Chapter 18
KENT
Iwas in trouble.
I walked back up to the lodge with my hands shoved deep in my pockets to ward off the cold, but my chest was warm, and my lips were still tingling from Sylvie’s kiss.
Damn. What even was that? I’d kissed plenty of women before, but nothing had ever felt quite like that moment under the mistletoe—soft and electric and significant in a way I couldn’t begin to process.
There wasn’t even any tongue. It was just good.
Really good. Like it left me semi-hard. I wasn’t used to being told no, but I was kind of glad she didn’t let me in her room.
If she had, we would have had sex. I knew it would be amazing sex, but then what?
One and done? I didn’t think I could do that.
And if I stayed the week on the property, was I just not supposed to touch her?
“Fuck that.”
And that meant I would be fucking her more than once. And that was the problem. That was where things got tricky because that would be edging into relationship territory and I was definitely not going to do that. So yes, I wanted to fuck her, but I was glad we didn’t.
Good on her.
I would thank her in the morning. She saved me from myself.
I was so lost in replaying every second of the encounter that I nearly jumped out of my skin when a figure emerged from Santa’s cabin. My first thought was bear. Shit. I pretended to be all big and bad, but could I really take on a bear?
Fuck!
What did she say to do? Yell at it.
Suddenly, the bear struck a match.
Not a bear, dumbass.
Santa Claus. Smoking a cigar. Because apparently this night hadn’t been surreal enough already.
I was not going to tell anyone about this little incident. My brothers would never let me live it down if they found out Santa had scared the shit out of me.
Wesley—I had to remind myself that the guy had an actual name—saw me recovering from the jump scare and chuckled. “Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a second cigar. “Care to join an old man for a smoke?”
I wasn’t much of a cigar smoker, but something about the offer felt like exactly what I needed after the emotional whiplash of the evening. “Sure.”
We stood together in the quiet, the tips of our cigars glowing orange in the darkness. The tobacco was good quality, smooth and rich, not the cheap stuff I might have expected from a guy who played Santa for a living.
My dad liked cigars, but it had just never really stuck for me.
He gestured to one of the rocking chairs on the porch. I sat down with him taking the seat next to me. It was a little weird sitting in a rocking chair on a porch in the middle of nowhere. I had a glimpse of a future I never imagined for me.
Weird.
“Hell of a town you’ve got here,” I said, mostly to break the comfortable silence.
Wesley nodded thoughtfully. “Been my home for about twenty years now. Emmy and I moved here when she was just a kid, after her mother left. Figured a small town would be better for raising a daughter on my own.”
“And you’ve been Santa the whole time?”
He laughed. “Not quite. Started out doing odd jobs around the farm, maintenance work mostly. But when the old Santa retired, Emmy was about ten and she begged me to audition for the role. Said it would be the coolest thing ever to have Santa for a dad.”
There was warmth in his voice when he talked about his daughter.
It was the kind of unconditional love I’d seen glimpses of in my own family but never experienced quite so directly.
My dad tried. I knew raising a herd of kids was no joke.
He wasn’t exactly present. And with so many of us, it was easy to get lost in the shuffle. I knew we all felt invisible at times.
“She’s grown up quite a bit since then,” I observed.
“Too much, sometimes. Got it in her head that she needs to see the world, experience everything life has to offer before she settles down. Can’t say I blame her. This place can feel pretty small when you’re young and full of dreams.”
Wesley took a long draw from his cigar and exhaled slowly.
“Part of me hopes Sylvie will go with her to Australia. Emmy’s got a good head on her shoulders, but the idea of her being completely alone on the other side of the planet terrifies me.
She’s impulsive. That’s part of her charm, but man, this white hair came naturally.
Raising a girl like Emmy has made my heart stop more than once. ”
“And the other part of you?” I asked.
“The other part knows that if Sylvie leaves, especially now, it’ll be the final nail in the coffin for this place. The Northwoods need her here, need her passion and determination. Without her?” He shrugged. “Well, let’s just say it wouldn’t be the same.”
I found myself curious about the dynamics of this small community. Wanted to understand more about how interconnected everyone’s lives seemed to be. “How long have things been struggling?”
It was an invasive question, but he had already told me quite a bit about the family operation.
“Depends on how you define struggling,” Wesley said.
“The writing’s been on the wall for about five years now, but the family’s been in denial about it.
Gigi and Harold kept thinking they could turn things around if they just worked harder, cut more corners, held on a little longer.
They put a lot of pressure on the kids to breathe new life into the operation.
They convinced themselves it was their old ways that were holding things back. ”
I took another puff from the cigar and processed that information. It explained why Sylvie was so determined. She felt the pressure to save what couldn’t be saved. That was fucked up. She was going to live with that guilt for the rest of her life.
