Читать книгу The Christmas Company - Alys Murray - Страница 8

Chapter Three

It was so provincial. Clark Woodward couldn’t think of any other word to describe Miller’s Point. Provincial in every sense of the word. Nearly everything about them revealed how small they were, and what was worse, they reveled in their smallness. They clung to their superstitious belief in the holidays. They fought the inevitable march of progress he was going to bring to the company and their backwater enclave. The diner didn’t even have avocado on the menu.

As he waited for his pancakes, Clark opened the newspaper. They didn’t get the Dallas Observer out here, so the local gossip would have to do. He scanned the words, each one sinking in less deeply than the one before it. Out of the window framing his booth, he could see the entire town square, including the town hall, where only yesterday he and Kate—he never got her last name—had faced off.

Last night, he hadn’t allowed himself the time or the thought to take in the beauty of the town’s historic district. And it really was beautiful, even if it being beautiful just reminded him how wasteful the entire enterprise was. How much money did they spend on these facade recreations of London’s Cheapside? How much of his family’s fortune got washed away every night with those fake snow machines? And the lights! They might as well have built a fire out of all the greenbacks they wasted.

Wasteful and beautiful. The worst combination.

More dangerous, though, was thinking about the beauty who’d dared to challenge him. She’d burned herself into him yesterday with her persistence and the fiery passion behind her eyes.

He appreciated how strangely alike they were, even as they fought for completely different goals. If he hadn’t been spooked by her insistence that his uncle would have saved the festival, he could have stayed on those steps and talked to her for hours. She was a sharp debater with a biting wit. In a town like this, he’d expected to be greeted as a king. His family, after all, was responsible for their survival. But she didn’t bow and scrape; she challenged him.

She was wrong, of course, and he was right. But the challenge still thrilled him, even if he didn’t dare let it show on his face. He didn’t want anyone thinking they had any kind of power over him.

The most striking thing about her, perhaps, was her ability to embody everything he despised about Miller’s Point. That dichotomy of wasteful and beautiful dwelled within her. She had much to offer; he saw that even in their brief interaction. Yet, she chose to stay in Miller’s Point, where she could do nothing but waste her life putting up tinsel.

Clark knew he should push all thoughts of her directly from his head. A distraction like her would only get in the way of his plans. His mission was simple, but like a fine watch even the slightest bit of sand carried the potential to destroy everything. In three steps, he could be done with this stupid festival. Step One: Dissolve The Christmas Company. Two: Sell off its assets. Three: Return to civilization and Dallas before New Year’s. He could only do that if all distractions were kept to a minimum and all pieces of sand stayed far out of his way.

And he could only accomplish his three-step plan if people actually went to work instead of spending their Tuesdays watching Hallmark movies or whatever it is they did when they “celebrated” Christmas. Clark’s mind boggled at the way this town shut down on this useless holiday. The McDonald’s, where he first attempted breakfast, had locked its doors.

“But—! But—!”

Clark’s head popped up from the blurred words of his newspapers at the loud shouting of a stranger. He whipped his head around just in time to see a flash of a red-scarfed woman dash out of the door and a desperate man sitting at the diner counter. Clark was aware of small-town manners. A good citizen would have invited the freshly liberated man to join him for breakfast, but Clark wasn’t a good citizen, and even if he was, he didn’t think anyone in Miller’s Point would particularly want to share a meal with him.

“Can you believe her?”

It took at least fifteen seconds for Clark to realize the other man was talking to him. He focused on an article about a high school track meet. Apparently, this small town dominated at the recent district meet, held at Christopher Woodward Stadium. He wondered if they’d keep the name now that his uncle was dead, or if they’d turn it into the Christopher Woodward Memorial Stadium to acknowledge his legacy or whatever.

“I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

Apparently, to the man at the counter, this was all the invitation he needed to join Clark for breakfast.

“This seat taken?”

