Читать книгу: «Somebody's Santa»

They had taken Dora in today as if she had never left after last summer.

They treated her like one of them. An old friend. No different than anyone, not even the town’s Top Dawg: Burke Burdette.

To be treated like one of the crowd had to drive a man like Burke, a man who defined himself by his position, his accomplishments, his respect as a leader, crazy.

Dora smiled to herself. Mt. Knott might drive Burke crazy, but she was just crazy about the place, and the people. She couldn’t think of a nicer, warmer, sweeter place to be during the Christmas season, and she looked forward to the town-wide event tomorrow night.

Burke hadn’t wanted her to stay for Mt. Knott’s Christmas kickoff. He’d asked her to come here, but now he did not want her to stay. Why?

If it were possible, she felt even more unwanted by Burke now than she had sitting alone in her office the day after Thanksgiving. What had she gotten herself into? And how did she get out?

ANNIE JONES

Winner of the Holt Medallion for Southern Themed Fiction, and the Houston Chronicle’s Best Christian Fiction Author of 1999, Annie Jones grew up in a family that loved to laugh, eat and talk—often all at the same time. They instilled in her the gift of sharing through words and humor, and the confidence to go after her heart’s desire (and to act fast if she wanted the last chicken leg). A former social worker, she feels called to be a “voice for the voiceless” and has carried that calling into her writing by creating characters often overlooked in our fast-paced culture—from seventy-somethings who still have a zest for life to women over thirty with big mouths and hearts to match. Having moved thirteen times during her marriage, she is currently living in rural Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Somebody’s Santa
Annie Jones

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

—Matthew 1:21

To my family far and wide (yeah, the older we get

the wider we are!): For all the merry Christmases

past and all the joyous new years to come, thank

you and God bless!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Burke Burdett had lost himself.

The man he had always believed himself to be had vanished. Nobody needed him anymore. Nobody wanted him. Nobody even realized that he had gone.

It had happened so quickly he still didn’t know where he fit into the grand scheme of his company, his family or even his own life. But he did know this—years ago he had made a promise and now he had to see that promise through, even if it meant he had to go someplace he swore he’d never go to ask help of someone he swore he’d never see again. Even if it meant that he had to trade in his image of Top Dawg, the eldest and leader of the pack of Burdett brothers, to become somebody that nobody in Mt. Knott, South Carolina, would ever have imagined. If Burke ever hoped to find himself again, he was going to have to become Santa Claus.

Fat, wet snowflakes powdered the gray-white Carolina sky. Dried stalks of grass and weeds poked through the threadbare blanket of white. Everything seemed swathed in peace and quiet solitude.

Winter weather was not unheard of in this part of South Carolina, but Burke Burdett had rarely seen it come this early in the year, nor had he ever considered it the answer to somebody’s prayer. His prayer.

He looked to the heavens and muttered—mostly to himself but not caring if the God of all creation, maker of the sky, and mountains and gentle nudges in the form of frozen precipitation, overheard— “And on Thanksgiving Day of all times.”

It had to be Thanksgiving, of course, one of the few days when Burke took the time to actually offer a prayer much beyond a mumbled appeal for help or guidance.

This time he had asked for a little of each and added to the mix a heartfelt plea, “Please, prepare my heart for what I am about to undertake. Give it meaning by giving me purpose.”

If he were another kind of man, he could have waxed eloquent about love and honor and humbling himself in order to learn and grow from the experience. But he wasn’t that kind of man. He was the kind of man who wanted to feel productive and useful. There were worse ambitions than asking to be useful to the Lord, he believed.

So he had left his prayer as it was and waited for something to stir in him. It had stirred outside instead. Snow. In November.

The whole family had ooohed and ahhhed over it, and for an instant, Burke recalled how it felt to be a kid. And just as quickly he excused himself and drove awry from the family compound of homes.

