Can’t Fight the Mistletoe

7

Silas claps a hand to the edge of my shoulder. “You know me too well, son. Keep your shorts on, Peggy’s almost here, and then you can head out.”

I’m itching to correct his idiom from shorts to the proper shirt, but I have a feeling he’d explain why his version works better. And with Silas, he’ll make the explanation as inappropriate as possible just to watch me squirm.

“What am I picking up exactly? Is it a delivery or another errand?”

“Like I said, keep your shorts on.”

Motioning toward my dark wash jeans, I retort, “Fully dressed, as you can see.”

Silas shakes his head, then jolts as someone taps on his door three times in rapid succession. His face breaks into the smile he reserves for Peggy as he flings the door wide.

“Right on time,” he says, leaning to press a kiss to the top of his fiancée’s head.

The diminutive woman isn’t alone. My heartrate kicks up as Alessia plants herself in the doorway, the stiffness in her body language communicating an inability to choose between coming inside or fleeing. My money’s on fleeing, so when she takes a hesitant step through the door, I’m happily surprised.

“Are you ready?” Her tone is flat, face expressionless as she crosses both arms and heaves a loud, impatient sigh.

Ah. We’re back to this again. So much for progress.

Then my ears flag on what she said. “Ready?”

“To hit the road?” There goes the classic Alessia Catano eyeroll. “If we leave now, we’ll be back in time for Miracle on 34th Street.”

“We?” I’m an intelligent man most of the time, I swear.

“Santa Fe?” she says, rolling her hand in front of her as she drags out the words in a tone typically reserved for the most clueless of morons.

It’s me. I’m the moron.

That’s when I notice she’s not sporting her usual khakis and Valle Encantado polo. Her hair’s piled on her head in one of those intentionally messy buns women wear that look like they threw it up in seconds but really took fifteen minutes to perfect. She’s wearing a loose button-down with the front casually tucked into a pair of relaxed button-fly jeans that make her legs look a mile long, and a soft leather bag hangs from one arm with a wool coat draped over the top.

What’s the expression Silas used when he saw Peggy for the first time after sixty years? Right—she’s knocked me sideways.

Dislodging my tongue from its trek down my throat, I thumb toward the guest bathroom. “Uh, yeah. Gimme a sec.”

Alessia looks so pretty, I wonder if she had a date planned for later. I grit my teeth against the image of her smiling freely with someone else after the one she gave me last weekend felt like such a reward. Jealousy sours in my gut, but then I remind myself she can’t go on a date if we’re in Santa Fe.

A wicked gleam and Harrison Ford-like grin of my own reflects in the mirror as I wash up. Before I go, I give myself a quick onceover. With any luck, I’ll persuade Alessia to join me for dinner, and she won’t be embarrassed to be seen with me in an untucked white tee under an open flannel shirt.

Funnily enough, we almost match with the thin lines of my flannel in the same yellow gold as her coat. For once I’m glad a parent kept me late, so I didn’t have time to change into the thermal Henley and joggers I intended to wear on the road.

Since no one warned me about Alessia. Intentional? Knowing Silas and Peggy, absolutely.

“That everything?” I ask the devious duo as I return to the living room.

“Here are the addresses,” Peggy says, slipping me a sheet of stationery edged with purple flowers, her precise handwriting in neat lines across the middle.

Alessia swipes the sheet from between my fingers. “You drive, I’ll navigate.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Silas and Peggy wear matching smirks as I spin my keys around one finger and hold the door for Alessia.

“I know what y’all are up to,” I murmur before ducking out the door, pointing two fingers at my eyes and then at them.

Every nerve vibrates with anticipation as Alessia and I stride in sync past the front desk and into the parking lot, but I’m trying to play it cool.

Stuck in my SUV with no one else available, she won’t be able to avoid talking to me. This could be my only chance to smooth over whatever went wrong Saturday night and regain the footing I somehow lost. Or accept defeat and let her go.

I can’t blow it.

She’s smart, though, and we have a long history of her assumptions getting in the way. I’ll have to pivot and try to counteract her animosity without my reliable arsenal of humor and charm, since those are the qualities that set her off most.

Now to figure out how.

Alessia

“No way Gremlins is a Christmas movie!”

I cross my arms and lean against the door, avoiding the nauseating streak of motion out the windows of Danger’s 4Runner as we speed along I-25 near Bernalillo. We returned to our debate from last week with gusto the second our butts hit the seats twenty minutes ago.

He started it.

I will finish it. And win.

“Please,” he scoffs. “You conceded to the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon debate. How is Gremlins different?”

“It just is!” I’m drawing a blank on the many reasons he’s wrong, but I know he is.

