He ripped himself away, violently breaking up the sensation. It made Kate flinch, but her smile didn’t falter or slip. She shook it off. She shook off everything he threw at her. He added another word to his description of her. Endlessly foolishly optimistic.
“I don’t want people here. I told you this isn’t a party.”
Up the servant’s steps and into the back hallway, Kate led him through the family house. How was it possible she knew this place better than he did? Up until his ninth birthday, he spent every Christmas here with his family. He should lead, not her.
“Okay,” she began, popping with excited energy. “Every year, on Christmas Eve, we have a huge festival feast for lunch before we open the doors for the guests. I mean, it’s huge. Everyone in town comes and we have everything you can imagine—”
“Last year, Buzz Schrute carved a Nativity scene out of butter. With a chainsaw,” Michael called over his shoulder. They turned the corner to the main living wing, which housed the library, the study, the formal parlor, the living room, kitchens and formal dining room. The public wing of the house.
“Eating is as much a part of the Christmas experience as anything else. Everyone really opens up around the table. When you share a meal with someone, you’re really sharing a part of your soul.”
“Where are you going with this?”
They approached the formal dining room. Oh, no. The house no longer reeked of gingerbread or fir. Other smells swirled in dizzying circles around Clark’s head. Garlic. Onions. Sage. Parsley. Paprika. Sweet potato. Brussels sprouts… Turkey.
“I wanted to show you what it’s like. Give you a taste of the real Miller’s Point Christmas experience. So, drumroll, please…” Kate shoved the French doors apart, revealing Clark’s worst nightmare. He thought a redecorated house couldn’t get any worse, but once again, Kate blew him and his expectations away.
“Surprise!”
The shout came not from Kate or her two compatriots, but from a room filled to the brim with Miller’s Point Christmas nerds. In his rushed morning, Clark never inspected the formal dining room. He knew from his childhood that it accommodated almost forty-five people, though he’d never seen so many in there. Old, young, fat, thin, tall, short, black, white, in Christmas sweaters, in dresses. Everyone crammed around the table to surprise him and welcome him to his own personal brand of torture. Decorations covered the carved wood paneling of the walls and a miniature Christmas tree—apparently the towering monstrosity in the living room wasn’t enough to sate Kate’s lust for the noble fir—took post in the corner.
But ornate decorations were nothing compared to the table. Pages from Dr. Seuss stories were less cluttered and colorful. Anything ever featured on a Martha Stewart Thanksgiving special or on the cover of the November issue of Southern Living claimed space at this feast.
Stuffing. No fewer than six varieties of potato. Sweet potato casserole. Sweet potato biscuits. Green bean casserole. Cranberry sauce—homemade and canned. Cornbread. Corn pudding. Corn on the cob. Creamed corn. Mac ’n’ cheese. Gravy. Brussels sprouts. Soup. Ham. Spinach dip. Broccoli salad. And on and on until the room nearly exploded with plate upon plate of delicious calories.
Three turkeys. Who needed one turkey, much less three?
It all looked so delicious. And so, so unnecessary. He clenched his jaw so tight he thought it might break his teeth.
“What is this?”
“It’s a feast.”
Kate joined the crowd, leaving him alone against a sea of strangers. He marveled. They all believed in this garbage. They all thought he would sit down at the table and suddenly be a changed man. Kate believed it. She was wrong. They were all wrong. He shoved his hands into his pockets so no one could spot their trembling.
“I can see that. Where did it all come from?”
“We ordered it. Well, some of it was already cooked and frozen for the feast, but we had to order some of it because—”
“Who paid for it?”
This time, Kate hesitated. The air in the room tightened, tense and uncomfortable. People shuffled, shifted their weight from one foot to the other, glanced uncertainly at Kate and coughed. With every tick of the grandfather clock placed against the far wall, as the inevitable explanation came closer and closer, Clark’s pulse boomed in his ears. His right hand kept flexing and clenching against the lining of his suit pocket. One woman stepped back, apparently afraid he’d turn violent.
He wasn’t a violent man, but he didn’t rule out knocking over a gravy boat or two.
“It’s part of the company expenses. We do this every year for the festival and—”
There it was. The explanation he knew was coming still managed to enrage him. His carefully constructed mask flew away, leaving nothing but the anger. He may have admired Kate, even liked her a bit, but she was still, at her core, stealing money from his company by disobeying his directive to cancel all festival-related orders. Stealing that which didn’t belong to her all to prove some stupid point about a holiday he would never like.
“I’m dissolving the company because it’s wasteful. This entire stupid holiday is a monument to waste and excess and it sickens me!”
A woman stepped forward, a coaxing but vain smile on her aging face.
“We worked really hard on this and—”
“Well that hard work was a waste of time because I’m not touching this. Go. Leave. Get out of here.”
“Clark.”
Kate threw him a lifeline. A
