Mistletoe Season by Michelle Major
CHAPTER TEN
THIRTYMINUTESLATER, Angi walked out of the school with a sullen Andrew next to her. Anger pumped through her like someone had just turned on a garden hose, ready to explode out in a torrent of temper.
She was angry at herself for not realizing how bad the situation had gotten for her son. Angry at the school for not doing enough to protect her sweet boy. Those two outlets should be enough, but she had plenty of temper left over for the man waiting for them in the truck.
The one who’d set her sweet boy on this path to the current deluge of problems.
“Hey, bud,” Gabe said as Andrew got into the back seat. “You okay?”
“No,” Angi snapped before Andrew could answer. “He’s not okay. Do you know why he’s not okay?”
Gabe gave her a sidelong glance. “Guessing it has something to do with that cut above his eye.” He turned to Andrew again. “How’s your head?”
“Fine,” the boy muttered.
“Do not speak to him,” she commanded, all the anger that she hadn’t been able to let loose on the well-meaning principal coalescing into a heavy ball of frustration. One that she could now level at the man sitting next to her. “He’s not okay because he just got suspended for fighting. A three-day suspension. You should see the other boy.” She sucked in a quick breath. “In fact, there he is.” She pointed to the kid walking down the steps of the school with his obviously furious mother. His face was red from crying and his right eye was already developing a massive bruise.
“He’s twice Andrew’s size,” Gabe said on a harsh breath. “Looks mean as the day is long.”
“But this one—” Angi jerked a thumb toward the back seat “—beat the tar out of him from all accounts. It was a regular pummeling.”
“I thought Andrew was hurt.”
“I slipped when the teachers pulled me off him,” the boy explained. “Hit my head on the ground. It’s fine. Even the school nurse said so. That’s Johnny, and he’s a bully. But I took care of him.”
“Violence doesn’t take care of anything,” Angi said, frustrated that things had gotten so out of control. She lifted a hand when Gabe would have spoken. “Not a word from you.”
“I was going to agree,” he said under his breath.
“Not a word,” she repeated. “Please take us to my car. I called the pediatrician’s office, and Andrew has an appointment for concussion testing this afternoon.”
Gabe shifted into gear and headed back toward the mill. He’d given her so much comfort on the way to the school when she’d been anxious and frazzled. But she didn’t know how to deal with this new side of her son.
Andrew was a sweet kid, a little awkward but with such a big heart. Now he’d been suspended for fighting, of all things. What had changed in his life? She rolled her lips together as guilt tumbled through her. Everything. She’d sublet her apartment so they could move back into her mother’s house after the heart attack. Andrew had lost his grandfather this year, the only father figure he’d ever known.
Angi was burning the candle at both ends as she tried to balance her responsibilities at the restaurant with the ones she had yet to give up at the inn.
But the biggest change—or at least the one she could control with a few well-chosen words—was Gabe’s involvement in their lives.
“Mom, I don’t need the doctor,” Andrew told her, his voice brimming with enthusiasm. “I feel good. I stood up to Johnny. He’s not going to bother me again.”
God, she hoped that was true. The warrior mother in her still wanted to throttle the little jerk who’d antagonized her son, but she hadn’t admitted any of that in front of the principal or Andrew’s teacher.
“According to Johnny,” she reminded Andrew, “you came after him unprovoked.”
“That’s a lie,” Andrew said, his voice losing its fervent edge.
“Then tell me why.” She adjusted the seat belt so she could turn to face him. “It doesn’t help your case with the principal that you wouldn’t give details as to what he said to upset you, Andrew. All she knows is that you started a fight with a boy on the playground.”
“I didn’t start it,” Andrew insisted. “I finished it.”
Angi set her jaw and darted a look at Gabe. “I assume you taught him that bit of wisdom.”
“No,” the infuriating man answered. “But I respect the hell out of him.”
“No swearing,” Angi warned.
Gabe nodded. “Right. Sorry.”
“I learned it on YouTube,” Andrew offered. “But Gabe taught me not to tuck my thumbs when I make a fist. That way I can punch harder.”