Now in the vacant parking lot of the old building that housed his family’s business, the Carolina Crumble Pattie factory, Burke did not feel the cold. Only a dull, deepening sense of loneliness that had dogged him after spending a day surrounded by his family. In years past that family had consisted of his mom and dad, Conner and Maggie Burdett, his three brothers, Adam, Jason and Cody, and maybe a random cousin or two in from Charleston. This year two sisters-in-law and a nephew had been added. But it was the losses that Burke simply could not shake.

Age and grief had ravaged the tough old bird who had once been the strong, proud Conner Burdett, left him thin and a little stooped, worn around the eyes and unexpectedly sentimental.

Sentiment was not the Burdett way and seeing it in his father made Burke think of weakness and vulnerability. Not his father’s but his own.

Burke clenched and unclenched his jaw and squinted at the low yellow-and-tan building where he had worked since he’d been old enough to ride his bicycle there after school. It did not help that the realities of the changing market had their business by the throat and had all but choked the life out of what had once been the mainstay of employment for much of the town of Mt. Knott, South Carolina.

They had made a plan to deal with that, or rather, his brother Adam had. He had gone out into the global marketplace, learned new techniques and made powerful allies. He was the one, the family had concluded by an almost unanimous vote, who needed to take the reins now. That plan had come at a cost. Burke, who had always carried the title Top Dawg in the pack of Burdett boys, had been asked to step aside.

Step aside or be forced out. By his own family.

In doing so Burke had lost his place not just in the family but, he thought, in the whole wide world. Not that they had fired him outright. They had asked him to stay on in a different capacity, but they must have known he’d never do it. After all, who had ever heard of Upper Middle Management Dawg?

So he had tendered his resignation and never returned, not even to collect his belongings. Until now.

Adam was to take on the job that Burke had held, for all intents and purposes, for a decade now. Adam, with his expertise in international corporate business dealings. Adam, with his new ideas for marketing and distribution. Adam, with the one thing that made him the most honored in the eyes of Conner Burdett, the thing that would assure them all that their name and reputation and even their business would go on—a son.

Burke didn’t even have a girlfriend. How was he supposed to compete with that?

He wasn’t, of course. To know that, Burke only had to think about Adam and Josie and their son, Nathan, how happy they had looked today seated at the massive Burdett dinner table together. Love and joy and wanting the best for those you care about, doing your best for them, that was what mattered. Winning?

Winning, Burke decided as he let out a long, labored sigh, was for losers.

And for the first time in his life, Burke felt like a loser. Not because of the loss of his position with the company or the unlikelihood that he would become a husband and father anytime soon, but because he had failed at that one thing that really mattered in life.

Burke shuddered. The wind whipped at the collar of his brown suede coat. He pushed his gray Stetson down low, as much to hide the dark blond hair that everyone in town would recognize as to protect his head and ears from the cold. Today, Thanksgiving Day, he felt the cutting ache of the loss of his mother down to his very bones. She had died two years ago, come Christmas Eve. Two years.

Yet it felt so fresh that he could still feel the heft of her coffin as he led the procession of pallbearers that day. He flexed his hand as if to chase away the memory of the icy brass handle he had clutched to take his mother to her final resting place. But it had been too long.

He had let too much time go past and now he had to face the truth.

Until this year the running of “the crumble,” as everyone in Mt. Knott affectionately called the business, had kept him busy. It had occupied his time, his thoughts, his energy. He hadn’t even had time for dating, much less a real relationship, for seeing friends or making a real home for himself or any of the niceties most people his age took for granted. He certainly didn’t have time to take on some silly pet cause of his mother’s. One he didn’t understand, didn’t approve of and had only learned about when she was on her deathbed. Even if it was the one thing she had asked that Burke and Burke alone, of all the brothers, undertake. Her dying wish.

He swiped a knuckle across his forehead to nudge back his hat, ignoring the sudden sting of a flake that swirled beneath his Stetson to land on his cheek.

His finger brushed over the faint old scar that jagged across his eyebrow.

