Christmas from the Heart Read online

  “Call me Andrew. I’m in insurance.”

  “Ah. Maybe you could advise me. What’s the best to have, term or whole life?”

  That was all it took to divert Andrew Berg, thank God. Guy let him talk, nodding between bites of meat loaf—not bad stuff, actually—and asking questions to keep him talking.

  He was expounding the advantages of term insurance for a young man when the doorbell rang. “That’s Bettina,” said Olivia. “She’s dropping off some last-minute entries for the fruitcake competition.”

  “Have her join us for dessert,” said Mr. Berg as Olivia got up.

  “Good idea,” she said, and disappeared.

  A moment later she was back with a petite woman around her age, slim with olive skin and long dark hair, following her. The woman was dressed casually, with a parka over a sweatshirt, jeans and boots, and she carried a small cardboard box.

  “This is my assistant, Bettina Thomas. Bettina, this is Joe Ford. He’s staying with us for a couple of days.”

  Bettina was looking at him assessingly, so Guy explained, “My car died outside of town and the Bergs have taken me in.”

  “Ah,” she said with a nod. But that assessing look remained. He knew what she was thinking as sure as if there was a bubble over her head. Single?

  Yes. Permanently so.

  “It’s nice to meet you,” she said. “Welcome to Pine River. If you have to be stranded there’s no better place.”

  Guy could think of about a hundred better but he smiled and nodded.

  “Sit down,” Mr. Berg offered as Livi set a plate of cookies on the table. “Livi made gumdrop cookies.”

  “Just for a minute,” Bettina said, helping herself to one. “I’ve got to get home.”

  “The demands of motherhood,” Mr. Berg said, nodding wisely.

  “I’ve got to admit, nobody tells you when you announce that you’re pregnant what you’re getting into. I feel like I haven’t slept in a hundred years.”

  “I think it’s time for Aunt Livi to come babysit so you can have a nap,” Livi said, passing the plate of cookies to Guy.

  He took one and bit into it. Olivia Berg knew how to bake. She was obviously a good friend and liked kids. Guy would have been into getting to know her a lot better. If she hadn’t been Olivia Berg.

  “Maybe, after we get through the holidays. Speaking of, I have bad news,” Bettina said, looking suddenly pained.

  “Oh no. What?” asked Livi.

  “We’ve lost one of our fruitcake judges. Jimmy just called. He’s come down with the flu.”

  From the expression on Livi’s face the end of the world must have come. “Oh no,” she groaned, driving her fingers into those honey-colored curls.

  Bettina helped herself to another cookie and passed the plate to Andrew Berg. “Oh yes. He said he tried to call you but you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “I left it in my purse,” said Livi.

  “Well, we’re one judge short for tomorrow.”

  “We have to have three in case of a tie.”

  “You could do it,” Bettina said.

  Livi shook her head. “That wouldn’t look right. Anyway, you know I’ll be too busy overseeing everything.”

  “How about Mr. Berg?” Bettina suggested, looking at Livi’s father.

  “Oh no,” he said. “I’m the organizer’s dad. That wouldn’t look right, either.”

  “Who are we going to get at the last minute?” Livi fretted. “All the other good bakers in town are entered in the contest.” Then her gaze settled on Guy.

  So did her assistant’s.

  He held up both hands. “Oh no. Not me. I’m a stranger. Nobody here even knows me.”

  “Which makes you perfect for the job,” Livi said happily. “You’d be completely unbiased. I know it’s a terrible imposition.”

  It sure was. This woman had no boundaries.

  Obviously, since she’d offered a total stranger a room in her house and was now feeding him dinner. Guilt jabbed Guy’s conscience.

  “It is a fun event,” she added, “and a big fund-raiser for Christmas from the Heart.”

  Naturally, it had to be for frickin’ Christmas from the Heart.

