Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The next morning brought Tanner with coffee and a question.
“The reading chair,” he said, setting a cup on the counter. “It’s wobbly. Mind if I take a look?”
Carrie stared at the coffee. It was from the place two blocks over, the one she’d stopped going to when she tightened her budget. “You brought me coffee.”
“You looked like you needed it yesterday. Black, right? I guessed.”
“You guessed right.” She took the cup, and their fingers brushed. Again. This was becoming a problem. “The chair by the window? You really don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” He was already grabbing the chair and heading toward the back of the shop.
He set the chair down in the small back room, testing the legs.
The space was cramped—desk overflowing with paperwork, inventory boxes stacked against one wall, a whiteboard covered in Post-it notes and reminders.
It was an organized mess, the kind that came from someone working too hard with not enough help.
His eyes caught a document at the top of the desk pile. He didn’t mean to read it, but the bold red letters were impossible to ignore:
LEASE RENEWAL NOTICE - PAYMENT DUE DECEMBER 27.
And below that, the amount: $5,000.00.
Five thousand dollars or the space reverted to the landlord.
He looked away quickly and focused on the chair. It was none of his business. She’d made it clear she didn’t want help. She didn’t want to be rescued. The last thing she needed was his prying into her finances, but the number stuck in his head.
Shannon appeared beside Carrie the moment he was out of earshot. “He brought you coffee.”
“I noticed.”
“Expensive coffee.”
“Also noticed.”
“From that place we love.”
“Shannon—”
Shannon furrowed her eyebrows. “I like coffee. I must not look like I need it.” She added, “Note to self: stop looking awake.” She gave Carrie a knowing look. “So, this is happening.”
“Nothing’s happening. He’s being nice. He probably feels sorry for me because of the shelf thing.”
“The shelf thing where he saved your life, and you stapled him?” She smiled as she scrolled through her phone.
“His sleeve. I stapled his sleeve.” Carrie stopped.
“Oh!” Shannon’s expression shifted from glee to concern. “There’s some news here about your staple gun guy.”
“He’s not my—” Carrie rolled her eyes. “What news?”
Shannon turned her phone around. A blog post filled the screen, headlined in festive red and green.
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Bad Santa’ Tanner Blake Hiding in Small Town After Scandal Costs Hospital Fundraiser
Carrie’s stomach dropped, and the words blurred together as she read, “After a viral talk show incident, Hollydale Children’s Hospital loses a hundred thousand in funding when publishers pull actor Tanner Blake’s live book reading event from their Christmas fundraiser.”
“A hundred thousand dollars?” Carrie read it again.
“He cost them their fundraiser,” Shannon whispered. “The hospital’s pediatric wing. Children who need surgeries, treatments.”
Carrie sank onto the counter stool, still reading. The article was brief but brutal—screenshots from social media, people calling him names, demanding apologies. His career was crumbling in real time. She handed the phone back to Shannon and tried to absorb it.
“Oh, there’s more,” Shannon said, scrolling. “The real video—the full, unedited one from the talk show—is buried, but I found a copy. Diamonds and the internet are forever.”
Carrie watched as the host, guest Portia Pembroke, and her beloved voice actor took their seats after a holiday skit.
They were still wearing their Santa hats as Tanner explained his latest project.
He gestured broadly and accidentally splashed his mug of water on Portia Pembroke, seated beside him.
After a dramatic gasp, she narrowed her eyes and snapped, “You f—ing idiot. This dress is worth more than your mother’s trailer!”
Tanner, stunned for a second, soon rallied. “Oh, I don’t doubt its worth because that dress has more brains and talent in its zipper tab than the person wearing it—you shallow, mean-spirited shrew!”
Portia Pembroke blinked in disbelief before unleashing a string of vitriol ending with: “You really think you’re the star here? You’re lucky you’ve made it this far in the industry, but don’t expect to get farther. You’re done.” She turned to someone off-camera and commanded, “Fix that in post.”
