Return to Christmas Read online

  Return to Christmas

  Anne Stuart

  Impeccably Demure Press

  Contents

  Reader Letter

  I. MADISON

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  II. MOLLIE

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Falling Angel

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Also by Anne Stuart

  Copyright © 2019 by Anne Kristine Stuart Ohlrogge

  * * *

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-951309-02-2

  Print ISBN: 978-1-951309-03-9

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design: Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs

  Dear Reader,

  * * *

  I love Christmas—in fact, I’m the Christmas baby mentioned in the book who sang “Peace on Earth and Mrs. Myers” and “with the jelly toast profane” when I was three. And I love Christmas movies.

  So naturally I always wondered what it would be like to go through those big revolving doors at Macy’s and end up back in Maureen O’Hara’s time.

  This has been percolating a long time, and Lord knows I’ve done research, but there are a lot of things I had to fudge, basing memories on my time in the late ’60s when I used to haunt the store (the New York flagship is still my favorite store in the world). I took the fictional Mr. Macy from the movie (the Strauss family owned Macy’s) and made a stab at what would be on which floor, etc. But this is a fantasy, and when you write a fantasy, you get to make up your own rules.

  Tough things happen even at Christmas, and there’s a streak of darkness here (there always is in my books) but Christmas makes everything better. Johnny Larsen, the impossibly hot and brooding hero, makes everything better. Throw in a few cameos from Santa Claus, and you’ve got a perfect way to spend time off during the holidays, wrapped in a quilt, drinking tea and nibbling on Christmas cookies. Not too many, though—they’ll make you sick.

  I hope you enjoy this indulgence of mine. Christmas in New York is very special, and Christmas in 1947 is even better.

  * * *

  Merry Christmas!

  * * *

  Anne

  Part I

  MADISON

  Chapter 1

  It was an icy day in December, and Madison Simcoe was shaking as she pulled on her leather gloves and glared into the setting sun, the mammoth office building behind her. The cold was the least of her worries—she was vibrating from pure, helpless rage. She desperately needed to punch something, but strangers didn’t deserve it, and she’d break her fist if she tried to slam it into the Time-Life Building. She could do nothing but try to walk it off, brush it off, laugh it off, and distract herself with anything she could.

  Philip Ronson had put his slimy hands on her, breathed in her ear, and said “You don’t have to pretend I don’t turn you on, Maddie. I know you want it.” And he’d bumped his nasty hard-on against her hip for emphasis.

  He’d tried it before—sooner or later someone always tried it—and she’d left jobs she loved because of it. She’d leave this one as well, if she had to, but there would always be someone new. Me Too was a great movement for women, but it did nothing to the men in charge. She was brilliant at avoiding asshats like Ronson, wunderkind vice president of Epithet, the trendiest influencer in all of mass media. But there were always new administrative assistants for men like Ronson to prey on.

  She wanted to smack him so badly. She wasn’t crazy about her job—in the end it was simply selling things to people who didn’t need them and couldn’t afford them; God’s work. She ought to leave New York City, she thought as she started down the crowded sidewalk, in step with everyone heading toward the Port Authority buildings and Penn Station on their way to the suburbs. She’d tried living in those neat little towns a few train stops from Manhattan, and they’d felt wrong. The closest she’d come to happiness was in the countryside up in Vermont, but even that hadn’t been quite right.

  It was her major inborn flaw—always feeling she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d lectured herself on being shallow. She should know by now that the grass was never greener on the other side—it just seemed that way—but still, the restlessness followed. She’d really hoped to stick with the aptly named Epithet, to prove to herself that she could, but that was becoming less of an option. She ought to be grateful to the stunningly attractive, absolutely revolting Philip Ronson for giving her the excuse to leave, but she still wanted to punch him.

  It was freaking cold, the wind whistling through the cement and granite fjords of New York, and she pulled her leather coat more tightly around her. It was trendy, but it wasn’t warm, and at that moment she would have given anything for an ugly, puffy parka, or even a cloth coat like her Republican great-grandmother had worn with such pride. She needed some thin lacy long johns if she were going to make it in the city for another year.

  She ought to go back to her soulless cubicle of an apartment, with the walls covered with old movie posters, but the condo had barely enough floor space to move—she could pace just as easily in her shower. She could open a good bottle of wine and drink it all, she could go out to a club and pick up someone, or even call Stephen, her on-again, off-again lover from work. He was currently in a relationship, but that had never stopped him from making a booty call before, and she doubted it would now. Maybe she just needed someone to hold her.

