Christmas with Holly Page 2

  “Neither did mine.”

  “I’m not ready for this.”

  “Neither am I. That’s why I need your help.” Mark let out a taut sigh. “Sam, when have I ever asked you for anything?”

  “Never. But do you have to start now?”

  Mark made his tone quietly persuasive. “Think of it this way…we’ll start off slow. We’ll be Holly’s tour guides to life. Easygoing tour guides who never come up with crap like ‘reasonable punishments’ or ‘because I said so.’ I’ve already accepted that I won’t do the best job raising a kid…but unlike our dad, my mistakes are going to be benign. I’m not going to backhand her when she doesn’t clean up her room. I’m not going to make her eat celery if she doesn’t like it. No mind games. Hopefully she’ll end up with a decent worldview and a self-supporting job. God knows however we do this, it’ll be better than sending her off to be raised by strangers. Or worse, our other relatives.”

  A few muttered curses emerged from the hard-muscled crucible of Sam’s arms. As Mark had hoped, his brother’s innate sense of fairness had gotten the better of him. “Okay.” His back rose and fell with a sigh before he repeated, “Okay. But I have conditions. Starting with, I want the rent from your condo when you lease it out.”

  “Done.”

  “And I’ll need your help fixing up the house.”

  Mark gave him a wary look. “I’m not great with home renovations. I can do the basics, but—”

  “You’re good enough. And the sight of you refinishing my floors will be a balm to my soul.” Now that Sam had the promise of rent money and cheap labor, some of his hostility had faded. “We’ll try it out for a couple of months. But if it’s not working for me, you’ll have to take the kid somewhere else.”

  “Six months.”

  “Four.”

  “Six.”

  “All right, damn it. Six months.” Sam poured more whiskey. “My God,” he muttered. “Three Nolans under one roof. A disaster waiting to happen.”

  “The disaster’s already happened,” Mark said curtly, and would have said more, but he heard a soft shuffling sound in the hallway.

  Holly came to the kitchen doorway. She’d gotten out of bed and was standing there with a bewildered, sleep-dazed expression. A small refugee, dressed in pink pajamas, her feet pale and vulnerable on the dark slate floor.

  “What’s the matter, honey?” Mark asked gently, going to her. He picked her up—she couldn’t have weighed more than forty pounds—and she clung to him like a monkey. “Can’t sleep?” The round weight of her head on his shoulder, the soft tangled mass of her blond hair, the little-girl smell of crayons and strawberry shampoo filled him with unnerving tenderness.

  He was all she had.

  Just start by loving her…

  That would be the easy part. It was the rest of it he was worried about.

  “I’m going to tuck you in, sugar-bee,” Mark said. “You need to sleep. We’ve got a lot of busy days ahead of us.”

  Sam followed as Mark carried Holly back to her room. The four-poster bed was fitted with a frame at the top, from which Victoria had hung an assortment of fabric butterflies with sheer gauzy wings. Settling her on the mattress, Mark pulled the covers up to her chin, and sat on the edge of the bed. Holly was quiet and unblinking.

  Looking into her haunting blue eyes, Mark smoothed the hair back from her forehead. He would have done anything for her. The force of his own emotions surprised him. He couldn’t make up for what Holly had lost. He couldn’t give her the life she would have had. But he would take care of her. He wouldn’t abandon her.

  All of those thoughts, and more, flooded his mind. But what he said was, “You want me to tell you a bedtime story?”

  Holly nodded, her gaze flicking briefly to Sam, who had come to lean against the doorjamb.

  “Once upon a time,” Mark said, “there were three bears.”

  “Two uncle bears,” Sam added from the doorway, sounding vaguely resigned, “and a baby bear.”

  Mark smiled faintly as he continued to smooth Holly’s hair. “And they all lived in a big house by the sea…”

  Two

  The bell on the shop door jingled as the man of Maggie’s dreams walked in. Or more accurately, he was the man of someone else’s reality, since he was holding the hand of a small girl who had to be his daughter. While the child hurried to look at a huge carousel that revolved slowly in the corner of the toy store, her father wandered in more slowly.

