Damsel Under Stress (7 page)

“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “She didn’t waste much time, did she? I can’t believe you’re letting her kick you out of your own office.”

“Who would you rather share an office with, Kim or Owen?”

“You’ve got a point there.”

The intercom on Trix’s desk buzzed, and Kim’s voice said, “I need you to get IT to bring me a computer right away, and I’d like some coffee.”

Trix rolled her eyes. “Her majesty calls. She’s lucky she’s immune to magic, or I’d be tempted to put a good curse on her.”

As I lugged my belongings down to R&D, I reflected that what I really needed was a fairy godmother for work. True, my love life wasn’t always spectacularly successful, but I didn’t necessarily have the skills, experience, or raw material to be a love goddess. When it came to work, though, you’d think I’d know how to handle myself. I’d started more or less running a business when I was still a teenager, I had a business degree, and I’d survived in the New York City business world for more than a year, but I still felt out of my element when office politics came into play.

Why was it that you could only get a fairy godmother to help you snag Prince Charming with a glass slipper? Where was the benevolent soul who provided the killer presentation, the perfect thing to say to the office backstabber, and the fabulous Armani suit to wear to the crucial meeting? Of course, you’d probably have to make sure you got out of the meeting before the stroke of five, or else that Armani suit would turn into polyester separates from JCPenney and your high-end laptop with the killer presentation would revert to being an Etch-a-Sketch.

If Ethelinda really wanted to help me, she wouldn’t be meddling in my relationship with Owen. She’d help me find a way to hang on to my job and my place in the company without making unnecessary enemies while I worked on what I hoped would be a temporary and one-time-only project. I wondered what she’d say if I told her she needed to update her fairy godmother duties for the twenty-first century now that women had a lot more on their minds than finding a good husband to provide for them.

The door to R&D swung open as I approached, which meant Owen was expecting me. I still had an access crystal Merlin had given me while I worked on my last assignment, but since my hands were full, I was glad for the touch of magical chivalry.

Owen’s eyes widened when I entered his lab with all my worldly office goods. “You’re planning to stay awhile?” he asked.

I set the laptop down on one of the lab tables, let my tote bag fall at my feet, and threw my coat over the back of the nearest chair. “Apparently Kim’s been assigned to handle my administrative and clerical tasks, and she’s already taken over my office. I figure since we’re supposed to be working together, I might as well work down here. Otherwise, it could get ugly.”

“Did you talk to Mr. Mervyn about it?”

I hadn’t even thought of that. I was the youngest child in my family, so I should have honed the tattletale instinct to perfection. “No,” I admitted. “But it does make sense, even if I’m not crazy about her appropriating my desk so quickly. She’s even got a plant and pictures.”

He gestured around the lab. “Well, if you can handle the mess, you’re welcome to claim a spot as yours for the duration. Just don’t rearrange anything.” Owen’s one of those people who looks disorganized but who has everything sorted into piles only he can understand.

“Don’t worry about that. I can’t read half of what you’ve got in here, and I’m not sure I want to know everything you’re working on.”

He looked around the room, as if seeing his own clutter for the first time and suddenly realizing that there was no spot I could take at any of the tables without disturbing his piles, then he waved his hand. A desk appeared in one corner of the lab. “I think there’s a network connection near there. And let’s see, you’ll need walls.” He pushed a wheeled freestanding whiteboard over to shield the desk from the rest of the room. “Anything else?”

It wasn’t as nice as my real office, the one Kim had usurped, but I reminded myself that my office mate more than made up for the difference. The only amenity missing was a phone, and I didn’t mind that so much. It meant I was less likely to be disturbed. “It looks great. Thanks.”

I set up my computer, arranged my few office belongings on the desk, and hung my coat on the top corner of the whiteboard. I’d just settled in when Owen stuck his head around the whiteboard. “Telephone call for you.”

Surprised, I went to his office and took the phone from him. “This is Katie,” I said.

“I thought I’d find you there,” Trix’s voice said in my ear. “I’ve got a call for you. I’ll put it right through.”

A second later, Marcia’s voice said, “Katie?”

