The fire crackled. The smell of the wood burning and the mellow feel produced by the brandy made it seem like all of Iona’s problems were worlds away. It had been a few days since her party and she had decided to stop pretending she didn’t want to make their relationship more solid, but still he was hesitating. Realistically, she knew it was past time for her to go back to her own apartment. She had a big promotion kicking off tomorrow morning that she wanted to be in store to oversee. But she didn’t want to leave.
She’d been encouraging Sofia to make a list for Christmas by telling her she could give it to her father and not Santa. Tonight she’d shown Iona a few of the items on there and asked what she wanted for Christmas.
Iona had always been one of those girls who took the time to make a Christmas list. To write down all the things she wanted and then being spoiled by her parents when it came to material things. She’d usually get them all. The first time she realized that Santa wasn’t real she’d been almost thirteen. She’d heard the stories at school and had stopped talking about the jolly man in the red suit to her friends, but somehow Santa had always delivered for her. Until that one Christmas when she’d waited for something money couldn’t buy. She’d craved just a little praise from her father and had asked for it each night in December as she’d looked to the North Star, whispering her wish. And on Christmas morning she’d had her usual pile of presents and nothing had changed with her father.
It had been sobering.
“More brandy?” Mads asked, returning to the living room. He still wore the thick gray cable-knit mock turtleneck sweater that made his blue-grey eyes even icier.
She shook her head. “No thanks.”
He poured two fingers into his own snifter and then sat down next to her. “You look very serious staring into the fire.”
“I was thinking about Sofia and Santa and remembering when I stopped believing.”
He stretched his long legs out in front of him, propping them on a leather hassock under the coffee table as his hand fell to her shoulder.
“When was that?”
“Sixteen.”
“Surely you stopped before then.”
“I had heard the stories at school but Christmas at my house is huge. And Santa never disappointed. Never,” she said, taking another sip.
“So, what happened?”
“I wanted something money couldn’t buy,” she admitted. “Something that couldn’t be delivered by Macy’s.”
“What was it?”
“My dad to be proud of me,” she said.
“Ah, I see … actually how did you think that would work?” he asked gently.
“I had been given an opportunity at school to attend the mock UN in DC and they only select a small number of kids in the entire US. I waited until Christmas morning to tell him. I had it all planned out in my head, how he would react and everything. I knew that Santa and the general Christmas magic would influence him and for this one morning I’d catch a glimpse of pride or maybe he’d even actually say, “good job”.
“But that didn’t happen. I followed him around all day waiting for some sort of Christmas miracle and nothing. Finally, he just told me to go and take the new car he’d gotten me for a spin,” she admitted.
He put his hand on her thigh and squeezed it softly, comfortingly.
“I never tried to ask for anything from God or the universe until Gill got sick. I prayed every night that the new drug would work. Not because I’d ever been deeply faithful but because I needed to believe that miracles could happen. And I’m not going to lie, a little bit of me wanted to believe what I saw in advertising and in holiday movies. That this really was the season of miracles. That Gill was going to beat her cancer and everything would go back to the way it was.”
She had no words listening to him. Hearing the gut- wrenching pain in his voice, she turned to him and saw him staring into the flames, watching them leap and dance. But Iona knew that Mads saw something else. He was seeing Gill and reliving her illness. “Tomorrow will be the day that we started to know the end was near. One year since she started to get really bad and the hospice nurse upped her dosage. I just can’t let go of the anger I feel. I went to church and raged at the priest. My mom had been sending me the Footprints in the Sand, psalm 77 print for years. Telling me that God would carry me when I needed him and instead I realized there were only one set of footprints because I was alone … well I had Sofia, who I was carrying.”
He didn’t say anything else and she took a deep breath. He was broken. But she’d known that from the moment they’d met in the elevator. When they’d become reluctant friends because they were both down on their luck, but unlike her who was taking a temporary hit, it seemed that Mads was down for the count.
How could she help him?
His faith in God and his relationship there was one he’d have to come back to on his own. She knew if she said that God sometimes delivered what was needed instead of wanted, she would drive a wedge between them that would never be budged.
“Why do you think they call it the season of miracles?” she asked instead.
“I’m not sure what that means. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”
He turned to face her. She saw the glint of tears in his eyes and knew talking about miracles wasn’t going to help him tonight.
“Oh, Mads,” she said. “Sofia is your miracle. She’s finding new traditions for you and making this Christmas special.”
“She is. I’m so blessed to have her. I was afraid when Gill was first diagnosed that I wouldn’t be able to raise Sofia on my own. I suggested we ask her grandparents to raise her, but Gill … she had a temper when she got mad and that really ticked her off.
