Page 3 of The Christmas Keeper

Well, to be fair, it was me that was ugly. The flight was okay. I spent most of it, and the hour-plus layover in Detroit sipping coffee to wash down more acetaminophen tablets than were recommended. My connecting flight back to the small airport an hour from Whiteham was far from okay. We took off into some strong headwinds and snow, nothing too bad, but enough to make the small jet thump around as if it was running over a washboard in the sky.

Each jolt made my stomach lurch and my head pound. Since the turbulence was so nasty, no smiling attendant was handing out shortbread cookies and ginger ale. They were all buckled in just as we were, which was fine, but man some ginger ale for the hungover ginger would have been nice. Coming into the rural airport was fun. Not. Intense snow squalls had raced over the state, creating whiteout conditions that not only made driving perilous, it made landing a plane dicey. The runway was cleared but icy in spots, and the wind was brutal and filled with snow. When the wheels touched down, a collective sigh ran through everyone on board.

No one was happier than me—perhaps the flight crew might have been—to disembark and head to the single luggage conveyor belt in front of the lone car rental kiosk. It was midday, but the sky was so dark and heavy with snow that it appeared tobe evening as I glanced through the thick glass walls overlooking the parking lot.

I briefly noticed a man sitting on a round stuffed seat as I followed the other passengers to baggage claim. Just a fast glance as you do when you’re surrounded by strangers with a headache and a gutful of sour. He was leggy, that much I’d clocked at a glance. Long legs, thin, Jack Skellington legs that were crossed at the knee, a ratty six-string on his lap. A headful of dark curls bowed low over his instrument as we filed in, cranky, with only one thing on all of our minds: how shitty it was going to be driving home in this white crap. Or maybe that was just me. Snow sucked. Sure it was pretty but unless you were seven and getting a day off from school, which the poor kids didn’t even get anymore thanks to internet classes, snow was nothing but a nuisance. It meant shoveling, plowing, skidding off dirty roads that weren’t cindered, slow days at the bar, and clearing out a goose pen for Fred and Wilma. White Christmases? Bah-humbug. I’d rather have a clear day in the 80s. People drank lots more beer in the summer.

So the guitar man had been just that. Some dude waiting for someone, probably. It wasn’t until he began to play that I lifted my sight from a text I was sending my neighbor Mr. Blum to ask if he had placed bedding in the pen for the geese to lie on. Everyone around me quieted when he began to sing and strum. His voice floated over the small terminal, pure and clear, with a slight twang that spoke of southern roots. A deep baritone, filled with emotion, that pulled me into the country song he was singing. It was a voice reminiscent of Luke Combs, not that I personally was into country but when you ran a small pub in a rural town, you listened to country all day long, either on the radio or on the old Rock-Ola jukebox in the corner. Whoever this guy was, he certainly could have been on any modern country station. Hell, he was better than most of the singers Iheard while washing glasses or shooting darts. His empty case sat at his scruffy sneakers, open, with a sign asking for holiday donations.

My gaze touched on his hands, long fingers, skilled, moving over the neck of his guitar as he did a cover of “Welcome to My World” that left me speechless. Inky dark eyes framed with thick lashes met my awed stare. A smile pulled at sensuous lips. His curls twisted around his ears, tickling some thin silver earrings in his lobes. His face was stunningly handsome, a proud nose that spoke of some Middle Eastern ancestry perhaps, and a slim strong jaw covered with unmanicured scruff. The clapping of the dozen or so passengers pulled me out of the fog his voice and face had launched me into.

“Thank you,” he softly said, sparing no time before starting on a holiday song about a hat made of mistletoe. The passengers tossed bills into his case as he sang, his ratty blue scarf hanging open to reveal a long neck inside a thick sweater. His coat was used, and used well, with small tears on the elbows but that took nothing away from him. He was beautiful. I took a step closer, then another. The sound of the suitcases tumbling down to the belt was white noise when his gaze met and held mine. My mouth opened to let something fall out when two airport security guards arrived, looking quite pissy. The music stopped dead. The passengers, now intent on getting their bags and going home, paid little attention to what was going on.

“Come on, you can’t do that inside. Take it outside,” an older man in a dark uniform told the singer. The musician, to his credit, immediately started to gather his tips, all the while nodding along with the rousting he was getting.

“Can I play in the vestibule? My car is just so cold,” the singer said, his tone respectful as he was hustled along like he was some sort of vermin. The lady at the car rental kiosk was bobbing her orange head, her nose crinkled as if she’d just sniffed a skunk’sass. “I won’t touch anyone coming in or out. If you can just let me stay for another hour or two, I can afford a room at a motel.”

