* * *

“King, I need your finger,” Nora said.

Kingsley rose from her overstuffed gray suede armchair and sauntered—as Kingsley did—across the living room floor, his wine glass in his right hand.

“Only one?” he asked as he sat down on the floor next to her. “I thought three was your finger preference?”

“This is my finger preference,” she said, showing him one finger in particular.

He raised his hands, surrendering the battle of innuendo. Good. Nora was too tired to play it tonight anyway.

“Where?” he asked.

“Right there,” she said, nodding toward the package she was wrapping. “Put your finger on the twine so I can tie a bow here. Consider it an order.”

“You don’t have to order me to help you wrap my Christmas gifts.”

Nora bumped her shoulder into his. “It’s more fun for me if I pretend it’s an order.”

He laughed drunkenly although he was only on glass of wine number two. Then again, Nora had very large wine glasses.

With the help of Kingsley’s finger, she tied the bow on the box.

“Who is this one for?” Nora asked as she picked up the package tags.

“What was it?”

“The Canon? The big fancy camera?”

“Simone,” Kingsley said. Nora’s eyes widened.

“That’s a two-thousand-dollar camera, King. Have you been fucking her lately without telling me?”

“She’s been you-know-who’s personal whipping girl for months now. He left bruises big as your hand on her back two weeks ago. I caught her in my drawing room taking pictures of them.”

“To show the cops?”

“She’s making a scrapbook of her favorite bruises. That’s why I bought the camera with the tripod and timer. The girl deserves hazard pay.”

“I never got hazard pay,” Nora said under her breath. She finished writing out the tag—To Simone, Thank you for your service. Love, Mr. King—and tied it to the gift.

“You’re frowning,” Kingsley said. Nora heard a touch of mockery in his tone.

“Am not.”

“Green is a Christmas color.”

“I am not jealous,” she said and meant it.

Kingsley scoffed. “I am.”

“Slut,” she said. Kingsley rolled onto his back on her floor and balanced his wine glass—still half full—on his stomach. If he spilled red wine all over her new rug, she would flog him within an inch of his life. As sexy as he looked lying there in his jeans, fitted black pullover, and bare feet, she might flog him within an inch of his life anyway. The best part—well, one of many good parts—of being Kingsley’s domme was getting to see him like this—relaxed, off-duty, dressed casually. He’d had to go out into the “vanilla world” today finishing his Christmas shopping and had come to her straight after, bags in hand, begging her to save him from the hellish task of wrapping his own gifts. She could never resist a pouty Frenchman. Who could?

She plucked the wine glass off his stomach and took a long deep drink of it before putting it down again. On a coaster, because she, unlike Kingsley, was not a savage. She’d recently moved into her new house, and she wasn’t about to let Kingsley break or stain anything when she’d finally gotten everything exactly the way she wanted it.

“Is it the wine or do you look sexier than usual tonight?” Kingsley asked.

“Both.” She had her new black silk pajamas on and even she had to admit, they did look damn good on her. Her cleavage was looking, in King’s words, magnifique.

“I thought so. Shall we fuck?” he asked. “If yes, I want to be on top. I’m in a toppy mood.”

Nora glared at him. “And they say the French are the romantic race.”

“With Juliette, I am a romantic. With you,” he said, grinning his devil-may-care grin that made the underwear of every woman in the tristate area evaporate on sight, “I am an unrepentant whore. You got the better deal, Maîtresse. Any man can be romantic. Only an elite few of us have mastered the art of true whoredom.”

“Did you ask me to wrap your gifts just so I’d let you into my house and my vagina?”

“It might have occurred to me. But you are much better at wrapping presents than I. Than I? Than me? Fuck, I hate English. I’m shit at wrapping gifts. That is what I’m saying. Women are better. In general. At all things always and forever.”

“Yes, that day they take us out of class and you boys thought we were learning about tits and periods? They were actually teaching us how to wrap presents.”

Kingsley narrowed his eyes and nodded. “Ah…I always suspected…”

Nora stood up. She had to twist and stretch her back after spending two hours on the floor wrapping Kingsley’s gifts to the 8th Circle crew.

“Merci,” he said, still on his back.

“For what?” she asked.

“Wrapping my gifts for me. Thank you.”

“That’s what friends are for,” she said.

“But we aren’t friends,” Kingsley said. “You’re my Maîtresse.”

“This is true,” she said. Calling her and Kingsley friends would be like calling Bonnie and Clyde a cute couple. “Which has me wondering why you asked me to do it. Calliope usually does this stuff for you, right? Did she quit? Oh, God, did you fuck Calliope and make her quit?”

“Calliope still works for me and adores me and no, I didn’t fuck her. She’s too young. I don’t fuck women under the age of twenty-five anymore.”

Nora raised her eyebrow at him.

“Admittedly, it’s a rule made to be broken,” he said. “However…you are too suspicious. I wanted to see your new house now that you are moved in.”

“You did?” Nora did not buy this excuse for one second but she enjoyed watching Kingsley lie. “I thought you hated my house.”

“Not true. I hate that you live in your house instead of in my house. The house itself is fine. It’s nice. It’s…”

“What?”

“It’s quite…Christmas…y?”

“It is Christmas Eve. It’s supposed to be Christmassy. Do you think I overdid the decorating?” Nora asked, glancing at her tree, her eight-foot-tall real, not artificial, Christmas tree.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Not at all. Only…I have to ask, when exactly did you schedule the gangbang with all the Macy’s Santa Clauses? I want to be here to film it. You know, for the children.”

