Jill looked up. “Competitive? Oh, I don’t know. I suppose you always liked to be your best. To give everything one-hundred percent. But the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree there.” She dipped her head and angled her eyes toward her husband, who had suddenly jumped to his feet, shouting emphatically at the football game on the television like he was a coach from the couch.
“I just wonder if maybe I was a little too intense.”
“I think you’re passionate, Holden. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Well, there is something wrong with it when it gets people hurt,” he said pointedly.
Jill put the spatula down. She moved the few feet between them and took her son’s shoulders into her grip. “Holden Hart, you are not to blame for the things out of your control.”
It was a mantra he might as well have had tattooed across his forehead for all the times his parents had imprinted it into his mind.
“I know,” he relented. His mother released her grasp.
She turned back toward the cookies. “Things happen and sometimes there’s just nothing we can do about it.”
“But sometimes there is something we can do about it.”
She picked up her utensil and swatted it toward him. “I will not let you go down the path of regret tonight, Holden.”
She was right. It made no sense to linger on what-if’s and if-only’s. And yet, Holden awoke each morning playing out a reel of scenarios that could have changed things in his past.
“I’m serious.” Jill shoved another cookie his way. “Eat this and stuff down those thoughts. They’re not yours to have.”
The cookie made him feel remotely better, but the time with his family in the house he grew up in was the real healing balm. Always had been. And if he continued to be a luckier man than he deserved, always would be.
CHAPTER7
It was almost an official workspace, and Rachel was grateful that once again, her table at the back of Bitter Cold Coffee Bar was wide open. She set up her things and claimed her spot, ordering an Alpine Americano off of the seasonal menu at the suggestion of the barista.
It was finally beginning to feel like Christmas. Her parents’ fully decorated tree—trimmed with heirloom ornaments and adorned in cranberry garland and sparkling tinsel—certainly helped with that. And the constant loop of carols just outside the Joy cabin window did its best to get Rachel in the Christmassy mood.
Even today, she had coiled a green and red plaid scarf around her neck, decorating herself in festive splendor just like a tree.
The café joined in too. Instrumental organ tunes belonging at a Christmas Eve church service piped through the speakers. It was the beautiful and calming soundtrack Rachel needed to ratchet down her anxiety and focus on the work before her.
She pulled out the sprigs of artificial mistletoe and rested them on top of the bistro table, directly next to her laptop. They taunted her, and she winced at the depressing thought that something she spent so much time on could make her feel so inferior.
Over the years with December Décor, she had designed many products for their catalog, most of which became seasonal best sellers. Her rustic evergreen boughs, adorned with pinecones and berries and fashioned into swags and sprays, were a hit last Christmas. As were her farmhouse-themed wreaths that came in the shapes of horses, goats, and even cows.
But the idea of artificial mistletoe was an entirely new venture for their company. Most of the ones currently on the market really dressed up the sprigs, making them resemble holly more than the sparse plant. Some even turned them into little green clusters in the shape of a kissing ball.
But for December Décor, realism was the key to their success. While her farmhouse wreaths were kitschy, the greenery was nearly indistinguishable from real foliage.
And this was where the mistletoe was a miss. Sure, it looked real, but that didn’t do it any favors. At the end of the day, mistletoe was simply a parasite on an otherwise healthy tree.
And this project was becoming a parasite in Rachel’s otherwise healthy career.
She groaned.
“Hey there, Mittens.”
She choked on her drink, head snapping up to attention. The man from the other day stood towering above her, that smile fixed on his full mouth. He slunk an arm out of his jacket, one, then the other, and draped the puffer over the seat back.
Mittens? Really? She didn’t even know the guy, and yet his casual familiarity was a little too comfortable. “I do have a name.”
“What’s that?”
The espresso machine hissed and gurgled loudly at his back, sputtering as it steamed milk for another drink.