Conner had given it to him—the scar, not the business. The Crumble he had had to fight for in every sense of the word. He’d used the law, his family’s consensus and finally even his fists to win his birthright as oldest of the four Burdett sons. His birthright—his place as head of the Burdett household and CEO of the family’s already foundering enterprise.

Burke had gotten that scar the night he’d taken over as head of the family business. He’d been running it behind the scenes while his mother was sick, without much input at all from the rest of the family, but Conner’s name had always remained painted in gold on the glass of the door to the big office. Until that night. That night everything had shifted, like a great jutting up of land along a fault line. They had all known it would come one day but had done little to prepare for it.

That night Adam had cashed out his share of the Crumble factory, taken the inheritance his mother had left and run away. And Conner and Burke had pushed their always contentious relationship to the edge.

He hung his head. Even after all these years, even though he and his father had made their peace, Burke felt a pang of regret that it had gone so far. But his father’s grief over losing Maggie had driven them to the brink of bankruptcy. Adam’s actions had sealed the deal.

It was either challenge his father and take over or lose everything that they had worked to achieve.

Burke stroked the memento of that fateful night. Two things had happened then that would forever shape the rest of his life. First, he’d become a man, the leader of his family, the one they would all depend on. And second, he had decided, as he saw his father sobbing in misery over the remnants of what had once been a proud life, that Burke would never let himself need another person the way his father had needed his mother. It was a man’s choice, as he saw it. You cannot love one person that much and still have enough left to serve the many who depend on you.

He’d been true to his word on both counts. He’d applied the ruthless business tactics that his father had taught him, slashed jobs, cut the budget to the bone, stripped away bonus plans and reduced salaries, starting with his own. It wasn’t enough.

And as for needing anyone?

Need was some other person’s weakness. Not his. Ever. Except…

There was his mother’s dying wish.

A wish too long ignored.

A job that no one in Mt. Knott could know about, much less help him with.

He needed to take care of that.

Christmas was only five weeks away. Time was running out.

He’d looked at his predicament from every possible angle. In order to preserve everything his mother had worked so hard to keep secret for so many years, he would require a certain type of person. Someone from out of town. Someone who would work hard, collect her sizable paycheck and then go away before December twenty-fourth to leave his family and his town to celebrate the sacred holiday, without so much as a backward glance. Someone who shared his beliefs that business is not a personal thing, that sentiment breeds weakness, and that needing someone is not the cornerstone of a good life but a roadblock on the way to the top.

He forced his hat back down low on his head and made his way toward the building at last. He would duck inside and grab the box that had been waiting there for him ever since he had cleared out of his office to make way for Adam. In it he’d find a phone number on a business card. Tomorrow morning, he’d have to make the trek to Atlanta.

Chapter Two

“Working on the day after Thanksgiving, Ms. Hoag? I thought you’d be out shopping with the rest of the country.”

“Shopping?” It took Dora Hoag a moment to grasp the concept. “Oh, shopping! Christmas shopping. As in gifts and glad tidings and ho-ho-ho and ‘Hark! the Herald Angels…’”

Dora let out a low sigh.

She glanced up from the paperwork on her enormous desk at the salt-and-pepper–haired man, Zach Bridges, owner of the company who cleaned their office building. She knew him, just as she knew everyone on his cleaning crew, the night security guards, the lunch cart girls, everyone at the nearest all-night coffee shop and the company maintenance staff. Dora knew pretty much anyone who, like her, was still working long after others had gone off to…well, do whatever it was people who did not work all the time did when they were not working. She knew them, but they didn’t know her, not really.

Granted, each year she took off most of the month of December, using up some of the vacation days she hadn’t taken during the year. After seven years she thought ol’ Zach might have figured out that she did not need more time to go caroling, wrap packages or bake cookies. She was hiding.

Hiding from the hurt the most joyous time of year always had meant to her. After all, what happiness is there in the season of giving when you have no one to give to?

