Chapter Four
A few minutes later, safely ensconced in the privacy of Kiersten’s bedroom on the second floor, Rachel began to relax a little bit. She sipped the virgin version of the party punch—some kind of cinnamon cranberry wassail-inspired drink—knowing tonight was not the time to let down her guard. For one thing, she was surrounded by resentful elves, apprehensive reindeer and a few mistrustful shepherds. For another, she had the powerful charm of one hot snowboarder already making her daydream about what would happen if she didn’t pull away from his touch.
So…virgin beverages only. Even if the garnish had been a spiky pine tree branch. Was her host certain that wasn’t lethal? Or maybe she was the only guest who’d been given a balsam sprig for a stirring stick. It was Kiersten who’d retrieved the drink for her, though. The one friend she trusted here tonight.
A couple of antihistamine tablets seemed to have her allergy under control for now, and she’d dispensed with the swizzle stick first thing.
“I’m so sorry about what happened downstairs,” the bride-to-be apologized for the third time in as many minutes. She paced in front of her cheval mirror, laden with fresh white poinsettias. Her wedding dress hung on an antique coat rack to one side of the mirror, a tulle and lace fairy-tale gown that would be breathtaking in photos.
Rachel had already raved over the gown, commending design details and admiring the stitch work, but Kiersten hadn’t been easily sidetracked from her misplaced guilt about the awkward reception at the front door.
“Please don’t think any more about it.” Setting aside the punch on a window ledge overlooking the backyard peopled with friendly blow-up snowmen decorations, Rachel intercepted the bride to halt her pacing. “I’m here to see dresses, remember? Gavin’s going to smooth things over downstairs—” or at least make the crowd less murderous “—and everything will be fine.”
Kiersten met her gaze. Her green crepe sheath dress was a simple, festive choice. No costume needed. “Luke will help him.”
“Perfect.” Rachel couldn’t help a fresh bout of nerves at the thought of seeing him again. Both Gavin and Kiersten assured her he hadn’t held a grudge over their unhappy parting, but Rachel felt more wary seeing him than anyone else. “I didn’t see him when we came in.”
“He must have been in the game room entertaining the younger guests.” Her eyes sparkled with a happy light that seemed infectious in brides. “He was leading the kids in a round of Pin the Nose on Rudolph.”
The bedroom door burst open before Rachel could reply and a pretty brunette stood framed in the archway, her shapeless Grinch costume and slumped posture taking away from her natural attractiveness.
“Is it true she’s back?” the newcomer blurted a second before her eyes skipped to Rachel. Her green Grinchy hat slid sideways on her dark hair as she reared back a step. “It really is you.”
Rachel didn’t recognize the young woman, but she sure understood the tone of her voice implying Rachel wasn’t welcome.
“Hi,” she replied simply. “Have we met?”
By Kiersten’s sharp intake of breath she gathered that wasn’t a cool question. The other woman glared at her.
“Emma Harris.” She stressed her well-known last name. “You were my personal idol before you spurned my brother publicly.”
As soon as she said her name, she could see the ten-year-old girl Emma had been within the heavier features of her grown-up self. She’d been a quiet, unhappy-seeming little girl, but Rachel had enjoyed getting to know her while she’d dated Luke. They’d read stories together and Emma had impressed her at her reading choices—a clever kid so smart that she found it tough to make friends her own age. Her mother had traveled a lot, frequently leaving both her kids alone. The lack of attention hadn’t bothered Luke, but it had hurt Emma.
Not wanting to alienate someone she’d genuinely liked, Rachel took cautious step closer.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Emma.” They’d read Anne of Green Gables together and Emma had been off and running down a path of reading that went on for months afterward. “I didn’t mean to let anyone down. And you were an idol for me in your own way.”
The teen scowled openly while the sounds of the party drifted up through the open door behind her. An older man who really knew how to rock it was singing “Holly Jolly Christmas.”
“You don’t have to invent things to try and make amends.” She glared harder in the way only a sullen teen could. “I know I was just Luke’s dopey kid sister to you.”