  No, not Stephen. He was perfectly adept at getting her off with admirable efficiency, but he was a lousy kisser and a stranger to the thought of cuddling. Not that she wanted him hanging around afterward, but it had begun to feel like rote, and even the release of sex no longer seemed worth the soullessness of it.

  Maybe a little retail therapy. That was probably what kept her in New York—they had the best shopping in the world. She had some money from her grandmother, and she was paid ridiculously well with no one to spend the money on. She didn’t need a damned thing, but that was a non-issue. You didn’t have to need something in order to spend money on it.

  Macy’s would be a madhouse. The parade a few weeks ago had been spectacular, if cold, with only the oversized elephant balloon going haywire, and the window decorations this year were supposed to be spectacular, the best since the late 1940s, according to one of the many podcasts she listened to. She could buy herself a ludicrously expensive handbag—corporate street cred depended on how much you paid for your purse—and tax deductible besides.

  She could get a glass of wine at Felix’s Hungarian Cafe, stuff herself on exquisite pastries or fresh salads if she were feeling virtuous. She could skip Macy’s and head uptown, try on designer clothes and even order something if the mood struck her�
��she’d probably need it for the extravagant holiday parties she would be required to attend—but she had a sentimental attachment to the grand old store, even if it was growing stodgy after more than a hundred years in existence. Maybe she’d treat herself to a very nice pair of earrings, diamonds maybe—cold and hard like the pit of her stomach. Her hair was razor cut short enough to do the earrings justice. If that didn’t do it, she’d go home and see if watching DVDs of old black-and-white Christmas movies would help.

  She’d gotten to the point where not even Christmas in Connecticut would cheer her—she needed to find something later and cheerier, maybe Lauren Bacall in All I Want For Christmas? She couldn’t handle most of the Hallmark moves that clogged the airways—all the heroes looked like Mormons.

  It seemed as if nothing could put her in a Christmas spirit, especially not today. When she was a child, her mother had said she was her Christmas baby, always singing carols in midsummer, mangling words at age three so they came out as “peace on earth and Mrs. Meyers,” but right now she was feeling more like the Grinch. Philip Ronson was enough to turn anyone into a Scrooge.

  It was a depressing time of year nowadays. Her father had left when she was young, her mother died ten years ago, and she’d been an only child. There was no one to care whether she lived or died except the boss whose ass she covered daily, no one to buy presents for, no one to spend the holidays with. The one time she’d tried to organize something, her hipster friends had decided a little cocaine would be just the thing to brighten the season, and she’d lost the last bit of childlike enthusiasm she had left.

  Still, even she couldn’t resist the sheer abundance of Macy’s on Thirty-Fourth Street. If that couldn’t cheer her up, nothing could. They must still have a DVD section somewhere—not everyone streamed. She needed to replace her copy of Miracle on 34th Street—she’d accidentally bought the colorized version and never replaced it. Movies always helped, and she could scrounge for new holiday albums as well, though how many copies of “Run, Run Rudolph” did she really need?

  No, now she had a goal in mind, and her mood lifted just slightly even as the wind whipped through the city, chilling her to the bone. It managed to feel colder in Manhattan than it ever had been in the Maine town she’d grown up in, where the temperature had often dipped to twenty below zero. The buildings around her held and radiated the chill, sending it everywhere like an industrialized snow queen was ruling over the city.

  Let it go, she sang to herself with a wry grimace as she quickened her pace. She’d left her fashion-mandated stilettos back in her office, her track shoes some small improvement as she crossed Forty-Second Street with the ever-present tide of humanity. Macy’s lay only a few blocks ahead, and she could see the dazzling Christmas lights over the crowds, flashing green and red. The bells in the background reminded her that the corner Santas were already in place—had been for a couple of weeks now, and she felt in her coat for the crumpled bills she always carried. She was such a sucker, she thought, and quickened her pace. If she wasn’t going to have a merry Christmas, then at least she could help someone else to have one.

  The Macy’s building was massive, of course, the familiar Art Deco edifice warming her with its sense of tradition. She would have loved living back in the golden era of American retail, in the thirties and forties, with the huge department stores in their prime. She looked up, way up, at the bright neon lights and the big red star, and she felt just the faintest stirrings of childhood wonder. Believe, it said, and she wished she could believe in anything at all, much less Christmas.

  Waiting dutifully till the light turned green, she crossed the street and headed straight for one of the solid brass revolving doors, probably there since the building was first erected. There were at least three street Santas lining the sidewalk, and she needed to get in out of the cold. Only one could benefit from her largess, which was a crumpled twenty dollar bill in her gloved fist.

