Page 9 of Christmas By Lamplight
Eight forty-three p.m., too early to sleep but too late to do anything productive.
Below, the bookshop was quiet. Carrie had left an hour ago, and he’d watched from his window as she’d walked to her car, shoulders hunched against the December cold. She’d paused at the driver’s door and looked back at the shop as if she were memorizing it.
Or saying goodbye to it. He couldn’t unsee the late rent notice on her desk. With her lease deadline days away, she might be facing closure.
He rolled onto his side and looked at his phone. The Secret Santa article was still open in his browser. Carrie had started the tradition three years ago. With its anonymous wishes and anonymous gifts, it was magic for people who’d stopped believing in it.
She’d built something beautiful in this shop. Anyone could see that. The carefully curated sections, the reading corner he’d fixed, the warm atmosphere that made people want to curl up with a book. She’d taken the shell of a store space and turned it into a place that mattered.
And it still wasn’t enough.
He could write a check right now, put it in a Secret Santa envelope, and slide it under her door. Five thousand dollars, problem solved. But she would know it was from him. And then what? She would think he pitied her. Or worse, that he thought she couldn’t handle her own problems.
She’d mentioned her ex—Dennis—more than once with bitterness in her voice. She’d left someone who’d had no faith in her, and she was determined to prove him wrong. She was building something on her own terms, refusing shortcuts even when they might save her.
He understood that.
He’d spent five years taking whatever roles his agent pitched, doing whatever his publicist suggested, being whoever they said he should be. But the longer he spent in the business, the less he believed he belonged there. He loved acting, but that was such a small part of his work. Most of it involved people whose values he frankly didn’t care for. The whole Portia incident merely brought it to the surface—not that he’d handled that well.
Maybe that was why he felt such a kinship with Carrie. Despite being in different spheres, they both wanted the same thing—to be more than what someone else said they were.
A floorboard creaked somewhere in the apartment. The radiator hissed and clanked, doing its best to fight off the December cold.
He recalled bringing her morning coffee and the surprise on her face, as if small kindnesses were foreign to her. He wished he could do more. The wobbly chair didn’t count. It was an easy fix, twenty minutes at most. He had nothing but time, and she had enough to worry about. But giving her rent money would be too much to offer. She would never accept it. So tomorrow, he would fix her back door that was sticking. It was one more thing he could make right before he left.
Because he would leave.
He gazed out the window where snow was beginning to fall again. Somewhere in this mess of scandal and struggle, he would find a way forward.
He had to.
Chapter Three
Tanner was rewiring the lamp in the fiction section when Carrie found him.
“I need to ask you something,” she said. “And you can say no. Absolutely, completely, no-hard-feelings no.”
He looked up from the collection of lamp parts, eyebrows raised. “That’s a concerning preamble.”
“We’re doing a charity event for the Hollydale Children’s Hospital. Community members are reading to children to raise money for their pediatric wing.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the flyers.”
“I know about the fundraiser you were supposed to do. I know what happened. And this isn’t about that.”
He set down the wire strippers and looked at her with dread in his eyes.
“Our Santa just canceled this morning. Stomach flu.” She pulled copies of the letters from her pocket. “The thing is, we have these letters from the children at the hospital. They wrote to Santa with their wishes and hopes. And Santa was going to answer their letters during the event tomorrow. Only we don’t have a Santa, so . . .”
“So you thought they would love to have the guy who cost them a hundred grand dress up and play Santa?” His voice was flat.
“I thought the guy who loves children and does charity work might want to help make their Christmas special. It’s a lot to ask, so I’ll understand if you can’t. But the children . . . And no one has to know that it’s you.” She waited. “Please?”
He took the letters, read Hailey’s wish about her dog, Marco’s about his sister, and Jade’s about the snow.
His jaw worked. When he looked up, his eyes were bright. “Nobody would know it’s me?”
“Full costume. Beard, suit, the works. You’d just be Santa, anonymous and safe.”
