For This Christmas Only Read online

  It all costs money.

  She’d planned for that. This evening, she’d been one of the very few students in the cavernous dining hall for dinner on a Saturday night, as usual on the weekends. She’d celebrated the start of the holiday season with one of those foil packets of instant cocoa, reconstituted with the hot water from an institutional coffee brewing machine.

  She hadn’t come to the park for food or cocoa, because she could get those on campus. She’d come for the rest. The Yule log was free. The music was free. Reflecting on one’s future under a pecan tree was free. Maybe the powdered instant hot cocoa wasn’t as tasty as the hot chocolate she remembered buying here years ago, but it had been prepaid. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  She squinted at the distant booths as if she wanted to read their colorful signs much more than she wanted to look at an appealingly rugged man. “There was some amazing hot chocolate over there, if memory serves. I don’t see it from here.”

  “You come every year?”

  “No, it’s been a while. I went to college here.” She left it at that. It was embarrassing to have gone to college but have no degree. Even worse to be living in a dorm on her twenty-ninth birthday. “How about you? Do you come here every year?”

  “No.”

  If she rolled her eyes at yet another curt answer, he’d see her do it, this time. She rolled them, anyway. “So, what brings you here this year? Did you go to college here?”

  “Of course.”

  That could be the reason behind that déjà vu. They might have had a class together—or she could have just admired him from afar. He must have been eye-catching at nineteen, too.

  “When did you graduate?” she asked. “Maybe we were here at the same time.”

  “Don’t you think you would have remembered me?”

  Her mouth fell open again. Hot body or not, the man had an ego the size of Texas. “Do you think you’re so amazing that I would remember if our paths had crossed between classes?”

  He scowled at her.

  She held up her hands and laughed a little. “I’m sorry, but you really do have an astonishingly high opinion of yourself.”

  It could have been a trick of the flickering firelight, but he looked almost confused.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I envy you, actually. It’s better than being full of self-doubts. Trust me.”

  “I find it hard to believe you harbor a single self-doubt,” he said, with a very clear, very arrogant scoff.

  She’d imagined that look. He’d probably never been confused about anything in his life.

  He elaborated. “You say anything you want to say, fearlessly. You’re confident that you have the right to tell me what’s wrong with my own opinion of myself. Don’t pretend now that you’ve been quaking with fright in your sandy boots for even a minute.”

  This time, her laugh was directed at herself. “Wow. I must be doing a good job of behaving the way I wish I already was, all fearless and what-not.” She clapped her boots together to send some dried sand showering down, but it was a halfhearted effort, and she gave it up after a few tries. “Honestly, I’m second-guessing myself all the time. If I fooled you, I must have that whole ‘fake it ’til you make it’ thing down pat. That’s something, I suppose. Some kind of achievement.”

  Sitting side by side, they fell into silence as they stared at the bonfire. From the stage beyond it, the string quartet began “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” It was a slow and haunting carol, a song of yearning for someone to come and change a hard, unhappy world. Such longing for things to get better, someday...

  Someday.

  Never show your doubts to the world. If you must indulge your doubts, do so alone. You will be confident when your plan succeeds. Eliminate the possibility of having witnesses to any earlier version of yourself.

  “Fake it ’til you make it,” she repeated quietly. “What happens if you never make it? You’ll have spent your life being a fake. Maybe being the real you, flaws and all, would have been better than pretending to be something you never became. You’ll have missed the chance to find out.”

  Every inch of the body beside her went still.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t expect you to stay and talk philosophy with me. I just came to see the Yule log and debate my future with myself. I didn’t expect to have a human to talk to.”

  Not that the human was talking back much, but still...

  Eliminate the possibility of having witnesses to any earlier version of yourself.

  She shouldn’t have admitted her doubts out loud. But did a stranger she’d never see again count as a witness to her weak moments?

  Her book would say he counted. E.L. Taylor hadn’t even made exceptions for family members. When Mallory’s brother had snooped out her plans, she’d needed to pretend she was confident that she’d be readmitted to MU—and that she’d win the financial aid her brother informed her he would not be providing, although she hadn’t asked. If she’d admitted she was worried, her brother would have been even harder to deal with. As usual, her book had been right. Never show weakness.

  Mallory sighed. “The real me isn’t usually so maudlin. It is my birthday, though.”

  “That makes you sad?”

  “My twenty-ninth birthday.”

  “Ancient.”

  “You sound like every smug, grouchy octogenarian in my family. ‘You’re young. You have plenty of time.’ Easy for them to say. Every single one of them, from my great-aunt to my brother, was married with a job and a house at my age.”

  Her fake boyfriend lapsed back into silence. It irked her after his sarcastic Ancient.

  “You must think you have plenty of time, too,” she said. “You don’t look very domesticated yet. No offense.”

  “I have the house.”

  Mallory shrugged. Of course, he did. Money meant ownership of real estate, almost always. When she had money someday, she’d invest in property, too—a house, a townhome, a condo. Anything. She couldn’t wait.

  “And the job?” she asked.

  “If you want to call it that.”

  Don’t ask, Mallory, don’t ask, don’t ask...

