Do Not Open 'Til Christmas by Sierra Donovan (9)

Chloe finished her lunch in silence, trying to savor the treat, wondering why she repeatedly felt the urge to knock her head into the brick wall that was Bret.

Something about Christmas really bothered him, and it wasn’t some childhood experience in a shoe-blacking factory.

When she stood to clear their plates, Bret surprised her by taking her plate from her hand as he picked his up, too. “I’ll get it.”

Nice manners. But if he wanted to get on her good side, he should just let her write the darned Santa story.

Instead, he said, “Before you go, there’s something I’ve been meaning to run by you.”

Warily, she eased back into her chair as Bret discarded their empty plates in his trash can, then set the trash can away behind him. “What?” she asked.

“A story assignment. If you’re up to it. But it’s a hundred and eighty degrees from what we were just talking about.”

Aside from press releases, he’d never suggested a story to her. Chloe waited.

“Someone e-mailed me a lead this morning,” he said. “We have a twenty-year-old local veteran. He came home about four months ago with his left leg amputated at the knee.”

Chloe scraped up the name. “Aaron McNamara.” She’d heard about it at the Pine ’n’ Dine.

“That’s right. Someone you know?”

“No, I just heard about it.” Chloe hesitated. She shouldn’t hesitate. She should be up for anything. “And you want me to ask him what it’s like living with half a leg?”

“There’s a little more to it. He’s had some hassles with the Veterans Administration. Bureaucratic red tape. They still haven’t worked out the approval on funding for a prosthetic leg.”

Chloe winced inside. She knew she shouldn’t hem and haw. But he’d caught her completely off guard. “Does he even want to be interviewed?”

“Don’t know yet. That’s where you come in. Start by talking to his old high school advisor. She’s the one who sent the e-mail. I’ll forward it to you.” Bret gave her a challenging look. “If you’re up to it.”

He’d said that already. This time, it sounded like a double-dog-dare.

“Why me?”

“It’s not exactly rescuing kittens from trees, is it?”

He held her gaze, unflinching. Was this some kind of a test?

Of course it was. Because apparently she still hadn’t proven herself. This was a job, she reminded herself. She couldn’t take it personally.

It’s his ball, her father’s voice echoed. Learn to play the game his way.

And stop thinking you’ll ever be buddies, she added on her own. The camaraderie they’d been enjoying a few minutes ago was a fluke. It showed up now and then, but she had to give up and regard it as a passing phenomenon. Like Halley’s Comet, but not nearly as reliable.

Meanwhile, Bret’s inscrutable dark gaze across the desk waited for an answer.

“Okay,” she said. “Shoot me the e-mail. I’ll start right away.”

Having taken up the gauntlet, she stood. She didn’t know why this sounded so much harder than talking to grieving families, but she didn’t dare back down. She just had no idea how she was going to go about it. As Chloe left Bret’s office, she knew only one thing.

She was going to write the hell out of this piece.

* * *

Aaron McNamara shifted in his wheelchair. “I’m luckier than a lot of people,” he said. “Some guys who step on one of our own explosive devices don’t live to tell about it. At least I got to come home.”

They sounded like words he’d repeated to himself often. Chloe bit her lip as she scribbled on her pad, keeping her eyes on Aaron as much as possible. They’d been talking for nearly two hours, and it had taken half that time for him to forget he was being interviewed.

The guy was four years younger than Chloe, two years younger than her brother Joel, and his life would never be the same. The girlfriend who’d waited for him through his deployment had, bit by bit, stopped coming around after he came home with the injury. Thanks to a computer spelling error, the processing on his doctor’s request for a prosthetic leg was still tied up in red tape.

And their living room was decorated with Christmas lights and pine branches, and his mom had brought in milk and cookies. It all felt so wrong.

“I hope the claim gets worked out soon,” she said awkwardly.

“It will eventually.” Aaron’s long fingers rubbed the head of his golden retriever, who hadn’t budged from his spot alongside his master’s wheelchair. “I’ve spent a lot of time on the phone, and everybody wants to help, but it’s the humans versus the computers. We keep going in circles.” Aaron shrugged, and a swatch of sandy brown hair fell over his eyebrow. His mother had apologized—actually apologized—for his hair when Ned arrived at the beginning of the interview to shoot the photo. She said they’d been meaning to get it trimmed for weeks, but simple errands had gotten a lot more complicated.

