Blessings of the Season Page 6

  She reached up to test it. “No, it’s fine. I always make sure it’s pretty secure. I wouldn’t want to lose it for the world. It was a gift from my father that last Christmas.”

  “Ah. I knew there was a story behind it.”

  “When he gave it to me, my dad said that since he couldn’t always be with me, it was his way to remind me that I was a special and unique individual, that there was nobody out there just like me.”

  “Like a snowflake.”

  “Exactly. But he also wanted me to remember that even though every snowflake is beautiful on its own, many of them working together can totally change the way people see their whole world.”

  “I like that.”

  She met his warm, sincere gaze. “Of course, my mom really played up the ‘beauty of the individual’ angle.”

  “And you liked the ‘everyone working together’ bit?”

  “Yeah. That is, I did, but now…” She looked toward Mrs. Goodwin, who had finally gotten the production team sent off to prepare for their commercial and was now talking to Doc in the living-room setting, probably going over last-minute details of her big announcement.

  “To everything there is a season,” Nate said quietly, clearly reading a pending shift of her feelings in her wistful hesitation. “And a time to every purpose under the heavens.”

  Addie skimmed her fingers over the snowflake again. Even with all the chaos around them she had a sense of the whole world being no bigger than the space where she and Nate now stood. “I love that part of Ecclesiastes.”

  He adjusted his vintage harvest-gold V-neck sweater over his broad shoulders. “Just a little something to think about.”

  “At one point in your life it’s good to work together with others, and at other times you just have to work up your nerve and…” She gestured with both hands as she tried to find the right way to put it.

  “Be a flake?” he quipped.

  She smiled. “I was going to say to go out there and stand out.”

  “Even better.” He put his hands on her shoulders, fixed his eyes on hers and then, just before he let go, leaned down and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “Go. Let Maimie know that Mrs. Goodlife isn’t the only one with her sights on the future.”

  She didn’t think her feet touched the ground after that kiss and Nate’s show of faith in her. She floated along to the living-room set, imagined herself practically hovering as she shared her proposal for the webisodes and drifted even higher emotionally when the older woman told her she thought they were brilliant.

  When Nate came to her side to hear the big announcement, she wondered if, in the still photos being snapped by the photographer of the Star City Satellite, it would show she was over the moon. Or if, minutes later, when Mrs. Goodwin took the floor to command the attention of the group, everyone standing there noticed that before the older woman finished her exciting proclamation, Addie wished she could crawl in a hole and hide.

  Chapter Nine

  Nate had to remind himself to keep smiling as Maimie launched into a spiel welcoming the curious and the customers and singing the praises of Goodwin’s Department Store. Though smiling wasn’t so difficult when he glanced at Addie standing to his right.

  “Psst.” She jerked her head slightly to the side and shifted her eyes to get his attention and ask him to get close enough to hear her. When he obliged, she whispered, “No matter what she says…”

  “I know, keep smiling.”

  “Stay cool,” she finished for him.

  “I am cool.” He didn’t even sound convincing to himself.

  “You are so jumpy you have been finishing my sentences all day.” She looked up at him from the corners of her eyes. “And getting them wrong.”

  He cleared his throat and tugged at his sweater collar, then pushed back his hair.

  “So just follow my lead. I had to agree to a little something with Mrs. Goodwin in order to get her to stop talking and listen to me.”

  “Just what did you agree to? Where am I following your lead to?”

  She raised her finger to her lips as if to shush him and whispered, “Cool.”

  “You got it. I’m as cool as you, my little snowflake,” he muttered. Then, catching what he had said, he held out his hand in a ‘hold it right there’ kind of gesture and said distinctly, “Not that you’re mine. I’m not trying to stake a claim on you.”

  The gathering crowd fell silent, and he realized that Mrs. Goodwin had just finished speaking and everyone had heard him tell Addie she was not his.

  She squirmed.