  Low-slanting September sunlight passed over dark hair cut in short, efficient layers, the ends curling slightly against the back of his neck. As he passed a mobile dangling from the ceiling, he ducked his head to avoid colliding with it. He moved like an athlete, relaxed but alert, giving the impression that if you threw something at him unexpectedly, he’d catch it without hesitation.

  Sensing Maggie’s helpless interest, he glanced in her direction. He had strong-boned, rough-edged good looks, and eyes so blue you could see them from across the shop. Although he was tall and striking, there was no swagger in him…just quiet, potent confidence. With the beginnings of a five-o’clock shadow, and jeans worn to the point of raggedness, he was a little bit scruffy and a whole lot sexy.

  And he was taken.

  Tearing her gaze away from him, Maggie hastily picked up a wooden weaving loom. With great care, she restrung a few stretchy fabric loops.

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, the guy wandered to his daughter. He took an interest in the train that went around the entire store, the tracks positioned on a shelf built close to the ceiling.

  Since the Magic Mirror had opened three months earlier, business had been brisk. Tables were piled with old-fashioned toys: binoculars, handmade yo-yos, wooden vehicles, lifelike stuffed animals, sturdy kites.

  “That’s Mark Nolan and his niece Holly,” Elizabeth, one of the store clerks, murmured to Maggie. Elizabeth was a retiree who had taken a part-time job at the shop. She was a vivacious older woman who seemed to know everyone on San Juan Island. Maggie, having just moved from Bellingham at the beginning of the summer, had found Elizabeth to be an invaluable resource.

  Elizabeth knew the customers, their family histories and personal tastes, and she remembered the names of everyone’s grandchildren. “Isn’t it getting close to Zachary’s birthday?” she might ask a friend who was browsing through the shop. Or, “Heard poor little Madison’s under the weather…we’ve got some new books, perfect for reading in bed.” Whenever Elizabeth was there, no one left the Magic Mirror without buying something. Occasionally Elizabeth called customers when the store had something new in that she thought they’d like. When you lived on an island, word of mouth was still the most effective selling tool.

  Maggie’s eyes widened slightly. “His niece?”

  “Yes, Mark’s raising her. Her mother died in a car wreck about six months ago, poor little thing. So Mark brought her over from Seattle, and they’ve been living at Rainshadow Vineyard, at his brother Sam’s house. I couldn’t imagine those two trying to take care of a little girl by themselves, but they’ve managed so far.”

  “They’re both single?” A question that Maggie had no business asking, but it slipped out before she could stop it.

  Elizabeth nodded. “There’s another brother, Alex, who is married, but I heard they’re having trouble.” She cast a regretful look at Holly. “She ought to have a woman in her life. I think it’s one of the reasons she won’t talk.”

  Maggie’s brow furrowed. “To strangers, you mean?”

  “To anyone. Not since the accident.”

  “Oh,” Maggie whispered. “One of my nephews wouldn’t talk to anyone at school when he started elementary school. But he would talk to his parents at home.”

  Elizabeth gave a regretful shake of her head. “As far as I know, Holly’s quiet all the time.” She set a pink cone hat with a veil over her white curls that danced like butterfly antennae, and adjusted an elastic band beneath her chin. “They’re hoping she’
ll come out of it soon. The doctor told them not to push her.”

  Picking up a scepter topped with a sparkling star, Elizabeth went back to the party room, where a birthday celebration was in progress. “Time for cake, Your Majesties!” she announced, and was greeted with high-pitched squeals before the door closed behind her.

  After ringing up a customer who had bought a stuffed rabbit and a picture book, Maggie glanced around the shop until she found Holly Nolan again.

  The child was staring at a fairy house that had been fastened to the wall. Maggie had made it herself, decorating the roof with dried moss and gold-painted bottle caps. The circular door had been made from the casing of a broken pocket watch. Standing on her toes, Holly squinted through a tiny window.

  Emerging from behind the counter, Maggie approached her, not missing the subtle stiffening of the child’s back.

  “Do you know what that is?” Maggie asked gently.

  Holly shook her head, not sparing her a glance.

