Snowbound Christmas Wish

Chapter Thirteen – Cracks in the Frame

Emma woke to the sound of someone shovelling snow.

For a few seconds she didn’t know where she was. The ceiling was wood, not white plaster. The air smelled faintly of pine cleaner and coffee from somewhere below. There was a heavy weight around her waist and warmth against her back.

Then the weight shifted and the warmth breathed softly against her neck, and everything rearranged itself.

The inn.

The room.

Liam’s arm around her, his hand resting low on her stomach, fingers curled there like he had fallen asleep mid-promise.

The memories of last night came in fragments.

His mouth on hers. His hands on her back. The way his voice had shaken on the words I love you. Her own chest twisting as she said them back. Falling asleep tangled together like they had been trying to make up for every night apart.

She smiled into the pillow, small and private.

“Are you awake,” he mumbled, voice muffled in her hair.

“Maybe,” she said.

His arm tightened slightly, pulling her closer.

“Good,” he said. “I had a terrible dream that you decided this was all a bizarre phase and went back to Berlin to marry a spreadsheet.”

She snorted. “You need better nightmares.”

He made a pleased sound and pressed his lips against the back of her neck, slow and deliberate.

Electricity went down her spine in a very un-morning way.

“Stop,” she said weakly. “You have mediation. I have… observing you in mediation.”

“We could call in mutually compromised,” he murmured. “‘Sorry, we cannot attend, we are busy making irrational decisions in a small wooden room.’”

She rolled over to face him.

His hair was flattened awkwardly on one side. There was a faint pillow crease on his cheek. He looked younger and older at once, like the boy who had stolen cookies from Helga and the man who had told a judge he had signed a contract too fast.

“You said you don’t snore,” she said.

“I don’t,” he said.

“You did,” she said. “A little.”

He frowned, offended. “You keep bringing that up. Is this going to be a recurring theme in our relationship?”

“Yes,” she said. “Along with ‘Liam, stop avoiding your feelings’ and ‘Emma, stop trying to turn everything into a sentence.’”

He smiled, soft and crooked.

“I love you,” he said, like he was testing how it sounded in the morning air.

Her heart did that painful, ridiculous thing again.

“I love you too,” she said.

He exhaled like he’d been holding that breath since the night before.

“Still not less terrifying,” he admitted.

“Good,” she said. “It should scare us a little. Otherwise we’re not paying attention.”

He leaned in and kissed her, slow and unhurried. Not last night’s urgency. Something steadier. The kind of kiss that felt like a continuation, not a repeat.

When they finally pulled apart, he glanced at the clock.

“We have forty minutes,” he said. “Enough time for breakfast and for me to remember how to stand in a room without you in touching distance.”

“You’ll manage,” she said. “Think of contracts. They’re a turn-off.”

He groaned.

“Way to ruin the mood, Keller,” he said.

She slid out of bed and immediately shivered. The floorboards were cold under her feet. She grabbed the inn shirt and pulled it on, the hem falling to mid-thigh.

He watched her with open appreciation.

“Unfair,” he said. “Very unfair.”

“Contracts,” she reminded him sweetly.

He flopped back on the pillow with a tragic sigh.

“I am going to break up with contracts,” he said. “Run away with you and a tree somewhere.”

“You can date the tree,” she said. “I’ll visit on weekends.”

He threw a pillow at her. She ducked and laughed.

For a few precious minutes, the world was just this room again. Old wood, rumpled sheets, their bodies moving around each other as if they had been doing this for years.

Then Liam’s phone buzzed on the nightstand.

He reached for it, still half smiling.

The smile vanished as he read.

“What is it?” Emma asked.

He handed her the phone without a word.

On the screen was a notification from a news app. Her headline. The old one. The article she’d already written.

Underneath, in smaller type, a new title from another outlet:

Heir’s Lover Writes About Forest Fight Conflict of Interest in Mountain Village Battle?

Her stomach dropped.

She tapped the article open before she could stop herself.

A smaller regional site. Not huge, but big enough. Someone had taken her piece, her television segment, and a few careful lines from a recent interview she’d given about “journalistic proximity” and hammered them into something sharp.

They had used a photo of her on the video call, split screen with a shot of Liam outside the courthouse. The caption read:

Journalist Emma Keller and landowner’s son Liam Hartmann too close for comfort?

Her face went hot.

“They dug,” she said quietly. “Of course they dug.”