Everything about him seemed so ordinary. If Aaron hadn’t enlisted, Chloe knew exactly who he would have been: one of a group of guys at the Pine ’n’ Dine, killing time before or after work, maybe flirting with her as they ordered. Skiing at Mount Douglas in the winter, driving down to the beach in the summer.

All that had changed now. Maybe there’d be skiing eventually, once they got the prosthetic leg worked out. She didn’t know if he’d ever want to go to the beach.

Chloe wished she could tell him anything was possible, but advice and platitudes meant nothing coming from her, because she hadn’t walked in his shoes. Shoes. She winced at how easy it was to stumble on the wrong word.

“I’m still not sure why I’m going to be in the paper,” he said.

For that, at least, Chloe had an answer. “This is your town,” she said. “What happened to you matters to people. Even people who only knew you a little bit.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I wish a few more of them would drop by.”

Through the interview, he’d maintained awry, upbeat attitude. Occasionally a glimpse of sadness got through, but mostly he’d kept his game face on. This was the first time she’d heard an edge of actual bitterness.

And Chloe recognized the truth of it. People wanted to be a step removed from things that were tragic, things that were uncomfortable, things that couldn’t be fixed. People mean well, she almost said, and that might be the worst platitude of all.

“People don’t know what to say,” she said softly. The pen was in her hand, but the interview was over.

“I get that, too,” Aaron said. His head lifted slightly, his sportsmanlike veneer back in place. “I don’t know if I would have been coming around, either, if it happened to someone else. It’s just—different from this side.”

She could only nod. She tried to think of a way to end their meeting on a positive note. Thanks to her, he’d spent the last two hours reliving what he’d gone through, and she didn’t want to leave him feeling worse off than he had before she arrived. How could anyone keep from getting emotionally involved in a story like this? But she knew it wasn’t her job to change the story, or help him resolve it. Only to write it.

And that killed her.

As if on cue, Aaron’s mother came back into the room, ostensibly to clear the plates from their milk and cookies. Wherever Mrs. McNamara had come from, Chloe suspected she’d stayed close enough to hear when it sounded like the interview had come to an end.

“Well, I won’t take up any more of your time.” Chloe rose, hating the false bright tone in her voice. She tried to make up for it by meeting Aaron’s eyes with as much frankness as she could muster. She extended her hand, glad when he took it. “Thank you.”

She made it to her car, made it out of the driveway, made it around the corner, before she pulled over to the curb and let the tears go.

* * *

She stayed up late to write the article. She handed it in the next morning.

An hour later, Bret called her into his office, told her to cut the story in half, and to contact the veterans’ office for their version of the story. “We have to report both sides,” he reminded her.

Chloe set her jaw, didn’t argue, and got to work on it.

When she filed the revised story the next morning, he called her into his office again. “You’re closer,” he said. “But you’ve got to cut it down before it can run. It’s still over forty inches long. Get it down to thirty.”

“The hospice piece was longer.”

“Which may have kept it from being read. One thing that’ll help you? Drop the adjectives. Don’t tell me how to feel. Make me feel it.”

“But—”

“No adjectives.”

* * *

Chloe shoved her way through the heavy glass door of the Pine ’n’ Dine and headed straight for the booth by the corner window. Usually she sat on the side facing the other tables. Today she faced the wall.

“Pie?” Sherry’s voice reached her as she sat with her fingers pressed over her eyes.

Chloe didn’t take her hands down. “Apple,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands. Her eyes felt hot. She wasn’t sleeping a lot these days, but that wasn’t the only reason.

She’d tried so hard. The story couldn’t be maudlin, couldn’t feel like a call for pity. She’d weighed every word. She thought she’d gotten it right. Twice.

And now she had to do it again.

You go write a story about a twenty-year-old amputee, she wanted to tell him. But in point of fact, Bret had done stories every bit as hard. She knew, because she’d searched the paper’s database to see how he did them. Bret wrote them eloquently, sparely, letting the facts speak for themselves. The guy was freaking Hemingway.

I can’t do that. She’d tried.

And it wasn’t enough.

She fought the tears. She didn’t cry over work. Ever. Not when tourists were rude to her. Not when Hal yelled at her for breaking dishes. She was never going to please Bret, and for some reason Bret’s opinion mattered way, way too much.

She heard a plate slide onto the table in front of her, followed by the quiet sound of a coffee cup being set beside it.