Nora yanked a stuffed reindeer ornament off her tree and lobbed it at Kingsley.

“My house does not look like a Santa Claus gangbang,” she said sternly, and if Nora ever thought saying “Santa Claus gangbang” with a straight face would be easy, she quickly revised that assessment.

“It’s a little much,” he said. “That is all I’m saying.” Kingsley sat up, cross-legged and ran a hand through his hair.

“Why? Because I live alone? Just because I’m single, and I don’t have living relatives within a ten-hour driving radius doesn’t mean I don’t get to do a little Christmas decorating.”

“A little decorating? You have two trees, Maîtresse. Two. You have a candle in every single window. You have been playing Christmas music non-stop since I arrived. You have even hung red curtains.”

“Red is my color.”

“They have snowflakes on them. Big ones. And you have Christmas coasters, towels, and lights on the front of the house, lights on the back of the house. You even have one of those stupid Christmas villages set up in your kitchen.”

“They’re cookie jars. I like cookies. Everyone likes cookies.”

“Is that eggnog in the refrigerator or did Santa come—”

“Stop it, asshole,” she said, laughing. She grabbed another reindeer off the tree, looked at it, then realized having multiple reindeer ornaments on her tree was not helping her case any. “We do not talk about Santa’s semen on Christmas Eve.”

“Did you buy that big black snow globe just because it matches your hair?” he asked, pointing at the snow globe on her side table.

Nora put the reindeer back onto her tree before collapsing into the big gray armchair. She picked up the snow globe with the white-frosted Christmas tree inside it, smiled at it, and put it back down again carefully.

“Søren’s mother sent it to me. She must not know we’re not together anymore. I guess he hasn’t told her yet.”

Kingsley got up and sat on the coffee table directly across from her. She put her feet in his lap, and, without having to be ordered, he began to gently rub them like the good man-slut he was. He might have a point about her overdoing the Christmas decorating. Next to the mantel clock stood a nutcracker, the traditional Victorian kind, not the sort she kept in her toy bag upstairs. The house did look nice though. Even Martha Stewart would have approved of the final product.

“When I was a little boy,” Kingsley said, caressing the dips and divots around her ankles with his thumb, a touch more comforting than erotic, “I think I was eight… Maman, she decided we had to have the best Christmas ever. Big tree. Three times as many presents as the year before. Lights. Candles. Christmas concerts. Walks in the park when it snowed. Christmas cookies every single day. A few years later I told my sister that was my favorite Christmas we ever had. She laughed at me. It was not a nice laugh. She said I was a stupid little boy because that year, she said, was the year our father confessed he’d gotten drunk at a business lunch and kissed his secretary. Infidelity is more accepted in France than in America but my mother, she was very American. She didn’t take it well. She almost left Papa over it. And she was going to take us with her back to Maine to live with my grandparents. It could have been our last Christmas with our father in France. And I had no idea. But…I am not eight years old anymore.”

Nora blinked back tears. Kingsley lifted her leg to his lips and gently pressed a kiss onto the top of her foot.

“You’re right,” Nora said. “We should fuck. Right now. But I’ll be on top. You just lay there and stay hard.”

“You can tell me,” he said. “I tell you when I’m miserable.”

“You’re French. Even when you’re miserable you’re still sexy,” she said, saying “miserable” in an exaggerated French accent, as the word should be said. “Miserable doesn’t look nearly as good on the Germans.”

She wiped another tear from her eye. When did she turn into such a sap? She’d listened to Joni Mitchell’s song “River” on repeat all yesterday and today while decorating. The broken-hearted woman’s Christmas anthem.

“It’s not fair, you know,” Nora said, as Kingsley continued to press soft kisses onto the top of her foot and her ankle. His dark wavy hair fell over his eyes and he paused in his worshiping only to tuck that wayward strand behind his ear. “No man should be as sexy as you and as good in bed and smart. I shouldn’t be sad and wet. It’s a weird combination is what I’m saying.”

“Now you know how it feels to be French,” he said. “I could go down on you while you cry. I don’t mind. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“I’m never letting Juliette leave you alone again at Christmas,” she said. “Babysitting your cock while she’s visiting her mother is exhausting. I better get a good present.”

“I’ve been trying to give you your gift all night,” he said, his eyes glinting.

“A sub giving his mistress an orgasm is not a gift. A sub should give his mistress orgasms every day that ends in Y.”

“Ah, very true,” he said. “But perhaps I wrapped a forty-thousand-dollar diamond tennis bracelet around my cock?”

“Did you?” she asked, suddenly feeling very Christmassy.

“I did, but for Jules. That was her Christmas gift.”

“That’s a big gift,” Nora said.

“I had to do something big. That fucking asshole Brad Wolfe sent her diamond earrings from Tiffany’s just to piss me off,” Kingsley said.

“Clearly it worked.”

“Of course it worked,” Kingsley said. “But I made her wear the earrings while I flogged her and fucked her. Then I called him and told him all about it.”

“It was your bright idea to fall in love with the most beautiful woman in the world. These things will happen.”

“Don’t blame the victim,” Kingsley said. “It’s a good thing I’m rich. Keeping up with all of Juliette’s suitors is expensive.” While his tone was annoyed, his eyes were shining with pleasure. Spoiling Juliette was his new favorite hobby.

