Our First Christmas (23 page)

“Thank you. Come on in, and we'll talk.”

And that was that. I walked beside the man that I had run from years ago.

Say yes, Josh, please,
I thought.

 

“Josh, thanks for seeing me.”

“Anytime.” He handed me a cup of coffee. I took it and tried to hide the fact that my hands were shaking. He sat down across from me at his kitchen table, and for a moment I stared straight out his windows and watched the snowflakes flutter down.

His home, if it was possible, was even more incredible on the inside than the outside. The ceilings went up two stories, and the windows framed the Montana mountains and meadows, now covered in snow. They were right there, as if they were a part of the house, only they were freezing cold and we were warm.

He had a two-story fireplace, the fire roaring, with towering bookshelves on both sides. There was leather furniture, wood floors, and a kitchen with everything I'd always wanted—granite counters, two ovens, and open shelving for my collection of cookbooks.
Not your collection of cookbooks, Laurel,
I said to myself.
Sheesh.

I noticed that he did not have a Christmas tree. He and I used to love Christmas. We always exchanged ornaments and little gifts, as we were both broke. I made him Christmas cookies.

After more shallow chitchat, I put the coffee down and laced my fingers together before I looked up into those familiar green eyes. “My mom and Aunt Emma told me that they have sold their house and land to you.”

“Yes.”

“They said that you're going to use their land, but they can stay in the house until, Aunt Emma says, ‘They're flying high in heaven, if they get there.' ”

“That's right.” His gaze did not waver.

“I didn't know they needed the money.”

“You haven't been home in a while.”

“I come home, Josh, but you're right, not enough. That doesn't mean I don't talk to them. We call, we Skype, we e-mail. I didn't know. They didn't share it with me. They don't have a mortgage on the home, and they said the aprons were selling well.”

“Your mom and aunt will be fine, Laurel.” His eyes, for the first time, softened. “If the house needs any repairs, I'll pay for them. In fact, I'm having a new roof put on in spring. I had the front porch and back deck repaired already.”

“I noticed. They look a lot better. They sound a lot better, too. No cracking. Thank you.”

“They like being outside, so they need the decks. When a pipe burst, I had it fixed, too. I'm not going to let the house fall down around them.”

“I know. You would never do that.” Our gazes locked. I saw a lot in his I didn't want to see, felt a coldness I didn't want to feel, a remoteness, a wariness . . . I didn't blame him. “Anyhow, Josh. I wish they hadn't sold it to you. I'd like to buy the land and the house back from you.”

“You want to buy it back?”

“Yes. I'll pay you what you paid my mother and aunt, plus, say, fifteen percent?”

“No.”

I felt like he'd pushed me, which he would never do. “No?”

“That's right. No.”

“Why . . . why not? It's pure profit for you.”

“Because I need the land.”

“Why?”

“I'll use the land now, but I plan on eventually donating it to a charitable trust here so that it will never be developed.”

“I have no plans to develop our land. I just want the house and the acreage. It's been in my family for generations.”

“I know, and I understand.”

I felt my temper start to take off. “You apparently don't. This is my family's land, Josh, it's not yours.”

“It is now.”

And there it was. Josh's strength. His indomitable will. He had always been kind to me, consistently, but even when we were younger, I knew it was there. I saw it in the way he played sports, how tough and relentless he was, how he skied. I heard it when he told me his plans for his life, for his business. I saw it in the way he stood up to kids who were bullying weaker kids, and how fast his fists flew, to protect them.

Josh had come from a broken home. His mother died when he was six and his father decided to be a real man and deal with that grief by binge drinking and bullying Josh. Josh had moved out of his home the summer before his junior year of high school into a small apartment above his football coach's home. He worked twenty hours a week at the grocery store to pay for his expenses and his car. And now that boy was a hard-driving man.

I tried to stay reasonable. “I'd like it back.”

He nodded. “I'm sorry.”

“Please, Josh.”

“No.”

“You are still so stubborn.”

“This is business, Laurel. It's not personal.”

