Michael didn’t share her optimism.
“We’re doomed. We’re totally doomed. This isn’t a song and dance kind of guy, Kate.”
“I know.” She cracked her knuckles. It was going to take a lot of singing to cover the flaws of this piano’s lack of tuning, but she never backed away from a challenge. Besides, she listed “singing Christmas Carols” as one of the Special Skills on her resumé. Without knowing it, she’d trained for this exact moment her entire life. “That’s why this is going to work.”
“And what’s your plan after this, hmm? Make him fall in love with you and the town like one of those movies you love so much?”
“I’m not going to fall in love with Clark.”
“Right. Because you’re going to be an old maid and Miller’s Point and the festival will be your family and your children. I’ve heard this speech before. Besides, I didn’t say anything about you falling in love with him. I said he would fall in love with you.”
“Love doesn’t factor into this plan at all,” she rushed out, eager to be done with this particular conversation. Whenever she and Michael broached the topic of her love life, they played out the same old song and dance. She reminded him that romantic, all-consuming, life-changing love never entered her mind as a possibility for herself. The pickings in town were slim and most of the people they went to high school with were paired off by the summer after senior year. And even if some handsome stranger did ride into town and she did want to fall in love with him, she wasn’t even sure she knew how to go about doing it.
And then, he’d remind her that anyone could fall in love—no one knew how to fall in love; it just happened—and they’d go around and around in circles. She didn’t have time for circles and talk of romance today, especially not in the context of Clark Woodward. “We’re going to do Christmas our way. And…” Her fingers ran along the keys, testing them out one by one in no particular order. She struggled to articulate what about Clark she struggled with or how she planned to get the best of him. “He’s got this thing about him. He’s lonely. I can tell.”
“He’s inherited a corporation worth millions of dollars, at least. I think he cuddles a body pillow stuffed with hundred-dollar bills every night.”
“The money doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean, the money doesn’t matter?”
Before this morning, Kate never would have made such a bold claim. She lived in a two-and-a-half-room apartment above the town’s only bookshop. A broken lock barely kept her door closed and she existed on a steady diet of diner food and gas station salad bowls. If anyone knew the importance of money and the detriment of not having it, it was Kate. But when faced with Clark, she didn’t see a rich man or a happy one. He was someone desperate to hide his own crippling solitary confinement. He believed himself above Christmas because he believed himself above people in general, a fact Kate was out to prove completely false.
“It doesn’t. I mean, I thought it did, but there’s something there. Or, something isn’t there. And if we can give it to him…”
Michael nodded and helped himself to the opposite end of the piano bench as Kate continued to noodle some random melodies. She operated on muscle memory, barely pressing the keys for noise.
“He may just want to give us the festival.”
“And he’ll be a better man for it.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
