Page 96 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
The porch swing tilted when Charlie grabbed the chain, groaned when she settled beside him. He rolled away from her and released a charcoal puff into the darkness. A motionless night, brittle, icy teeth nipping at his nose and cheeks. To make matters worse, his arm seemed to throb with each fragile snowflake that drifted to the ground.
“Kate didn’t show?”
Tanner flicked ashes from his thumb and lifted his gaze to the sky. A thousand stars visible away from the city. Woodsmoke. The sweet scent of rosemary. “No.”
Charlie’s feet shuffled. Her lips parted, closed, parted.
Tanner straightened his spine, preparing for advice.
“I think Kate might have done it, until that stupid game,” she finally said.
Tanner let his head drop back, exhausted. His arm thumped in time with the ache in his head. On a clouded exhalation, he whispered, “Before she went home, she made me give the hairpin to her. Ripped it right out of my hand. It’s all I have of her, all I had. She probably tossed it in the weeds on her way home.” He laughed, sensed how fragile it sounded, and tried again. No better.
“Tanner, maybe I should help you to—”
“No.” He extinguished his cheroot and rose to his feet. For a moment, black colored his vision. Closing his hand about the wooden railing, he gulped air like water. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Answering a question honestly, for once in my life.” Silly damned parlor game. Who in the hell needed to know the contents of a man’s pockets? And what each item signified? Jesus. Telling a roomful of people he kept a former lover’s hairpin?
With the former lover in the room?
He was losing his mind. Simply. Losing. His. Mind.
“You love Kate, Tanner. You didn’t ask for it and you can’t make it stop. You can’t make love disappear. Believe me, I tried. Tried to hide my love for Adam. And, he tried to hide his love for me. You remember escorting me to the train station in Richmond. Oh, I reveled in my martyrdom. My supreme sacrifice. Then, I came back to Edgemont without him, and my life splintered, no better than rotting wood. My days didn’t matter if he wasn’t in them. And my nights....” The creak of the swing mingled with her soft laughter. “What did our stubbornness get us but three miserable months apart? What has denying gotten you? Or Kate?”
Tanner glanced over his shoulder. Shadows revealed the lower half of Charlie’s face, the tender smile gracing her lips. Her gaze rested on her bedroom window, making him wonder if she missed her husband even now. Pushing the swift jab of envy aside, he stared across fields awash in silver and white. “So, you’ve decided I’m in love with her?” he asked, stretching to catch a snowflake on his finger.
“Oh, Tanner. Those lovely blue eyes of yours smolder when you look at her.”
He spanked his hand against the railing. “Maybe they do, dammit.”
“If you tried to talk to her again—”
“I did everything in my power to talk to her after the article went out.” He dropped his face to his hands and smelled cinnamon on his skin. His head pounded, persistent blows against his temple. “She didn’t understand that the man I was that summer was the only man inside me. The things we did, hell, the simple things, playing chess and riding horses, were everything to me. I foolishly believed I could tell her, would tell her, tomorrow...or the next day or the next. While loving her with my whole heart, giving every part of myself I deemed worthy.”
“She didn’t tell me...didn’t say you—”
“I’ll just bet she didn’t,” he growled. A dizzying burst of anger, not all self-directed, flooded him. “Tonight, standing behind that bonnet shop, it hit me like a bolt out of the blue: I killed her love for me. Ours is a relationship she wants to forget. And remembers only with a flash of emotion on her face that is painful enough to bring me to my knees.”
He tucked his hands beneath his armpits and shivered. “I thought telling her about my family, that goddamned bank, university, my life, my feelings for her, would bring her back to me.”
“You’re convinced it won’t?”
“Didn’t you hear me? She is marrying another man.” The world tilted, dimmed. He shook his head and drew a chest-deep breath.
Charlie kicked a black boot high. “What about the kiss? You think she would kiss a man she didn’t love?”
“How do you know—” He waved his hand, dismissive. “That doesn’t, well, we were always good like that. At that. Nothing more, nothing less.”
She pleated Adam’s coat, and Tanner couldn’t help but recall Adam’s warning that Charlie fidgeted when she was plotting. “You’re quitting then?”
“Yes.” The word dropped, dull and final, between them.
Charlie’s fingers stilled. She threw a quick glance his way. “When will you leave?”
“Day after tomorrow maybe. I promised Adam I’d do an editorial for him. Going into the Sentinel office in the morning. Some story about an agricultural” —he sighed, shrugged— “whatever.”
She jerked her head, a flash of surprise, perhaps, or delight, streaking through sapphire. “Oh! The Sentinel office. Tomorrow.” She focused on a point high above his head, her fingers dancing along her braided coat pocket. “I mean, you can’t leave the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. No stages on Christmas day. Plenty of time to write an editorial. Plenty of time. And, well...good. Plenty of time.”
Christmas.