Merry Humbug Christmas (32 page)

love you on sight! You’re freakishly lovable, considering where you came from.”

“His family is wonderful, actually. There’s a lot of them!” she

pointed out with a chuckle. “They’re great.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Promise you won’t tell mom and dad?”

“Of course.”

“One look at the giant goose in the oven, and I hurled all over the string beans.”

“No!”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Mom would be so . . .
proud
. . .”

Reese had to pull the phone away from her ear and adjust the

volume as Hersch’s cackling laughter spilled over her in booming

waves.

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“WELL, YOU SOMEHOW MADE it through Christmas Eve dinner,”

Damian said as he swatted Reese’s hip. “Nice work!”

“Oh, hush.”

His heart surged when her grimace transformed into a smile that

seemed to melt the new snow around his boots.

“Admit it,” he said, shifting the heavy bag of sand from one arm

to the other. “You liked it.”

“Yes,” she replied with reluctance. “Fine. The goose was deli-

cious. Once it wasn’t bird-shaped any more, I actually enjoyed it.”

“You know what would have made the dinner perfect?” he asked

her with a serious expression.

“A hollow leg so you could consume even more than you already

did?”

“That,” he acknowledged, “and some string beans. Man, that

meal would have been perfect if we only had some of my mom’s

string beans!”

“You’re a dark and tortured man, Damian Palmer.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Reese thought she saw something

race past them, and she whirled around. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” he asked as he walked on down the driveway.

“I . . . don’t know.”

Stopping, she held her breath and surveyed the area around them.

Beyond the house several of the shrubs shimmied, and she squinted and watched to see if it was nothing more than a December wind.

“Did you guys see it?” Hannah called out to them from the front

porch.

“See what?” Damian asked her.

Zeke peered at them from behind Hannah’s jeans-clad legs.

“It was Blitzen, Uncle Damian. He came back and ate the sweet

patatahs
!”

“He just snatched them and ran in this direction,” Hannah

exclaimed. “He’s huge!”

Reese looked toward the woods, wishing she’d caught a glimpse

of him. “Was he limping?” she asked Hannah.

“A little. His back leg looked like it might be hurt.”

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“I told you,” she said to Damian, shaking her head. “He’s the one.”

Damian slipped his hand into the pocket of his coat and pro-

duced the long-necked lighter he’d stashed there.

“Okay, let’s get back down to business,” he said, and Reese took

a long look toward the woods before trailing him.

“How does all this luminaria stuff work, exactly?” she asked.

“You open up one of the white paper lunch bags,” he said, and she followed his instruction. “I pour in a few cups of sand.”

Reese held the mouth of the bag open as Damian emptied some

sand into it.

“Now you place the candle in the sand, like this, careful not to

get too close to the sides. I fold down a cuff at the top of the bag.

Then we do that about six hundred more times down the driveway

and along the road.”

“Wait, shouldn’t we light it?”

“No, we wait for everyone to get their sections set up, and then

we go along and light them all at once.”

Damian used his teeth to pull off one of his gloves, and he left

it hanging there while he adjusted the opening on the bag of sand.

He glanced back at Reese just in time to see her twist her gold hair around one hand and tuck it underneath her pink beanie. Although

a nearly full moon reflected off the snow-covered ground, and new flakes gave the landscape a light dusting of glitter, all of it paled in comparison to the quiet beauty of Reese standing there in her long black coat with the pink fur collar that matched not only her cute little hat but also the stain of frigid pink on her cheeks from the plummeting temperature. Damian knew the woman had no clue

how exquisite she really was.

“What are you grinning at?” she asked when she caught him

watching her.

“Just dreaming about those string beans,” he said with a shrug.

“Sure wish I had some of those tonight.”

He felt the heat of her glare bearing down on the back of his

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borrowed from the mudroom crunched along through the snow

behind him.

“Hey,” she said when they stopped to prepare the next bag with

sand. “Where does this tradition come from, anyway? And why do

they call it a
luminaria
?”

“It came from a Spanish tradition, actually.” When he noticed

Sofia, Eli, and their two kids ahead of them at the end of the driveway, Damian called out to Sofia. “Hey, Sof. It started out as a celebration of the birth of Christ, right?”

“Chez, Domion,”
she said as she broke away and headed toward them with little Jeremy holding her hand. “
Las Posados
. It’s a celebration of when Mary went into labor, and they had to search for

lotching
.”

“Search for lodging,” Damian translated for Reese in a whisper.

“Ohhh.”

“Elijah, he says the Palmers have been lighting the
farolitos
—the little lanterns—for years back in Vermont, so I tell him he had a Spanish influence even before he met me.”

