasses today. So you’ll be all set to leave by Friday at the latest.”

“Can’t you fix it now?”

“Nope. Gotta go work the tree lot at the Methodist church.” Earl patted his hat down farther on the top of his head, then strode out of the shop, waving at Flynn to follow. “The ladies’ bingo group is coming by at three to get their trees, and they’re counting on my muscles to help them out. I can’t be late.”

Earl strode off, leaving Flynn stuck. He should have been mad. Should have pitched a fit, threatened to sue or have his car towed to another garage. He could have done any of the above.

But he didn’t. For some reason, he wasn’t as stressed about the missing part as he should have been. He chalked it up to still needing more information from Sam.

As his path carried him toward the bakery again, something pretty damned close to anticipation rose in his chest. If there was one thing Flynn needed from Santa this year, it was a renewed dose of his reporter’s objectivity.

A
PAY PHONE
.

Who’d have thought those things still existed?

Flynn’s hand rested on the receiver. Stumbling upon the phone on his way to the bakery had taken him by surprise. In his opposite hand, he jingled several coins, and debated. Finally, he picked up the phone, dropped in several quarters and began to dial. He made it through nine of the ten digits that would connect him to Liam’s dorm room before he hung up.

It had to be this town that had him feeling so sentimental. Especially considering he was surrounded by so much Christmas spirit, it was like being in the company of a woman wearing too much perfume. Even the pay phone was wrapped in garland, a little red bow hanging from the handle. That must be what had him thinking of mending fences so broken down, it would take a fleet of cement trucks to build them up again.

Would Liam see him when he arrived in town this week? Assuming, that was, that his car ever got fixed. Or would Liam slam the door in his face? Maybe it was better not to know.

The change dropped to the bottom of the phone. Flynn dug it out of the slot and redeposited the coins, then added some more change to reach his editor at
Food Lovers
magazine.

But while he waited for the four dollars in quarters to connect him, he realized the money would have been better spent on a lifetime supply of candy canes. At least then he could have used them to sweeten Tony Reynolds up—

Because at this point he could use every tool in Santa’s arsenal to assuage the inevitable storm that was about to come.

“Where the hell is that bakery piece?” Tony Reynolds barked into the phone. “We held the damned issue to get this piece in there because you promised to get it to me, remember? Or did you lose your brain back in June, too?”

Flynn winced. Even now, he couldn’t tell Tony why he had walked out in the middle of the interview of the year, ticking off a celebrity chef. It was intended to be the cover story for the magazine, one they had advertised for the last three months, a coup that Tony had worked his butt off to finesse, promising the celebrity chef everything from a lifetime subscription to the magazine to a limo ride to the interview.

Flynn hadn’t just dropped the ball at that interview—he’d hurled it through the window. He’d been working day and night to get back to the top ever since.

He hadn’t expected to walk into that room, meet “Mondo,” the chef to the stars, and see one of the first foster fathers he’d ever had. A man he and Liam had lived with for a total of six months before the man had decided the two boys were too much for the man and his wife, who were busy making a go of their restaurant, and he’d asked the department of children’s services to find them another home.

The recognition had hit Flynn so hard, he’d never even made it into the room. Never said a word to the man. He’d made up some excuse to Tony about a bout of food poisoning, but the damage had been done. Mondo had stalked out of the building, furious about being stood up, and refused to reschedule.

Flynn had worked too damned hard building his reputation to let that one mistake ruin everything, which explained why he was the one out on assignment at Christmas while all the other writers were at home, toasting marshmallows or whatever people did with their families the day before Christmas Eve.

“I’ll have the story,” Flynn said. “You know I will.”

“Yeah, I do. We’re all allowed one mistake, huh?” Tony chuckled, calmer now that he’d blown off some steam. “You’re the only guy who’ll work on Christmas, too. Hell, you
never
take a day off. What is it, Flynn? You got some extra ambition gene the rest of us missed?”

