The Christmas Gift

The implication was that Krista should have known that. In reality, Krista wasn’t even sure how Rayna had escaped getting roped into going into business with their parents at the nursery. “That’s great.”

“Whatever.” Rayna started to walk out of the kitchen.

“Rayna, wait,” Krista called. Her sister stopped but didn’t turn, making it even harder to ask for a favor. “Can you drop me at the shop on your way to work? Or someplace where I can rent a car?”

“The rental agency’s too far away,” Rayna said, “and work’s in the opposite direction.”

Before Krista could figure out where that left her, dogs started barking to the tune of “Jingle Bells.” The doorbell.

“That’ll be Alex,” Rayna said.

“Alex?” Some of the coffee in Krista’s cup sloshed onto her hand. If it hadn’t been lukewarm, she would have gotten burned. “What’s he doing here?”

“Grandma asked him to pick you up.” Rayna walked the rest of the way out of the room, leaving Krista to answer the summons.

The irony didn’t escape her that the man who’d criticized her last night was willing to give her a ride to the shop when her own sister was not.

THE FIVE MILES BETWEEN the Novaks’ house and their business traversed a rolling stretch of rural road that led to the sprawling downtown of Jarrell.

Alex drove his company pickup past a diner, a dry cleaner, a hardware store and a bank branch clustered within a few blocks. Giant fake snowflakes decorated the light poles, which he thought provided a nice festive touch.

“Not much has changed around here, has it?” Krista asked.

Jarrell’s population was less than five thousand but the town was only thirty minutes south of the city center of Harrisburg. Anything Alex needed, he could get without driving more than a half hour, including streams to fish, trails to hike and mountainous scenery to photograph.

“Some of us think that’s a good thing,” Alex said.

“I was never one of them,” Krista said. “When I left, I felt like the town was smothering me.”

“You said you’d suffocate if you didn’t leave.” Alex braked at a red light at the intersection where his favorite bakery was located. Sometimes in the mornings, he dropped in for a cinnamon-raisin bagel topped with cream cheese, one of the simple pleasures of life.

“I’m surprised you remember that,” Krista said.

Alex could call the moment instantly to mind. They’d been lying naked in each other’s arm, having just made love. Her cheeks had been flushed, her hair awry, her lips well-kissed. Alex had been about to surprise her with tickets to a concert at the Forum in Harrisburg, but he’d never gotten around to it. There wasn’t any point. The concert had taken place the day after she left town.

“Probably because it’s the opposite of how I feel about Jarrell,” he said. “The clean air makes breathing easy for me.”

“Lots of places have clean air,” Krista said.

“Only one of them is home,” Alex said, then felt frustrated at himself for getting in the last word. They weren’t arguing. He liked living in Jarrell and she preferred Europe. End of story.

The light turned green and he stepped on the accelerator, but not before noticing she’d lost none of the vibrancy that had first attracted him to her. She filled up the truck with her presence, her skin glowing with health, her hair shiny clean. Dressed in the red coat, she looked even more alive.

“I’m surprised you agreed to drive me,” Krista remarked.

“Happy to do it,” Alex said.

“Oh, come on,” she drawled. “Why don’t you just admit Grandma twisted your arm?”

Alex’s eyes left the road. She gazed back at him, her expression challenging. For a woman who should be suffering from jet lag, she was surprisingly lucid.

“You believe in speaking your mind, don’t you?” Alex asked.

“You didn’t mince words yesterday. Or just now, for that matter,” she pointed out. “It’s obvious you disapprove of me.”

Alex focused in front of him, unwilling to be drawn into an argument. “You were right last night. I shouldn’t have criticized you.”

“But you meant what you said?”

“I did,” he confirmed. In his rearview mirror, Alex noticed a black SUV that was following too closely. The driver had a cell phone to his ear. “But I heard your mom at dinner. She doesn’t need me to speak for her. She does a pretty good job herself.”

Krista laughed, the last thing he expected.

“I guess my mother and I have something in common, after all,” Krista said. “So while we’re being outspoken and clearing the air, let’s hear why you dumped me.”

Alex abruptly turned to Krista, not able to determine from her expression if she were joking. “I didn’t dump you! You moved to the Czech Republic.”

“You dropped me like a hot potato two weeks before that.” She gasped and pointed at the road. “Red light!”

They were approaching a traffic light that was turning from yellow to red, but Alex only had one choice because of the SUV on his bumper. He kept his foot steady on the gas and went through the intersection. Behind them, the SUV came to a screeching stop.

“You ran that red light!” Krista said.

“It was safer than stopping.” Alex counted himself lucky he didn’t hear a police siren. How could he explain missing the red light when he’d driven this route thousands of times?

“Am I distracting you?” she asked.

“Ya think?” He vowed to keep his eyes on the road, but his mind was mired in the past. “To set the record straight, I didn’t break things off until after you accepted the job.”

“You had to realize I would have liked to keep seeing you in those two weeks before I moved,” Krista said.

“What would have been the point?” he asked.

“We were having a good time together.”

“The good times had to end, sooner or later.”

“It would have been nice if it was later,” she said.

Were they really having this conversation? Alex didn’t know any other woman who talked so bluntly. Was that one of the reasons he’d been attracted to her?

“More time together would have changed nothing,” he stated. “You still would have moved to Europe and I still would have stayed here.”

“I suppose,” she said, a sigh in her voice. “But it’s not like we had a commitment.”

The few weeks they’d known each other had been enough time for Alex to suspect he wanted more from Krista than sex. Her surprise announcement that she was leaving had forced him to conclude he hadn’t known her at all.

“Why didn’t you mention you were considering moving to Europe?” Alex posed the question he should have asked back then.