Page 15 of Christmas By Lamplight
The reading chair sat in the corner, no longer wobbly. She sank into it and pulled her knees to her chest. She could have saved it. The check was for exactly what she needed. Tanner had offered it freely, with no strings attached. Just take the money, pay the lease, and keep the doors open.
But that would have made Dennis right. You’re not practical enough. Not business-minded. Too emotional. And worse: You’ll always need someone to save you.
The Secret Santa letters hung in the window, wishes written by strangers—some fulfilled, some still waiting for magic. Her own wish—Let me keep this place—would go unanswered.
Carrie stood and walked to the counter, touching the vintage cash register she’d restored herself, the coffee station she’d built from a flea market cart, and the handwritten recommendation cards she’d spent hours creating. Every corner held a piece of her determination to succeed.
Three days. She had three days, and then it would be gone. Ahab Coffee would gut the space, install their corporate fixtures, and erase every trace of what she’d built. Before long, no one would remember Lamplight Books was ever here.
The tears came then, silent and steady. Not pretty tears, but the ugly kind that poured out with the death of a dream. She’d done everything right—created beauty, served her community, helped sick children—and it still wasn’t enough.
She considered calling the bank to beg for a loan. It wasn’t too late to call Tanner and tell him that she’d changed her mind. All she had to do was let go of her principles.
But she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. If she was going to fail, she would fail as herself. Not as Dennis’s ex or Tanner’s charity case, but as Carrie Watson, who tried and fell short but never compromised who she was.
She turned off the lights one by one. The reading corner went dark. The children’s section. The romance novels. Finally, just the lamp by the register was still glowing.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the books, to the walls, to the dream that was dying. “I tried. I really tried.”
She always left that one light on so the books wouldn’t be lonely, and she locked the door behind her.
The drive home took twelve minutes. Twelve minutes of streetlights blurring past, of Christmas decorations mocking her failure, of her phone sitting silent in the cup holder.
She’d lost. But at least she’d lost on her own terms.
Chapter Five
Tanner stood at his apartment window, looking down at the light from the single lamp Carrie had left burning in the bookshop. She’d been gone for twenty minutes, leaving light spilling onto the sidewalk.
His phone buzzed against the kitchen counter where he’d abandoned it. Fourteen missed calls from Sloane, his publicist. Twenty-three texts. He didn’t need to read them to know what they said. The charity event story was everywhere now, which meant his location was blown.
He picked up the phone, thumb hovering over Sloane’s contact. With one call, she could have a car here in three hours, spiriting him away to some other small town where nobody knew about the hospital children or the lost funding or Portia’s perfectly edited victim performance.
The bookshop’s light caught his eye again.
Nice to meet you, Tom. She’d known exactly who he was, but she’d offered him invisibility, anyway.
His phone rang. Sloane.
“Where the hell are you?” Her voice was sharp with professional panic. “Someone posted a photo from that bookshop event. You’re trending again.”
“I know.”
“The Crescent Gate Studios meeting is in four days. If you’re not back in LA?—”
“I’ll be there.” He watched a cat cross Main Street below, unhurried. “But not yet.”
“Tanner, that’s insane. The longer you stay, the more likely?—”
“The event raised thirty thousand for the hospital, and more keeps pouring in. The real story is getting traction. Portia’s team is in damage control mode.” He moved away from the window. “Things are turning around.”
“Because you got lucky. Some small-town bookshop owner decided to let you play Santa. That doesn’t mean you should?—”
“Sloane, I’m staying.”
Silence. Then she said, “This is about a woman, isn’t it?”
Was it? The memory of Carrie’s hand in his surfaced unbidden. Then he thought of the way she’d yanked out her earbud the first day he walked in. He wished she hadn’t refused his check, but he loved the fierce pride that drove her to achieve on her own.
