The Magic of a Family Christmas

He entered the library feeling a mix of nostalgia and disappointment. His mother had worked in this room every night and most weekends. But Wendy didn’t have a desk and leather chairs. Instead, a chaise sat by the bay window. A well-worn yellow comforter lay across the foot. The room that had been a place of work was now a place of peace and quiet. He scanned her titles, found a thriller by a favorite author, and settled in on the chaise.

After an hour, the scent of fresh-baked cookies drifted into the room. He closed the book and inhaled deeply before rising from the chaise and walking into the kitchen.

“Smells good in here.”

Green icing on the tip of his nose and flour across one cheek, Harry grinned at him from his chair beside the kitchen island. “I’m painting stained-glass windows on a church.”

Cullen laughed. “No kidding!”

Wendy looked offended. “Hey, I can get pretty fancy with my cookies.”

Glancing at the rows of already painted cookies on the far end of the island, Cullen nodded. “So I see.”

Harry nodded. “You paint one, Mr…”

“This is Mr. Barrington,” Wendy supplied.

“Since we’re kind of in close quarters and unusual circumstances I think you might as well call me Cullen.”

“Okay, Cullen!” Harry said, handing him a cookie. “You paint this one. It’s a bell.”

“I see that.”

“So paint it.”

“With frosting,” Wendy qualified. “But you should also wash your hands first.”

He was going to say no. He’d never done anything like this in his life and he was too old to start now. But just the mention of the word frosting squeezed his heart. Unable to catch every word said about him, Harry had repeated what he thought he’d heard and had called himself a frosting child. In a way he was. He was a sweet little boy left in the hands of a cold, sterile system. How could Cullen turn away the request of a child who’d just lost his mother?

“Okay.”

He washed his hands, picked up his cookie again and chose a paintbrush from those assembled beside the colorful cups of frosting. He watched Wendy dip her brush into the yellow icing and paint the bell she held a bright yellow, then switch brushes to add red icing to create a bow. He mimicked her movements, except he dipped his brush in blue. He covered his cookie in pale-blue frosting and painted the bow shape at the top white.

Harry approved it with a smile. “I like it.”

“I like it, too, but you know what? I’m kind of getting hungry.”

Wendy said, “Let me finish up here and I’ll make hamburgers.”

“Actually, I make a great hamburger. You said your gas stove will work, right?”

She nodded. “That’s how we made these cookies.”

“Then you guys just go ahead and keep painting. I’ll make burgers and by the time you’re done, dinner will be ready.”

Wendy smiled. Cullen’s heart tripped over itself in his chest. Now that they were in a comfortable environment, he’d begun thinking of things a little more normally. But that wasn’t necessarily good. Instead of envisioning off-the-wall images like sparkling angels when he looked at her, he was now thinking how he’d like to kiss the lips that had pulled upward into a smile. They were a soft reddish color. Untarnished by lipstick or gloss. Very real. Plump. Tempting.

But that was wrong. They’d be working together for the next weeks. Visions of angels were one thing. Actually wanting to kiss his employee was another. Anything he said or did could turn into a sexual-harassment suit. He had to stop this and stop it right now.

He walked to the refrigerator and pulled out the hamburger. “What’s going to happen to everything in your refrigerator if the power stays out for a long time?”

“If we don’t open the refrigerator often, lots of it will be okay. Plus, I have blocks of ice in the freezer for times when this happens. It acts like a big cooler. Everything in there will stay frozen and I can put the important things from the refrigerator in there, if I need to.”

“You’re pretty smart.”

Holding a cookie she’d just painted with bright-red frosting, she laughed. “Yeah. Right.”

Happy to have their minds back on work, he said, “You are. All your performance appraisals say that.”

“You read my performance appraisals?”

“I read your file this morning. You are my administrative assistant for the next four weeks. I figured I’d better know who I was getting.”

“Oh.” She placed her cookie on the aluminum foil that lined the far end of the island and reached for another one. “So, how did you learn to cook?”

He grimaced. “Our housekeeper taught me.”

“That’s right. Your mom was the last company president.”

He nodded. “My dad owned an investment firm and my mom ran the factory, so my parents were overly busy. Our housekeeper was the one who fed me, nudged me to get dressed, drove me to school…” He pointed at the stove. “And taught me to cook. Nothing fancy, just the basics. Eggs. Hamburgers.” He shrugged. “That kind of stuff.”

“So that makes you pretty handy to have around the house.”

He laughed. “And also a good roommate for everybody in college.”

“Where did you go to school?”

He could tell she was only making casual conversation, but he nonetheless felt odd, as if he were bragging and he winced. “Harvard.”

“Ah. Right.”

“Where’d you go to school?”

“Community college for two years, then I met my husband and realized I could be an administrative assistant while he did his internship at the local hospital. When he died, I probably should have gone back for a degree.” She shrugged. “But I just never found anything I wanted to study.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

With her focus on choosing the next cookie to paint, Wendy shrugged again. “It’s all right.” She said the well-practiced words easily, but the emptiness that shuddered through her contradicted them. Still, as she’d told Harry, she shouldn’t dwell. She’d moved on. Gotten tougher, smarter. “It’s been two years since Greg died.”

Surveying the cookies to be painted, Harry casually said, “Cullen’s mom died this year.”

Wendy spun to face the stove. “Now, I’m sorry.”

“As you said, it’s all right. She actually died in January. So my dad and I are pretty much beyond it.”

Finished patting the hamburgers into shape, Cullen poked through cupboards, looking for a frying pan. Wendy watched him, feeling a shift in the funny catch she got in her heart every time she looked at him. Hearing about his mom’s death reminded her that he was as human as everybody else. But was it really good to begin seeing him as a normal man? Wasn’t it wiser to continue thinking of him as a super-good-looking but unapproachable playboy?

By the time the hamburgers were ready, Wendy and Harry had finished painting their cookies, and laid them on the island to dry. Wendy pulled paper plates from the pantry and handed them to Harry.