To his credit, Gabe had the good sense to look chagrined. “Your mom is right, Drew.” He looked at her son in the rearview mirror. “Violence doesn’t solve problems.”
“It stopped Johnny from saying mean things,” Andrew countered.
“What mean things?” Angi demanded. “What on earth could that boy have said to make you react in that way, Andrew?”
“He said my daddy didn’t want me which made me a stupid little...” His voice cracked as he finished, “Crap bastard.”
Gabe turned into the mill’s gravel driveway at that moment, taking the speed bump too quickly. Angi let herself be jostled, like she was riding a violent wave after the ocean had been turned up by a storm. That’s how she felt—as if she were being pulled under and then thrown again. Her emotions pitched back and forth, tossed this way and that before finally being dragged under into the darkness.
The truck jerked to a stop, and Gabe threw it into Park and turned fully to face her son. “That boy at your school—Johnny, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Johnny is a jerk, Drew. He’s a piece of dog poop on your shoe, and nothing more.”
Again with the life coaching, Angi thought, but that was the only coherent idea that registered. She should take over. As the mom, this was her issue. As the single mom who’d walked away from Andrew’s father without a word or any attempt to make him own up to his responsibility, this was completely on her.
She was afraid to speak. Afraid all that would come out was a keening wail because that little piece of dog poop had given voice to her biggest fear for her sweet child. That he’d be judged for her mistakes.
It had been a mistake to let herself trust a man who was perfect on paper but not in reality. That was all she would admit to because the rest of it had led to Andrew. Her son was the best part of her.
The very best part.
And now he was tainted by her past when she’d worked so hard to be everything for him. It felt as though all of that effort had been turned to nothing with a few callous, cruel words.
“I knew kids like this Johnny,” Gabe continued, filling the void when she still couldn’t speak. “He’s going to grow out of his meanness or not, but picking on you is about his problems. You are a great kid. You’re smart and clever and persistent to the point of being annoying.”
Angi sucked in a breath, which Gabe must have recognized as the admonishment it was because he ran a hand through his hair and said, “I mean that as a compliment. You’re not afraid to go after what you want, buddy. You don’t do it by tearing people down. You get to work and make things better. That’s a skill that a dumb fu—”
He shook his head. “A fool like this Johnny can never understand. Trust me. One thing I learned in the army was how to read people. I can tell you within thirty seconds of meeting a person all I need to know about their character. You have incredible character.”
“What’s a bastard?” Andrew asked, another knife driven into Angi’s already bleeding heart.
“It means a person whose parents weren’t married when he was born.” All the fury Angi felt was written across Gabe’s face. “It doesn’t mean anything about you, kid. That’s on the guy who was stupid enough to let your mom walk away.”
While she appreciated his valiant effort to put a positive spin on this for both of them, she had to fight her own battles. So she swallowed back her anger and guilt at what her son had experienced, dashed a hand across her cheeks and turned.
“Gabe is right,” she told Andrew with as much reassurance as she could muster. “And trust me, I don’t say that lightly. I’m not sure where this Johnny character learned that word or why he’s chosen to taunt you with it. But it’s mean and ugly, Andrew.”
“It’s true though.” Her son’s sweet rosebud mouth had turned into a prickly pout.
“You are loved,” she said, instead of responding directly. She wouldn’t lie to him, but she needed to focus on what was essential at this moment. “You know I love you. And Nonna does, too. You were so loved by your papa, and your uncles think the sun rises and sets by you.”
“I’m partial to you despite my best efforts,” Gabe added.
To Angi’s great surprise, that revelation was the one that made Andrew’s stiff shoulders relax the tiniest fraction.
“Your...” Angi hesitated, her breath catching in her chest. She didn’t even want to give her ex the honor of using the word father. To her, that was earned not by a few minutes of pleasure but by showing up in a child’s life. Something that man had not done even once. “He’s the one who’s missing out, sweetheart. He has no idea how much, and I doubt he ever will. But that’s on him. Not you.”
She reached out and placed a hand on his knee. “It’s also on me for choosing so badly, but it brought you to me so I’ll always be grateful. Even if he’s a complete idiot.”
