One Charmed Christmas Read online

  She was reluctantly moving toward the closet to get her coat when her sister called. “Are you working?” Sierra asked.

  She usually worked straight through lunch, eating an apple (an apple a day and all that) and some yogurt (probiotics, good for the digestion) while she surfed the internet on behalf of her clients. Today she’d gotten done early and once she’d braved Costco she was going to curl up on her couch with a cup of rooibos tea and stream a Hallmark movie.

  “Just finished,” she said. “You on your lunch break?”

  “Yeah. Thought you might have a minute to talk.”

  A minute to talk. Obviously about how Sierra’s plans for the night before had gone. There wasn’t any excitement in Sierra’s voice. That wasn’t a good sign.

  “Sure,” Sophie said cautiously. “What’s up?”

  “Murder.”

  “Oh, no. Mark didn’t like his Christmas surprise?” How could he not?

  “He can’t go.”

  “Can’t go? Why not? Is the Grinch holding him for ransom?”

  “He says he doesn’t have enough vacation time left and, anyway, he’s swamped.”

  Sophie frowned in disgust. Really, Mark was such a waste of man sometimes. “Why can’t he, like, talk to his boss, borrow from next year’s vacation time or something?”

  Could you do that? Sophie had never been Miss Corporate America. Before she turned her shopping passion into a business, her jobs had been the kind that involved plates of food and tips. So what did she know?

  “I don’t know. I talked to his boss months ago, told her what I was planning. She said she’d be fine with it.”

  “Maybe his boss forgot about your conversation and needs him. Maybe he really does have too much work to do.”

  “Or maybe he just doesn’t want to go with me.” Sierra’s voice was threaded with insecurity.

  “What man in his right mind wouldn’t be working every angle to go on a glam holiday cruise? With his wife,” Sophie hastily added.

  “Mine, I guess. I mean, I know things haven’t exactly been perfect these last few months, especially with him working so much, but we still love each other.”

  Correction: they both loved Mark.

  This conversation was going to take a while. Sophie took a bottle of juice out of the fridge and settled on her living room couch, put her feet on the coffee table and looked out the window. Her studio apartment had a great view...of the apartment across the street from it. That was what you got when you lived in Seattle and worked not at Amazon.

  “I’m sorry, Sissy,” she said. Sorry your man is turning out to be such a subpar husband.

  Mark had a selfish streak that had been widening over the last four years. He was constantly frustrating Sierra by blowing their budget on expensive toys—a new car, that fancy watch he’d just had to have, pricey tickets to football games, which he attended with his buddies, a bigger and better TV. Sierra, the budget-conscious one, had tried to rein him in, but they were now five years into their marriage and the reins were pretty much broken.

  Which made it all the more mystifying why he wasn’t moving heaven and earth to take this trip. It should have appealed to him, considering his family’s German roots and his love of extravagance. Sierra had been paying for the cruise for months.

  “I swear if I wasn’t such a good wife I’d poison him,” Sierra said, the insecurity replaced with anger.

  “Well, there you go. He senses danger and he’s afraid to be alone with you in a stateroom,” Sophie teased in an effort to lighten the moment.

  “He’s afraid to be alone with me in the bedroom, for sure,” Sierra grumbled. “Afraid I’ll poke a hole in his condom.”

  “TMI. Pleeease.”

  “Sorry,” Sierra muttered.

  “You guys talked about this stuff before you got married. Didn’t he say he wanted kids, or am I misremembering?” Sophie took a drink of her juice. Orange juice. A little extra vitamin C never hurt.

  “Yeah, eventually. But I’m thirty-four and he’s thirty-five. Eventually is here.”

  “You still have time. Thirty-four’s not that old.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, it’s not.” If thirty-four was old, then thirty was middle-aged, and Sophie wasn’t ready for that. “I’m sure you can convince him to change his mind.”

  “I’ve been trying, believe me. He thinks we can’t afford a baby.”

  Maybe not, with the way he liked to spend money. Poor Sierra.

  “It seems like we’ve been arguing so much lately. I was really looking forward to us getting away. I thought he was going to love this.”

  Sophie knew that Sierra had been excited to present her husband with the gift of a Christmas cruise the night before. She’d planned to make a recipe for Rouladen, a German dish she’d found online, and then serve him German chocolate cake for dessert as a warm-up for the big moment. She’d been so sure that this cruise was just what they needed to get back that honeymoon high.

  “Not that things are that bad,” she insisted. “But we need more time together. We need to get on the same page.”

  Sophie fumbled around for the right words. “Maybe he was just shocked. He needs time to process, figure out how to make it work.” Lame.

  “He should have jumped at this.” Sierra’s voice began to wobble.

  “What happened when you gave him the envelope?” Sophie asked.

  “He stared at it and asked, ‘What’s this?’ Like I’d given him a raw onion or something.”

  The rat. “That’s all he said?”

  “No. He said he was really sorry. We can do something next summer. Blah, blah.”

