“You grew up here in Toronto, right?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Why all the questions?”
“I’m trying to understand you, Red.”
She smiled to herself. Just like she wanted to understand him.
“Toronto doesn’t feel like home?” he asked.
Now that was a tricky question. Ruby took a breath. “No, not really. There are too many memories in this city. Not good ones.” Memories like doctors and hospitals. And her father yelling. And then leaving.
“I’m sorry again about your mother,” he said, seeming to understand what she meant. “You’ve spoken so fondly about her. I hadn’t realized she had passed. Are the bad memories why you want to leave the country?”
Ruby shrugged. “I do have some good memories here, too. Like all the holiday ones. But… I can make holiday memories anywhere, right? I can make new ones in England.”
They walked by the large tree in the middle of the market. It was absolutely covered with blue and gold ball ornaments and gold bows. Halfway up the tree, big black letters spelledDIOR. Evidence that all this beauty and joy had a corporate sponsor. She waited for him to say something.
“My sister made me take about a million pictures of Tara and Noor at that tree,” he said.
“You didn’t mind the corporate branding in the pictures?”
He huffed a laugh. “I took them from the back of the tree.”
She pointed to the Spanish restaurant near the tree. “That place has fantastic tapas.”
“I love tapas. Honestly, Spain has the best food in Europe. My parents used to have a flat there—we went every summer.”
It struck her how different their upbringings were. Ruby grew up in an apartment in an area full of immigrants. Her father did own his own business—an auto shop—but it didn’talways do well enough to support them, which was why her mother took on work as a seamstress. They didn’t really have family vacations—maybe a trip to Niagara Falls when guests were in town. They certainly didn’t have a summer home in Spain.
Even now, as adults, Rashid could be considered to be in a different class than Ruby. He was a doctor; she worked retail. True, she made pretty good money selling luxury goods, but she hadn’t even finished college. Ruby remembered reading an article once that said cultural differences between classes were much bigger than cultural differences between races. She could believe it. She’d dated blue-collar white men—they had more in common with Ruby than this Brown doctor. But it didn’t matter that she and Rashid came from different classes, because they were nothing to each other, and it would stay that way.
She chuckled. “A house in Spain? We really come from different worlds.”
He sighed. “Yeah. I’ll be honest, Red. I’ve led a very privileged life, and I think that maybe my blinders are thicker than I realized. The truth is, my parents taught us all good values and morals, to treat everyone equally, and to be grateful for what we have, but they left us to our own devices with those lessons. We were told we had a lot of privilege compared to others, but we weren’t really shown it. But you… I mean, you kind of rubbed my nose in it.”
“You sound like Mr. Darcy. Your accent is even peeking through.”
He gave her a confused look, so she explained. “InPride and Prejudice, when Darcy apologizes to Elizabeth for being adick, he said, ‘As a child I was given good principles, but was left to follow them in pride and conceit.’ It sounds like what you just said.” He still looked confused, so Ruby waved her hand. “Never mind. Carry on…”
He shrugged. “All I was going to say is that if you’re willing, I want to continue our deal. You said you wanted to show me that you’re a responsible, non-impulsive person, and now I want the chance to show you that Idohave manners, and I do respect you and your… worldview.”
She raised a brow. “So now yourespectme?”
He laughed at that, nodding. “I not only respect you, Red. I think I’m starting to actually…likeyou.”
Ruby grinned. The truth was, she’d been starting to like him, too. When he wasn’t a pretentious ass, he was kind of fun. He was smart and ridiculously loyal to his family, and he clearly listened… which was more than she could say about many doctors she’d known in the past. He paid attention to what she liked and bought her gingerbread drinks. And he was very easy on the eyes, too.
“Tara and Noor like you, too,” he added. “They wouldn’t stop talking about you this morning. They told their mother about the best pancakes they’d ever had, and they want to bring her to see those windows. They said they can’t wait until we go out again.”
Ruby huffed a laugh. “Really? They actually talked?”
“The girls are actually very chatty with their mother. And me.”
Considering the complete tantrums they’d had when Rashid had been strapping them into the car, Ruby wassurprised that they were so positive about their day. But that was holiday magic. Ruby of course realized that not every moment she had with her mother as a kid had been perfect. She’d probably burned cookies, cried at the parade, and been poked with pins when Mom made her annual choir dress. But Ruby didn’t remember any of those bad moments. She only remembered the good. She only remembered how much she loved the season and how great her mother was for doing all those things with her.
Rashid was staring at something in the distance. Ruby looked, and it was an archway leading to the back patio of a restaurant. The patio was closed because it was way too cold to eat outside now, but the arch spelled out in blue and white lightsTHE HAPPIEST TIME OF THE YEAR.
“Look, Ruby,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I hate the way it happened yesterday, but I’m glad I learned more about…” He hesitated. “About why you love all this so much. Maybe we won’t get under each other’s skin if we understand our differences better?”