Then she heard another sound: a person settling into the booth across from her. Quickly, she blinked hard and lowered her hands to see Sherry. Who else had she expected?

Who else indeed? You dope.

“What’s wrong?” Sherry asked.

Chloe took in her surroundings for the first time. At eleven a.m., most of the tables were empty. “I’m going to kill Bret. If he doesn’t kill me first.”

Sherry frowned. “You had a fight?”

“No, it’s not like that.” Chloe slumped against the upholstered booth. She had to stop whining to people. After this. “I’m just tired. And there’s no pleasing him. Every time I think I’m on the right track he shoots me down.” She rubbed her eyes, feeling them start to swell again. “Every. Damn. Time.”

“Bret’s not so bad.”

Sherry’s voice held an odd note. Chloe raised her head and tried to fathom her friend’s enigmatic expression. “How would you know?”

Sherry shrugged. “We went out for a while. Back in high school.”

That dried up her tears. Her mind was too busy reeling, trying to re-imagine a universe where Bret and Sherry ever would have dated.

“How did that happen?” Chloe stared at her friend unabashedly, but she still saw the same Sherry. Compassionate brown eyes, standard pink Pine ’n’ Dine uniform, hair tugged up into the obligatory waitress’s bun, currently dyed a deep shade of wine red. A different hair color every month. Sherry and Bret?

“It was a long time ago,” Sherry said. “The point is—”

The front door opened with its familiar chime. Sherry broke off and stood as if ejected by the booth’s cushions. Eyes on the door, she fished her pad out of her pocket and pantomimed writing on it. “Can I get you anything else?”

Something flickered in Sherry’s eyes as they looked past Chloe to follow the newcomer’s progress into the restaurant.

Chloe didn’t turn around. Voice lowered, she said, “Bret just walked in, didn’t he?”

“Mm-hmm.” Sherry scribbled on her pad, tore off a ticket, and slapped it on the table at Chloe’s elbow. With the polite friendliness waitresses used on total strangers, she said, “Let me know if you need anything else.”

* * *

“This isn’t your station,” Bret said as Sherry walked up.

“Yeah, well, your usual table’s taken.”

“I noticed.” Bret saw the back of a blond head in the coveted corner booth, facing away from the rest of the room. Unless someone else had the seat across from you, it ran contrary to human nature to sit with your back to a restaurant. “She’s not back there crying, is she?”

“No.” Sherry widened her eyes. “Why would you think that?”

“Because I’m trying to turn her into a journalist.”

“And that involves what? Floggings?”

He should have stayed in his office, as usual. But the latest revision session with Chloe had left him unsettled. He was putting her through the wringer and he knew it. But the story had to be good. So good it couldn’t be missed by even the laziest reader.

He glared at Sherry. “Constructive criticism.”

“Your constructive criticism never made me cry.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s why you only got a C plus in English composition.”

“It was all I needed.”

And that, Bret concluded, was one of many reasons he and Sherry remained on good terms but could never have been soul mates. Settling for good enough, especially when words were involved, was beyond his comprehension. But Sherry had more horse sense than most people he knew, one of many reasons he was glad to count her as a friend.

Most of the time, anyway.

Sherry cocked a hand on her hip. “Is there the slightest possibility you’re being too rough on her?”

Enough was enough. “What happened to taking a guy’s order around here?”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Tiffany approach the table, get halfway across the room, and wheel back around. Tiffany was Chloe’s roommate, he’d sat in her station, and now his long-ex-girlfriend was taking his order. Could Tall Pine get any more interconnected?

Sherry held her notepad poised, looking over it with a reproachful stare.

“Coffee,” he said. “Lots of cream.”

“Want to pay for Chloe’s pie?”

“Sherry.” He did his best to send daggers from his eyes. “Let it go.”

She spun away and went back to Chloe’s table.

It was Tiffany who brought his coffee.

* * *

After the week she’d had, Chloe didn’t even want to look at the Gazette that weekend, but she couldn’t stop herself.

The Aaron McNamara story ran on Sunday’s front page. Not the front of the “B” section. The very front page.

Chloe shut herself in the bathroom of the apartment, although Tiffany and Kate weren’t up yet. Half afraid to look, she read the article to see how much of her third revision had survived Bret’s final edits. Like all of her stories, she practically knew it by heart. This time it had been through so many revisions, it was hard to tell. But hadn’t she deleted that paragraph?

