You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(90)

As he zipped up the bag, he wondered if Selina would see the compromise. He needed one more week to wrap everything up and pin down his future, and then he’d call her.

No. Better yet, he would stop by her house and talk to her.

He wasn’t doing this for her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t hoping she would be one of the benefits.

*

Selina staggered into Pam’s house, her feet aching from being on them all day. She’d worked a double shift today at the restaurant downtown, which was hard but necessary. In the past couple of weeks since Marc had left, she’d registered for spring classes at the local community college, talked with the gallery owner about a possible job there, and landed herself a waitressing job. All the while, she helped Pam around the house.

She sighed as she pulled her shoes off her feet and wiggled her toes. Not only did the work add money to her bank account but it kept her mind off her loneliness. Pam was good company, too. Selina had gone out to coffee once with one of her coworkers also. But none of them distracted her from the fact that she missed Marc.

With a sigh, she stood up and shuffled to the bathroom to brush her teeth. It would all get easier, she told herself. One day.





Chapter Thirteen





Selina was about to hang an ornament on Pam’s tree when the doorbell rang. She nestled the fragile ornament—a white china bird’s nest—back into its small piece of protective wrap and went to the front door to answer it.

Her jaw dropped when she opened it. Marc stood on the other side, a knit cap pulled tight over his floppy hair and his hands shoved into the pockets of a navy peacoat. He no longer looked like a white knight.

Over the course of two weeks, she’d come to realize that falling in love with a white knight was a bad idea. Better to come to a man as an equal than for him to know that he’d rescued you because you weren’t able to rescue yourself.

“I don’t remember you having a peacoat,” she said.

His face broke out into a lopsided grin. “You didn’t see all my clothing.”

“No, but . . .” I didn’t think you were the peacoat type.

Really, though, what did she know about him? She’d wondered that every night when crying to herself about her loss. What had she lost?

She’d lost a funny, interesting, smart, and capable guy who’d kept all of his promises, never asking for more than she could give, nor offering more than he could follow through on. Along with learning about the dangers of white knights, Pam had also been lecturing about why that trait was so rare, in men and in women.

His brow raised until it nearly touched the ribbing at the bottom of his cap. “No, but?”

“I’m happy to see you,” she said because it was true. “But I don’t know why you’re here.” That was true, too.

“Can I come in? I brought you a present.”

Selina stepped aside, and Marc passed through the doorway into the entryway of Pam’s house. She saw him reappraising the small cottage, now made brighter with an overflow of Christmas decorations, including a large collection of nutcrackers.

“Did I hear the door?” Pam asked, coming through to the living room from the kitchen, a tray of snacks and two mugs of hot chocolate on it.

“Oh,” she said, the chocolate sloshing over the sides of the mugs as she stopped short. “It’s the young man who brought you here. I was given the impression that you’d left forever.”

“I’d hoped you would come back,” Selina explained, “but I told you I wasn’t going to wait on you.” Even though the temptation had been great. Instead, she’d focused her crying on healing and let Pam’s excitement over having Selina help putting up the Christmas decorations take her mind off the fact that she no longer had Marc to talk to.

But the man she faced when she turned back from watching Pam leave the room was different. The vulnerability etched in his face didn’t make him look older, but it made him look more serious. That was a man she could believe would both put together a multimillion-dollar computer program and go on to do other things with his life, a man looking to plan his future rather than a permanent vacation.

“Selina,” he said, his hands outstretched toward her, “you were right. Traveling wasn’t what I wanted. Or, maybe I want to travel, but I don’t want traveling to be my life. I want to do something.”

He took a step closer to her. “You were right. About all of it. And I didn’t realize it until I was at Snowdance, in this beautiful room with the most amazing view of the mountains I’ve ever seen and I felt as lost and empty as I ever have. I want to work. I like to work. I find meaning in work, where I can build something.”

Her heart stilled with his words, hoping that they meant something more than what he was literally saying. Then she took a deep breath and remembered the man she’d spent a couple of days with. He’d been more than his words, and he’d stuck to all his words.

“What does this mean?” she asked.

“It means I want to take you out to dinner. On a date.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “I think I got that part.”

“Is that a yes?”

“I meant, what does this mean for you? Are you looking for work?”

“Huh? Oh. Um, no.” He shook his head. “Work found me. Curtis called.”