Mistletoe and Holly (3 page)

“Do you really think so?” Leslie was skeptical.

“You need to have the basis of love and common interests, but with two different personalities involved,” her aunt elaborated on her initial statement.

“I suppose that makes sense, as long as one didn’t try to change the other,” she conceded. “Either way, I’m glad I’m here. And I’m really grateful that you’re letting me stay with you.”

“It’s a big, old house. There is always plenty of room for you to come anytime you want,” her aunt insisted. “Besides, I had no plans for the Christmas holidays, except to spend it quietly here. I suppose we could get a tree if you want.”

“No. I don’t believe in that nonsense,” Leslie stated firmly. “I’ve been called a female Scrooge, but I think Christmas has lost its meaning. It’s all
decorations and gifts and parties. It’s an excuse to celebrate rather than a reason.”

“That’s a cynical attitude.” The remark was almost an admonition.

“It’s true,” she insisted. “It used to be Christmas merchandise was never displayed in stores until after Thanksgiving. Now it’s on the shelves before Halloween. Personally, I think they should ban Christmas.”

“Unfortunately the economy would suffer if that was attempted,” Patsy Evans murmured dryly and changed the subject. “How’s your job? It was certainly understanding of your employer to grant you a leave of absence until after New Year’s.”

“Mr. Chambers had planned to be gone most of the month attending a sales conference anyway, and he always takes off a few days before Christmas, so there wouldn’t have been much for me to do at the office except handle the mail and answer the phone. The receptionist can do that.” She knew her boss too well to believe he had been motivated solely by compassion. He had given her a leave of absence because it was both practical and economical.

“Then both of you are benefiting from it since you don’t have to worry about going back and forth to work in bad weather. You’ll have a chance to rest while your leg heals,” her aunt reasoned.

“Yes.” It just seemed bad luck that she had broken her leg at this time of year, presuming there was a good time for an accident like that. She had an aversion to the holiday season, a holdover from her childhood probably. Usually she could escape it with work or physical activity. Both those were taken from her.

She sipped at her tea and tried not to think about it.

C
HRISTMAS SEEMED INESCAPABLE
. Nearly every other song the disc jockey played on the radio was oriented toward the season. After trying for almost an hour to tune in other stations, Leslie gave up and switched the radio off. She had already read two books since she had arrived at her aunt’s. She liked reading, but not all the time.

In desperation, she picked up a deck of cards and propped her leg on a kitchen chair to begin playing solitaire to pass the time until her aunt returned from her shopping trip. Leslie wished now she hadn’t decided to stay at the house.

The knock at the side door startled her. No car had driven in; there hadn’t been the sound of footsteps
climbing the back steps to the door; and no movement in the kitchen window facing the driveway. Leslie pushed the cards into a pile at the end of the table and grabbed for her crutches. With growing deftness, she maneuvered them under her arms and swung toward the door in long strides. Steam and frost covered the glass pane in the door, preventing Leslie from seeing who was outside.

In New York, she wouldn’t have dreamed of opening the door without knowing who was out there, but this was Vermont. She opened the inner door and saw a short, red-coated child standing on the other side of the storm door. Leslie pushed it open too, her glance running past the little girl, but there was no sign of her father.

“Hello.” The hood to her red snow jacket wasn’t covering her head, revealing long, shining black hair. Its blackness made the girl’s eyes seem all the more blue.

“Hello, Holly.” Leslie was a bit confused as she glanced at the paper sack the girl clutched against the front of her unbuttoned jacket. A pair of blue barrettes secured the black hair swept away from her temples.

“May I come in?” she asked with a look that fairly beamed with friendly warmth.

“Of course.” She shifted her crutches to back out of the opening and let the young girl step inside.

Holly paused on the rug and painstakingly wiped all traces of snow and moisture from her shoes. “I forgot to wear my boots.” There was a hint of mischief in the rueful expression. “My dad’s probably gonna be mad when he finds out.” But she obviously wasn’t concerned.

“Was there something you wanted?” Leslie still wasn’t too sure about the reason for this visit. Her aunt hadn’t indicated the little girl was in the practice of coming over.

“I saw Mrs. Evans drive away a while ago and I thought you might like some company,” she declared and walked to the kitchen table to lay her paper sack on it.

“That’s very thoughtful of you.” Leslie had been wishing for someone to talk to, but she wryly wondered if her desperation for company stretched to conversing with a six-going-on-seven-year-old girl.

“I know,” the girl agreed blandly and shrugged out of her jacket, draping it on a chair back. Underneath the jacket, she was wearing a pair of blue corduroy overalls and a white blouse with a ruffled collar. She managed to look both the little lady and the tomboy. “Is it all right if I call you
Leslie? Dad said I should ask before I called you that,” she explained to Leslie over her shoulder.

“I don’t mind if you call me Leslie.” A little bemused, she edged around the girl to resume her seat in the kitchen chair.

“Do you want me to put your crutches somewhere?” Holly volunteered.

“No, that’s all right,” Leslie refused gently. “I’ll just stand them up against the wall where I can reach them.”

“I always thought Leslie was a boy’s name, but Daddy said it can be a girl’s name, too.” She emptied the contents of her paper sack onto the table. There were a dozen pieces of red and green construction paper, a bottle of glue, and a pair of blunt-ended, child’s scissors.

“I guess it must be true since my name is Leslie and I’m a girl,” she offered, containing an amused smile. “What’s all this you have here?”

“I remembered when I was sick with the measles, it made me feel better if I had something to do. So I brought this over. I thought you might like to help me make a paper-chain to hang on our Christmas tree.”