“A foreshadowing of what was to come,” Reese said with a grin.

“
Si
. Foreshadow.”

“When my folks bought this place in Sugarloaf,” Damian told

Reese, “we carried on the family tradition every Christmas Eve.

Pretty soon, Mr. and Mrs. Hillsborough down the road liked it so

much they organized all of the other neighbors, and it became a regular thing up here. In an hour or so, we’ll go for a sleigh ride, and you’ll see lanterns like these placed every few yards for nearly three miles.”

“A sleigh ride!” Reese cried. “You have
a sleigh
?”

“Well, we don’t, no,” he said, laughing. “Pop rents one every

Christmas Eve. It’s more of a huge wagon, really, pulled by a couple of horses owned by the Ferncliff family down in Erwin Lake.” When he saw the astonished expression on her face, he smiled and lifted one shoulder into a shrug. “The kids really love it.”

“Don’t let him fool you, Reese,” Eli said as he joined them. “The adults like it just as much as the kids do.”

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“The Palmer boys are just big
niños
, anyhow,” Sofia added.

“
Cheeldren
, right?”

“Oh?” Reese teased. “I’d hardly noticed.”

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On the tenth day of Christmas,

Murphy’s Law gave to me . . .

ten carols screeching,

nine cornball sleigh rides,

eight geese a-roasting,

seven backs a-blazing,

six ER visits,

five frozen thiiiings!

four yapping dogs,

three wrenched necks,

two mismatched gloves,

and a big rockin’ Harry Winston ring.

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10

Two large brown horses—one of them with streaks of white

running through its mane and long, bushy tail—trotted

down the road, the clomp of their hooves muffled by another inch of fallen snow. Three generations of Palmers huddled together on two long bench seats on either side of the open wagon.

Reese leaned close to Damian, and he tightened his arm around

her shoulder, drawing the soft woolen blanket up to her chin. The temperature had dropped below thirty degrees, but the wind had

gone still, and snowfall had thinned to a scant flurry, making the ride up the road and over the hill somewhat pleasant when well prepared with thick blankets and thermos cups of hot chocolate and warm

mint tea.

Jeane and Paul, seated at the reins with Zeke and Abigail between them, seemed to know every neighbor they passed along the way. In the distance Reese heard a choir of voices singing “Joy to the World,”

and Paul brought the wagon to a stop as they crested the ridge at the top of the hill. A family of six had just gotten around to lighting the 261

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Humbug Christmas

candles inside the paper lanterns at the end of their driveway, and the eldest of them shouted out a greeting as the others continued to sing.

“Palmer clan!” he beamed. “Merry Christmas!”

“Same to you, Jake,” Jeane returned. “How about some hot

chocolate?”

“Thank you, thank you,” the white-haired man answered. “But

we have Margaret’s apple cider a-flowing already. Join us in song?”

“Come on, Palmers,” Paul called out. “Let’s show the good Lord

what you’ve got!”

And with that Damian and his family began to sing along.

“He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove . . .”

A teen from the group stepped forward and rubbed one of the

horses on the nose. When the animal whinnied, her laughter cut her song into pieces.

Reese felt as if she’d stumbled into some cheesy Hallmark movie

with the townsfolk singing carols, drinking apple cider, and tak-

ing sleigh rides in the snow. Even though she secretly adored those Christmas movies each year, she recognized a good fantasy when

she watched one! Looking around her now, it was almost a little too much for her to believe. She didn’t know whether to call Hersch

later and describe the scene in mocking disbelief or just to dive in and enjoy the cornball beauty of it all.

“How about one more?” Jeane suggested when they’d completed

the carol.

Jake basked in the glow of the suggestion, and he rallied his

troops.

“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining . . .”

Reese’s favorite Christmas song! She grinned so hard at Damian

that her cheeks throbbed.

“I love this song!” she exclaimed.

A strange expression shadowed his face as he replied, “Right. I

know.”

And with that Reese sang out with all her might.

“Faaaaall on your knees. O hear the angel voooices. O ni-ight diviiiiine . . .”

Was it her imagination, or was everyone staring at her?

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She felt exhilarated as the beautiful carol came to a close.

Squeezing Damian’s arm as tightly as she could, she whispered in his ear. “I can’t believe this is for real . . . that people actually live like this. Let’s bring our children here every year, okay? I want them to grow up with this view of Christmas, Damie.”

He touched her cheek with his leather-gloved fingers and gazed

into her eyes for a long and frozen moment. She could almost see

the wheels of thought turning in him, and she wished she had a com-puter screen handy where she could read the transcript. The steam of his warm breath meeting the cold air between them fogged her eyes, and she closed them as he kissed her.