Heating up the Holidays Read online

  The angel’s face, small as it was, managed to look so peaceful, so free of petty emotions.

  “Maybe you should just forgive him,” Maria said. “You know, the spirit of the season and all…”

  Right. Forgiveness. Harmony. Wasn’t that what Christmas was all about?

  Lorelei frowned at the mist of fog outside the window, rolling in from the ocean. Did she have enough forgiveness in her heart?

  Did Ryan, now, after what she’d done?

  She knew she couldn’t sit here forever wondering. She had to go find out.

  10

  R YAN LAY on the couch in the darkened room across from the crackling fire, watching the colored Christmas lights on his ficus tree twinkle. The string of bulbs was his one nod to holiday cheer. But at nearly midnight on Christmas Eve, he was feeling a lot more wistful than cheerful. He’d turned down the various offers he’d received from friends to join them for holiday festivities, because after work today, he’d just felt like being alone.

  Lorelei was still on his mind. But he understood she didn’t care to hear from him, and he supposed he understood why. Not everyone could forgive. And maybe he didn’t deserve to be forgiven.

  But he wasn’t all that thrilled with the way she’d treated him, either. He’d allowed her into his heart…the same way she’d allowed him into hers when they were teenagers.

  So, yeah, okay, perhaps she was right, he deserved to be alone and miserable tonight. But he couldn’t stop thinking of the way it had felt to be with Lorelei again, and the memories, so fresh in his mind, haunted him day and night.

  Maybe he was just meant to be alone. He’d failed ever to find a woman who felt like his soul mate, and now, when he finally had found someone who seemed to fit his wildest fantasies, she hated him for the ass he used to be.

  Such was life, he supposed.

  His gaze landed on his guitar, and he sat up and grabbed it from the foot of the sofa. If nothing else, he could pour his wistful feelings into a new song. That was how he usually dealt with heartbreak, anyway.

  He started a slow strumming, closed his eyes and let the words come to him.

  He sang about sorry being such a sorry word, and forgiveness being so hard to reach, and…he just about made himself sick with how bad the impromptu song was, but he kept going, making up words as he went along, stopping, starting again, trying out the lines one way, and then another.

  He was just about to give up his brooding musical efforts and go to bed, when he heard a knock at the door.

  Ryan set aside the guitar and prepared to tell the neighbors that he was sorry the walls of his house were so thin, but when he opened the door, he found Lorelei, still wearing her hospital scrubs.

  “Hi,” she said quietly.

  “Hi.” His heart swelled in his chest, as if it was straining to get closer to her.

  “I…I just wanted to stop by and say I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “No, it’s okay. No more apologies.”

  “I heard your song.”

  “Oh. Well, then I do have to apologize for how bad it was.”

  “You wrote that?”

  “Just now. I mean, no, I didn’t really write it, I was just making it up as I went along.”

  “What was it about?”

  “You.”

  She blinked, and he could see tears form in her eyes. One spilled out onto her cheek, and he wiped it away with his thumb.

  “Want to hear a live performance?”

  “Um…I just did. I heard everything. Sorry. I was eavesdropping, I guess.”

  “It’s okay. All stuff I’d say aloud to you, if you’d listen.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “I don’t?”

  “It’s Christmas Eve. Aren’t we supposed to forgive on this of all holidays?”

  Ryan tried not to feel too hopeful, but he failed. “I suppose so. Please come inside.”

  She stepped into the living room, with its unintentionally shabby chic decor, surfboards hanging from the ceiling, fireplace glowing brightly, and the pathetic little tree with one sad string of lights.

  “Welcome to my humble shack,” he said. “Can I get you something hot to drink?”

  “Let’s skip the pleasantries, okay?” she said, staring at him in that intent, hyperintelligent way she had.

  She looked tired, as if she’d been working a long shift, but she was still beautiful. Her hair was pulled back, and her face was free of makeup, making her look younger than she was.

  Ryan got a lump in his throat, seeing her standing right there in his living room, that had only moments ago felt so cold and empty.

  “I shouldn’t have done what I did,” she said, “and if you have time, I’ll explain why I did it. It has to do with an African medicine man, and fate, and teenage angst, and first love and other things I don’t quite understand.”

  “I’ve got all night.”

  She smiled then, and all the tension vanished. She was, at once, the beautiful, odd girl he’d always known. The one he wanted to know inside and out. The one he was pretty damn sure he was falling in love with.

  “So do I,” she said, smiling still. “And I’ve got tomorrow, too, if you’re free.”

  “I am,” he said, then he bent to kiss her softly on the lips.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” she said against his mouth a moment later.

  “Yes.”

  “You were the first guy I ever loved.”

  “I was?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow…I’m honored.”

  “Do you know what they say about first loves?”

  “I’ve heard different stories,” Ryan said, slipping his arm around her and pulling her against him.

  She felt warm and perfect.

  “The only one I know to be true is that first love never really dies.”

  He let her words sink in, and he smiled. He glanced up at the clock. It was 12:01 a.m. now. Christmas day.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, then kissed her again, holding her tightly, as he promised himself that this time, they’d get it right.

  Epilogue

  A village near Mombasa, Kenya,

  Christmas Eve, One Year Later…

  “W HY HAVE you not made her your bride yet?” Kinsei asked Ryan. “A woman like her will not wait around forever for a man.”

  “You should tell her that,” Ryan said to the medicine man. “She doesn’t want to get married. Says it’s not a fair deal for women.”

  The man threw back his head and laughed hard. Ryan had seen him do this several times since they’d arrived in the village the day before, and it never failed to make him smile. Really, everything about this village that had been Lorelei’s home made him smile. In spite of the relative poverty of this place populated by scrawny, beautiful children, elegant women, fat goats and squat little huts, the people he’d met seemed to possess something most Westerners lacked-true, unabashed, non-neurotic joy.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever been so happy in his life as he had been since he’d arrived.

  “What?” Lorelei said as she walked up, her long hair shining in the sun. “I can tell you two were talking about me.”

  “You American women know nothing of marriage,” Kinsei said to her. “Ask my wives-they will all tell you they are happy being married to me.”

  Lorelei looked as if she didn’t doubt it. On the flight over, she’d said that in spite of Western ideas about marriage, Kinsei’s family was at least as functional and happy as any she’d ever seen.

  “Kinsei, tell me you weren’t just pressuring him to make me his bride or some nonsense like that.”

  “Nonsense? This is the most important thing you will ever do, getting married. It will bring your heart what it desires.”

  Ryan would have expected Lorelei to roll her eyes at the triteness of the sentiment, but he knew she was faced with Kinsei’s track record. He was, against all reason, inexplicably always right, or so she claimed. And he co