“Charli Prescott!”
She stopped. Flora Smith, the bubbly choir director Charli recalled from cantatas past, strode up to her. “Oh, Charli! I’m definitely in need of another good alto! Neil was telling me—”
Now Neil slid in beside the woman and smoothly interjected, “How interested you were about your father’s participation. I did tell you Charli had said no.”
“Oh, yes, he was so wonderful!” Flora trilled. “And of course we have room for you this year! Even if you did miss last night’s first rehearsal. If you’re worried about being rusty, don’t—we’ll have you shaped up in no time!”
Charli’s feet itched to take her out of the crowded room. She opened her mouth to make excuses, but didn’t know what to say. The last thing she wanted to do was join the community choir and sing Christmas music. She opened her mouth to politely and firmly say no, knowing that would invite a flood of protests from Flora.
Neil interjected. “Maybe Charli should watch a bit of the rehearsal before committing herself—you know, Flora, it is a big commitment.”
Flora didn’t look happy about it, but at that moment, someone called her attention away. She nodded and hurried off.
“Did I get you off the hook?” Neil asked.
Charli looked past Neil in search of Flora. “Where’d she go? I need to tell her definitely no, or otherwise it will be like water torture.”
“Stay. Watch us. You might change your mind.”
She glared at him. “I won’t.”
“So...what are you doing here, then?” he asked.
Good question, she thought. His pointed question served to cool her irritation. What am I doing here?
“Just curious.” After all her protests that she wanted to be alone, Charli didn’t want to admit that an empty house wasn’t something she was looking forward to.
Behind her came a clatter of noise, and Neil put a hand on her arm to steer her away from someone loaded down with more trays of food. He pulled her into a quiet alcove that served as a coat-check area.
A tug against her throat halted her. She turned and realized that the end of her scarf had snagged on a nail at the doorjamb. “Wait—my scarf, it’s caught....”
Neil bent down and freed the fluffy pink knitted ruffles from the head of the nail. “There you go,” he said, lightly dropping it back in place over her shoulder. “That’s some kind of scarf. I don’t think I’ve seen one like it before.”
Charli picked up the end of the scarf and stroked the kitten-soft yarn. “It’s something, isn’t it? My mom knitted it for me—she’s on a knitting frenzy since my dad...passed away. I hated not to wear it after she worked so hard to finish it. Even after all these years, she’s still trying to force me into pink ruffles.”
“You’re not the pink-ruffle type?” he asked. Now he reached over and stroked the soft knit. “Well, I think it looks nice on you. She obviously put a lot of effort into it, and I like the fact you wear it even when it’s not to your taste. Your mom—she stays busy, doesn’t she? I can’t think of a single important committee in this town that she’s not a part of.”
“So strange.” Charli closed her eyes. Her fingers continued to stroke the yarn. “I never knew either of them to be involved in much of anything, community-wise. It’s like I’m Rip van Winkle, and I’ve woken from a long sleep and come home to find everything’s different.”
She opened her eyes again and found that she’d uttered her words so softly Neil had been forced to lean in to understand them. He was close enough for her to see the stubble on his cheek, to breathe in his scent. Close enough to kiss.
He must have heard her quick intake of breath at his nearness, because he moved away a half step.
“Sorry—the noise in the background. Better?” Neil asked.
Oh, no. It wasn’t better at all. Had her mother’s matchmaking put ideas in her head? She realized with startling clarity that she’d wanted to see Neil tonight—maybe not talk to him, but just see him, hear him sing. She’d wanted to know what he sounded like, whether he was a clear-voiced tenor or a strong bass.
But how to say that without coming across like a blithering idiot? “You asked me why I’d come tonight. I guess you made it sound interesting,” she finally said.
“Good. I’m really glad to see you. It seems like I keep ticking you off, and I don’t mean to do that.” He leaned against the doorjamb, giving off that I’ve-got-all-the-time-in-the-world vibe Charli found refreshing. The men she’d known—in college, in med school, her fellow residents—had never been so patient.
“If you’ll give me a pass on all things Christmas, I expect we’ll get along swimmingly,” she said. “I’m not usually a Scrooge....”
“I know.” He nodded and grinned. “It’s the timing. I get it. I guess I’m like Flora—I try to convert the world to my own obsessions.”
She liked his self-deprecation. Again, this was like none of the guys she’d been around for a while. They seemed to take every opportunity to remind her that while she was planning on going into the lowly family-practice field, they would be elbow-deep in neurosurgery or cardiothoracic surgery or trauma or oncology.
Here, Neil had no such pretensions, and she liked the way he seemed at ease with himself.
It soothed her—and her anxiety about her father’s money, and what that amount of cash could mean. She felt certain, all in a moment, that she could tell the man in front of her anything and he’d understand it, help her through it.
It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out about the money and ask Neil for his opinion. But then the lights dimmed twice, and she recalled it was Flora’s signal to get back to the grindstone.
“Gotta go,” he told Charli. “Why not stay and watch?”
She did. As she slid into one of the old wooden seats in the back of the auditorium, she discovered Neil’s voice to be a strong, clear tenor that nailed a solo in an old English Christmas carol.
He probably had sung right beside her dad the Christmas before. She hadn’t come home for Christmas last year. She would have if she’d known that Christmas was to be her father’s last one. It was a regret she knew she’d have for the rest of her life.
Still, as Charli watched Neil sing with the rest of the choir, she was glad of the interruption that had prevented her from spilling the beans about the money. What on earth had made her think telling Neil about the money was a good idea? What could he do about it? And he owned and edited the newspaper. Would he feel compelled to report her discovery before she had a chance to figure things out?
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she became. That amount of money couldn’t mean anything good.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Charli awoke gritty-eyed and groggy. Thoughts of the money and Neil had chased themselves around in her head until the small hours of the morning. When she faced herself in the mirror, seeing the bags under her eyes, she knew something had to give.
She called Marvela at the office and told her she’d be a half hour late coming in. “I’ve got a stop I need to make first,” she told her.
That stop was at Floyd Lewis’s house. Floyd had been her dad’s CPA for years. Charli hadn’t seen a professional listing in the yellow pages for his office, so she’d rung his house and he’d told her he’d retired three years before, but to drop in at home.
When she pulled up to Floyd’s house, she saw a Corolla parked at the curb—a Corolla that looked suspiciously like Neil Bailey’s. Her heart went into overdrive