“Okay,” Andrew agreed, and she wondered if part of his acquiescence was just to shut her up before she lost control and started blubbering all over the place. He shouldn’t be dealing with this sort of stuff at his age, and she thought she’d protected him from it by returning to Magnolia where he was part of the Guilardi family, well-known and well loved in town.
But small towns didn’t let anyone off the hook, a fact she understood better than most.
“Why didn’t you tell the principal or your teacher?” she demanded as Gabe drove forward slowly.
“Dunno,” Andrew muttered, and she saw him gazing out the back window.
Gabe gave her a “duh” side glance, and her heart pinched again. Of course, a boy wouldn’t want to repeat those awful words out loud. Even in the privacy of the truck’s cab, it was as if speaking them made them somehow truer. Real.
She didn’t want any of this to be real. The first Christmas since her father had died, and with everything else on her plate, to add this one more heart-wrenching thing was almost too much. What was her tipping point? Or more accurately, her crumbling point—the moment when she just couldn’t deal with any of it any longer and she gave up? Gave in.
She opened her mouth to give another lecture on how violence wasn’t the answer but snapped it shut just as quickly. She was all out of smart words of advice.
They stopped next to her car and she turned to Gabe first. “Thank you for the ride,” she said. “We’ll talk about your fighting lessons another time.”
“Self-defense,” he clarified.
She only arched a brow in response and then shifted to face Andrew. “Let’s get this visit to the doctor over, and then we’ll stop by Sunnyside Bakery. I’m sure Mary Ellen has some of her famous holiday hot chocolate and gingerbread cookies.”
“Can Gabe come with us?” Andrew asked as he unbuckled his seat belt.
Visits to the bakery were a treat, their special mother and son time. Now her baby wanted to include someone else like it wouldn’t change everything. Death by a thousand small cuts, Angi thought. Sometimes she wondered if all mothers felt that way.
“Sorry, bud.” Gabe spoke the words without inflection. “I’ve got orders to fill this afternoon. I’m going to be too busy. Take care of your head and leave off the fighting. Johnny Rotten isn’t worth it.”
Ignoring Andrew’s heartfelt sigh, Angi got out of the truck and closed her door without meeting Gabe’s stormy gaze again. He pulled away, and she hugged her boy and then led him to the car.
ANGIALMOSTTEXTEDEmma and canceled their meeting later that night. Although the walk-through at the old mill had filled her with promise, the day had gone way downhill from there. She thought nothing could be worse than picking up her son from the principal’s office after that frightening call. Then she’d had to deal with her mother.
Bianca was incensed at the fact that someone—anyone—had laid a hand on her grandson, and she’d launched into an angry tirade, mostly spoken in Italian. After Andrew had been sent to his room, she’d stomped back and forth across the living room as she wrung her hands and grunted between litanies. Angi had understood about half of what her mom said. She could follow along only when Bianca spoke slowly, but she did catch something about wishing for a plague on the bully and all of his descendants.
If only it were that easy.
In the end, her restlessness and a sense of duty she couldn’t seem to shake propelled her out the door while her mother and Andrew settled in to watch their favorite Christmas baking show. She told her mom she was stopping by Gabe’s to work on some details for the weekend’s shopping extravaganza. Bianca had winked and given Angi a knowing nod of approval, which only added to her guilt.
She drove through the dark town, marveling at how time could pass so slowly even with the shorter days. Neighborhoods were decorated with cheerful lights on houses, some white and others colorful, as well as wire reindeer and blow-up Santas and snowmen. Part of her wished she could fast-forward through all of this—the festivity and cheer so at odds with her mood.
The Wildflower Inn had pride of place in the center of Fig Tree Lane, the prettiest street in town. The house, which was one of the largest in Magnolia, had been transformed into a picture postcard of holiday nostalgia. Although it was difficult to make out in the darkness, large swaths of pine boughs framed the front door, and wreaths with bright red bows adorned every window.
