Page 15 of Mad About Yule

I walkinto McBride Landscaping’s executive meeting before Mom and Caleb have a chance to sit down at the small conference table. They both hold paper coffee cups, ready to settle in for the weekly check-in session.

“I wasn’t expecting you today.” Caleb looks at me like my very existence baffles him.

“What? I still work here. Mom didn’t trade me to the Christmas festival permanently.”

“Wish she could,” he mutters. He shoots me a grin right after, so I forgive him for the joke.

Even if I suspect part of him means it. We’ve been knocking each other’s elbows ever since I took my place with the family business almost a year ago. Neither of us has enough room to spread our wings the way we want to, but we keep our scuffles to a minimum, for the CEO’s sake.

“What do you think of Hope’s plans?” the CEO asks. Mom’s eager eyes tell me she won’t accept criticism on the festival.

I dig deep, searching my brain for some tact. Putting things nicely isn’t one of my stronger skills. I try sometimes, but to my way of thinking, truth is more important than sparing someone’s feelings.

Unless that someone is my mom.

“It’s ambitious.”

Vaguely complimentary, that description might work. It used to be my usual response when someone presented me with a haphazard plan they didn’t know how to execute. Make them feel like they’d had a good idea, even if I wound up shooting them down in the end.

Her frown proves my methods don’t fly with her. “Can you make her buildings the way she wants?”

I splay my hands wide. “Look who you’re talking to. Of course I can make them, that’s not the problem. Doesn’t mean they’ll bring in the crowds she’s hoping for.”

She waves off my doubts. “What happened to my determined son with a vision and a plan to make it happen?”

“He’s still here, but that only holds true if it’smyvision. This is all Hope’s rodeo. Me, I’m envisioning her Christmas village surrounded by a smaller crowd than she’s thinking, that’s all.”

Much smaller, if I have to guess. The buildings will be cute, I’ll make sure of that, but I just don’t see the rest of it drawing in record-breaking numbers.

“You’re such a Scrooge,” Caleb says.

“It’s not being a Scrooge to look at it logically. What does Sunshine have that’s going to draw in that big of a crowd?”

“It’s like you’ve never watched a Hallmark Christmas movie.”

“Maybe you should think about how easily you just admitted that youdo.”

He shrugs. “They’re Rowan’s favorite.”

“Sure. Blame it on your wife.”

“Maybe you should help Hope revise her strategy,” Mom cuts in.

Someone needs to, but that won’t be me. “Christmas parties aren’t my wheelhouse. I’ll make her gingerbread village, but the rest is on Hope.”

“Don’t go giving her a hard time.” Mom points her “I’m serious and I mean it” finger at me.

Seems a rude thing to lob at a guy. I look to Caleb for some backup. “Why would I give her a hard time?”

He chokes on laughter. “I don’t know, maybe because you love giving people a hard time?”

I scoff, but arguments die before I can voice them. I do kind of like giving people a hard time. Only if they deserve it, though. A guy who wanted to pretend to be the foreman and bark out orders after being on a job crew for a week? Absolutely, I’ll give that guy a hard time. But a woman who’s simply overshot her goals of reigniting this town’s Christmas spirit? I have no plans to butt heads with her over that.

“I can show you written feedback from our crew that says you have a tendency to be abrasive,” he adds.

“Well, I don’t tear down pretty women for the heck of it.”

Except when I do. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I’d razzed Hope enough in high school to prove myself a liar. It hadn’tallbeen for the fun of it. I’d had genuine points to make most of the time. But some of it had been just because I could get under that veneer of perfection she wore so carefully.

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