‘I don’t know. Blunder in blindly, mess everything up, and hope my mum can survive the heartbreak of watching her only son destroy the business she’s dedicated nearly forty years of her life to?’
I want to put my hand over his heart, but the fingers of his broken arm are resting on his chest and I reach out and cover them gently with mine, letting my fingertips touch the soft cotton of his T-shirt. It’s the closest I’ve come to one of his injuries and I wonder if I’m pushing him too far, but he doesn’t pull away.
‘Your hand is freezing,’ I say in surprise.
‘Having your fingers constantly stuck out of a cast will do that.’
I hold my hand out. ‘Lift your arm, let me warm you up.’
Surprisingly, he does. He positions his elbow so it’s supported by a cushion and lets his broken arm sink towards me. I bite my lip, my hands shaking as I hold my palm under his icy fingers and cover them gently with my other hand.
He lets out a shuddery breath and closes his eyes, letting his head drop back against the sofa again. It feels like he’s putting an insane amount of trust in me, to let me hold his broken limb like this and trust me not to hurt him, and to open up like that.
‘Even your hand is bruised,’ I murmur, my eyes focused on the blueish purple skin emerging from the stark white cast that ends at the base of his thumb.
‘Moving cars tend to do that when people walk into them.’
I want to pull his hand up to my mouth and blow on his freezing fingers to warm them, but I daren’t move a millimetre. And it’s probably a good thing because I want to lean across and press my lips to his smooth cheek and tell him it’ll all be okay, but it won’t, will it? He’s about to lose his father and gain a business he doesn’t want. ‘Do you want some brutally honest advice from someone who barely knows you and has no right to comment on your life decisions, or do you want me to shut up and keep my beak out?’
He doesn’t open his eyes, but a smile spreads across his relaxed face where his head is still leaning back. ‘Advice, please. All the advice. You’re the only person I’ve talked to about this. I can’t tell my parents how apprehensive I am because they’re dealing with enough as it is.’
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never known. I grew up doing business studies and accounting and retail in the knowledge I’d be taking over one day. I rebelled and tried different careers and failed at all of them. I had no money so Dad gave me a job at their company, probably thinking that working there would inspire their love of Christmas in me, but I’ve failed at that too. Working on Nutcracker Lane, meeting you, and being dragged headfirst into Christmas has made me feel like a child again. I get all giggly when I’m with you, and I cannot remember the last time I giggled.
‘Fixing things in the shop and seeing your crafts have reminded me of how much I used to like working with my hands, not sitting at a computer staring at numbers all day. Putting the decorations up at the lane, doing window displays, even putting those shelves up tonight has made me remember I had a creative side once. And none of that helps with … selling Christmas crackers.’ He sounds so dejected in those last few words that I have to grit my teeth to avoid dropping his arm and wrapping him in a bear hug tight enough to break a few more ribs.
‘James, if you don’t want to take over this business, maybe the best thing you can do is refuse. I don’t know your family, and I don’t know you very well—’
He opens his eyes and meets mine. ‘On the contrary, I’ve told you stuff I’ve never told anyone before. You know me better than all my friends and my immediate family now.’
I vehemently ignore how special that makes me feel. ‘They wouldn’t want to see you making yourself miserable. If you can’t do this, maybe the best thing you can do for your parents, yourself, and the business is to admit it and find someone else. Someone who’d love it like they did. Someone who’d want to put in the time and effort it needs. You’re trying to force yourself into loving something you hate so you can do something you don’t want to do.’
The index finger of his good arm comes up to draw patterns on my forearm and goose bumps rise in their wake, but I carry on. ‘You have no enthusiasm for it. You don’t want to take over your family business – you’re resigning yourself to it. No one wants a job like that, and believe me, no parent would want to see their son doing that.’
‘I’m just scared of letting them down. I’ve realised lately that my approach so far has been all wrong, and I don’t know how to fix it.’
‘Then the kindest thing you can do is admit that.’
‘I know. Believe me, I know.’ He sighs. ‘But how would I ever trust anyone? How would I ever know it would matter as much to someone else as it did to Mum and Dad? No one else is going to have that personal connection to it. When the going gets tough, no one is going to put in the effort they’d have put in because it’s never going to be as important to anyone else.’
‘But do you realise how important it is that you think that?’
He slowly screws one eye up and tilts his head to the side. ‘No?’
‘You’re willing to do something you hate for the rest of your life because you care about their business that much.
