A Mistletoe Affair (6 page)

“Have you picked out a tree yet?” she asked him. “You need to make sure they trim a good portion of the bottom limbs so that this little one won’t reach them.”

“I wasn’t planning on getting a tree at all,” Jordan said.

His mother looked at him as if he’d just confessed to armed robbery of an orphanage.

“What?” he asked defensively. “It doesn’t make sense to go through the hassle of a tree when we’ll be spending Christmas Day here anyway.”

Her chastising frown was a throwback to his days in elementary school after coming home with a note from the teacher for “bucking authority,” which Jordan later realized was code for speaking his mind.

“Jordan, you have a baby now. This munchkin needs a Christmas tree. And it’s more than just one day, it’s an entire season. Get a tree,” she stated in a tone that brooked no argument.

Jordan grunted, just as he used to do when those notorious letters arrived from his teachers, but he grudgingly accepted that, in this case, his mother was probably right.

He had never bothered with decorating for the holidays when it was just him, but now that he had Mason, he had to think about the kind of childhood he wanted his son to have. Some of his fondest memories as a boy were from Christmas. His parents went out of their way to make this time of the year special for both him and Sandra. He wanted Mason to have the opportunity to make those same memories.

“Okay,” Jordan said. “We’ll get a tree today.”

His mother gave him a firm, regal nod, as if she never doubted he wouldn’t do just as she’d requested. She turned her attention back to Mason.

“Now that that’s settled, why don’t we go into the kitchen? Grandma has a special treat for you.”

“What’s new about that? You always have a special treat for him,” Jordan said as he followed her to the kitchen.

“Oh, hush,” she called over her shoulder. “If I have to wear the title of grandmother, then I want to enjoy all the privileges, which includes spoiling my grandson.”

She retrieved a package from the pantry. “I ran across these organic fruit chews the other day. I figured any healthy snack is a good snack. Let’s just hope he likes them.”

Perched in his grandmother’s lap at the breakfast table, Mason took the dried fruit between his stubby fingers and immediately started to devour it. The smile on his mother’s face stretched to the Massachusetts state line.

“Yes!” she said. “Score one for Grandma Nancy.”

“I hope you bought a case. He’s at this stage where he gets fixated on a certain thing and that’s all he wants. Last week it was canned peaches.”

“I’ll make sure Millie picks up a few more boxes when she does this week’s grocery shopping,” his mother said, referring to the live-in housekeeper who had been with their family for years. “But you do know that you shouldn’t let him have too much of any one thing, even if it is healthy. Not that I’m trying to tell you how to raise your son,” his mother quickly interjected.

“I know,” Jordan said. She made a point not to butt in, as she called it. Unless it concerned Christmas trees. Apparently, all bets were off when it came to proper holiday preparations.

Jordan walked over to the fridge and grabbed a can of soda. “I try to practice moderation as much as possible, but I’ve been somewhat lax these past few days. Mason’s been fussier than normal lately. If I find something to appease him, I’m doing it.”

“What’s got you fussy, huh?” his mother asked, smoothing a hand over Mason’s head.

“I don’t know what it is,” Jordan said. “Maybe he’s missing Laurie? He’s used to having her around.”

“How long will she be gone?”

“Until after the New Year.”

Jordan groaned just thinking about it. He appreciated his housekeeper/nanny, and paid her well because of it, but he didn’t realize just how much she handled until she’d left for this extended vacation.

Maybe that was why he was feeling off-kilter. With Laurie gone and him stuck at the house all day, things seemed out of whack. He needed his life to return to normal.

“I’m thinking about maybe shortening my leave of absence,” Jordan said. “I’m not used to sitting around the house doing nothing.”

“You are not doing ‘nothing,’ Jordan,” his mother said. She stood and brought Mason over to him. “You are enjoying the holidays with your son. Do you even realize how lucky you are? Your father would have loved to have weeks off around the holidays to spend with you kids, but it was a luxury he couldn’t afford. He was always too busy with Woolcott Industries when you and Sandra were little.”

His mother cupped his jaw in her soft palm. “Enjoy this time with Mason. Take it from me when I tell you that he’s going to be grown and on his own before you know it. It’s Christmas, Jordan. Enjoy Christmas with your son.”

He nodded. “Okay, Mom. I hear you.”

“Good. No more of this ‘shortening your leave of absence’ nonsense again. And when you
do
go back to the firm, you need to think about cutting back on your hours. You’re a single father after all. This little one needs to have at least
one
of his parents around.”