“Sorry, you’re outside or we call the cops and they arrest you for soliciting.” Older guard gave the singer a gentle shove to the revolving doors as the check-in clerks behind the two airlines that flew out of here watched in morbid fascination.

“Okay, no, okay, it’s fine. I’ll play outside,” the singer, cowed now, said as he was herded to the doors.

My feet moved on their own, propelling me past the old bat in the car rental desk, and planting me in front of two tired TSA agents.

“It’s five degrees outside and the snow is blowing sideways,” I chimed in, getting a look of utter shock from Curly as he juggled his guitar case and a small duffel.

“That sucks, I get it, but he can’t play in here. I suggest you get your luggage, sir, and let us do our jobs,” the younger burly fellow informed me. Getting into it with airport security was not on my to-do list, so I lifted my hands, palms out, and gave Curly a “I tried, dude” look that got me a soft smile of thanks that made me forget how to walk properly.

I stumbled into a trash can as my sight stayed on the busker being shown the door. Wind right off an iceberg blew in as the door spun, flakes as big as my hand rushed around the singer, lifting his curls from his high forehead. His shoulders rose to his ears. When he turned to look at the guards, they motioned him to move from the doors. So he did, his face into the wind.

I grabbed my lone bag from the conveyor belt, shot the guards a dark look, and stomped outside into a squall that robbed the air from your lungs. I saw Curly crossing into the short-term parking lot, and I followed, my old suitcase thumping behind me.

“Hey!” I shouted, the word lifted and blown into the next county. Curly paused, looked back at me, and then walkedtoward me. “Hey, listen, I don’t know why they did that but tossing anyone out into weather like this is shitty.”

“It’s how it is. Thank you for trying to help.” A flash of white teeth set off a total mental shutdown the likes I had not felt since…forever. “I should get to my car. It’s parked on the street over there, and if I don’t get back to it by six, the city will tow it and all my possessions are in it.”

“You live in yourcar?” I asked and instantly regretted how terrible my emphasis on car had been. “I mean, it’s really cold to be sleeping in a car.”

“Yeah, it’s chilly, but I have blankets.”

I stared at him as snow swirled around us. Tiny white specks of frost clung to his eyelashes and whiskers. I couldn’t stop admiring the way his nose sat on his face so perfectly. That was probably why my mouth started making offers that my brain would eventually be horrified about.

“I have a spare room above my bar that you can sleep in,” I blurted out as the speakers that usually announced flights leaving and arriving was now playing Christmas carols. Dolly Parton, to be exact. Curly stared long and hard at me as if weighing whether to accept or run for the guards inside the airport. “I’m not after…I’m just…” And there I floundered because I had no fucking clue why I had just offered this stranger a room above the alehouse. “I don’t want anything. I swear. I just wanted to help. To be…helpful.”

“Right. Look, I’m busking, not hooking, so whatever you think is going to happen isn’t.” A fire lit in those mahogany eyes of his.

I felt my face ignite with shame. “What? No, no, I’m not trying to hook up. Shit, no, not at all. I’m totally the opposite of that guy.” Snow attacked us…like it honestly assaulted us. My nose was starting to run. “I’m not after anything other than…”

“Than what? My spleen?”

“I…spleen?! God, no, I’m not after your spleen. I’m just trying to be kind. Just a kind offer to a fellow human being two weeks before Christmas. You can turn me down, and to be honest, I would turn me down too.” I pulled my sleeve under my runny nose. This cold was crippling. “I’m trying to do a good deed. That’s all. I’ll be sleeping at my place, which is not near my bar.”

Nora’s off-handed, or I hoped it was off-handed because who wanted to be a Scrooge, had cut deeper than I would ever admit to her, or this man. Maybe I was a little puckery about the holidays, and human beings in general, but I wasn’t some old dude who hated everyone.

I just hated certain people. The ones who pissed me off, which was mostly everyone sure but…well shit.

He appeared to be contemplating. I wished he would contemplate faster. My balls were now nestled inside my body and my toes were brittle from the cold. If I wiggled them, they’d snap off.

“I’m not sure I should be that close to temptation, but hey, maybe it’s a test from the big man?” He pointed skyward. I glanced up to see a large plastic St. Nick and two wobbly reindeer secured to the roof of the canopy over pick-ups and drop-offs.

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