Free Hating Christmas (Holiday Series) by Carol Rose Page A

a desire to set herself up comfortably for the rest of
her life.”
    “Now why’d you have to go there?” Holly’s desire to
laugh disappeared. “You have issues, you know?”
    He shrugged. “That’s only true if I’m wrong. What if
I’m not wrong?”
    “You don’t know my mother or anything about her,”
Holly snapped, the man had the power to madden, amuse and frustrate
her, all at once. How could she go so quickly from suffering a heat
wave at his nearness, to dissolving into laughter at his words to
wanting to strangle him?
    ***
    “Mom, you don’t have to get these out every year.”
Kneeling beside the open ornament storage box, Holly carefully
dislodged the decorated ball from its tissue paper.
    “I know,” her mom straightened from underneath the
tree they’d bought for the den, “but these ornaments hold such
wonderful memories from when you were younger. See? Remember when
we got this one that Christmas before your father started getting
really sick?”
    Grimly affixing an ornament hanger, Holly passed the
ball to her mother. She remembered alright.
    Her mother sighed nostalgically. “Such a pretty blue.
Your father loved this color.” Swinging around, she looked at her
daughter. “You should wear this color more often.”
    “Because you have a Christmas ball that matches?”
    “No,” her mother said as if she were talking to a
slow child, “because your dad loved it on you. Goes well with your
coloring, all that wonderful red hair of yours and your ivory
complexion.”
    “Keeping the sunscreen companies in business,” Holly
muttered.
    “Your dad loved the holidays, too. He wouldn’t have
wanted you to dislike Christmas the way you do.”
    She didn’t respond, digging another tissue-wrapped
ornament out. Her own small apartment in LA was streamlined and
uncluttered. No Christmas crap there which was just the way she
liked it, despite her mother’s infatuation with the holiday.
    “I don’t understand you not loving these.” Her mom
held up a pair of glass reindeer, depicted in frisky postures.
    “Mom,” Holly paused in digging through the box, “how
come you still love all this stuff? I mean, the season hasn’t
always been good to us.”
    Her mother swiveled around from the half-decorated
fir. “What do you mean?”
    “You know,” she went back to digging through the
tissue. “Dad…everything after that.”
    Her mom received the heavy mini-snow globe Holly
handed her. “Honey, you know I’ve always loved this time of year.
It’s magical and joyful. Your dad just happened to die in December.
It would have been terrible any time of the year.”
    “I guess it’s just associated with loss for me.” Her
voice was flat to her own ears.
    “I know.” Her mother’s smile was compassionate. “We
had different ways of coping with your dad dying then. I felt it
was a wonderful gift—to have him released from the cancer. To have
it happen just before the Christmas season seemed like a new start
for us. I know he wouldn’t have wanted us to grieve him
forever.”
    Holly’s look was somber. “You stayed single a long
time…grieving.”
    “That’s true.” Her mother’s voice was matter of fact.
“Your dad and I had a good marriage and I missed him terribly…I
still miss him sometimes. And now I’m married to Michael. I waited
until the right man came along and now I’m ready to start a
relationship again.”
    “If he is the right guy,” Holly muttered under her
voice.
    “I know this all took you and Levi a little by
surprise.” She hung up a tiny sled next to a red twinkling light.
“And I know that neither of you has the same enjoyment of Christmas
as Michael and I do, but I’m hoping you can wish us both happiness
and spend this short time here with us.”
    Choking up suddenly, elbow-deep in tissue paper as
she searched for the last of the ornaments, Holly swallowed and
said, “I do wish you happy, Mom. Very happy. I just wish you and
Michael had dated a little