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Do you have any plans for Christmas?”

“Nothing set in stone yet. I was planning to tag along with whatever y’all came up with.”

“Well, I just found this insane bargain airfare to Dallas, in case you want to go home. The catch is you have to leave tomorrow and come back Christmas day, but it’s less than half the usual cost. Gemma and I decided to surprise our parents, so we thought we’d let you know in case you wanted to get in on it, too.”

“I’m not sure I could do it,” I said.

“If money’s the problem, I could loan you the cost of the ticket, and you could pay me back.”

“It’s more time than money that’s the issue. I’m not sure I could leave as early as tomorrow. I’m working on a project I just got assigned today, and getting to the airport on Christmas would eat up most of the day.”

“Uh-huh, I know exactly what you need time for: that gorgeous guy you’ve landed. Go back to Texas for a few days and you run the risk of him getting away.”

“That’s not it at all,” I insisted, looking through the office doorway to the lab, where Owen stood in front of the whiteboard, thoughtfully chewing on the end of a dry-erase marker. I lowered my voice and added, “He’s going to his parents’ house for the holiday, anyway.” It occurred to me that if Gemma and Marcia went home for Christmas, I’d be left all alone in the city. Owen would be gone, and Connie’d said her in-laws were coming over. For a moment, I was tempted. How much work would we get done in the next couple of days? But for all I knew, that was when Idris and Ari would wreak havoc.

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said firmly, more to convince myself than to convince her, “but I really don’t think I can make it.”

“You don’t mind if we leave you alone, do you?”

“Are you kidding? It’ll be the longest I’ve had the place to myself since I moved in. I may even change the locks while you’re gone.”

She laughed. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll see you tonight.”

In spite of my assurances to Marcia, I couldn’t help but feel a little lost and lonely as I walked back out into the lab. “Is something wrong?” Owen asked.

“No. It was one of my roommates. They found an airfare sale to go back home for Christmas and were letting me know in case I wanted to go, too.”

“Are you going?”

I shook my head. “Nah. It’s a weird schedule to get that fare, so I’d have to leave here tomorrow, then come back on Christmas itself. It’s several hours to the airport from my parents’ house, so I wouldn’t even be able to stay for Christmas dinner. My roommates are from around Dallas, so it’s a lot easier for them.”

“You’re going to be stuck by yourself for Christmas?”

“Yeah, but it won’t be so bad. It’ll be nice to have some peaceful alone time.”

“You could come with me.” He said it casually as he uncapped his marker and moved toward the board to write something on it.

“With you? You and your foster parents are just starting to work things out. You don’t need an outsider there.”

“I’d love an outsider there,” he said, still facing the board, his back to me. “Think of it as a buffer zone.”

“But would they want me there?”

“You’ve already been invited.”

“What?” This was awfully fast to be meeting the folks. We’d only just kissed for the first time when magic wasn’t involved a few days ago. Now I was already invited home for the holidays?

“Not like that,” he said, finally turning around to face me. His cheeks had turned the shade of pink that meant he was very uncomfortable. He didn’t quite look me in the eye as he spoke. “I’d already told them about you—not as someone I’m dating but as a friend from work who’s relatively new to the city. When they invited me to come for Christmas, they suggested that I could invite you if you didn’t have other plans. Until now, I suspected you had other plans. But if you don’t, you’re welcome to come.”

For Owen, that was a long, heartfelt speech. It also demonstrated that although he was a genius when it came to stuff like magic, research, and translation, he could be a little clueless when it came to women. If he’d talked enough about me for his foster mother to notice and feel as though she should invite me, then she was dying of curiosity about me and wanted to make sure I was worthy of him. And that made this a potentially tricky situation.

“You’re sure it won’t be really awkward?” I asked.

“Oh, it’ll be awkward. But it will be whether or not you’re there. It may be less awkward for me with you there.”

“But what about me? I have a feeling it’ll be more awkward for me there than it would be if I stayed here.”

He took a step closer to me and gave me the shy smile that had totally floored me when I first met him. “I’d really appreciate it if you came along with me.”

