Eight Christmas Eves (6 page)

Cyrus rubbed a
frustrated hand through his hair, his brow lowering as he tried to recall. Then
his expression changed.  “Damn it, Helen—you little idiot. If you’re going
to keep eavesdropping, at least learn to do it well.”

“I eavesdrop
fine!”

“I wasn’t
saying that about
you
. I was talking about Maria’s father’s girlfriend.”

Helen had been
about to make an automatic retort, but then she processed the words and stopped
short. She stared at Cyrus’s outraged face and tried to make herself think.
When nothing still made sense, she gazed up at him with bewilderment. “What?”

He sighed
deeply and rubbed his head again, more slowly this time. “You must have missed
the first part of the conversation. I was telling him that Maria’s father is
living with a woman who is the daughter of the kingpin of one of the biggest
organized crime families in Europe. I don’t know whether Maria’s father is
connected to the business, but we couldn’t send you into that situation, not
even with security.”

Helen swayed on
her feet and had to sit down again as she processed the new information. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”

“Maria is your
friend. I didn’t want to get in the way of that.” Cyrus gave a huff. “Of
course, that was before I knew she took you to idiotic parties.”

She still
couldn’t wrap her mind around what this meant. Cyrus hadn’t said those awful
things about her after all. He didn’t really think she was useless, silly, and
a burden.

Then she remembered
something else and stiffened in indignation. “No! That can’t be right. You
were
talking about me. Because then your dad said something about how I wouldn’t
like it, and you said, ‘What the hell do I care what she thinks?’”

Cyrus actually
groaned. “So you took that to mean I don’t care about you at all? For God’s
sake, kid! I just meant that I didn’t care if you were going to be mad about
the canceled trip. Even if it made you angry, you still couldn’t go if it might
be dangerous.”

Helen sank her head
into her hands, trying to make sense of everything. Her shoulders shook with
emotion.

“Helen, please
don’t cry.”

She couldn’t
bear to look up at him. Everything she’d known about her world seemed to be
falling apart. “Can you just leave me alone for a little while? Please?"

“Okay.” He
stood and stared at her for another moment. She wasn’t looking at him, but she
could feel him. Then, “I’ll be downstairs.”

Helen cried for
a few minutes until she’d managed to work through her emotions. Since she felt
like crap, she went to take a shower. By the time she finished and braided her
hair into two damp braids and put on red flannel pajamas, she was actually
feeling better.

Cyrus hadn’t
said those horrible things. He hadn’t just been pretending to be nice all this
time.

Maybe she
hadn’t been a fool to like him as much as she had.

Sure, he did a
lot of dumb things and was pretty sucky with the women he dated, but at least
he hadn’t been faking caring about her.

She put some
slippers on and then went downstairs. She found Cyrus in the media room. He was
staring at the television, which was set to a cable news channel.

He turned when
she entered. “How do you feel?”

She shrugged
and sat down beside him on the couch. “I’m okay. Not great, but not fuzzy
anymore.”

He peered at
her closely but didn’t say anything.

She felt
awkward and a little embarrassed as she thought over the events of the evening.
To make conversation, she asked, “How did you know I was at the party?”

“My father has
security assigned to you all the time.”

She blinked.
“I’ve never seen them. So they tattle on me all the time?”

“They’re
supposed to be discreet. They’re good at it. Their role is not to keep you from
having fun. It’s to make sure you’re safe. They only tattle when you might be
in danger, so don’t think about trying to sneak away from them.”

She thought
about that but didn’t have the mental energy to process it all tonight.

“Helen,” he
said, a little hoarsely, catching her attention again. He’d leaned toward her,
meeting her eyes. “I know I’m not your father or your brother or anything, but
I’m a guy who has done a lot of things I wish I hadn’t done. Have fun if you
want. I’m not saying you have to follow every rule. But don’t let yourself
become helpless. I promise you’ll regret it.”

Helen was
deeply affected by the look in his eyes, and she couldn’t help but wonder what
he’d done that had made him helpless, what he’d done he now regretted. She
couldn’t seem to speak, so she just nodded.

Cyrus relaxed a
little. His mouth relaxed, as if he was relieved his advice-giving was over.
“And I’m sorry you misunderstood what you overheard back in August and it upset
you so much.  I wouldn’t have said that about you. I like you, kid.” His
smile broadened. “I always have.”

Something
softened and warmed in her heart. She smiled back at him, widely, sincerely,
for the first time in months. “I like you too.”

