california christmas dreams (11 page)

“So what do I do?”

“You like her, don’t you?”

Merry had come out of her office and was talking with the foreman of the construction crew. She held a drawing pad in her hand and pointed at it as she talked.

“What’s not to like?” Jake mused as the foreman nodded at Merry’s instructions. Then he turned and walked away, speaking into his walkie-talkie as he went.

John simply laughed and said, “You need to rethink how to work with Merry. Figure it out fast, son. She’s going to make this park a success in a way it’s never been before, and someone else is going to see what she’s done, make her an offer she can’t refuse and she’ll be gone because she’ll be comparing the way you’ve treated her with the future job. You may come up lacking. I need her to stay.”

“Are you asking me to seduce her so she’ll stay here?”

“I’m asking you to ease up on your suspicions. Give her some room and let her do her job. Amazingly enough, Jake, there are people in this world who know how to do that.” John tucked his hands in his pockets and walked away, leaving Jake standing in the middle of the path with the wind whipping the flags on their poles and snapping the cables against the steel.

Merry had disappeared, but he caught a glimpse of her as she headed toward the water park. He followed her, wondering what he was going to say when he caught up to her.

He found Merry standing in front of a display of large wood boxes. The boxes had been painted in Christmas green and red. Merry attached a large red plastic bow to one of the boxes and stood back to look at it.

He watched her for a moment as she worked. She shifted the boxes back and forth until she finally settled on an arrangement she liked. She reached out toward a canvas-covered statute on a dolly and wheeled it into position. As she wrestled the statue off the dolly, Jake stepped up to help her.

“Where do you want it?” he asked as she pushed the dolly away with her foot.

She tilted her head one way and then another. “Right there.”

After he’d positioned the statue, she pulled the canvas off to reveal a large nutcracker.

“We need to call a truce,” Jake said when the nutcracker was in the position she wanted. His father had been right.

Her eyebrows rose. “Are we going to bury the hatchet?”

“Yes. Listen, I want this park to be great for my dad. It’s what he wants. It’s important to him, so it has to be important to me. And he thinks you’re the one who’s going to save this.”

“How is that calling a truce?”

“My dad is sixty-seven years old and he has always had a blind spot where this park in concerned. His father was rabidly against building it, but my dad did it anyway. My grandparents thought the park was nothing but a black hole sucking money that they felt belonged to them, and not one person thought my father would succeed. My grandparents thought they would die destitute after the years they’d lavished on the orange groves. But they didn’t, and my dad did everything right. I don’t want to be like my grandfather and make the renovations into a war, but I have to watch the money. I have to protect my dad even though he doesn’t think he needs protecting.”

“I get it,” Merry said quietly. “Your dad’s a dreamer. I understand exactly how he feels. I’m not going to waste the money. I’m not going to create frivolous things. I understand the bottom line. I have to do my job. I’m bringing John’s dreams to life. Doctors, chemists and plumbers make existence possible, but artists, singers and actors make life worth living. And sometimes there’s a price to pay for that.”

John knew exactly what she meant. She might understand the creativity of the artist, but he saw the unsavory side. “I don’t want my dad’s dream to kill him.”

“That’s not your choice,” Merry said gently.

“I still have to protect him.”

“You’re right, you do. But not to the point where you stifle him, where you stifle me.”

Jake ran a hand across his face, his eyes closed. He felt a hand on his arm.

“Jake,” Merry said, “I understand about disappointment, about losing. I spent years in the shadow of a diva, but there was a time when I realized I wasn’t going to have the career I wanted. It was a major blow to my self-esteem. I found something else I loved as much.”

He held his hand out. “Truce.”

She shook his hand. “Truce.”

* * *

Merry drew her hand back and searched his face. No matter what type of truce he offered her, it would be an uneasy one. She backed away. “Since we’re burying the hatchet, I wanted to talk to you about getting some star power for our opening weekend. We’re going to be competing with Black Friday shopping and Cyber Saturday, or whatever.”