“That’s not even close to true.” Rachel ventured closer still. Close enough to see the checkerboards painted on Emma’s fingernails where she folded her arms across her chest. “I always thought it was cool that you had a fearless ability to speak your mind, just like Anne Shirley.”
Would the young woman think the reference too childish? Rachel half held her breath, waiting for the next rebuttal.
Emma looked unsure of herself for a moment before tipping her chin. “I still speak my mind, you know.”
“Clearly,” she acknowledged. “And I think your brother will confirm my side of the story—that I broke up with him long before he proposed.” She huffed out a pent-up sigh from the stress of the evening so far. “I would have never publicly embarrassed him like that. And obviously, it was all for the best since now he’s marrying a woman who makes him ten times happier than I ever could have.”
Emma’s gaze flicked over to Kiersten. “Kiersten is pretty awesome.”
Perhaps seeing her chance to smooth things over, Kiersten reached for a handful of hangers on the coat rack behind her wedding dress.
“Emma, I was just explaining to Rachel our dilemma about the dresses.” The bride laid four bagged gowns on her queen-sized sleigh bed, the satin draping to the floor where a heavy wool rug protected the dark bamboo floor. “Can you shut the door a minute?”
Emma shuffled back to tip the door shut, her green furry costume sagging and rippling as she moved. Rachel stole a sip from her punch glass before joining the pair at the bedside to stare at the bridesmaid attire.
“There’s no dilemma,” Emma explained before Kiersten could continue. “I’m too fat for my dress. End of story.”
Kiersten looked horrified. “That’s not at all—”
Emma plucked the largest gown off the bed. “It’s okay. I’m not offended. I look good in some things, just not the same things as you skinny girls.”
While Kiersten tried to protest, and looked like she wanted to sink through her floorboards, Rachel saw an opportunity to help. Seeing the dress held up in front of Emma’s more generous frame gave her about a million ideas at once.
“This is actually my area of expertise. If I may?” She tucked some of her hair behind her ear before hitching up the plastic to get a better look at the gown. “Kiersten, how important is it to you to have all your bridesmaids match exactly?”
She tried to gauge Emma’s proportions through her costume, reimagining the dress in a more flattering cut.
“Umm. I don’t know?” Kiersten stood beside Rachel, watching her tuck a lace sleeve inside itself to shorten it.
Emma peered down her green belly to where Rachel pulled the red satin over her legs.
“I mean, what if you had all four girls in red satin, but the bodices were a little different on each?” Rachel glanced down at the other outfits on the bed and tried to calculate how much time was left before the wedding.
There was a sewing machine at her mother’s house, she happened to know. She’d learned to sew on the Singer in the attic before she was ten years old. She’d been hooked.
“I’ve seen that in magazines before.” Kiersten appeared excited, her eyes taking on a hopeful sparkle. “I like that idea.”
“Do you?” Rachel turned toward her. “Because we’d have to move fast if you wanted to try it, but I don’t want to rush you into a decision you’re not happy with. It’s your wedding.”
“What would mine look like?” Emma interrupted, her eyes bright with curiosity.
A positive sign.
“I’d get rid of the lace sleeves and use the ribbon from the back to create a halter top with a square neck. Show off your shoulders.” She turned Emma toward the full-length mirror decked with poinsettias to show her what she meant, using the sleeves to re-create the lines of a reimagined top. “I know it’s hard to picture—”
“I think it would be perfect,” Kiersten added, peering into the mirror beside them, their three faces tipped together for a moment.
Almost friendly.
“I can see it,” Emma added, nodding to herself. “But what about the others?”
“Are they all here?” Rachel asked, seeing a way to help Kiersten and also make inroads with her other friends before the wedding. If she could win over just a few others in town, it would go a long way toward making her feel like less of an outcast.
The bride nodded. “Heidi and Diana are downstairs. Should I get them?”
Rachel stepped away from the mirror, keeping hold of Emma’s dress. “That would be great. But before you go, do you have any pins up here? I could start pinning Emma’s dress to prepare for alteration.”