  “And the marriage?”

  He slid her a very knowing look.

  Okay, maybe she had been fishing for information. “Since I’m wearing your gloves, I see you have no wedding band.”

  He didn’t bother to confirm the obvious. Mallory was happy she hadn’t imposed on someone else’s husband to stand in as her fake boyfriend; that was the reason she felt a little relieved that he was a bachelor. Not that she would ever begrudge another woman the space to stand next to her own husband someday, if that woman needed shelter. In fact, her future husband would have to be the kind of guy who’d help out any person who needed help.

  Not that she was looking for a husband. First things first. She didn’t have her bachelor’s degree yet...at almost thirty.

  Never look back.

  It was hard not to on her birthday. The mournful Christmas carol was killing her. She’d lost so much time, waiting for her degree, waiting for her real career to happen, waiting to have her own home and—well, if not her own husband, at least a madly passionate relationship. Waiting, for years, for everything, while she’d traveled down the caregiver detour that she’d never seen coming.

  She fell back to lie on the hay bale and stare up at the night sky. The smoke from the Yule log made a little plume of gray in the distance, but the stars above were bright in the clear night, white sparks of infinity that obeyed the laws of physics, not wishes.

  She didn’t need a Christmas wish. There was no mystery to the way her life was unfolding. Her path was the result of her own decisions. Why wasn’t she where she’d expected to be at twenty-nine? The fault lay not in her stars, but in herself.

  “I let too many birthdays slip by,�
�� she explained to the night sky. Maybe to herself. Not to the stranger’s back. “I won’t let that happen again. Every year will be a milestone year from now on. I’ll make every single one count.”

  The string quartet’s next song was more lively, all Santa Claus and toys and childhood, a better melody for tonight’s crowd.

  Mallory sat up again. She swung her rain boots in time to the children’s song.

  The man next to her did not. He didn’t seem to have anything childlike left in him.

  “Are you waiting for someone?” she asked.

  He was silent.

  “I’m just trying to make conversation so that I can wear your gloves a little longer.”

  More silence.

  She didn’t have to worry about him being a witness to her weakness. He’d never say a word to anyone.

  She took her time as she took in his strong profile, the grim set to his lips. Stoic was a good word for him. Stoic, the way her grandfather looked when his body hurt and he didn’t want to admit it was holding him back from some task he still expected himself to do, like hunkering down to put air in his car’s tires. I can do that for you, Grandpa. Let me help you stand. That asphalt has to be hard on your knees.

  Mallory tried again. “Why are you out here, staring at a fire by yourself?”

  “Not because I’m sad.” Unlike you, she practically heard him say.

  “Hey, don’t judge. Odds are, it’s not your birthday.”

  He didn’t smile at her flippant comment, not exactly, but his mouth sort of relaxed.

  She picked at a piece of straw. “I’m not sad that I’m twenty-nine. It’s just that, each birthday, I have an appointment with myself to stop and evaluate if I’m where I want to be.”

  Never allow your actual timeline to lag behind your projected timeline. She could hardly admit she was letting a business manual direct her entire life, could she?

  “This time two years ago, things were not good in my life. I listened to a—a—”

  A book.

  “To a friend, and I made changes. Hard ones.”

  My book gave me the resolve I needed to object to my family’s plans and make my own.

  “So, this birthday, I’m actually right where I had always wanted to be. Finally.”

  “Congratulations.” His tone was somber. The sarcasm was missing, for once.

  “Yeah. Thanks.” She laced her fingers together, warm now in his gloves, and let her hands rest in her lap, palms up, cupping...nothing. “I just thought I’d be happier once I’d gotten what I wanted.”

  She could feel the intensity of his gaze.

  She kept looking at the gloves. “Do you know what I mean?”

  The music stopped. She looked up from her hands to his unsmiling eyes.

  Yes, you do. Poor man, so grim.

  The quartet pushed chairs aside to place their instruments into black cases. In the absence of music, the crowd got louder. Families were talking, friends were meeting up. So much noise. So much connection.

  The only connection Mallory had made tonight was with a stranger who barely spoke. She decided to fake some confidence—it really had become a habit in the past two years—and make him a little less of a stranger. She held out her hand to shake his. “My name is Mallory, by the way. What’s yours?”

  He didn’t take her hand. Just as she’d suspected when he hadn’t returned her first friendly smile, he was the type who’d leave somebody hanging if they approached him while he wasn’t in the mood to be bothered.

  Well, she was bothering. She kept her hand out, ready to shake, and raised one eyebrow at him in challenge.

  “Eli,” he said, and waited.

  For what, she didn’t know.

  “Well, Eli, it’s nice to meet you.” She grabbed his hand with both of hers and pumped it up and down a few times. He let her, watching their hands as if she were performing some exotic ritual from another civilization.

  But as she let go, he abruptly adjusted his grip so he was shaking her right hand properly. His handshake was firm, decisive. All of his physical confidence translated, unsurprisingly, into an impeccable businessman’s handshake.

  Or not.

  He didn’t let go.

  Chapter Three

  Never let anything take you by surprise.