Dora supported all the charities, of course. She’d worked at missions serving food and dropped a mountain of coins in little red buckets. She went to the candlelight service at her church, and her heart filled with love as they sang the hymns about the baby born in the manger. But when the last parishioners had called out their goodbyes, Dora had always been alone. Like the last gift under the tree that nobody claimed.

“Let me guess. You’re the type who has all her shopping done before the stores even put up the first display. Oh, say, long about the end of September.” Zach’s smile stretched beyond the clipped edges of his mustache. “That way you don’t have to face the rush this time of year.”

Dora would have loved a reason to brave the throng and chaos this time of year to find just the right thing to express how she felt, to make someone smile, to give them…well, just to give from her heart. Instead she had work to do, and if she hoped to take her yearly sabbatical starting next week, she had to get back to it.

She flipped over a piece of paper in the file and narrowed her eyes at the long column of numbers. “I’m shopping all right. I just have a different idea of what constitutes a bargain.”

“Looking for a couple of small businesses to snatch up and use as stocking stuffers, eh?”

“Snatch up? You make me sound like a bird of prey swooping down for the kill.”

“Eat like a bird,” he said, emptying the day’s trash—an apple core, a picked-over salad in a plastic container, half a sandwich with just the crusts nibbled away. “And you’re always flitting around, never perching anyplace for long.”

“I’ve been based in this office for seven years, now, Zach.”

“Seven years, and I’m still dusting the same office chair. Ain’t ever in it long enough to wear it out and requisition a new one.”

“Point taken.” She laughed. For a moment she considered quizzing the man on what else he had concluded about her over the years, but a flashing light and a buzz from her phone system stopped her.

“Ms….” The barely audible voice cut out, followed by another buzz then, “This is…” Silence, another buzz. “…says that…” A longer silence, a buzz, then nothing, not even static.

She frowned.

Zach chuckled and gave a shrug. “Security. Brought in extra help for the holidays and made the new ones work this weekend.”

“Not like you, huh, Zach? You let your staff have the time off and came in yourself.” She admired that. It showed the character to put others before your own desires and the integrity to make sure you still meet your promised goals.

“Just the way I roll, I reckon,” Zach said matter-of-factly. Then he nodded his head toward the bin beneath her paper shredder, his way of asking if she wanted him to take the zillion cross-cut strips of paper away with the rest of the trash.

She shook her head. Nobody got a glimpse of her business, not even in bits and pieces. She glanced down at the pad on her desk and the silly little doodle of a very Zach-like elf pushing a candy-cane broom and suppressed a smile. It was only business, she admitted to herself as she tore off the page and slid it into the middle of the pile of papers waiting for the shredder. The man might come to some conclusions about her on his own, but she wouldn’t supply any confirmation. That was the way she rolled.

Never show your soft side. Never reveal all your talents, even the more whimsical ones. Never let anyone get a peek at what you think of them. Never share your dreams. Never act on anything in blind trust, not even your own feelings.

And most importantly, never let your hopes or your heart do the work that is the rightful domain of your history and your head.

She’d learned that lesson the hard way and not all that long ago.

She looked at the nest of shredded paper and blinked. Tears blurred her vision. The tip of her nose stung.

For an instant she was in South Carolina on a lovely summer day at a family barbeque. Not her family, but one in which she had thought she might one day find a place.

Dora Burdett. How many times had she doodled that name like some young girl in middle school with her first crush? Crush. What an apt word for what had happened to that dream.

She cleared her throat, spread her hands wide over the open file before her and anchored herself firmly in the present. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my work.”

“Always wheelin’ and dealin’, huh, Ms. Hoag?”

“I head Acquisitions and Mergers, Zach.” She raised her head and stared at the massive logo for GrimEx-Cynergetic Global Com Limited on the green marble wall beyond her open door, where professional decorators had already begun hanging greenery with Global gold-and-silver ornaments. “It’s my job to find the best deals before anyone else does.”

“One step ahead of all those poor saps who took the long weekend off to get a jump on the holidays, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Those poor saps.”

