Rebel Without a Claus Read online

  Ten minutes later Ridge arrived to collect Clara. He offered Christian a hand and said, ‘G’day, Christian. Gee, you’re looking a bit rough around the edges, mate.’

  Christian imagined punching him. It was the next best thing to punching him. Still, Christian was embarrassed. Clara was embarrassed too. Ridge didn’t seem to notice, or maybe he did notice but didn’t care. He had Clara right where he wanted, right there at his side, one arm looped over her shoulder.

  For an awful moment, Christian almost told them about Magdalena. Then he remembered Milleridge and the luxury hotel he wished to construct in Milleridge’s place, so he smiled, albeit tightly.

  ‘Oh, hey do you want to come?’ Ridge said to Christian.

  ‘No,’ Clara said as Christian replied, ‘Yes.’

  On the way to the sleigh, Christian whispered in Clara’s ear: ‘You still want me to inherit the inn?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Then tell your boyfriend to behave.’

  Over dinner, Christian learned more about Ridge than Christian had ever wanted to learn about Ridge. He learned that Ridge handcrafted wooden toys for children with plastic allergies—toys made with love which were then sold with love by Ridge’s grandfather in their family owned toyshop. He learned that this toyshop would have shut when an unscrupulous toy magnate opened a big box store in Mistletoe, if not for the support of the local children, who chose to buy Ridge’s wooden toys even though none of them had a plastic allergy.

  ‘A plastic allergy is actually quite rare,’ Ridge said at one point, which left Christian pondering where the market for plastic allergy friendly toys came from.

  ‘Have you always made toys?’ Christian asked, his tone flat.

  ‘I used to whittle fish hooks,’ Ridge replied. ‘But there’s not much money in whittling for whittling’s sake, in whittling for pleasure.’

  Ridge knew he needed a plan for his life after whittling that was whittling adjacent, that would let him work with wood. But the weird thing about whittling is the passion never leaves, Ridge assured Christian, who did not know he needed assurance on this subject. The weird thing about whittling is it’s always in here, Ridge continued to assure Christian, except this time he pointed to Christian’s heart.

  Christian grabbed his left pectoral like he was Chris Evans. Christian knew about Chris Evans, about how he liked to grab his left pectoral, because one of Christian’s girlfriends had made him watch a fifteen minute montage of Chris Evans grabbing his own, and, on occasion, other people’s, left pectorals during press junkets. Now Christian could not think about pectorals—left or right—without thinking about America.

  Christian learned that Ridge’s memoirs, ‘Sprucing Myself Up: One Man’s Road To Redemption Through Whittling,’ chronicled his journey from addict to toymaker and had received a starred review in the Mistletoe Bugle, which was not an honor Ridge cared for just quietly, because the real honor came from expressing his true self.

  Yeah, well, Christian wondered if Ridge even knew about crystal-infused water. He wondered if Ridge even knew that Gwyneth Paltrow’s editorial staff thought very highly of it—thought that by simply looking at a crystal-infused water bottle during, say, the downward-dog yoga position, your spirits may feel boosted.

  Christian learned that, like a professional athlete, Ridge’s life could be placed in two categories: the season and the offseason. During the season, he crafted and sold toys. During the offseason, which was in the spring, and a majority of the summer, Ridge volunteered at a homeless shelter in Yuletide. He didn’t need to work all year long, you see—his toys were in demand. And in demand toys meant a man was freed to pursue his passion for philanthropy.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Christian said when Ridge finally stopped talking about himself.

  ‘The lads and I are going out after this. Do you like to party, Christian?’ Ridge said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’

  It was true. Christian never partied. He never went out with the boys or drank so much that he woke up in a stranger’s apartment. He liked working, and he didn’t like working with a hangover. It never occurred to him to drink very little and always with a meal. Clara was the same. Back in school, they’d vanish together from parties where people had passed out in other people’s bedrooms, and share a milkshake in the same cafe they sat in now. Maybe even the same booth.

  Ridge seemed like a big drinker. Lots of people were big drinkers, but Clara had never wanted that in a husband. She didn’t have any patience for drinking culture, and neither did Christian. They’d both seen Christian’s father wreck his life, and it had made an impression on their impressionable minds.