He gestured toward the lodge with his cigar. “The whole town has been in limbo for half a decade, everybody pretending things are fine while watching the slow collapse happen in real time. But it feels like the axe is about to fall any day now.”
The weight of his words settled over me like the falling snow. This wasn’t just about one family’s business failing. It was about an entire community that depended on the Northwoods for their livelihoods and identity.
And they all knew what my dad knew. They knew it was coming to an end.
“What happens if they can’t turn it around?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
Wesley’s expression grew grim. “It’ll break Sylvie’s heart,” he said simply. “That girl has poured everything she has into this place. If she loses it…”
He didn’t finish the thought, just shook his head and took another drag from his cigar.
“Why do you think things have changed?” I asked.
He sighed. “Time marches on. People change. Society changes. You either change with it, or you get left behind. We didn’t change.
I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.
I admire it in a way, but we all agreed to keep doing what we’ve always done to our own detriment.
We’ll just have to find a new way while holding on to the old ways.
Unfortunately, not everyone is going to be able to do that here. ”
Which was exactly what my father had said. The buyout would launch the families into a new life. If they stayed and watched the town die, they would lose everything.
But something told me Sylvie was not going to accept that. It just wasn’t in her nature. I didn’t even know her all that well, but she gave off such a strong energy.
We smoked in silence for a few more minutes. I found myself wondering about Wesley’s living situation. The cabin was charming, but it couldn’t be more than a few hundred square feet.
“I should get to bed,” Wesley said and got to his feet. “I’m sure you’d rather be snug as a bug in your own bed.”
He opened the door to the cabin.
“Do you actually sleep here?” I asked as he started to head back inside.
Wesley grinned and pointed up at the hand-painted sign above the door that read “Santa’s Cabin.”
“Of course I do. I’m Santa.”
He disappeared inside, leaving me standing there with more questions than answers.
There was no way the guy actually lived in that tiny hut year round, right?
He had to have a real place in town. But something about his commitment to the character, even when no kids were around to see it, was oddly touching.
I made my way back to the lodge, winding through the quiet lobby and main rooms. The atmosphere was completely different from earlier in the evening.
It was peaceful and cozy instead of bustling with activity.
A fire still crackled in the grand stone fireplace, and a solitary guest sat nearby with a book, looking perfectly content.
Soft instrumental Christmas music played from speakers hidden somewhere in the room.
It was barely audible, but just enough to chase away the quiet.
The air was filled with the lingering scents of whatever had been baking in the kitchen earlier.
I breathed in deeply and was hit with an unexpected wave of nostalgia.
The smell was familiar, similar to the pot of mulling spices that the kitchen staff at my father’s estate used to keep simmering on the stove from Thanksgiving until New Year’s. But somehow this felt different. Warmer. More genuine.
The Bancroft estate had always been beautiful, elegant, impressive in all the ways that money could buy.
But it had never felt like this. It had never actually felt like Christmas, not in any meaningful sense.
This lodge, with its mismatched furniture and over-enthusiastic decorations, somehow captured something that all of my family’s wealth and sophistication had never managed to achieve.
It was jarring to realize that I’d never actually experienced the feeling of Christmas before tonight. Not real Christmas, anyway. Just the expensive imitation that passed for holiday celebration in my world. Kathy did a good job with Christmas, but I did my best to avoid hanging out with them.
But I got it now. I understood the sense of love and celebration.
Back in my room, I tried to focus on practical matters.
I needed to figure out my next moves. I had to figure out how to approach the Northwood family about the acquisition.
What angles might work best to convince them that selling was in their best interests?
I knew there would be serious resistance, and I couldn’t blame them.
But I also knew they were fighting a losing battle.
My thoughts kept drifting back to Sylvie and the conversation with Wesley. “It’ll break Sylvie’s heart.”
The words echoed in my mind as I got ready for bed. I could still see her face in the gazebo earlier, the tears in her eyes as she talked about her simple dream of preserving her family’s legacy. The trust she’d shown by opening up to me about her fears.
I had to get her to see that the Bancroft acquisition was right for her and her family.
I was a smooth talker by nature. I’d been trained from childhood to be persuasive.
I knew how to find the right arguments to get people to do what I needed them to do.
How hard could it be to convince one small-town woman that selling to my family was her best option?
The money we were offering would set all of them up for life. They could start over anywhere they wanted, do anything they wanted. Wasn’t that better than slowly watching everything they’d built crumble around them?
Even as I tried to construct the arguments I would need to make, my gut was churning with unease. I knew what I had to do. I just wasn’t sure I could actually do it anymore.