“I don’t have a car and these heels are killing me. That’s the only reason I’m still here.”
It was then he realized she hadn’t been shaking with noiseless sobs, but fooling with the difficult laces of the Victorian heeled boots on her feet. From directly behind her, he couldn’t tell the difference, but once he stepped to the side, he saw the fight firsthand and the determined way her teeth dug into her bottom lip. In the cold, her skin both paled and reddened at the same time, the high contrast giving her an otherworldly glow amid the thousands of lights strung up across the square from the buildings on either side of them. Clark didn’t want to think about the electricity bill they’d rung up over the last few days.
“Can I sit down with you?” he asked, pointing to the sliver of space between the end of her billowing skirt and the side railing of the gazebo’s steps.
“Why?”
Good question. A smarter man might have gotten down on his knees and begged forgiveness. Right? Clark didn’t watch many movies, so his vocabulary of romantically tinged apologies was severely limited.
“I was hoping to talk to you,” he said. A cringe bunched his shoulders together just beneath his neck. He’d never done anything like this; this limb upon which he was reaching out bowed under the weight of his own insecurity.
“You can’t talk standing up?”
His chest tightened. After his cold dismissal of her last night, he didn’t blame her. She had every right to despise him. Knowing the right was hers didn’t make it hurt any less. He’d orchestrated this entire Christmas miracle for her, to make her feel better, not worse.
“I can, but you seem pretty upset.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“I’ve never seen you like this.”
“I’m fine.”
He could hit himself. Everything out of his mouth turned out to be the exact wrong thing to say.
“Okay. Okay.” He breathed in a deep lungful of country air. Dallas never smelled this good, nor did it ever crackle inside him like the first spark of a fire. It cleaned him from the inside, clearing his head. A path presented itself, so he took it. A risky move, but one he had to take. “I’ll just stand up here until you’re ready to talk.”
One of the few memories of his mother he held close to him was a story she used to tell about a woman who was separated from her love, and she sat by the banks of the river every day waiting for him to return. His mother held it up as an example of true devotion, sacrifice and love. Though he hoped she wouldn’t, he would wait a lifetime if Kate asked. Out of his own selfishness, he’d caused her pain; the least he could give her was devotion and a little bit of patience. He counted the minutes by the twinkling of the timed, dancing lights overhead. One cycle. Two cycles. Three cycles. And finally:
“Fine. You can sit down.”
The space between the hoops of her skirt and the side railing barely fit, but Clark sat on an angle to speak to her, only to open his mouth and find he had nothing to say.
“Kate. I think—”
Good thing he hesitated. An explosion of hot air and frustration flew from Kate’s lips, pouring out steaming accusations as she gesticulated wildly. Though it was hardly the time or place to do so, Clark couldn’t help but store away Kate’s habit of talking with her hands as one of his favorite quirks of hers.
“What is it with you, huh? Why are you doing this? What is all of this about? I don’t understand.”
A reasonable question, one he wished she’d asked before storming out of the house and out here into the cold where she would almost certainly catch her death only one day after he saved her from it.
“I got your present.”
“Present? What present?”
Slipping out of his coat, he pulled a red-bound book from the breast pocket, which he handed to her. Distracted by the slender volume, she barely reacted to him as he laid his coat over her shoulders and wrapped his red scarf around her throat. He took pains to brush her skin as little as possible, a task that proved almost impossible and left him with tiny electric shocks every time they did touch.
“The one you left under my tree yesterday.”
“Oh.”
As reverent as opening a prayer book, Kate turned over the pages until she stared at the title page engraving, a picture of an old man with a small boy on his shoulder. Clark didn’t concede to wearing old age makeup as Emily suggested, but if he had, he and Bradley would have looked almost identical to the picture she traced with her red-painted nails now.
“A Christmas Carol,” she muttered.
“Good title.”
His quip went ignored as she thumbed the pages. Clark tried to rescue the moment.
“No one’s ever seen me before. Or wanted the best for me. And you were right yesterday when you said I took your Christmas away, so…I thought it was only fair I try to give a little bit back to you.”
“Why? Because you want to rub it in my face or what? You hated me yesterday.”
“I was wrong.”
“Yeah? Maybe I was wrong, too. I liked you and you treated me like dirt. You thought I was trying to manipulate you when all I wanted was the best thing for everyone.” She’d long since given up trying to take off the uncomfortable shoes. Curling up under herself, she drew her knees into her chest, making herself as small as possible. Clark couldn’t begin to see a way out of this. He’d taken a willful, loving woman and broken her like he’d been broken. The whispers in town were right. He was a monster. Kate sniffed and turned her head away from him, resting her head on her knees. “All I wanted was for everyone to be happy.”
“I know. And that’s what I didn’t understand. I’ve never known
