Sheila Roberts - Merry Ex-Mas

And when they asked why she didn’t have a daddy, she recited the Swan party line—a girl didn’t really need a daddy. She’d sure wanted one, though, and had watched with longing when she saw other little girls riding on their daddies’ shoulders or getting taken out for ice cream.

When she’d married Jake and gotten a father-in-law it was the world’s best bonus.

Jake’s dad always greeted her with a hug and a “How’s my girl?” He checked the air in her tires and whittled little wood raccoons for her to put on her mantelpiece in the living room. Mims had pronounced them tacky but Ella loved them because every time she looked at them she could see her father-in-law’s big, smiling face.

“We’re so sorry to lose you,” Mom O’Brien had written in a sweet card after Ella and Jake broke the news. She’d been sorry to be lost. Too bad a girl couldn’t shed the husband but keep the family, she thought as she turned the sign hanging on the door of Gilded Lily’s to Closed.

She was tired—working with people all day could be exhausting—but it was a good kind of tired, she decided as she started to add up the day’s receipts. From now until New Year’s Eve the shop would be busy. Gilded Lily’s was the closest thing Icicle Falls had to a Neiman Marcus or a Nordstrom. It was owned by her mother but Ella managed it. She loved pretty clothes and she loved helping her customers find a special dress for that special occasion, whether it was a party or a prom, as well as all the accessories to enhance it. There’d been a lot of enhancing taking place this Black Friday.

Now the business day was over and it was time to go home. Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like home.

Bah, humbug.

She stepped out into the brisk mountain air and locked the door behind her. Winter darkness had settled in for the night and downtown Icicle Falls was a-twinkle. Christmas lights decked out the trees in the park and the potted fir trees nestled against the shops, and red ribbons adorned the old-fashioned lampposts that ran along Center Street.

Every weekend there would be a tree-lighting ceremony, and the skyscraper-size fir in town square would come to life with hundreds of colored lights, making the winter village scene complete. With its mountain setting and Bavarian architecture, Icicle Falls was like an animated postcard, quaint and charming—a perfect setting for a perfect life. Except Ella’s life wasn’t so perfect these days; it was like a dress that no longer fit.

It didn’t take her long to walk the half mile from the shop to her two-bedroom Craftsman-style cottage on Mountain View Road. Her dream home. In the summer she’d put two wicker rockers with plump cushions on the porch, and she and Jake had sat out there on warm weekday nights. She’d work on her knitting with their Saint Bernard, Tiny, lazing at her feet, while Jake serenaded her on his guitar. Last Christmas she’d taken great satisfaction in stringing colored lights and cedar boughs along the porch, while Jake had strung lights along the roofline—a team effort.

Ella sighed at the memory. She’d thought she’d have that house for life, had envisioned raising a family there or, once Jake became a famous country star, keeping it as a vacation home.

Her mother hadn’t shared the vision. “You shouldn’t buy a house so quickly,” Mims had cautioned when they first looked at it. “You’re both young and you don’t even know if this marriage will last.”

“Of course it’ll last,” Ella had insisted. “Why wouldn’t it?”

Her mother said nothing, just pursed her lips like a woman with an ugly secret. How had Mims known things wouldn’t work out with Jake? What early warning signs had she seen that Ella hadn’t?

Whatever she’d seen, she’d kept it to herself, and to show her support (once the decision was made and the papers were signed), she’d given them a gift certificate to Hearth and Home to buy a new couch, saying, “Really, Ella, you can’t decorate in Early American Garage Sale. What will people think?”

“Maybe they’ll think we’re happy,” Ella had suggested.

Mims had ignored that remark. “Go look at the couches at Hearth and Home, baby. You’ll find one you love, I promise.”

Ella did find a couch she loved, and Mims heartily approved of the brown leather sofa with the carved mahogany accents that Ella picked out. “You have wonderful taste,” she’d said, and then added, “In most things.” Translation: your taste in men is questionable.

“Really, darling, you can do so much better,” Mims advised when Ella and Jake started getting serious. “Sleep with him if you must, but for God’s sake don’t saddle yourself with him for life.”

What kind of mother told her daughter stuff like that? Lily Swan, that was who. Mims hadn’t felt the need for a husband, so Ella supposed she thought her daughter would see the wisdom of her choice and follow suit. “Men are fun, but not necessary,” she’d once overheard her mother say.

How much fun had Mims had with Ella’s father? And what had happened to keep them from becoming a family? That, like her mother’s age, was classified information and Ella had finally given up asking.

She opened her front door in time to see her own Mr. Not Necessary, her ex-husband, coming down the hallway wearing nothing but his boxers and carrying a basket of laundry, Tiny trotting at his heels. She hated it when Jake did that—not the laundry, parading around in his boxers.

Jake O’Brien had a poster-worthy body and looking at it was, well, distracting. He’d had all day to do the laundry. Why was he waiting until now?

She frowned at him.

He frowned back. “What?”

Tiny rushed up to her, his huge tail wagging with joy, and she bent to give him a good rub behind his ears. “You couldn’t have done the laundry earlier?” That sounded snippy, and she wasn’t a snippy sort of person. At least she hadn’t been before their divorce.

“I was busy,” he said.

Probably with some woman. Not that she cared. It was no longer any of her concern what he did or who he did it with.

“Anyway, what does it matter to you when I do my laundry? We’re not married anymore.”

“That’s my point,” she said, straightening up. “We’re not married and I don’t think you should be running around the house in your underwear.” Now she sounded both snippy and bossy. She was never bossy. Never!

He stopped next to her. That close proximity still did things to her.

Used to do things to her. Used to! She told the goose bumps on her arms to settle down.

He grinned at her, a wicked, taunting grin. “Does it…bother you?”

She could feel a guilty-as-charged heat on her cheeks. “It’s not proper.” Snippy, bossy and prissy—who was this new and unimproved Ella? “You don’t see me running around the house in my underwear.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

She upgraded her frown to a scowl. “We may be sharing this house but it’s strictly business.”

“I am strictly business, and if my boxers bother you, move.”

Like she could afford to move? She didn’t have any more money in the bank than he did.

“Go stay with your mama.”

He might as well have added, “Mama’s girl.”

She wasn’t a mama’s girl and she had as much right to be here until the house sold as he did. She was an adult. She didn’t have to run home to her mother.

Anyway, Mims had downsized to a condo in the spiffy new Mountain Ridge condominiums outside town and they didn’t allow dogs Tiny’s size. If Jake thought she was leaving Tiny to him, he could think again. Tiny needed a mommy and a daddy. Even when they went their separate ways, they’d have joint custody of him. And besides, Ella needed to stay to make sure the house was kept in good condition to show. If she wasn’t there, potential buyers would see nothing but dirty toilets, dishes in the sink and beer cans on the coffee table, and they’d never be able to sell the place.