“Cyber Monday,” he answered absently.

“We’re going to need a draw.”

“Did you have someone in mind?”

“You’re the music man. Who do you know who would do a show for cheap but will bring in the crowds?”

He gazed at her thoughtfully, running through his list of clients in his head. “We’d want someone who’ll put on a family-friendly performance, who can be professional, and you’re coming to me looking for a draw.”

“It’s a win-win situation,” she said. “You’re here, you have the contacts.” She had contacts, too, but she didn’t want to fall back on them unless he didn’t want to cooperate. “Besides, I already got the carolers. You get the headliner.”

“Carolers!”

“The group that performs at the Dickens festival in downtown Riverside every February. They’re very good and they’re working for free.”

“As in no money changing hands?” he asked, looking suspicious.

“Well—” she squirmed a little “—not totally free. But they’re willing to perform in exchange for yearly passes to the park. I know you’re out the money for the passes, but they’ll spend money on food when they’re here. Why not promise yearly passes to the headliner?”

He laughed at her. “You have really, really been thinking about this, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” she replied. She’d worked hard to figure out ways to save money, and offering yearly passes in exchange for free labor or reduced labor costs had been one of them. John had approved.

“I need to think about this,” he said.

“All you have to do is get one good act to show and others will follow. And if they’re good enough, people will start putting this park on their summer agenda. In fact, I think we should have summer concerts like the more well-known parks. There’s a lot of potential here,” she said, swinging her hand to encompass the park. Her knuckles hit the nutcracker and it wobbled.

“Don’t you think my dad thought about the potential?” he asked curiously.

“No, he didn’t think about diversification.” She knew John had some idea of where the park needed to go, but he didn’t know which direction to take. “There’s a lot to work with here. You have the rides, the water park, the go-karts and a small amphitheater that isn’t really being utilized.”

“It’s too small for big acts,” he replied.

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it,” she said. “And it’s not too small, it’s intimate. One of my favorite shows was
MTV Unplugged.
And that’s what you can do. The amphitheater is perfect for acoustic music, and I’ll bet we can get bigger names than you think we can. Do you know what tweens would pay to see Justin Bieber unplugged? We could get him.”

“He’s not one of my clients,”

“That’s not a problem. I spent a whole summer at the Pasadena Playhouse working for free. And my name on the marquee was enough to bring people in. And I did it just to prove that I could. You appeal to these people the right way, you’ll get them here dirt cheap.”

“That leaves out my clients,” he said with a wry laugh. “They hire me because they don’t have any money.”

She held up her hand. “LL Cool J’s career was revived on
MTV Unplugged.
And look at him now. He still produces music and stars on a highly rated TV show. Just think about it.”

“I’ll think about it,” he promised.

She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I have an appointment with a woman who wants to open a bakery here that specializes in Russian food.” She walked away, thinking how thrilled she was to have had an open conversation with him, considering the almost kiss. Her sister was right—act as though nothing had happened.

Chapter 7

D
uring the morning, the wind increased until it was practically howling, and Merry started to panic. The weatherman had said it would be a mild windstorm, but this was changing rapidly into something stronger. Most of the displays hadn’t been secured yet because she was still playing with the arrangements. And now the wind was moving them around as if they were nothing.

She raced across the pathway to John’s office, and the wind was strong enough to practically blow her inside. She fell inside to find John standing at his window, looking at the flagpoles.

“This is the earliest Santa Ana we’ve ever had,” John said.

“It’s going to blow my displays all over the park.”

“Get the construction crew together and we’ll take everything to storage.”

“I don’t think the storage area is big enough.”

“Then we’ll pack things into the empty retail spaces.”

Merry opened the door and ran into Jake. The wind pushed him into her and she flew back. “We need to get all the displays into storage areas or they’ll be damaged by the wind.”

“I’ll get the construction crew started on it,” Jake said.