  The one closest to her looked like every fake Santa she’d ever seen—cheap suit, shiny fake beard and hair, a grim “Ho, ho, ho” coming out in time with the incessant ringing of his clamoring bell. The one in the middle looked like the real thing, as some of them did. That was no wig on his head or chin—he really was blessed with his own snowy locks and rosy cheeks and expensive-looking red-velvet suit.

  And farthest away stood the ringer, literally, a burly man dressed in a trench coat over his saggy red velvet costume, the white beard a reasonable length, his silver hair cropped to his shoulders. Clearly he didn’t get the memo on what Santas were supposed to look like, and even though he stood by the massive revolving doors to the Great Hall, most shoppers were ignoring him. Actually, most shoppers were ignoring all of the Santas, something that never failed to surprise her, convincing her that New York really wasn’t the place for her.

  There was a blast of icy air, so sharp and direct it almost seemed determined to keep her away from Sad Sack Santa, but she had never been easily discouraged, and she plowed straight on through, ignoring the people and things that were in her way. This one must be homeless, and she prepared herself for pungent street odors, but instead, he smelled like peppermint, lemon and ginger as she drew closer.

  She shoved the twenty into the bucket, trying to conceal the size of the bill with her hand, when the old man met her eyes, and for a moment she was breathless. Those weren’t they eyes of a homeless man, nor the eyes of someone playing a part. They were warm and wise and knowing, and he touched her hand just as she was about to drop the twenty.

  “Macy’s will have the answer,” he said, and there was a spark of humor in those wonderful eyes. “They have everything.”

  For a moment she didn’t move his gloved hand resting lightly on hers, the noise and the people surrounding them but unnoticed. Of course, he was simply a shill for the store, though one was scarcely needed. If someone was braving the crowds to go into Macy’s during the holiday season, then they knew the wonders that awaited them.

  She moved her hand, and he released her immediately, and his gentle smile was almost as surprising as his eyes. No one smiled like that in the fast-paced city. “Go find your answer, child.”

  She stumbled back, knowing she should be offended by the condescending “child.” She wasn’t. For the first time in months, in years, she felt loved and cared for. And then another blast of wind hit her, picking up the trash from the street and tossing it in the air, and she was herself again, turning away from the bizarre encounter without another thought.

  The heavy, revolving doors were right there, and she pushed against the heavy plate glass, stepping into the tiny carousel and through, into the heart of American capitalism.

  And froze.

  Something was wrong. She blinked, looking around through the jostling crowds as she tried to focus, but everything seemed muted. The shoppers moving around her were dressed in dark clothes, their voices muffled, and she shook her head in an instinctive effort to clear it as the world slowly came back into focus.

  And then she laughed, for the first time in what seemed like weeks, laughed in pure delight as she took in her surroundings. How had she missed hearing about this? Macy’s was holding some sort of holiday event as a tribute to their glory days, with the entire front section of the store decked out like something from an old movie. The glass cases with the high-polished wood trim gleamed, the sales reps were dressed in period costumes that wouldn’t have looked wrong on Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck, and even the customers were in the spirit of the thing, cosplaying the hell out of the experience, down to their shoes, she noticed, looking down at the shiny wood floors that were no longer covered by cushy carpeting. This whole thing must have cost a freaking fortune—if she’d come up with it at work, it would have been immediately shot down as too costly, and that would have been a mistake. It was brilliant. They’d probably take a bath on the whole thing, but she loved it.

  The Great Hall was absolutely enchanting, the customers playing their parts as they moved
through the aisles, some with costumed children as well, keeping up a period-perfect litany on proper department-store behavior.

  She looked around for the cameras—surely they wouldn’t have pulled off something this elaborate without major plans to document and monetize it. In fact, the atmosphere hadn’t been her imagination—the vast area was slightly darker, with only incandescent lighting piercing the late autumn darkness.

  “Excuse me, lady, but you’ll need to move.”

  She jerked, startled, then realized she’d been standing, frozen, in front of the door, blocking the path of those milling reenactors. She turned to see a New York City cop, looking like he’d stepped out of a movie as well. He even had a nightstick, she realized to her amusement, and no sign of a body cam or any of the modern equipment guards wore.

  “I’m so sorry, officer,” she said cheerfully, stepping out of the way. “I was just so in awe of this whole performance.”

  The man frowned. “I beg your pardon, young miss. What performance?”

  So it was a fully immersive occasion, she thought with a grin, the last of her anxious mood vanishing. This was just what she needed.

  “Sorry,” she said instantly. The actor was looking at her with a disapproving glower—probably because she was wearing the wrong clothes. “I’ll just go and find the videos.”