Do You Believe in Santa? (22 page)

Twenty minutes later, as Mandy spooned the first batch of cookies onto the baking sheet, Emily asked the familiar question.

“Is Santa Claus real?”

Mandy let a spoonful of cookie dough plop onto the metal sheet as her mind scrambled for an answer. “If he isn't, then who are we making these cookies for?”

“Some kids at school say the moms and dads eat the cookies.”

“Some kids at my school used to say that, too.” Mandy's eyes cast desperately around the room. How was she supposed to handle this?

“But is it true?”

Jake walked in. As if he'd been in the next room all along. Mandy sagged with relief.

“Uncle Jake can answer that better than I can.” She shoved the cookies into the oven, even though there was room for at least three more on the sheet. “I'll be right back. I've got to get this flour off me.”

She rushed upstairs without meeting Jake's eyes. She'd left him holding the bag, but if he didn't want her messing things up, this was the way it had to be. Let him make the decision.

She pulled on a fresh sweater, not that the first one had really gotten any flour on it. But it gave her something to do as she tried to imagine what Jake would say.

Which part of Jake would win out—the one who'd smiled at her and called her the Christmas girl? Or the practical, “realistic” Jake, with his column of facts and figures and some blunt, disillusioning answer?

 

 

Jake sat on the sofa with Emily and thought,
So this is how it feels to hold someone's faith in your hands.

He looked down into a pair of brown eyes so much like his own, so much like his brother's, and knew a simple black-and-white answer wouldn't do.

There were more important things to believe in than Santa Claus, to be sure. But at the moment, it sure seemed like he represented a whole lot. And after all the hemming and hawing, Jake knew he'd better come up with something good.

No way was he going to break his niece's heart. She deserved something more than a flat
no.

“The fact is,” he said slowly, “a lot of people do stop believing in Santa Claus when they get older. It's the really lucky ones who keep believing.”

Her eyes were fixed on him, and he was fumbling in the dark.

“You see, the same way those guys you see at the store are Santa's helpers? I think these days we're kind of Santa's helpers to each other.” Jake nodded at the tree, the floor around it already laden with multicolored packages. “Not everybody needs another present. I don't think he could fit much more under there anyway, do you?”

Emily shook her head. The aroma of baking cookies wafted into the room, reminding him that a certain time limit was in play here.

“I think how real Santa Claus is depends on how much you believe in him,” Jake said. “I'm not sure if he's a person like you and me, but he's the spirit of Christmas, and in that way, he's very real.”

“So is he coming tonight?” Like any reasonable seven-year-old, Emily pressed for something tangible.

“Oh, he'll be here, all right,” Jake said. “I'll admit, I've never seen him myself. But I kn—I've heard of people who have.”

“Really?” Emily asked, clearly intrigued by the possibility.

“Really.”

When Jake went back upstairs to the guest room, the door was open. Mandy stood at the dresser brushing her hair, and he was pretty sure she wasn't really seeing her reflection.

“You win,” he confessed, and she turned.

“I couldn't do it,” he said. “Better get back down there, or your cookies are going to burn.”

She looked at him, a world of questions in her eyes. But Emily and the cookies won out. She hurried past him down the stairs.

Jake followed a few minutes later and paused just outside the kitchen doorway. Silently, he surveyed the scene across the room.

Mandy was carefully moving the cookies from the hot baking sheet to a strip of wax paper on the kitchen island while Emily watched intently, her elbows propped on the edge of the countertop. As they stood over the cookies, heads close together, he saw a bond between them that felt almost conspiratorial. Something as timeless as Christmas itself.

“We'll let these cool for a couple minutes,” Mandy told Emily. “But you
have
to eat at least one while the chips are still melty.”

“Too bad the cookies won't be warm when Santa gets here,” Emily said.

A smile came over Mandy's face, one that Jake knew well. That soft Christmas smile he'd seen for the first time in the middle of August.

“I guess not,” Mandy said. “But we can make sure Uncle Jake gets one.”

She wasn't looking at him, hadn't even seen him standing there, but Jake felt the glow of that smile even from across the room. Watching her, he thought he might understand, at least a little.

If he were Santa Claus, this was exactly the kind of girl he'd appear to.

Chapter 22

Dusk came, and with it, a heightened sense of anticipation. Christmas Eve had arrived.

Mandy hadn't been alone with Jake since their last conversation. Jake's parents had returned while she was still in the thick of baking cookies, and she didn't know if she was disappointed or relieved. She knew she needed to set things right, and she wasn't sure what to say.

They all ate a dinner of the abundant turkey leftovers in the breakfast nook. Mandy had the feeling the dining table wasn't used for meals so much as it served as a buffet table when company came. After they cleared the dinner dishes, Jake's parents vanished up the stairs for the old, familiar ritual of last-minute gift wrapping.

“Should we put out a plate for Santa now?” Emily asked.

She was looking at Jake. Mandy waited to hear what he'd say.

“It's a little early, but it couldn't hurt,” he said. “Right?”

He locked his gaze with Mandy's. Her heart kicked up. “Absolutely,” she said.

Once again, there was something unspoken in his look, but Mandy didn't want to try to guess at its meaning. She'd been wrong too many times already. Instead, she took Emily to the kitchen and found a plate for the cookies. They walked back out to the living room with Emily bearing the cookies, while Mandy carried a glass of milk.

“Where should they go?” Emily asked.