  —How to Taylor Your Business Plan

  by E.L. Taylor

  The woman had no idea who he was.

  E.L. Taylor let go of the hand that was wearing his glove.

  She dusted her hands off on her jeans. “Well, now that I’ve been a Debbie Downer, I should get going.”

  Not Debbie. Mallory.

  Mallory was the first person in at least two years who hadn’t recognized him. She hadn’t even started with the Don’t I know you from somewhere? line of questioning he got from strangers who needed an extra moment to place him.

  Yes, they knew him from somewhere.

  From birth, Erasmus Leonardo Taylor had been well-known. Announcements had appeared in all the right places. From the first private kindergarten class, everyone at each of his prep schools had known whose son he was, students and faculty alike. He was called Eli by his immediate family, because Erasmus Leonardo was an asinine name for a child. He was called Taylor by everyone else, but he wasn’t plain Taylor. He was Taylor, Harold and June’s oldest son—yes, the Dallas Taylors, the ones with the summer estate outside Galveston; you know the ones. For the first eighteen years of his existence, everyone in his world had known who he was.

  Then, he’d come to Masterson. The town was small, but the university was large. Thousands of students were not from Dallas, thousands had never spent their summers in their family’s oceanfront vacation home in Galveston, thousands had never played the traditional round of golf with their father’s business partners on their sixteenth birthday. Most had never played a round of golf at all.

  He’d loved it.

  He’d kept Eli a secret and ditched the ludicrous Erasmus entirely, using E.L. Taylor on every term paper, signing E.L. Taylor on his first legal contract, which had been his dormitory agreement. One of his many-greats grandfathers had founded one of the fraternities in the mid-1800s, guaranteeing his progeny membership in perpetuity, but Taylor had ignored that legacy and chosen a fraternity that none of his ancestors had ever belonged to, then been elected president of it. He’d aced his classes while leading the men’s record-setting crew team, rowing in the first seat, the man with the most power, the man who led the team.

  The end result was that everyone at Masterson University had known him by the time he graduated. Everyone in the world of collegiate crew had, too, and he’d attracted the attention of Olympic recruiters for rowing. To fly across the surfaces of rivers and lakes around the world, using his own body to power the fastest, cutting-edge racing shells... That would have been something.

  However, Harold and June’s son was not expected to spend two years training for any sport at an international level. He’d been named after two legendary geniuses. From birth, Erasmus Leonardo had been expected to have a brilliant mind and to nurture it, so that he would, one day, bend numbers and legalities to his will and become master of his own fortune. A gentleman’s competence at sports was expected, but to devote oneself entirely to a physical pursuit was not.

  So, he’d done what he’d been raised to do. He’d graduated from Masterson and gone to Harvard for his MBA. Harvard had an outstanding rowing team, as well as an infamous policy that barred all graduate students from competing in varsity sports. With that temptation out of the way, he’d mastered his master’s degree, allowing himself one physically challenging outlet by returning to the fencing he’d first learned at his prep school, competing only at a club level, not intercollegiate. Not international.

  He’d graduated and promptly invested in a winning array of stocks and real estat
e. He’d performed as spectacularly well as expected, accruing his first few millions, but he’d been in his mid-twenties, a little reckless. Tracking the stocks of long-established companies wasn’t as thrilling as taking bigger risks in unknown start-ups. Instead of holding a stock that increased by a mere tenth of a single percentage point, he could invest in companies that grew by one thousand percent or more.

  Most start-ups failed, however, becoming money pits until they finally dissolved, but Taylor had a good eye for new products and an even better judgment when it came to predicting which fledgling entrepreneurs would grow into successful CEOs of new companies. His millions had turned into tens of millions. Everyone in the world of venture capital knew him.

  Fortunately, the world in general did not. He’d always been able to ditch the suit, don a leather jacket and ride a motorcycle across Texas like any other man. Stop and get gas without being photographed. Stop for a plate of barbecue without giving an autograph. He’d been able to stop being E.L. Taylor whenever he wished to.

  Then, he’d written a book.

  It had given him name recognition outside the world of high-stake investments and black-tie charity galas, so a few television producers had come to call. He should never have agreed to be a guest millionaire on a few episodes of Shark Tank. It had made his face as recognizable as his name, so a famous female recording artist had come to call—and come to his bed. He should never have agreed to escort her to the Grammys. The added exposure had sold more books. Their breakup had sold even more.

  Taylor could not go anywhere or do anything without being watched, pointed at, photographed, whispered about. Anyone who had attended Masterson University during any part of the four years he’d been there invariably recalled that they’d been close friends.

  This fall, Taylor had found himself on a private airstrip with one of those alleged school buddies. The man had proudly pointed out his private plane, a two-seater with a single propeller. It was laughably small compared to Taylor’s personal jet, the equivalent of a go-cart next to a Ferrari. On that unimportant evening in September, Taylor had been inconvenienced by a change in plans and was impatient for his jet’s return. The man he barely recalled from college had been happy, even eager, to take him from Houston to Dallas. I’ll fly; you buy, he’d offered. He’d wanted Taylor to pay for the fuel, less than $150.