The Mistletoe Melody

He felt it, despite the heat of the water. “I got your voice mails and I left you one of my own.” He stood and pushed himself out of the hot tub. There was no relaxing around Roxanne.

Already, he felt his muscles tightening again after the two-hour session with his physical therapist. In the three years since the car accident, he had been going to therapy twice a week to build up the strength in his legs and back. Besides the countless broken bones, he’d had torn muscles and five dislocated disks in his spine.

Yet he’d been the lucky one.

“But you didn’t give me the answer I wanted to hear.” Roxanne kept her eyes on him as he made his way to the towels and wrapped one around his waist. Luckily, he always wore his swim trunks.

“Well, it’s the only answer you’re going to get.” Brad raked a hand through his highlighted hair and watched her as she swung her legs over the side of the tub and stood up. With her shoulder-length blond hair and big blue eyes, he might have found her attractive if she weren’t always trying to convince him to do things he didn’t want to do—such as her latest request.

Even in bare feet, Roxanne was almost as tall as the five-foot-eleven Brad. “Think about this rationally—it’s television. So far, we’ve done the magazine articles, the talk radio, that one-time appearance on that music reality show, but we haven’t been able to secure a prime-time spot focused on you as an artist. This is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for.”

“Heartland Country Television is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for?” He raised an eyebrow. Roxanne could talk, and he suspected 99 percent of the time people bought everything she said. But even she had to know that calling Nashville’s local country television station prime time was a stretch.

“Okay, so it’s not Oprah—and don’t think I haven’t tried calling her—but it’s a start. And their ‘Home for the Holidays’ episode is one of the most watched Christmas Eve programs. Apparently, people love seeing how stars spend their holidays,” she insisted, following him to the men’s change-room door.

“You can’t come in here,” Brad said, pausing with his hand on the door.

“Try to stop me.”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Roxanne, I won’t do it. ‘Home for the Holidays’... Do you even know what that means for me?” He shuddered at the thought of returning to his family home in Brookhollow, a place he hadn’t dared visit in three years. He’d tried the year before when he’d been performing an hour from his hometown, but as the town-limits sign had come into view, he’d pulled a U-turn and hightailed it out of there. Facing his past, especially this time of year, would have destroyed him.

“Let me guess—your family’s crazy? So? Whose isn’t? Country music is about crazy mothers, alcoholic fathers, hillbilly farm life and broken-down trucks. Be the stereotype. Embrace it. Trust me, it will surprise you how fans love humble beginnings. It makes you more relatable—”

“Forget it, Roxanne. I don’t think my family would go for it.”

That was a lie. His mother and five older sisters would have eaten it up. Brookhollow did Christmas in a big way, with the colorfully decorated storefronts on Main Street, the twenty-foot evergreen erected in the town center, the parade and the horse-drawn sleigh rides through the park. He didn’t even want to think about his own family’s extreme holiday traditions. At Christmas, not an inch of wall space inside the home was visible beneath the garlands and wall hangings. Outside, the twelve thousand multicolored lights stapled to the roof lit up the entire neighborhood, and the large evergreen trees around the family farm were decorated with hundreds of baubles and bows. Overdone was an understatement. Tacky was more the word.

“Let me talk to them.” She offered him a confident smile.

“No. And besides, you’ve changed my last name, remember?” How did she expect to pull that off?

“So, we’ll change the name on your family’s mailbox. I’m not seeing an issue here, Brad.”

She was unbelievable. He didn’t doubt for a second she would force his entire family to assume the surname Jackson for this publicity stunt. “Can we talk about this later? I’d like to get dressed now.” He had no intention of resuming this conversation, but goose bumps were covering his bare skin now that he was out of the hot tub. Or maybe it was the icy chill he always felt around his publicist.

“Go ahead,” she said with a shrug, daring him to force her to follow him into the change room.

“You’re unreal, you know that?”

“It’s called being persistent. It’s why you hired me. I’m going to take your wavering resolve and lack of a snappy retort as agreement.” She opened her shoulder bag and pulled out the contract for the television spot.

He accepted it with reluctance and scanned the pages. “You forged my signature?” Why her behavior still shocked him, he didn’t know. By now, he knew there was no point in putting up a fight. Roxanne Klein didn’t know the meaning of failure.

“Don’t get caught up on morality,” she said. “We needed to secure the last-minute spot before they gave it to some adorable seventeen-year-old kid who writes all his own songs and plays like eighteen instruments. I did what I had to do. I’ve also confirmed your travel arrangements to Brookville...”

“Brookhollow.”

“Whatever. Middle of nowhere, New Jersey...” She positioned her aqua-blue heels on the concrete floor and held his shoulder for balance as she slid her feet into them.

“Are you going with me?”

“It’s the holidays. Are you kidding? No.” Her eyes fell to his torso and she frowned. “Have we talked about getting a plastic surgeon to look at those?” she asked, pointing to the scar tissue on his chest and upper abdomen.

