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“Something for me? Awwww.”
She reaches into the pocket of her silk pants and hands me the creation, and I burst out laughing.
I hold up the white-fabric-covered cardboard with red elastic attached to each side. What looks like a bedazzled poinsettia flower, made of rhinestones, covers the fabric.
“It’s an ugly Christmas eyepatch,” she says.
I reach up and remove the black patch I’m wearing over the gauze and replace it with the new one.
“How does it look?” I ask one of the kids.
“Awesome!”
“Thanks,” I say as I ruffle his blond hair.
Willa commands the attention of the room and announces that Hal was unable to choose between the children’s masterpieces, so they each get a prize. Trixie will be handing them out at the bottom of the stairs as they head up to bed.
Once all the guests have retired for the evening, we clean up the stations and break down the tables while the girls make charcuterie trays and a couple of pitchers of Christmas rum punch.
Sammy and Norah arrive just as we are all settling in. Trudy reads off the song list from the phone app, and we each choose two songs. One for our solo and one for a duet.
Trudy and Trixie start us off with their duet of “Christmas Time Is Here.” Next is Bob, channeling Elvis with “Blue Christmas.” By the time my solo comes around, we are on our third pitcher of punch, and Norah decided we needed a rating system, so she and Hannah drew the numbers one through ten on the backs of a stack of paper plates and gave us each a set.
When I finish my lively rendition of “Last Christmas” by Wham!, I’m confronted with an average score of four—Keller rating me with an unfair score of one, saying that I was “pitchy,” but Trudy bringing up the curve with her nine.
To be honest, none of us can carry a tune, except for Sammy, the dark horse in the karaoke game, who slayed with a combination of dance moves while singing “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
By the end of the night, Willa, Norah, and Hannah are laughing and shaking their hips through a slurred rendition of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”
“That was the sexiest butchering of a Mariah Carey classic I’ve ever witnessed,” I say as I give them the only ten of the night.
They all rush me and end up in a pile on my lap.
This is a train wreck I can get behind.
When eleven o’clock rolls around, Bob announces that he needs to get Trixie and Trudy home because the live nativity starts at noon, and after their late night the night before, they need to get some sleep.
Sammy and Norah, Keller and I head out as well. Willa and Hannah follow us to the foyer to say good night.
I stand under the mistletoe above the door and wait as each one of them gives me a quick peck, but when Hannah’s lips meet mine, I bring my hand to her waist and hold her against me for a moment longer. When I release her, I reach up and pluck a berry from the sprig and stick it in my coat pocket.
She smiles at our inside joke, and I watch as a tinge of pink crawls across her cheeks.
“Good night,” she says as she puts her right hand on my chest and pushes me out the door.
“See you tomorrow,” I say as she shuts it behind me.
Hannah
Willa and I help Alice and Trixie with afternoon tea, which features gingerbread cheesecake squares. Then, we head to meet Norah at Lydia’s Dress Shop.
When we arrive, we find Lydia awaiting us with a bottle of chilled champagne and a rack of holiday-hued gowns for us to try on.
She and I discuss the projected sales and rental income that I worked up last night, and she brings out the catalog of bridal gowns and bridal party selections from the designers her supplier offers, and she agrees to order samples of several styles for brides to try on as well as two tuxedo styles in a variety of sizes to be available for rental.
Once she and Willa come to an agreement, I write down the terms for the exclusivity contract so that I can type it up tomorrow for them to sign off on.
We toast to the new relationship, and then the fun begins.