Emma and Cam Arlinghaus had strung lights along the roofline and front porch so that the whole inn glowed like some kind of Christmas beacon ready to welcome guests.
Angi parked in one of the spaces designated for guests and walked around to the back. She knew Emma was hosting a family reunion for a few nights, and Angi was in no mood to play nice with strangers.
Some of her tension dissipated as she entered the inn’s kitchen. Emma had redone the space with granite counters and white cabinets with stainless steel appliances and a six-burner stove plus double ovens on one wall. In many ways, it was the kitchen of Angi’s dreams.
It had taken so much to walk away from her family’s restaurant this past summer and forge a partnership with Emma. She’d been terrified that she wouldn’t live up to expectations. After all, she’d been in her first year of culinary school, after scrimping and saving for tuition money, when she’d gotten pregnant with Andrew. Yes, she’d learned a lot about basic techniques and even more during her time working in a fast-paced New York City restaurant kitchen, but she didn’t have a formal degree. Emma hadn’t cared. She’d taken a chance on Angi just like she’d taken a chance on the property, and the excitement of truly getting a chance at her dream job had propelled Angi forward.
But it hadn’t been enough, not when she owed so much to her mother, and to her father’s memory.
She ran a hand along the cool countertop and opened the refrigerator door, smiling slightly as she took in the neat containers of food on the shelves. The Wildflower Inn was a bed-and-breakfast, but Angi also knew it could be a culinary destination for guests.
With a happy whine of greeting, Emma’s dog, Ethel, came padding into the kitchen from the front of the house.
“Have you been entertaining guests, sweetheart?” Angi bent down to scratch behind the labradoodle’s fluffy ears. Drew had been asking for a dog—or a pet of some sort—for months now, ever since he met Meredith Ventner, the woman who owned and operated the local rescue, Furever Friends.
Angi had said no without hesitation when they’d been in the apartment, not sure how she would add one more responsibility to her already long list of duties. Now it was an even less likely prospect since they’d be living with her mother for several more months. One more option taken out of her hands. A grown woman, and she couldn’t even choose whether to adopt a pet.
“Are you and Ethel coming up with a plan for world peace?” Emma asked as she walked into the room. “Looks like a serious conversation between the two of you.”
Angi straightened and the dog headed over to her bed in the corner. “I can’t get a dog because I live with my mother.”
“Based on how I’ve heard you talk before, you don’t want a dog.”
Angi scrunched up her nose. “A cat isn’t an option either.”
“Do you want a cat?”
“That’s not the point.” She blew out a breath. “The point is I’m thirty years old and I live with my mother.”
“Because you’re taking care of her,” Emma reminded her.
They both turned as Mariella entered through the kitchen door. “Why so serious?” she asked, glancing between the two of them.
“Angi is lamenting the fact that she’s currently staying with her mom.”
“Not exactly lamenting,” Angi said with a sniff.
Mariella nodded. “It’s kind of pathetic on paper even if it’s for a good reason.”
Angi inclined her head as Emma bit back a laugh. “Did you just call me pathetic?” she asked Mariella, horrified to discover tears stinging the back of her eyes.
“She didn’t mean it,” Emma said quickly.
“I was joking,” Mariella confirmed, looking at Angi in shock. “You and I trade jabs. It’s what we do.”
“Yeah.” Angi turned back to the refrigerator and pretended to study the contents. “It was a good one. A joke. Right now, my whole life feels like a joke.”
She stiffened as Mariella grabbed her shoulders and turned her. “Um, nope. You aren’t a joke. I was making one, apparently badly. I was funnier back when I was drinking. Or at least I thought I was funny. You’re handling more right now than most people deal with in a decade. Give yourself a break, sis. If anyone deserves one, it’s you.”
“You being nice makes me want to cry more,” Angi said with a watery laugh. “I must be pretty bad off if you’re not throwing verbal jabs.”
“What’s going on, Ang?” Emma came to stand next to Mariella. “Is it the workload between here and the restaurant? As much as we need you—”
“Drew got suspended today,” she said, the words sounding no less awful now than they had when she’d shared them with her mom earlier.