After a moment
of smiling at each other, Cyrus picked up the remote. With a click of it, the
opening credits of
White Christmas
started to run.

Helen felt even
warmer, even fuzzier. She leaned over to grab a thick, cashmere throw from the
floor and pulled it up over her.

“There’s some
more water there, if you want it,” Cyrus said, gesturing toward the side table
beside her. “We can get cider and cookies later, if you want.”

Helen didn’t
know if she would be up for their normal snacks, but she took the water
gratefully.

She didn’t feel
too bad now, just a dull headache and some lingering fatigue. She was warm and
comfortable on the couch, though, taking in the familiar images and music on
the television screen.

And she felt
safe, secure, sheltered with Cyrus there with her, on the other side of the
couch, slouching back with his legs extended and his blue eyes focused on the
movie.

“Will you wear your
Christmas sweater tomorrow?” she asked out of the blue, grinning at him when he
turned to look at her in surprise.

His lips
parted. “Are you serious?”

Her mouth
wobbled as she tried to suppress amusement. “Just to prove there’s no hard
feelings?”

“Somehow, I
ended up with the raw end of this deal,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes in
exaggerated annoyance.

“Why would you
expect anything else?”

With a laugh,
he reached over and gave one of her braids a playful tug. “If you can stay
awake through the whole movie, I’ll wear the sweater.”

Helen was
getting very sleepy, but she wasn’t about to lose the challenge. So she managed
to keep her eyes open until the movie was over, although it was touch-and-go
there at the end.

She went to bed
happy, looking forward to seeing Cyrus in his sweater the following day.

It might not
have started off well, but it was a pretty good Christmas Eve after all.

five
years ago

Cyrus wasn’t having a very good
day, but at least it wasn’t snowing.

That morning,
as he’d been wrapping up the final tasks he needed to complete before a few
days of vacation over the holidays, he’d gotten pulled into a four-hour meeting
about how to deal with an emergency situation at one of his father’s plants.
His father had left for Clarksburg the previous day, so he’d told Cyrus to take
care of the crisis for him.

Cyrus had been
working at the executive level in his father’s company for seven months now,
ever since he’d finished his MBA. The position had been created just for him,
so at first he’d filled a mostly empty role, but a few months ago he’d started
pushing his father to give him some real work to do, which his dad had taken as
an invitation to dump any tedious, tiresome, or unwanted jobs on his son.

He’d completed
them all without complaining, and he was satisfied he did them well. He wasn’t
surprised his father was testing him, to see how deeply he was committed and
where his limits and boundaries were. Cyrus was determined to make himself
indispensable. If that meant managing a four-hour meeting on Christmas Eve day
when he’d been planning to drive out to Clarksburg, then so be it.

He liked the
work—the real work and not the empty tasks he’d been given at first. And, while
he wasn’t fool enough to start believing his father really liked or respected
him, at least they’d been getting along better in the last few months than they
ever had before.

He’d already
been running late when he returned to his place to get ready to go, and then
he’d had an awkward conversation with a woman he’d gone out with a few times.
He’d thought there might be potential there, but his feelings for her were
definitely cooling. He’d been trying to let her down easy. Only she didn’t want
to be let down at all.

When he’d
finally gotten off the phone, he’d been tired and frustrated. He spent most of
the drive mentally composing a proposal for a new project he wanted his father
to invest in.

At least the
sky and the roads were clear, so he didn’t have to focus much on his driving,
and he started to relax when he pulled his car into the garage.

Dinner
shouldn’t be bad, since he and his father had been on pretty good terms lately.
He could spend a relaxing, companionable evening with Helen, without any
pressure or stress, and tomorrow he had the day off.

Hi mood had
recovered by the time he walked into the house—only to be greeted by silence.

He frowned.
Usually Helen was waiting for him and would run up to greet him with a hug,
except when she was mad at him or was caught in a snowstorm.

He knew she
wasn’t angry with him right now. They’d talked on the phone the previous day,
and she’d seemed excited about his visit.

He shrugged off
the strange lack of greeting and took his bag up to his room. He checked
Helen’s bedroom on his way back down, but she wasn’t there.

He found his
father in the study, sitting by the fire, listening to Puccini at a very loud
volume, and reading a book.

He lowered the
music when he saw his son enter. “I heard back from Walton. He said your plan was
a good one, and the plant has begun implementing it as of now.”

Cyrus nodded.
“Good. Tell him to watch Cutler. I don’t trust him at all.”

“I’ll convey
your suspicions.” He raised his book again. “Dinner is at seven.”

“Where’s
Helen?”