“Maybe so.” That drive to succeed had fueled him for so many years, had been a constantly burning fire, unquenchable by hundreds of cover stories, thousands of scoops. Then he’d faltered, and he’d been working himself to the bone to recover ever since. There’d be no messing up again. “I’ll have the story, Tony,” he repeated. “You can count on me.”

“That’s what makes you my personal Santa, Flynn.” Tony laughed, then disconnected.

Flynn hung up the receiver. For a moment there, he’d let himself get sidetracked by Samantha Barnett. Hell, last night he’d even talked about
dating
her, got caught up in a whole champagne-and-lobster fantasy. No more.

He needed to eviscerate the emotion from this job. Get back to business. Then he could get out of this town, and get back to his priorities.

Sam hadn’t spent this much time outside the bakery in…well, forever. She could thank Aunt Ginny’s matchmaking, though she didn’t want to be matched with anyone at all, but she was grateful for the break from work. The minute Flynn MacGregor had entered Joyful Creations and said he needed to talk to her, Ginny had practically shoved Sam out the door and told the two of them to go ice skating.

“Do you know how to do this?” she asked Flynn.

He paused in lacing up the black skates. “Not really. Do you?”

“You can’t grow up in rural Indiana without learning to ice skate. There’s practically a pond in every backyard.” She rose, balancing on her rented skates, then waited for Flynn to finish. Several dozen children and their parents were already skating on a small pond down the street from the park that was set up every winter as a makeshift rink.

He stood, teetering on the thin blades, reaching for the arms of the bench. “This isn’t as easy as it looks.”

She laughed. “Is anything ever as easy as it looks?”

“I suppose not.” He rose again, then let go, taking his time until he was balanced. “Okay, I’m ready to go.”

“If you’ve ever Rollerbladed before—” She cut off her words when she saw his dubious look. “Okay, so you’re not the Rollerblading type.”

“Limos, champagne and lobster, remember?”

Oh, yeah. She remembered. Very well. In fact, she hadn’t been thinking of much but that since their date—no, it hadn’t been a date, had it?—last night.

They made their way through the compacted snow on the bank and down to the ice. Sam stepped onto the rink first, then put out her hand. Flynn hesitated for a second, then took her hand and joined her, with a lot of wobbling. Even through two pairs of gloves—his and hers—a surge of electricity ran up Sam’s arm when Flynn touched her. This was
so
not in the plan for the day.

“Okay, so where do we start?” he asked. “Hopefully, it’s not a position that lands me on my butt.”

She laughed. “I can’t promise that.”

“Then I can’t promise to be nice in my article.”

She couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. She hoped he was. But just in case, she held on to him, even as part of her told her to let go, because every touch awakened a stirring of feelings she hadn’t expected. “First, pretend you’re on a scooter. Take a step, glide, take a step, glide. Put your arms in front of you to balance.”

He let go of her and did as she said, while Sam skated backward, a few feet before him. He wobbled back and forth, scowling at first, frustrated with the whole process. “I give up.”

She laughed. “So soon?”

He swayed like a palm tree in a hurricane. “You said you wouldn’t let me—”

She caught him just before he fell, the two of them colliding together in that close—very, very close—position of the dancing he had mentioned last night. Hyperawareness pulsed through her, and she tried to pull back, but Flynn’s balance still depended on her, and she found her body fitting into the crook of his, as naturally as a missing puzzle piece.

“Fall,” he finished, his voice low and husky.

“I didn’t,” she answered, nearly in a whisper.

He bent down to look at her, his mouth inches from hers, and Sam held her breath, desire coursing through her, the heat overriding the cold air. “Thank you.”

“You’re…you’re welcome.”

A crowd of teenagers whipped past them, laughing and chattering, their loud voices jerking Sam back to reality. She inserted some distance between them, locking her arms to keep herself from closing that space again.

“Let’s try this again,” Flynn said. He started moving forward, one scoot at a time, while Sam slid backward, her gaze first on their feet, and the milky white surface holding them up, then, as Flynn began to master the movement, she allowed her gaze to travel up, connecting with him.

He was intoxicating. Tempting. Her skate skipped across a dent in the ice, and she tripped. Flynn’s grip tightened on hers. “Careful,” he said.