How she so wanted to be one of them.

All her life that was what she had wanted most of all—to have somebody recognize what she had to give, and to accept it and her. Not as an obligation or duty or in hopes of currying favor but because…she mattered.

Dora had never truly felt that she mattered. She, the things she did, the things she thought, her hopes, her dreams, her. Not in that way when someone loves you despite your shortcomings. When someone not only wants the best for you but feels you are the best for them, that you bring out the best in each other. She did not grow up in a home like that.

Her mother died when she was born. Her overwhelmed father left his newborn in the care of a childless and already middle-aged aunt and uncle while he went away to “find himself” and “get his head on straight,” as people said in the seventies.

Apparently he never did either thing, because he never returned for Dora. Sometimes when Dora thought about him she imagined a man wandering about with his head facing backward, asking total strangers if they had seen his lost self.

Aunt Enid and Uncle Taylor did their best to care for her as their own. They started this by naming her Dora, which already put her at a disadvantage among peers with names like Summer, Montana and Jessica. So she kept to herself and worked hard, trying to make her foster parents proud. And for her effort she drew the attention of teachers and administrators. They called her “the little adult” and made jokes about her being “ten going on forty” and tried to get her to lighten up a little. But whenever they needed something done—from choosing a child to represent the school at a leadership conference to helping out in the office or being in charge of the cash box at the pep club bake sale—they tapped Dora.

She learned quickly that hard work and efficiency opened doors. It wasn’t the same as fitting in or mattering to someone but it came a close second. About as good as Dora thought she’d ever see.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering how different her life might be if just once someone had reached out and asked her to come through the doors her drive had created.

A small thing.

A shouted invitation to join a crowded lunch table.

A remembered birthday.

An explanation of why a certain blond-haired, South Carolina gentleman had slammed the door in her face when she had only wanted to…

“I’m dreaming of a…”

“Please, no Christmas songs, Zach.”

“Too early in the season for you?” the man asked, as he tossed his dust rag on top of his cart and began to back the cart out of the room.

“Something like that.” Especially when her mind had just flashed back to last summer and that family barbeque when she had thought that finally she had done something so caring and constructive that it would change her entire life. That the man she had offered to help, she dared hope, would change her life.

Dora Burdett.

She pressed her eyes closed.

Zach cleared his throat.

A twinge of guilt tightened her shoulders and made her sit upright, look the man in the eyes and produce a conciliatory smile. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those who wants to do away with Merry Christmas or any of the wonderful trappings of the season. I just…”

She put her hand over her forehead, as if that would warm up the old thought process and help her find the right words to explain her feelings. Except, it wasn’t her brain that was frozen against all the joyous possibilities Christmas represented to so many. She loved the Lord, and observed His birth in her own way. “I love going to church for the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. I love singing the hymns and all, but….”

“But after that you don’t have no one to go home to and share it all with,” Zach said softly.

“How did you know that?” The observation left her feeling so exposed she could hardly breathe.

“You don’t dust around folks’s nicknacks and geegaws or throw out their calendar’s pages or run into them working on the day after Thanksgiving year upon year without learning a thing or two about those folks.”

The answer humbled her even if it didn’t bring her much relief. “I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, don’t think it’s my place to say—or sing—anything more, but I hate to leave without at least…” He scratched his head, worked his mouth side to side a couple of times then finally sighed. “I’ll just offer this thought.”

Dora braced herself, pressing her lips together to keep from blurting out that she didn’t need his thoughts or sympathy or songs. Because, deep down, she sort of hoped that whatever he had to say might help.

He lifted his spray bottle of disinfectant cleaner the way someone else might have raised a glass to make a toast. “Here’s to hoping this year is different.”

It didn’t help.

But Dora smiled. At least she thought she smiled. She felt her face move, but really it could have been anything from a fleeting grin to that wince she tended to make when forcing her feet into narrow-toed high heels. Just as quickly she fixed her attention on the papers in front of her and busied herself with shuffling them about. “Thanks. Now I need to get back to work. Can’t make a deal on merely hoping things will improve, can I?”