“How would I
know?”

Cyrus sighed.
“Is she here?”

“She’s around
somewhere. She’s probably too distracted to notice your arrival.”

“What does that
mean?”

His father
smiled, almost predatory. “It means I wouldn’t count on your being her favorite
any longer.”

Cyrus started
to ask another question, but he stopped himself. His father was looking too
pleased with himself, and it would be a mistake to give him the advantage by
acting curious or confused. Instead, he just murmured, “Hmm,” and left the
room.

He
was
confused, though, and a little worried. It wasn’t like he had to be Helen’s
favorite person, although he knew very well that—with the exception of those
months she'd been angry with him about the imagined slight—he had always been
her favorite. But he didn’t like the idea of something going on with her that
he didn’t know about.

They only saw
each other a few times a year, but they emailed or talked on the phone at least
weekly and she’d taken to sending him funny texts at odd times of the day. He
also got regular updates on her from the security assigned to her.

Cyrus thought
he basically knew what was going on in her life.

He had to ask a
member of their security team to find out where Helen was in the house, since
he didn’t want to traipse all over looking. On discovering that she was in the
kitchen, Cyrus went to find her.

He found her
rolling out dough on the large granite island. Her long red-blond hair, darker
than it had been a few years ago, had been clipped up on her head, but it was
now falling down and hanging messily around her face. Her cheeks, forehead,
hair, and sweatshirt were all covered in flour.

When she
finally looked up from her exuberant rolling, she gasped in surprise and cried,
“Cyrus!” Despite the excessive flour, her face glowed when she saw him, and she
immediately dropped the rolling pin and ran over to hug him.

“Uh,” he began,
predicting the result of a hug from her at the moment. Then he resigned himself
to being covered with flour too as she hurled herself into his arms.

He laughed as
he returned her hug, wrapping his arms around her warm, messy, little self.

He had to admit
that it was really nice—to have someone who was always happy to see him,
someone who genuinely liked him simply for who he was, someone he could trust
to never betray him.

He wondered if
this was what it should be like to have family.

“You’re late!”
Helen exclaimed. “You were supposed to be here
hours
ago.”

“A few things
came up.” He brushed off his dark shirt and trousers, which were now festooned
with blotches of flour. The brushing did nothing to restore them so he gave up.
“So you decided to amuse yourself until my arrival by baking?”

“Sugar
cookies,” she declared with a wide smile. “For tonight.”

“I didn’t know
you had any culinary aspirations.” He idly noted that she was getting prettier
as she grew into her features.

“I don’t. I’m a
horrible cook. But I wanted—” She cut off her words for some reason, looking
slightly self-conscious. It immediately triggered Cyrus’s curiosity, since she
rarely appeared self-conscious around him. Her green eyes seemed to really look
at him for the first time, and her expression changed, “Oh no! I got you
covered with flour.”

He chuckled at
the way she’d just now had such an obvious revelation. “No big deal. What were
you going to say you wanted?”

She opened her
mouth, but before she could reply another voice broke into their conversation.

“Hey, Helen.
Did you know there’s—“ The new voice cut off when the owner of the voice
entered the room and saw Helen was no longer alone.

A young man, probably
around Helen’s age, had walked into the kitchen. He was tall and athletic with
dark hair and a square jaw. He wore jeans, sneakers, and sweatshirt. “Oh,” he
said, pausing and looking at Cyrus in surprise. “Sorry.”

“This is Cyrus.
He’s Drake’s son, you know,” Helen said, going over to stand next to the young
man with a smile that almost looked shy. “Cyrus, this is my friend Ben.”

The way she
said the words sounded almost like a pronouncement, as if she were voicing
something of utmost importance. She slanted Cyrus a very particular look that
he understood immediately.

She was trying
to covertly tell him that he was supposed to be very nice to Ben. Because she
really liked him.

Cyrus
immediately smiled and held out his hand, giving the boy a quick but close
assessment. Ben was clean-cut and healthy, with a relatively intelligent
expression and a smile of almost earnest good-nature.

Cyrus's first
impression was that Helen would be able to run verbal circles around the boy.
He’d never be enough of a challenge for her.

But she seemed
to like him very much. Her expression was glowing, almost besotted, as she
gazed up at Ben. Cyrus recognized the expression since she used to look at him
that way.

She’d been
quite happy to see Cyrus earlier, but she hadn’t looked at him the way she used
to.

He brushed the
thought aside. It was ridiculous to feel like something between them had
changed merely because she had a very normal crush on a classmate. She was
sixteen. Something would be wrong if she
didn’t
have a romantic
interest.

