Chesapeake 10 - A Seaside Christmas (7 page)

“Of course not,” he agreed solemnly.

Jenny studied him, then laughed. “This could turn out to be a lot more fun than I was imagining.”

Caleb winked at her. “I’ll certainly do my part to make sure it is.”

And that, she thought, her smile fading, was troubling. Because when Caleb threw himself into something, he generally got exactly what he wanted. At the moment, his goal seemed to be to totally charm her once more.

* * *

Caleb had always admired Jenny’s work ethic as much as he’d appreciated the results of her intense determination to nail down the perfect word or the right run of notes. She’d always listened to his thoughts, but in the end she’d had an innate sense of what worked and what didn’t. She’d won more arguments than he had, because he’d trusted her gut. It had never steered either of them wrong.

When he popped the cork on the bottle of wine, her head shot up.

“Really?” she demanded, disappointment written all over her expressive face.

He held the label out so she could read it. “Nonalcoholic. I’m not an idiot, Jenny.”

“Sorry,” she apologized at once. “I just panicked for a minute.”

“Understandable. Now, do you want a glass with lunch? It’s time to take a break.”

“I just want to get this last couple of lines right,” she protested.

He reached for her guitar and moved it away from her. “They’ll come to you a whole lot better if you give your brain a little time off. You know how important it is to relax and take a breath.”

She regarded him with amusement. “I said I’d work with you, not take orders from you.”

“It wasn’t an order. It was a gentle reminder that I actually do know a few things about your working habits. Once you tense up and start pushing, the lyrics are never as good as when you get away from them for a little while.” He held out a plate with roasted chicken, cheese and bread on it. “Eat!” He grinned at her. “And that
was
an order.”

Jenny accepted the plate, but feigned a scowl. “I’ll eat, but not because you say so. It’s only because that chicken looks amazing.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself,” he commented.

They ate in companionable silence for a while. Eventually, Caleb couldn’t take another moment of the quiet. “This morning wasn’t so hard, was it? Working with me, I mean.”

She glanced sideways at him. “It wasn’t horrible,” she conceded. “You were on very good behavior.”

“It reminded me of old times.”

“Don’t go there, Caleb.”

“We had a lot of good times, Jenny. You can’t deny that.”

“I can’t deny it,” she agreed. “But I don’t want to think about them.”

He regarded her knowingly. “Why not? Afraid you’ll let down your guard?”

“That’s not going to happen,” she said fiercely. “If you’re thinking it will, you’re in for a rude awakening. The past—
our
past—is behind us, Caleb.”

“Doesn’t feel that way to me,” he insisted.

“Well, it is.”

He figured that he’d pushed hard enough for now. “How late are you planning to work today?”

“Do you have someplace you need to be?” she inquired tartly. “You can leave anytime.”

“No, but I was thinking that you’ve been at this for hours.”

“We don’t have a lot of time. The professional actors Bree hired get to town on Monday. I know she wants to run through the songs with the locals at least a few times before that.”

“Makes sense.”

“What about you? Has she told you how she’s going to work you into the script? You can’t very well just pop up and sing a song here and there.”

Caleb shrugged. “I figured she’d spell it out for me when she has it nailed down. She’s the playwright. We just agreed to do this yesterday.”

“Which means she’s probably written you in by now. Maybe you should look for her and find out what she has in mind.”

“Trying to get rid of me, Jenny?”

“Just being practical. As I said, there’s not a lot of time.”

He regarded her with amusement. “And you don’t think Bree knows exactly where to find me if she needs me?”

She frowned at his logic. “More than likely,” she conceded. “But I’m not going to be around much longer, anyway, so you might as well look for her.”

Now it was Caleb’s turn to frown. “Hot date with that ex-boyfriend who was here yesterday?”

She ignored his reference to the old flame. “If you must know, I’m going to move my things from Jake and Bree’s tonight.”

For a moment, Caleb’s heart stuttered. “To the inn?”

She shook her head. “You wish. No, my mother and Thomas kept our old house for me. I’m going to move in there. Of course, the furnishings are a little sparse, so I’ll need to spend some time shopping for furniture, but I won’t need much, at least not on this trip.”

Her words stirred a memory. “Remember when we shopped for furniture for your place in Nashville?” Caleb asked. She’d insisted on buying the town house out of her first big paycheck, rather than agreeing to move in with him.

“I thought we weren’t going to walk down memory lane anymore,” she said, her frustration plain.

“Your plan,” he said. “I like memory lane, especially when we picked out the bed. I thought the saleswoman was going to have a heart attack when we both climbed into it. I’m stunned there weren’t pictures on the internet within seconds.”

