Kate straightened. It didn’t matter if she wasn’t strong enough. He didn’t know she wasn’t strong enough, and she could use that to her advantage. Besides, she had every right to be here. She picked her head up, adopting an impenetrable armor of optimism. This was Christmas Eve. These people were her family and friends. She had to save them all.
And she didn’t know how to walk away from someone with eyes as cold as his. She’d just have to save him, too.
“Clark! How are you?”
Her smile sent him back a step. He must have expected her to whimper and scrape at his booming shouts. Good. She’d caught him off guard already. Once he’d recovered, he walked deeper into the foyer.
“What have you done to my house?”
“Your house? Does it have your name on it?”
Michael helpfully stepped forward.
“It does, actually. It’s on the sign right out front.”
“Don’t you have a clock to check somewhere?” she snarked, sending him scurrying out of the front door, right behind Billy Golden.
With Kate at the top of the stairs and Clark at the bottom, she reveled in the literal high ground. All she had to do was hold onto it. She glanced out of the house’s wide front windows. Though the decorations on the inside of the house were almost entirely complete, a near army of workers on ladders were still hard at work hanging lights outside.
“So.” She placed a steadying hand on the top of the staircase banister, hoping it looked more like a power move than something necessary to keep her upright. “What do you think?”
“What have you done?”
“Is there an echo in here?” The quip, in her opinion, was brilliant, but he either didn’t get the joke or purposefully withheld his laughter. Rude. She gripped the banister tighter and gave a sweep of the grand atrium with her free hand. The chandelier hanging in the high, vaulted ceiling had been dotted with poinsettia plants and evergreens, giving the room a sweet, rich smell. Kate was glad for their perfume; it meant she couldn’t smell the smoke coming out of Clark’s ears. She would’ve been lying, though, if she didn’t secretly derive pleasure from his displeasure. He’d made everyone she knew uncomfortable when he ended their employment yesterday. Maybe he deserved to be uncomfortable, too, even if she was trying to heal what she suspected was his broken, used-up heart. “We decorated for Christmas. Do you like it?”
Don’t shout. Don’t raise your voice. Don’t even let her know this is bothering you. Just be clear, direct, and get the job done. Clark’s internal pep talk was strong, but not strong enough to hold his bewildered frustration at bay. He flexed his right hand, a nervous habit he’d spent almost his entire life unsuccessfully struggling to break, and tried to answer her question. Did he like it?
“I’d like it to be taken down.”
“I’m sorry. No can do.”
She stood at the top of the staircase like some silent film star, taking control of the garish scenery. He didn’t need to look around him to see the marks of her handiwork everywhere. His family’s house—that cold monument to excess and emptiness—had been transformed. In his memory, this place was always closer to Wayne Manor than Hogwarts—a shadowy prison for cobwebs and abandoned family photos.
When he’d driven up with Michael this morning, however, he’d almost turned around, convinced they’d made a wrong turn somewhere. Woodward today looked nothing like it did in his dark memories. With every turn of his car’s wheels, they moved closer and closer to a postcard of a Victorian Christmas, not the palace of pity he’d always known the place to be. Though men and women still busied themselves on high ladders arranging wreaths upon third-story windows and hanging lights along the roof, the picture was clear.
Matters only worsened when he arrived inside to see a house overflowing with decorations and frippery. (Yeah, frippery. He was so enraged he’d had to dip into his grandfather’s vocabulary for a word to describe it.) Fresh, fragrant greenery and cardinal-red ribbons brightened the sallow walls. Fake icicles hanging from the doorways danced in the heated breeze and caught the abundant light. A train—an honest-to-goodness train set—ran circles around the fir standing sentry in the open living room, sending out real puffs of steam from its working engine. And, if he wasn’t going crazy—which, to be fair, wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility—he could’ve sworn he smelled gingerbread baking somewhere.
The whole thing was enough to make him puke chestnuts.
“Take it down,” he growled.
He could only hope the backdrop of tinsel and baubles didn’t undercut the weight of his infuriated stare. This was his house. His family’s house. And she had absolutely no business being in here, much less taking the whole place over for her personal art project.
“I can’t.” She shrugged and began a descent down the stairs, her high-heeled boots making authoritative thuds with her every step. “Not by myself, anyway.”
Beyond the closed front door, a series of engines turned over and sputtered to life. Clark’s stomach sunk.
“Let me guess…”
“Everyone’s already leaving. They’ve got to go home for Christmas Eve. There’s no way I could take all of this down by myself. It’ll just have to stay up.”
She landed on the step above him, and their body language echoed their last encounter. Back then, she was below him, asking for something she had to know he couldn’t possibly give. Now, he was the one at a disadvantage.
Taking stock of himself, Clark tried to catalogue his feelings. In business, these sorts of exercises kept him from flying off the handle during negotiations. He treated his emotions like items on an inventory list. They first needed to be counted, weighed, measured, and then neatly put away to keep from overwhelming him. It would have been easy enough if her caramel-candy eyes weren’t so distracting. The