She’d mentioned
Ben to him before, but always in the context of friendship, so Cyrus hadn’t
made the connection that Ben was someone special to her.

But at least he
seemed to be her age and appeared to be a sincere and responsible. Much better
than the crowd she’d been hanging out with two years ago, when he’d almost had
a heart attack on finding her being groped by a drunk football player.

She’d grown up
a lot in those two years, and he was glad that she seemed more comfortable with
who she was and that she’d made real friends who seemed to care about her as a
person.

If that meant
she would start to have boyfriends, then so be it.

Helen had been
rambling on about her adventures with Ben in cookie-making, but Cyrus was only
listening with half an ear. When she demanded that he help them cut out the
cookies from the flattened dough, Cyrus obediently took a cookie-cutter. He was
already covered in flour, after all.

He also
accepted the cocoa Helen offered him, since both she and Ben were already drinking
from big mugs.

He made a
gesture toward pressing out cookies in the shapes of stockings and stars, but
he mostly just watched how Helen acted with Ben.

Her behavior
wasn’t hard to interpret. She took every opportunity to touch him casually or
smile at him, but Cyrus was pretty sure they weren’t officially dating. They
were probably ostensibly still just friends. Obviously, Helen would like their
relationship to be something different, and from the way Ben was smiling back
at her, Cyrus figured it wouldn’t be long until they were a couple.

Cyrus wasn’t
sure what he thought about it. He checked with Helen’s security team regularly,
just to make sure his father wasn’t neglecting his responsibilities, so he knew
what she did and where she went.  She’d never had a boyfriend before.

Ben didn’t seem
wild or very sophisticated, so Cyrus thought it was likely that, if they paired
up, they would move very slowly. That would be a good thing.

“What do you
think, Cyrus?” Helen asked, poking him hard in the arm.

“What do I
think about what?”

She frowned at
him impatiently. “Ben should come back after dinner to watch
White Christmas
and eat the sugar cookies with us, since he helped make them. Right?”

Swallowing
hard, Cyrus tried to hide his real reaction—which was irrationally one of
resentment. He had no particular attachment to the movie, the cookies, or the
cider, but he
was
attached to the tradition. It was virtually the only
one he had. Having Ben there would definitely feel like an intrusion. But all
he said was, “Sure. If he’s able to. Don’t you do something with your family on
Christmas Eve?”

“Yeah,” Ben
replied. “I can ask, but my folks probably won’t want me to leave on Christmas
Eve.”

Helen frowned,
almost pouty, as she sipped her mug of cocoa. It wasn’t her normal expression
of disappointment, so Cyrus assumed she was playing it up to look cute for
Ben’s benefit. “Well, come if you’re able. It will be fun. Won’t it, Cyrus?”

Cyrus would
find it much more fun and relaxing with only him and Helen like it normally
was, but he wasn’t about to say as much, since she was obviously counting on
him to affirm her invitation.  “Of course,” he murmured, “Although I can’t
vouch for the sugar cookies this year, given their source.”

Helen huffed
and swatted at his shoulder. The gesture resulted in getting more flour on his
shirt. It also resulted in her spilling her cocoa all down the front of her
sweatshirt.

She squealed
and set down her mug, pulling the fabric away from her chest.

When Ben laughed,
she scowled at him. “It’s hot!”

“Sorry,” Ben
said, looking far too apologetic, confirming Cyrus’s suspicions that Helen
would easily be able to walk all over him.

She started to
pull her sweatshirt up over her head while keeping the wet fabric away from her
skin. It was a rather awkward attempt, since the tank top she had under it kept
pulling up with the sweatshirt. Eventually, she ended up trapped with her head
and arms caught in the fabric.

Her clumsy
maneuverings and muttered exclamations of distress left Cyrus and Ben highly
amused. Ben was trying not to laugh, and Cyrus wasn’t even trying.

“Don’t laugh at
me, Cyrus!” Helen cried, futilely struggling to escape the sweatshirt, which
had twisted into a vice. “Help!”

Cyrus reached
over before Ben could and carefully helped untwist the sweatshirt and pull it
over her head while she tugged down her tank top so she wouldn’t expose too
much of her belly.

She was
scowling malevolently at him as he pulled it over her head. “At least Ben isn’t
mocking me so heartlessly!”

Ben was visibly
struggling to repress his amusement, but Cyrus just shook his head wryly as he
put the damp sweatshirt on the counter. “Fitting retribution for trying to hit
me earlier.”