Page 4 of Can't Miss Christmas

CHAPTER 2

The traffic started out at a creep but thinned out once Graham drove out of the city, as if all smart people had the good sense to get the hell off the road in anticipation of Storm Armageddon. Unfortunately, Graham couldn’t count himself as one of them. In the pitch-dark night, the snow blanketed windshields and cars and the road in a slippery, bluish-white blanket.

The traffic was nothing compared to what was going on inside the car. Conversation was as painful as tooth extraction, overly polite and superficial, skirting around anything meaningful or potentially awkward. Grace’s career was meteoric; his business was finally turning a profit, and they were expanding to other states. They hadn’t made much progress beyond that.

“Where are you spending the holiday?” he asked.Please don’t say with Maxim. Maxwell. Maximillian. Whatever his name was.The guy with the horn-rimmed glasses and theI’m really successfulhaircut who was currently number three on theNew York Timeslist for his latest cheesy thriller. Not that Graham had looked or anything.

“My sister’s,” she said. Oh, her horrible half sister, who was a privileged, entitled pain in the ass and hadn’t even visited after their baby had died. Graham must’ve unconsciously made a face, because she said, “What? Blakely and I are closer now. I can’t wait to see her.”

Which he pretty much knew was a fib, but he let it go. Grace’s father had left when she was eight, and her mother had remarried a well-to-do real estate developer and had Blakely, who couldn’t be more different from Grace. Despite losing the family-of-the-year lottery, Grace had turned out pretty well, though sometimes Graham wondered if her tendency to put up a tough front was a reaction to the scars of her past. Neither of her parents seemed to really care enough to actually be parents to her: her mother lived overseas somewhere, and her father cropped up every couple of years, usually when he needed money.

“So, you like living on the Upper East Side?” he asked. When they were married, they’d lived in a simple walk-up in Brooklyn.

“Yes, very much,” she said.

“You living with Maxim?”Oh hell.What was hedoing? He’d meant to drop some subtle hints until the answer came out naturally in the conversation. So much for that.

She rolled her eyes. “Maxwell.” She paused. “And no, I don’t live with him.”

“Oh, sorry. Maxwell.” He wasn’t sorry. And for some reason, he was unreasonably happy she didn’t live with him. He, unlike Maxwell, didn’t skydive over the Burj Khalifa, swim with sharks in South Africa, or bungee jump off some high-assed building somewhere in China. He liked his life calm, orderly, and in control. Those qualities had enabled him to survive his divorce as well as build his business into what it was today.

Except Grace had disliked his craving for order. Felt he was too emotionally buttoned up, and accused him of seeing things in black-and-white terms.

“How about you?” she asked. “You dating anybody?”

He shrugged. Up until last month, he’d been seeing a nice woman who was punctual, neat, and didn’t challenge his every move—basically the opposite of Grace. On paper, Niki was perfect. She wanted a relationship, and a future with marriage and children, as he did. She was intelligent, fun, and a great cook (unlike Grace, who nearly set herself and him on fire trying to caramelize crème brulée with a chef’s torch for his birthday one year). Niki was also a fanatical exerciser, whereas a workout for Grace was pushing the trash can to the curb on the Thursday nights he worked late. If you’d asked him if there was anything wrong with Niki, he wouldn’t’ve been able to think of a single thing.

Maybe that was the problem. There was no friction, no conflict—no challenge. The silences he and Grace used to have had always been filled somehow with a kind of underlying understanding…but with Niki, they were awkward.

Were “awkward silences” a good enough reason to break off a relationship? She’d taken it well, but sometimes she still called him, hoping they’d get back together.

“Oh no,” Grace said. “That’s a long pause. I’m afraid to ask why.”

“I’m not seeing anyone,” he said.

“Oh. Well, I’m not either. I broke it off with Maxwell.”

“Because he only hit number three on theNew York Timeslist?”

She crossed her arms. “That was snarky, Graham.”

He paused. “You’re right. I’m sorry. Why did you break up with him?”

“It feels weird discussing this with you.”

He shrugged. Damn weird. “We were best friends for a lot of years. I don’t know why it should be.” He just really wanted to know.

“He was in love with who he wanted me to be, not who I was. He kept pushing me to be more adventurous, travel more, eat more exotic food… I’m just not like that.”

“I always liked you just the way you were.” Yeah, yeah, he should shut up already. But it was true. She was perfect just the way she was. Except for being stubborn. And difficult. And too proud to ever ask for help.

She turned to him then. “I hate to admit this, but you’re right. You never tried to change me. You never complained when I was overweight or—”

“You were never overweight. Right now, you look like you could use a couple of cheeseburgers.”

“I’m a vegan. I’ve purged my body of all impurities.”

Including him, he supposed.

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