The Magical Christmas Cat

"I'll go with you." Ian stood up.



"No. No, you won't." Bree grabbed her skirt off the floor and stepped into it.



"Why not?" He gave her a wounded look.



"Because I just want to talk to my sister alone." She yanked off her T-shirt and pulled a turtleneck on. "Is there anything else about this Darius and his crappy offer that you need to tell me?"



"Just that he wants to close on January 1 and he wants you out by February 1."



Fresh tears filled her eyes, and these actually spilled up and over and slid down her cheeks. "Are you kidding me? What a total bastard."



"He's just a businessman, Bree. It's nothing personal."



She could not believe he was coldhearted enough to say something so callous. "Not personal? Not personal! This is my family home, Ian. I've been manipulated into a corner and I'm going to lose everything and you're acting like it's not a big deal. Oh my God. Just get out of my house. Now. Or I will scream, and I am seriously not playing this time." In fact, she felt like she might just start spontaneously screaming regardless of whether he left or not.



"Bree . . . calm down. We'll figure this out. I'll loan you the money."



He reached for her, but Bree dodged him. She



couldn't stand the thought of him touching her, and she really, really wanted to be alone so she could break down in private. She hated feeling vulnerable, hated feeling like she was being patronized, hated worrying and wondering if he had manipulated her all along.



"I don't want your damn money. I want you out of my house." She was crying for real now, and it pissed her off.



Ian tried again to touch her, but she just threw his pants at him, hitting him in the face. "Get. Out."



Maybe she was being totally irrational, but she was overwhelmed and hurt and panicked. She wanted to be alone to think, and he was not listening to her or respecting that, which said volumes about him.



"You don't mean that," he said, pulling his pants off his head.



Hello. "Yes, I do. Leave."



He stood there for a minute, and Bree stared him down, her heart pounding and her palms sweaty. His jaw was locked, his shoulders tense.



Finally, he said, "Okay. If that's what you want."



He tried to step into his jeans and tripped over Akasha. "Damn it, this fucking cat is always under my feet."



Bree gasped and bent over to grab her cat. "Do not swear at my cat."



Ian rolled his eyes. "I wasn't swearing at the cat. I was swearing about the cat."



She bit her tongue before she said something



utterly childish. Instead, she just turned and walked out the door.



"Bree!" Ian called after her. "Please, don't do this.



We need to talk. We can figure this out."



Except that at the moment she just didn't want to.



Chapter 7



Bree sat in her living room in front of the fireplace the next day, her Yule log resting on the grate, red candles all around it. She felt much calmer than she had the day before. Discussing the bleak situation with Charlotte and Will had helped. The tax bill was a huge problem, there was no doubt about it. Her sister and her brother-in-law had echoed Ian's suggestions for how to handle paying the tax bill, but somehow coming from them the logic was way less irritating.



She felt bad about the way she had handled the situation with him. She was fairly certain she had overreacted, but she had just been so blindsided by the horror of potentially losing her house that she had lashed out at Ian. He had been an easy target, and she wasn't necessarily proud of that. But she didn't really know him well at all, and she had been falling for him.



Hard. And that had scared her. So maybe she had found a reason to pull the plug. Which made her seriously annoyed with herself.



She was the one who always professed to believe in signs, to believe in destiny, to believe in her own empathetic ability.



Yet she had ignored all of those and reacted with fear and mistrust.



There was, or had been, something special growing between her and Ian, regardless of how short a time they'd known each other. She had been dreaming of him for a year, and she truly, genuinely enjoyed his company. When she was with him, she felt an ease and a comfort that she had never had with any other man.



Yet she'd thrown his jeans at him and tossed him out. Granted, he still had a little explaining to do as to why he hadn't tried to talk his client out of stealing her house from under her, but Bree understood that to a certain extent, Ian's hands were tied. She had reacted with pure emotion and now Ian was probably back in Chicago and she would never know the fulfillment of what they might have been together.



It sucked, basically. So Bree wanted to burn her log in solitude and ask her grandmother for guidance. She wanted to bring peace and more logic to her life in the new year. She wanted to stop acting first and thinking only later, and she needed to accept whatever was going to happen with the house. She needed to make a decision and be comfortable with it.



Closing her eyes, she visualized her desires, saw them as words and pictures in her mind. Peace.



