Chapter 14 Jace #2
They left the chocolate store, and Holly brightened again as they went into the toy shop beside it.
Here, she bought a set of colorful blocks with letters and pictures, as well as a large wooden pizza-shaped puzzle for her sister Noelle’s son Kaden.
“He’s two and a half, so maybe this is too advanced for him, but if so, he’ll grow into it. ”
“Noelle is the one who’s flying in tomorrow?”
“Yes. She and maybe Merry are the only ones who are coming home this year. But Noelle wouldn’t miss having Christmas at home for anything. Dad would be devastated if he missed out on grandchild time.”
It was going to turn into a houseful of people. Jace tried to decide how he felt about that. It wasn’t his decision, it was their home, but he might end up spending a lot more time retreating up to Mistletoe Manor if he had to.
“Hey!” a high-pitched voice exclaimed. “Hey, bike guy!”
Jace didn’t realize that he was being addressed until someone tugged on his coat. He turned and found a redheaded tween-age girl grinning at him. There was something vaguely familiar about her.
“You fixed my brother’s bike, right?” the girl said, and oh, it was the bike kids.
“Did you two get that chain looked at like I told you?” Jace asked.
“Yeah, our cousin did. He said it was fixed perfectly. Mom, mom!” The girl waved to get the attention of the woman who was wrapping Holly’s purchases in festive paper. “This is the bike guy I told you about!”
“Oh, hello,” the woman said. She had the same red hair as the kids, although hers was styled in a salon set. “It’s so good to meet you.” She held out a hand, and Jace let her shake his. “Thank you for helping out my kids when they needed it. A lot of people would have just walked right on by.”
“I like fixing broken things, ma’am,” Jace said, dropping his eyes from hers. His gaze went to Holly, only to find her looking at him with a soft, wondering expression.
“Well, tell you what. You saved us the cost of a bike repair, so pick out something else on the house. Anything you like.”
The shop had a selection of dog toys, so Jace chose a squeaky toy for Cupcake in the shape of a pizza slice.
“No, the bacon, get the bacon,” Holly suggested. “Dad glares at me whenever I give him the real stuff.”
“Both it is,” the saleslady declared, and those went in the bag with their other purchases.
As they walked out of the store, Holly said, “Do you do that everywhere you go? Fix broken things?”
“I guess so.” He had never really thought about it. He’d been doing it ever since he was a kid. Stuff was always broken in the group home, and tinkering with it gave him something to do.
“Jace,” Holly said softly, “you are one of a kind.”
Fortunately there was a shop selling Christmas ornaments and cards that they wandered into next, which gave Holly something to look at other than him, and Jace got some relief from the embarrassment of being treated like a treasure, which he was well aware he wasn’t.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask,” he said while Holly examined a rack of ornaments in the shapes of different breeds of dogs. “What’s up with the names of the rental cottages? Did you and your sisters name them?”
“No.” Holly poked through the ornaments, clearly not finding the one she wanted. “Mom did.”
“Oh.” Suddenly he felt about three inches high. “They’re, uh, they’re really great. Very punny.”
Holly smiled wistfully. “You don’t have to feel bad. I know they’re a little silly.” She gave the ornaments another poke. “Do you see any hairless dogs here?”
“I don’t think people put hairless dogs on Christmas trees.”
The saleslady overheard her. “Do you mean the crested hairless breed? You’re right, we don’t have any ornaments, but we do have a stuffed toy.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Holly said when the toy was deposited in her hands. “Jace! Feel this! It’s so squooshy.”
It did, indeed, squoosh in a way that the real Cupcake would probably have enjoyed being squooshed if his small body would take it. It was spotted in the same way as the real Cupcake’s hairless body.
“I’m buying this,” Holly declared, clutching it to her chest.
While they waited in line behind a young couple arranging the purchase of a personalized “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament, Holly said, “It’s fine, Jace, really.
You might have guessed from our names, but Mom absolutely adored Christmas.
She loved everything about it. For Mom, the Christmas season started on November first. She would get through Halloween, because we loved that, and she was always there helping us make costumes and hang up bats and spiderwebs, even though she wasn’t really into any of it.
But as soon as she got out of bed on the first day of November, the spiderwebs came down and the wreaths went up. ”
“That sounds really nice.” Jace thought about the lackluster decorations at the group home, if anyone bothered to put up any at all.