“Did you get Søren anything for Christmas?” she asked.

“Socks,” Kingsley said.

“You got a sadist…socks?”

“When you spend forty grand on your lover at Christmas, someone else is going to get socks. I bought you some, too.”

Kingsley dug into a shopping bag from Saks and tossed her a small red box. Nora opened it and found red-and-white candy-cane striped socks nestled in tissue paper.

“These are very cute,” she said. “I hope you got Søren the same kind.”

“Plain black boring socks,” Kingsley said. “Not that I’ll even see him to give them to him until New Year’s, if then.”

“When did you last talk to him?” she asked.

“Two months ago? Almost?”

“Two months?” Nora said, stunned. She thought Kingsley and Søren talked all the time.

“It was right after my birthday,” Kingsley said. “He was at the club to meet Simone. I nodded at him when I saw them leaving for his dungeon. That was it. How long has it been since you’ve seen him?”

“Three months. He called me, said he needed me. I dropped everything like I always do and went over. It was a good night until your name came up,” she said.

“Moi?”

“Toi,” she said.

“Now you have to tell me the whole story if I’m in it.”

Nora rubbed her forehead. “He beat me and it was lovely. He fucked me and it was lovely. We were in his bed and it was lovely. I said something about how sometimes—not often, for the record—I miss being the one on the receiving end of the flogging. Søren said he was surprised I didn’t let you top me anymore. I said I was your domme now, and we didn’t switch very often. He asked me if I fucked you.”

“Which you do,” Kingsley said.

“Which he knows,” Nora said. “But I said that was between your asshole and my strap-on. And he said something like, ‘You know, he’s only using you to hurt me.’ ”

“Not at all true,” Kingsley said. “I’m using you for pain and sex. And to hurt him.”

“Which we all know,” Nora said. “But instead of saying that to him, I said…something not nice.”

“What did you say…?” Kingsley asked, his lips twitching into a smile though his tone was scolding.

“I said ‘At least I know how to fuck King without putting him in the hospital for three days after I’m done with him.’ ”

Kingsley blinked, slowly, twice.

“I know,” she said. “That was bad.”

“Do you have a death wish?” Kingsley asked. “You really said that to him?”

“Yeah,” she said with a regretful sigh. “And it is true. I do know how to fuck your ass really well.”

“You’re the goddess of sodomy, but that is not the issue,” Kingsley said. “You threw my past with him in his face. That’s my job.”

“He pissed me off,” Nora said, raising her hands in exasperation. “First of all, it’s none of his business what you and I do in private together. Second, it’s none of his business why I top you and you let me. And third…”

“Yes…?”

“He pissed me off!” Nora groaned and then laid her head on the soft squishy chair arm. “After that, I just…I stormed out. That was the last time we talked-slash-fought.” She smiled apologetically at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought up your past with him. That’s between you and him, not me.”

Nora still regretted that fight and her closing argument. It had been a low blow especially since Kingsley’s first time with Søren was his most precious memory, not the sort of thing she ought to be wielding as a weapon. If not for Søren’s sake, than Kingsley’s.

“It’s very sweet, you defending me,” Kingsley said. He bent and kissed her on the forehead. “And it’s even sweeter, you picking me over him.”

“Oh, but I’m not.” She wagged her finger at him. “I’m picking me over him.”

“Do you regret it yet?” Kingsley asked.

“Sometimes. Occasionally. Except…”

“What?”

“When I’m beating you,” she said and gave him her own devil-may-care grin, the one that made male submissives all over the world hard as bricks.

“Good thing I’m here then. And good thing you are. We can pretend we don’t wish we were with him tonight.”

“I don’t,” she said. He raised his eyebrow at her. She was a very good liar, but Kingsley was even better at seeing through her lies. She picked up a pile of Christmas cards from off the side table. The pile wasn’t very thick. A card from her bank. A card from her doctor’s office. An exquisite Joyeux Noël card from Juliette, which Kingsley likely signed under duress. And one other card.

She handed it to Kingsley.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“What’s it look like?”

“A boring Christmas card with a church on the front,” he said. “What is it?”

“It’s a boring Christmas card with a church on the front.” She smiled. “It’s the annual Sacred Heart Christmas card. I got it in the mail a week ago. I am embarrassed by how excited I got when I saw it was from ‘Rev. Marcus Stearns, SJ.’ I knew it was the church’s Christmas card. I knew I got it because I’ve always been on the mailing list. I just thought…I thought maybe he’d write a special message in the card for me. I was shaking when I opened the envelope. I had to sit down.” She waved her hand in front of her chest, miming how her heart fluttered.

Kingsley opened the card.

“Just a signature,” Kingsley said. “His and his secretary’s.”

“Right. Just a signature. And the same boring card a thousand other people got this year. Including his bishop, the mayor of Wakefield, and Pope Benedict.”

“I would have been hurt, too,” Kingsley said.

“My throat’s been hurting ever since I got this card in the mail. But it’s not a cold. I’ve been trying not to cry for a week. Hard on the throat.”

“Elle…” Kingsley said, his tone pitying.

“I did all this decorating for him,” she said. “I have this recurring fantasy that one evening I’ll be in my office writing, I’ll hear a knock on the door, and he’ll be there. And I wanted the house to be beautiful so he’d see it and…”

“He’d realize what a stubborn ass he’s being? He’d magically have a change of heart about you going pro? About you and me?”