No, but it isn’t open either. Please leave me and my pancakes in peace. Clark fought to keep the snark at bay. There was nothing he wanted less than company at the moment, especially when the entire town was afflicted with candy cane fever. He didn’t want any of that foolishness rubbing off on him. But it didn’t seem this guy was in the mood to take no for an answer.

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

Balancing his array of half-finished plates across his forearms, he plopped into the seat, rattling the table. It took longer than a polite minute for the man to arrange his extensive breakfast, which only added to the heat flaring up the back of Clark’s neck. His lips flattened into a thin line of displeasure when Mel appeared with a piping hot plate and mug. He placed them on the table, and Clark pulled them close, grateful for the distraction. He couldn’t decide what the stranger across from him wanted, but if he thought he could convince him to change his mind about the festival, he’d be just as disappointed as Kate. Did these people have some sort of committee, dedicated to twisting the simplest of business decisions into a city-wide ordeal?

“One order of pancakes and bacon. And a black coffee. Syrup’s over there. Can I get you anything else?”

Clark started to say no, but was cut off.

“Can I get some more coffee, Mel? Oh, and one of those blueberry muffins.”

“They’re about two days old.”

“Can you pop it in the microwave for about thirty seconds, then?”

His easy intimacy with the diner owner put Clark’s transactional replies to shame. Without the protection of his newspaper, Clark had to actually interact with these people. His worst fears realized.

“You got it, kid.”

Mel departed. As Clark dug into his pancakes, he hoped the only frustration he’d have to deal with was the treacle-sweet music pouring out of the juke box, but his new guest proved him wrong.

“You’re that Woodward guy, aren’t you?” he asked through a mouth of biscuits dripping with gravy.

“Clark.”

“I’m Michael.” Clark nodded once, an acknowledgment that he’d heard the introduction, but his new companion took his silence as an invitation for more conversation. “Some people call me Buddy, but I’ll answer to anything, really.”

The urge to roll his eyes was unbearably strong. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be called Buddy when Michael was perfectly suitable. Buddy wasn’t a name for a man. It was a name for a puppy or a background character in a Flannery O’Connor novel.

“Small towns,” he muttered.

“Buddy was my grandfather’s callsign during the invasion of Normandy. He won a Medal of Valor.”

Clark choked on his bacon, ready to splutter out some kind of tense take-back of the insult, but he was awarded with uproarious laughter from the man across the table.

“I’m just messing with you, Dallas. Buddy used to be my nickname, but getting a medical degree changes how people see you. I mostly just go by Michael now. How’re the pancakes?”

“Good.”

“Mel makes the best pancakes in the whole state, I think. On Christmas morning, he sets up an assembly line in the town hall and a bunch of volunteers chip in to help him make, like, two thousand pancakes so everyone in town can have breakfast before the festival starts. The 25th is our busiest day of the year.” Michael’s hurried excitement tapered off when he realized a tradition would be ending. He got a hollow look in his eyes, which Clark did his best to ignore. “I mean, he did. And it was. When the festival was still on.”

The festival. He was tired of hearing about the festival. If these people loved the festival so much, why didn’t they put it on themselves instead of using his family’s money? Better yet, why didn’t they raise the price from a measly $10 a person to $25 a person? A fifteen-dollar increase meant big things for their bottom line, yet when he’d proposed it to Carolyn, the Director of Operations, she’d assured him she’d rather quit the whole thing altogether than keep poor families out and only cater to rich folks. She then glared at him as if the mere suggestion of raising ticket prices cheapened the entire heart of her operation.

Clark said, “Listen, Michael. I’m not really looking for company. I’m fine on my own.”

“Yeah. Of course. I was just thinking I could maybe show you around, you know, give you the lay of the land since you’ll be here for a few days. I can show you everything. Library, bank, even the parking lots so your car doesn’t get towed again.”

