You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology (36 page)

Flop. Bang. Ring.

The ball rolling around in her head dropped, and suddenly she got it.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she shuffled closer to him, desperate to touch him and yet afraid that if she let go of his hands, he would disappear and this would all be a dream.

He cocked his head, examining her face. “Are you crying?”

“Yes, but it’s because I’m happy.” She sniffled. “If you haven’t noticed, I’m a crier.”

“Oh, I noticed.” His wide smile was the embodiment of joy. “Is this a yes?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding and sniffling again and then tilting her head up for a kiss. She didn’t know if she was agreeing to a date, or a kiss, or the future he’d outlined, but she didn’t care. She wanted them all.

Almost instantly, she was wrapped in his arms, their lips pressed together. Their kiss was hopeful, as if they had decades of kisses to set the tone for. When they finally pulled away from each other, Marc looked down at her, his eyes soft with the same love she felt warming her heart.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, reaching in to the pocket of his peacoat and pulling out an envelope. “Your present . . .”

Her eyes widened. “What is it?”

He just shrugged so she flipped the envelope over. She tried to be gentle, but the paper ripped as she pushed her finger under the flap. Inside the envelope were two brochures and two cards, which she fanned out in front of her.

“Are these . . . ?”

“Lifetime memberships to the Salt Lake art museums. I didn’t know which one to get, so I got both of the big ones. You can volunteer or get a job in a gallery, but this way you can visit anytime you want, too. They were going to be yours even if you sent me packing.”

She hugged the envelope to her chest. Even if she decided working in the art world wasn’t for her, he was giving her the gift of art. And while he may have given her dreams to her in an envelope, he was a solid, flesh and blood man who wanted to be with her.

And she wanted to be with him. No matter what.

“Merry Christmas,” she echoed, reaching up to her tiptoes to drop a kiss on his cheek.

The End

Copyright © 2016, Jennifer Lohmann

I appreciate the time you took to read
Twelve Kisses Until Christmas.
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This anthology was Molly’s idea, way back at RWA in San Antonia in 2014. I’ve loved working with this group of women and hope to be able to again (hint, hint).

A week skiing in the mountains of Utah is the perfect way for Cassie Sumner to mark the start of her post-divorce life. Especially when the mountains aren’t the only gorgeous view . . . But hitting the jackpot with her hot ski instructor doesn’t mean she’s ready for—or interested in—the vacation fling her best friend is encouraging her to have.

One bad experience years ago was enough for Doug Vanderholt to swear off affairs with students. And he’s keeping that promise, even if he can’t stop thinking about Cassie’s smile. He’s remade his life and is only interested in something serious and real.

Doug and Cassie can’t ignore their attraction to each other, and they both feel they can just get it out of their systems. But as the week draws to a close and their physical attraction turns deeper, they start to wonder if they can turn a vacation fling into something more.

Buy a copy today!

by

Laura
Florand

In a snow-kissed Christmas cabin, a heart-wrenching tale of love, loss, forgiveness–and new hope.

After the utter destruction of her marriage and her happiness, Kai knew it was better to shut herself away from the world than to hurt and be hurt.

Holed up in her mountain cabin, she plans to spend her Christmas alone. Until her not-quite-ex-husband shows up as the first flakes start to fall.

Now should she send him back out into the cold? Or can she be brave enough to let this winter snow bind them back together?

Voted Biggest Tearjerker of the Year in the All About Romance Annual Reader Poll (you are warned) and named a Best Book of the Year by Dear Author and Romance Novels for Feminists. An Elite Eight finalist in the annual “March Madness” book tournament, the DABWAHA.

“If anyone should ask me why Laura Florand is one of my very, very favorite authors, I won’t need to say a word. I will let Snow-Kissed speak for me. It is undoubtedly one of the very best, most moving stories I’ve had the privilege to read.”

—The Bookish Babe

“Breath-taking, gut-wrenching. A must read.”

—Book Junkie

“One of the best second chance romances I have ever read.”

—The Reader’s Den

“Romance at its strongest and most powerful.”

—Dear Author

Laura Florand burst on the contemporary romance scene in 2012 with her award-winning Amour et Chocolat series. Since then, her books have appeared in ten languages, been named among the Best Books of the Year by
Library Journal, RT Book Reviews
, and Barnes & Noble, received the RT Seal of Excellence and starred reviews from
Publishers Weekly
,
Library Journal,
and
Booklist,
and been recommended by NPR,
USA Today
, and
The Wall Street Journal
, among others. In 2015, NPR gave her the enormous honor of naming her
Chocolate Kiss
to its list of the Top 100 Romances of all time.

T
he snow fell
over the black granite counter in a soft hush of white. Kai focused on the sieve she shook as she brought a winter of sugar to the dark world, letting the powder slide across her thoughts the way snow on a falling night would, taking all with it, even her, leaving only peace.

That peace lay so cold. She had almost forgotten how cold she felt, until he showed up.

The man who, once upon a time, had always made her so warm and happy.

Now he stood at the window, looking as cold as she was. Destroying all peace. Past him and the pane of glass, only a few flakes fell against a gray sky, rare and disinterested, nature as usual failing her. Her fall of powdered sugar could not come between her and him, could not blur him to some distant place cut off by the arrival of winter. Could not hush him, if ever he chose to speak.

No, all she could do was concentrate on the sugar-snow. Looking up—looking at him—undid everything.

“I don’t think they’re coming,” the man said finally, and she swallowed. It was funny how her whole body ached at his voice. As if her skin had gotten unused to his vibrations running over it. As if she needed to develop tiny calluses at the base of every hair follicle so that those hairs would not want to shiver.