Jordan didn’t miss the thinly disguised dig at Mason’s
other
parent.

To say his mother wasn’t his ex-wife’s biggest fan was an understatement that put all other understatements to shame. She’d somehow seen through Allison’s facade from the very beginning. Jordan had been too blinded by his ex-wife’s stunning beauty, vivacious personality and ridiculously hot body to pay attention to anything else. He’d ignored the warnings his mother tried to send him. And he’d paid for it. Dearly.

Water under the proverbial bridge.

He couldn’t go back in time and change what had happened with Allison. He wouldn’t even if he could. His son was worth every bit of the heartache and strife Allison had caused him.

Millie, who had been the Woolcotts’ housekeeper for decades, came into the kitchen, and when she discovered Jordan had yet to have lunch, insisted on whipping up a quick meal. After demolishing the seared tuna over arugula that was worthy of a restaurant menu, Jordan patiently followed his mother around the house so she could show off the rest of her holiday decorations.

A half hour later, she followed them out to the car and strapped Mason into his car seat.

“You
are
going to get that tree this very instant, right?”

“Yes,” Jordan said with an exaggerated groan.

“Good.”

“Should I expect a surprise visit from you tonight to make sure I have the tree?”

“Your father and I have plans for tonight, but I expect you to text me a picture.” She kissed his cheek before closing his car door and giving him a wave.

Jordan chuckled to himself as he rounded the circular driveway and drove away from his parents’ home. As he pulled up to the stop sign at the end of the street, his cell phone trilled with the special ringtone he’d set for the investigator he had looking into the election results. Jordan pulled over to the curb.

He answered the phone. “What do you have for me, Mike?”

Several minutes later, he flipped his blinker to turn left, back toward his house. The news he’d just received was the most promising he’d heard in days.

Tree shopping would have to wait.

Chapter 4

“O
uch!”

Vicki stuck her finger between her lips, sucking on the spot where the prickly holly leaf had just nicked her.

“Careful,” her mother admonished. She looked up from the leather-bound organizer spread out before her on the marble kitchen island. “You don’t have to do that, you know. I could hire someone to put those together.”

“Very funny,” Vicki said. She looked over the tall centerpiece and caught the glimpse of a smile tipping up her mother’s lips. “If you want to pay me, go right ahead, but if I catch another florist within twenty yards of this house I cannot be responsible for my actions.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” Her mother blew her a kiss. Vicki pretended to catch it and threw it back at her.

Her mother’s shocked laugh echoed around the massive kitchen. “That was rude.”

“That’s what you get for suggesting bringing in another florist to decorate the house,” she said, but then to show her mother that she knew it was all in good fun, Vicki walked over and plunked a kiss on her cheek.

Sitting with her legs crossed on the high-backed stool, Christine Ahlfors was the epitome of everything Vicki had thought she wanted to be. Physically, they were unmistakably mother and daughter, with their fair skin and naturally wavy hair. Her mother had thrown a fit when Vicki had chopped half of hers off, but when she’d arrived today to help ready the house for Christmas, Christine had remarked that the chin-length pixie cut was growing on her.

Vicki joked that she could give her the number for her stylist, but found that she was actually grateful when her mother laughed it off. Her new hairstyle was just one of the ways that she was finally starting to come into her own. She’d followed in her mother’s footsteps in so many ways, being on the cheer squad in high school, majoring in the arts in college, serving on the boards of several philanthropic groups.

But as the years marched on, Vicki had begun to realize that they had different goals. Unlike her mother, she would never be satisfied filling her days with charity events and the other things that occupied her mother’s time. Vicki needed more.

“I was thinking of a shopping trip in Boston this weekend. Why don’t you join me?” her mother asked. “We could have lunch. I can even get us tickets to the Boston Pops’ Saturday-night performance.”

“I doubt I’ll have time,” Vicki said. “I have to drive up to a supplier in Scarborough to look at a few things for the Woolcotts’ Kwanzaa celebration.”

Her mother made a tsking sound. “That’s going to be one interesting party if this thing with the election isn’t settled by then.”

“You’re still planning on going, aren’t you?” Vicki asked.

Her mother looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Who knows what’s going to happen if Jordan is still accusing Darren of stealing the election.”

“Let’s hope this has all blown over by then,” Vicki said.

“Speak for yourself. I’m looking forward to a little drama.”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

As she returned her attention to the centerpiece, Vicki shot a surreptitious glance at her mother. She was trying to determine whether or not to tell her the other reason she would be too busy to frolic around Boston this weekend.