  “Most people think it’s a dollhouse, but it’s not. It’s a fairy house.”

  Holly looked at her then, her gaze traveling from Maggie’s lo-top Converse sneakers all the way to her curly red hair.

  Maggie felt an unexpected rush of tenderness as they studied each other. She saw the frail solemnity of a child who no longer trusted in the permanence of anything. And yet she sensed Holly still inhabited the corners of her childhood, ready to be tempted by something that hinted of magic.

  “The fairy who lives here is always gone in the daytime,” Maggie said. “But she comes back at night. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if I gave you a peek into her house. Would you like to see it?”

  Holly nodded.

  Carefully, Maggie reached for the clasp at the side of the house and unfastened it. The entire front swung open to reveal three small furnished rooms containing a bed made of twigs…a gilded espresso cup for a bathtub…a table shaped like a mushroom, with a wine cork for a chair.

  Maggie was gratified to see a hesitant smile spread across Holly’s face, revealing the endearing gap of a missing tooth on the bottom row. “She doesn’t have a name, this fairy,” Maggie said confidentially, closing the front of the house. “Not a human name, that is. Only a fairy name, which of course humans could never pronounce. So I’ve been trying to think of what to call her. When I decide, I’ll paint it over the front door. Lavender, maybe. Or Rose. Do you like either of those?”

  Holly shook her head and bit her lip, regarding the house pensively.

  “If you have a name in mind,” Maggie told her, “you can write it down for me.”

  They were joined by Holly’s uncle, a protective hand closing over one frail shoulder. “Everything okay, Holly?”

  An attractive voice, dark and slow-simmered. But there was a gleam of warning in the glance he shot at Maggie. She fell back a step as she found herself confronted by six-foot-plus of uncompromising male. Mark Nolan wasn’t precisely handsome, but his bold features and dark good looks made handsomeness irrelevant. A small crescent-shaped scar high on his cheek, faintly silvered in the light from the window, gave him an agreeable hint of toughness. And the eyes…a rare shade of blue-green, like the ocean in a tropical travel brochure. He seemed dangerous in some way that had yet to reveal itself. He was the mistake you would never entirely regret making.

  She managed a neutral smile. “Hi. I’m Maggie Conroy. This is my shop.”

  Nolan didn’t bother to volunteer his own name. Noticing his niece’s fascination with the fairy house, he asked, “Is that for sale?”

  “Afraid not. It’s part of the shop decor.” Glancing down at Holly, Maggie added, “They’re not hard to make. If you draw a picture of one and bring it to me, I could help you build it.” Lowering to sit on her heels, she looked directly into the girl’s small face. “You never know if a fairy will come to live in it. All you can do is wait, and cross your fingers.”

  “I don’t think—” Mark Nolan began, but he fell abruptly silent when Holly smiled and reached out to touch one of the crystal earrings that dangled from Maggie’s ears, sending the weight of it swinging.

  Something about the girl, with her off-center ponytail and wistful gaze, reached past several layers of self-protection. Maggie felt a sweet, almost painful ache in her chest as they contemplated each other.

  I understand, Maggie wanted to tell her. I’ve lost someone, too. And there were no rules for how to deal with the death of someone you loved. You had to accept that the loss would always stay with you, like a reminder note pinned to the inside of your jacket. But there were still opportunities for happiness. Even joy. Maggie couldn’t let herself doubt that.

  “Would you like to see a book about fairies?” she asked, and saw eagerness light up the girl’s face.

  As Maggie stood, she felt the brush of Holly’s hand against hers. Her hand closed carefully over the cool little bundle of fingers.

  Risking a glance at Mark Nolan, Maggie saw that his face had gone blank, his unfriendly gaze arrowing to their clasped hands. She sensed that it had surprised him, this willingness of Holly’s to hold hands with a stranger. When he made no objection, Maggie drew Holly along with her toward the back of the store.

  “The…the book section is over here,” Maggie said. They reached a child-sized table and a pair of small chairs. While Holly sat, Maggie pulled a ponderous and richly colored volume from the bookshelves. “Here we are,” she said brightly. “Everything you ever wanted to know about fairies.” It was a beautifully illustrated book with several pages of pop-up scenes. Sitting on the tiny chair next to Holly’s, Maggie opened the book for her.

