Black Flame (8 page)

Perhaps most disturbingly, in the dream Jimmy hadn’t attempted to disarm her of the dangerously hot implement, but had only closed his eyes and waited for the burn.

He brushed his teeth and splashed water on his face as quickly as he could. He would start the coffee, then wake Deneen; by his calculations, even factoring in her longer-than-average preparation time to apply her cosmetics and arrange her hair, she ought to be ready to go by the time the coffee was prepared and the truck loaded with the gifts and decorations.

Jimmy was halfway across the kitchen when he spied the object in the middle of the kitchen table, and did a double-take.

A beautifully decorated cake, iced with frills and scalloped piping and holly leaves and berries. On closer inspection, the leaves were sculpted from frosting and the berries from the red gumdrop candies Mrs. Osterhaus had given Deneen last night.

Could that really be his cake underneath? The rough size and shape—circular—were right, but all evidence of his cake’s failure, including the swollen muffin top and the burned bits, were gone.

Tentatively, Jimmy poked a finger into an iced scallop along the bottom edge of the cake, and tasted it. It was delicious: not too sweet, creamy, and faintly spiced with almonds. Well, his roommates were in for a treat tonight.

A stab of discomfort shot through him at the thought. Zane and Cal, back from their long night out in the winter storm, would encounter not just a luscious Christmas cake but an even more luscious woman who would be staying with them. Cal, of course, would be bringing his girlfriend Roan, but that left Zane, who was single despite a number of false starts with girls he’d met in Conway. Zane worked on the rigs, but he had a law degree and horn-rimmed glasses and pale gray eyes, features which Jayne had explained to Jimmy were very attractive to many women, as they implied hidden depths of creative and intellectual acuity. Jimmy knew that myopia, despite common media portrayals to the contrary, did not correlate to higher than average intelligence, his own nearsightedness notwithstanding, but he couldn’t deny that women were drawn to Zane.

And in a matter of hours, Zane would be meeting Deneen for the first time. Smelling her intoxicating perfume. Tasting her cake…

Jimmy started the coffee, banging the filter basket into place with more force than necessary, pouring too much coffee from the bin and getting it on the floor. He stomped into the living room to get the broom he’d left by the front door after sweeping snow from the porch—

—and stopped. Deneen had left the Christmas tree’s lights plugged in overnight, and Jimmy’s irritation over the wasted electricity was quickly overcome by the beauty of the moment: the tree shimmering in the pre-dawn stillness, the few ornaments she’d left behind winking in the sparkling lights. And below the tree, the light reflected off a pair of gifts wrapped in beautiful silver paper.

The gifts hadn’t been there the night before—Jimmy was sure of it. He crouched down and lifted one of them. A scalloped tag read, “To Jimmy from Santa,” and a bow made of what looked like packaging twine was knotted around a small pine bough. Tucked into the bow was a single perfect red feather.

Jimmy thought of Deneen standing in the doorway yesterday, hiding something in her cupped hands. He was somehow sure it had been this feather, a small treasure that others would have overlooked, but had caught her eye. He examined the perfect vane, the downy barbs, the stiff quill, and imagined the delicate redbird that had left behind this memento on Christmas Eve.

“Are you going to open it?”

Jimmy turned to see Deneen standing sleepily behind him, covering a yawn with her fingers. She was already dressed, in close-fitting jeans and an even closer fitting red sweater that hugged her curves and gave just a hint of what lay underneath, the swell of her breasts peeping out from a bit of white lace. Jimmy swallowed hard, before taking in her hair, unstyled and falling in messy waves around her face, and her clean-scrubbed face.

She was beautiful without even a speck of makeup, and Jimmy wanted to tell her so, but she had asked a question that required a response.

“Uh…” His mind circled, trying to remember what she had asked him before he’d been overwhelmed by the mere sight of her. Then he remembered the package in his hands.

“I’m sorry to say that I still don’t believe in Santa,” he said gravely.

Deneen laughed, and plopped down on the sofa, curling her legs underneath her prettily. “That’s okay. You can still open it. Both of them, actually. You must have been a very good boy.”