Answers. Ian.



Then she opened her eyes, lit her candles, and spoke softly, "As you burn, this spell's set free; As I will so mote it be."



An hour later, Bree stood up from her fireplace and blew out the half-burned candles. She knew what she had to do. She didn't like it, but it was the option that made the most sense, and she was at peace with it.



She was going to have to sell her house to Darius Damiano. She couldn't ask anyone to lend her that kind of money, even if they'd had it, and she couldn't afford a loan. She had to let the house go, and somehow in her meditations, she'd felt in her heart that her grandmother was telling her it was okay to do the reasonable thing. That she understood.



So Bree went to her computer, found a phone



number for the heiress turned real-estate agent, Amanda Delmar Tucker, and gave her a call on her cell phone. Amanda answered right away, and Bree explained to her the situation.



"So, I need to find a place to live, Amanda. Either a rental house or if there's something decent available to buy, I'd be interested."



"No problem, Bree. We'll fix this for you. I do actually know of one property for sale that you might be interested in. It's over on Evergreen Drive, and it's a little 1920s Victorian. Sort of like a mini version of your house, and it's been empty for a while since the owner died and the kids have taken a year to decide what to do with it."



Evergreen Drive. That struck Bree as fortuitous.



Evergreens symbolized eternal life since they never went completely dormant during the winter. Bree could use any sign she could get because she was still feeling a little shell-shocked from the whole situation.



"So when can we see it? I don't have a lot of time. The buyer wants me out by February 1."



"We should be able to see it tomorrow since it's empty, as long as you don't mind that I'll have my monkeys, aka children, with me. Today was Piper's last day of school before Christmas break, and Logan lives on my hip since he's only six months old. I don't think Danny will be able to stay home with them on such short notice."



"I don't mind. You know I've always thought Piper was a great kid. I'll bring a book for her from the library to compensate her for having to go house hunting on her first day of break."



"She'd love that. And I have to say that I'm damn curious why Darius Damiano wants your house so badly that he was willing to dig through tax records. I know Darius from my clubbing days in Chicago, and he never struck me as mercenary. I'm really sorry he's doing this to you, Bree. I know what that house means to you, and your sisters, too."



Bree swore she wouldn't cry, but her eyes did tear up. "Thanks, Amanda. I'm trying to tell myself that there is a positive reason for all of this, I just can't see what it is yet."



"Sometimes things just suck, you know."



That made Bree give a watery laugh. "That's true."



"And not to change the subject—okay, I am totally changing the subject—but there is a rumor running around town that you're shagging my lawyer. Please tell me that it's true."



She should have known that the Cuttersville rumor mill would be grinding out the news about her and Ian in no time. "It's sort of true. Ian and I spent the day together yesterday, but then he told me about Damiano's 'offer,' which basically forced me to have to sell my house, and I thought he bore some culpability, so I sort of lost it on him."



"Oh, I doubt Ian had anything to do with it at all.



He was just acting under the direction of his client. Ian is a really good guy under all the button-up shirts."



Somehow Bree suspected that was the truth.



"So did you sleep with him before you kicked him to the curb?"



Leave it to Amanda to just ask straight out what she was thinking. And leave it to Bree to tell the truth.



"Yes. Twice."



"Ooohh, ma cherie, that is tres magnifique." Amanda sounded downright gleeful.



Bree felt the same when she thought back to the feel of Ian inside her. "But then I freaked out on him and threw his jeans in his face and kicked him out."



Amanda gave a short laugh. "Well, that's easy enough to fix, if you want to."



Bree knew she wanted to fix it. Or at least hear Ian's side of the story. "It's too late, Amanda. He went back to Chicago." She was sure of it.



Ian pulled into the driveway of the house that was for sale and parked his car to wait for the real-estate agent. He considered it a good sign that the listing agent was willing to show him the house on such short notice, and the price was unbelievably low. Ian could afford it easily and still maintain his condo in Chicago.



He was very attracted to the idea of having a house in the country, one so close to Bree. Maybe if he was around town, they could fix the rift between them, and God knew, he wanted that more than he wanted any piece of property.



It had been an accident that had led him to the house. After leaving Bree's house two nights earlier, he had taken a wrong turn in the dark and wound up in a part of town he had never seen. He'd turned around in the driveway of this house and seen the FOR SALE sign.