Once Upon a Christmas Read Free Page A

both coffee cups to the sink. Prompted by
    Holly’s meaningful glance at the brown-ringed mugs, she turned on the tap and
    gave each one a cursory swish. “No, really. Didn’t the two of you ever
    argue? About anything?”
    “Nope.”
    “Hmmph.” Clarissa grabbed a cinnamon-raisin bagel
    from the basket on the kitchen table and settled back on the other banquette,
    picking out the raisins with her long red manicured fingernails. She popped a
    raisin in her mouth, then another. “I’ve got to be honest here, Holly
    Berry. That’s abnormal.”
    “It’s true,” Holly insisted, printing one last
    note in her day planner. “Maybe we didn’t argue because we were so
    well-suited for each other.”
    “Well-suited? Did we warp back into the dark ages when
    I wasn’t looking? What are you talking about, well-suited? I don’t think
    arranged marriages are happening anymore.”
    “Very funny.” Ticking off each similarity on her
    fingers, Holly said, “Brad and I are the same age. We went to the same
    schools. Both of us grew up here. We’ve got the same goals—”
    “Career, career, and…career?” Clarissa
    suggested.
    “No, I mean life goals. Like we both want a family.”
    Or at least Brad hadn’t actively discouraged her on those few occasions when
    she’d talked about having children together someday. Holly tilted her head
    sideways, thinking. There had to be more things they had in common. “We’re
    even the same height,” she announced triumphantly.
    Twirling the remains of her bagel on one finger, Clarissa
    asked, “Really? I always thought Brad was taller than you.”
    “I slouched,” Holly admitted. They both grinned.
    Meanly. “But all the right elements were there, and I’m not just going to
    let this pass me by. I’m practically thirty—”
    “Nearly dead,” Clarissa broke in, nodding and
    grinning.
    “—and it’s time I settled down.”
    Clarissa shook her head. “You’ve got to be the most
    settled down person I know. You’ve got a retirement plan. You’ve got
    coordinated bath towels, for crying out loud. Even my mother doesn’t have
    towels that match.”
    Holly’s towels did match. Down to the washcloths, they were
    all a suitably masculine burgundy color, the only one she and Brad had both
    liked.
    “There’s more to life than decorating,” Holly
    said, ignoring Clarissa’s raised eyebrows. “Besides, Brad and I had a good
    relationship. Maybe we were taking each other for granted, maybe some of the
    spark went out of things, but I think we had something worth saving.”
    Clarissa looked doubtful. Well, let her, Holly thought
    rebelliously. It wasn’t Clarissa’s love life that had taken a nose dive.
    Clarissa had been happily married for three years now. She could afford to take
    the high moral ground.
    Squinting at the notes she’d penned neatly in her day
    planner, Holly went on. “Anyway, my theory is what we’ve got here is a
    fear of commitment. I think Brad and I just got so close it scared him.”
    “I guess so. Maybe.”
    “Your enthusiasm is too much for me,” Holly
    muttered wryly. She gathered her convictions again. “It’s like I said.
    Maybe Brad and I were taking each other for granted and got caught in a rut, or
    something.”
    She hoped her reasoning sounded more convincing to Clarissa
    than it suddenly did to her. Last night, lying in bed alone, it had all made
    perfect sense. Unfortunately, Holly hadn’t come up with any better
    interpretations since then.
    Her feelings, her love life, her pride were at stake. Her
    life didn’t feel like it was supposed to anymore, and she couldn’t bear
    to sit back and do nothing at all about it.
    “I mean, Brad didn’t actually say we were through,”
    she said, “not in so many words…”
    Clarissa gaped at her. “Oh, geez, tell me you don’t
    mean what I think you mean—”
    Holly nodded, smiling with renewed hope at the notes she’d
    made. Her plan. Just looking at it made her feel a