The host hastily chimed in, “We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.”
Carrie said, “Well, everyone knows she’s a horrible person. She’s on all those lists of mean celebrities.”
Shannon slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Yeah, but the viral version just shows him unloading on her, so he looks like a big bully attacking a vulnerable woman.”
“That’s character assassination,” Carrie said.
“That’s the internet.” Shannon took her phone back. “But that hospital still lost its funding. Those children still need medical treatment. And he’s over there fixing our reading chair like nothing happened.”
Carrie glanced toward the back room and the steady sound of tools being set down, the creak of wood, and the quiet competence of someone who knew how to fix broken things drifted out. “So that’s why he’s here and asked me to call him Tom. He’s trying to hide from the scandal.”
“Can you blame him?”
“No, not at all.” Carrie stood.
Shannon nodded and rested her chin on her hands.
Carrie leaned on her elbow and thought for a moment. “But why would he come here where the hospital is? I mean, wouldn’t he want to be anywhere but here?”
“Good point. He’s fresh in everyone’s mind since the scandal, and not in a good way.” Shannon gazed abstractedly at the front window. “But isn’t he really known more for his voice? I mean, I know he’s an actor, but he’s one of those actors that nobody recognizes, you know?”
“I doubt he would like hearing it put quite that way.” Carrie glanced toward the back where Tanner was working.
Shannon shrugged. “Sorry, but it is what it is.”
Carrie couldn’t argue the point. “But I still don’t get it. He’s obviously hiding, but why here?”
Shannon looked around the store. “Maybe because, judging from our customer traffic, we’re practically invisible?” She let out a weak laugh. “He’s desperate to hide, and we’re desperate for people to notice we’re here. It’s kind of funny, but not really.”
Carrie looked through the display window toward the hospital. An idea was forming, still nebulous but growing clearer. “Shannon, what if we could fix both problems?”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking of our Secret Santa tradition. People love that sort of thing. Anonymous gifts. Acts of kindness.” Carrie pulled out her phone and started searching. “I mean, we’ve never done a charity event, but what if we did? What if we did something for the hospital?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe take our Secret Santa tradition to the children. Oh! Or we could donate books for people to read to the children. They could get sponsors, and the proceeds would go to the hospital. I don’t know. It’s an idea. I just think there must be something we could do.”
“‘A hundred thousand dollars’ worth of something? That’s a lot of reading.” Shannon had the same look on her face that she got when Carrie came up with impossible display window ideas.
“Maybe not a hundred thousand, but we could raise some money. It would help the children, and it would give us free publicity. Everyone wins.”
“And Tanner?”
“Doesn’t need to be involved. He’s just the guy upstairs with a tool belt. Who knows? This might even take the spotlight off his situation.”
Shannon studied her. “You’re trying to protect him.”
“I’m trying to help children and save our shop. If that also happens to take some pressure off a guy who got screwed by social media, then good.”
Over the next few days, the idea took shape.
Carrie reached out to the hospital and proposed a partnership: “Christmas Stories by Lamplight Books.” Local volunteers would visit the pediatric wing to read to the children in person, with sponsors backing each reader.
The children could write Secret Santa letters with their wishes—kept anonymous to protect privacy—and the hospital could share a general wish list on their blog.
Community members could sign up to fulfill specific wishes.
The event would culminate on December 22 with an evening story hour at the hospital, where Santa would read to all the children by lamplight and pass out the presents the children had wished for.
The hospital loved it. The local paper loved it. The story got picked up by the regional news.
What Carrie hadn’t expected was the feedback.
The messages started arriving as soon as the web page went live.
People wanted to help. The nurses made it a project, giving the children special paper and envelopes decorated with snowflakes and reindeer.
Before they hung the real letters to Santa with clothespins and twine at the hospital, Shannon scanned them and posted them online so people could sign up to contribute.
“Dear Santa,” wrote a seven-year-old named Hailey with careful, looping letters. “I wish I could go home and see my dog, Biscuit, on Christmas morning. He doesn’t understand why I’m gone. When you see him, can you tell him I miss him?”