“Now that you say it out loud, it does sound incredibly stupid.” She laughed at herself. “I guess I just keep hoping he’ll miss me so much he’ll come around on the idea. I can’t go back to him if he’s going to take that away from me,” Nora said.

Søren wanted her back and would take her back in a heartbeat…but only if she gave up this whole new wild world Kingsley had given her. Her world or Søren? Søren or her world? Should have been an easy choice, especially since for her entire adult life, Søren had been her world. But it wasn’t easy.

“He may never change his mind,” Kingsley said. “You know that, yes?”

“I know,” she said. “But I keep hoping…”

“Moi aussi.” He raised his glass to her in salute. She returned the salute and started to drink her wine, but found she’d lost her taste for it when it came to her lips. She set the glass down on the side table, still full. Kingsley took the card from her lap, the one from Sacred Heart. He opened it, flipped it over and around as if looking for a secret message.

“Maybe he wrote something in invisible ink,” Kingsley said.

He held it up to the lamplight.

“Nope,” she said. “It’s just a card with all the Christmas mass times. Guess when midnight mass starts.”

“Midnight, I would assume.”

“No, 11:30 actually,” Nora said. “They’re having Christmas music for a half hour first. So…right about now,” Nora paused and glanced at the clock, “Søren is in his bedroom at the rectory putting on his clerical shirt and collar. Socks and shoes. Mirror check. Gotta make sure the perfect blond hair is perfect, which it is, of course.”

“Of course,” Kingsley said.

“Then he’s—right this second—striding down the steps, probably adjusting his cuffs as he goes. Jacket on in the kitchen. Short walk from the rectory to the church so he might skip his overcoat. Then again, it’s freezing and it snowed last night so maybe he’s putting it on. Lights off. Out the door. Straight to the church. Soon as he walks in, Diane will be there in her red Christmas dress with her gold tree broach on. She’ll let him know everything is running smoothly. He’ll go to the adoration chapel and pray. The rosary first then whatever novena he’s working on. He’ll pray for all the sick people in his congregation, he’ll pray for the dying, he’ll pray for the dead. He always says a long prayer to St. Dymphna at Christmas. She’s the patron of mentally ill and depressed people who always get screwed over at the holidays. Then he’ll pray a simple Christmas prayer for his congregation.

God of love, Father of all,

The darkness that covered the earth

Has given way to the bright dawn of your Word made flesh.

Make us a people of this light.

Make us faithful to your Word,

That we may bring your life to the waiting world.

Grant this through Christ our Lord,

Amen.

“And that’s it for the chapel,” Nora continued. “At 11:15 he’ll check with Diane again, give her her Christmas bonus, and she’ll cry and hug him and tell him he’s too generous. He’ll make a joke about skimming it all from the collection plate. She’ll kiss his cheek and wish him a Merry Christmas. Then he’ll go to the sacristy where the deacon’s already there waiting. They’ll help each other put on their vestments. And in the background, Søren will hear the choir begin to sing Christmas music. He’ll enter into the sanctuary right after midnight. Old Testament reading. New Testament reading. Gospel reading. Then a homily to make even the Grinch weep and call his mama. And the good Father Stearns will end Mass wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and then it’ll officially be Christmas because he said so.”

Kingsley said nothing, only looked at her long and hard.

“I was there at the rectory a lot of Christmas Eves. We would…we would make love under the tree at his house. Take a quick shower together. He’d leave to go to Midnight Mass, and I’d wait and sneak in late so people wouldn’t see that I was coming from the rectory. I know his routine.”

She knew his routine. She knew his secrets. She knew his needs and wants and desires. And for years she could have sworn she’d known his heart. But she wasn’t sure she knew his heart anymore. Three months since their fight. You could forget anything in three months. Maybe in three months, he’d forgotten he loved her. She knew he hadn’t. Of course he hadn’t.

But what if he had?

“I forget sometimes you weren’t just his lover,” Kingsley said. “In so many ways, you were his wife.”

“I was never his wife,” she said. “Wives get the boring moments. I only got the highlights and the holidays. No mornings, just nights. I can count on two hands how many times we sat at his kitchen table and had morning coffee.”

She wiped another tear and Kingsley put his head on her knee.

“I didn’t want to be alone,” he said.

“Tonight?”

“I understand why Juliette visits her mother on Christmas. We’re the opposite of you and him. She gets me all the boring times. We have coffee together every morning. She has nights and days with me. Her mother needs the special times. The holidays. But I miss her. She’s become so important to me so fast that I forget most of the time how much I love him because I’m so busy loving her. Then as soon as she’s gone…”

“You remember,” Nora said.

“I remember,” Kingsley said, “too many things I want to forget.”

“So, you pouted at me to wrap your Christmas gifts just so you’d have an excuse to come over?”

“Pathétique, non?” he asked.

“If I could have one thing for Christmas, it would be to have coffee with him tomorrow morning. Just coffee in his kitchen. How pathétique is that?”

“Your Christmas wish is more likely to come true than mine,” he said.

“What’s yours?”

“I want to swallow Søren’s come again,” Kingsley said.

Nora narrowed her eyes at him, her lips slightly parted. A rare moment when Nora Sutherlin was rendered speechless.

“For old times’ sake, I mean,” he said.

“This is why I keep you around,” Nora said. She grabbed his earlobe, tugged it hard the way she knew he liked. “You make me laugh and gross me out when I need it most.”