So far, Sandra and Janelle were the only people she’d told about her entry into the float competition. She had decided not to mention it to anyone else until she knew whether or not her submission was accepted. But this was her mother. She would be just as stoked over the possibility of Petals being selected as an entrant, wouldn’t she?

“Mom, another reason I can’t go with you to Boston this weekend is because I’m hoping that I’ll be too busy working on a float for the Holiday Extravaganza Day Parade.”

“Oh?” Her mother said, her attention still directed on the organizer. “Who are you decorating a float for this year?”

Vicki hesitated for the tiniest second before she answered, “Petals.”

Her mother’s head popped up. “For
your
business?”

She nodded. “I submitted an application for Petals to sponsor a float this year.”

Genuine concern creased her mother’s normally flawless skin. “That’s a lot to take on by yourself, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I won’t be totally by myself. I have part-time employees.”

“Those little kids from the high school that deliver for you?”

“They’re hard workers, Mom. And they do more than just deliver. I’m also teaching them basic floral design. I haven’t done so these past couple of weeks because of the holiday madness and their semester finals, but after the New Year I’m actually hiring two more students.”

“But putting together an entire float? That’s so much to take on, Vicki.”

“You do realize that I have supplied the flowers for many of the floats that take part in the parade every year, don’t you?”

Her mother stepped down from the stool she’d been perched on and rounded the kitchen island. She clamped her arms around Vicki’s shoulders and gave her a gentle squeeze.

“It’s not that I don’t think you can do the work.”

Judging by her reaction, Vicki wasn’t so sure about that.

She knew exactly what her family thought when it came to her desire to be an entrepreneur. They didn’t see Petals as the thriving small business that it was; they saw it as “Vicki’s little flower shop.” That was often how her father even referred to it, as if it was some hobby she played around with on the side, instead of a business that she’d poured her blood, sweat and tears into.

The fact that he had built Ahlfors Financial Management from the ground up should have made him even
more
proud that his daughter was following in his footsteps, but that had never been the case. And as supportive as her mother tried to be, Vicki knew deep down that Christine Ahlfors’s expectations for her daughter were that she would get married and step into the role she was supposed to play—the society wife and mother. Becoming a wife and mother was one of Vicki’s most cherished dreams, but it was not her
only
dream.

She was a businesswoman. She took her work seriously. It was time her family took it seriously, as well.

She turned to her mother. “If you think I can do the work, why were you so dismayed when I told you I’d entered the float competition?”

“I wasn’t dismayed,” her mother said. She gave Vicki a patient pat on the arm. “I just don’t want you to be humiliated.”

Humiliated?

The word knocked the wind right out of her.

Vicki managed to keep her expression indifferent, but on the inside her soul was breaking.

She shouldn’t have expected anything different. Foolishly, she had. Which was why she only had herself to blame for being naive enough to think a new wardrobe and new haircut would change the way her family regarded her. They didn’t see the
new Vicki,
they still saw polite, reserved, nonconfrontational Vicki. The Vicki who would rather keep her mouth shut in order to keep the peace, who never would have had the guts to even attempt to enter the float competition.

They still saw the Vicki she
used
to be. She would have to show them she wasn’t that Vicki anymore.

She put the finishing touches on the centerpiece she’d created for the foyer, but that was all she was willing to do today. She had a float to design.

“I just remembered that the Buckleys want a second wreath for their guesthouse,” she said. “I’ll come back later to finish the decorations.”

“That’s fine, honey,” her mother said, her focus once again on her calendar.

Vicki studied her for a moment, wishing she’d given Vicki the reaction she’d been hoping for when she’d told her about the float. Couldn’t her mother have surprised her just this once? Couldn’t she be proud, or even just excited? Why had her first reaction been to doubt that Vicki could pull this off?

She should have gone with her first instincts and kept this news quiet until she was sure her submission was accepted. If it turned out that she wouldn’t have a float in the parade after all, she would have to hear “I told you so” for the next six months.

Yeah, she had no one to blame but herself.

*

Jordan braced his elbows on his kitchen table and ran both palms down his face. The longer he stared at this stuff, the less sense it made. For the past two days he’d pored over the data, running the numbers over and over again, trying to figure out just where the inconsistencies had come from.

When he’d gotten the call Wednesday from the investigator he’d hired, notifying him that he’d found a sharp decline in the number of voters for several counties in the western part of the state that normally had high voter turnout, Jordan thought he was on to something. But the gap in voter turnout wasn’t as wide as Jordan had anticipated, and there could have been a number of factors that accounted for it, including the weather in that part of the state on Election Day.