  He fell back on the old reliable smile. It had no impact on Maimie, who gave him a shake of her head before she turned back to the group, held up her hands and said, “And now for our big announcement. There are going to be some big changes for our promotional couple, the Goodlifes.”

  Nate looked at Addie, who stared straight ahead.

  “In response to those who rightfully pointed out that our gentleman’s work life is decidedly un-fifties-like in comparison to our lady’s, starting Monday, Mr. Goodlife will have a secretary.”

  He looked to Addie, but her wide eyes were fixed on a woman in a towering beehive hairdo with a pencil stuck in it, cat eye glasses and an orange tweed suit.

  “Mom!”

  Bivvy McCoy wiggle-walked her way onto the scene to the delight of the entire store full of people. “Ain’t it a hoot, Addie-baby? When I told ’em this was for charity, I got time off from work to come by a couple times a day.”

  Addie’s face went nearly white.

  “Cool,” Nate murmured in Addie’s ear, then added, “I take it this is not the little something you agreed to?”

  The answer came not from Addie but from Maimie, who thanked Bivvy with a poised head nod, then commanded everyone’s attention again by saying, “And Mr. Goodlife is not the only one with big changes in store.”

  All eyes moved to Addie, and she tensed.

  He put his hand on her shoulder and stepped up close behind her. “It’s all for charity. Plus, the end result will get you what you’ve always wanted.”

  “Mrs. Goodlife is going to become a mother!”

  Nate curved his fingers around Addie’s upper arm and got a good grip, fearing she might faint. Of course, she didn’t faint. Addie was made of stronger stuff than that. Keep cool, he reminded himself as he grinned and, trying to take the attention off Addie, said, “I guess that means I’m going to be a dad.”

  The crowd broke into wild applause.

  Addie shot him a panicked look. “Nate! How could you?”

  Nate tried to quiet the group, but Maimie took things in hand when she laughed and explained. “Our grandson, Jesse, will be filling in as Jesse Goodlife a few hours a day while on Christmas break from school.”

  “Jesse.” Addie relaxed and whispered, “Oh, that’s so perfect.”

  This time he didn’t have to remind himself to smile. The way Addie had taken to Jesse got to him on a gut level. He’d always been a kid person. He had taken enough courses in psychology to know that stemmed from his own feelings of vulnerability and loneliness in childhood. He also knew that identifying it wouldn’t change who he was or lessen the way he felt when he saw how open and loving Addie was to this kid who needed a little kindness and warmth in his life.

  “Finally, I want to issue an invitation.” Maimie launched into her concluding remarks.

  Addie’s spine went rigid. She whipped her head around and angled her shoulders back so that she could say, unnoticed by those around them, “This is it. Don’t panic. I know just what to do.”

  In Nate’s experience a sentence like that never led to anything good.

  “Next Saturday the Goodlifes are holding a Christmas Open House.”

  Addie cocked her head, and Nate figured that wasn’t what she had expected to hear. Once again Maimie had gone off on her own, he guessed, leaving Addie feeling foolish and frustrated.

  “Please feel free to drop by anytime, all day. Th
ere will be door prizes, and everyone who comes in 1950s-style costume will be entered in a drawing for a grand prize. I hope to see you all there.”

  “Whew. Got through the whole thing and not even a hint of panic,” he teased her.

  “She’s got so much going she even glosses over her own ideas.” She folded her arms. “How can I ever expect her to listen to me and take me seriously?”

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” Maimie turned back toward the group for just a moment. “One last change that involves our couple that you all might find interesting.” She looked right at Addie, winked, then nailed Nate with a steely glare. “Mr. Goodlife is going to get a haircut.”

  “A what?” Nate asked.

  The crowd applauded again.

  “And Mrs. Goodlife is the one who is going to give it to him,” Maimie added. “Ten minutes from now, front of the store. Have a good day!”

  “Mrs. Goodlife? Front of the store?” No wonder Addie had told him to stay cool. She knew this was just the kind of thing that would get him hot under the collar. He turned to her.

  “Trust me,” she pleaded before he could get his protest out.