  Sierra let out a sigh. “Looks like this wasn’t one of my better ideas.”

  It seemed that, lately, Sierra and Mark spent more time apart than they did together. He did have to work long hours. The price of success.

  If you asked Sophie, it was priced too high. She loved her work—what was not to love about shopping for people?—but she also loved hanging out with family and friends. You had to make time for that. She could have understood Mark’s long hours better if he owned his own business or was doing something he was passionate about, but from what she could tell he was only a cog in the corporate wheel, working for a paycheck he could blow.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  “Throw out the leftover Rouladen.”

  “No, I mean about the trip.”

  “I’m going. I paid for this and I’m going. I can take the time off.”

  “You’re gonna go without him?”

  That sure didn’t seem like a good idea.

  “He said I should since I already spent the money. He felt bad that he can’t come with me and he didn’t want the trip to be wasted. In fact, he even suggested I take you with me.”

  Very noble. Except Mark wasn’t that noble and his offer made Sophie suspicious. Did he have some selfish hidden agenda? Did he welcome the idea of a week away from his wife?

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said. “I mean, you guys are already having problems.”

  There was a moment of silence. “I know,” her sister said in a small voice. “I thought this would be good for us. I’d been hoping all morning he’d text me that he got the time off, after all. I finally texted him.”

  Having to nag her husband to go on a trip with her. This was sick and wrong.

  “He said he really can’t take off. My surprise sure backfired.”

  “I’m so sorry, Sissy.”

  There was a lesson in this somewhere, like never spend a small fortune on a trip you didn’t plan together. At least, not if you were married to Mark.

  There was another moment of silence, then Sierra said, “Maybe he’s seeing someone.”

  Gaack! “Then you definitely shouldn’
t go!”

  “Like staying home would stop him? A man can always find ways to cheat. Anyway, he’s always working. When would he get the time?”

  Sophie thought of the old saying you always find time for what you really want to do. Mark was selfish, but surely he wasn’t downright evil.

  “Maybe we need this time apart,” Sierra reasoned. “Maybe it will make us both realize how much we love each other.”

  Or how much he doesn’t love you. Sophie frowned and set aside her juice, which suddenly wasn’t sitting so well on her stomach.

  The diagnosis for this tummy trouble was easy. She worried about her big sister. Sierra was a typical firstborn—a real caregiver, watching over everyone, including Sophie.

  Sophie still had the card Sierra had made her when she was nine and had to spend the night in the hospital. The angel on the front showed the talent of a young, budding artist. Inside Sierra had written, I’ll watch over you. She’d kept that promise, telling Sophie stories at night to distract her when she was scared that the invisible monster that had sent her to the hospital would come back and sit on her chest so she couldn’t breathe. In high school she’d gotten Sophie through algebra and geometry, shared makeup tips and clothes.

  She still watched out for her sister and everyone else, as well. She was always the first to offer to help their grandma decorate the Christmas tree and bullied Sophie and their brother, Drew, into putting up the Christmas lights for their parents every year. When Mark’s mom had broken her ankle the year before it had been Sierra who took her to her doctor appointments and physical therapy. She loved with all her heart. Sophie didn’t want to see that big heart of hers get stomped on.

  “Anyway, I was stupid and didn’t get trip insurance.”

  “You didn’t get trip insurance?” Sophie repeated, shocked.

  “I know. I should have. I’d just been so sure... Anyway, if I don’t go I’ll have spent all that money for nothing,” Sierra continued. “So I’m going.” She might as well have added, So there. “Want to come with?”

  “On a cruise.”

  It had all sounded so glamorous and romantic when her sister first told Sophie what she was planning; she’d actually been a little jealous. But not for long, not after she remembered all those poor people quarantined on those cruise ships.

  “It’ll be fun.”

  “Yeah, until some disease breaks out.”

  “Cruise lines are being extra cautious now. You could be safer on a boat than you are here at home. Think of it—quaint German villages, beautiful scenery, sister adventures. Shopping.”

  The magic word.

  “It’s all paid for.”

  More magic words.

  “I don’t want to go by myself,” Sierra confessed. “It’d be too depressing.”

  “That would be hard. You’d look like the loser of the high seas.”

  “We won’t be at sea. We’ll be on a river.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.”

  “It really does look like fun and I know we’d have a good time. So what do you say?”

  “Um.”

  “Come on. The only time you’ve used your passport was when we did that family trip to Canada. Don’t you want another stamp in it?”

  Actually, she did. And a weeklong cruise with her sister would be a fabulous way to start the holidays.

  Um finally turned to yes and Sierra ended the call sounding happy instead of miserable. Sophie, too, was feeling a little swell of excitement. She and her sister always had fun together and she was sure they’d both enjoy this trip. Well, as long as neither of them got sick.

  She went to Costco to shop for her friend. While she was there she bought a giant bottle of Airborne gummies. And on her way home she stopped and bought pills to prevent seasickness, several bottles of hand sanitizer (even though she already had three in her bathroom cabinet) and a mask to wear on the plane. Okay, let the fun begin.