“She knew better,” Jenny said, a smile tugging at her lips. “She wanted the big fat commission she stood to get because you insisted on buying up half the store.”

“Admit it, though. We had fun that day.”

“Yes, we did,” she acknowledged grudgingly.

“Then you should let me come shopping with you,” he suggested. “You already know I have excellent taste, especially when it comes to the perfect mattress.”

“This house already has a new bed,” she told him, then shrugged. “It’s the only thing it has, in fact.”

“Then get out your credit card, sweetheart. Let’s go shopping!”

She regarded him with astonishment. “You may be the only man on the planet who actually sounds excited about the prospect of shopping.”

“That’s because we’ll be doing it together,” he told her. “Just like before.”

He could see the precise instant when she gave in, even before she said, “Okay, fine.” She gave him a stern look. “But do not get any ideas about moving in with me the way you did in Nashville. You were practically delivered to my doorstep there along with the furniture.”

“Okay,” he agreed readily. “We’ll talk about that later.”

Alarm spread across her face. “No. No talking. No cajoling. You are not moving in, Caleb, and that’s final.”

“You sure about that?”

“As sure as I’ve been about anything in my life,” she said forcefully.

“Then I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

“Caleb!”

“Here, try a little of this cake. You always feel better once you’ve had a chocolate fix.” He held out a forkful of the decadent cake.

“You are not getting around my decision with cake,” she said, then moaned when she took the bite he’d offered. “Oh, sweet heaven! It’s as good as I remembered. Better, even.”

“Have some more.”

She took the outstretched plate eagerly and finished it off amid sighs of pleasure. Caleb regretted that the cake was responsible for her current state of ecstasy, rather than him, but it was a start. If making her moan and call out his name was his endgame, he was pretty sure he was on the right track.

Chapter Seven

“Y
ou know, it would help if I saw this house of yours before we go furniture shopping,” Caleb told Jenny as they drove away from the theater in his pickup. He’d only managed to convince her to take that by pointing out that there might be a few purchases they could bring home in the bed of the truck without having to wait for a delivery. She had, however, insisted on driving.

“I know the roads,” she’d argued, planting herself outside the driver’s-side door in a display of the control issues she swore didn’t exist.

Caleb had given in readily and flipped the keys to her. “Whatever makes you happy.”

“Your staying home would make me happiest of all,” she’d countered.

“Debated and decided,” he’d retorted.

He glanced over at her now. “About my seeing the house—”

She immediately cut him off. “I’ve already told you, you are not crossing the threshold of my house.”

“No, what you said was that I could forget about moving in. I’m just suggesting that I’ll be more help with choosing furniture if I have some idea what the place looks like, the proportions of the rooms, that kind of thing.” He met her gaze. “Look me in the eye and tell me that doesn’t make sense.”

She scowled at him, but finally agreed, “Okay, it does make sense.”

“Then why are you so resistant to the idea?” He suspected it was because she wanted to keep the house devoid of any and all memories of him, to make it her personal Caleb-free zone. Since he wanted just the opposite, he pushed a little harder. “Stop being stubborn, Jenny. A ten-minute walk-through.” He winked at her. “I promise not to linger in the bedroom.”

“As if I’d let you anywhere near the bedroom,” she muttered.

“Okay, agreed. What’s the harm in letting me take a peek at the rest of the place?”

“None, I suppose,” she replied with unmistakable reluctance.

A few blocks later, with daylight fading fast, she turned down a neighborhood street that looked as if it would be shaded by giant oaks in the summer. Right now, though, the branches were bare, at least those that hadn’t been strung with white Christmas lights. It was a little like driving into a holiday theme park with every house already lit up brightly and every lawn outfitted with displays ranging from gaudy North Pole scenes to more tasteful religious figures. Only one house in the middle of the block was eerily dark.

“Yours, I assume,” he said even before she turned into the driveway. “You need to get with the program, Jenny.”

“I just found out this house was mine yesterday. It’s not as if I’ve had a lot of time to decorate. It probably doesn’t even make sense to bother now,” she said, though there was an unmistakably wistful note in her voice.

“We could decorate the yard, too,” he suggested. “It would be fun.”

She immediately shrugged off the offer. “I suppose if I decide I want outdoor lights, Uncle Jake can do it. Mom’s bound to have saved all the decorations.” Her expression turned nostalgic. “We always did Santa’s workshop with these giant candy canes and the ugliest elves you’ve ever seen. I have no idea where on earth they came from, but we kept them because I absolutely knew nobody else would want them. I felt bad thinking about them being relegated to the dump.”

Caleb smiled, thinking about the compassionate child she must have been. He wondered how much that had to do with the rejection she herself had felt at her father’s abandonment.

“What else did you have in the yard?” he asked.