“How can you possibly say that? It's my home. It is personal. It's personal to me.” I could tell he was not moving.

“I told you, Laurel. I want the land.”

“And I want the house.”
Oh Josh,
I thought.
I have missed you, but now I'm getting pretty dang ticked off.
“It's my mother's, my aunt's, it was to go to me when they—” I couldn't even say it. I loved my aunt and mother from here to the moon.

“You live in Los Angeles. You work for Hellfire. Why would you want a house in Montana? They told me you had no plans to return and live here, ever.”

“It's our home, Josh. And I love that home. It's part of me. Part of who I am. Who my grandparents were, who their parents were.”

I did not want to tell him that I had quit my job and was trying to figure out where to live and what to do, also called Plan Q, as in Questions. I couldn't live here, that was for sure, but I could return for vacations. I think. If I avoided seeing this man, right in front of me. “I love Montana. I want to be able to return and stay here sometimes.”

Josh unexpectedly leaned across the table and wound his finger around my hair. Even though he did not touch my skin, I felt his touch like a blaze of sexy heat. That heat was still there after twelve years. I was not surprised. I thought I was going to catch on fire in his driveway looking at him.

“I like the pink,” he said. “And I like that your hair is as soft as I remember it.”

Yep. I was going to heat up so high I melted.
Control yourself, Laurel!

“You're more beautiful than you were twelve years ago, Laurel.”

I blushed. I am a band manager. I yell at the men in our band now and then, including Ace. When we're performing with other bands, sometimes I yell at those guys, too. I know how to get them to work together, how to get them sober quick, and how to get the stage up and ready.

I handle a thousand details and a lot of employees. I know about lighting, sound, videos, everything that goes into a head-banging concert. I can move a hundred people at a time to one hotel after another, competently, quickly, and get the ones who need to be on stage, on stage.

And Josh made me blush.

“You still blush.” I heard his low chuckle.

“No, I don't.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Okay, I do.” I laughed. I suddenly felt young around him, even though he was making me mad.

He tilted his head, studied me, then slowly smiled. I knew he felt that crazy attraction, too.

“Josh, please reconsider.”
I really want to kiss you even though I'm ticked off.

“Do you know how much I paid your mother and aunt?”

“Yes.” I told him.

“And you're able to pay me that?”

“Yes.” I had been paid well to manage Hellfire and I didn't have a life, so I didn't spend money.

He smiled. “I always knew you would be a massive success in whatever you did, Laurel. But I'm sorry, my answer is still no.”

I pulled back so my pink-tipped hair fell from his fingers. I wanted to throw something. In the end, all that my family had owned for almost ninety years would be gone. Out of our family. “It's my family's. You know that. How can you do this?”

“They asked me to.”

“And I'm asking for it back.” I was upset. I couldn't believe our home was not ours.

“I don't like hurting you, Laurel, you know I don't—”

“I don't know anything about you anymore.”

“I don't want to hurt you.”

“Did you think this wouldn't hurt me?”

“I assumed you knew.”

“I didn't.”

He was immovable. He'd made his decision and that was it.

“I feel like throwing something at you,” I said.

“I can tell. Try not to throw the coffee. It's probably still hot.”

“I want to buy it back, Josh.”

“I know, and no.”

I thought of our light green farmhouse. The small parlor with the red toile wallpaper that I read books in every day as a kid, next to books my great-grandma read. I thought of my pink bedroom with the two dormer windows that used to be my mother's, the long wood farm table, scarred and nicked from generations of my relatives using it, the two rocking chairs built by my granddad, the stairs that creaked from generations of feet, and the red barn that had been restored by my granddad.

Gone. It was all gone.

We argued more, but nothing I said moved him.

“Then, I guess that's it. You own
my
home.” I stood up and walked out before I started snuffling like a baby. I did not want him to see my tears. It would be too embarrassing. I was also afraid I might try to tackle him and hold him down until he acquiesced. I would not be successful. He was a former football player and still looked it.

I heard him call my name, soft, and I heard his boots behind mine, but I kept walking. I heard him again as I hurried down the driveway.