The article itself was mostly speculation. “Sources” at the inn mentioning that she and Liam had “appeared close.” Her TV appearance described as “emotional.” Her article praised and then questioned. Phrases like blurring of lines and sleeping with the story thrown in with the subtlety of a brick.

She put the phone down.

“I didn’t talk to them,” she said quickly. “I swear. I talked to my editor, to you, to”

“I know,” he said.

He did sound like he believed her.

He also sounded like someone had just punched him in the ribs.

“This was always a risk,” she said. “We knew it. We joked about it, even.”

“Jokes sound different in headlines,” he said.

The room seemed smaller suddenly. The walls closer.

“What does this change?” she asked.

“It gives Clara new ammunition,” he said. “It gives my father more reason to think everything is spiralling. It gives the company a way to claim you manipulated public opinion to make me look better.”

“And you?” she asked, hating how small her voice sounded.

He looked up at her.

“And me,” he said carefully, “it makes me feel like I am asking you to walk into a room where half the people already decided you are a problem just by existing.”

“I already was,” she said. “Without the article. Without us. I was always going to be a problem to someone.”

He exhaled.

“You don’t have to be one to me,” he said.

It shouldn’t have hurt. It did, just for a heartbeat.

“Am I?” she asked.

“No,” he said immediately. “Yes. Of course. You complicate everything. In ways I do not want to live without.”

She let out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.

“Then we go downstairs,” she said. “We pretend we don’t know how to read clickbait. And we deal with Clara.”

He huffed an unwilling laugh.

“You say that like she is a plumbing issue,” he said.

“She is,” Emma said. “We just have to find the valve.”

Helga had the article open on her phone when they reached the lobby.

She lifted her eyes when they came down the stairs, gaze sharp.

“Do you want me to throw my phone at the next journalist who walks through that door?” she asked Emma.

“I am a journalist,” Emma said.

“I said the next one,” Helga replied.

Lina leaned on the counter, scrolling angrily.

“They have the worst photo of you,” she told Emma. “You look like you are about to cry and also kill someone. It is not flattering.”

“It is accurate,” Emma muttered.

“Good,” Lina said. “Accuracy is important.”

Markus strode in from outside, snow on his boots.

“You’ve seen it?” he asked without greeting.

“Yes,” Liam said.

“Clara will use it,” Markus said. “She called already. Wanted to know if we ‘condoned media interference in legal matters.’ I told her we condone hot chocolate and not cutting trees. She hung up.”

“Remind me to buy you something,” Emma said.

“You can buy me a lawyer,” Markus replied darkly. “One that bites.”

The mediator arrived ten minutes later, exactly on time, a folder under her arm. She had the article print-out, folded neatly.

“I do not care who you sleep with,” she said without preamble, glancing between Emma and Liam. “As long as they are not bribing you to change your legal position. This” she held up the paper “is annoying. It is not relevant to the negotiations. I will say that in the room if anyone tries to use it otherwise.”

Emma liked her more than she had five minutes ago.

“What about the judge?” Liam asked. “If this spreads?”

“The judge reads briefs, not gossip sites,” the mediator said. “And even if he sees it, his order stands. Mediation continues. Unless you’ve changed your mind.”

She said the last part looking directly at Liam.

He met her gaze.

“No,” he said. “I still want to be here.”

“Good,” she said. “Then we waste no more time on pixels.”

She strode toward the meeting room.

Emma glanced at Liam.

“Go,” she said. “Before she adopts you as another problem to solve.”

He squeezed her hand once, quick and hard, then followed.

If the article had rattled Clara, she didn’t show it.

She sat at the table with her usual composed poise, a small stack of documents in front of her. The only sign she’d seen the piece was the brief, assessing glance she gave Emma as she walked in to take her place against the wall.

“Before we begin,” Clara said, “NordAlp would like to express concern about outside pressure and media presence. We all saw the article.”

The mediator lifted a hand.

“We did,” she said. “And we are not here to discuss Ms Keller’s personal life. We are here to discuss trees, contracts and shared profit. If your concern is that she will leak confidential negotiation details, we can address that. Otherwise, we move on.”

“My concern,” Clara said smoothly, “is that her presence, as both Mr Hartmann’s partner and the author of widely read articles on this dispute, continues to skew the dynamic in the room. She is not a neutral observer.”

“I never said I was,” Emma said before she could stop herself.

Every head turned.

Heat rushed to her face.

