Page 72 of The Christmas Blueprint

“What’s my budgetagain?” Harlow walked beside him, an adorable red crocheted beret from Sophia’s shop perched on her head that matched the red coat he’d purchased for her during a shopping trip in Medford this week.

It had been four days since he’d seen Sophia except when he dropped Harlow off to make the gnomes in her shop after school. She and a couple of friends congregated there to craft, and because sometimes three or four kids would join Harlow while their parents shopped Main Street and gossiped over coffee or a glass of wine at the tasting room, Sophia had added a craft area outside, taking up one of the parking spaces in front of her shop. He and Riley had built a cute barrier and awning, but Killian had kept his role quiet while he tried to figure out a way to apologize.

Her artists had graduated to felting other woodland creatures out of the boiled wool and making ornaments out of Styrofoam balls, beads, sequins, and buttons since the ornament-making class had had to be canceled for this weekend. Sophia, however, had decided to make her booth bigger at the Christmas Market so that families could create their own ornaments there.

“You’re making gifts for your friends. I think we cleared out one craft aisle at Michael’s, and you’ve commandeered the dining room table at the house,” he told Harlow now.

“I preferred working outside the trailer at the long tables. That was fun.”

“It was,” he said. He’d moved his office to Riley’s house as well, not wanting to aggravate Jeffrey Bane any more in case he carried through with more retaliation against Sophia. The store was her livelihood.

He didn’t know if he still had a job in January, and he wasn’t sure he cared. Jeffrey Bane was as toxic as Riley had claimed. But he’d had the town under his thumb for too long. Before it hadn’t been Killian’s problem. Now it was, but he wasn’t sure what he was going to do about it. Sophia wouldn’t talk to him. Riley challenged him. “Why get involved if you’re just going to ditch out again? Why become someone we count on if you’ve got one foot out the door?”

She’d said it more than once as they’d worked together. Then she’d hugged him, and to his complete astonishment, she’d burst into tears. She was worried about Sophia. She wasn’t talking. She didn’t seem to have any joy. She didn’t look like she was sleeping.

And he felt helpless.

“How could you betray her like that?” Riley had tearfully demanded, thumping his chest and shoulder hard enough to hurt.

“I wanted to protect her.” He admitted feeling all kinds of stupid. “I thought if we carried out with her plan, the town and Zhang and the other planning commissioners would see the benefits to the city and Bane would back down. And I was just so…so caught up in her magic, I didn’t want reality to intrude.”

“Really?” Riley, her eyelashes studded with tears, blinked furiously. “Really, you’re serious?”

“It feels deadly serious,” he’d said, rubbing his chest where his bruised heart thumped away. “And she won’t even talk to me, let me explain, let me apologize, let me help her.”

“Oh, Killian,” Riley said, wiping away her tears. “I was so worried about you hurting Sophia that I didn’t think that you too might be hurt.”

“I have to find a way to apologize—to explain.”

Tomorrow the Christmas Market opened for the weekend. He wanted her to have huge success—just as the wreath-building class had been a success.

But what could he do? He needed a plan, a go big or go home plan. And he was already home.

The thought hit him like one of his brothers’ dead-arm punches when they’d been kids.

He was home.

He wasn’t going anywhere. And he was going to prove to Sophia that he was worth taking a chance on.

*

“Are you evergoing to forgive Kills?” Riley asked Sophia Friday afternoon after she returned from the River Bend Park where she’d been helping Sophia’s three brothers build her booth for the Christmas Market. Maeve True had helped build an attached section for Elaine to show some of her art. Now that Elaine had sold all of her roosters at the wreath-making class, she was riding high and bragging that she’d open an art gallery with a studio where she and other artists could teach.

“Nothing to forgive,” Sophia said coolly.

“C’mon, it’s me,” Riley insisted. “Yell, stomp your feet, curse his firstborn—no, don’t do that. That would be my niece or nephew. But why won’t you talk to him?”

“No reason to. He chose his side.” Even saying the words felt like she was stabbing herself with the brass mermaid letter open she’d found while joining Riley on a flea market run a few years ago.

“No one choses to side with No-Brain Bane.” Of course Riley defended her brother.

“They were scheming.”

Riley’s eyebrows arched. Maeve crossed her arms.

“You do remember the part that Killian works for the city, right?” Maeve reminded her. “He can’t just ignore No-Brain Bane.”

Sophia felt like she should shut down the negative nickname. It wasn’t nice, but neither was Jeffrey Bane.

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