Then she winked at him, a gesture that took hold of his insides and scrambled them. At least, that was what it felt like as Jimmy tore the paper from the package, setting the feather carefully on the coffee table. Inside was a handsome leather case, which Jimmy unzipped to reveal a neat row of grooming implements including nail scissors and trimmers.

“This is very nice,” he said. He held the kit up for inspection in the light of the tree.

“It was supposed to be for Matthew,” Deneen said apologetically. “I’ll get him something else, though. Quick, open the other one before I change my mind.”

Jimmy opened the second package more slowly, adding a second red feather to the one on the table. Deneen had given him the gift she had brought for her sister’s fiancé. Did that signal affection, or pity, or…

Layers of tissue fell away from the object in his hand. It was a small round ceramic frame, fitted with a silky golden ribbon loop, and painted with a design of tiny gingerbread men and lollipops. In the center of the design, the year was painted in curlicue numerals.

“I make one every year,” Deneen said. “Ever since I was fifteen and I bought my first set of acrylic paints. I’ve got—well, let’s see, I’m twenty-seven so I guess this one makes an even dozen.”

She was speaking quickly and averting her eyes, classic signs of conversational discomfort, so Jimmy tried to think of a response that would serve to reassure her.

“It’s very nice.”

“Oh. Well. Um, thanks.”

“The gingerbread cookies look very…realistic.”

“Um, thanks, but they’re—it was—I mean, I should have probably just started over.”

Instead of reassuring her, his comments seemed to be making it worse. And he was going to have to spend the next four hours in her company, in a situation that was already going to tax Jimmy’s emotional resources.

“I saw the cake too,” he blurted. “Your work is remarkable. It’s, er, symmetrical now. And tasty.”

Deneen’s smile wavered. Inexplicably, it looked like she might cry. This combination of happy and sad was among the worst of female expressions, completely beyond Jimmy’s ability to translate.

“How did you accomplish the icing designs?” he asked politely as he tucked the tiny frame in his shirt pocket.

“I brought my tools,” she said. “I love decorating cakes. I’ve been doing it since I was in middle school. Mom doesn’t cook much, and…well, I wanted to make something nice to celebrate Jane’s engagement.”

“Your diligence has paid off. You are very competent.”

Deneen shrugged. “It’s not hard. Well, except for turning the cake. That’s hard to do when you’ve got your hands full with the frosting bags and decorative tips. But other than that, anyone could do it.”

Deneen had done something very nice for him, and now she was brushing off his attempts to compliment her. There was only one explanation: she had given him the cake and gifts because she felt sorry for him. Despite racking his brain, Jimmy was unable to come up with any other logical explanation for her kindness. And while he appreciated the concern—not to mention the way she looked before she’d put her makeup on, when she was still sweetly sleepy and rumpled—he had had about enough pity to last him for his entire life.

He had let his feelings get out of hand where this female interloper was concerned, and it was time to nip them in the bud. And there was one very good way to make sure that he didn’t foolishly dwell on a woman who was out of reach and uninterested.

“Don’t worry,” he said desperately, getting to his feet and tucking the gifts and wrappings under his arm. “Zane will be here tonight. He is single, healthy and unencumbered by prior relationship commitments. I’m sure you’ll enjoy his company.”

“Oh.” Deneen’s face fell. “Well, that’s great, then. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready to go.”

The ride to the Family Circle Center had been stilted, to say the least. Jimmy drove with his jaw clenched like he expected to have to do battle at any moment, and Deneen was consumed with embarrassment as well as hunger. After Jimmy had practically come out and said he couldn’t stand being alone with her in the house—he was already trying to set her up with his roommate! It had probably been the frame, Deneen decided. Compared to the intricate work he did in his spare time—Deneen had snooped around the workshop a little yesterday, and while she couldn’t tell what he was creating on his workbench or drafting table or the contraption suspended from the ceiling, it certainly did seem to involve a lot of tiny parts—her painted frame probably looked completely amateurish.