“Dear Santa,” wrote a ten-year-old named Marco. “I wish my little sister could visit me. She’s too young to be in the hospital, but I miss her. Can you make her older just for one day?”
“Dear Santa,” wrote a five-year-old named Jade. “I wish the snow would come inside so I could touch it. I’ve been here since September, and I forgot what snow feels like.”
Carrie read them in the back room and had to sit down. Shannon found her there, letters spread across the desk, eyes damp.
“Shannon, these kids just want normal things—to see their pets, their siblings, and snow. And we’re selling books.”
“We’re raising money for their care. That’s not nothing.”
“But we could do more. We could—” Carrie looked at the letters again. “Not just deliver gifts but have Santa answer their letters during the event. It would make it more about them in a tangible sense. They don’t understand fundraising, but they’ll understand Santa.”
“Where are you going to find Santa on three days’ notice at this time of year?”
Carrie was already thinking about the man upstairs, the one with the voice that made people listen, the one who was hiding from the world. But maybe he would consider it if he could give some sick children some Christmas magic.
“I have an idea,” she said. “But you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Going to? No, I already think that. What’s the idea?”
“Tanner,” Carrie said. “We need Tanner to be Santa.”
Shannon’s face registered something between laughter and horror. “Tanner? Bad Santa?”
Tanner lay on the couch in his apartment, staring at the ceiling and listening to the old building settle around him.
Eight forty-three p.m., too early to sleep but too late to do anything productive.
Below, the bookshop was quiet. Carrie had left an hour ago, and he’d watched from his window as she’d walked to her car, shoulders hunched against the December cold. She’d paused at the driver’s door and looked back at the shop as if she were memorizing it.
Or saying goodbye to it. He couldn’t unsee the late rent notice on her desk. With her lease deadline days away, she might be facing closure.
He rolled onto his side and looked at his phone. The Secret Santa article was still open in his browser. Carrie had started the tradition three years ago. With its anonymous wishes and anonymous gifts, it was magic for people who’d stopped believing in it.
She’d built something beautiful in this shop. Anyone could see that. The carefully curated sections, the reading corner he’d fixed, the warm atmosphere that made people want to curl up with a book. She’d taken the shell of a store space and turned it into a place that mattered.
And it still wasn’t enough.
He could write a check right now, put it in a Secret Santa envelope, and slide it under her door. Five thousand dollars, problem solved. But she would know it was from him. And then what? She would think he pitied her. Or worse, that he thought she couldn’t handle her own problems.
She’d mentioned her ex—Dennis—more than once with bitterness in her voice. She’d left someone who’d had no faith in her, and she was determined to prove him wrong. She was building something on her own terms, refusing shortcuts even when they might save her.
He understood that.
He’d spent five years taking whatever roles his agent pitched, doing whatever his publicist suggested, being whoever they said he should be.
But the longer he spent in the business, the less he believed he belonged there.
He loved acting, but that was such a small part of his work.
Most of it involved people whose values he frankly didn’t care for.
The whole Portia incident merely brought it to the surface—not that he’d handled that well.
Maybe that was why he felt such a kinship with Carrie. Despite being in different spheres, they both wanted the same thing—to be more than what someone else said they were.
A floorboard creaked somewhere in the apartment. The radiator hissed and clanked, doing its best to fight off the December cold.
He recalled bringing her morning coffee and the surprise on her face, as if small kindnesses were foreign to her.
He wished he could do more. The wobbly chair didn’t count.
It was an easy fix, twenty minutes at most. He had nothing but time, and she had enough to worry about.
But giving her rent money would be too much to offer.
She would never accept it. So tomorrow, he would fix her back door that was sticking.
It was one more thing he could make right before he left.
Because he would leave.
He gazed out the window where snow was beginning to fall again. Somewhere in this mess of scandal and struggle, he would find a way forward.
He had to.