One Winter's Night: The Twelve Dates of Christmas / Frozen Heart, Melting Kiss / A Cadence Creek Christmas. SUSAN MEIER
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his gray-haired assistant, nodded. “Okay. I’ll get right on it.”
“Great.”
David started toward the door but stopped and turned around. “You didn’t need to apologize. I don’t take it personally when you yell. I know that’s how you are.”
“How I am?”
“Sometimes you talk loud. I’m accustomed to it. It doesn’t bother me.”
David left his office. Ricky walked to the window and blew his breath out on a sigh.
Sometimes he talked loud?
Sheesh. Was he a grouch? A Grinch? Somebody who yelled so much people thought it abnormal when he didn’t?
Thoughts of Eloise shamed him. She was alone, yet never once had he seen her bite anyone’s head off. Even when they’d argued after his frat party, she’d been reasonable.
He sighed. He didn’t like discovering he was a grouch. Especially because he wasn’t. He was sad about his son. Lonely for his son. And everyone understood that.
He sat down and squeezed his eyes shut. He remembered Blake’s one and only Christmas. He could hear the sound of his little boy’s laugh. See wrapping paper strewn on the floor. Remember the way Blake loved cookies, chattered nonsensical baby words with Ricky’s mom, sat on his dad’s lap.
He swallowed.
If he was grouchy with his staff over missing Blake, over feeling guilty about Blake’s death, he had a right. Even his staff knew that.
Feeling sorry for a woman he barely knew? It didn’t make sense. Her making him feel bad for something he had no right to be guilty about? Well, that didn’t make any sense either. Why should a woman he barely knew affect him like this?
He had to fix it. The best way would be to get his relationship with Eloise back to where it was supposed to be.
A deal.
Not a friendship, and certainly not a romance.
Simply a deal.
* * *
He didn’t hear anything from the CEOs he’d sent her résumé to, and by Wednesday that bothered him. Once he got her a job, everything between them would balance out, and they could go back to being strangers pretending to date. So no response annoyed him. Still, his friends might not have called him because she was the one who wanted the job.
Given that it was Wednesday, the day before their next party—so he needed to call her with the information about that weekend’s events—he picked up his phone. He wouldn’t interrogate her, but if the subject of interviews came up, he wouldn’t waste it.
“I wanted to let you know that Thursday’s party is formal again.”
“Oh. Okay. Good.”
He winced, waiting for her to mention if she’d gotten calls from his friends, if she’d gotten interviews. When twenty seconds passed in silence, he sighed. “You didn’t hear from my friends, did you?”
“No.”
“Which means you didn’t get a job.”
“Nope.”
Annoyance with his friends buffeted him. But sorrow for her sneaked in there too. This woman could not get a break. Still, he had troubles of his own. Guilt of his own. Shame of his own. A baby boy he missed so much sometimes his chest ached. He had enough trouble without getting involved with her and her problems. He had to help her find a job, but he couldn’t get personally involved.
Needing to get them back to their deal and get himself out of this conversation, he said, “Even if someone hires you, the deal is twelve dates for a job. Not you get a job, then you quit.” He grimaced, even more frustrated with himself. In trying to keep his distance, he’d made himself look like a grizzly bear. “I didn’t mean that to sound as grouchy as it did.”
She sighed. “I know.”
He grimaced again. He almost told her how he’d noticed ten thousand times in the past three days how surly he was. How difficult he was to deal with. He knew it was the result of losing a child. And suddenly, he longed to tell someone. To share his pain. Or maybe he longed to tell her because he knew she’d understand?
But all he said was, “Good.”
“So you want me to wear a gown.”
“Yes.” He paused. “Do you want me to make follow-up calls with the guys I sent your résumé to?”
“You can do that?”
“They are my friends. But they also owe me.”
Silence greeted him. Finally she said, “Although I appreciate the offer, I still have some pride. I’d like to get a job based on my qualifications.”
“You really don’t have many.”
“Thanks.”
Damn it. He might not want to confide in her, but there was no reason to hurt her. He slapped his desk. “See? There I go again. I have no filter on my tongue when it comes to business, and sometimes I’m just a little too honest.”
“I think your honesty is your best quality.”
He winced. “Tell my employees that.”
“Why do you think your friends come to you for advice?”
“Because I tell them the truth?”
“Sometimes brutally.”
He laughed, then marveled that he’d laughed even though he continually said the wrong thing. Even though he couldn’t stop thinking about Blake. Even though he had guilt that swallowed him whole some days, she kept making him laugh and he kept making her miserable. “Let me call my friends.”
“No. I don’t want to be that girl in the office who only got her job because of her boyfriend. It’s why I didn’t want a job from you. I can’t be the girl in the office who only got her job because her boyfriend pulled strings.”
It wasn’t so much what she said but how she said it that caused him to shake his head. “It’s been a long time since anybody called me a boyfriend.”
“Fake or not, that’s what you are.” She settled onto the wide sill of her living room window, wishing, like Binnie Margolis, for snow. Laura Beth was out. Olivia was in Kentucky. Christmas was getting close. Telling her story to Ricky on Sunday morning had pounded home the fact that she’d soon be facing another holiday by herself, without even a blanket of snow to make her feel cozy in her empty apartment with her eighteen-inch plastic tree and the cookies Olivia’s mom would mail to her.
She swallowed. Desperate to get her mind off her troubles, she said the first thing that popped into her head. “So how was your day?”
He sniffed. “Same. Kinda boring.”
“Really? Rich wheeler-dealer like you has boring days?”
He hesitated, as if he really didn’t want to talk anymore, but he said, “It was fun when I started out. Now things are routine.”
“Maybe you need a new venture.”
“A new venture?”
“You know. Instead of writing new video games, invent a different kind of microwave popcorn. Try taking that to market. I’ll bet you’ll meet some challenges.”
He laughed. “Microwave popcorn?”
“Hey, my dad loves the stuff...” Even as the words flipped out of her mouth, her heart tugged. Her stomach plummeted. As gruff and socially conscious as her parents were, they were her family and they didn’t want her.
How could she miss people who didn’t want her around?
Her