Holly, Jolly, and Oh So Naughty (Festive Flames)
Holly, Jolly, and Oh So Naughty: Chapter 2

“Are you sure about this?” The woman in my chair continues tearing her soggy tissues into confetti strips while sniffling. “What if it doesn’t work?”

It’s impossible to keep my heart out of situations like this. As a gynecologist, I see people at their most vulnerable, and facing a woman who has been trying to have children for years to no avail doesn’t get any easier.

“Samantha, with any treatment, there is always a chance it won’t work,” I reply as gently as I can. “And I have to remind you that this isn’t any kind of miracle injection. If you choose to go down this route, then it will be expensive and incredibly taxing on your mental and emotional health.”

“But I could have a baby?” She lifts her swimming eyes to me, and the sadness pouring out of her shoots me straight in the chest.

“Yes. With IVF, it definitely increases your chances.”

She breaks down once again, sobbing into her hands. I lean back and collect some fresh, dry tissues then press them into her palms.

“I always…” She sniffles and hiccups. “I always thought there was something wrong with me!”

“No,” I assure her. “There’s nothing wrong, per se. Your body is just different and needs some help. But I stress that you must talk this over with your partner, okay? You cannot make this decision alone, and it will be a long road.”

Samantha nods through her tears, trying to stifle her sobs. “Thank you, Doctor. Thank you!”

The thanks feels too early since I haven’t done anything other than go over her test results and offer her some options, but they are options that didn’t exist in this town until I got here, so her overwhelming gratitude is understandable.

“It’s no problem. Now, I don’t feel right sending you away like this so come with me, if you don’t mind?”

Samantha nods. When she stands, her legs are trembling so I quickly wrap an arm around her shoulders and guide her out of my room and into the reception area.

“Taylor, could you get Mrs. Hill a hot cup of tea, please, and bring it to the break room?”

My receptionist, Taylor, leaps to action immediately and hurries over to the coffee room while I guide Samantha into the staff room and sit her down on the couch.

“Now, Samantha. I want you to stay here and drink some tea until you feel better, okay? And once you’re calm, Taylor will call you a taxi to take you home, okay?”

“Oh.” Samantha weeps and she pats my arm. “You don’t have to do that. It’s too much.”

“Think nothing of it,” I assure her. Taylor arrives right on cue with a steaming hot cup of tea. Taking it, I hand it to Samantha and squeeze her shoulder. “Drink. Slowly. It will help.”

“What did you do?” Taylor hisses to me out of the side of her mouth as we stop near the door.

“I just gave her some options,” I reply. “Options I think she either never knew about or had written off long ago.”

“You know, if you keep making the patients cry, someone’s gonna think we’re doing something wrong.”

“Don’t worry.” I clasp Taylor’s shoulder. “They’re happy tears. I think. Can you keep an eye on her? Call her a taxi when she’s ready to leave? I’ll pay. I don’t mind.”

Taylor rolls her eyes. “An Angel this close to Christmas? Careful or they’ll rope you into the Nativity show next.”

With a laugh, I leave Taylor and Samantha alone and return to my office.

Closing my door, I breathe deeply and close my eyes.

It never gets old. No matter how many people sit before me with health concerns and more, delivering good or bad news doesn’t get any easier. These poor souls look at me like I hold their life in my hands.

Once upon a time, I thought it was something I would get numb to. I would watch my father attend his conferences and speak about people in such a detached way. As one of the country’s leading surgeons, maybe he taught himself to disconnect, but I always assumed it would be something that would come naturally.

Last year, I would have said I was well on my way to emotionally detaching from my patients.

Then, my father passed suddenly three months ago, and everything felt raw. Like I’d been skinned alive and left as just this raw, painful nerve absorbing the agony of everyone around me.

Returning to my desk, I sit down heavily in my chair and sigh as a familiar wave of grief rushes through me like a burst of static. I may not have learned to emotionally detach like my father, but I certainly grasped his idea of running away.

My childhood was filled with verbal fights between my parents that would only be resolved by my father disappearing to some out-of-state work or a conference. Then he would return with flowers and an apology, and it would be peaceful until the next fight.

I fled.

My father’s death was a wake-up call to the smothering life I found myself trapped in. From the day I was born, my mother had everything planned out for me, from my schooling to my career path and then my fiancée.

Ex-fiancée.

I left the ring and an apology note on her bedside table three months ago and never looked back because losing my father highlighted one very hidden truth in my heart.

I didn’t love my fiancée because I was in love with another. I always had been, and there simply wasn’t enough space in my heart for anyone else.

Leaning forward, all it takes are a few key taps to bring up the website for this town’s famous bakery, the Sweet Noel, run by the gorgeous Lily Thompson.

The woman who has my heart.

Maybe it’s the grief talking. Maybe I’m crazy.

Packing up and ditching my life within one night to come halfway across the country to a state I’ve never been in, just for a glimpse of the woman I’ve been in love with for seven years.

A woman I was forced to forget due to family obligations.