  He hadn’t planned on getting his hair cut until his job interview. But then he hadn’t planned any of this so far, and he’d been having a pretty good time. A much better time than he’d have had alone in L.A., he realized, looking into Addie’s sweet face as her expression told him how much this meant to her and the future she had always dreamed of. “I didn’t plan on getting my hair cut until someone as lovely as Mrs. Goodlife could do it for me.”

  She smiled and mouthed a silent thank-you.

  He offered her his arm. “My display case or yours?”

  With a good many of the people who had stopped to listen to Maimie’s announcements watching, Nate took a seat at the kitchen table and awaited his fate.

  “This won’t hurt a bit,” Addie teased as she pulled a green and pink and white 1950s-style Christmas tablecloth from a drawer.

  He clenched his jaw and tried not to sound too concerned as he asked, “You do have some experience giving haircuts, don’t you, dear?”

  “Of course I do, darling.” She gave the tablecloth a flick, and it unfurled with a pop. As she began to drape it around his upper body like a barber’s cape, she mugged to the crowd and said, “I’ve been practicing on the neighbor’s poodle!”

  The crowd laughed.

  He started to get up out of the chair, but she pushed him down again, and as she tied the tablecloth around his neck, she nonchalantly put her lips near his ear and whispered, “I’ve got this all figured out. I’ll cut some of the curly part that hangs over your ears and collar, then slick it back with water so it looks fifties-ish.”

  “If you use water on my hair, when it dries it will be even curlier,” he warned.

  “Then I’ll use something else I have in the kitchen. How about shortening?” She gave his shoulder a pat, then made a show of going to the drawers again, saying things like, “Now where are my kitchen shears? I don’t want to use my good sewing scissors for a messy job like this.”

  “Messy?” He sat up and gave the crowd a worried look that was not far from how he felt. “Maybe I ought to go to a real barber, dear.”

  “Nonsense. I can do this. You do have faith in me, don’t you, Nathan?” She stood over him, kitchen shears in hand. She snipped them in the air a few times and raised her eyebrows, trying to look sinister.

  He chuckled softly at the attempt but not at the question. “Adelaide, my dear, I have more faith in you than I have had in anyone in a long time.”

  And he meant it.

  She knew he meant it, too, because all the playfulness of her pretense fell away and she looked at him as if…as if what he said and did really mattered to her.

  That was something, outside of his interactions with Jesse, that he hadn’t had in a long time, either: to feel as if he mattered. Up until this moment, he hadn’t realized how much he liked that feeling. Now he understood it was probably behind his initial decision to stay on in Star City. It was good to be valued, especially at Christmastime.

  “Are you going to cut his hair or not?” a man in the group around them called out.

  Addie shook her head as if to bring herself back to the task at hand. She held up the shears again and plopped a can of shortening down on the table. “You ready, Mr. Goodlife?”

  “For anything, Mrs. Goodlife,” he said with a smile. Then he added, “But I do have one last request.”

  She paused with the shears above his head. “I guess every man in your position deserves that. Ask away.”

  “If I do end up looking like the poodle next door, promise me you’ll get me a really nice hat for Christmas.”

  She paused for only a moment. Then she smiled, a bit sadly, and said, “I promise. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure you get what you really want for Christmas.”

  Chapter Ten

  Since she was already in costume and ever eager to grab her share of the spotlight, Bivvy stepped up and took on the role of Goodwin’s salesclerk in the webisodes they filmed not long after Addie finished Nate’s haircut.

  “He looks pretty cute all done up like a 1959-type guy, don’t you think, Mom?” she asked as Nate and Jesse mugged their way through the last of the two-minute spots that the foursome had improvised all over the store. Though they had only made ten of them, it had taken nearly two hours, and Addie was so tired she was looking forward to the tedium of puttering around her kitchen set.

  “Well, he’s a pretty cute fella,” Bivvy said, plunking her elbow down on the glass countertop across the aisle from the electronic-toy display. “Which one are we talking about?”