  “It really is a fun party,” Bettina added, as chipper and enthusiastic as her boss. “Everyone in town comes. We have hot cider and cocoa and Christmas cookies and soft pretzels and corn dogs. And live music.”

  Corn dogs. Oh yeah, there was an incentive.

  “So, what do you say?” Livi asked.

  I say let me out of here. Guy smiled weakly. Both women were looking at him, holding their breath. He was trapped. “I guess. But I don’t like fruitcake.” Big understatement. Fruitcake was even grosser than corn dogs.

  “So much the better,” Livi said gleefully. “The entrants will have to work really hard to please you.”

  “This will be interesting,” Bettina predicted.

  No, this was going to be torture.

  8

  Livi rewarded Guy’s altruism with cookies and eggnog ice cream. Her assistant made predictions of all the fun he’d have, took a cookie for the road and left him to the ministrations of the Bergs.

  “How much fruitcake does a judge have to eat?” he asked.

  “Only a bite. And we’ll have sherbet to cleanse your palate.”

  He’d have preferred whiskey but he doubted he’d find that anywhere at the fruitcake competition.

  “I really appreciate you agreeing to help us,” Livi gushed, and her dad smiled approvingly. “It is a popular fund-raiser.”

  “And well supported,” put in her father. “This is a tight-knit community. People here help each other.”

  “If that’s the case, why do you even need Christmas from the Heart?” Guy asked.

  Livi looked at him as if he’d suggested they didn’t need oxygen.

  “It’s not a wealthy community,” Mr. Berg said. “Most of our residents are blue-collar workers commuting to warehouse jobs in Monroe or construction projects wherever they can find them. Some people work up at the ski resorts. Many are unemployed. And we have our share of seniors on a limited income and single moms trying to make ends meet on minimum-wage jobs. Christmas from the Heart fills the gap.”

  “Sounds like you could use some light industry out here,” Guy mused.

  “Or another Amazon,” Livi said. “Meanwhile, we do the best we can to help our residents and the people in the surrounding towns who are struggling.”

  “The fruitcake competition is a big hit, partly because people have a chance to contribute no matter what their income,” Mr. Berg explained. “It was all Livi’s idea,” he added, beaming with pride at his daughter.

  “The grand prize winner gets a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gift card from the grocery store and runners-up each get a fifty-dollar one. In addition to that we have an elf central booth where people can barter services and goods for the new year. So, a handyman may trade a Saturday afternoon of work for a meal baked by one of our seniors. Last year a retired schoolteacher traded a summer of free child care with one of our single moms in exchange for the mom and her daughter weeding her vegetable garden and helping with canning.”

  “How do you raise money for your nonprofit in all this?” Guy wanted to know.

  “Vendors pay for booths, and we have a silent auction. All our local businesses offer goods and services and that usually brings in a nice chunk of money. We also have a giant wooden Christmas box where people put cash donations. Everyone who donates gets a pin that says I gave from the heart. They have a different design each year and people collect them.”

  Oh yeah, sounded like a real collectible. Right up there with baseball cards and vintage comic books. Guy nodded politely.

  “Many of the local businesses write checks and donate them at this,”
added Mr. Berg. “Livi writes their name on a big dry-erase board.”

  There was an honor.

  They chatted a while longer, both father and daughter talking up the merits of the fruitcake torture event and of the nonprofit in general, then Mr. Berg thanked his daughter for the meal, kissed the top of her head and excused himself.

  Guy was ready to scram, too, but his mother had trained him right, so he stayed and helped clear the table.

  “I’m glad you were able to join us,” Livi said as she loaded the dishwasher. “This was good for my father.”

  She bent to load a plate and Guy caught a tantalizing glimpse of cleavage. He stepped away from temptation and moved to the table for more dishes. “How so?”

  “He hasn’t been too social since my mother died. Having to put himself out a little for a stranger, well, for a moment he was almost his old self again.”

  Guy nodded. “I get that. It about killed my mom when my dad died.” It had about killed him, too. “Sometimes you need something to pull you out of yourself.”

