“I don’t like him.”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t dislike him either!” She covered for herself, resisting the urge to hold up her hands in a pose of joking surrender. “I feel—”
Michael cut her off.
“You feel for him.”
“I feel bad for him,” she corrected, even though it wasn’t remotely true. Or, rather, it was true, but it wasn’t the entire truth. She did feel bad for him. It just wasn’t the end of her feelings. Horror of horrors, she actually related to him. “Haven’t you ever felt lonely?”
“Well, besides sharing a house with two brothers, I’ve had to deal with you basically my entire life. You never stop talking. No, I’ve never felt lonely.”
“I have,” Kate said, her head dipping down towards the piano keys.
“I know.” Hard edges softened around Michael and he nodded in recognition. They would never speak of the thing that made her lonely, and he knew it. “I know. Just seems like a flimsy reason for you to want to help a guy.”
“I can help him and the town at the same time. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“I just want you to keep your eye on the ball,” Michael said.
Kate didn’t want to think about the sad things anymore. She wanted to sing. She wanted to play the piano until the lonely man upstairs was forced to confront them down here. She couldn’t save the person she was when she was at her loneliest, but she could at least save him.
And her entire town and way of life, while she was at it.
With a blistering, face-cutting smile, Kate effectively ended their conversation.
“What do you think? ‘Good King Wenceslas’ or ‘Here We Come A-Caroling?’”
After storming out of the room, Clark made a deal with himself: if he could survive the next two days without seeing Kate Buckner again, he would buy himself something nice. Something practical, of course. A watch, maybe. Or a new set of locks for his apartment in Dallas. A pair of shoes he didn’t have to repair every other week because they insisted on falling apart at the seams when he walked too long or the temperature rose over seventy degrees. He rarely promised himself these sorts of rewards. His idea of a reward was sleeping in an extra fifteen minutes past his 6 a.m. alarm on Saturdays. But between the difficulty—maybe the impossibility—of avoiding Kate in his own house and the post-Christmas deals soon to flood the malls and shops back home, he decided it was worth it.
Here we come a-caroling along the fields so green!
Here we come wandering so fair to be seen!
He was sure he could do it until she started singing. There was music in his house. Not just any kind of music. Christmas music. When choosing a place to work from today, he’d made sure to pick the farthest room in the house from the living room. The second office used to host his uncle’s secretary, if the discarded paperwork and bubble gum wrappers were any indication, and he assumed it would be a fine hideout for a few days. Its couch and proximity to a bathroom were convenient; he’d just have to make sure he snuck to the kitchen for snacks when he was sure Kate wasn’t anywhere along his route.
A flawless plan…until she decided to go and fill the house with music. At first, Clark did his best to ignore it. He shut the heavy office door carefully, trying not to disturb the cheesy toy basketball hoop hung over the top—apparently, his uncle had hired an eight-year-old boy as a secretary—and returned to the whirring laptop. Maybe no one in this town was working, but he had a work ethic, and it didn’t disappear because the weather got a little cold.
The closed door did basically nothing to prevent the music. If anything, it somehow managed to get louder. He shook his head and resolved to ignore it. He could manage distractions. He was disciplined enough to work over some annoying piano tunes.
Love and joy come to you! And to you glad Christmas too!
Clark tapped his foot. Maybe that sound would drown out their warbling.
And God bless you and se-end you a Happy New Year!
It didn’t. He just managed to tap in time with them, giving them a beat. He covered his ears. Maybe that would drown them out.
And God se-end you a Happy Ne-ew Year!
It didn’t. There was no drowning them out. Them, of course, because, as it turned out, he and Kate hadn’t been as alone in the house as he assumed they were. Michael’s slight drawl joined Kate’s…competent singing. In a more generous mood, Clark might have described her singing as beautiful. Stirring, even. Not because it was technically perfect—it wasn’t—but because there was a freedom to it. She didn’t care about sounding good; she sang because it brought her joy.
Or something. Clark didn’t want to read too deeply into it.
“That’s enough.”
Decorations and other passive, ignorable expressions of her Christmas obsession, he could handle. But indoor caroling? He couldn’t allow it.
Leaving his work behind, he stormed downstairs. He flew past the miniature Dickens village set up on a long end table in the hallway, the popcorn garlands strung between overhead light fixtures and down the garland-strewn grand staircase. Thank goodness his allergies didn’t include pine or he’d be a dead man walking.
By the time he arrived in the living room, embarrassingly out of breath, they’d moved onto the slower, more somber “Silent Night,” which Kate elected to sing in German.
Great. She knew German. The enemy living in his house was clever, talented, beautiful, and bilingual.
Not that Clark cared about any of that, of course. She was, above all, a nuisance. An obstacle to be conquered on his way to full control over his family’s affairs. He had to think of her that way. He never thought about anyone else he did business with in warm or familiar terms. Why should he start