“Not your Drew.” Emma shook her head.
“No way,” Mariella agreed. “That kid is pure as the driven snow.”
“For fighting,” Angi said with a sigh.
Emma opened the wine fridge tucked under the counter on the edge of the island. “We need to sit down for this.”
A chime dinged as the innkeeper pulled out a bottle of pinot grigio. “Start without me. I think the rest of the guests are back from dinner in town. Let me just check on them.”
She handed the bottle to Angi and hurried from the room.
“Would it be bad if I started drinking straight from the bottle?” she asked Mariella.
“Been there done that,” Mariella answered, grabbing three wineglasses from a cabinet. “Definitely don’t recommend it.”
The bottle had a screw-on top, and Angi had to admit at that moment she appreciated not having to work for something. She poured the wine and carried two glasses to the kitchen table.
“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Mariella said with more emotion than she usually displayed. “I know what it’s like to have people kick you when you’re down.”
“Speaking of that...” Angi sipped the dry white. “Can’t you petition to have that video of you taken down or something? It doesn’t seem right to have one mistake haunt you.”
Mariella shrugged and brushed a lock of pale blond hair away from her face. “I don’t care at this point. Plus, it’s a good reminder of a person I don’t ever want to become again.”
“Do you watch it?”
“Oh, no. God, no.”
Before coming to Magnolia, Mariella Jacob had been one of the biggest names in the fashion world. She’d created a bridal empire and, from what Angi understood, was in the process of inking a deal to expand into ready-to-wear fashion. Then she’d discovered that her fiancé was having an affair with one of her clients. Mariella had shown up to the woman’s wedding and made a huge, destructive scene. One that had been recorded by several guests at the ceremony and quickly picked up by tabloids and uploaded to various sites online.
The wedding had been ruined, right along with Mariella’s reputation. The following day she’d been fired by the board of directors from the company she founded.
“What would have happened if you hadn’t left?” Angi asked the question she’d wondered about since hearing Mariella’s story. “What if you’d stayed and fought for your business?”
The blonde traced a finger along the rim of her wineglass without taking a drink. Angi had never seen Mariella finish a full drink.
“I watched it once.” Mariella’s voice was raw. “The video. And I hated that woman making a spectacle of herself, even more than I hated Joshua for his betrayal.”
“The cheating fiancé?”
Mariella gave a tight nod. “I chose to leave. I sold everything of value that I personally owned, and walked away. It wasn’t difficult. What has been harder is coming back into the world in any kind of meaningful way, even on a small scale.”
“You mean designing dresses for brides who seek you out.”
“And working with the brides who’ve contracted with the inn to plan their weddings.”
“Do you need the money?” Angi placed her glass on the table. “Is that why you’re doing it?”
“I don’t need money. I saved enough to get by. I like weddings. I’ve been fascinated by brides since I was a kid, and I feel like with the inn there’s a certain woman—or couple—who chooses this place as a venue. The type of people I want to help. The Wildflower is special.”
“I know,” Angi murmured. “That’s why I can’t quite let go of it yet. Why I’m a grown woman sneaking around like a teenager so my mom doesn’t bust me.”
“For following your dream?”
Angi looked at the ground. “For not wanting to follow hers.”
Emma burst through the swinging door that led to the dining room at that moment.
“Problem?” Mariella asked, arching an eyebrow.
Emma looked between the two of them. “Honestly, I was afraid you two might be at each other’s throats.”
“We’re like peas and carrots,” Mariella told her, and Angi laughed in response. It felt good to laugh despite everything. She appreciated these two women. She might have grown up in Magnolia, but it wasn’t until meeting Emma that she felt she’d found a true friend. Mariella, too, despite their differences and the friction that sometimes arose between them.
“What have I missed?” Emma asked as she picked up the glass Angi had left for her on the counter.
Angi glanced at Mariella. “Nothing,” the blonde said. “We were waiting for you.” She met Angi’s gaze, her cool blue eyes giving away nothing of the vulnerability she’d just revealed. “Let’s figure out how to help your boy,” she said, and Angi felt immensely grateful not to be alone.