  “Or someone,” Livi said.

  He looked out the kitchen window at a backyard covered in snow. A couple of trees stood with bare branches. He wondered what kind of trees they were. Here in the country, where people lived more closely to the land, probably fruit trees. Guy had no complaints about his condo in the city, but there was something about a house and a backyard. A man could play soccer with his kids in a backyard. He could sit under a tree and drink a microbrew and watch the sunset.

  But that wasn’t his life. His life was about keeping a company in the black so other men could have jobs and afford to buy that house with the backyard and the fruit trees. And in the end, that did more to help people than donating to a rinky-dink charity.

  Still, come the next day, he’d go to the fruitcake competition and help decide who deserved a grocery store gift card. And he’d put a hundred in the donation box and get a stupid button to prove that, like everyone else here in Whoville, he, too, had a heart.

  They finished cleaning the kitchen and she offered him more coffee. The sensible part of him advised beating it to his room. There was no point in hanging out with this woman. They were two different people living two different lives. He was already going to be stuck with her the following day. It would be best to go up to his room and start that Grisham novel.

  Before he could take his own sensible advice he heard himself saying, “Sure.” What a dope.

  She refilled the cookie plate and they settled back down at the kitchen table. He took another cookie. Just to be polite. “These are good,” he said, holding it up like some idiot in a food commercial.

  “Thanks. My mom and I used to make them together every Christmas. And gingerbread boys and sugar cookies, too, of course.”

  “The kind shaped like stars and trees with that frosting on them?”

  Livi nodded.

  “My mom used to make those. They were my dad’s favorite. After he died she couldn’t bring herself to do it.”

  “It’s hard to carry on after you’ve lost someone,” Livi said. “My mom was my best friend.”

  She looked like she was going to cry and Guy felt a sudden urge to put an arm around her shoulder. Her settled for “I’m sorry.”

  She gave him a wobbly smile. “I know I’ll see her again in heaven though and that’s a comfort.”

  “It’s still hard for those of us left here on earth,” Guy said. Just a little bitter about his own loss? Yeah, maybe.

  “I imagine you miss your dad as much as I miss my mom.”

  “I do,” he admitted. “But more than that I miss what we never got.”

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “He was talking about retiring in another year, spending more time with the family,” Guy explained. “He worked so hard at the business when we were kids that we didn’t see much of him. He and my brothers and I talked about going to our place in Vail for some skiing. Dad hadn’t been on the slopes in years and he was looking forward to getting back into it. He never got the chance.”

  “That’s sad,” she said softly.

  Guy shrugged. “But that’s life.”

  “I guess the bottom line is you have to live your life right now and not wait for that perfect time in the future to do those things you want to do.” Her brows knit together.

  Those knit brows spoke volumes. “Are you taking your own advice?”

  “Well,” she hedged.

  “What is it you want to do?”

  “I’d like to travel. I really want to see the Eiffel Tower.”

  “So, what’s stopping you?”

  “Money, for one thing.”

  “You can save for it.”

  “That could take a while on what I make,” she said with a rueful smile.

  Ah. The price of doing good. Her salary had to be pitiful. “Have you ever thought of getting a real job?”

  The ill-considered words popped out of his mouth and lay between them like a toxic spill. Where had that come from? The gremlins, of course.

  She stiffened. “I have a real job.”

  “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he lied, and hoped she wouldn’t ask him how he had meant it.

  “My job may not be as prestigious as one in the corporate world and my nonprofit may not be big, but what we do is important and it’s impacting people’s lives.”

  Suddenly it wasn’t so cozy in the kitchen. “Of course,” he said.

  What Guy did with his business was important, and it, too, impacted people’s lives. His brain was working again, and it commanded him to keep that thought to himself. The last thing he needed was to get into a philosophical debate with Olivia Berg. Anyway, that could open the door to more prying questions about his business.