News travels fast. He’d only told Kate and the tow truck guy about his car; twelve hours later, everyone knew. If I walk around with you for twenty minutes, will you leave me alone? Something in this town’s water must have made them especially persistent. As with his first interaction with Kate, Clark saw no other way to get rid of this guy than giving him a little bit of his time.

“Sure,” he agreed, trying to hide his displeasure behind a half-hearted smile, only to be practically blinded by Michael’s blinding one.

“Mel! Make my muffin to go!”

What Clark hoped would be a brief twenty-minute introduction became an almost three-hour walking tour of the most important historical and contemporary sites Miller’s Point had to offer. By the time Michael ran out of steam, Clark knew more about the remote ranching village than he’d ever known about Dallas. For example, he’d had no idea his family founded Miller’s Point outright. He assumed they’d settled and prospered here, not set up the first encampments of ranchers.

At the first half-hour mark of the extensive tour, Clark considered bailing out and begging off to his office, but he couldn’t actually find it in himself to do it. Save for the workers taking down the decorations in the town square (as he’d instructed the night before), the town was empty and Michael was every bit the enjoyable host. Not that he ever let on, but he actually had a good time walking around the town and taking in its sights, provincial though they were.

But he drew the line at a cemetery tour. Close inspections of ghosts and tombstones where Jesus wore cowboy boots did not fit his description of an acceptable way to spend a morning. He checked his watch.

“I have to go to my office. I have things to do,” he said, curt and direct as possible. The tour may have been a fine diversion for a few hours, but it couldn’t last all day. He needed to be in the office, taking care of work, even if no one in this town seemed to understand the concept.

“Great! I’ll walk you there.”

“I’m fine, thanks—”

“No buts! Besides, I know where they hide the spare key.”

The Woodward Building was two blocks east off of the town square, and unlike the Dallas offices, it was not an imposing block of concrete and steel, made up in an intricate Art Deco style. It was a humble, two-story building with a flat roof and little else to speak of besides the embarrassment of Christmas lights decorating the front windows. A hand-painted sign with flippable numbers read: “0 DAYS ’TIL CHRISTMAS.” Clark ripped it from its hook as Michael went for the spare key.

“You really aren’t into this Christmas stuff, are you?”

Given he’d only known this guy for a few hours, Clark spared him the tragic backstory and instead took the key and let himself in. The building’s exterior appeared humble, befitting a small-town center of business operations, but the inside ruined his every hope of a muted, respectable workplace environment. It was too fancy. Though years of red-clay-covered boots marked and stained the carpet, the wood finishes of the desks and the crown molding belonged in a palace rather than a satellite office building. Christmas decorations, no doubt charged to his family’s accounts, cluttered every available space. Even the coffee machine was top-of-the-line, but something else bothered him more. He made a beeline for the wall beside the receptionist’s desk.

“What are you doing?” Michael asked.

“Turning the heating off,” Clark replied, searching for the temperature gauge instead of asking what in the world he was doing standing around here when Clark had made it clear their little tour had ended at the graveyard gates.

“It’s, like, forty degrees outside.”

“And we all carry coats, don’t we? Heating is expensive.”

The other man’s shocked gaze bore into Clark’s skin. He paid it no mind. He was a practical man in every sense of the word; he didn’t indulge in luxury. He wore fashionable but reasonably priced clothes, even stitching buttons and cuffs himself when they showed signs of wear. He wore his father’s timeless suit jackets, having them tailored to fit perfectly. He wasn’t very well going to heat an entire building, especially when no one worked inside to enjoy it. Besides, chill increased productivity. Hundreds of workplace studies said so. He’d stopped heating the office in Dallas; everyone here would get used to it. His next order of business, while Michael underscored his movements with a warbling whistle version of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” was to find the receptionist’s black book. When he finally procured it, he flipped through the pages, holding them close enough to his face to read them. He’d forgotten his glasses back at home.

“What’re you doing now?”