“Laurel—”

“Go to hell, Josh,” I said.

“I think I've already been there.”

“Then go back.”

“I'd rather not. I don't like it there. Drive careful.”

I whipped around and glared at him. Those two words about undid me. Josh had always said that to me, every time I'd gotten in a car. “Drive careful.” Then he'd given me a hug and a kiss. A tall, tough kid, who told his girlfriend to drive careful.

I slammed the door to my car, reversed fast to show some immature rebellion, and kept my head at an angle so he couldn't see the tears streaming down my cheeks.

The tears weren't only for the house.

 

I took a detour on the way home, probably to torture myself further. Snowflakes fell, light and fluffy, as I drove along the same road where it happened.

I stopped at the curve and climbed out of my car.

The river rushed by, snow covering the banks and road like white blankets, exactly as it was that night.

I don't remember all of it, but I remembered enough.

I remembered the words, the skidding, the echoing crash, the cold, the blackness, the fear.

I remembered what happened next.

I sat back on my ankles and let my tears loose.

I stood and stared at our farmhouse when we finished decorating it the next afternoon. It had taken hours, and the snow, fortunately, had held off. My aunt Emma and mother blared Christmas music from their newly fixed porch. “Jingle Bells.” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” “Frosty the Snowman.” We sang along.

Our home—which was no longer ours—was all lit up with Christmas lights. The weekend before Thanksgiving, every year, all the lights and decorations went up.

My aunt and my mother, to my acute embarrassment when I was a teenager, could not be normal with their Christmas lights, as they couldn't be normal when they decorated the five Christmas trees in our house, either.

An electrician friend had been paid to build an eight-foot-tall frog with green lights, blue lights for the eyes, and a red bow. “It's our Christmas frog, Gary.”

“You've named the frog Gary?”

“Yes,” my mom said. “We met a sanctimonious, misogynistic, sexist man named Gary recently, so we thought the name fitting, although it is rather insulting to our frog.”

In front of the frog was a five-foot-tall giant dragonfly in pinks, reds, and yellows. The frog had a red tongue pointed at the dragonfly. “The dragonfly's name is Tilge.”

I didn't even ask.

There was another display with a seven-foot-tall gingerbread house. It would have been a sweet Christmas display except for the green-faced witch on top, à la
Hansel and Gretel
.

The house was lined with colorful, twinkly lights, as were a few trees.

My mother grabbed champagne.

“Merry Christmas, Laurel, darling,” she said.

“May you live your life as you wish it, not as anyone else wishes it,” my aunt said.

“May you always hold your chin high, like the strong woman you are,” my mother said, “and follow your dreams.”

My mother lit a firework.

Each year they light off two fireworks to celebrate the season. It's an odd July 4th–Christmas tradition. They like to blend their holidays.

My mother kissed my cheek, between explosions. “The family will love the lights.”

“What?”

“Everyone's coming here for Christmas Eve this year.”

My jaw dropped, I'm sure, to the snow. “Everyone?”

They both turned to me. “Everyone.”

I picked my jaw up. “All the wives, the kids, Dad?”

“You bet,” my aunt said. “I hope we all survive.”

“Should be exciting,” my mother drawled. “Hopefully there will be no serious injuries.”

“You'll have to serve hot buttered rums then,” I muttered, as my mother lit another firework. “Because I'm going to need a bunch of them.”

 

Ace called. He begged. He was emotional, a “nervous train crashing track jumping wreck,” his words. I tried to calm him, comfort him. He hardly heard me.

 

That night, staring out one of my dormer windows at the giant Christmas frog named Gary, I thought about Christmas Eve. I would refer to it now, until I recovered from it, as the Kelly Family's Chaotic Christmas. Who knew what would happen?

My father would be there along with his three ex-wives, his current wife, and a noisy gang of kids, most related to me via my father, but not all.

With Wife Number One, Amy, my father had two twin daughters, Camellia and Violet. Amy remarried after my father. Her husband's name is Richard. His last name is Longer. One can understand why he gets irate when anyone calls him Dick Longer or Longer, Dick. Camellia and Violet are about two years older than me and each have a five-year-old and a three-year-old. The toddlers are miniature hurricanes who talk, as they have inherited the Wild Bone of the Kelly family, as we call it.

