“I care about you.”
“What?”
“I mean…” She bit her bottom lip. “I care about everyone.”
No matter what she said, all he heard was, “I care about you.” The revelation plunged him into full-on defensive mode.
“I don’t. I care about my company, my family, and my legacy. I don’t care about Miller’s Point. I don’t care about your stupid festival. I don’t care about Christmas. And I don’t care about you. I said you could stay because I felt bad for you, but now I know…”
She stiffened. She froze. Something snapped behind her liquid-gold eyes. She seemed to consider her options. And then, without reaching for her coat or her scarf or anything belonging to her, really, Kate marched towards the nearest door.
“Where are you going?”
“Why are you even asking? You don’t care.”
The door slammed behind her. Clark knew he should have felt a rush of joy. He’d won. He’d claimed victory over the invading armies of Miller’s Point and their fearless leader. But happiness eluded him. It sprinted in the other direction, leaving him empty. The sustaining belief in goodness she’d carried all through their time together dimmed.
He’d broken Kate Buckner.
He’d been trying to do it all day, but now that he’d succeeded, he felt nothing but disgust.
Chapter Eight
Kate’s first thought, as it always was when things went horribly, horribly wrong (or, to be completely fair, even slightly wrong) was, “How did I screw this up?” If a stranger’s high heel broke or the set for the Fezziwig mansion got slightly burned by an errant candle fire or no one could agree on how to fairly split a bill at a restaurant, Kate’s immediate reaction always passed go, did not collect two hundred dollars, and zipped straight to self-blame.
She abandoned Woodward House behind her, fully intending to return once she cleared her head. The problem with this entire plot of hers came down to one simple fact: being near him drove her crazy.
Crazy didn’t accurately describe it. He just…robbed her of any ability she possessed to take decisive, bold action. Kate’s performance reviews with The Christmas Company—both during her time as a volunteer and as an employee—always highlighted her excellent ability to think clearly, no matter the circumstances. During times of crisis or mild inconvenience, she took charge and steered the ship back on course. When she got near Clark, however…she might as well have tried to steer the Titanic through nighttime fog.
He made no sense. He surprised her with peeks of his heart and then tore it away when she stepped closer to get a better look. When he offered to drive them on their Christmas Box deliveries, when he gave Bradley that candy bar… Those actions pointed to something specific, to a truth he either wanted to hide or didn’t know he had inside of him at all.
He was secretly a good man. He wanted to open himself up to others. But something—fear or pain or resentment—kept him from doing so.
This entire impossible-to-balance calculation led to Kate trudging through the back forty of Woodward House. Thin bands of frozen rain slapped her cheeks. After less than five minutes exposed to the elements, her bones themselves shivered from the cold. Texas never froze, of course, not properly. Snow happened rarely and people usually took it as a sign of the End of Days. But, on days like today, it did get cold enough for Kate to wonder if she would catch her death just trying to get some fresh air.
The forty acres of land stretched between the faux Victorian manor house and the edge of the hill overlooking Miller’s Point upon which that house sat. It stirred Kate with its beauty. The old legend of the original Woodwards always included some storyline about Jedediah Woodward, the founder of the town and the company, who bought this land because his bride-to-be—whom he’d never met—apparently loved to paint. He thought buying her a landscape to explore and inspire her art might endear his unseen bride to him. Apparently, the gesture went over fairly well, seeing as she gave him thirteen children.
As she approached the end of the tree line, where a log bridge crossed over an icy river, Kate gave Annabella Woodward some credit. If a man gifted this land to her, she’d probably give him fifteen children. At least.
Stopping at the river’s edge, Kate leaned back against a granite boulder and surveyed the vast landscape around her. The rock was not exactly the most comfortable of recliners. She made do anyway. A view so beautiful deserved to be looked at. She could think of no better place to collect her thoughts. The tall evergreen trees followed the river down to a broad estuary in the distance. Unlike the half-frozen, half-cold spit rain, the river really had frozen over, halting the rushing water with a thin top layer of ice.
In the spring especially, she could understand the appeal of Jedediah Woodward’s gift to his wife. In a time before flu medicine, one generally appreciated a warm, leafy landscape more than a cold, wet one. Today, with plenty of cold pills and doctors on hand in town, she enjoyed the view for its resilience. Everything froze. Everything died in winter. But that was all the more reason to flourish and blossom come April. Kate sat on the edge of it all, taking in deep breaths of fresh tree breezes as she reckoned with her failings.
She’d failed him, the man with eyes as cold as this landscape. Something in Clark wanted to come out. She saw the hesitant hope hiding in his distant eyes. So why was he being so cruel to her? What had she done to deserve his devil-may-care attitude? She ran circles around this question, poking and prodding and second-guessing every decision she’d made this morning. Every turn she took
