Christmas In Silver Bell Falls (7 page)

His expression was still serious as his eyes scanned her face.  “What changed your mind?”

“It wasn’t a matter of changing my mind, it was a matter of taking a step back and making sure we weren’t making a mistake.”

He quirked a dark brow at her.  “And what makes you so sure we’re not?”

She gave a slight shrug.  “I’m still not sure.  But I know I want to try.”  Swallowing, she moved against him.  “We’re on borrowed time here and I think we’d both regret it if we wasted time pretending to think about it.”

“We?”

A low laugh was her first response.  “Okay, me.  I knew I’d regret it if I sat around pretending to think about it.  I know it’s only been twenty-four hours but it’s all I’ve thought about.  I could stand here and play the ‘I don’t really know you’ game, but you took me all around town today and everywhere we went, people knew you.  Everyone talked to you.  Hell, it’s like you have your own fan club around here so it’s not like I can’t trust you since obviously everyone does.”

“I wouldn’t call them a fan club.  Not exactly…”

And just like that, the tension between them was broken.  “Oh please…I was beginning to think they all had t-shirts with your picture on it.  Maybe there was a parade in your honor during one of those ridiculous Christmas festivals.”

He joined in her teasing.  “It’s not a particularly huge parade…normally me just driving down Main Street waving to people.”

“Does the high school marching band follow you?”

“Only on Saturdays.”

Melanie rested her head against his chest as she laughed.  She could feel him laughing with her, felt his arms band around her waist as he slowly pulled her against him.  When she lifted her head and looked up at his face, humor was suddenly the last thing on her mind.  His name was a whisper on her lips.

“As much as I love talking with you and laughing with you, Melanie, right now all I really want is to kiss you.”

Her hands skimmed up his chest and up and over his shoulders.  “So what are you waiting for?”  And much to her surprise, Josiah didn’t move.  The confusion she felt surely must have been obvious on her face.

With his forehead gently touching hers, he sighed.  “I can’t believe I’m saying this but…”

“But…?”

“I don’t think we should do this.”

“Oh.”  Melanie felt like she had been kicked in the gut and she wished the floor would just open up and swallow her.  She was mortified.  She’d never been the aggressor in a relationship and on her first time out of the gate she was shot down. 

Dammit.

Not wanting to let him see how his words affected her, she carefully tried to disengage from his arms.  When she realized he wasn’t letting her go, she looked at him questioningly. 

“I meant right now,” he said quickly.  “I just…I think if I kissed you right now, I wouldn’t be content to let it stop here.”

“I…I don’t understand,” she said quietly.

“If we kissed right now, Melanie, I would want to keep kissing you.  We wouldn’t talk.  We wouldn’t discuss it.  Hell, we wouldn’t have dinner.”  He motioned over his shoulder toward the ladder that led to his sleeping loft.  “And it would be awkward as hell climbing the ladder the way I’m feeling right now.”

“Oh,” she sighed with a small smile.  “But you were the one who…”

“I know.  I know.”  This time it was Josiah who moved away.  “So…I think we should stick to our original plan of meeting for dinner.”

The sheepish look on his face was enough to melt her heart.  “Okay then.”  Taking her own step away, she moved toward the door—not that it was far to move since the space was so small.  “Then I’ll plan on seeing you in a little bit.”

He nodded.  “Should I bring anything?  Wine?  Dessert?”

Opening the door, Melanie chuckled.  “Just yourself.  I think everything else is covered.  It just won’t be very gourmet.  I sort of thought of this after we shopped.”

“I’m not looking for a gourmet dinner, Melanie.  I’m just looking to spend some time with you.”

Unable to speak because she suddenly felt very emotional, she simply nodded and walked out the door, closing it softly behind her.

Chapter Four

Josiah walked to the kitchen to pour them each another glass of wine and saw it was after eleven.  Where had the time gone?  They’d eaten dinner and done nothing but talk for hours.  In all his life he never remembered having a date—or dating anyone—where they never seemed to have an awkward silence.

Returning to the living room where Melanie was sitting on the sofa, he walked toward her and put their glasses on the coffee table.

“So I was thinking,” she began, “we already know you’re going to buy this place when I leave.  So if you’re ready, I don’t see why you couldn’t start doing stuff now.”  Reaching for her glass, she looked at him.  “I could contact the attorney and start having the papers drawn up so you know I’m serious.”

“I didn’t think you were lying to me, Melanie,” he said softly.  “Are you really so sure you’re going to go back to Raleigh at the end of those three months?”

She nodded.  “My life is back there.  I own a home—well, a condo—there.  My dad is there.  It’s been just the two of us since my mom left.  I couldn’t just leave him.”

Josiah reached over and took one of her hands in his.  “You don’t have to talk to me about this if you don’t want to, but I…I’d like to hear about your family.”

She sighed.  “There’s not much to tell.  My mom left and my grandmother disowned us.  That just left my dad and me.” She shrugged.  “End of story.”

He gave her a disapproving look and she slowly pulled her hand away and sagged against the sofa cushions.