Kiersten was already hustling toward a tiny drawer in the center of a high bureau. “I do.” She withdrew a box and handed it to Rachel. “I’ll go get the other girls.” She stopped at the door, hesitating. “Are you sure it’s not too much for you to do all this?”
“Consider it your wedding gift.” She grinned at her friend. “As for your bridesmaids—” she glanced over her shoulder toward Emma, who was holding her hair up off her neck “—I’m hoping they’ll be kind enough spread the word among their friends that I’m not the worst villain since Scrooge and the Burgermeister.”
Emma snorted a laugh before smothering the sound. Kiersten winked at Rachel before adding, “Deal. I’ll be right back.”
Turning to the groom’s younger sister, Rachel crossed her fingers they were making headway. Hearing the hurt in Emma’s voice earlier—beneath the surly attitude—had reminded Rachel that she played a role in allowing her reputation to be shredded. She could have stayed through that awful summer and defended herself. Shared her side of the story.
But she’d been too hurt by her father’s defection to worry about that at the time.
“If you’re on board,” she said to Emma “you could try on the dress and I’ll start pinning.”
“You know, I wouldn’t even be speaking to you if I didn’t really want a cool dress.” Emma toyed with the heavy zipper on the front of her costume. “So this is kind of sartorial blackmail.”
“But you can thank a lifelong love of reading that I personally helped to nurture for that high-level vocabulary, can’t you?” Rachel tossed the plastic case of pins from one hand to the other, wondering how Gavin was doing downstairs.
Had he been serious about singing with her? She worried she was going to ruin his high standing in the community in the course of one evening.
“Mostly I’m going to agree because I want to look hot at this wedding.” Emma tugged down the zipper on the costume, where she wore a tee and shorts underneath. “Do you think you can make that happen?”
Most women didn’t know that beauty came from confidence, something Emma already possessed. But Rachel would take whatever credit she could to mend her friendship with this young woman.
“I guarantee it.” She popped open her box of pins, and gestured for Emma to get moving. “Pop on the dress and let’s get to work.”
She waited while Emma took the gown into Kiersten’s bathroom, wondering what Gavin would think of her next round of creations when he saw the bridesmaid dresses at the wedding.
A thought that had her realizing she’d committed to staying in Yuletide until then by promising Kiersten she’d work on the gowns. Would the locals leave her in peace to do her sewing? Or would too many Ghosts of Christmas Past, determined to bring up what they saw as Rachel’s misdeeds, visit her mother’s home?
Any answer she might have come up with for that question was drowned out by an outcry from downstairs. An argument, maybe? Rachel crossed quickly to the bedroom door, opened it and turned her head so her ear faced the opening.
Promptly, she heard a new karaoke song begin. The tune was familiar enough. But then the woman singing introduced some revised lyrics.
“Rachel got run over by a reindeer!” the voice crowed gleefully. “Walking out of my house, back to hers…”
Closing the door again, Rachel saw Emma had joined her in eavesdropping.
“Sounds ominous down there,” Emma observed, spinning around in her red lace and satin dress. “Good thing you have me to think about instead of the veiled threats to your life.”
Rachel gulped and wondered if Gavin had overestimated his sway with this crowd. “For a Christmas-themed town, we’ve got some bloodthirsty residents.”
Shrugging, Emma took up a spot in front of the mirror. “Personally, I think their anger is a little misplaced. It was clearly your father who embezzled all that money.”
“I appreciate that.” Circling her model, Rachel remembered why she’d liked Luke’s precocious little sister, even when his parents hadn’t been overly fond of having Rachel around. “And I had no idea my father was a crook until that day. I thought it must be a misunderstanding for weeks afterward.”
It hurt to learn someone you trusted was someone you never really knew at all.
“Were you able to forgive him?” Emma lifted her arms at Rachel’s gestured instruction.
The fabric pulled in all the wrong places and she added a pin where a little extra material would create a smoother look.