  Nolan stood nearby, appearing to check messages on his cell phone, but Maggie was aware of his covert interest. Although he was willing to let her interact with his niece, it wouldn’t happen without his supervision.

  Maggie and Holly looked at the section titled “What Fairies Do All Day,” showing them stitching together rainbows like long ribbons, pruning their gardens, and having tea parties with butterflies and ladybugs.

  From the corner of her eye, Maggie saw that Mark Nolan had pulled one of the sealed copies of the book from the shelf, and had put it in a handbasket. She couldn’t help noticing the hard, lean lines of his body, the flex of muscle beneath ancient denim and a worn gray T-shirt.

  Whatever Nolan did for a living, he dressed like a working-class guy, with worn shoes, Levi’s, and a decent but unspectacular watch. That was one of the things Maggie liked about the islanders, or Sanjuaneros, as they lightly referred to themselves. You could never tell who was a millionaire and who was a landscaper.

  An elderly woman approached the register, and Maggie pushed the book a bit closer to Holly. “I have to go help someone,” she said. “You can look at that book as long as you want.”

  Holly nodded, gently tracing the edge of a pop-up rainbow with her fingertip.

  Going behind the counter, Maggie faced a woman with artfully styled gray hair and thick-lensed glasses.

  “I’d like this gift-wrapped, please,” the woman said, pushing a boxed wooden train set across the counter.

  “This is a great starter set,” Maggie told her. “You can rearrange the track four different ways. And later on, you can add the swivel bridge. It has little gates that automatically open and close.”

  “Really? Maybe I should get one of them right now.”

  “Let me show one to you. We’ve got it on display near the front….” As Maggie guided the woman to the train table, she saw that Holly and her uncle had left the book area and were browsing among racks of fairy wings on the wall. Nolan lifted the child to give her a better view of the higher-up wings. Maggie’s stomach did a funny little swoop as she saw how his T-shirt molded to the powerful line of his back.

  Dragging her gaze away from him, Maggie turned her attention to gift-wrapping the train set. While Maggie worked, the customer squinted at a phrase painted on the wall behind the counter. There’s no sensation to compare with this…su
spended animation, a state of bliss…

  “What a nice quote,” the woman said. “Is it from a poem?”

  “Pink Floyd,” Nolan said as he came up to set a heavily filled handbasket on the counter. “It’s from a song called ‘Learning to Fly.’”

  As Maggie met his gaze, she felt color blooming from head to toe. “You like Pink Floyd?”

  He smiled slightly. “I did in high school. During a phase of wearing black and whining about my emotional isolation.”

  “I remember that phase,” the elderly woman said. “Your parents wanted to call the governor and enlist you in the National Guard.”

  “Thank God they loved their country too much to go through with it.” Nolan’s smile widened, leaving Maggie momentarily dazzled, even though he hadn’t been looking in her direction.

  She fumbled a little as she slid the wrapped present into a bag with cord handles. “Here you go,” she said brightly, nudging the bag toward the elderly woman.

  Nolan reached for it. “That looks heavy, Mrs. Borowitz. Why don’t you let me carry it out to the car for you?”

  The diminutive woman beamed at him. “Thank you, but I can manage. How are those brothers of yours?”

  “Sam’s great. Out in the vineyard most of the time. As for Alex…I haven’t seen much of him lately.”

  “He’s certainly putting his mark on Roche Harbor.”

  “Yeah.” There was a wry twist to his mouth. “He won’t rest until he’s covered most of the island with condos and parking lots.”

  The woman looked down at Holly. “Hello, sweetheart. How are you?”

  The child nodded bashfully and said nothing.

  “You just started first grade, didn’t you? Do you like your teacher?”

  Another timid nod.

  Mrs. Borowitz clucked gently. “Still not talking? Well, you need to start soon. How will anyone know what you’re thinking if you don’t tell them?”

  Holly stared fixedly at the ground.

  Although the words had not been meant unkindly, Maggie saw Nolan’s jaw tighten.