A smile touched her lips. “My favorite was the toy train that wound around the whole yard with Santa riding in the caboose,” she said.

She turned to him suddenly, her eyes bright. “Can I borrow your cell phone? Mine’s still buried in a drawer at Bree and Jake’s.”

He handed it over, then listened as she spoke to her mother. After what sounded to him like some fairly awkward pleasantries, she said, “I’m at our house. The neighborhood’s already lit up like some crazy wonderland. It made me think about the old decorations, especially the train. Where are they? Did you leave them in the attic?”

Caleb watched as her face fell.

“Oh, of course. That makes sense,” she said flatly. “No, no problem. I’ll see them next time I’m over there, then. Gotta run. I’m going to look for furniture.”

She hung up and handed the phone back to him. When she was about to start the car and pull away without ever setting foot into the house for their walk-through, Caleb reached over and covered her hand with his.

“What?” he asked softly, though he was sure he already knew.

“They’re putting the decorations up at the new house this weekend,” she said, her tone emotionless. “It makes sense. I mean, they didn’t even know if I was going to keep the house or even be here for the holidays. No sense in letting the decorations go to waste. And Sean apparently loves the train as much as I did.”

A tear leaked out despite her best attempt to keep her voice casual and breezy. Caleb rubbed it away with the pad of his thumb.

“I’m sorry.”

She managed a smile, though there was little question it was forced. “No big deal,” she insisted.

He could tell, though, that it was.

“Change of plans,” he said then. “The furniture can wait.”

“No, it can’t,” she said, frowning. “I can’t live here with just a bed.”

“You can for a day or two or you can stay at Jake and Bree’s a little longer. Tonight we’re shopping for new decorations.”

“That’s crazy. I’m only going to be here for a few weeks,” she said, but there was a spark of interest in her eyes. “Besides, people buy this stuff before Thanksgiving. Everything will be picked over by now.”

“Which means there will be some great bargains, and who has more creative genius than the two of us. We’re going to have a display that people will drive for miles to see. Forget the train. That is so old-fashioned. We’ll have a rocket ship with Santa on board. Maybe some little Martian elves.”

She started laughing then, her somber mood broken. “You’re nuts.”

Caleb thrilled to the sound of her laughter. “Maybe just a little,” he agreed. “Don’t tell. I’m trying to repair my reputation, not add to the talk.”

She met his gaze. “Caleb, do you really want to decorate the house?” she asked, genuine yearning in her voice.

If he hadn’t wanted to before, he did now. “I do,” he told her solemnly. “And think of all those rejected decorations we’re going to find. You’ll be giving them a home.”

She lifted a brow. “Seriously, you’re going to play on the sympathy factor for the decorations?”

He shrugged. “Whatever works.”

“Have you ever done over-the-top Christmas decorations in your entire life?”

“Nope, but I can get into the spirit of it,” he assured her. He could do anything that might make the two of them close again.

“But can you do it without falling off a ladder and breaking your neck?”

He held her gaze. “I guess we’ll see.”

“Okay,” she said eventually, her expression turning thoughtful, “but we’ll need a theme.”

“I gave you a great theme,” he said, feigning indignation.

“No Martian elves,” she replied. “No rockets. I’m a traditionalist.”

He smiled at her. “Could have fooled me.”

She laughed. “I’m a little surprised by it myself.” Her grin spread. “Let’s do it. Let’s turn this house into something magical.”

Studying the light in her eyes as she gazed around, apparently imagining the transformation, Caleb thought what was happening was already just a little magical.

* * *

Jenny hadn’t laughed so hard in a very long time. Suddenly the past—her own, his or even theirs—wasn’t even part of the equation as they hit a half-dozen stores to pick through the outdoor decorations until they’d assembled more than enough to turn two or three yards into the gaudiest of all wonderlands.

“If we use all this, the house won’t even be visible,” she protested as Caleb found yet another Santa figure, this one sitting in a giant sleigh that played music as it appeared to lift off toward the sky. “And we can’t have three Santas.”

“Why not?”

“It’ll be confusing to the children. They think there’s only one.” As soon as she’d said the words, she caught him struggling with a grin. “What?”

“Sweetheart, even toddlers have to know that all these Santas hanging out in the front yards of every house in the neighborhood are not the real thing,” he explained patiently. “For one thing, they’re plastic. For another, everyone knows that the real Santa lives at the North Pole. So what if we have a Santa family? Has anyone ever said for sure that there aren’t Santa triplets? Or clones, even? I mean, he does manage to hit a whole lot of places in one short night.”

“Please do not share these ideas of yours with Bree,” she begged. “With the way she delights in doing things that are cutting-edge, she’s liable to turn this Christmas play into some sci-fi holiday adventure that will have the audience totally bewildered.”