Dammit.
Why couldn’t this have been the break he’d been looking for?

He massaged the bridge of his nose. “You’re driving yourself crazy,” Jordan murmured.

“Crazy,” came a little voice from around his feet.

Jordan looked down at Mason, who had started to climb up his leg.

“Did you just call daddy crazy?” He scooped his son up and sat his cushy bottom on the table. “What do you say we finally pick out that Christmas tree before Grandma Nancy comes over and murders Daddy, huh?” He tickled the pudgy rolls underneath Mason’s chin. “You think you’re up for that?”

“Crazy,” Mason said.

“Great.” Jordan groaned, then laughed. “Of all the words you could have picked up on, that’s the one you go with?”

They went through the ten minutes of torture also known as dressing Mason for the cold. The temperature had dropped overnight, so Jordan broke out the heavier coats, along with scarves, gloves and an extra hat for Mason. When he strapped him into his safety seat, the only things visible were his eyes. The poor kid was going to bake under all those layers.

He’d put off buying the tree because it would just be an extra bother, but the more he thought about it, the more he began to look forward to bringing a little Christmas cheer into the house. It was a tradition that he wanted his son to have, memories he wanted him to cherish years from now.

Jordan tried to be mindful of spoiling Mason too much. He’d attended high school with a number of friends who were products of divorce. They had made manipulating their guilt-ridden parents an art form. Jordan never wanted to create that sense of entitlement in Mason, but giving his son the kind of Christmas he had enjoyed as a child wasn’t spoiling him.

He remembered his mother’s warning from a couple of days ago about trimming the low-hanging tree limbs so that Mason couldn’t reach them. That brought about another concern: pine needles all over the floor. He was sure he’d read somewhere that some trees were more susceptible to losing their needles than others, and with the way Mason had of putting everything in his mouth these days, he needed to make sure he bought a tree that wouldn’t have dozens of dead pine needles scattered about the floor.

What in the hell did he know about picking out the safest Christmas tree?

A slow grin lifted one corner of Jordan’s mouth as a thought occurred to him.

He might not know much about trees, but he knew one person who did.

He didn’t give himself time to deliberate before making a U-turn and heading toward Wintersage’s main business district. As he drove toward the yellow-and-white Victorian that housed the Silk Sisters, Jordan tried to discredit the sudden quickening of his pulse. And the reason for it.

He wanted Vicki’s expertise. She worked with this stuff for a living. She could give him advice on the safest tree, the one that would last the longest, maybe even the one that would look the best in his great room. That was all he wanted here—a little advice.

She’s going to see right through you.

Yet he stayed on the same trajectory, because it didn’t matter if she didn’t buy his flimsy excuse. He hadn’t been able to get her off his mind since she’d left his house Tuesday night. Scratch that, since Sandra’s wedding.

Jordan still couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was that had changed about her that had him so intrigued. It couldn’t be just because of her new look, could it? He wasn’t
that
damn shallow, was he?

But what else could it be?

He had always viewed Vicki as just one of Sandra’s friends. He definitely had never looked at her with romantic interest. But Jordan couldn’t deny the current of electricity that had shot through him when he’d first seen her standing on the beach at Sandra’s wedding.

A slow burn started low in his belly.

He could recall with incredible clarity the way his breath had caught in his throat. She’d stolen the air from his lungs, and turned the heads of more than a few of the single men at the reception. The fact that he had even noticed the attention that other men had paid to her that night should have been the first clue that something had changed.

He just didn’t get it. Vicki Ahlfors wasn’t his type. She was restrained and demure, while he tended to gravitate toward sassy and vivacious.

Jordan huffed out a sardonic laugh. His experience with Allison should have taught him something about his “type” and the trouble that it could lead to. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he’d never had much luck with his usual type. Once the shine wore off, he found that he wasn’t all that attracted to what was underneath.

Still, was Vicki the kind of woman he could see himself getting involved with?

“Hell yes,” Jordan whispered to himself. If the excitement skittering across his skin just at the thought of seeing her again was any indication, hell
yes
he could see Vicki becoming much more than just a friend of his sister’s.

The question was did
she
see
him
that way?

Jordan refused to believe he was the only one who’d felt the electricity that had sparked between them Tuesday night. He’d seen it in the way she’d looked at him, in the way her breath had caught. There had been interest in those beautiful brown eyes. Maybe she would be willing to see if there was anything more to the awareness that had ignited in those moments just before she’d left his house.