“Explain,” the mediator said, not unkindly.

Emma swallowed.

“I wrote from a position,” she said. “I never hid that. The first piece was clearly from the village perspective. I did not pretend to be some omniscient voice in the sky. People know where I stand. That is why they read it. Not because I am pretending to float above the fight.”

“Exactly,” Clara said. “Which makes your presence questionable.”

The mediator shot her a look.

“And yet, here we are,” she said. “Ms Keller is in the gallery, not at the table. She has not spoken in previous sessions. She will not be quoted in the minutes. If we start excluding everyone with opinions, we will be here alone. Now, can we talk about the revised slope plan?”

Clara’s jaw tightened, but she let it go.

For now.

The session that followed was more concrete than the first. The mediator had drawn up two possible framework proposals. One more favourable to the village, one leaning toward NordAlp. Neither side liked either completely. Which, Emma supposed, meant they were probably realistic.

“Option A,” the mediator said, “is smaller hotel, more community equity, strict building height limits, and a conservation easement on the old forest, legally binding. Option B larger hotel, fewer village shares, but an education fund, guaranteed local hiring quotas and a commitment to partial rewilding if the resort fails after twenty years.”

“Fails,” Markus repeated. “That is a cheerful word.”

“It is a business,” Clara said. “Businesses fail. At least this way there is a plan for after.”

“And how do you plan the after for people who have lived here for generations?” he shot back.

Liam listened, brows drawn together, fingers tapping lightly on the table. He was weighing, Emma knew. Not just money and trees. Faces. Names. The way the square would feel ten years from now under each scenario.

He caught her eye once.

There was a question in his gaze.

She didn’t answer with words. She just nodded, slow and small.

We will talk later.

When the session finally broke for lunch, everyone looked exhausted in different ways.

In the lobby, Emma cornered him near the fireplace.

“Walk?” she asked.

“Always,” he said.

They stepped outside into the thin midday light. Old snow crunched under their boots. The air had that strange early-spring sharpness, cold and damp at once.

They walked toward the edge of the village, down the path that led to the first trees.

“What do you think,” he asked, before she could.

“About the options?” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “About all of it.”

She considered.

“Option A feels like less concrete,” she said. “More control for the village. Less money for the company. They’ll hate it.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Option B feels like they’re betting on failure,” she went on. “Like they’re already building an exit narrative. Which is honest in a way. But also...” She shook her head.

“Hopeless,” he supplied.

“Yes,” she said. “What do you want?”

He let out a breath, watching it fog in front of him.

“I want them to disappear,” he said. “And for the forest to stay exactly as it is, and for everyone to miraculously have jobs and my father to forgive me and the village to stop yelling and my grandfather to come back and explain why he thought this was a good idea in the first place.”

He smiled humourlessly.

“Since that is not available,” he said, “I want Option A with some parts of B. Education fund. Local hiring. Strict limits. The kind of contract that cannot be twisted when I am not in the room.”

“Then fight for that,” she said. “Let Clara scream about returns on investment. You are here to talk about returns on not destroying everything.”

He huffed.

“You make it sound so simple,” he said.

“It isn’t,” she said. “But you know what it looks like when it is wrong. That is worth something.”

They walked a few more steps in silence.

He stopped suddenly and turned to her.

“What about you,” he asked. “What do you want?”

She blinked.

“In general?” she said. “Or right now?”

“Both,” he said.

“Right now,” she said slowly, “I want to go back to the inn and steal all of Helga’s cake and eat it in bed with you and pretend there are no companies.”

He smiled.

“In general,” she went on, “I want to be able to write about things that matter without becoming the thing I’m writing about. I want to keep loving you without constantly checking whether each sentence is a betrayal. I want my editor to stop sending me emails with the subject line ‘any juicy quotes?’”

Liam grimaced.

“He really writes that?” he asked.

“Once,” she said. “I did not answer well.”

“Good,” he said.

She picked up a handful of old snow and crumbled it between her fingers.

“And I want you to remember,” she added, “that I am not Clara. I am not your father. I am not your judge. I am allowed to disagree with you, but I am not here to use the fight to win something from you.”

He watched her, expression serious.

“I know,” he said. “Even when it stings.”

“Especially then,” she said.

He stepped closer and brushed some snow from her glove.

“They will use us against each other if they can,” he said quietly. “My father. The company. Maybe your editor, if you let him. They will say you are biased. That I am weak. That we make each other foolish. We cannot pretend that possibility does not exist.”