My father left Amy six months after she had the twins. I know. Nice guy. Amy says living with my father was like living with an immature monkey. He met my mother, Wife Number Two, six months later and I came ten months after that. My mother and Amy get along fine, always have, strangely enough, so Camellia and Violet and I grew up together.

I am my mother's only child. She said she never wanted to remarry again because she didn't need Male Stress. She only needed Male Company, now and then. And yes, she made sure I knew she was capitalizing those words.

With Wife Number Three, Chantrea, who was raised in Cambodia and met my father there on one of his exotic plant and flower research expeditions, my father had three sons. The sons' names are Oakie, who is 19, Aspen, 20, and Redwood, 22. They are tattooed and pierced, and are, now and then, arrested for mischievous things, because they, too, are afflicted with the Kelly Wild Bone.

Chantrea has a temper. She periodically throws things at my father's head, so we all make sure we are on the floor when she pitches a fit. Chantrea left my father, then immediately remarried. She divorced recently. Chantrea has another son, with her second ex-husband, named David. David is six. He has an odd fascination with the galaxy and insists we are living in something like a hologram in a fake 3-D setting. He's brilliant. He's confusing.

After Aspen was born, my father quit traveling at Chantrea's fiery insistence and he and Chantrea opened a Cambodian restaurant in town, which she received in the divorce. It's delicious.

Wife Number Four, is named, and I'm not kidding, Velvet. It is not her given name. Her given name is Betsy Elaine Warbinger. Velvet is five years older than me, which makes the whole thing creepy, but predictable. She and my father have a four-year-old girl named Daisy and a three-year-old boy named Banyan.

Velvet also has an eleven-year-old son, whom she named William Robert Rhodes, from a fling she had with a governor of another state, William Robert Rhodes, who was, unfortunately, married at the time. His wife did not appreciate Velvet, who may have, or not, been a successful stripper called Velvet Glove.

Their affair hit the headlines, especially since the governor always touted his “family values,” and his new son was his namesake. The governor's wife divorced him, fleeced him, and he did not run for office again. William Robert Rhodes, senior, now lives in Alaska in a village. It is rumored his beard is quite long.

You might have noticed something odd with my father's biological children's names. You are right. We are all named after flowers or trees. My father was a botanist who wrote humorous books and magazine articles about his travels and semi obsession with plants. He's been all over the world and was gone a lot during his first two marriages.

Some people in my family like each other. Some don't. Personalities clash and collide and love on each other. They fight about silly things, like who makes the best pecan pie, Velvet's provocative attire, Chantrea's temper, and the next generation's Wild Bone.

It gives me a Santa's sleigh–sized headache to think of the drama at our home on Christmas Eve.

I simply hope that open warfare will not be declared, as the turkey carving knife will be out as will the hot gravy.

 

On Tuesday evening, as warned, my twin sisters, Violet and Camellia, came to get me. Violet is blond and tall; Camellia's a brunette and curves. Except for having dimples, like me, they hardly resemble each other. “We're going to Taylor's Bar and Grill,” they said.

“We're going that crazy?” Taylor's Bar and Grill had a reputation. The music blared. There was a bucking bronco you could ride in the center of the ring, there was karaoke, and fist fights.

“We need the excitement,” Camellia said. “I'm smothered in laundry and mommy-ness. I used to be cool. Look at my hand. Tad bit me.”

“Those are impressive bite marks. What is he, part vampire?” I asked.

“No.” She seemed miffed, then her face fell. “But he does have these unusually long eyeteeth. They're fang-ish.”

“And he's stubborn once he bites down,” Violet said, snapping her jaws together. “Like a pit bull.”

“As if you should talk about pit bulls, Violet,” Camellia huffed.

“Your daughters keep getting kicked out of preschool. Didn't Lizzy empty all the glitter bottles on someone's head the other day? And what about Shandry? She took the lizard out, put it down her pants, and tried to leave preschool with it.”