She read it again. Every word was hers. But two of the paragraphs she’d sacrificed on the last go-round were restored. He’d even put a few of her adjectives back.

She sagged against the bathroom door with relief. But she wasn’t prepared for what waited for her when she went out.

“Chloe,” the grocery checker said when she went out for milk. “When did you start writing for the paper?”

She passed her old volleyball coach in the parking lot. “Great article. Congratulations.”

“Good job,” Kate said when she came home from the store. “You made me cry.”

She made Kate cry?

No, of course not. It was Aaron’s story that made Kate cry, and she couldn’t forget that. She’d only told the story; Aaron had lived it. Was still living it.

She had a call from her parents, which shouldn’t surprise her, because she already knew they were proud of her. But she’d written so many articles for the Tall Pine Gazette by now, they weren’t usually a topic of conversation.

When she stopped at the Pine ’n’ Dine to pick up some takeout chicken, it happened again.

“Congratulations.”

“Beautiful article.”

“How long have you been writing for the paper?”

She’d spent so much time steeling herself against Bret’s criticism, convinced she was never going to measure up, that it took a few hours for full comprehension to sink in. He hadn’t been trying to torture her, or even just using a harsh method to teach her.

He’d made her shine.

* * *

“Bret.”

He’d just settled behind his desk Monday morning when Chloe showed up in the doorway of his office. “I wanted to thank you.”

He didn’t pretend not to understand. “Don’t thank me. You earned it. And then some.”

She smiled. But there was a reserve to her smile, and that wasn’t like Chloe. “Okay.” She shifted in the door. “Nine-fifteen for story conference?”

“Sure.”

She turned to go. A cloud seemed to hang over her. Maybe she hadn’t gotten over the grinding he’d put her through, but he didn’t think that was the case. After all, she’d just thanked him.

“Chloe?” He let his voice come out softer than usual.

She turned back, eyes shimmering with what looked suspiciously like unshed tears. “What?”

“Are you all right?”

She leaned against his doorjamb, arms hugged around today’s rust-colored cardigan sweater. “I feel like I’m benefiting from someone else’s problem,” she confessed. “Aaron’s stuck in a wheelchair. And people are congratulating me. It doesn’t seem right.”

Dear God. He knew he’d given her a hard subject to tackle. But he hadn’t expected this. Looking at Chloe now, he wondered why he hadn’t seen it coming. It was her empathy that made her so good at writing stories like this one.

He struggled for some balance between moral support and professional neutrality. “You can’t fix everything. You told the story. You told it honestly and you did it well. That’s not nothing.”

“I wonder—” Her shoulders drew up as she pulled in a breath. “I wonder if I’m cut out for this. I don’t know if I can be—objective enough.”

He tried to ignore the unshed tears. The fact that they made her eyes brilliant, that at the moment they looked more blue than gray or green.

He couldn’t acknowledge the tears, but he couldn’t ignore them, either. He sat forward, trying for once to minimize the amount of space the desk put between them.

“I don’t quite understand,” he said. “What made this harder than the hospice piece? You asked for that one. And you were talking to bereaved families.”

Her eyes drifted somewhere past him as she considered. “Maybe because when I talked to those families, the worst thing had already happened to them. It was over, and I guess they were already starting to heal a little bit. I mean, I didn’t talk to anyone whose mother died last week or anything.”

Bret flinched inwardly. Once again, if he didn’t know better, he would have pegged Chloe for a closet sadist.

But he did know better.

“With Aaron—” She paused. “Maybe the worst thing’s already happened to him, but he hasn’t had a chance to start healing. He’s been going through it for four months. And I couldn’t make it better. I know that’s not my job. But I kept wanting to change the story.”

“I understand,” Bret said quietly. “You wanted to make a difference.”

She nodded, biting her lip.

He’d set her up for this. Maybe he was the closet sadist. Professional relationship or not, he needed to make it right. But he needed to do it from this side of the desk, even though he found it increasingly hard to stay here.

He asked, “Do you know why I assigned that story to you?”

She hesitated. “To help me make an impression?”

“That was part of it,” he admitted. “I wanted to show people what you could do. But the other reason was—you were the right person for the story. I knew Aaron McNamara was in good hands. I knew you’d treat him right, and you did.”

Her arms wound tighter around her sweater. “I just hope I didn’t make it worse.”