He was impossible to resist when he was like that. I also couldn’t deny that I was curious about his foster parents, and I didn’t particularly want to spend Christmas alone in this city. “Okay, I’ll go,” I said. “What’s the itinerary, and what should I bring?”

He grinned, and for a second I thought he’d kiss me or at least hug me, but we were at work, and Owen was nothing if not proper. “I was planning to take the train up the morning of Christmas Eve and come back the morning after Christmas. It’s about an hour-long trip. Does that work for you?”

“Owen, we work at the same place, so we’re on the same schedule,” I reminded him.

He flushed slightly, “I didn’t know if you might have any other plans. As for what you need to bring, well, they tend to be rather formal, so you can expect to dress for dinner, and a church service Christmas Eve night is mandatory. You won’t need to bring anything for the dinner. That will have been planned in detail well in advance.”

“I should probably bring gifts. Any suggestions?”

“You were the one who helped me buy my gifts for them,” he reminded me. I refrained from telling him that his gifts had been far, far out of my price range. Great, now I not only had to find an appropriate gift for him, but it had to be appropriate enough to give him in front of the closest thing he had to a family. And, I had to find something for them that wouldn’t make them hate me on sight. The way he described them, I pictured his foster parents as being very stern and forbidding. Still, they couldn’t be all bad for him to have turned out so nice. It wasn’t like there was a niceness gene. That usually had something to do with one’s upbringing.

“Then we’re set,” he said, smiling so brightly that I was glad I’d agreed to go. If it made him that happy, I was certainly game. “I’ll check the train schedule and let you know what time we’ll need to leave from Grand Central. In the meantime, what do you say to spending the day before that together?”

I blinked, trying to catch up. “Huh?” I said, showing how smooth I was at this male-female communication process. He wasn’t the only one who had a thing or two to learn.

“Well, we have noticed that the one thing that seems to bring Ari out of the woodwork is us together. What could be more tempting than the two of us, spending the day enjoying all the romance of Christmas in New York City?”

“So you mean we’d be doing this as work?”

He gave me that shy smile again. “We could have fun, too. That’s certainly allowed. In fact, it would work even better if we were having fun.”

“I guess if we have to do it to get our jobs done, then I’m willing,” I said with a wink. “I should warn you, though, I think I’ve seen every movie that involves any kind of Christmas scene in New York, so my expectations are pretty high.”

“I can’t guarantee a pretty snowfall—well, I probably could, but altering weather patterns is usually frowned upon—but I’ll see what else I can come up with.”

I didn’t think he was likely to kiss me at work, but he was awfully close to me. Our heads were practically touching, and neither of us would have had to move much if we wanted to kiss. Then the sound of a throat clearing made us jump apart. Of course, that made us look guilty, like there had been something going on. I turned to see Owen’s assistant, Jake, who seemed to be trying to look anywhere but at us. “Uh, boss, just bringing your mail,” he said. From the way he acted, you’d think he’d caught us undressed and rolling around on the lab floor.

Owen didn’t help matters when he turned several different shades of red and took the long way around the lab table to take the mail from Jake instead of walking past me. Looking guilty was a sure way of giving the impression that something was going on. “Thank you, Jake,” Owen said firmly, the implied dismissal clear in his tone.

Jake didn’t move. “What’s this I hear about Ari getting away?” he asked.

“Yes, she got away. Thanks for bringing the mail.”

“Wow. I wonder how she pulled that off. That was quite a scene at the party Friday night.”

I was pretty sure Jake was talking about the showdown that had taken place among Idris, Ari, Owen, and me instead of Owen kissing me, but I still felt my face turning red. I ducked back into my makeshift cubicle and let Owen deal with Jake. I had enough to worry about now that I was meeting Owen’s family.

That evening was consumed by a flurry of packing as both of my roommates got ready for their trip home for the holidays. I got assigned Laundromat duty to help them get some last-minute loads done while they packed.

“I hate to leave you alone like this,” Gemma said as she folded and packed the last load I’d brought back.

I continued sorting through the laundry basket for the items of mine I’d thrown into the load. “Actually, I’m going home with Owen.”