Deneen wasn’t really even sure why she’d given it to him. The frames weren’t a secret, exactly, but she’d never shown anyone—even her sister—the series of frames that she had made over the years. Someday, she meant to hang them from a tree in her very own home, a home that she hoped to share with a man who would love her, and eventually, children who would adore her. This imaginary husband and children would see her for who she really was, and love her for it, too, in a way that her family couldn’t. Oh, Deneen knew that her family loved her, but they saw her through a lens that would never allow her to shine. They wanted her to be useful—to be important. All of Deneen’s work—from the crafts she made to the parties she planned to the meals she cooked—were fine as
hobbies
, as her mother often reminded her. But in addition to being objectionably gender-typed, they didn’t constitute a
career
.

“Just look at your sister,” her mother had said, beaming, as Deneen worked on the Thanksgiving centerpiece last month, a giant bread-dough cornucopia from which a wealth of gilded leaves and vegetables spilled. She had been up at dawn baking the thing and spray-painting the leaves from the yard, and she was pleased with the result. “Not even thirty yet and she’s in line to be a
fore
woman.”

In truth, Jayne had merely been promoted from driver to route supervisor, but Marjorie enjoyed saying the word forewoman, and no one in the Burgess household was about to correct her.

Deneen had kept working in silence, tucking gold-dusted acorns into the centerpiece, and though she received compliments from the dinner guests that afternoon, she had suffered her disappointment in silence. Just as she was doing now.

But it had just hurt too much to see the expression on Jimmy’s face when he looked at her gift. To be found wanting was one thing—but she’d put her heart on the line this time. She couldn’t bear the thought of Jimmy, whose Christmas memories were tainted by loneliness and need, having yet another holiday without gifts, without the joy of being with loved ones. And so she had given him the most precious thing she’d brought to North Dakota with her. Not the grooming set—though the gift meant for her sister’s fiancé had set her back most of her final paycheck—but the frame that she had made with her own hands, listening to Christmas carols and daydreaming about snow, about what the future might hold for her.

This final rejection was just too much to bear.

“You know what,” she said as they pulled into the parking lot. Theirs were the only tire tracks in the deserted parking lot, and it was hard to believe that the center would be the site of festivities and merriment in less than two hours. “You’re right. I can’t
wait
to meet Zane. I bet he and I have tons and tons in common.”

She gave a startled-looking Jimmy her very best fake smile and jumped out of the truck, her faux-suede boots landing softly in the accumulated snow. She started toward the rec center, making tracks in the unbroken whiteness.

She ought to be helping Jimmy unload the truck, she knew, but after being snubbed, ridiculed, and rejected, she just didn’t have the energy. Maybe Deneen wasn’t as ambitious as her parents or as accomplished as her sister, maybe she wasn’t smart enough to catch the attention of some stupid Mensa-scientist-hunk-oilman, but Deneen knew there were people in this world who would appreciate her.

And it didn’t matter if they were all under five feet tall and believed in Santa Claus. They needed her, and that was good enough for Deneen.

The morning went by in a blur once the kids started to arrive. Jimmy took his seat on the chair that Deneen had rigged with garland and a string of blinking lights she’d found somewhere, and a line of youngsters ranging from barely-walking toddlers to a shy-looking boy of maybe seven or eight formed. Meanwhile, the older kids chowed down on stacks of pancakes and bowls of fruit salad, served by an army of volunteers headed by Mrs. Osterhaus.

As Jimmy bellowed out the hearty ho, ho, ho’s that he’d been practicing in his workshop all week, and listened to the children’s requests for toys and games, he watched Deneen out of the corner of his eye. He had to hand it to her; the decorations she had borrowed from Doris certainly made the room look more festive, and she was no slacker when it came to pitching in. She may have left all the unloading of the truck to him—once again, he seemed to have annoyed her despite having no idea what he’d done—but she hadn’t hesitated to help haul heavy crates of milk and orange juice, to move tables and chairs, or to keep the plates of food stocked. She comforted crying toddlers, danced to Christmas carols with a little girl in a wheelchair, and challenged a feisty red-headed kid to an arm-wrestling match.

As Terrence Jackson’s turn finally arrived, Jimmy was watching Deneen’s well-shaped backside as she lifted up a little boy so he could flip the doors on the Advent calendar on the wall. He regretfully tore his eyes away so he could focus on Terrence.