“Calling my staff. I didn’t give them the day off.”

“You really think that’s a good idea?” he asked. His boldness lasted up until Clark shot him a narrowed look over the secretary’s desk. “It’s just… They made plans. Want to see their families, you know.”

“Why are you here? Why aren’t you at work, I mean?”

“The foreman gave us the day off. We were all supposed to be out working on the festival to help with the Christmas Eve crowds. The 24th and 25th are packed. You wouldn’t believe it.”

“You work for Woodward?”

“Yep. On Ranch 13 on the Eastern lot.”

Clark raised an eyebrow and flipped to another page in the contact book. No wonder the company suffered so much during the month of December. All of his employees were getting free passes from his foremen. If he had any say, everyone would be coming in to work this afternoon.

“I’ll have to call him, too.”

Passing pages upon pages of personal numbers and shoved-in food delivery menus, Clark finally reached the work associates section of the records and searched for his Head of Production’s number. Whoever he was, he’d be getting an earful. Anyone who wanted to keep their job would be coming in, and that was final. Everyone in the Dallas office was working; there was no reason anyone else should have the day off. His fingers flew over the expensive black phone—only to receive the dial tone as Michael pressed down on the termination button. His eyes flashed with fear. Fear of what? Of hard work? This guy, with his big, calloused hands, didn’t seem unaccustomed to hard work.

“Listen, I have to tell you something.”

“…Yes?”

Returning the phone to its cradle, Clark waited for his companion to speak. Michael checked his watch, a gesture Clark couldn’t help but note. Their tour had lasted an eternity without Michael checking his watch once; now he read the thing like the gospel. The entire air hummed with nervous panic, though Clark couldn’t for the life of him understand what Michael had to be nervous about. Surely the company’s employees weren’t this afraid of a hard day’s work…right? Or did they really fear losing their precious day off so much?

“You know Kate Buckner?”

It wasn’t the question he’d expected. Perhaps he should have. She’d been hovering in his thoughts like heavy-handed foreshadowing all day. He filtered her in his mind like sea water, never quite seeing her clearly.

“I’ve met a Kate,” Clark offered. The taste in his mouth soured and he offered a silent prayer that Michael’s sudden declaration did not concern the Kate who cornered him outside of Town Hall last night. Dear God, let him be talking about a different Kate. Please. If this strange small town had taught him anything so far, it was this: no one wanted to tangle with her.

“Pretty? Dirty blonde hair? Looks like she always wants to dance or fight?”

Clark wouldn’t have put it that way. She never looked to him like a dancer or a fighter, though she carried herself with the natural grace of either. If he put any amount of real thought into her, he might have described her as a helper. She looked ready to help anyone and anything who needed her, even if helping meant she had to fight. It was an endearing quality; he would have admired it if he didn’t think it was against her best interest.

“Yeah. I’ve met Kate Buckner.”

“She’s up to something.” Michael spoke, gaining momentum with every word like a freight train. “She’s at your family’s house right now. I wasn’t supposed to tell you, and I don’t really know what’s going on, but I think it’s important you go home right now and check it out.”

Truth be told, Clark hated that old place. He’d tried to avoid staying there the night before, but every hotel or bed and breakfast he approached informed him, polite as could be, they had no vacancy, so he’d bitten the bullet and returned to the mansion’s creaking halls, choosing to sleep on a couch in the front living room to avoid diving too deep into the body of the house. He hadn’t been there since he was a kid, and the memories wrapped around him heavier than the musty old blanket he’d slept under.

“The Woodward House?”

“Yeah.”

He dreaded returning in the daylight, but he knew he had no choice. He didn’t know her plan, but he couldn’t let any harm come to the estate. The sham castle built on a hill still held the spirits of his family, and they required protection.

It was all he had left of his parents.

Collecting his coat, he tossed Michael the keys to his rental car, which he’d rescued from the tow yard this morning.

“Drive me there.”