In my few months in Silver Hills, I’ve expertly avoided her other than a few walks past her bakery seeking just a glimpse. I’m surely nothing more than a distant memory to her, but right now, with my life a mess and my heart broken, she’s the medicine I need.

Bringing my expertise to a town like this has the added benefit of making me feel like I can still do good things.

I know the Sweet Noel website by heart and yet I still take my time scrolling through the pages until I reach the ‘About Us’ section. Lily’s smiling face shines above an award for best confectionary three years running. The sight of her makes my heart swell and I⁠—

“James, why on earth is Mrs. Hill sobbing her heart out in the staff room?”

My door bursts open and my boss, Margret, stands in the doorway with her arms crossed and her small, rectangular glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

I quickly close the Sweet Noel page and heat warms my face and neck as if I’ve just been caught looking at something naughty, like a teenager caught by their parents.

“Uhm… I gave her some unexpected good news. Not even good news, just hopeful news, I think, and it hit her harder than she expected. Than either of us expected.” I shift in my seat, still flushed.

“Hmm. Well, that had better be all. This place had a nice reputation before you started here.”

“Has your reputation suffered?”

“No,” Margret replies stiffly, “but we don’t need people seeing a stream of sobbing women leaving your office.”

“Well…” I snort softly. “When you put it like that…”

“And another thing.” Margret strides forward and rounds my desk. When her eyes flit to my computer screen, I’m infinitely grateful I closed that window. “You need to do something about this.”

“About what?” I scan her quickly and my eyes lock onto the phone in her hand.

“About this!” She thrusts the device toward me, and my heart sinks.

A few button presses and there’s a flood of missed calls and voicemails from two numbers I instantly recognize. My mother and my ex-fiancée.

“Your mom and your fiancée⁠—”

“Ex-fiancée,” I correct sharply.

“Ex-fiancée are still calling non-stop, blocking up the line to actual patients. You told me you would handle this.”

“I believe I said I was handling it,” I correct her again, quickly deleting all the voicemails. There’s nothing either of them can say that I want to hear. “As in, I’m in the process.”

“James.” Margret perches on the edge of my desk and adjusts her glasses although they never shift from the small indent on the tip of her nose. The beaded chain that runs from the leg of her glasses to her cardigan tinkles at the movement and momentarily distracts me.

Margret is exactly how I pictured her when I called her months ago inquiring about the position here. Her nasally voice has a rough edge to it, created from the cigarettes I knew she used to smoke daily. She doesn’t anymore, but her fingers are always twiddling with a pen or something similar and she pops hard candy mints like they’re going out of fashion. Even now, she sits there toying with those beads to keep her fingers busy. She smiles at me, deepening the wrinkles on her face and giving her an oddly charming look despite her brash personality.

She’s a woman who has seen it all over the years but still has a smile to take home to her family. Sure, she can be as sour as the bitterest lemon at the end of fall, but she has a good heart. A good heart that’s clearly at the end of its tether from the narrow-eyed look she’s giving me.

“We’re a family-owned business,” Margret says.

My heart plummets.

“Having a big shot from the city makes us look good, and despite the tears you draw out of the patients, you’re doing good work here. Work I never thought a practice like ours could ever achieve. But even I have my limits.” Margret takes the phone from me and taps the screen. “We’re a Medical Practice, not a call center. Now, I’ve given you your privacy, and I have done my best not to ask why a hot-shot doctor like you decided to move to a small town like Evergreen Falls, but we can’t keep this up. It’s becoming more trouble than it might be worth.”

“What are you saying?” I press my fingertips into my thigh, fighting against a lump rising in my throat. I can already see where this is going. If it’s too much hassle to employ me, then I’ll be out on my ear, and what then? What other excuse do I have to stay here trying to work up the courage to say even one word to Lily?

“You need to deal with this,” Margret says, and there’s an unexpected softness in her tone. “Whatever it is, you need to deal. Because if it ends up on my doorstep, then I’m sorry, but you⁠—”

“It’s my girlfriend!” The words blurt out of me like a shot, and my entire body dissolves into cold shivers.

“I’m sorry?” Margret’s faint brows shoot up into her gray curls.

“I—” The lie knots my tongue. “That’s why they’re calling so much. I, uh… I told them I met someone and they want to meet her, but I’ve been saying no and my mother is not the kind of woman you say no to, so it’s creating a lot of pressure to provide details, y’know?”

“A girlfriend?” Margret repeats. “I’ve never seen you out socializing.”

I force a wide smile. “Yeah, uh… I, uh, I met her at the store, and we hit it off, and I, uh… yeah.”

“Who?”

“It’s a secret,” I say quickly. “She’s not ready to go public. I am a hotshot doctor, after all.”

Margret’s eyes narrow, and then her next words send a molten hot bullet right through my gut.

“Well I think since I’m fielding all the calls from your mother, I have a right to know who it is. So invite her.”

“Invite her?” I say hoarsely. “To what?”

“The medical charity party, of course. Bring her with you, and I’ll evaluate whether she’s worth losing my sanity over.”