“That is what I’m here for,” he said. “That and to be beaten and fucked.”

Nora grinned into her wine glass, took a small sip when she wanted to guzzle the whole thing down.

“I don’t know why I’m taking this so hard,” she said. “It’s not like this is our first bad Christmas. Our first Christmas…that was probably the worst. Spent all Christmas Eve crying in bed.”

“What happened?” Kingsley asked.

“You don’t remember? That was when I was sixteen,” she said. “I broke all his rules in one night. I went and saw my father—rule broken. I didn’t water the stick I was supposed to water. Another rule broken.”

“You showed up at my house without being invited, fooled around with…who was it?”

“Lachlan,” she said with relish. She’d always liked that guy. “He called me Bite-Size. Then he bit me.”

“Ah, that bastard Aussie who stole my girlfriend,” Kingsley said, nose wrinkling in disgust.

“That was the first night I ever laid eyes on you,” Nora said. “God, you were so arrogant. I can still see you standing there wagging your finger at me. ‘Tsk-tsk, no children allowed.’ ”

“What was I supposed to do? Give you a glass of Pinot and take you to bed with me? I admit I considered it.”

“It would have been much more fun than getting yelled at and dumped.”

“That’s what happened after? He yelled at you?”

“He doesn’t really yell, you know. Until you push him.”

“Oh, I know. I’ve pushed him.”

“Søren took me home in your Rolls. On the way there, he made it very clear he and I had gotten too close too soon, and I was way too young to be part of his life. After that, it was the silent treatment for almost a full year. Except for a couple times I got desperate and snuck over to see him. Christmas was the first time I caved.”

“What happened?” Kingsley asked.

“You really want to know?” she asked. “This was…what? Thirteen years ago. It’s all stupid maudlin teenaged goo.”

“I love your stupid maudlin teenaged goo. All your goo really.”

Nora was glad Kingsley was here to keep her from getting too maudlin.

“Come be my foot warmer,” she said, “and I’ll tell you the story.”

Kingsley obeyed without a word of protest. He set his wine glass down and laid at her feet. Nora slipped her cold toes under his shirt and onto his warm stomach. Ah…bliss…

“My dad had just gotten sentenced the day before,” Nora said. “Christmas Eve Eve. Talk about sadism, sentencing a guy the day before Christmas Eve.”

“Hard day,” Kingsley said.

Nora slowly nodded. “Hard winter.”

She wasn’t Nora Sutherlin yet that day and maybe if she had been, Elle Schreiber would have handled it better, hearing from her mother that her father would be spending the next fifteen years on Rikers. Elle had agreed to testify against him as part of her plea deal when she was up for five counts of grand theft auto. Her testimony could have put him in prison even longer than fifteen years and without chance of parole after seven, so he’d cut a deal. She was sixteen and that meant he wouldn’t be out until she was thirty-one at least. Thirty-one seemed a thousand years away to her. She could only imagine how long it seemed to her dad.

And even worse, Søren had stopped talking to her. He’d cut her off, cut her out. No more visits to his office, standing in the doorway and only putting a toe over the threshold because of “Father Stearns’ Rules” about not letting anyone under the age of seventeen into his office unattended by an adult. So she’d stand there in the doorway, with her toes on but not crossing the threshold as she pelted him with questions. It should have annoyed him—it would have annoyed any normal priest—but it never did because Father S was never a normal priest. But all that was over. No more getting help with her math homework. No more hot cocoa. No more intimate conversations that left her shaking and shivering and smiling for days after.

It was all her fault, though, and she knew it. She’d screwed up, and had no one to blame but herself. She’d knowingly disobeyed his express orders and gone to see her worthless father, which ended in her half-frozen and wandering the streets of the city. Maybe if she could prove to Søren how sorry she was, he’d lift the ban on them being friends? Maybe if she could fix things with the right words or the right Christmas gift? Maybe if he knew how much she loved him, his heart would melt and he’d let her back in?

Worth a shot anyway.

Her mother had decided to work at the hotel on Christmas Eve night for the overtime and the holiday pay. There she was, all alone at midnight, wide-awake and miserable. She couldn’t possibly get any more miserable, could she? Might as well go to church.

Elle got dressed and put her hair into a loose braid, wrapped up in her coat and boots and scarf and walked over to Sacred Heart. She was late. She wanted to be late so she could be alone with Søren after everyone left. While everyone milled around, hugging and kissing and saying Merry Christmas to everyone they knew, Elle snuck up the side stairs and sat in the front pew of the choir loft. Finally, the church cleared out and she was all alone.

Leaning forward, she peeked over the balcony and watched. She waited for ten minutes, then fifteen. After twenty minutes, she thought she’d made a mistake. Maybe he’d gone straight to the rectory. But the small weight in her pocket reminded her of the reason she came so she made herself wait a few more minutes.

Finally, she heard footsteps echoing off the hardwood floors. Søren strode to the front of the church, turned around, and paused. His dark gray eyes scanned the sanctuary, and she bit her bottom lip to stop a smile, her first smile in weeks. He was looking for her. She knew it in her soul. Part of her wanted to call out and wave to him, but she stayed silent and kept watching. Usually it was his eyes on her watching her even when she didn’t know it. For some reason, and from the very moment they’d met, they had some sort of secret understanding between them. She tried explaining it to her friend Jordan late one night when Elle had slept over at her house.

