Allie Pleiter - Bluegrass Christmas

“Only if you include one of Howard’s horses, too. He’ll want equal time.”

Mary put down her cup. “Have you always been a thorn in Howard’s side?”

Mac sat back in the chair. He wasn’t an enormous man, more of a strong, lean build, but he looked too big for the bakery’s delicate chairs. He legs refused to fit under the small round table. He flexed his fingers, putting his answer together in his head. Mac’s broad, tawny hands looked as though they divided their time between paperwork and oil changes. The kind of man who could tinker with a spreadsheet just as easily as he could an engine. Evidently she’d asked a delicate question.

“’Spose I have. We go back a bit, you could say. And yeah, Howard and I clash on a regular basis. We see things differently. But I’m not out to get him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Does he think you are? Out to get him, I mean?”

Mac kicked his legs out, and Mary felt like they extended into the center of the room. The man took up space—literally and figuratively—and he was comfortable with it. “I quit trying to figure out what Howard’s thinking a long time ago. Still, I reckon Howard would’ve gotten his dander up at anyone who took him on, even if it wasn’t someone like me. That’s one of the reasons I felt I ought to be the one to run. That kind of heat don’t bother me much.”

That kind of heat. Meaning all that attention. Mary had learned a while back that men who liked attention didn’t much care if it was positive or negative attention. Her former boss, Thornton Maxwell, didn’t care if the business columns praised him or bashed him, as long as they discussed him. What was that old saying? “All press is good press.” Still, Mary wasn’t sure it was right to paint all extroverts with the same sinister brush as Thornton. Just because a guy took the lead didn’t mean he was ready to squash everyone in his path. And it needed saying that not one of Mary’s artsy advertising colleagues or cerebral music composition classmates could have dispatched that snake so calmly. Mac looked like an alligator would have posed an amusing challenge, or maybe some antlered forest beast would have ended up mounted to the hood of his truck.

If he owned one. Mary had never seen him drive anything but the shiny orange sports car that pulled into the spot in front of MacCarthy Engineering every morning. She still couldn’t quite see how that tall man folded into that zippy little car.

“So why’d you do it?” Mary prodded.

“Run?”

“Yeah. Why not just wait until he retired?”

“Howard? Retire? Doubt he would. Not that you shouldn’t like your job, but Howard loves his a bit too much. I’m not even sure he consciously knows he projects the ‘mayor for life’ thing, but I don’t think he can see himself not in charge. He doesn’t know how to follow. The man’s in charge of stuff he’s not even in charge of.” Mac finished off his coffee and pointed at her. “And you ought to keep that in mind. Your newcomer status may be the only thing keeping him from taking over the Christmas drama. And he still might. I saw him in the diner earlier—he’s just warming up on you. I give it two weeks before you’re knee-deep in Howard.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. Mac wasn’t looking humble himself at the moment, either. “Knee-deep in Howard’?”

“Okay, that sounded a bit ridiculous. But you know what I mean.”

She shot him a look.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Howard’s all bad. His motives are good. He believes he’s got the town’s best interests at heart.” Mac wiped his hands down his face, as if he still hadn’t found the words to explain what he was trying to say. “I love it here, but I get so annoyed with people for being so…predictable. People here fall into life by default. No one’s run against Howard because everybody is so used to Howard as mayor. But Howard’s so stuck in how everything’s always been that he can’t see the possibilities. I don’t want Middleburg to die off just because it’s the path of least resistance. Life should never be the path of least resistance, the expected thing.”

“And you’re the new possibility?” She hoped her skepticism for his speech didn’t show.

“Sounds corny, doesn’t it? But, well, yeah. I prayed about it for weeks when I first got the idea. Even I don’t tilt the world sideways without thinking it through. But the honest truth is that I believe this is what God wants me to do. Run, at least. I’ll leave the part about whether or not I win up to Him.”

She’d seen him at church, heard him lead prayers during services, but it was different to hear him talking about how God affected his everyday life. She was just getting used to this praying-over-decisions thing. Part of it was wonderful; she could bring the Lord of the universe in on even her smallest decisions. Another part of it was frightening, because she’d given up having the final say. God hadn’t said no to anything she’d asked Him yet, and she wasn’t sure how she’d handle it when He did.

She looked at Mac again. Most of the people she knew in Chicago had so many layers, so many overlapping hidden agendas that a simple conversation gave her a headache. Mac was just the opposite—living, walking “what you see is what you get.” It was as unsettling as it was refreshing.

“I memorized a line today,” Gil bragged to Mac as they brought more wood in from the pile in Mac’s backyard. He puffed up and bellowed, “Spare not one!” into the night air. Mac had to agree with the casting; Herod was a very good use of Gil’s commanding baritone.

“I’m shaking in my boots, your majesty. And you have all of what, six lines?”

“Seven.”

“Ain’t that useful. I, on the other hand, have no less than forty-two lines to occupy my whopping load of free time.”

“Star.” It wasn’t a compliment.

“I got ’em typed out onto index cards and stacked up on my dashboard. I go over them at stop lights and while I’m waiting at the train crossing. Because that’s how much free time I have.”

Gil dumped his armload of wood into the wrought iron holder beside the enormous stone fireplace that was the centerpiece of Mac’s living room. “Rots to be you, don’t it?”

Mac dropped his own wood, then bent down to arrange a fire. “Pastor Dave was dead-on casting you as the villain. You’re just plain mean. You’ll probably scare the little kids or something.”

“Emily’s delighted,” Gil said as he settled into one of the large leather chairs that stood in front of the fireplace. Emily had wound up being Mary, and was over-the-top happy about her starring role, not to mention Gil’s. “For all I know, she put Dave up to it.”

Mac struck a match to a pile of kindling. “Who knew you had an artistic side? It’s almost unnatural.” He cast a sideways look back at Gil as he opened the pizza box that sat on the coffee table between them. “I can’t quite see you in a crown and flowing robes. This ought to be fun.”

“Speaking of unnatural, I heard you got to play hero to Mary Thorpe earlier this week. Peter Epson was telling Emily about it—said he wanted to do an article, but he was afraid his dad would throw a fit.” Peter Epson was Howard’s son and a reporter for the local paper.

“You see,” Mac elaborated as he pointed the tip of his pizza slice at Gil, “that’s exactly why I’m running. People do things—or don’t do things—way too much based on what Howard will think. Okay, Peter may be a bit of an exception, but you know what I mean. The guy’s got too much influence. And I don’t even think he goes after half of it. You might be surprised to hear I don’t actually hate Howard. Not at all.”