“I see.” Actually what Leslie saw was the irony of the situation. She, who abhorred the commercialized Christmas and all its trappings, was being asked by a little girl to help make a Christmas decoration.
She liked children, so how could she refuse without appearing heartless and cold.

“I can show you if you don’t know how to make them. It’s real easy,” Holly assured her and picked up the scissors to cut a strip of green construction paper crosswise. “You start with a piece of paper like this—it can be red or green—then you glue the ends together like this.” She squirted a glob of white glue on one end and stuck them together with the excess glue oozing out the sides. “Then you take a different color.” She picked up the red paper and crookedly cut off another strip. “And you put it through the first one before you glue it. That’s how you make a chain.”

“That’s very good.” Leslie managed to force an approving nod.

Holly wrinkled her nose in rueful disagreement. “But I don’t cut straight.”

“It just takes practice.”

“Why don’t you cut the paper and I’ll paste it together? It will go faster,” the girl suggested with bright-eyed eagerness.

Leslie opened her mouth twice, but couldn’t find an adequate excuse to refuse. “All right.”

She took the small scissors Holly held out to her. The handles were so small she could barely get her fingers in them, but she began cutting. The edges were so dull it was closer to sawing. Holly
pulled a kitchen chair closer to Leslie and sat on her knees to begin the task of pasting the chain together.

“Do you have a boyfriend, Leslie?” she asked. Leslie threw her a look, wondering what prompted that question. “No.”

“I do. His name is Bobby Jenkins and he always sits beside me at Sunday School. He says he wants to marry me.” She frowned and tipped her head to one side to look at Leslie. “Has anyone ever wanted to marry you?”

“Yes, a couple of boys have asked me,” she admitted and tried not to appear too amused by the subject matter. Neither did she explain the last serious marriage proposal had been when she was a freshman in college.

“How come you didn’t marry them?”

“Because I didn’t love them.” Leslie kept cutting the strips of colored construction paper, pausing now and then to flex her fingers.

Holly sighed heavily and began pasting again. “I’m too young to be in love.”

“You are a bit young.” Leslie had trouble keeping her tongue out of her cheek.

“Do you think my daddy is handsome?” Holly wanted to know. “A lot of women do.”

“Yes, he’s a good-looking man.” She tried to
sound disinterested, and failed, although she doubted that his daughter knew the difference.

“Are you going to fall in love with my daddy like they do?”

That was going too far. “Holly—” Leslie rested both hands on the tabletop and gave the child a look that was a mixture of exasperation and amusement, “—I only met your father once. I don’t even know him. I’ve hardly even talked to him.”

She thought about that for a minute. “After you get to know him, then are you going to fall in love with him?”

Leslie didn’t make another attempt to answer the question. “Where do you get ideas like this?”

“They just come to me,” Holly declared with a shrug and an innocently batting blink of her eyes. Bending over the table, she squirted glue from the bottle onto a band of red paper.

“It might work better if you used less paste,” Leslie suggested as it went on the table. At least it was the kind that washed off with soap and water.

“Okay.” There were already a dozen links to the paper chain. Holly stretched it out to see how it looked. “It’s really going to be pretty on our tree, isn’t it?”

“Um-hmm.” It was an agreeing sound, which allowed Leslie to stop short of voicing an outright
approval for the tree-trimming tradition that had lost its meaning over the years.

The double barrier of the storm windows muffled the voice calling outside the house. “Holly!”

“Whoops! That’s my daddy.” She scrambled off her perch on the chair and darted to the door.

“Your coat—” Leslie protested, thinking the little girl intended to run outside without it.

But she only opened the two doors and stuck her head outside. “I’m over here, Daddy!” Without waiting for a reply, Holly blithely shut the doors and skipped back to her chair.

Leslie stared, slightly taken aback by the child’s lack of concern. While Holly seemed a little precocious, she hadn’t acted spoiled or overindulged. If it wasn’t the latter, she was certainly extremely confident of herself.

From the corner of her eye, Leslie caught the movement of someone passing the kitchen window. That was followed by a knock at the door. She didn’t need three guesses as to who it might be.

“Come in.” She called out the permission to enter, rather than hobble ungracefully to the door to admit Tagg Williams. Unconsciously she bit her lips to force color into them, aware she hadn’t bothered to put on makeup.

The storm door opened, then the inner door, and
her aunt’s tall, dark neighbor walked in. His strong and sun-browned features were wearing a curious expression, his piercing blue eyes slightly narrowed. Without the dullness of fatigue and soreness, Leslie absorbed the full impact of him beyond the striking coloration of coal black hair and light blue eyes. Lines were grooved into his lean cheeks, indicating the frequency of his smiles. His mouth was thin and firm, clearly defined. There was a vitality about him, a virility that came from the combination of the whole rather than any single part of him. Leslie thought she glimpsed a sense of humor perpetually lurking in the blue of his eyes.

“So this is where you got off to.” He eyed his daughter with a trace of reproval.

“I’m sorry. I thought you knew she was here.” Leslie had presumed Holly had told him she was coming over. Even though it wasn’t her fault, she felt a little guilty for not questioning the girl.

“I thought she was playing in the kitchen until I became suspicious over how quiet she was.” His mouth lifted in a faint smile. “I guess parents develop a sixth sense about such things.”

“I was going to tell you, Daddy, but you were busy,” Holly explained in defense of her oversight. “I knew you wouldn’t mind. And I knew I’d hear you call.”

“You still should have asked.” He walked to
Holly’s chair and lightly tugged at a strand of black hair, then rested his hands on her shoulders.

“I knew Leslie was here alone. I thought we could keep each other company. Look.” She held up the paper chain. “See what we’ve been making for the tree.”

“Let me guess—you did the pasting and made the chains while Leslie got the boring job of cutting the paper,” Tagg Williams said dryly.