“She told me to stop feeling sorry for myself. That Sofia was going to be the best daughter in the world because she was part of her and me,” Mads said, his voice going quiet at the end.
Gill was wise. How hard it must have been for her to watch her husband and daughter as she slipped away from them. It made Iona want to cry.
“Do we want a good cry or do we need a laugh?” she asked after a few moments.
“Men don’t cry,” he said.
“That’s so last century,” she quipped back.
“Agree, but if I start, Io, I might never stop,” he said with a seriousness that just made her want to cry for him.
But that wasn’t going to help. She knew that miracles weren’t real. That she wasn’t going to magically transform his Christmas, but their friendship was real. And she did know how to make people laugh.
“Dance off.”
“What?”
“Sofia told me you had some moves back in the day and showed me a video of you boogie-ing with your brother.”
“We were drunk,” Mads said.
“You have natural rhythm.”
“You took ballet until you were fifteen,” he said. “I don’t think I can beat you.”
“Good.”
“I thought you were going to let me win,” he said.
“Why ever did you think that? We both are competitive.”
He nodded. “Okay, then, I’m not going to make it easy on you.”
“Fair enough.”
***
Mads was on the cusp of losing it. Really losing it. He knew it and he could tell that Iona did too. But as she turned to Alexa and asked the machine to play dance music, the first song to come up was the “Macarena”. She looked at him, with one eyebrow raised.
“I was the champ at school to this song,” she said. She got to her feet, shaking her hips to the music. “I’ll go first.”
She did a slow circle and then instead of doing the common line-dance moves did her own combination of salsa moves, which were distracting him. Making him forget about the holidays, this wretched first that was hanging around his soul like a lead anchor. Iona filled the room as she always did with her sunny personality and her sensuality.
She had a pair of skin-tight jeans that clung to her long legs and a sweater that was loose fitting but did nothing to disguise the shape of her body. With each sensuous shake of her hips, he forgot a little more and just heard the music. And despite the fact that they were on the Upper East Side, with snow and ice outside, he felt transported to Cuba.
He stood there watching until she threw her hand out towards him.
“Your turn.”
His turn? His turn. They were having a dance-off.
He wasn’t really much of a dancer unless he’d been drinking, and drinking a lot, so his moves pretty much were limited to putting his hands on his hips and making a circle with them. She threw her head back and started laughing.
“What, you don’t like this?” he asked, shimmying his way over to her. He danced around her, clapping to the music and then he put her hand on his hip. “That’s fear, right? I noticed your moves weren’t quite as good as mine, but since I’m a gentleman I’ll show you how it’s done.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, their eyes met and she smiled. “I can’t wait to see what you have to teach me.”
“You will be impressed.”
She laughed and then he spun her around to face him, putting one hand on her waist and taking her right hand in his. He pulled her close to him and her curves fit nicely against his body. The sensation overwhelming him for a moment and he realized how much he’d missed touching someone. Not sex. He’d gone out and done that with a bar hook-up over the summer just to have it out of the way. But touching and intimacy.
Their eyes met, her lips were parted, and she gently took her hand from his and brought both up to wrap behind his neck. She went up on tiptoe and their lips brushed. He could tell from the way she did it that she meant the embrace to be a casual one. Nothing too hot and heavy but a spark arched between them, burning him straight to his core. Making him forget things that he’d thought he never would and he put his hand in her hair at the back of her neck, kissing her with all the passion he’d thought he’d never feel again. She tipped her head to the side as he deepened the kiss.
His hands rubbed the column of her neck, her fingers soft and long and everything narrowed down to Iona. The way her lush lips parted under his. The taste of brandy on her tongue and the way her height made it easier to hold her. His hand on her waist drifted lower, cupping her backside and drawing her into the curve of his body.
The music changed but he didn’t register it. The dance- off had been a distraction and he’d thought it had been from the past, but he stepped back, looking down into Iona’s upturned face, her lips were parted and swollen slightly from his kisses. Her skin was flushed and her eyes half-closed and he had to admit that the sadness he’d felt was because she was fresh and new to love and he wanted to be the kind of man who could believe in miracles and forever because he knew if he’d met her before Gill, he would have wanted that with her.
Not that he hadn’t loved his wife. He had. Oh, God. Had he loved her.
He turned away from Iona and walked out of the room.
What was he thinking? She’d died and now he was holding another woman, wishing he still believed in love because … he liked Iona. It wasn’t just lust or loneliness. He truly liked her with her quirky sense of humor and her willingness to do anything for a friend.