“No, and we won’t.” He hoped his voice held enough conviction to make her drop the point.

“Fine. I’ll take my victories where I can get them—we’ll discuss it another time. You fly out on Monday morning. Bye, Brad.”

Brad watched her saunter away. He ran a hand over his damaged skin.

He didn’t doubt she would bring it up again, but removing the scars was something he would never consider. They were a permanent souvenir from a bad decision that had cost him so much, as well as a constant reminder that life was short.

Besides, unless the surgeon could remove the scars he carried on the inside, what would be the point?

CHAPTER TWO (#uc3784392-2693-5a1b-bccd-cfb0f4d5cd1c)

“DAVID, COME ON. You’re going to be late for school,” Melody called down the hallway of her two-bedroom bungalow to the room the boys shared. Opening their matching superhero backpacks, she tucked their lunch tins inside before adding juice boxes and sandwich meat to the grocery list on the fridge. She hated running out of things on a Monday, which called for a between-jobs run to the grocery store. But with the three of them recovering from illness all weekend and her shifts at the bowling alley, there really hadn’t been time.

“Worry about Josh!” David called back. “He’s out in the shed again.”

Melody moved to the kitchen window and looked across her backyard. The light in the shed was on, and through the open door she could see Josh sitting on the tiny sofa in what had once been the family’s makeshift recording studio, his father’s electric guitar on his lap. She sighed. He spent so much time out there trying to learn to play. She wished she knew how, but she’d never bothered to learn. Patrick had been playing since he was four years old, and he could play anything simply by hearing it. He’d taught Josh a few simple chords.

If only music lessons weren’t so expensive, she would have signed both boys up for them. She was struggling just to keep the equipment. She hated the idea of selling Patrick’s things, a few times in the past couple of years the idea had tempted her. She didn’t go out to the shed anymore. The sight evoked memories that were too much to take, longings that were too hard to face. But she couldn’t sell the equipment if Josh wanted to use it.

Leaning forward, she opened the window. She shivered in the blast of cold air. “Come on, Josh. Time for school,” she called.

A minute later, the kitchen door opened and Josh entered, leaving a trail of wet snow on the floor. “Here’s the mail, Mom.”

She chose to ignore the mess and thank him for the gesture. Eight-year-old boys were oblivious to things like tracking mud or snow through the house. “Thanks, honey,” she said, accepting the stack and tossing it into a bin on the counter. She unrolled a sheet of paper towel and bent to wipe up the clumps of snow.

“Aren’t you going to check the mail?” Josh asked.

“I will later. We’re in a bit of a hurry now.” She didn’t need to look through the stack to know it held an overwhelming number of overdue notices. Besides, this was exam day, and she was trying her best not to let anything frazzle her.

“But there might be something important in there,” Josh persisted.

He was up to something. “You’re right. I should probably check it now.” Picking up the stack, she noticed a piece of blue construction paper sticking out of one corner. She pretended to flip through the rest. “Bills, bills...ah, what is this?” She shot a glance toward him, then pulled out the construction paper, which was folded like a greeting card. She read aloud, “‘Good luck, Mom.’” On the front was a drawing of a bouquet of flowers and on the inside the boys had signed their names.

Josh’s smile reached from ear to ear. “David and I made it with Lauralee last week. We didn’t actually mail it,” he confessed.

“Thank you, Josh. I love it.” She gave him a hug. She didn’t doubt the card had been his idea. Her boys may have been identical in appearance, but they had different personalities. Josh was more thoughtful than David, whose hardheadedness she knew he’d inherited from her. David kept his emotions to himself most of the time, while Josh was more like his father—open and kind. Tucking the card into her purse, she said, “Can you please go get that brother of yours? We’re going to be late.”

She checked her watch, noticing the slight trembling of her hand. She didn’t feel nervous about the exam, though she suspected she must be, subconsciously. A lot was riding on this opportunity. She would feel much better about things once it was over. She was the only employee at the Brookhollow store who had completed the course, so she was confident the position would be hers if things went well today.

Flipping through the rest of the mail only reinforced how much she needed this promotion. The envelope for her power bill was stamped with a huge red Final Notice. The overdue stamp on the cable-bill envelope was smaller—it would have to wait. The boys would lose their minds if the cable was shut off, but sleeping in a cold, dark house would have been far worse. Hopefully, she’d be able to catch up on the outstanding debt in the first half of the new year.

As she placed a stack of flyers on the edge of the counter for recycling, another envelope fell to the floor. When she picked it up, her heart rate soared—it was from the Brookhollow Trust, her bank. It wasn’t her usual bank statement, which always came in a white envelope, or the mortgage bill, which came in a small tan one. This was a thick, heavy legal-size manila envelope.

“Ready, Mom!” David announced, appearing in the doorway of the kitchen. He grabbed his backpack and tossed Josh’s to him.