  Christian’s father had been drinking when he crashed his car, killing himself and his wife. The police said he was under the limit, but Christian didn’t care. He’d never drink if he were driving Clara home while it was snowing, even if the snow was light. It was a husband’s job to protect his wife, which Christian Thornton II certainly knew. But then, why shouldn’t he drink with his friends after an exhausting day? He didn’t need permission. He didn’t need a warrant. It was this attitude that had made Christian and Holly orphans.

  Christian slammed his hot chocolate on the table. He was unsure who exactly he felt mad at, Ridge or his father. Maybe Ridge reminded Christian too much of his father, and that was the problem. He’d need to escort Clara home tonight, just to make sure she didn’t go anywhere with Ridge. Sure, the sleighs had drivers, but drunken people rarely did something without acting stupid. In fact, acting stupid was their whole thing.

  Christian’s phone didn’t make a sound, but he pretended it had, just to get away from Ridge.

  ‘This looks important,’ Christian lied as he glanced at his phone. He walked to the other side of the cafe and said to his imagined caller, ‘Blah, blah, blah. I’m better than Ridge.’

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Clara said when Christian returned to the table.

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle. But I should get back to Milleridge.’ Christian pocketed his phone and downed the rest of his hot chocolate. ‘Of all the evenings I’ve had, this was certainly one of them.’

  ‘I need to run too,’ Ridge said.

  ‘Ridge, I thought we were going on a sleigh ride tonight.’

  ‘The boys want to hang, babe,’ Ridge said. He threw up his hands as Clara frowned at him. ‘You want to come too, Clara?’

  Christian didn’t know what Ridge did on a night out with his boys, except he imagined it involved tipping reindeers and harassing grandmothers.

  ‘Yes, Clara, are you going with Ridge?’ Christian asked.

  Christian stared hard at Clara. Clara stared hard at Christian. Ridge cleared his throat.

  ‘Er, honey, I’m going out with the boys.’

  ‘Fine,’ Clara said tersely. She didn’t take her eyes off Christian.

  Ridge and his friends spilled onto the street. Christian only just noticed that they all dressed like lumberjacks, in flannel and jeans. Clara liked lumberjacks. She’d perhaps wrestle an axe in Ridge’s hands given half the chance, Christian thought.

  ‘Sometimes I make him chop wood so I can watch,’ Clara said, as if reading Christian’s mind.

  Christian wanted to call her mean, but that would be admitting he felt jealous of Ridge.

  ‘Mouth breather,’ he whispered to Clara—clearly meaning Ridge—and she responded by elbowing him in the ribs.

  Christian felt a surge of triumph as Ridge slid on the sidewalk and collided with a family.

  ‘You’re way too good for Ridge Brooks,’ Christian said. ‘Why are you even dating him?’

  ‘Because,’ Clara replied, soft as starlight, ‘he was the one who stayed.’

  Ten

  By the next morning, Christian had almost convinced himself that Mistletoe wasn’t as bad as he remembered.

  Sure, the ridiculous Christmas sweaters irritated his eyes, and if he smelled one more gingerbread latte, he would scream. But he’d sur
vived thus far, hadn’t he? Here was Christian Thornton III, who hated sleighs and juniper garlands and gingerbread lattes, not tearing out his hair every time he left the sanctity of his room.

  Of course, Ridge was a problem. How he kissed Clara, how he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, how he talked nonstop about whittling. But the thing to do with Ridge was to ignore him—don’t mention him to Clara. Don’t snort every time someone mentioned his name. Clara couldn’t know how Ridge niggled at Christian, how he’d spent half the night pacing his room, muttering about Clara’s poor taste in men.

  Only after breakfast, when Christian found a note on his bed, did he momentarily forget about Ridge. It was from Holly, who wanted Christian to sneak onto the roof. ‘We’re not children anymore,’ Christian whined to himself as he scrunched up the note. He would join her on the roof, but only because she had promised him candy canes.

  ‘Where are the candy canes?’ Christian said as he climbed onto the roof, which was slippery from the snow. ‘I was expecting candy canes.’