“They were playing glitter monster, and Shandry was bringing the lizard home to let it go because she doesn't like to see animals locked up. Don't attack my daughters.”

“Then don't criticize my vampire child!”

The twins got into it for a second, then they both, as if on cue, reading each other's minds, grabbed my elbows and pulled me out the door.

At that second, James and Thomas, the mutts, zipped around the corner, tails wagging. They surprised old Zelda, who doesn't like surprises. She clawed the air and let loose with a spine-tingling meow. The dogs yelped and leaped behind the couch.

“They need to man up,” I said.

“Your cat runs the place,” Violet said, tugging me out.

“Bye, Aunt Ellie, bye, Aunt Emma,” they shouted.

“You girls behave,” my mother called out. “I do not want to see the sheriff pulling up in his car again with you three in the backseat.”

That was a night about two years ago on one of my quick trips home. There was a misunderstanding with a rude, crude man at the bar and Violet let him have it. With her purse. Perhaps Camellia and I jumped in to defend her, too, also wielding dangerous purses. Perhaps the rude, crude man needed stitches.

“Lord, have mercy, neither do I,” Aunt Emma called out. “But if it happens, ask if you can ride with Lieutenant Janes. He's a hunk and I'd like to have him in for some dessert.”

We agreed to request Lieutenant Janes.

 

Taylor's Bar and Grill was packed.

I don't like bars. I don't like being crammed in, I rarely drink, and I don't like the pickup scene. If Violet and Camellia hadn't wanted to recapture their youth as their “mommy-ness” had worn them out, I would not have come.

The three of us have always been colorful dressers, like my mom and aunt. It's a bonding thing. Camellia was in a burgundy velvet halter, red jeans with a silver buckle, and black heels. Violet was in a purple sequined tank top, jeans, and purple knee-high boots with silver studs. I had my hair in a ponytail, pink tips swinging. I wore a white shirt with all sorts of embroidered flowers on it from Mexico, jeans, and red cowgirl boots.

“You're getting on the bull first,” Camellia shouted at me through the high-octane din of country music and talk. She handed me a drink.

“Heck, no,” I said. I took a sip of the drink. I would have one drink to get Josh the Edible Cowboy out of my head.

“Heck, yeah,” Violet said. “Are you scared?”

I took that as a challenge. The more I rode that buckin' bull, and the more sips of my drink I had between rides, the funnier it became. Camellia and Violet rode, too. On my third ride, I looked up, right into Josh Reed's (otherwise known as the Edible Cowboy) bright, light green eyes, his jaw sporting a five o'clock shadow, his broad shoulders encased in a light blue shirt.

He was a manly, muscled man.

I flew right off that buckin' bull and landed straight on my face.

I heard Camellia and Violet shrieking, “Ride 'em, cowgirl!” and laughing. I laughed, too. What else to do? When I saw Josh, I felt like crying. Laughing doesn't hurt so much.

“Josh,” I said to him, about fifteen minutes later, when he threaded his way through a crush of people to our table. Violet and Camellia gave him a hug, the traitors, although I don't think they knew about him buying my mother and aunt's house.

Violet said, “I suddenly have to powder my nose,” and Camellia said, “And I have to powder my ears.”

“What?” I said. “You two don't powder anything. The only powder you two know about is gunpowder from your army years.”

“Then I'm going to go use my gunpowder on my nose.” Violet pointed to her nose.

“I heard it clears the complexion.” Camellia patted her cheeks.

They turned away and I was stuck with Josh, the hard-talking, land-taking, house-possessing cowboy.

“Laurel, nice to see you.” He sat down beside me.

“I wish I could say that to you, but currently I want to shake you.” I crossed my arms over my embroidered flowers.

“Yes, I know.”

His face was serious. He was a lot more serious than he was when we were dating as teenagers, and when we were dating in college until that bleak night. It was as if part of his humorous side had dropped out of him. “Who are you here with?”

“Jason Aster, Chuck McDonnel, and about five other men.”