Merry simply nodded as she ran down the path to the go-kart track, a little surprised that Jake would pitch in so readily. She couldn’t think about Jake now. Her life was being blown away. Generally Santa Ana windstorms started in late October. She’d figured she had a couple more weeks before the first storm and enough time to get the displays secured.

The wind whipped her hair around her face and she reached into her pocket for a hair tie to secure it. She picked up the smaller wooden boxes, headed to the row of empty retail stores and set the boxes down in the first one. She ran back for more. Ribbons from a display flew past her. She chased them, but the wind was too strong. She rounded a corner and found Jake with a dolly piled high. He’d caught the ribbons and held them in his hand. He grinned at her and held them out, presenting them to her like a conquering hero. Merry laughed because chasing those ribbons had been silly and he’d been sweet to catch them for her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“You’re welcome,” he replied as he turned back to push the dolly toward one of the retail stores.

The wind caught the top box and flung it away. It landed hard on the concrete path and broke into pieces. Merry felt tears start, a feeling of defeat settling over her like a mantle of doom.

“It’s nothing we can’t fix,” Jake said as he wrestled the broken pieces back to the dolly and held them down with his hand as he started pushing.

“I know you’re right, and tomorrow I’ll agree with you, but right now I feel beaten.” She opened the door to one of the stores and he pushed the dolly inside, out of the wind.

“Okay,” he said as he started unloading the boxes. When the dolly was empty, she held the door open for him. Once outside, he stopped and sniffed.

“Do you smell smoke?” he asked, raising a hand to shade his eyes as he scanned the blue sky.

“Fire,” she said. She didn’t see any smoke. The sky was a deep cloudless blue. The wind had shuttled the smog out to sea.

“Not close,” he said, sniffing again.

Fire was always a worry for Southern California. Merry’s father had once joked that California’s four seasons were fire, wind, drought and mudslides. “I’ll check the news and find out where it is,” she said. The park was vulnerable to fire since it was smack dab in the middle of country surrounded by dry scrub brush, grass turned brown from the summer heat and rolling hills with the kind of conditions just right for spontaneous combustion.

She ran back to her office and turned on the news. Fortunately the fire was about seven miles east and a couple of miles north of the park. They were in no danger, but still she felt a slither of fear run through her. She’d seen the devastation a fire could leave behind. Andy had lived in the foothills behind the studio and had lost his home twice to fire before he’d moved to the beach to be nearer to his restaurant.

“We’re safe,” she told Jake when she sought him out a few moments later.

He nodded. The construction crew had brought the last of the displays inside and had gone out to the retail area to pick up the roof shingles that littered the yard.

Merry could see the damage. Tears prickled in her eyes. So much work gone in just a few hours. She should have secured the displays. She should have known. How could she have been so careless?

Jake put an arm around her. There was sympathy in his eyes. “I said we can rebuild. Nothing had been so damaged it can’t be repaired.”

“It’s the loss of time,” Merry said. She felt comforted by his arm around her, but the image of their almost kiss haunted her. “And it’s going to blow my budget.”

“You’ve come in underbudget on almost every project. You have a few dollars here and there to use for the repairs until the insurance company pays.”

“You have insurance!”

“Of course we have insurance,” Jake said. “But it may not come through by the time we need it.”

She brushed her tears away. She could do this. “Tomorrow I’ll get back on that horse, but today I think I’ll just go home and cry in my beer.”

“Don’t do that. Come to the Queen’s Knickers with me and you can cry in their beer. They have the best fish and chips in California.”

“Are you asking me out on a date?”

“No, I’m taking you drinking.”

“Okay. I didn’t want to have to tell my sister you’re taking me out to a pub named the Queen’s Knickers.”

“Do you and your sister talk about me?”

“Not in a nice way,” she answered, unable to resist teasing him.

“And this ‘not in a nice way’ consists of what?”

She tilted her head at him, suddenly feeling lighter and happier. “I moan about what a penny-pinching miser you are.”

He gazed at her thoughtfully for a few moments. “Then maybe I need to give you nicer things to talk about.”