“I’m not sure that I have,” Rachel said between a few pins in her teeth. “But I was able to move past it.”
Emma nodded. “Then it’s a good thing you’re here. Because I’m starting to think the rest of the town has been stuck on it for way too long.”
Their gazes met in the mirror and Rachel sensed a possible ally in Luke’s sister. And while she was grateful to have someone on her side, she knew the rest of the town wouldn’t be as easy to win over.
*
In the Garretts’ den, a few doors down from the main gathering area of the bridal party welcome dinner, Gavin lined up the bull’s-eye on the dartboard for his next shot. He’d retreated here with Luke shortly after his tense conversation with the bride’s mother. Katie Garrett had been unimpressed by his assurances that Rachel wasn’t in town to cause trouble, but she’d at least given up trying to throw her out of the house.
Luke had been only too happy to take a break from the Christmas mayhem, suggesting a round of darts that had turned into three. No doubt they’d need to return to the party soon to mingle, but the guests seemed entertained by the games and karaoke. A screechy rendition of “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” in the background might be tough on the ears, but the singer was obviously enjoying her two minutes of fame as she ad-libbed lyrics to stoke the crowd.
“This one’s for you, Yuletide!” she shouted over the microphone before the chorus.
It spoke to the strength of the party cocktails that the living room crowd went wild.
Gavin arced back his arm to make his throw.
“So are you two dating now?” Luke asked from where he sat on the front of a big oak desk.
Gavin’s shot missed the target.
“What happened to the ‘no talking while in the backswing’ rules?” he asked, his natural competitiveness extending to games of all kinds. He couldn’t miss one more if he wanted a chance to win.
“It’s not golf, dude,” Luke reminded him, levering himself off the desk to peer critically at the board. “And we’re just seeing who goes first.”
The groom wore a top hat with a sprig of mistletoe in the brim, the Bob Cratchit look a smart nod to the holiday theme without lugging around a set of antlers all night.
“But it’s a tiebreaker round,” Gavin argued. “It’s go time.”
Although, in all fairness, he hadn’t expected a question about Rachel Chambers to knock him off his game quite so much. Good thing he hadn’t been on a snowboard run or he would have wound up head first in a drift for the first time in a whole lot of years.
Luke’s assessing stare moved from the board to Gavin. “So maybe you’d better answer my question before you take any more turns.”
Built like a rugby player, Luke Harris had a quiet way about him that intimidated some people. Gavin had been scrapping with him since they were pre-teens though, so the flexing jaw and brooding scowl didn’t work on him.
“We’re not dating,” Gavin informed him, picking up a bottle of spring water off the sofa table full that was of snowman knickknacks and sprinkled with fake snow. “But I have to wonder why it matters so much to a man getting married to someone else in a few days.”
Luke frowned while Gavin guzzled down the water. The stress of this night called for a beer, but he was too deep in training to make indiscriminate choices about what he put into his body. He wasn’t eighteen anymore.
“Just what are you implying?” Luke’s dark eyebrows furrowed.
“Only that your old grudge against Rachel makes it look like you care. When obviously, you don’t.” He shrugged, setting aside the water bottle and stepping away from the taped line on the floor that was the official spot to stand when throwing darts.
“Of course I don’t have a grudge.” Luke huffed out an exasperated sigh before he tipped his top hat back and scratched his forehead. “Hell, you know that. But I still don’t trust her.”
Gavin’s eyes went to the open door to the hallway, making sure they were alone as a man took the karaoke microphone—the bride’s father, he guessed—crooning about chestnuts roasting over an open fire. The guy was pretty good.
“What have you got against Rachel?” Gavin kept his voice low anyway, wondering what his date was doing right now. He hated leaving her side after the openly hostile greeting they’d received. “You admitted to me a long time ago that she broke up with you before you proposed. What did she do so wrong?”
If even Luke still held a grudge, how would Gavin ever help Rachel make peace with anyone in Yuletide? If he wasn’t careful, he’d lose any influence he had with the town council and his idea for the fundraiser would never get off the ground.