  Addie laughed lightly. She was going to say “Nate, of course,” but when she turned and saw the two guys standing there, with Nate pretending to need Jesse to explain the basics of computer gaming and Jesse eating it up, she shook her head. “Both of them, I guess.”

  “Have you given any thought about what you’re going to give them for Christmas?”

  “Yes, and I’m not telling you.” Addie made a slashing motion, the sign of zipping her lips. “You’ll blab.”

  “I will not.” Bivvy, who had her glasses, that pencil and for all Addie knew a partridge in a pear tree in her hair now, folded her arms. “But just for saying that I’ve half a mind to not tell you what they’re getting you.”

  Addie laughed. Bivvy pouted a bit, then gave up and broke into a chuckle, too.

  “Okay, so I am no good at keeping a secret.” She walked around from the back of the counter to stand beside Addie, whom she nailed with a steely-eyed glare. “Like mother, like daughter.”

  “Me?” Addie scoffed. “I didn’t tell you anything.”

  “You don’t have to tell me a thing, sweetie. It’s written all over you.” She pointed her finger, now with a fire engine-red nail, at Addie and made tiny circles. “You’re in love with Nate Browder.”

  As if he had heard his name spoken, the man turned, smiled right at her and then started walking in her direction.

  Addie’s heart leaped. Love? She’d known him less than a month. He was California-bound, and she was a Star City citizen through and through. He was a standout in everything he did, and she was…

  She brushed her trembling fingers over the snowflake clasped to her headband. Suddenly she couldn’t stand to think another second about who she was and what might have been. So, in order to change the subject, and preferably to something that would make her mother hush, she blurted out, “I got Jesse one of the snow-globes with the silver snowflakes inside of it that they sell in the gift department here in the store. You won’t tell, will you?”

  “Addie, honey, I know you think I’d do anything to draw attention to myself, but I would never give away your most precious secrets.”

  Addie exhaled, but it didn’t really ease the pressure in her chest. “Thank you, Mom.”

  “Even if I think you are foolish not to own up to those secrets when
they are right there for anyone who has ever been in love or who just has eyes in their head to see.”

  Nate strode up, with Jesse tagging along behind. “Eyes to see what?”

  “How cute you two are, darlin’.” Bivvy crinkled her nose at Nate and then Jesse.

  “Yeah.” Addie smiled, weakly, ducked her head and then made her getaway. “I have to go now. I have to demonstrate how to make manger animals out of common household items.”

  After the changes, the time seemed to fly the following Monday. Bivvy was a big hit, and as a result of her appearances on the Goodwin’s site, her votes in the Web contest had skyrocketed. That got her house on the local news all the way over in Knoxville.

  The Goodwins, though tight-lipped about business, seemed happy with the results. Doc, getting a lot of interest in the vintage goods used in the promotion, was even looking into going through all the junk he had warehoused in the now-vacant part of the Goodwin’s building. Addie didn’t know if that was a good sign or a bad one. Maybe he had finally resigned himself to the fact that the place was going to close, and his son, whose investment time-wise in Jesse could have been measured in minutes rather than days or hours this week, didn’t care what happened to his family or his family’s business. That broke Addie’s heart for the Goodwins and for Jesse.

  That feeling grew each day when, at shortly after five o’clock, Nate pretended to come home from the office and she and Jesse greeted him with open arms. That part was not pretend, they were actually glad to see him and know the three of them would be spending the next few hours as a family. It was the kind of thing that Addie hadn’t known since before her father died. But at least she had known that kind of love and shelter. For Jesse and Nate it was a completely new, and obviously welcome, experience.

  With that in mind—and not at all because of what her mother had said about her being in love with Nate—Addie decided to make their last regular day together special. Before the chaos of the Open House all day on Saturday and their parting on Christmas Eve morning, she thought these two special guys in her life deserved an evening as a family. So she had asked Doc to allow them to stay behind in the store for an extra hour or so after closing, with the cameras off, so that they could have a quiet “family” evening.