Holiday Affair Read Online Free

Technically, she was off duty until mid-January. But she liked to make herself available between semesters, just in case someone needed her.
    “Karina Barrett. How can I help?” she asked crisply.
    There was a pause. Then her younger sister Stephanie’s voice came over the line. She sounded weary. And befuddled. “Karina? Did I call you at work? What time is it anyway?”
    Karina took the cell phone from her ear and squinted at the glowing display. Watches were so 2002. She put it in place again. “It’s just after seven. And no, I’m at home. What’s up?”
    “Hmmm. I thought you were going to stop making yourself available to your students at all hours.”
    “I was.” Still cradling her cell phone, Karina dropped to her knees in front of the next box. “I am.”
    “Then why did you answer your phone that way?”
    “What way?”
    “Like the secret love child of Miss Manners and a Marine.”
    Karina laughed. “Takes one to know one.”
    “Guilty. At least I get compensated appropriately for it.”
    “That’s true.” Stephanie worked as an expert risk-assessment evaluator for Edgware Consulting, a global hospitality management company. She and her husband, Justin, were the epitome of dual-career coupledom. Both of them worked hard, played hard, and still found the time to indulge in creative, “enriching” hobbies with their four-year-old son, Blake Whitmore Dodger Taylor. They were always jetting off to preschool yoga or Classical French Cooking for Families or artsy indie films and documentaries. “Listen: If you were Eric—”
    “I’d hate myself, because I’d be a loser.”
    “—where would you put four boxes of Christmas decorations?”
    “Four boxes?” Stephanie offered a succinct, unprintable suggestion. “I’d shove them straight up his no-good, cheating—”
    “Never mind. I’ll just keep looking.”
    “You can’t find any of your Christmas stuff?”
    “No.” Before Karina could stop herself, her worst suspicion slipped out. “I think Eric took everything when he moved out.”
    “That dirtbag stole your Christmas decorations?”
    “Well…legally speaking, they’re his decorations too. California is a community-property state.” Thank God. Otherwise Karina would’ve been left with nothing when her husband left. Balanced on her knees, she opened the flaps on another box. It contained baby clothes—things she’d boxed up when Michael had grown too big for them. At the time, she’d thought she and Eric might have another child. She sighed. “I should have expected this, I guess. I just wish he’d told me he wanted them first.”
    This put a new wrinkle in her never-ending Christmas to-do list, she realized. Now, not only did she have to handle everything (impeccably!) by herself, she also had to start over from scratch, without so much as a piece of tinsel. Ho ho ho.
    Hoping to shore up her spirits, Karina inhaled deeply. Then she smiled into her cell phone. “It’s all right,” she told her sister. “I can manage without our old Christmas decorations. Some of them were getting pretty ratty anyway.”
    Because we loved them so much, Velveteen Rabbit style.
    Back in the day, she and the kids had loved reading that story together. It had made regular appearances as part of their bedtime routine. Lately, though, that formerly dependable routine had gone through some changes.
    Okay, that routine had been demolished, plain and simple. Despite Karina’s efforts, it turned out their routine hadn’t been so dependable, after all. Partly that was because preteen Olivia could scarcely be pried away from texting her friends on her cell phone at all hours. Partly it was because Josh insisted on being the one to read, rather than being read to (something Olivia tended to take exception to). Partly it was because the whole endeavor still felt weird without Eric participating. Now, only Michael was willing to snuggle after a nighttime bath, with a stuffed animal in the crook of