“So we can get this Santa?” Caleb asked, studying the rosy-cheeked figure and the gold-trimmed sleigh with lights and bells on the reins. “He’s the best one yet.”

“By all means, let’s take him home,” Jenny relented, delighted by this playful side of Caleb she hadn’t seen in far too long.

By the time they were finished, the bed of the pickup was jammed with outdoor lights and displays.

“One more stop,” Caleb announced. “If we’re going to do this job tonight, we’ll need hot chocolate, marshmallows, a boom box and some Christmas CDs.”

Jenny smiled, thinking of the years when she, her mom and Jake had worked on the yard with exactly the same things to set the mood. “Big marshmallows, not those little miniature guys,” she told him when he offered to run inside yet another big box store to get their supplies. “We’ll need some popcorn, too. And make sure you get the traditional Christmas CDs by Johnny Mathis and Tony Bennett, as well as all the latest ones.” She frowned. “Maybe I should come, too. You’ll never remember all that.”

Caleb merely lifted a brow. “You questioning my musical taste
and
my memory?”

She hesitated, thinking of their arguments over various singers. His taste was far more eclectic than hers. “Could you at least avoid the rappers?”

He winked at her. “That I can do. And I promise not to forget a single thing. If I do, you can send me back for it.”

She leaned back in the warm cab of the truck, listening to the local country station, her eyes closed.

It had been a surprisingly pleasant evening. She’d let down her guard. Caleb hadn’t been trying too hard to prove he’d changed. He was just Caleb, the way she remembered him from before he’d started drinking too much and lost his way.

He’d always been able to make her laugh. He’d delighted in provoking her with outrageous comments that he knew wouldn’t fail to elicit a strong response. He’d claimed he liked to see the fire flashing in her eyes. And that he’d liked even more stoking that fire by making love to her.

That memory had her sitting up straight.
No, no, no,
she warned herself. She couldn’t go there. She couldn’t start remembering how it had felt to have his hands all over her or his mouth covering hers, how he’d coaxed her along until she could barely remember her own name for all the sensations he was stirring up. She needed to be steeling her resolve, not getting weaker. Hadn’t she come to Chesapeake Shores at least in part to forget about him once and for all?

A tap on the window scared her to death. “Jenny, open the door,” Caleb said. “My keys are in the ignition.”

Her nerves jumpy—and definitely not just because he’d startled her—she unlocked the door to let him in. “Find everything?” she asked, her voice surprisingly breathless.

“As promised,” he said, then studied her. “You okay?”

She forced a smile. “Perfect.”

His expression remained worried. “But?”

She drew in a deep breath. “I’m thinking it’s already late. Jake can do the decorations tomorrow or the next day. He does it for a lot of people this time of the year, so he knows exactly what to do. I should probably get some sleep. We still have a lot of work to do on the music for the play.”

Caleb stilled, his frown deepening. “What the heck happened while I was inside that store, Jenny?”

“Nothing. Honest. I just realized it was late, that’s all.”

He sighed. “If you say so,” he said, though it was evident he wasn’t buying her explanation.

He pulled out of the parking lot and drove back to her house in silence, breaking it only to ask for directions once or twice. In the driveway, he said, “You go on inside and get some rest. I’ll unload everything and leave it on the porch.”

“I can help,” she offered, filled with guilt over ruining the evening by cutting it short simply because she’d panicked. After all, he hadn’t tried anything. She was the one who’d suddenly gotten all nostalgic.

“No need to help,” he told her. “I can do it. Just take the CDs, the CD player, and the popcorn and hot chocolate inside when you go.”

She took the bags and started for the house, then turned back. “Caleb, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“Spoiling things.” Avoiding his gaze, she said, “I had a good time tonight. I really did.”

He walked over to her then and ran a finger along the curve of her jaw. “Too good?”

That he understood that surprised her. She dared to look into his eyes. “Maybe.”

His gaze remained steady, locked with hers. “I won’t apologize for that.”

“You shouldn’t. It’s me. This feeling scares me.”

“I don’t want you to ever be scared of me or with me,” he told her solemnly. “You take all the time you need, Jenny. I’m not going anywhere.”

This time when he said it, it didn’t sound so much like a warning. It sounded like a promise. And that scared her most of all.

* * *

Even though it was Saturday, Caleb knew he’d find Jenny, and most likely Bree, at the theater first thing in the morning. He risked a stop at Sally’s café for coffee and some of the chocolate croissants she assured him were Jenny’s favorites. He smiled as she put them into a bag. His girl—and she would be his again, he vowed—sure did love her chocolate, apparently in whatever form it took.