“I know,” she said. “We just have to decide whose voices we take seriously.”

He nodded.

“Yours,” he said.

Her throat tightened.

“Yours,” she echoed.

The crack didn’t come from any of them.

It came from an email.

That evening, after the second session, after too much coffee and not enough food, after an argument about tax relief that had left everyone annoyed and no one satisfied, Emma sat on the bed with her laptop open.

Liam was in the shower. She could hear the water running, the pipes rattling slightly against the walls.

Her inbox had three new messages.

One from her mother: Are you alive? Does he still like trees?

One from Lina: a photo of Helga frowning at a spreadsheet with the caption secret power behind the council.

And one from her editor.

Subject: Draft looks good small changes.

She frowned.

She hadn’t sent him the full draft yet. Just sections. Notes. Fragments.

She clicked.

Read through what you sent. Very strong. I took the liberty of rephrasing a few things for clarity/punch mostly in the sections about the courtroom and mediation. See highlighted parts. Especially liked the line about “signing because it was easier than disappointing the room” I moved it up to the intro for impact. Also tightened the bit about you joining him in the village again “following the man who is the story” works as a motif.

We’re still a week away from publication, but heads up: the features team wants to promote this as “inside Hartmann’s head” Marketing will push the romantic angle a little (only a little, don’t panic). Write back with any absolute red lines by tomorrow

Her stomach twisted

She opened the attached document.

Her words were there. Twisted slightly. Tidied for pace. The line about signing because it was easier was now in the second paragraph, weightier, an early judgement.

Worse was the new sentence, added somewhere near the middle.

In following Hartmann back to the village not just as a reporter chasing a story, but as the woman he now shared a room with I realised that loving someone in the middle of a public fight means accepting that your heart is also on the table.

She hadn’t written that.

She’d written something smaller. Less declarative. More careful. About being involved. About proximity. Not loving and sharing a room with all the subtlety of a tabloid.

She scrolled faster.

Her pulse picked up speed.

Marketing will push the romantic angle a little.

She heard the shower cut off.

“Emma?” Liam called. “Did Helga leave us any of those ginger biscuits or did Markus eat them all?”

She didn’t answer.

He stepped back into the room a minute later, towel around his waist, hair damp, skin still flushed from the heat.

He saw her face and his expression changed instantly.

“What happened?” he asked.

She turned the screen toward him.

“My editor,” she said.

He took the laptop and read.

She watched his eyes move. The muscle in his jaw tightened. His mouth flattened.

He set the laptop down very carefully on the nightstand, as if it were something that could explode.

“So,” he said.

“So,” she echoed.

“‘Inside Hartmann’s head,’” he quoted. “That’s… catchy.”

“I didn’t choose that,” she said quickly. “He just told me.”

“And this,” he went on, tapping the added line with one finger, “‘the woman he now shared a room with’ that’s new.”

“I didn’t write that,” she said. “He added it. I can tell him to cut it. I will tell him.”

“You sent him this draft,” he said, voice very calm.

“Pieces,” she said. “He stitched them together. I wanted his feedback before”

“You sent him my sentence,” he said. “‘Signing because it was easier than disappointing the room.’”

“Yes,” she said. “We agreed I would.”

“And now he moved it to the top,” he said. “So anyone reading the first page knows I admit that I signed a multi-million contract because I didn’t want to annoy people.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” she said. “The piece shows that. Your hesitation. Your change. It’s not”

“Marketing will push the romantic angle,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “Because apparently I am not just an i***t heir. I am an i***t heir in love. Great for clicks.”

His eyes met hers.

They were not cold.

That almost made it worse.

“I told you,” he said quietly, “that I was scared this would happen.”

“And I told you I would fight it,” she said. “I still can. I can tell him no. He is not a monster. He will listen.”

“Will he?” Liam asked. “Or will he just change a few adjectives and keep the rest? It’s a good story for him, Emma. ‘I fell for the man I was writing about.’ ‘How my heart got entangled with a forest fight.’ They eat that stuff up.”

“It’s also true,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “I did fall for you in the middle of this. I am writing about you. That’s the line we’re walking. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make it less real.”

“I know,” he snapped. “I knew that when I kissed you on that platform. When I asked you to come to the hearing. I am not stupid.”

“Then why are you acting like I stabbed you,” she shot back.