“On the contrary.” The challenge came from the tall blond man who placed himself squarely in her office doorway. “I’d say that hope is at the very core of every deal.”

Burke Burdett! Questions blew through Dora’s mind more quickly than those fictional eight tiny reindeer pulling a flying sleigh. But the words came out of her mouth fast and furious and from the very rock bottom of her own reality. “How dare you show your face to me.”

“Show my face? The view don’t get any better from the other side, Dora,” he drawled in his low, lazy Carolina accent.

Zach, who had worked the cleaning cart into the hallway by now, laughed.

Dora opened her mouth to remind him it wasn’t part of his job description to make assumptions about her or eavesdrop on her and her guests. The squeak, rattle, squeak of the cart told her Zach had already moved on, though. She was alone in her office with Burke Burdett.

But not for long.

She reached out for a button on her phone, hesitated, then raised her eyes to meet those of her visitor.

He had good eyes. Clear and set in a tanned face with just enough lines to make him look thoughtful but still rugged. But if one looked beyond those eyes, those so-called character lines, there was a hard set to his lips and a wariness in his stance.

“Give me one reason not to call security to come up here and escort you out,” she said.

“Well, for starters, I don’t think the poor kid you’ve got posted at the front desk knows how to find the intercom button to hear you, much less where your office is.” He dropped into the leather wingback directly across from her. Years ago an old hand had taught Dora that standing was the best way to keep command of an exchange. Stand. Move. Hold their attention and you hold the reins of the situation.

Burke had just broken that cardinal rule. And made things worse when he stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his boots at the ankle to create a picture of ease. He scanned the room, saying, “Besides, he was the one who let me in.”

Dora wasn’t the only one who noticed and befriended the people everyone else looked right past. “And what did you use to convince that so-green-he’s-in-danger-of-being-mistaken-for-a-sprig-of-holly security guard to get him to do that?”

“Use? Me? Why, nothing but the power of my dazzling personality and charm.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of your charm, Mr. Burdett. It’s more drizzle than dazzle.” She’d meant it as a joke. A tease, really. Under other circumstances, with another man, maybe even a flirtation.

Burke clearly knew that. All of it. He responded in kind with the softest and deepest of chuckles.

And Dora found herself charmed indeed.

“So the security kid is already sort of on my side in this deal,” he summed up.

“Deal?” She stood so quickly that her chair went reeling back into the wall behind her desk. She did not acknowledge the clatter it made. “There is no deal. You made that very clear to me when you cut me out of your family’s plans to save the Crumble and get things there back on track.”

Last summer, after working his way quickly up the corporate ladder at Global, Adam Burdett had returned to Mt. Knott with a scheme to buy out Carolina Crumble Pattie and get some satisfaction for all the perceived wrongs done against him by his adoptive father. It had all seemed a bit soap operaish to Dora, but as a good businesswoman she knew those were exactly the elements that put other people at a disadvantage in forging a business contract. Emotions. Family. Old hurts. They could push things either way.

In this case, they had eventually gone against Global’s proposed buyout. And in favor of Adam Burdett, and by extension, Dora. Together they had the wherewithal to save the company and the desire to do so. It wasn’t what either of them had planned, but then love had a way of changing even the most determined minds. Adam’s love for Josie—now his wife—his son, his family. And Dora’s for the town of Mt. Knott, its way of life, the thrill of a new venture based on the same kind of Biblical principles that had once motivated Global a few dozen mergers ago. And her love for Burke.

She hadn’t loved him right away but by the end of the summer, she thought she did love him. And she thought he loved her back.

Only she hadn’t been thinking. She had been feeling and acting on those feelings. Which had brought her full circle, only then she had become the one at a disadvantage in the contract negotiations. Dora was out. Adam was in. Burke had been nowhere to be found.