Jake cleared a space on one of the two lamp tables flanking the sofa, the one that was closest to the fireplace. “Here,” he said. “This is where I always put them.” He took the plate and glass and set them down. “The trick is to keep Grandpa from eating them.”

At Emily's concerned look, Mandy said, “Don't worry. We'll keep an eye on it. If he eats any, we'll put more out after he goes to bed.”

Now she and Jake stood on opposite sides of the little end table, a plate of cookies between them. Time seemed to slow. Mandy was aware of Jake's parents coming back down the stairs, discussing which Christmas movie to watch; Emily, looking at the plate of cookies with a mixture of anticipation and hope; but most of all, Jake's eyes, and some unspoken intent there.

“Let's go outside for a minute,” he said.

Mandy nodded.

As Jake went to the closet for their jackets, she remembered the night they'd talked on her front porch.
Jake's revenge,
she thought as she stepped outside into the biting cold. Then she stood entranced as the winter night greeted her. White icicle lights hung from the eaves above her head, and in the sky beyond, the stars were brilliant. It hadn't snowed since their arrival, but a sparkling crust still covered the lawn. Mandy tried to slow her breathing so she could hear it: that Christmas Eve stillness, the quiet pause of expectation.

She felt Jake's hand on her elbow, and the warmth from his touch seemed to spread up her arm to ward off the chill. She pulled in a big breath of the cold air. Time to face him.

She turned. “Jake, I'm sorry. I—”

“Don't.” He pulled her nearer, resting his forehead against hers. “I almost blew it with Emily. You were right. Sometimes it's hard for a guy like me to understand about things like . . . magic.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Pretty much the same thing your mother told you about Santa. That he's the spirit of Christmas. But I didn't bring you out here to talk about Emily.”

Her heart sped up.

“Look.” He clasped his arms around her waist, holding her loosely to look down into her face. “Do I believe there's a white-haired guy who's going to come down the chimney tonight? No. But it's important to believe in something, and I don't ever want to take that away from anyone. Not Emily, not you. Not me, either. And I believe in Mandy Reese.”

“And I believe in you,” she said. “Whether you agree with me on everything or not.”

“That's good, because I need you. A guy can't be rational all the time. You cut through all the pluses and minuses. You make me remember what's important. Whatever happened with you, whatever you saw that night all those years ago—I don't know what it was. But you've got something nobody else has. And I don't want to live without it.”

He brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “The thing is, I don't like moving forward without a plan. I think I can make this Christmas hotel work. But it's risky. It may not be entirely . . . practical.”

A smile tugged at her lips. “You know how much I hate that word.”

“Right. But I couldn't jump into something like this without you.
That
would be crazy. So . . .” Jake looked up at the deepening blue of the night. He'd planned for this moment, gotten it off to a false start, and now that it was here, he wasn't sure what to say. “Is it too early for a Christmas present? I've been carrying this one around for a while.”

Everything in her face encouraged him, but his fingers still shook as he reached into his coat pocket to bring out the little red velvet box. It had picked up some lint over the past few days, and he brushed at it. The cold made his fingers clumsy as he pried open the box and turned the ring toward Mandy. The Christmas lights from the eaves did their part to set the cluster of small diamonds sparkling. He heard her draw in a soft breath.

Finally he knew exactly what to say. “Mandy, will you marry me?”

“Yes,” she said, and he was gratified to feel her arms around his neck, to be able to bury his face in the softness of her hair. She fit against him, giving him warmth.

“Hey,” his tongue-tied mouth said. “You're supposed to let me put the ring on first.”

He kissed her, still clutching the box. It was a few more minutes before he put the ring on her finger.

Afterward, Jake rested his cheek on the top of her head, and they looked up at the night sky together. “We'd better go inside,” Jake said. “Time to celebrate Christmas Eve with the family.”

“Wait.” Mandy pointed up at a tiny red light crossing the sky. “Do you see what I see?”

Jake wasn't sure if she was kidding or not, but he took a chance. He'd been honest with her up to this point; now wasn't the time to start pulling punches. “It's an airplane, Mandy.”

She considered it for a moment, then nodded. “You're right. It's too early for Santa.”

 

 

Okay, he felt like a kid at Christmas.

Jake couldn't sleep, and he was tired of grinning at the ceiling like an idiot. So he tiptoed down the stairs for a snack. Anyway, since he was embracing all this, it might not be a bad idea if some of those cookies got eaten.

The house felt so silent, every step Jake took on the stairs sounded magnified to his ears. He thought of the line Mandy had quoted:
Not a creature was stirring . . .

The dim light from the entrance hall guided him. Beyond that, through the arched doorway to the living room, he could make out the soft glow from the Christmas tree, its lights left on overnight in honor of the holiday.

The closer he got to the room, the slower and more careful his steps got. After all this, it really wouldn't do to get caught eating Santa's cookies.

When he reached the living room archway, he heard a child's voice whispering. It had to be Emily. But who was she talking to?

He peered into the room. On the far wall, he saw a large shadow cast by the light of the Christmas tree. If he didn't know better, he would have sworn he recognized the shape of a man dressed in a very distinctive suit, the same figure he'd seen on a thousand Christmas cards.

Then, for an instant, he couldn't see anything at all as a brilliant flash of light filled the room.

Jake blinked and waited for his vision to clear. When it did, the room was dim again, illuminated only by the Christmas tree. The shadow on the wall was gone.

And Emily was peering up the chimney.