  2

  Trevor March and his brother, Kurt, sat in Pok Pok, the only restaurant to go to in Portland, Oregon, for great Thai food. It was also where they’d been meeting every Black Friday evening since their mom died five years earlier.

  Now it was a tradition, and about the only one they had left. Dad had moved out when they were in their teens and started some new traditions of his own with the big-boobed, small-brained homewrecker down the street. Dad never got invited to Pok Pok.

  Kurt stuffed a piece of kai yaang in his mouth. “Come on, change your mind. There’s plenty of room in my stateroom. It’ll be good bro time.”

  Trevor pointed his chopsticks at his brother. “You’re not looking for bro time, you ass. You’re looking for a sucker to help you babysit.”

  “Huh-uh. I just want to be able to talk to someone once in a while whose frontal lobe has fully developed. Of course, in your case, who knows?”

  “I thought Misty was going with you.”

  “Can’t. Her grandma decided to come out for a visit the same time as the cruise and she has to help entertain her. That means I’m stuck on my own with an extra plane ticket.”

  “With a dozen college kids who’ll get lost, get drunk and make trouble or fall off the boat. Yeah, sign me up.”

  “Come on, man. I need help.”

  “You sure do. What were you thinking?”

  “That it would be a good experience for my German class. Easier than renting a bus, and someone else will be on hand to help with the head count.”

  Trevor shook his head. “You’re lucky all twenty-five didn’t decide to go.” He signaled their waitress, who he’d been enjoying flirting with, and she hustled over. “I think I need another drink,” he told her.

  “Whatever you want,” she said, and hurried off to fetch it.

  Trevor grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. She didn’t mean it that way,” Kurt said.

  “Jealous,” Trevor teased. “You don’t have the gift with women.”

  “I also don’t have a chocolate company and unlimited bribes at my fingertips.”

  “You also don’t have any charm.”

  “Hey, who’s got the girlfriend?”

  “Poor woman. She has no taste. You sure lucked out.”

  “No, I just got smart. Which is more than I can say for you with some of the women you’ve picked.”

  “Hey, I’m not psychic,” Trevor said in defense of his poor choices.

  “Like you had to be psychic to figure out that Angela was a loser? I never saw a grown woman pout so much. Talk about manipulation.”

  “She wasn’t like that when I first met her.”

  “Yeah, she was,” Kurt said. “And Sarah.” He shook his head. “What a leech.”

  “Okay, already. Are we done talking about my love life?”

  “We are. It’s too damn depressing. You gotta quit being so shallow. Look for someone with some heart.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Phil.”

  “You’re welcome. Now, back to the cruise. Are you coming or not?” Kurt demanded.

  “Give me one good reason why I should.”

  “’Cause I want you to.”

  Well, shit. Playing the brotherly love card was hitting below the belt.

  “We can see Heidelberg, where Gramps was stationed, drink all that good German beer and eat soft pretzels.”

  “It might be fun,” Trevor said.

  “Who knows? You might even meet some nice German Fräulein you can fool into thinking you’re sexy.”

  “I am sexy. I got all the sex appeal in the family.” Trevor had no problem getting women. He was tall and worked out enough to look good in a shirt and jeans. Like his brother, he’d inherited their lousy dad’s movie-star face—square chin, right-size nose, good eyes. Women fell for him like a ripe apple from a tree.

  Sadl
y, his brother was right. He never seemed to pick the good ones. The women he dated always turned out to be more interested in going out to flashy clubs and being seen rather than seeing what else he had to offer beyond a good time. He guessed that was what he got for chasing women who walked through the world like the perfect, candy-colored boxes he sold his chocolate truffle collections in. Unlike those candy boxes, though, they were all shine and hard edges with very little inside to recommend them. Why weren’t there more out there like his mom, who was kind and generous?

  Or who liked to cook. Nobody wanted to cook anymore, at least nobody he’d found. He’d known his way around the kitchen better than the last two women he’d dated. Not that he minded cooking for a woman. He was a foodie, after all. Still, it would be nice if someone wanted to make a meal for him once in a while instead of the other way around.

  And there was the bottom line. Relationships should be give-and-take. It seemed like Trevor always fell into ones where he was doing all the giving and she was doing all the taking.

  At least his company was doing well. Cupid’s Chocolates had grown like a weed in a pile of manure and the long hours he’d been putting in lately didn’t leave a lot of time for any relationships beyond what he already had with his brother and his closest friends. The old saying was true: you didn’t own a business; it owned you. Still, could he make room in his life for the right person? Damn straight he could.

  “Okay, that settles it,” Kurt said, and adjusted his glasses.

  “Settles it! Since when?”

  “Since you haven’t said anything for the last minute.”

  Their waitress was back again, all smiles, with Trevor’s drink. He barely noticed.

  He frowned at his big bro. “I’ve got a business to run, you know.”