“Elle...he’s a priest. You can’t be in love with a priest.”

“It’s not like that. Not totally. I don’t know, Jordan. I think I belong to him. I think I’m supposed to belong to him.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Jordan said, throwing the covers over her head and sinking down into the pillows. “You’re crazy. People can’t belong to other people. They can only belong to God.”

But Elle knew there was a way to belong to someone, a way that wasn’t like slavery but more like Jordan said, like the way Christians belonged to Jesus. Or the way people in arranged marriages belonged to each other even years before they’d met?

Elle hadn’t tried to explain it to Jordan. Either you got it or you didn’t, and Jordan didn’t.

Søren went to the piano and began to play “O Holy Night.” When she was certain they were alone in the sanctuary, Elle crept down the stairs and walked toward the front of the church. Søren didn’t pause in his playing, but he moved slightly to the side to make room for her on the piano bench. She sat down, her back to the piano.

Closing her eyes, Elle leaned against his shoulder as the last haunting strains of her favorite Christmas song rang out for a melodic eternity before quietly dying.

“It’s a pretty song,” she said, sitting up straight. “But it’s no ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.’ ”

Søren said nothing. Not a word. His fingers continued to tickle the keys and though the sounds were lovely it was no song she recognized, just beautiful noise.

“I got an A on my European History exam,” Elle told him. “Got my report card two days ago. I’m keeping my grades up, but English and History were my only As.”

She waited, hoping and praying for a response, a congratulations, something.

More silence.

“We learned about something cool on the last day of school,” she continued. “Mr. Stone taught us about the Christmas Truce of 1914. You ever heard of it?”

Søren didn’t nod or smile but only continued softly playing.

“Well, it was a World War I thing,” she said. “There were these French soldiers on one side of no man’s land in their trenches, and there were these German soldiers on the other side of no man’s land in their trenches. And then somebody…who knows who? He decided there ought to be a day off fighting the war. I mean, it was Christmas, right? Who fights a war on Christmas Day? So somebody went up and over into no man’s land. And then somebody on the other side did the same. And somebody brought out a soccer ball and the war turned into a France versus Germany soccer game. Mr. Stone showed us this famous picture of the soldiers who were killing each other the day before and would kill each other the day after, talking and lighting each other’s cigarettes. One French soldier even gave a German soldier a haircut. I mean, if they can declare a truce on Christmas Day I thought, maybe you and I could?”

Søren’s fingers stilled on the keys.

Elle smiled as Søren closed the fallboard. Leaning back, she rested her elbows on the fallboard.

Søren raised his hand and tucked a snowy strand of hair behind her ear. She quivered at the touch of his hand and the fingers that lingered meaningfully on her cheek and her ear.

“I’m glad you came to church,” he said so softly she thought at first he was speaking to himself.

“I’m here.”

“I was worried you wouldn’t come. Whatever happens with us…our difficulties should never come between you and God.”

Their difficulties? What a nice way to phrase it.

“God’s not really talking to me either these days so don’t worry about that.”

Søren tilted his head to the side and gazed at her with sympathy.

“How’s your mother?”

Elle shook her head.

“Not doing well?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Is she ever? Dad got sentenced yesterday. Nice of them to do it just before Christmas, right? Mom’s a wreck. She was coherent enough today to say she’d give me money to go buy new clothes for Christmas. Clothes...yay,” Elle said entirely without enthusiasm. She didn’t want new clothes for Christmas. Or money. What she wanted she knew her family couldn’t give her anymore. Only Søren could give her the things she needed. If he would, please, someday, she prayed.

“I’m so sorry, Little One.” Søren crossed his perfect hands in his lap. “I wish I could make that better for you.”

She found it surprisingly easy to smile for him.

“You make everything better for me. Except when you make it worse.”

“It’s Christmas. You aren’t allowed to tell me you hate me today,” he said, turning his body more toward her. “Truce, remember?”

“Right,” she said. “Truce.”

Elle laughed a little, then rolled forward, and collapsed against his chest. The tears came out in near-silent waves as Søren held her with his chin on top of her head. As she cried he whispered to her, something in Danish, his native language. She would have given anything to know what he said to her then. But really it didn’t matter, the words themselves comforted her, the words and the man who spoke them.

She wasn’t even sure why she was crying. She’d known for months her father was getting sentenced in December. Life was better without him anyway. And for years now her mom had been slowly losing it. She’d wanted to be a nun as a girl and had instead fallen for Elle’s dad and abandoned her convent dreams. Now she had a convict for an ex-husband and a daughter with a criminal record. Proof, her mother thought, that marrying and having a child had been against God’s will. Great for Elle’s self-esteem, right? But none of that was news. All the bad stuff had been bad for a long time. For some reason Christmas made it really hard to ignore the bad stuff like she could the rest of the year.

Slowly the tears dried up. She pulled back and swiped at her face. Søren took a black silk handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to her.

“Is it a sin to get snot on a priest’s cassock? If so, I am a big fat sinner.”

“My cassock is in my closet and safe from all harm. And any sins you commit against my jacket are merely venial.”

“Well, that’s good to know. Do you really have a cassock?” she asked, trying to imagine Søren wearing a cassock. She’d only seen those weird ankle-length robe things on the pope on TV and occasionally on a priest visiting from the mission field.

“I do,” Søren said, nodding his regal head. “All Jesuits do.”