“Because I keep finding out about my own life in other people’s emails,” he said, voice rising. “From Clara. From my father. From lawyers. From judges. And now from your editor. I thought at least with you, I would not have to read about myself like a stranger.”

The words landed hard.

She swallowed.

“That’s not fair,” she said. “I showed you. I put the draft in your hands. I didn’t sneak it past you. I didn’t publish anything without telling you. I am here, in this room, letting you see every line that scares me too.”

He ran a hand through his damp hair, leaving it standing up.

“I know,” he said. “I do. It just… It feels like every time we build something that’s just ours, someone wants to photograph it.”

Silence stretched between them.

She sat on the edge of the bed, laptop between them like another person.

“I’ll write him now,” she said. “I’ll tell him the romantic angle is out. That those lines are not negotiable. If he insists, I kill the piece. I can do that.”

“You would?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, without hesitation.

She realised it was true only as she said it.

He stared at her, as if trying to see whether she meant it.

“That’s your career,” he said. “Front page, long feature, all the things you’ve wanted.”

“I don’t want them if the price is you walking into a mediation session knowing I turned your worst mistake into a hook,” she said. “I can write other stories. I can’t find another you in a Christmas station.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Terrible romantic line,” he muttered.

“I’m out of practice,” she said.

He sat down slowly beside her.

His shoulder brushed hers.

“I don’t want you to stop writing,” he said. “Even about this. Even when it hurts. I just need to know where I end and your sentences begin. That there’s a place in your life where I’m not material.”

“There is,” she said. “Here.”

She tapped the mattress under them.

“This room. That forest. The stupid pinecone on my nightstand in Berlin. The messages you send me at 2 a.m. saying ‘the mediator is a witch but in a good way.’ None of that is for the article. That’s ours.”

He let out a long breath.

“Tell him,” he said. “Tell your editor that the romantic marketing is off limits. That if he wants a villain, he can interview Clara. If he wants a hero, he can go somewhere else. If he wants a messy, complicated story about contracts and love and fear, he gets it on our terms or not at all.”

She nodded.

“I will,” she said.

He rubbed his face with both hands.

“I hate that I care this much,” he said. About what some headline says. About how many people read it. About whether my father will throw the paper at me at breakfast.

“It means you’re aware of the stage,” she said. That’s not weakness. That’s survival.

He glanced at her, something like reluctant amusement in his eyes.

You’re very good at turning everything into a sentence, he said.

“I warned you,” she replied.

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers.

Don’t let them turn us into a slogan, he murmured.

I won’t, she said.

He kissed her once, brief and firm, then stood.

“I have to sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow they want to talk about access roads. That’s when people really lose their minds.”

Go,” she said. I’ll fight my editor and then maybe yell at a pillow.”

He hesitated.

Stay,” she added. After. In my head. Not on the page.”

He softened.

“Always,” he said.

After he left, she opened a new email.

Subject: Lines I won’t cross.

She stared at the blank body for a long time, then started typing.

I read your edits. Some work. Some don’t.

What doesn’t:

“Inside Hartmann’s head” as a marketing hook. He is not a zoo animal.

Moving the “easier to disappoint the room” line to the top. It reads as an indictment, not as the beginning of a change.

The added sentence about me “sharing his room” and “loving him in the middle of a public fight.” That is mine to say or not say, not the feature team’s.

If those stay, I pull the piece. I’m not negotiating on that. I know what that means for the slot and for future commissions. I’m asking you to trust that a story can be strong without selling the people in it as characters in a romance drama.

She hesitated, then added:

I am too deep in this to be the cool, detached writer you’d give an entire series to. That’s either the reason you want me here, or the reason you should hand this to someone else. But I won’t let marketing decide which parts of my life become a product.

She hit send before she could talk herself out of it.

Then she lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, listening to the noises of the inn around her.

Voices downstairs. A door closing. Lina laughing at something. The faint creak of a floorboard in the corridor as someone walked past with careful steps.

Her phone buzzed.

A message from Liam.

You still awake?

Yes. Email sent. Editor probably crying.

Poor man, he wrote.

She smiled.

Scared? she typed.

Always, he sent.

Her fingers hovered.

Me too. But I’m here.

A pause.

So am I, he replied.

She put the phone on the pillow beside her, so that if she turned her head in the night, she would see his name glowing there.

Cracks had appeared in the frame they were building.

From headlines. From edits. From fear.

But the frame was still there.

And for now, that was enough to keep going.