quickly along the sidewalk. Fresh air. He needed some of that.
Apparently, he was witnessing some kind of Bliss, Tennessee, ritual. Most of the citizens and shop owners appeared to be trailing toward the courthouse. It wasn’t until he reached a cotton-swathed window displaying a Christmas village and a running train that he saw another human being not joining in the singing.
He looked up. A rich red sign hung overhead, emblazoned with the words Mainly Merry Christmas. He looked inside again. Fleming, on the wide-plank floor inside, was engrossed in putting together another train track, clearly set to run around a verdant Christmas tree.
Jason tried the door. To his surprise, it opened.
She looked up eagerly at the sound of the sleigh bells above her door. Her face sobered as she saw him.
“What’s going on at the courthouse?” he asked.
Her smile was a surprise that made him feel less at loose ends. They shared a puzzling intimacy after yesterday.
“It’s tradition.” She scrambled to her feet as he shut the cold out behind him. “Everyone goes to the courthouse, and we sing carols to welcome the holiday season. Your bank files must show you we do a lot more business around here this time of year.”
“Until spring,” he said, “and then there’s a slight dip until summer vacationers arrive.” He went to get a closer look at the train track. “Need some help?”
She joined him. “I do, but not with this. Why don’t we talk about my loan?”
The figures were burned inside his head, but he didn’t want to make a mistake. “This isn’t a workday. Why aren’t you out there singing?”
“I’m maybe weeks away from losing my shop. I have to work today and sell tomorrow.” She sat and started placing the track again.
“You could sell this train set and make a sizable sum.” His grandfather had a similar one he’d bought at an auction and shared with Jason all the Christmases they’d spent together.
“More tradition.”
He retrieved a box of spare track from the window seat and carried it to her. “You could run this all around the store.”
“I’m torn between the charm of how that would look and the risk of children stepping on it.”
“Take the risk.”
She laughed. “Is that the way you feel about loans, as well?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
“So you come across as all concerned for us, but you’ll close us down if you have to?”
He nodded, passing her a straight piece that she laid, directing the track toward a shelf of vintage holiday cards. “I don’t always enjoy what I have to do, but I hope you and everyone else here will realize none of my decisions are personal.”
“They should be personal. You should be going out of your way to meet these people. We’re not in some big city like New York. In a town this small, you have to study each face and family. You should try to understand what’s at risk before you start destroying people’s lives.”
“I’m not destroying anyone. I’ve told everyone I’ve seen exactly what I’ve told you, but I can’t fix what’s wrong if I don’t do what’s right for the bank’s investors.”
“In a town of this size, with a bank this small, we’re all investors,” she said, her temper slipping a little, and he had to wonder if the cliché about fiery redheaded women might be true.
“I’m working for my family right now, and they’ve owned the bank for over a hundred years.”
Fleming eyed him as if he didn’t quite understand reality. “Not unusual in Bliss. Almost every family out on the square has roots that deep.”
“Where’s your family?” He had no right to ask, but he wanted to know. She’d told Lyle her mother would be back for Christmas.
“My mother recently married.” Fleming’s voice softened and warmed in a way that didn’t happen in his family. “She’d been dating this guy for a few years, but after I finished college, they married.” She looked even more wistful. “I always suspected she stayed here so long because of me, so that I’d have my home to come back to. After she moved to Knoxville to be with Hugh—that’s his name—I took over the store.”
“And refinanced?” Jason asked.
She nodded. “I had to pay my mom, although now I’m wishing I’d been a little less noble about that.” Her grin, as she reached for another piece of track, made him feel as if he knew her.
“I can see that.” Fleming must be paying her mother out of what she made each month, as well as paying the bank’s note. She was stretched thin, and from what he could tell, the economy in this remote resort had dipped in recent years.
“Why aren’t you with family today?” she asked.
He hesitated. Sharing his history spelled involvement, and he wasn’t used to getting involved. But he’d asked her a personal question, and he liked that she’d answered. “We don’t really do that. I have younger siblings.” His father made a habit of marriage. “But they’re all in college, or they have families of their own. No one went home this year.”
“And you’re home here, working?”
“I lived here once,” he said.
“I know.” She blushed as she pointed to a curving piece of track and started a path around the end of the shelf, getting to her knees. “Lyle told me. He remembers your parents.”
“I don’t remember being here. They moved when I was really young.”
“Maybe Bliss wasn’t big enough for them.”
For his dad? No. Bliss was no place to run an empire. “He profited by some boom years, and New York suits him better.”
“And you?”
Jason hesitated again, but she flipped her long, rich red braid over her shoulder, and she looked sweet and open. Not as if she were searching for a way to read him and use him. That had happened more than once. If he were the marrying kind, he’d be more like his father than he’d like to admit. At least he didn’t pretend he was the committing kind.
“I have itchy feet,” he said, more honest than he meant to be. “New places challenge me. New jobs.”
“I didn’t know that many banks could be rescued—or needed rescuing.”
“It’s not just banks,” he said. “I clean up all kinds of ailing companies.”
She was on the other side of the shelf, but she leaned back to look at him. “Then why the bank? Sounds as if we’re small potatoes.”
“Not to my grandfather. This was his pride and joy, and he gave it the foundation that allowed my father to move on. I owe him.” For that,