While my brain skips around like a hopscotch champion, my road trip companion remains blessedly silent for the next five minutes as Christmas carols play over the radio. His 4Runner predates Bluetooth connectivity, so we’re stuck with the 24/ Christmas radio station. Somebody somewhere is going to hate me for saying this, but if I have to listen to Mariah Carey shriek about what she wants for Christmas one more time, I’m going to stab my eardrums with one of the five thousand straws in Dan’s glovebox.

I said what I said.

Whitney Houston’s (the real queen, if you ask me) soulful rendition of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” comes on, which sparks another topic in my memory. Debating with this man might be my new favorite pastime.

“Okay, you said Grams was a huge Cary Grant fan—” From the driver’s seat, he confirms with an “mm-hmm,” and my heart skips a beat because who would’ve thought Danger Stevens was the kind of guy to sit and watch old movies with his grandmother? “So, I assume you’ve seen The Bishop’s Wife?” At his nod, I continue. “How about the 1996 Denzel and Whitney remake, The Preacher’s Wife?”

“I’ve seen both.”

“Which is better?” Yes, I asked more smugly than a girl who is undecided probably should, but I’m curious whether he has an opinion I can contradict merely on principle.

It’s pathetic how much I enjoy sparring with this man.

He glances at me briefly, then returns his focus to the road shaking his head and grinning.

“What? It’s a good question.”

“An unanswerable one.”

“It’s perfectly answerable. Now choose.”

“Oh no,” he’s shaking his head. “I am not going to say Denzel simply to have you spend the next thirty minutes enumerating the ways Cary made the better angel. Or vice versa, as the case may be.”

Oh, he’s good. I’ll give him that. He’s giving me absolutely nothing to work with. But it’s not as if I can let go and, what, talk about normal subjects? Civilly? We’ve never done that before.

After a brief back-and-forth which ends in a stalemate, the conversation switches to the countless iterations of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Ever the English teacher, Dan retorts with the inevitable “the book was better.”

“Of course, you’d say that.” My eyes roll as predictably as his argument. “I wouldn’t know.”

His slack-jawed expression is priceless. “Never?”

“I haven’t read a single work of fiction since college, and even then, not by choice.”

The man makes a show of rubbing his chest. “That hurts. You’ve caused me actual pain, Alley Cat.”

I can’t help it. My laughter fills the cab.

He glances at me dumbstruck before refixing his gaze through the windshield. The tension ratchets up as the silence drags on.

I’m out of Christmas movies at this point (gasp!), but I’ve been enjoying the easy flow of conversation in what I’d worried would be a tense car ride. I’m not ready for it to end. So…

What do we talk about now?

My life isn’t exactly exciting. Other than work, chatting with Paige, and hanging out with my rabbit, I don’t do much.

I already overshared about my weird relationship with my parents. A huge leap for me. I don’t typically talk about my family. Or anything else uncomfortable, really, except with Audrey. She’s been my only real sounding board since I quit seeing my therapist years ago.

Even my conversations with Paige only go so deep.

I could sneak in a short nap like I used to as a kid when we’d venture into Santa Fe or Taos to play hometown tourist between Dad’s touring gigs. Except that would be rude. Plus, I’m not sure how I feel about Danger Stevens watching me sleep. What if I drool or snore? (Also, why is the habit of full-naming him so hard to break?)

My mind blanks the harder I try to think of a conversation topic, but I eventually land on something.

“You spent a few years in Texas, right?”

He mentioned as much the other night as he reheated those incredibly craveable chicken tenders while I watched in drooling awe. I’ve never been one to freak out about a man who cooks. It’s not as if gender influences one’s ability to prepare food. But there is something vulnerable, intimate, and oh-so-appealing about one person offering another tasty sustenance made with their own two hands.

Goosebumps break out along my arms at the memory.

Also, I’m getting hungry.

“Cold?” He reaches for the temperature controls on the dash.

“A little.” White lies aren’t actual lies, are they?

I notice he hasn’t acknowledged my question. “Texas?”

He drags in a long, slow breath, the kind I do when I need a minute to calm and refocus my tangled thoughts.

“Yeah.”

“Teaching?”

He nods. “Spent half a dozen years teaching at an all-boys private school.”

There’s satisfaction and pride in his tone. I don’t know why I always pictured him teaching in some Dangerous Minds sort of situation. Dead Poets Society fits him so much better.

My cheeks flush at the idea of him as Mr. Stevens, the kind of laidback yet impassioned teacher who inspires his students to stand on their desks and sneak out into the night to recite poetry. It’s pathetic how easily the image forms in my mind’s eye, more so how my heart skips a beat.

Warning lights go off inside my head.

This is neither the time nor the place to resurrect old crushes.

Focus, Alessia.

“What brought you home?”

