Kate didn’t want to think about the sad things anymore. She wanted to sing. She wanted to play the piano until the lonely man upstairs was forced to confront them down here. She couldn’t save the person she was when she was at her loneliest, but she could at least save him.

And her entire town and way of life, while she was at it.

With a blistering, face-cutting smile, Kate effectively ended their conversation.

“What do you think? ‘Good King Wenceslas’ or ‘Here We Come A-Caroling?’”

After storming out of the room, Clark made a deal with himself: if he could survive the next two days without seeing Kate Buckner again, he would buy himself something nice. Something practical, of course. A watch, maybe. Or a new set of locks for his apartment in Dallas. A pair of shoes he didn’t have to repair every other week because they insisted on falling apart at the seams when he walked too long or the temperature rose over seventy degrees. He rarely promised himself these sorts of rewards. His idea of a reward was sleeping in an extra fifteen minutes past his 6 a.m. alarm on Saturdays. But between the difficulty—maybe the impossibility—of avoiding Kate in his own house and the post-Christmas deals soon to flood the malls and shops back home, he decided it was worth it.

Here we come a-caroling along the fields so green!

Here we come wandering so fair to be seen!

He was sure he could do it until she started singing. There was music in his house. Not just any kind of music. Christmas music. When choosing a place to work from today, he’d made sure to pick the farthest room in the house from the living room. The second office used to host his uncle’s secretary, if the discarded paperwork and bubble gum wrappers were any indication, and he assumed it would be a fine hideout for a few days. Its couch and proximity to a bathroom were convenient; he’d just have to make sure he snuck to the kitchen for snacks when he was sure Kate wasn’t anywhere along his route.

A flawless plan…until she decided to go and fill the house with music. At first, Clark did his best to ignore it. He shut the heavy office door carefully, trying not to disturb the cheesy toy basketball hoop hung over the top—apparently, his uncle had hired an eight-year-old boy as a secretary—and returned to the whirring laptop. Maybe no one in this town was working, but he had a work ethic, and it didn’t disappear because the weather got a little cold.

The closed door did basically nothing to prevent the music. If anything, it somehow managed to get louder. He shook his head and resolved to ignore it. He could manage distractions. He was disciplined enough to work over some annoying piano tunes.