“It was.” Holly sighed a little. “Gingerbread house decorating, Christmas music playing all the time ... and we put the tree up on December first, even though the needles would be half gone by Christmas Day.”
That made Jace realize there was something he hadn’t seen in the house at all. “You guys don’t have a tree this year?”
Holly winced. “No. Pretty funny for a tree farm, huh? I guess Dad and I just got so busy we couldn’t find time. And decorating it by myself doesn’t seem like much fun.”
Jace had never decorated a Christmas tree before, but he supposed it couldn’t be that hard.
It sounded ... fun, actually. “Do you want to put one up when we get home this evening? I’ll help.
We can put on Christmas music and maybe make some gingerbread, or buy some, and do all those—all those things you were just talking about, or some of those things. I know it won’t be the same, but ...”
He trailed off, because Holly was, once again, looking at him with a warm, soft depth in her eyes that he didn’t know how to cope with.
“Jace Wheeler, you are the sweetest guy.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick peck of a kiss.
There was a chorus of “awwww” from nearby shoppers, who were mostly women from the middle-aged parent to the grandparent demographic.
“Honey, you better not let that one get away,” said a cute elderly woman with a halo of frizzy white hair standing in line behind them, carrying a large light-up reindeer.
Holly blushed to the roots of her hair. She finished paying for her purchase and fled, pausing only to grab a handful of Christmas cookies from a plate by the door and stuff one into her mouth.
Jace was laughing when they got outside. He didn’t remember the last time he felt so light and free. “What’s that about not wanting to spread rumors?”
“Oh, make yourself useful and carry this,” Holly said through a mouthful of cookie crumbs, but her tone was playful.
She passed him the shopping bag to join the others he was carrying for her.
“And here, this one’s for you.” She aimed a red and green frosted cookie shaped like a snowflake at his mouth.
Jace stopped walking, and the playful attempt to shove a cookie into his face turned suddenly tender.
Holly placed it carefully between his lips, and Jace nipped off half in a single bite.
It was overly sweet, but somehow, with the snow falling around them, it tasted good anyway.
Holly ate the other half, flushing as bright as she had in the store.
Her lips closed over the place where his had touched.
Without warning, all of that fell apart.
“What the hell? This guy again?”
A hand settled on Jace’s shoulder. Jace jerked away, sidestepped and spun and delivered a push that sent the newcomer staggering.
“Rob,” Holly said in a choked voice.
Jace glared at him, filled with the rising heat of anger. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Rob at the community center. He had been focused on Holly, her discomfort and fear as that jerk hassled her. Now he got an eyeful, and he didn’t like what he saw.
Rob was a big guy with a once muscular physique, who looked like he had let himself go. Muscles were running into fat, and there was a visible beer gut under his open jacket. He had brown hair that was at the unflattering stage of growing out of a not too recent haircut, and a scraggly mustache.
Jace could not for the life of him imagine what Holly ever saw in this guy, but that was up to Holly. He also wouldn’t have thought, just from looking at him, that Rob had the force of character to break into Holly’s childhood bedroom and destroy her stuff.
But maybe that was exactly the kind of thing he’d do. Slinking around behind her back, too much of a rat to confront her openly or to respect what she had told him she wanted.
“Get your hands off her,” Rob snapped.
“You get your hands off her,” Jace growled. It was followed by a real growl, rumbling out of his chest, sounding like an angry wolf.
And an angry wolf was exactly what it was. His wolf wanted to sink their teeth into this loser’s throat. Tear him apart for scaring and hurting Holly.
The sense of his wolf rising up inside him brought mingled exhilaration and fear. It didn’t feel out of control, but it was way too close to the surface.
He became aware of Holly’s hand on his arm. Just a light touch, but a grounding touch. With her here, he didn’t feel like it was going to break free against his will. His hands weren’t breaking out in fur; his teeth weren’t pointed. He was angry, and his wolf was angry, but that was all it was.
“Jace, it’s okay,” Holly said. “Let’s not make a scene. Let’s just go.”
“You’re not going anywhere with him,” Rob snapped.
Holly flared, “I am leaving with him and you’re not coming. You don’t get a say in this anymore.”
Rob moved forward belligerently, getting into Jace’s space. Jace could smell booze on his breath. He stank like he’d just come from a bar. “You leave my girlfriend alone,” Rob snarled. “Quit bothering her.”