Danger works his jaw a long minute. The knuckles of his left hand go white on the steering wheel as he stares unblinking ahead. Each passing second brings my nerves closer to a fever pitch. Whatever the reason, it must be bad. No one waits this long unless it’s painful, right?

“Mave’s husband was killed in June.”

My stomach sinks. Emotion floods my system, overwhelming me with waves of feeling.

Mom used to shake her head in frustration at how I’m either completely closed off or achingly empathetic. There’s precious little middle ground. Right now, I’m awash with grief for a man I know nothing about on behalf of a woman I’ve met twice. And for the upheaval such a loss must have cost the man beside me.

What happened? Is Mave okay? From looking at her, you’d never know she was a recent widow… though now that I think about it, there has a been a shadow in her eyes that doesn’t fully dissipate when she smiles.

This man moved home for her. Wow.

So many questions, but only one is safe to ask.

“You gave up a job and a life you must’ve loved to be here for your sister?”

Danger never fails to surprise me. I mean, who does that—upend their entire life for their family? My dad would never. Mom either. Paige might, but would I?

No, I can’t say I would. Not even for Paige. Sure, I’d show up on her doorstep at the first sign she needed me and stay until I knew she was okay, but give up my job and move…

That’s major.

“She needed her family,” he shrugs. “Besides, it wasn’t much of a sacrifice. Things in Texas were… complicated.”

The fingers of his right hand tap a rapid beat on his knee while the rest of his body sits rigid and tense. He reaches out to fiddle with the heater again, then the stereo. My eyes narrow as I continue to study the man beside me from the comfort of my little corner. I’ve got one knee bent with my foot on the seat. It’s comfortable, but my casual position is a tactical move as well.

The vibes he’s putting off are intense. I feel them the same way I experienced such grief a few minutes ago. If I appear comfortable, he might relax, otherwise he'll perceive my questions as a threat. (At least, that’s how my brain works.)

I have so many questions.

His fidgeting is starting to get to me by the time he speaks. “So, uh, how’d you become an activities director?”

His subject change throws me off balance.

We’ve come a long way in the last few weeks, but a handful of light conversations about movies and our families aren’t in the same realm as the soul-baring discussion his level of discomfort implies. So, as desperately as I want to know what happened to Mave’s husband and the real reason he left Texas, letting it slide for now is clearly what he needs.

Instead, I tell him about Nonno and how lost he was after Nonna died. How Dad had to put him in a nursing home, and the way it broke my heart to see my precious grandfather waste away between visits.

“He started spending time with a few of the other residents on his better days. I noticed how much more vibrant he was on days they had something to do besides watch television while waiting to die.” I drop my left foot onto the floorboard and lift my right instead. An hour doesn’t seem like a long car ride, but my tush starts to go dead around the forty-minute mark. “Which is morbid, I know. But realistic.”

He gives one of those you’re not wrong kind of shrugs. I have to say, it’s nice being on the same side of something for once.

“Anyway, around the same time, I realized I’d rather watch movies than make them. But I’m not a great writer, so becoming a critic is out, and a girl’s got to eat and pay rent somehow.”

His soft chuckle warms me through. “How’d you wind up at Valle Encantado instead of your nonno’s nursing home?”

Sadness burns in my eyes as it always does when I think about my grandpa too long.

“He passed away my third semester.”

“What’s your favorite memory with him?” Danger asks, surprising me yet again with his sensitivity.

Dan. Not Danger. He’s trying, so should I.

For the next fifteen minutes, I share my favorite Nonno and Nonna stories. He laughs in the right places, and each time the sound fills me with warmth and light. By the time we arrive at Peter James’s single-story adobe home on the outskirts of northern Santa Fe, I become aware of two sensations at once: my arms ache to wrap around Dan and soak up as much of that warmth and light as possible, and I desperately need a bathroom break.

He opens the door, jolting me from my stupor. More like pulling me, since my mind feels as rubbery and stretchy as taffy on a puller machine. My gaze meets his, and I add lungs to the list of parts functioning poorly today.

I can’t be fantasizing about how it would feel to hug Danger Stevens. I’m still off balance after our moment in his house with that near-kiss we haven’t talked about.

What is happening to me?

And why am I hoping it keeps happening?

Dan

Alessia has a knack with people, and it’s beautiful to behold.

Peter James could’ve given Ebenezer Scrooge a run for his money when he first opened the door, but in no time at all, she had him sending a boy off to procure a turkey for Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim. Except the boy was me, and I procured burritos.

By the time we finished our insanely early dinner, she’d convinced Ms. Peggy’s son to not only come to the wedding but walk his mother down the aisle. I was there, yet I couldn’t tell you how she managed it.

That’s not the craziest part.