He shook his head. “He wanted to tell his story. Otherwise his family never would have let you in the door. And you treated him with respect. Don’t feel guilty because you wrote an article that moved people.”

The shadow of a smile appeared at one corner of her mouth. “With your help.”

“In your words. And don’t lie. I know you wanted to shoot me dead at least seven times.”

She didn’t deny it. At last her lips curved up in a smile. It was small, but it was real. Her eyes were still shining. He shouldn’t be noticing, but in that moment he’d never seen anyone look more beautiful. Not because of her face, which was lovely enough, but because of the heart behind it.

Bret ignored the lump in his own throat.

“It’ll be all right,” he told her. “It gets better. You’ll see.”

With visible reluctance, she pulled away from the doorjamb to leave.

“Also,” he added, “if you quit this job before Christmas, I’ll kill you.”

That got a shaky spurt of laughter out of her. Good.

Bret didn’t say any more, but if he knew Tall Pine the way he thought he did, things would look better sooner than she expected.

* * *

Chloe returned to her desk. The weight she’d been carrying since yesterday afternoon felt a little bit lighter. Not gone. But lighter.

She sat down and checked her voice mail. Several messages had come in yesterday and this morning, complimenting her on the article, most from people she didn’t even know.

Then the e-mails. Two of them asked if there was anything they could do to help Aaron and his family. That was better, although she didn’t have a ready answer. Maybe she could call his mother and ask. She put her hand on the phone and hesitated. It was still relatively early in the morning. And frankly, she wasn’t sure what to say.

She took a fortifying drink from her coffee—coffee that Bret had made before she came in—and got busy polishing up her weekly list of story proposals. She made sure to include some cheerful ones. She wanted to write about kittens and puppies and babies and—

“Morning.” Chuck’s voice came from her right. She hadn’t heard him come in. “Good job on the Aaron McNamara story.”

She smiled faintly. “Thanks.”

Just before lunchtime, she got another phone call.

“Miss Davenport? This is Wayne Schallert from Tall Pine Community Bank.”

In what had become reflex, she grabbed her pen and notepad. “Yes?”

“We’ve had several calls this morning about your story on Aaron McNamara. People read about the problems he’s been having with his insurance claim, and they’re looking for away to contribute.”

Chloe sat up straighter.

“We wanted to let you know we’re setting up an account for contributions. If you’d like to run something in the paper to let people know . . .”

She wrote down the information, started to e-mail Bret, and called his extension instead.

“Write up a news brief.” His tone was as clipped as ever. Then he added, less brusquely, “It’s all you’ll need.”

With the response she’d been getting from the town, she was beginning to believe that. What she no longer believed was Bret’s terse, clipped tone. He had a heart. He just didn’t want anyone to know it. She’d heard it in his voice this morning, when he talked about making a difference. The same words he’d used at The Snowed Inn. He’d been so much less guarded that night. She wondered what had gotten into him, and if she’d ever see that side of him again. Why did he work so hard to keep himself under wraps?

She shook herself. But at least she was thinking about something besides Aaron in his wheelchair.

Chloe worked through her lunch, taking calls about the story, referring readers to the bank when they asked how to help, all while trying to get this week’s articles off the ground.

It was almost five, and she was finally almost done writing her first story for the week, when another call came through from Jen at the front desk. Chloe picked it up.

“Miss Davenport? This is Rita McNamara. Aaron’s mother.”

As if she could forget. “Call me Chloe. Please.”

“Chloe.” There was something strained in her tone; Chloe hoped it wasn’t a bad thing. “I wanted to say thank you. I would have called sooner, but things have been so hectic.”

She didn’t know if Mrs. McNamara knew about the bank account yet or not. “You don’t have to—”

“We’ve had calls all day long,” Mrs. McNamara went on. “We’ve found money in the mailbox, under the doormat . . . But the best thing of all is, Aaron’s friends have been coming out of the woodwork. They’ve called, they’ve dropped by—it’s like Christmas came early.”

Chloe found herself nodding, even though it was a phone conversation. “Just as long as they don’t all come in one day.”

“I finally told a few of the ones who called that it might be better if they came by in a few days, or next week. I think they understood.”

Chloe clutched the phone. “Good.”

And I’m dropping by again, too, she decided. Before Christmas.

As she hung up, she felt her heart lift, and she realized that was the call she’d wanted to get all day. She returned to her article, but she had trouble seeing the letters on her screen. She was crying again.

But this time, for a better reason.