  Holly raised an eyebrow. ‘On the roof?’

  ‘Sometimes candy canes appear to us at the most unexpected of times.’ Christian noticed the little wooden box in Holly’s hands, and his stomach pinched. ‘You found daddy’s cigars?’

  ‘They were shoved in the back of the pantry. I thought we’d cleaned out that pantry a hundred times over, and yet we still managed to miss these.’ She drummed her fingers on the box. ‘Is your bum wet too?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s almost like we’re sitting on a damp roof.’

  ‘Do you want one?’ Holly took off the lid, and Christian inhaled a lungful of pepper and cedar and earth. ‘They smell so much like daddy.’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ Christian said quietly. He picked up a cigar and rolled it between his fingers. He wished Holly hadn’t found the box. He also wished that he had known the box was still around, that he could spend years anticipating the day it was found. The pleasure in this discovery was all too brief.

  ‘Go on,’ Holly said.

  ‘Maybe one.’

  But Christian did not light the cigar. He and Holly sat on the roof for a long time, silent. Then Holly said, ‘When people say you have to love yourself in order to love someone else, I think they mean you have to love yourself in order not to love the wrong someone else.’

  ‘Where is this coming from?’ Christian said quietly. Holly did not seem to hear him.

  ‘Because if you think you’re not good enough for love,’ she continued, ‘you are going to find yourself married to a person who isn’t good enough for you.’

  Christian didn’t know what to say. He shrugged off his blazer and placed it around Holly’s shoulders. He asked if she needed anything. She was going to pick the Gs up from their babysitter, she told him. She had been on the roof for long enough. She had to clean up the house, but mostly she had to find somewhere silent for a while to sit.

  ‘Like here,’ Christian said.

  Holly nodded. She kissed her little brother on the cheek, and she slipped back into the inn with the cigar box tucked neatly underneath her arm. Christian still had a cigar, and in the pocket of his jeans he kept a box of matches. He didn’t smoke, but on occasion Magdalena liked a cigarette with a cocktail, so he was in the habit of carrying her matches.

  Christian lit the match, and he then lit the cigar by holding it at a forty-five degree angle over the flame and rotating the cigar until the foot began to ignite. Meanwhile, he slowly puffed on the cigar while rotating it around the flame. He gently blew on the foot to make sure the cigar was burning evenly, and then he waited for a minute for the burn to stabilize.

  After all this, Christian decided not to smoke the cigar. This was his father’s thing—a thing which Christian had never enjoyed. He stood like he was going to climb back into the inn, but then suddenly he was falling off the roof and the cigar flew out of his hand. He lay in the snow, not moving, not shouting either. Finally, he managed to stand and run a shaking hand all over his body, just making sure nothing was broken or bruised.

  He’d gotten lucky falling in that pile of snow, but not so lucky when it came to his cigar, which had landed in the outdoor Nativity scene, in the hay, setting fire to the manger almost instantly.

  Thankfully, the seniors’ crochet class had seen the fire from the inn and scrambled outside. As Christian stumbled over to the now extinguished fire, he saw the seniors had managed to save Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, sheep, and angels, but not the wise men. No, the wise men had perished as the Relic carried their camels to safety.

  ‘Who would do this?’ the Relic shrieked.

  ‘Er—’ Christian raked a hand through his hair.

  ‘Oh, hello, Christian darling. I was just asking Prunella who on earth would set fire to my Nativity scene.’

  ‘It was me, Great Aunt Gladys.’

  The Relic was furious. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Christian.’

  ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. I was smoking a cigar and I slipped off the roof,’ Christian said in a stiff, awkward way as he inched away from the seniors, who were glaring at him.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Prunella said.

  ‘Christian set fire to the three wise men.’ The Relic could barely process this. ‘I think he might be an alcoholic, actually.’

  ‘Oh, I bet they were all alcoholics,’ Prunella said. ‘Honestly, who gives gold, frankincense, and myrrh to a baby?

  ‘Not the wise men, Prunella. Christian. My great nephew. Fix this,’ the Relic added to Christian.