Getting to the Elvis impersonator guy’s house was tricky. The GPS kept taking us through nonsensical twists and turns ending in front of a tattoo parlor a few blocks off the historic Plaza. Alessia and I devolved far too quickly into bickering, but before I had a chance to prove to her men sometimes do ask for directions, we were interrupted by a knuckle rap on her window. She eased it open an inch at the sight of a massive, burly dude with the wickedest beard I’ve ever seen.

Me? I would’ve reversed out of the place faster than you can say “gauged ears,” but Alessia simply smiled at the man and said, “I think we’re lost.”

The softspoken man melted into heart eyes (which, dude, I get it) and found the problem in two seconds. I had clicked the street name with drive instead of avenue on the nav. Luckily, the correct address was only a few blocks away, and thanks to Alessia’s knack, we got pulled into a lively conversation with Silas’s friend Terrance for forty-five minutes before leaving with one white sequined jumpsuit in hand.

“Tell Silas we’re even,” the old man chuckled before closing his front door.

Alessia is quiet now that our errands are complete. Resting her head between the window and the headrest, her eyes are closed with a tiny V etched between her brows as she focuses on her breaths. In for three, out for four. I’ve noted this about her over the years—when she’s on, she’s on, but as soon as no one’s looking, it’s like her depleted battery requires a full retreat to recharge.

Some might perceive her as an extrovert with how she engages people in conversation and the effortless way she smiles, treating everyone as old friends. The fact she struggles to be this way around me is part of why I’ve always been so drawn to her. She doesn’t conceal her grumpiness or sass, doesn’t fake a smile to be nice when she doesn’t want to. Alessia is completely herself when I’m around, and I’m honored.

I don’t know why she lets me see her in full introvert recovery mode. Could be the same reason she never bothered to hide her disdain and freely expressed her displeasure for my interactions with other women—she never sought to impress me, never considered me a viable option romantically. This might put off any other man, but with the teasing way my family expresses their love, the back-and-forth between me and Alessia has always felt like a form of affection.

Her silent meditation stretches as I navigate the darkening streets lit by streetlamps and the faintest traces of sunlight reflected in the clouds along the horizon. Our errands are complete, bringing this strange and brief road trip to a close, but I’m not ready to go home. I still need to learn why she raised her walls after our moment last week. Lord knows I’ve tried to give her space, but I don’t want to go back to how we were.

Traffic’s getting tighter the closer we get to the Plaza. Traffic equals people, which is the opposite of what she needs right now.

“Als?” I glance toward the passenger seat, gently shaking her knee.

Her eyes blink open. “Where are we? I thought we were going home.”

“Can you check your phone to see what’s happening at the Plaza? Thought it might be fun to walk around and grab dessert before we head home, but it looks like there’s an event.”

Her frown deepens, but she unlocks her phone, fingers tapping away at the screen. The light at the next intersection turns red, and I brake to stop behind a blue minivan.

“Tonight is Las Posadas.” There’s a wistfulness in her tone that sparks hope she’s willing to spend more time with me.

“I’ve always heard about it, but never been. Have you?”

She shakes her head, dragging her lower lip between her teeth as her gaze bounces over the buildings and pedestrians outside her window.

“We weave through this traffic, hit the interstate, and we’ll be home in an hour.”

Alessia doesn’t answer, and the light changes to green. With another quick glance before I press the gas pedal, I glimpse the indecision in her eyes.

“Or… we can find a place to park and check it out. Grams used to tell stories about it. A couple dressed as Mary and Joseph travel around the Plaza seeking accommodation but are heckled by the devil as each innkeeper refuses them lodging.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard the same, but never made the time.”

A lifted truck pulls away from the curb ahead leaving ample space. I grin, ready to flex my parallel parking skills at the first sign she wants to stay.

“I don’t have any plans tonight,” I venture before considering she may have a Friday night event at the community to oversee. Or date. “Do you need to get home?”

“No, Pam said she’d manage movie night.”

I jut my chin toward the space ahead, praying we’ll get there before someone else takes it. “Stay?”

“Yeah.” She nods with a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “Let’s play tourist.”

My own lips curve into a grin. I was hoping she’d say that.

“Four tries!” Alessia guffaws, slapping her thigh and wheezing with poorly suppressed laughter as I join her on the curb.

My injured ego has me frowning, but the frown’s more playful than I feel because it’s hard to be irritated when she’s this amused. I love the way her hair cascades behind her as she throws her head back in laughter.

“It’s not that funny.”

She raises one eyebrow, lips twitching. “Oh, but it is.”

“I’m normally excellent at parallel parking.”

“I believe you.” She nods solemnly, then snorts at her own straight-faced lie as she ropes a thick scarf around her neck with nimble gloved fingers.