“What is this?”
“We’re singing.”
Apparently, the concept of a rhetorical question was lost on Michael, who answered with a big grin as Kate’s song continued. Her head hung low over the keys and her golden-brown hair curtained her face, but the melody her lips offered wrapped around Clark with the insistence of prayer. He tried his best to ignore the clenching of his heart. The scene in the living room was something out of The Saturday Evening Post. Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted it better himself. A man and a woman sat, cozily enough, on a piano bench in the middle of a Christmas-covered living room. The fireplace crackled and the music hummed.
The picture-perfect image was enough to make Clark sick. It was enough to make Clark want to sing along. It was enough to make him wonder if Michael and Kate were together.
Again, not because he cared. Just because he needed more ammo against her. And he was curious.
“Singing’s not allowed,” he snapped, harsher than he intended.
Michael scoffed, undeterred.
“What is this, The Sound of Music?”
“I’m being pretty generous, letting you stay here. But this isn’t an open invitation. You can’t just have free rein in my house. And you know what?”
Clark’s admittedly self-righteous lecture ended with the abrupt ringing of the doorbell. Truth be told, he was so oblivious to the workings of the house, he hadn’t realized what their doorbell even sounded like, so the noise sent him jumping in shock.
“Oh, good!” Kate looked up from the piano keys for the first time since he arrived, her brown eyes alchemizing to a glistening gold. Michael popped up from the piano bench and ran towards the front door. For all of the excitement, a pit of understanding bottomed out in Clark’s stomach. If he wasn’t careful, his house would soon be overrun with townies. “Emily’s here!”
“Emily who?”
“Emily Richards.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
He didn’t need an introduction. Emily Richards tottered through the living room door, juggling storage containers of brightly wrapped presents in her cocktail-straw-thin arms. The introduction wasn’t necessary because Clark had actually met Emily the night before. She worked behind the check-in desk of the Miller’s Point Bed and Breakfast. She was the one who had suggested sleeping in his car because “no one in this town is going to have room for you after what you did.”
He hadn’t taken her advice, choosing instead to return home for the first time in a long time, but that didn’t stop her words and the hatred in her eyes from haunting him the entire way.
Emily Richards was a twig of a woman with high blonde hair. She couldn’t have been any more different from Kate if she tried. Where Kate was all curves and warmth, Emily was narrow and icy. Without knowing either of them particularly well, Clark could only assume their differences made their friendship work.
“Sorry I’m late. I walked all the way up the hill and it was murder on my calves. Where should I put these?”
“What are those?”
“Donation bins.” Kate’s deft hands continued their musical exploration of the keyboard, even as she afforded him the bare minimum of her attention in favor of Emily. “Go ahead and put them on the floor for now. We’ll take them out with us later.”
“Later? Where are you going?”
The suspense extended as Emily flounced into his kitchen without saying so much as a “hello” to him.
“Who wants eggnog?” She shouted.
“Three glasses in here please!”
Nope. Clark’s foot needed to come down. He couldn’t allow them to walk all over him and around him like this. He’d given her the run of the house, sure. But he did not agree to have his entire life overrun, not by Kate and certainly not by her friends. Every minute, she threw more and more illegal fireworks at him; soon, his annoyance would explode. His right hand twitched; he struggled to control his own breathing.
No one got under his skin like this. Not business partners, not rivals. And never a woman.
“No, no! No eggnog for me. Two glasses.”
“But—”
“I didn’t come down here for eggnog. I came down here to tell you to stop playing.”
“It’s not Christmas without music. C’mon,” she said, her voice lighter than a chorus of bells. “Sing a song with us. It’ll be fun.”
“I don’t sing,” he growled.
“Everyone sings at Christmas.” Emily returned with the eggnog and requisitioned the overstuffed couch, plopping down on it and burying herself in the cushions. “Even Frank Sinatra sang Christmas songs and he could hardly carry a tune.”
“Frank Sinatra was a great singer and this isn’t a party!”
“Why not?” Her golden eyes twinkled with the edges of a private joke. “You look like you could use a little party.” She’d wedged herself under his skin and she knew it.
You look like you could use a little party. The challenge repeated in his head, a maddening, singsong refrain he wished he could pluck out and erase from his memory. An unfamiliar feeling welled inside of him; every time he tried to place it, the name eluded him. It wasn’t rage or dignified coldness; he could easily identify those, as they were his most common emotional responses to nearly any annoyance, even if he didn’t let them register on his face. He felt altogether different than he could ever remember feeling before.
Fondness? Was it fondness?
Before he could answer, he turned tail. A hasty retreat would be best. Alone in his office, there was no way he could feel anything for Kate.
“I have to work. Keep the noise down and the disasters to a minimum, please,” he commanded.
But he’d only made it three steps towards the exit when Michael sidled up beside him and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. Clark didn’t often have occasion to feel like “one of the boys,” but when Michael elbow nudged him, he could almost imagine it.
“Hey, Clark.”
“Yes?”
“Can I give you some advice?”
Clark didn’t want his advice. He knew the other man’s advice would inevitably lead him to staying here, in this room,