Let alone approval for all the changes he wanted to make on the Jingle Elf house.
Luke shoved his hat back down into place. “I never told anyone this except for Rachel, but I asked her father for permission to marry her ahead of time. And after Chris Chambers wished me well and told me that I had his blessing, I told him what I was planning—the whole skywriting thing in front of the town.”
Gavin’s thoughts rushed to fill in what that meant.
“You figure he timed his departure to coincide with a day when everyone would be distracted?” he guessed.
“Right.” Luke nodded, scraping his dart off the desk and passing it from hand to hand like a hot potato. “And despite the proposal and all the drama of that day when the locals were putting Rachel on the spot, asking her where she’d been or if she’d said yes, she never once sought out her father?”
Gavin shook his head, unable to make the leap in his friend’s logic. “I don’t follow. So what?”
“She was only eighteen and all of Yuletide was demanding answers from her about why she skipped the parade and why she wouldn’t marry me. Wouldn’t it have made sense to call in her father—affable Chris Chambers, the founder of Yuletide and everyone’s favorite perennial Santa—to run interference for her?” Luke quit tossing the dart back and forth. He met Gavin’s gaze with an unblinking stare. “I’ve always wondered if her dad warned her he was leaving and she knew perfectly well he was already long gone by then. She could have been covering for him.”
“Impossible.” Although even as he said it, he wondered if he was quick to defend her because it was a reflex, or because he truly believed in her. “The cops questioned her—”
Was he still letting an attraction to Rachel overrule common sense? It made him wary that everyone else suspected her of something.
“We don’t know how much they asked her though. They were following the money. And I’m sure she didn’t know he was taking those town funds until afterward.” Luke flicked the fins of the dart with his finger. “But she could have known he was leaving and did him a favor by not calling attention to him that day. She certainly couldn’t have helped him any more if she tried.”
That last part was true enough. But none of the rest.
“No.” Gavin didn’t buy it. “You ended up helping him far more than she did. Chris Chambers saw a good time to leave and he took it. Your proposal was the perfect cover.”
“Maybe.” Luke moved to take his next shot while the party outside suddenly quieted. “I just know she and her mother sure never suffered financially afterward. I’d have a care about how close you let Rachel get to you, Gav.”
“You’re way off base,” Gavin told him as he wandered toward the open door to the hallway, wondering what was going on in the living room. “She didn’t sell you out to the town that day; she was unwilling to make things uncomfortable for you.”
That said a hell of a lot about her character in his book. He had always seen something special in her—even back when she’d been dating Luke and Gavin had forced himself to stay away. He hadn’t been the right kind of guy for her then and he sure wasn’t the right kind of man for her now with a career on the other side of the globe. But the Rachel he remembered had always possessed a gift for making people feel good about themselves. For making the world around her a little brighter. It bugged him to think she’d stifled that side of herself since then. Yuletide needed more of that playful spirit.
It also bugged him that Luke didn’t bother answering him. He was too busy looking over Gavin’s shoulder toward the living room to see why the party had gone silent.
Surprise, surprise.
Rachel was coming down the stairs with Kiersten, Emma and two of the other bridesmaids behind her.
All eyes turned toward her, the party going quiet. Quieter.
Dead silent.
One by one, the bridesmaids peeled away.
There was no way he was going to let his date stand there alone with most of Yuletide glaring up at her. He glanced over at the vacated karaoke stage heaped with baskets of feather boas, tiaras and big sunglasses for the aspiring stars. He spotted a beat-up guitar in the corner and a game plan came together.
Gavin strode to the bottom of the stairs and held out a hand to his descending date. He’d been apart from her for only an hour, but he’d forgotten how beautiful she looked tonight in her red dress and her Ugly Christmas Sweater Vest. She held her head high, dark hair shining in the warm glow of a pine-bough-laden chandelier.
“Looks like the stage is all ours,” he announced, never one to shy away from a moment in the spotlight. Even if this moment cost him any sway he had with the townspeople. “Time to entertain this rapt crowd with a holiday duet.”