  ‘What are we going to do about the wise men, Great Aunt Gladys? They are completely toast,’ Christian answered.

  ‘Replace them.’ She waited until Prunella had stepped into the inn with the seniors’ class before adding, her voice no louder than a whisper, ‘I don’t want that Prunella walking around here all smug that my nativity scene is missing the wise men.’

  Inside the inn’s shed, there was a broken sleigh; sometimes kids sat on the back and kissed. In the cupboards, erupting onto the floor, there were the ghosts of Christmas past: tinsel, ornaments, plastic trees, plastic garlands. There were the things left over from Christian and Holly’s childhood, too, like toys and books and school reports, but there were also life-size cardboard cutouts of the Spice Girls: Scary Spice, Sporty Spice, Ginger Spice, Posh Spice, and Baby Spice. The cardboard cutouts were damp, moldy, and perfect.

  ‘Holly,’ Christian cried as his sister stepped into the shed. ‘What do you think about replacing the three wise men with three Spice Girls?’

  ‘Perfect, I think,’ Holly replied. ‘But which three do you choose?’

  ‘Definitely not Ginger Spice,’ Christian said bitterly.

  ‘Really?’ Holly seemed very interested in this. ‘Why not Ginger?’

  ‘She broke up the Spice Girls, Holly.’ Christian said this as if Holly was ridiculous for even asking. ‘Quitting is hardly the right message to send to Baby Jesus.’

  ‘You’re right. Ginger is out.’ Holly thought for a moment. ‘What about Baby Spice?’

  ‘A baby can’t take care of a baby, Holly. They’d both die.’

  ‘So, thanks to a process of elimination, the three wise men are now Scary, Sporty, and Posh Spice.’

  Christian’s jaw tightened. ‘Posh Spice is really more of a cool aunt than a wise man. You know, you’ve got your vegetarian mom who thinks make-up and heels are weapons of the patriarchy to control women, and also she won’t let you have a phone, then Posh Spice comes along and gives you your first pair of Manolo Blahniks.’

  There was a long silence. Then Holly said, ‘What’s Baby Jesus going to do with a pair of Manolo Blahniks?’

  Christian couldn’t believe the question. ‘Honestly, Holly, you’ve missed the point entirely.’

  ‘Look, all I know is Scary and Posh Spice are too damaged. The cardboard is all water damaged and gross. They’ll probably just scare the kids. Maybe we should only use Sporty Spice?’

  ‘Sporty Spic
e can’t go it alone. She’s not Beyonce.’

  Holly sighed, exasperated. ‘I don’t know, Christian. You work this out.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Clara poked her head around the shed door.

  ‘I’m replacing the three wise men with Spice Girls,’ Christian said.

  ‘And I’m leaving,’ Holly said. She smiled at Clara and returned to the inn.

  ‘Excellent,’ Clara said to Christian. ‘Wait—why are you replacing the three wise men with Spice Girls?’

  Christian cleared his throat. ‘I may have set fire to the wise men.’

  ‘I bet you did, you naughty cow,’ Clara replied. ‘What are the Spice Girls bringing Baby Jesus?

  ‘Do they have to bring him something?’

  ‘Suppose it’s gold, frankincense, and myrrh?’

  Christian shook his head. ‘That would make the Spice Girls alcoholics, apparently.’

  ‘Hmm. Very thought provoking.’ Clara frowned. ‘The thing is, babies don’t really like gold, do they?

  ‘Everyone likes gold. Even pirates.’

  ‘Baby Jesus wasn’t a pirate.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know,’ Clara replied. ‘Which means you’re wrong.’

  Clara James thought he was wrong. Big surprise. Christian knew his eyes looked steely and sharp. ‘I mean, I’ve never been wrong about anything in my life,’ he replied, ‘so that seems unlikely.’

  They faced each other, frowning, like this was a standoff.

  ‘How long have you been seeing Ridge?’ Christian said. He had decided to pull the trigger.

  Clara tilted her chin up. ‘We’ve been on and off for about seven years.’

  ‘Good.’ Christian nodded, thoughtful. ‘So, it’s not serious then.’