“How come you never wear it?”

Søren paused and considered her question. He was the only adult she knew who did that, who took her questions seriously enough to think about them before answering.

“I suppose I find it too distinctive. It’s far better for a parish priest to blend in with his congregation.”

Elle snorted, and Søren’s eyes widened slightly at her reaction.

“You? Blend in with us? Have you seen you? You’re like eight feet tall and gorgeous. You don’t blend in with anybody. You wouldn’t even blend in with other eight-foot-tall gorgeous priests.”

Søren pursed his lips at her.

“Eleanor, haven’t we had this conversation?”

She exhaled noisily.

“Yeah, I know, I’m not supposed to tell you that you’re gorgeous because you’re a priest and that’s inappropriate, and I stopped listening after that because I was imagining what you looked like in jeans. You probably don’t even own a pair of jeans. You probably sleep in your vestments.”

“I do own a pair of jeans, and I sleep in a bed.”

Elle pictured him in his bed. She shouldn’t have done that. Because what did he sleep in? Really? She couldn’t imagine him as a boxer shorts and t-shirts kind of guy like her dad. And he was definitely not the sort to wear old man pajamas.

Naked. He slept naked. She knew it. She’d bet her life on it.

“Wait, what kind of bed?” she asked.

“We shouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said, turning his head, no longer looking at or even near her face. “This is what got us into this mess in the first place.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just really miss you,” she said.

“It’s been far too quiet in the doorway of my office without you,” he said. “I do have something for you. That’s why I’m glad you came.”

“Something? A gift?”

“A very small gift.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a tiny purple velvet drawstring bag. She took it from him and with shaking hands, opened it.

“It’s a saint medal,” she said, staring at the silver coin on the end of the silver chain.

“St. Louise,” he said. “Her feast day is March 15th.”

“My birthday.”

Elle put the necklace and felt the cool metal of the medallion against her skin and near her heart, right where she wanted Søren.

“Thank you,” she said. It was a nice gift, a safe gift, a very Catholic gift. The sort of gift a priest could give to a member of his parish without raising eyebrows. Her gift, however, would raise eyebrows. His specifically.

Still, she’d come all this way in the cold and the dark.

“I have a little gift for you, too,” she said.

“You should not be buying me gifts. Ever.”

“It’s just a stupid thing, okay? And I didn’t buy it. I already had it so take it, please, and don’t laugh at me. Then I’ll leave.”

She dug the tiny wrapped package out of her coat pocket and dropped it onto the fallboard of the piano. He picked it up and carefully—as if it were a bomb—he unwrapped the tissue paper.

“I had a whole set of them as a kid,” she said. “Bears and sheep and tigers and stuff. Dozens of these little plastic animals. I had to dig through like a million boxes in to find that one.”

“A stag?” Søren asked, staring at the small antlered deer in his hand.

She shook her head.

“It’s a hart. Which is also a stag. But I’m calling it a hart. That’s the traditional name for it, I guess. A male red deer. I like puns. It’s a visual pun,” she said, flushing a little. It had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now as soon as she’d given it to him and explained it, she realized how truly stupid the whole idea was. A plastic toy deer? That’s what she gave the smartest, handsomest, weirdest man in the world for Christmas? This man she loved with every cell in her body?

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks,” Søren said, “so panteth my soul after thee…”

Oh. So maybe the hart had been a good idea after all.

Søren still stared at the toy.

“Was that a Psalm?” she asked.

“Psalm 42, verse one,” he said, his eyes looking deep into hers. Something glinted in those dark gray depths, deep as the ocean and just as mysterious…

Elle reached out and stood the stag upright on the center of his palm. The little hart’s proud head and dark eyes stared straight at Søren.

“So, there it is,” Elle said. “I give you my heart.”

Slowly Søren closed his fingers around the tiny hart and pressed his fisted hand to his chest.

“Thank you, Little One,” he said, his voice hardly a whisper.

Elle merely leaned against his shoulder once more.

“Merry Christmas, Søren.”

She heard him take another deep breath through his nose as if he preparing to say something important, maybe even forgive her and end their separation.

But no.

All he said was, “Merry Christmas, Eleanor.”

She got up, put on her coat and started to leave. At the sanctuary door, she stopped and turned around.

“It’s too bad it isn’t Christmas every day,” she said. “Then nobody would have to go back to fighting stupid wars.”

Søren said nothing, merely turned away, still holding her hart in his hand.

Nora blinked and two hot tears rolled down her cheeks. She wiped them away before Kingsley saw them. Nora lifted her feet off his stomach, and he sat up, still at her feet but with his chin on her knee.

“Strawberries,” Kingsley said.

“What? You want strawberries or is that your new safe word?”

“Your hair,” he said. “It smelled like strawberries that night. When Søren breathed in right before he wished you Merry Christmas, he was smelling your hair. He told me the next day he was ashamed of himself for how weak he was at that moment, that he sniffed your hair while you weren’t looking. I remember him telling me your hair smelled like strawberries.”

“That was my shampoo. Suave, strawberry-scented. Only ninety-nine cents a bottle. He told you about that night?”

“He told me he saw you after Mass and talked to you and that he was having a very hard time with the separation from you,” Kingsley said. “He said you looked so beautiful he couldn’t stop himself from smelling your hair.”

Nora laughed. Better to laugh than to cry.

“That whole year we were ‘separated’ or whatever…I thought he hated me. Or worse, that he’d forgotten about me. I’d rather him hate me than forget me.”