“Okay, fine,” she moaned and then shifted to get more comfortable.  “I don’t think my mom ever wanted to be married.  She and my dad dated all through high school, did the whole high-school-sweetheart thing and then she got pregnant with me.  They got married but…I don’t know.  From what I remember and from the things my dad has shared with me over the years, she was never happy.  She had big plans for her life after high school, like traveling and college, and because of me she couldn’t do them.”

“I’m sure she didn’t blame you…”

Melanie shook her head.  “No, but she did blame my dad.  They fought all the time. Looking back he says he should have seen all the signs she was going to leave, but he didn’t.  Anyway, three days before Christmas, when I was five, she told my dad she was going out to buy my Christmas presents.  They were kind of poor and lived paycheck to paycheck and so it was the first time they had the money for her to go shopping.”  Lowering her gaze from his, she stared into her wine glass.  “She left with the money and never came back.”

Josiah was speechless.  He’d heard stories like this happening throughout his life, but never to someone he knew.  His heart broke for the little girl she had been, wondering where her mother had gone.  “Have you seen her since?”

She shook her head again.  “Dad was a mess.  I don’t remember a lot of it, but I can remember him just sitting on the couch and crying.  He was devastated.  I was pretty self-sufficient for a five year old and I did my best to try and take care of him.  We didn’t celebrate Christmas that year.”

He nodded with understanding.  “Was Carol still in your life at that point?”

“Not much,” she admitted.  “You see, she wasn’t happy that my parents had gotten married.  She’d had big plans for my dad too and resented the fact he opted for a wife and child over college and a career.  So it was really just the two of us.”

“What about your mom’s family?  Where were they?”

“She was a late-in-life baby and her parents passed away when I was an infant.  She was an only child just like my dad.”  She took a sip of her wine.  “You know, as an adult I can see how they had everything against them—they were too young and didn’t have a supportive family around them.  But it doesn’t make it any less painful to know…”  Her voice began to tremble.  “To know I was a contributing factor and so many people were just able to ignore me or walk away.”

“Oh, Mel,” he sighed and pulled her into his arms.  “You shouldn’t feel that way.”

“How can I not?” she asked.  “My mom was able to just walk away from me.  I was her own child and it didn’t seem to matter.  And my grandmother never bothered to get to know me.  And…and now here I am in her house, a place she specifically left to me, and I don’t see it as a gift or a blessing.  It’s a reminder.  It’s nothing but a lousy reminder of her.  It’s like being stuck in a prison cell for three months.”

Part of him wanted to take offense to her words, but he knew exactly what she meant.  This wasn’t about him and he couldn’t make it be that way.  She was carrying a lot of emotional baggage with her and maybe this was the first time she’d ever started to let it out.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked softly, placing a kiss on the top of her head.  When she nodded, he pulled her a little more comfortably against him, tucking her against his side.  “Why did you take the house then?  If you felt this strongly about your feelings toward your grandmother and what this house represented, why come?”

“My dad talked me into it.”

He waited for her to continue.

“He said it was a blessing in disguise.  I was struggling with this book I’m supposed to be writing and he thought a forced change of scenery would help.  The three months is about the time it usually takes for me to finish a book so the timeline would work.  And it was specifically stipulated in the will how I had to stay for three months.”

“It seems like an odd request.”

She nodded.  “I thought so too.  And I have no idea why she would have put it in there since I didn’t know her.  Who knows what was going on in her head?  She may have done it just to try to control me.”

Josiah frowned.  “Why would you say that?”

Pulling back a little, she looked up at him.  “Are you sure you want to talk about this?  I know you have good memories of her and I really don’t want to ruin that for you.  If she was nice to you, then those are the memories you deserve to keep, not the negative ones of my interactions with her.”

He couldn’t help but smile at her thoughtfulness and pulled her back so her head was on his shoulder.  "I really want to know.”

“About a month after my mom left, my grandmother showed up.  Dad was still kind of a mess, the house was a disaster and I remember her coming in and just…she looked like she was sucking on a lemon.”  She shook her head.  “She offered to help us out if we came to live with her.”

Josiah couldn’t really see an issue with that.  It seemed exactly like the kind of thing Carol would do.

“But I would have to go away to school.  She knew of some sort of private school or boarding school she wanted to send me to.  Then she told Dad how she could get him a decent job and even knew the right girl for him.”

Yikes. 

“Dad threw her out.  Every six months or so she would call and make the same offer, and every time he declined.  After several years of this, they finally had a very, shall we say, heated argument about it.  I remember I was washing the dinner dishes and the phone rang.  Dad answered it and then went into his bedroom and shut the door.  I didn’t think the yelling would ever stop.  When he came out, he looked at me and he looked sad, defeated.  I asked him what was wrong and he said it was finally over—she wouldn’t be bothering us anymore.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I honestly didn’t see why he was sad about it.  She wasn’t a very nice woman and all I could see was how we no longer had to deal with her calling and making us feel bad.”  She paused.  “When I was older, in my early twenties, Dad and I talked about it.  I finally asked him what had been said that day.  He said she was making him choose—it was either me or a chance to have the life he deserved.”

