He shook his head. “What are you going to do, frame it and hang it on your wall? It’s only wrapping paper.”
“With the most adorable Yule Lads I’ve ever seen.” Much like her niece, she peeled off the tape and folded the paper back, though the size of the painting meant she kept its bottom on the floor and leaned over it.
Once she had it loose, he helped remove the paper. She tipped the painting back, mouth in a perfectO. She blinked, gaze tracing over the image. Then she turned misty eyes and smiling lips to him. “Anders—it’s... it’s...”
He shrugged. “Jolabokaflod. Elea gave me the idea, and I couldn’t help but create it.”
“The Christmas Book Flood,” she murmured, looking at the gift again. “It’s perfect! Now I’ll always havesomething to remember this year by.” She traced a finger along the curve of painted-Elea’s braid, though she didn’t actually touch the glass. Then let the same finger run along the frame. “And it matches my other one! The frame, I mean.”
“Mm. I debated. My mother talked me into keeping them a matching set.”
“Your mother was right.” She stood, moved the painting over to rest against the bookshelves on the opposite wall, and came back to the couch without taking her eyes from it, though she didn’t sit. “Oh, wow. I needed a bit of distance to see all the details.” She pressed her hands to her hips, looked down at herself, and laughed. “It’s even this skirt suit.”
“It seemed to fit the theme.” Had he really been afraid she wouldn’t like it? He smiled, watching her for several more moments as she took note of each detail, the titles on the spines of the books in her arms and on which Elea was standing—all ones she’d helped pack up and ship out these last few weeks. The books that were part of this first Christmas flood.
She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “I’ll have to have Valdi and Beta over so he can see it. I wouldn’tbe surprised if he commissioned one from you too, to commemorate the Book Bulletin’s success.”
She and her niece clearly thought along the same lines. But Valdi wasn’t his concern just now. “I’m glad you like it. I second-guessed myself about the painting too.”
She spun to face him and gave him that look he was becoming so very familiar with. The one that was part chiding, part smiling, part... affection, he’d call it. He didn’t dare give it any other name. Not yet. “Of course you did,” she said. Then her face shifted, and she swallowed. Nodded. “That’s your gift there on the table beside you. Under the tree—the one with green paper, which you really can just rip to shreds, because it’s store-bought. The red ones are for Elea.”
He thought he recognized the size and shape of one of Elea’s and figured it for the signed copy of his latest saga that they’d chatted about before Elea ever arrived in the city. But he focused primarily on the green one. It was box shaped, the size of the boxes their typewriter paper arrived in—handy for gifts, to be sure. He’d repurposed several of them too.
Heavy, he noted as he picked it up. As heavy as if it really were just a ream of paper. And whatever wasinside had Tatiana biting her lip in a way that made him nearly forget all about presents and lean in to show her how her lips ought to be treated.
Focus, Anders, he told himself. He tore the paper away, smiling at the familiar paper box, and sending a teasing smile her way. “Paper! You shouldn’t have.”
She finally sank back down to her place beside him on the couch. “You’re not as wrong as your joke implies.”
THIRTEEN
TATIANA BARELY KEPT HERSELF FROMgnawing all her lipstick from her lips as Anders lifted the lid from the box. Her stomach was in knots, scenarios nipping at her mind that she’d already entertained and dismissed a dozen times.
What if he couldn’t reconcile Tatiana, the woman he admired, with Tandri, the author he thought he knew? What if the very idea of her being his newest author friend felt like a betrayal to him? For that matter, she didn’t honestly know his opinion on female writers. True, he always treated the female employees at the Story Society with respect and equality, but they wereall secretaries and assistants. Not editors. Not writers. The company had only a couple of those on the rosters, none of whom wrote stories like the ones she’d chosen to tell.
He set the lid aside, frowning a bit when he saw that it was, indeed, paper inside. A whole ream of it. But not blank paper—he’d be noticing the typewritten words covering it, behind the note sitting on top, on lined paper instead of blank.
He lifted the note. Frowned at the handwriting that would be familiar to him—not hers. Tandri Ebbisson’s. She’d rewritten the thing so many times, she had it memorized.
Anders,
I couldn’t sign that third book to myself—but it made me realize how very much I wanted you to know who “myself” really is. I wanted you to know me, the part of me I’ve yet to tell anyone else about. I wanted you—the man who first saw the worth in those words I’d penned anonymously, the man who helped me shape it into the book it needed to be... the man I’ve come to care for so deeply—to know the truth.
And that’s all I can write in this hand, so put the note down now and look over at me.
Tatiana / Tandri
He obeyed, but his gaze flicked first to that typewritten page, where the title of her next book was written.Beneath the Aurora. The title of Tandri’s second contracted novel.
His eyes went wide, but it wasn’t disappointment or even shock that filled them. It was... did she dare to name it?
Her fingers twisted together. “Elea said I should give you a story I’d written,” she said, words tumbling over themselves. “But I didn’t have time to write something else, not with my deadline so soon—and I know this is a silly gift, because you can’t actuallykeepthose pages—I need to edit them. And then give them back to you, but as Tandri. To my editor. And...” She squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s not even finished. I still have two chapters to write. But I wanted to give you something I’d never given to anyone else. Something true and meaningful and...”
“Tatiana.” He reached out like she’d done over aweek ago and caught her hand. “This is the best gift in the world. You’ve given me your trust. Your truth. Does no one else know?”
Could he possibly be as pleased as he sounded? As joyful? She shook her head in answer to his question.
“Your sister? Your parents?”