He heard sounds of her moving around behind him and a moment later she was next to him. “I think I’m going to go. Thanks for a fun evening.”
“Don’t. Please don’t leave.”
She tipped her head to the side and shook it. “I can’t stay. I want something that you’re not ready for. And I’m trying to be a good friend to you, Mads. You need a friend and so does Sofia.”
It was as he’d thought. Not fair to Iona to ask her for more when he wasn’t the man she deserved. And if he needed further proof that there wasn’t a higher being watching out for him, he’d just gotten it. Why would God put her in his path now? Why would he give him this woman, who could be so much more if only he hadn’t been so badly shattered by Gill’s death?
“Fair enough. Text me when you’re back to your place.”
“It’s not that far,” she said. “I think I’ll be safe.”
“I’ll worry if you don’t,” he said.
She started to say something but then just shook her head. “Okay.”
“What were you going to say?”
“Nothing that matters,” she said. “Don’t forget the gingerbread decorating tomorrow at Sofia’s school. I brought some candies over for her to take in. They are on the counter in a Candied Apple Café bag.”
She had become a part of their lives and he realized that as he nodded at her and watched her walk down the hall. That he had to stop taking from her. He either had to find a way to give her what she deserved from him or just let her go.
***
Lucy was curled up next to the fireplace and when Iona entered she came over to greet her; she was watching the little dog while Hayley and Garrett were in Boston for an overnight trip. Iona sank to the floor and let the little dog climb up on her lap. Lucy put her paws in the middle of Iona’s chest and then licked her chin as Iona lowered her head.
She’d spent hours thinking of herself as a fixer. She knew that her super power — if she had one — was down to the fact that she’d always been able to see the broken things in others and fix them. Even without a degree in psychology she knew that it owed a lot to the fact that she’d rather analyze others and figure out what motivated them. That had always been the secret to her success at all of her jobs.
She took comfort from cuddling the tiny miniature dachshund. She was grown and she knew there was no such thing as a Christmas miracle. She’d paid lip service to that sentiment earlier, but tonight she realized it was true. The part of her that had always been able to tap into the joy of the holiday season felt small and gray. She looked around her apartment, decorated with garlands and twinkling with lights. She waited for the holiday things to cheer her up but she finally understood the lyrics from “Blue Christmas”. Finally she knew that missing one person could cut deep. And the worst part was Mads missed Gill and Iona thought she missed Mads.
Lucy gave her one last lick and then trotted back to her bed and Iona stayed there on the floor taking off her boots and then pulling her legs up to her chest. She hadn’t allowed her belief in the holidays to be shaken until tonight.
Maybe she was tired.
Yeah, that was it.
But as she forced herself to her feet, she knew it wasn’t fatigue. Or not the normal kind. It was a kind of soul wariness that had been spawned by nothing more than a desire for once to have someone for herself. Someone who could mend the broken bits inside of her.
And, of course, her heart wanted a man who was so far from being healed no matter what he’d said. Mads was going to take years to heal from the blow of his wife’s death. And she got that because she was coming to love him and little Sofia. Iona knew that it wasn’t that crazy lust-driven emotion that she’d sometimes called love while in the flush of a new relationship. It was something deeper.
Something more profound.
And that was what frightened her. She went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of hot cocoa from the new Candied Apple at Home line. And then took it up to her loft bedroom. She set it on the dresser and then fiddled with her iPhone dock until her Christmas playlist came on. She did her bedtime ritual, thinking too much about things she couldn’t have.
But the truth was she’d always been hungry for something but had never really known what. And there was no easy answer. She climbed into bed as her phone pinged and she reached for it to see it was a text from Mads.
White Christmas is playing on TCM.
Iona sighed. She should probably ignore the text. But he’d reached out to her. She knew then that this was the part of complicated she couldn’t plan for or anticipate. He wanted her but he was still tangled in the briars of the past. She needed this tentative olive branch he’d offered her.
Iona replied. It’s one of my favorites.
Mine too. Sorry for … just sorry, pinged back.
Me too.
She wanted to say more but didn’t know what, so instead she watched the movie and laughed when Mads texted her about asking his brother to try the fan dance when he saw him on Christmas Day.
She texted back that she thought Mads had nice calves, so the act sounded promising.
They continued texting until the movie ended with that miracle snowfall that saved the ski season and Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby reconciled.
She wished life was that easy. That the miracle she sought would just appear like a snowstorm.
Iona texted one last time: Night.
Mads replied. I’m going to try to count my blessings tonight.
She just sent back a smiley face. She knew he was trying and the thing she had to decide was if she was going to continue to try or if she was going to just let the burgeoning feelings she had for him fall to the side.