  “And if I have to choose between ever seeing the Eiffel Tower and seeing people’s lives changed for the better I’ll pass on the Eiffel Tower,” she continued.

  “Yeah, absolutely,” he agreed. “I guess I just thought maybe you could find a way to do both. You know, as opposed to either or.” She didn’t look at all mollified. He took a final gulp of his coffee, then stood, pointing in the direction of the doorway. “I’ve, uh, got some work to do. I think I’ll just, uh... Thanks for the dinner,” he finished, and scrammed.

  What a fiasco. He should have listened to his practical self. Lingering in the kitchen with Little Miss Helpful had been a stupid choice. And he was stuck with her the next day, too. Fa-la-la and frickin’ merry Christmas.

  * * *

  Livi poured the last of Joe Ford’s coffee down the drain and stuck the mug in the dishwasher, all the while kicking herself for getting up on her high horse. Way to alienate a possible donor. More than just a donor, she had to admit. She liked Joe Ford, liked talking to him.

  Rather, she had liked talking to him until she blew it. What had she been thinking, anyway?

  She hadn’t. His comment had hit a nerve and she’d simply reacted. And now he’d bolted. They’d been making such progress, too, sharing life experiences. Obviously, they had things in common. Well, not the skiing. Her brother had skied but she’d always been a little afraid of going fast downhill. Still, she liked to cross-country ski—something that was much more affordable. Maybe Joe liked to cross-country, as well. He obviously enjoyed the outdoors. So did she. He’d lost a parent, so had she. He liked cookies. She did, too.

  She leaned against the counter and chewed on her lower lip. He especially liked sugar cookies. She hadn’t baked those since Mom died. Everything else she’d managed—the pies at Thanksgiving, the Christmas decorations, every other cookie. But the frosted sugar cookies, that was a different story.

  She could still see herself as a little girl, perched at the edge of the kitchen table, helping her mother frost and decorate those cookies. The stars got yellow sprinkles, the Santas w
ere trimmed with pink frosting, and the trees, the best of them all, those got a light green frosting and a gentle shake of multicolored sprinkles—“Not too much dear, just enough to look pretty”—and a silver dragée at the top to stand in for a star. Livi always concentrated so hard to make sure that tiny silver ball was placed exactly. “Oh, that’s perfect,” Mom would say, and it described both the cookie and their time together.

  “I don’t think I can do it, Mom,” Livi said.

  Not even for Christmas from the Heart? a voice seemed to whisper.

  Livi took in a deep breath.

  And to bring back a happy memory? To honor those special times and the life we enjoyed together? And to pass on a little of that happiness?

  Passing on happiness, keeping her mother’s memory alive—yes, she should make those sugar cookies. Livi took out the old blue mixing bowl that had been her grandmother’s and then her mother’s. She got out the eggs and butter and flour and sugar and got to work. Half an hour later the kitchen smelled just the way she remembered.

  “I wish you were here in person,” she said as she rolled out another batch of cookies. “But I’ll settle for having you here in spirit.”

  And wouldn’t it be fun if, someday, she had a little girl of her own to bake sugar cookies with?

  Ding, ding, ding, said her biological clock. I’m winding down so you’d better find a sperm donor soon.

  “Yeah, good luck with that,” she muttered.

  Did Joe Ford have a girlfriend?

  And why was she even bothering to speculate about him? She’d be lucky if she even got so much as a dollar from Joe let alone any sperm donation after bitching out on him.

  Don’t think like that, she told herself. You’re making him sugar cookies. Sugar cookies make great olive branches. So maybe she’d get a donation after all.

  Of money. She’d probably have to settle for just money.

  She finished with her baking and got the cookies frosted. And shed only a few tears in the process. She decided to take a few in to her father, who was hiding out in the den with a book.

  “I thought I smelled something good,” he said as she came in. “What have we here?” Then he caught sight of what was on the plate and his smile faltered.