Kingsley shook his head. “Forget you? Sometimes he’d show up at my house at two or three in the morning, and I wouldn’t even have to ask why he was there. I’d hear his Ducati in the alley. I’d get up, let him in, and find him whatever pretty masochist was lying around the house for him to ‘vent’ his frustrations on. All because of you.”

“Are you serious?” she asked. “He never told me that.”

“He wouldn’t want you to know how weak you made him feel.”

“But I want to know,” she said.

“Did you know he thought about kidnapping you?”

“What?” Nora was agog.

“I asked him once what he would have done if I hadn’t been able to keep you from going to jail after you stole all those cars. He said he would take you to live with his mother in Denmark. Lucky for him, I’ve smuggled people out of and into various countries before without getting caught. Lucky for you, it didn’t come to that.”

“Lucky for his mother,” Nora said.

“But that bad year you two weren’t talking, he admitted to me under the influence of a very potent Cabernet, that he wished he had packed you off to Denmark.”

“He probably thought his mother would take better care of me than my own mother did.” And he was likely right about that.

“He thought he wouldn’t be so tempted to beat you and fuck you if you were living an ocean away from him and under his mother’s roof. That’s what he was thinking.”

“God,” she said.

“I could tell you many stories about that year,” Kingsley said. “The time I chained his ankle to my bed is a very good one. It was either that or he was going to murder a boy at your church he overheard talking about your tits in glowing terms.”

“I feel like I should tell you I’m sorry,” Nora said, wincing.

“Don’t. It was a terrible year for him. For me?” He pointed at himself. “I was having the time of my life.”

“I had no idea he was feeling so much during that year. He always acted like he had it all under control, meanwhile I was the one falling apart.”

Kingsley blew a little disgusted “pfft.”

“Pfft?” Nora repeated.

“Pfft. Grown men who have their shit together don’t go around sniffing the hair of teenaged girls,” he said. “He’d probably sniff your hair again if he got near you.”

“Fuck, I’d sniff his hair right now if I could,” she said. “I love the way he smells.”

“Frost on pine trees,” Kingsley said.

“Fireplace smoke in the distance.”

“New-fallen snow.”

“The way peppermint hits your nose,” she said, then laughed at herself. “We’re insane.”

“All his fault,” Kingsley said. “We were normal until him.”

“Damn straight we were. Both of us, little angels.”

Kingsley laughed.

“What?” she asked.

“I just noticed something on the card,” he said.

Nora leaned over and watched as he flipped the Sacred Heart card over to the back and pointed out a tiny red deer with antlers under the name of the printing company of the card.

“It’s the card logo,” she said. “Christmas card companies sometimes have reindeer for logos.”

Kingsley licked the tip of his finger and ran it over the deer and the card company name. The ink of the company’s name didn’t smear. The ink of the deer did.

“He drew a ‘hart’ on your card, Maîtresse.”

“God damn,” she said, the knot in her throat now the size of a golf ball. “He did.”

Nora met Kingsley’s eyes, and he smiled at her, proud as a little boy who’d solved a riddle that stumped the grown-ups in his life.

“King, what if he’s not giving me the silent treatment,” Nora said. “What if he thinks I’m giving him the silent treatment? I’ve been waiting for him to talk to me. Maybe he’s been waiting for me to talk to him.”

Once upon a time, thirteen years ago, she had given Søren her “hart” for Christmas. He’d given her his heart, too, this Christmas, and hidden it on her card. He hadn’t forgotten her at all. He hadn’t forgotten her, and he still loved her. And that’s when it happened, that’s when Christmas came to her house. It wasn’t in the tree and it wasn’t in the kitchen and it wasn’t on the mantel and it wasn’t hanging in strands off the eaves or even knocking at her door. It was in that tiny hart on her card. If she’d blinked she would have missed Christmas. Good thing Kingsley had better eyes than she did.

She touched the little hart, its little hand-drawn antlers. As the hart panteth after the water brooks…

Nora slapped her thighs and stood up. “Come on, Captain. We’re going over the wall.”

“What? Where?”

She waved the card in front of his face.

“To Sacred Heart?” Kingsley asked.

“I have to see him. I have to,” she said. “And if we leave now we’ll get there in time for the homily.”

“Then go,” he said.

“Come with me, please?”

Nora could tell Kingsley was tempted but didn’t want to be a third wheel. No matter how many times she told him Søren cared about him as much as he cared about her, Kingsley never could or would let himself believe it.

“Ah, I should go home,” he said. “The dogs miss me when I’m gone at night.”

Nora narrowed her eyes at him. Pathetic excuse.

“I bet you one-thousand dollars I can guess the first two words out of Søren’s mouth when he goes up to give his homily,” she said.

“One-thousand dollars?” Kingsley asked.

“Cash,” she said.

“No bet. It’s ‘Merry Christmas,’ isn’t it?”

“Nope.”

“Then there’s no way you can know. He gives a different Christmas homily every single year, doesn’t he?”

“He does. But I can still guess the first two words he’ll say. You believe me?”

“No.”

“One-thousand dollars says I can.” She scratched him under the chin like a cat. Then he grabbed her finger and held it tight. She knew she had him then. The chance to prove her wrong always got him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll take that bet. You better bring the money.”

“I got the money,” she said. They shook hands on the bet.

“Let’s go to church.”