“You look nervous,” Jenny commented, tilting her head to one side to study Elaine. “You’re never nervous. What’s up with that?”
“It’s my parents’ party, for heaven’s sake.”
“So? We do parties all the time. We’re the best in town. People are still talking about the Helpline Foundation fundraiser we did last Thanksgiving in Bridgehampton. What’s really eating you?”
Elaine took a deep breath. She might as well spill. “I hate Christmas. I hate my life. Byron dumped me for a bra model.”
The announcement fell into a collective, stunned silence.
“But you were supposed to marry him,” Jenny said after a horrified pause. “His father practically owns a broadcasting empire. You two were going to be the ultimate media power couple.”
Bobbi leaned in close to give her a hug. Her forgiving nature made Elaine feel small. “Oh, honey,” Bobbi said in her delightful Southern accent, “We’re so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m more annoyed by his timing than anything else.”
“It’s not too late to find another plus-one for tonight.” Mel started a search on her Palm. “It’s Christmas. You can’t be dateless.”
Elaine bit her tongue. The truth was, she didn’t want a date. Or even Christmas, for that matter. She just wanted to make it through the holiday rush and get back to work.
“Tonight will be perfect,” Jenny declared, raising her glass. “Your parents will be blown away, we’ll have Axel eating out of our hands and everyone will live happily ever after.”
Elaine’s smile felt stiff as she lifted her champagne flute to her friends’ highball glasses. “To happily ever after.”
The bright sound of clinking glasses penetrated the din of piped-in music and high-octane conversation. She would get past this, Elaine told herself. Loneliness and yearning were for losers. Tonight would be perfect.
She watched the bubbles in her champagne cocktail. Through the half-empty glass, she spied something—someone—that made her freeze. She forgot to breathe, to move, to think.
Everything receded into a blur of color and sound, everything except him. He came into sharp focus, each detail about him familiar despite the passage of—she counted quickly in her head—seven years. Seven years this very day, in fact.
She felt trapped, yet at the same time helplessly enchanted, as though she were drowning in honey. All the intensity of first love came roaring back at her, possessing her, waking up feelings she had thought long dead.
It was, she discovered, physically impossible to tear her gaze from that broad-shouldered stance and easy smile, that air of assurance and electric sex appeal. Time had only deepened and sharpened the attributes that still sometimes haunted her dreams.
A classic Bob Marley tune filled the air.
“Elaine, what’s the matter?” asked Jenny. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ducking her head to hide the flush in her cheeks, she set down her glass. “The ghost of Christmas past.”
“WHOSE PAST?” Jenny demanded.
“My past.” Shaken, Elaine propped her chin in her hand and continued to gaze across the room at the tall, unforgettable silhouette, outlined by frosty winter light streaming in through the wide window.
Memories flooded her, of a brief time when Christmas had meant more to her than juggling a social schedule with a business plan. Against her will, she remembered those nostalgic days when the softest, most vulnerable part of her had felt safe with an unexpected stranger.
They never should have met in the first place. She belonged to a social class governed by strict but invisible rules. One of those rules prohibited her from fraternizing with guys like Tony Fiore. He came from a different world entirely, and that world had rules of its own. He’d been raised in a large Italian-American family in Brooklyn that believed, as much as the St. Jameses did, in sticking to its own kind.
At eighteen, she was only just discovering the world outside her privileged, insulated life. He was definitely a major discovery.
Now an older, possibly even more interesting, Tony Fiore stopped at a crowded table across the room. He started talking to the well-dressed patrons there. Every face at the table turned toward him as he spoke.
Elaine’s friends followed the direction of her rapt stare. “Holy mistletoe,” Mel said. “That guy?”
“Who is he?” asked Jen.
Bobbi patted Elaine’s arm. “Whoever he is, he’ll make Byron seem like a bad dream.”
“His name’s Tony Fiore. We met a long time ago, when we were in college.” Their lives had intersected for the first time at the ice rink at Rockefeller Center during Christmas break. Tony was attending Notre Dame on a hockey scholarship. She’d never forget her first glimpse of him. Crowds of tourists and regulars had jammed the ice, yet Tony Fiore had glided effortlessly between couples and children and daredevil teenagers. His imposing profile and swift athletic strokes across the ice had caught her attention.
“Fiore.” Jenny studied him, her expression that of a jeweler inspecting a flawless gem. Elaine followed her gaze. Pale daylight flickered on his thick indigo hair, which lay in glossy, unruly waves that defied a conservative haircut. “I’ve never heard of him,” Jen continued. “How can that be?”
Elaine struggled to act blasé. She reminded herself of the way things had ended between them—or failed to end, depending on how you looked at it. They’d been Romeo and Juliet without the messy final act.
Hardening her heart, she said, “You wouldn’t have. He’s nobody.” Even as she said the words, her throat went tight. Nobody but the only guy who had ever convinced her that magic was real. Nobody but the guy who, on the night she’d gone to offer her heart to him, had stood her up.
“He looks like somebody to me,” Melanie said. “I can’t quite place him.”
“Maybe he’s a movie star,” Bobbi suggested, reaching across the table to snatch the cherry from Mel’s drink.
“If he was a star, we’d know who he is.”
“What’s he doing?” asked Bobbi.
Holding a clipboard with a pen attached, Tony Fiore moved to another table and greeted the people seated there. Again, everyone turned to him, and their faces lit up as though he’d flipped a switch.
“Maybe collecting pledges or donations,” said Jenny. “Who cares? Look at him.”
He set down the clipboard, bracing his hands on the table and bending slightly to lend someone a pen. They could now see the reflective lettering on the back of his bulky parka.
“Well, how about that,” said Melanie. “He’s a cop.”
Elaine stared at him. A cop? He was supposed to be a hockey star. That was the only way she’d made sense of what had happened to them. She’d assumed he’d realized he wouldn’t be able to juggle a professional athlete’s career with falling in love. Now she was forced to consider the idea that he’d thrown her over for the dubious glories of being a cop.
Bobbi shifted in the booth and fussed with the pashmina bunching in her lap. “He’s coming this way, isn’t he?”
Before anyone could reply, he approached their table.
Oh, that smile, Elaine thought, suppressing a groan. Those eyes, the color of melted chocolate. This man, she realized, had a face she couldn’t seem to stop dreaming about no matter how many Christmases had passed.