“Oh my God…”

She nodded.  “She never saw me as a person.  Never took the time to even try to see me as her granddaughter or to love me.  I was something to get rid of.  A reminder of a mistake my dad had made.”

“I don’t think he sees you that way.”

“No, he never did and it bothered him when others did.”  She sighed.  “That’s what makes this all even more confusing.  Why would she leave me anything in her will when she clearly hated and resented me?  It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Maybe she came to realize she had made a mistake,” Josiah suggested.

“I don’t know.  Maybe.  Either way, here I am.  Stuck in Christmastown.  It’s like a double whammy.”

He chuckled.  “Okay, I get the reason you feel the way you do about your grandmother, and I even understand why you might not love Christmas based on the story about your mom.  But there has to be more to your dislike of Christmas than that.”

“Dislike is a mild word.”

He sat up fully and put some distance between them.  “Come on…now I have to know.”

“Fine, but after this we are done talking about me and my family.  Maybe I’ll put you under the microscope for a bit and see how you like it,” she said with a half-hearted laugh.

“You could but it would be a very boring conversation.  We were your typical American family with six kids.  Money was always tight, we lived on a lot of hand-me-downs and ate a lot of macaroni and cheese because it was cheap.  My parents are still happily married and all of my siblings, as I told you earlier, are doing well.  I’m the beloved sheriff of this little town and happen to love my job.”  He sighed dramatically.  “See?  Boring.”

“Does that mean I’m off the hook for the rest of my story?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head and laughed.  “Not a chance.  Come on.  Tell me why you hate Christmas.  I’m thinking it’s not all that bad.”

When a slow, almost evil smile crossed her face, Josiah had a feeling he was about to majorly be proven wrong.

“We’ll start with the Christmas Mom left.”

“Naturally.  And while horrible, I wouldn’t think it would make you hold a lifelong grudge against Christmas.”

“The following year Dad and I got the stomach flu.  Bad.  We spent days doing nothing but vomiting and praying for death.”

He nodded.  “Okay, that’s pretty…gross, but still not enough not to get over.”

“Dad got laid off the week before Christmas the next year.”

He didn’t even bother to stop her because now she was using her fingers to count all the ways she was proving her point.

“The next year was when he and my grandmother had that fight.  It sort of took all the merry out of everything, knowing you were permanently disowned.  But my favorite was the year we had gotten robbed the day before Christmas.  By the time I was twelve, we both agreed to throw in the towel.  Christmas was just not our thing and we simply quit fighting it and stopped celebrating.  We’ve been very happy with our choice.”

“So it’s been…”

“A long time,” she finished for him. 

Knowing there was no way he was going to be able to find the right thing to say to her to change her mind, he decided to drop the subject.  For now.  But already his mind was reeling with ideas of how he could work on making her see Christmas in a new light.  He could show her some positive aspects of it, and do his best to make this particular Christmas the best one ever.

“Okay then,” he said and reached for his wine and finished it.  “So how is the new book coming?  Have you started on it?”

She shared with him how she had started seriously writing that afternoon and he loved how animated she got when she talked about her work.  He normally read thrillers and mysteries, but her plans for a holiday romance sounded very nice.

“Now…wait a minute.  If you’re just writing it now, it won’t be out for Christmas, will it?”

“The publishing world is very slow,” she said.  “This book won’t come out until next October.”

“Wow.  That’s a long time.  Why so long?”

“By the time I hand in the finished manuscript it has to go through a first read, normally with an associate editor.  Then they send it back to me with a round of edits, I send it back and then my editor reads it.”

“Why doesn’t she read it first?  Wouldn’t it save time?”

Melanie shook her head.  “She needs to read a more polished version.  It makes it easier for her to stay in the story rather than focusing on what needs to be changed.”

He nodded.

“So she reads it and if she wants me to change anything, we do it.  If she’s good with it, it goes off to bookmaking where it will go through another two—sometimes three—rounds of edits to polish it and make sure there are no mistakes.”

“Mistakes?  It’s fiction.  How can there be mistakes?”

She chuckled and reached over to finish her own wine.  “Grammatical mistakes.  Sometimes I use a word or phrase too much or the way something is worded sounds awkward.  That sort of thing.  It’s a very long process.  And during all that, the cover needs to be designed and approved.  Advanced copies go out to reviewers…it’s a lot.”

“I had no idea.  It makes me appreciate books a little bit more.  I never gave much thought to all the work that goes into them.  I just figured the author wrote and then it got published.”

“I wish!” she laughed.  “The editing process can be very frustrating.”

“I can only imagine,” he said.  “Well, if I wasn’t already impressed with what you do, I definitely am now.”

“Thank you,” she said with a smile.  Standing up, she picked up both of their glasses and took them to the kitchen.  “So I set up my office in the guest room since there was a desk in there and I plan on buckling down and getting this story written.  Now that I finally have a little direction, I think it’s going to go smoothly.”