“I’m trying,” Sam said. Trying her best.

“Do you do this often?”

They swished around the rink, going in a wide circle, circumventing the other skaters with an easy shift of hips. “Not often enough. I love to skate. Love the outdoors.”

“You? An outdoorsy girl?”

She laughed. “I didn’t say I was Outdoorsy Girl, but I do like to do things outside. Garden, skate, swim.”

“Swim?” Heat rose in his gaze, the kind that told her he was picturing her in a swimsuit, imagining her body in the water. Another wave of desire coursed through Sam.

“You must have gone swimming a lot, growing up near an ocean.”

A shadow dropped over his face. “I used to. But then I…moved.”

“Oh.” Flynn didn’t seem to want to continue that line of questions, so Sam moved on. “What made you get into writing about restaurants?” She grinned. “Do you just like food?”

“I do,” he acknowledged. Flynn began to glide forward, his steps becoming a little surer, even as his conversation stayed at a near standstill. “As to the restaurant business, I have some personal acquaintance with it.”

Something cold and distant had entered Flynn’s gaze, like a wall sliding between them. Not that he’d ever been that open to begin with, but Sam had begun to feel like they were sort of making headway, and now—

He had gone back to being as impersonal as that first day. Was it because the issue wasn’t with her…

But with him?

“What happened in your life?” she asked, emotionally and physically invading his space by sliding her body a little closer, not letting him back down this time, or back away. She sensed a chink in his armor, a slight open window, something that told her there was more to Flynn MacGregor than a man who didn’t want to sing “Jingle Bells.”

“Nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. And I don’t believe all that hooey about seeing one too many restaurateurs give up their lives to their restaurants. This all seems so personal to you, Flynn. Why?”

Sam was sure, given the choice, he would have moved away, but he was stuck on the ice, stuck holding on to her. He paused a long time, so long she wasn’t sure he was going to answer. “I know someone who chose their business over their family.”

“Over…you?”

Flynn swung his body to the side, breaking eye contact. He had clear natural athletic ability, which had allowed him to pick up the ice skating quickly, and he let go of one of her hands. “I’m not in Riverbend to talk about me.”

“Does every second of our time together have to be about the article?”

“No.” But he didn’t elaborate. Another group of teenagers whooshed past them, their raucous noise a stark contrast to the tight tension between Flynn and Sam.

She sighed. He was as closemouthed as a snapping turtle. Why? Perhaps she had treaded too close to very personal waters. Could she really blame him for pushing her off? If he had started asking about her grandmother, she would have likely done the same. “I guess it’s not too fun to be on the other end of the interview, huh?”

A slight grin quirked up one side of his mouth. “It’s not a position I like being in, no.”

“Join the club. I know it’s good for business and all, but…” She toed at the ice, stopping one skate so that she swung around to skate beside him instead of in front of him, figuring then he’d let go of her hand, but he didn’t. “But it’s uncomfortable all the same.”

“Why?”

“I’m afraid I’ll say something I’ll regret. And you—” She cut the words off.

“And I’ll what?”

Sam cursed the slip of tongue. Now she had to answer. “You’ll write one of those tabloid type stories.”

“The ones the magazine, and I, am known for.”

She watched the ice pass beneath her, solid and hard, cold. “Yes.”

“You don’t trust me?”

She glanced at him. “Should I?”

The same group of teenagers hurried past them, one brushing past Flynn, causing him to wobble. “Let’s take a break for a little while.”

“Sure.” They made their way off the ice and over to the park bench where they had stored their shoes. The bench sat beneath two trees, long bared by winter’s cold. Before them, the skaters continued in repeating circles.

As soon as they sat down on the small bench, the tiny seat making for tight quarters, the tension between them ratcheted up another couple of notches. Sam wished for someone else to come along and defuse the situation. For the teens to rush by, for Aunt Ginny to pop out of the woods, for Earl to amble by, heck, anyone.

“Listen, ah, I didn’t mean to pry,” she said, diverting back to the earlier topic. It would be best not to make an enemy of this man. “Your personal life is your own.”