The Christmas Company. Alys Murray

I work on Tuesdays.”

      Apparently, Clark didn’t appreciate the perceived intrusion.

      “Ah. I see.” There was a pause, awkward in its length. Kate picked at her own pancakes to give off the appearance of not eavesdropping. “It’s just…I don’t know if anyone’s gonna be in the Woodward office this morning. Most people would have the day off for the festival. Besides, even if anyone is in, they won’t be there until nine, at least.”

      “All because of Christmas?”

      “Yeah. Christmas is kind of a thing around here.”

      Understatement of the century. Christmas was a way of life, and Clark couldn’t even begin to understand how terribly he’d disturbed it. A pang of sympathy tugged at her. His cronies in Dallas almost certainly worked on Christmas Eve, the poor big city stiffs.

      “I’ll just have my breakfast here, then. Thanks.”

      “Don’t you have a family or anything to visit? I know it’s not any of my business, but you seem pretty young to be wasting your holiday in a boring office.”

      “You’re right.” Newspaper pages rustled. “It isn’t any of your business.”

      “Buttermilk pancakes, bacon and coffee.” Another awkward pause spread between them like butter on a biscuit, ending only with Mel tapping his pen against his tiny ordering notepad. “Coming right up.”

      The interaction ended with Mel whistling as he returned to the kitchen and Michael turning back to Kate with untamed shock. He probably expected to see steam coming out of Kate’s ears. If anyone had told her she wouldn’t be hopping mad at Clark for speaking to someone in her town that way, she would have laughed in their face. But her mind caught on something and unraveled like a home-knit sweater.

      Don’t you have a family?

      It isn’t any of your business.

      For the first time since meeting him, the anger and hurt serving as Kate’s most recent and dear best friends were nowhere to be found. In their place stood a different creature altogether. She no longer hated the man threatening to take her life away.

      She pitied him.

      All of her assumptions about him had to be, on some level, incorrect. In her mind, she fancied him living the perfect, big-city rich boy life. A huge family who lavished him with gifts and privileges, love and understanding.

      Yet, here he was. Alone. In a diner booth. On Christmas Eve. Waiting for his office to open so he could spend the day working.

      How sad was that?

      Kate’s entire heart smashed open, and the blindness of her own rage smacked her in the face. Guilt bittered the coffee in her mouth, but it was soon replaced. Her eyes widened, she reached for Michael’s hand, and let her hopes get as high as they pleased.

      This was a solvable problem. Clark Woodward’s loneliness was 100% solvable.

      “Can you distract him for a few hours?” she asked, knowing full well the monumental burden she’d shoved onto her friend’s admittedly toned shoulders. Michael’s eyes widened. As usual, he was an open book. Fear wrote itself on his every page.

      “What?”

      “I think I have a plan.” Well, half a plan. Quarter of a plan. A fraction of a plan. She’d work out the rest on her bike. “Can you distract him until, like, noon? And then bring him to the old Woodward place? I think that’s where he’s staying.”

      “You wanna leave me with that?”

      Kate stood and threw on her layers of sweaters and scarves, all while her mind wrote plans and made to-do lists. When she was done, she gave him a firm pat on the back for good luck. She wouldn’t want his job, either, but he was the only person she trusted with the task. No one said no to Michael. Even in a world with Tom Hanks, Michael took the top prize for most effortlessly likable guy on earth.

      “You’re the best guy in town. If you can’t do it, no one can. I believe in you.”

      “But—!But—!”

      His protests faded as she sprinted from the diner and hopped on her bike, which was waiting outside for her. As she pedaled towards the massive mansion on the far side of town, speeding past Dickensian facades and garlands, Kate’s motives solidified. There was only one way to save Miller’s Point. There was only one way to save the festival. There was only one way to save the solitary man in the diner from his own self-imposed darkness and isolation.

      She had to make Clark Woodward believe in Christmas.

      Chapter Three

      It was so provincial. Clark Woodward couldn’t think of any other word to describe Miller’s Point. Provincial in every sense of the word. Nearly everything about them revealed how small they were, and what was worse, they reveled in their smallness. They clung to their superstitious belief in the holidays. They fought the inevitable march of progress he was going to bring to the company and their backwater enclave. The diner didn’t even have avocado on the menu.

      As he waited for his pancakes, Clark opened the newspaper. They didn’t get the Dallas Observer out here, so the local gossip would have to do. He scanned the words, each one sinking in less deeply than the one before it. Out of the window framing his booth, he could see the entire town square, including the town hall, where only yesterday he and Kate—he never got her last name—had faced off.

      Last night, he hadn’t allowed himself the time or the thought to take in the beauty of the town’s historic district. And it really was beautiful, even if it being beautiful just reminded him how wasteful the entire enterprise was. How much money did they spend on these facade recreations of London’s Cheapside? How much of his family’s fortune got washed away every night with those fake snow machines? And the lights! They might as well have built a fire out of all the greenbacks they wasted.

      Wasteful and beautiful. The worst combination.

      More dangerous, though, was thinking about the beauty who’d dared to challenge him. She’d burned herself into him yesterday with her persistence and the fiery passion behind her eyes.

      He appreciated how strangely alike they were, even as they fought for completely different goals. If he hadn’t been spooked by her insistence that his uncle would have saved the festival, he could have stayed on those steps and talked to her for hours. She was a sharp debater with a biting wit. In a town like this, he’d expected to be greeted as a king. His family, after all, was responsible for their survival. But she didn’t bow and scrape; she challenged him.

      She was wrong, of course, and he was right. But the challenge still thrilled him, even if he didn’t dare let it show on his face. He didn’t want anyone thinking they had any kind of power over him.

      The most striking thing about her, perhaps, was her ability to embody everything he despised about Miller’s Point. That dichotomy of wasteful and beautiful dwelled within her. She had much to offer; he saw that even in their brief interaction. Yet, she chose to stay in Miller’s Point, where she could do nothing but waste her life putting up tinsel.

      Clark knew he should push all thoughts of her directly from his head. A distraction like her would only get in the way of his plans. His mission was simple, but like a fine watch even the slightest bit of sand carried the potential to destroy everything. In three steps, he could be done with this stupid festival. Step One: Dissolve The Christmas Company. Two: Sell off its assets. Three: Return to civilization and Dallas before New Year’s. He could only do that if all distractions were kept to a minimum and all pieces of sand stayed far out of his way.

      And he could only accomplish his three-step plan if people actually went to work instead of spending their Tuesdays watching Hallmark movies or whatever it is they did when they “celebrated” Christmas. Clark’s