Light brown hair neatly cut, he stood angled toward the window, shoulders straight, with that long, intellectual fitness he had, the over-intelligent, careful man who had played sports almost like he might study for a test, maintaining perfect physical fitness as just another one of his obligations. She still remembered when he had discovered Ultimate Frisbee, the awkward, unfamiliar, joy-filled freedom in him as he explored the idea of playing something so intense
just for fun
. It had been rather beautiful. She had gone to all his games and chatted with the other wives with their damn babies and even played on his pick-up teams sometimes, although unwilling to put forth the effort to be part of his competitive leagues.

Those fun, fun years full of weekends of green grass, and friendly people, and laughter. They had had too many happy days. They clogged in her all the sudden, dammed up too tight, hurting her.

She had screwed them all the fuck up. Forever.

She didn’t know what to say to him, after what she had done, so she concentrated on shedding snow, like some great, dangerous goddess bending over her granite world, a creature half-formed from winter clouds, drifting eerily apart from all humanity. She wished he had not come, but the thought of him leaving wrenched a hole in her that filled up instantly with tears.

Hot, liquid tears that sloshed around inside her and wanted to spill out. That in itself was terrifying and strange; she had thought she had tamed her tears down to something near-solid and quiescent, a slushy of grief that lay cold in her middle but no longer spilled out at every wrong movement, every careless glimpse of happy couples or children laughing in a park.

She had so hoped that she had reached a point where she could—see him. Where all that long process of coming to peace with herself and her losses would be strong enough to withstand a glimpse of him. But all of her, every iota of strength and peace, had dissolved into pain and longing the instant she saw him step out of his car, a flake of snow catching on his hair.

Damn it, his mother was supposed to be here. She was supposed to come with her magazine staff for this shoot, a whole entourage to make it easier on both Kai and Kurt. How could they have abandoned her to this reopening of wounds because they were afraid of a few flakes of snow?

She swallowed, focusing hard. She had to get this sugar exactly right, not too thick, not too shallow, not too even, not too ragged, leaving perfect graceful curves and fades into black at its edges. It was soothing to work on that white against gleaming black. To focus on those tiny grains, almost as tiny as cells of life.

She could control these grains. She could always get them right. If she worked hard enough. If she really, really tried.

“The snow is supposed to start from the south and close us off,” Kurt said from the window. “They probably didn’t want to chance it.”

Now why would Anne Winters’s staff do that to her? Leave her alone with him just to avoid bad roads? Those selfish people, it was almost as if they had . . . families. Reasons to live that were far more important than she was.

Kurt shifted enough to watch her, but she didn’t look up. She shouldn’t have let him come, but for God’s sake, his mother was Anne Winters. First of all, Anne had only rented the cabin to Kai so affordably on the condition that Kai maintain it for her use in photo shoots when she wanted it. And even without that agreement, Kai was a food stylist who regularly contracted to Anne Winters’s company. She could hardly refuse this photo shoot for next year’s holiday edition, Anne’s biggest. And accepting it, she had to jump through Anne’s hoops, even the famous multi-tasker’s insistence on having her lawyer son with her for the weekend so she could work on contract negotiations simultaneously. Her formidable presence and the bustle of her staff should have helped dissipate all this miasma from their past and saved them from any need to linger in it.

Besides, Kai was supposed to be strong enough again for this now. She had worked so hard to heal, to grow strong. To still and chill those tears down to something—bearable.

“Are you ready to be snowed in?” Kurt asked. “Do you want me to run to the store and pick up any supplies while there’s still a chance?”

Her stomach tightened as if he had just pierced it with some long, strange, beautiful shard of ice.
Kurt. Don’t take care of me. You always did that so, so
—the ice shard slid slowly through her inner organs, slicing, hurting—
well.

“Why don’t you check your email so that you’ll know for sure whether they’ve cancelled?” he suggested. “Or find your charger so I can check my phone?” They had matching smartphones; their shared two-year contract still hadn’t expired.

She didn’t check her email or find her charger mostly because she didn’t dare leave this powdered sugar snow. She had to keep her focus. She had to.

She hadn’t yet managed to say a word to him. When she had opened the door, she had meant to. It shouldn’t have been so hard.
Hello, Kurt
. She could say that, right? After practicing it over and over in her head on the way to the door. But the instant their eyes met, his hazel gaze had struck her mute. As the moment drew out, his hand had clenched around his duffle until his knuckles showed white, and his whole body leaned just an inch forward, as it had so many, many times in their lives, when she greeted him after a long day or a trip, and he leaned in to kiss her.

She had flinched back so hard that her elbows had rapped the foyer wall with a resounding smack, and he had looked away from her and walked quickly into the cabin without speaking, disappearing to find a room for his things. It had been at least twenty minutes before he reappeared, his hands in his pockets, to set himself at that post by the window and watch the road. Probably sending out a desperate mental call to his mother:
Hurry up, God damn it. Where the hell are you?

But the cars hadn’t come, and now he watched her. She could feel his gaze trying to penetrate her concentration on the snow. But she had to get that powdered sugar snow just right. She had to. Even if she had to play at snow for all eternity.

“Kai,” he said and she shivered. Her name. Her name in his voice. “Can you still not even look at me?”

The weariness in his voice was like a hook dragging her gaze to him, and she did get her head up, just for a second, because he deserved so much better from her than what she had managed to give him. But he was so beautiful and so distant there against the window that it broke her heart, and her heart was so tired of being broken. It gave up quickly and let her look down at her sugar-snow again.

“Do you want me to go?” he asked.

Oh, God, yes. Oh, God, no.
Oh, God, she didn’t know.
It’s snowing
, she wanted to protest, but her lips felt stiff and frozen. Besides, it was snowing more on her counter than it was outside. He could get away still, if he wanted.

“Kai.” He sounded as exhausted as her heart. But—firm against that exhaustion. Determined to go on through it. He was that way.