Once Upon a Christmas Eve (10 page)

“Gone.”

Silence gathered again. When the ex–college linebacker spoke again his affable tone was back. “You didn't get a
reputation for being hard-ass thorough for nothing, did you, Callahan? Thanks for the heads-up.”

It was Max's turn to pause. “No problem. Just wanted to know if you were still interested.”

“I am. Definitely.”

Max didn't hear a trace of doubt in his partner's tone, nothing at all to indicate that the little bombshell he'd just dropped had given him anything more than a few moments pause. That didn't seem anything like the man he knew, the man who made it a rule to never date a woman two weeks in a row so she wouldn't get serious. But then, nothing about his partner and Tommi Fairchild made any sense. Not to him.

“This might change my approach,” he heard Scott admit, “but I'm still in the game. Keep the ball rolling with her, okay? I'll be back next week. And about those résumés,” he went on, shifting gears with the ease of a race-car driver, “it might be a while before I get to them. Gray wants to close on one of the properties here. I'm going to be tied up for a while.”

Since HuntCom was one of their biggest accounts, he told him he was glad to hear that. That their commission would be in the two-million range also softened any irritation he might have felt over yet another delay with staffing the so far nonexistent East Coast branch. Moments later, he ended the call as he aimed for the freeway on-ramp.

The status of their own business wasn't what had mattered to him, anyway. He'd just wanted to know if Scott was still interested in pursuing the woman. Since he hadn't let himself think about why he'd wanted to know that before he'd texted him, now that he knew how truly infatuated his partner was, he wasn't going to think about it now, either. He would just handle her account the way he would any other—and stuff down the protectiveness he didn't want
right along with everything else he didn't want to feel for her, anyway.

If there was anything Max could do, it was block what he didn't want to deal with. After all, he'd had a lifetime of practice. Yet, whether he wanted to acknowledge it or not, that protectiveness was still there, along with all of his defenses, when he returned to the bistro after Tommi's call two days later.

T
he cold drizzle that had leaked from the gray sky all Sunday morning was taking a break when Max parked in front of the bistro. From the looks of the wreath on a large, red storage box under its domed green awning and the ladder nearby, Tommi had decided to use the undoubtedly brief respite to put up Christmas decorations.

She just didn't appear to be anywhere around.

Since the bistro was closed for the day, Max headed for the corner of the redbrick building to go around back, passing a row of two-foot-high faux fir trees on his way. They occupied the long iron planter box below the arching gold
THE CORNER BISTRO
stenciled on the large front window.

When he'd been there a couple of days ago, the planter had overflowed with some sort of flowers in yellow and rust.

Twenty feet ahead, he saw Tommi poke her head around the corner of the building.

She'd heard a vehicle slow on the wet pavement, heard the slam of a door after it stopped. Seeing Max walk from the expensive black Mercedes that hadn't been there minutes ago, her heart gave a funny little jump.

He had his hands tucked into the front pockets of his casual cords. The stance pulled back the sides of the heavy squall jacket that made his shoulders look huge, and exposed the crew-neck sweater stretched over his hard chest. He looked very large, very male and despite his faint smile when he saw her, very preoccupied.

To her relief, no mention had been made of how she'd wound up in his arms when they'd talked briefly on the phone Friday afternoon, and nothing he'd said indicated any misgivings about continuing to do business with her.

Her own uncertainties about the partnership had compounded, though.

“I'll just be a minute,” she called. One of the clauses in the proposal he'd left dealt with putting their own manager on-site. He assured her that the proposal simply covered all the bases and that the point was negotiable. Still, its existence added another stress to the awkwardness and anxiety she felt now that he was here. “I should have had these up last weekend.”

With the nod of his dark head and his distracted, “No rush,” she went back to lining up faux trees in the planter below the window on the park side of her bistro. She didn't want to keep him waiting, but she really needed to finish what she'd put off far longer than she should have.

This would be her third Christmas since she'd opened the restaurant. The two years before, she'd plunged head-first into the joy of the season and changed the decor from “fall” to “holiday” over Thanksgiving weekend. With her life totally upended, joy missing, the task simply hadn't been a priority.

For a number of reasons, she made it a priority now. She didn't want to cheat her customers of the sparkle and cheer of a holiday atmosphere. Or her neighbors. Or her staff. She especially didn't want one of her sisters or her mom dropping by and wondering why her decorations weren't up. “Looks nice.”

Max had rounded the corner.

“Thanks,” she murmured, stressed enough without the unnerving way his glance slid over her. In the space of seconds, his assessing blue eyes moved from the scrunchie holding her high ponytail in place, to her cocoa-colored parka and down the length of her jeans. Since she hadn't been able to zip up her favorite pair that morning, she was wearing her fat ones; the pair that, under other circumstances, would have had her ruthlessly cutting carbs until her skinnier ones fit again. It seemed as if she'd thickened around her waist almost overnight.

She could have sworn his glance lingered on her middle.

She stepped back from the planter. Trying not to worry about whatever he was thinking, she frowned at the middle tree in the compact row of seven.

Max walked up behind her, looked over the top of her head.

“The middle one needs to go left.”

She could almost feel his heat radiating into her back. Too conscious of him, definitely not needing the way his nearness toyed with her nerves, she moved back to the window.

She edged the little tree to one side, adjusted the one next to it.

“Better,” he concluded.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

“What else do you need to do out here?” he asked. “Unless you need your notes, we can talk while we do it.”

She had far more color than when he'd last seen her. Her cheeks were pinked by the cold breeze, her unadorned mouth was the color of a blush. Her eyes looked tired to him, though. Bothered by the latter, not questioning why, Max focused on the caution lifting from those dark depths. Even as it relieved him to see her smile forming, he reminded himself he was there to close a deal. He might as well get it done as quickly as possible.

“Thanks, but I wouldn't want to impose.”

“You wouldn't be. I'm here, anyway.”

The delicate wing of one eyebrow arched. “Is that the two-birds-with-one-stone approach to negotiating?”

“Whatever works,” he replied, his shrug tight.

His offer was a two-edged sword. Helping her outside while they discussed the issues they needed to address seemed infinitely preferable to being with her in the confines of her empty bistro. On the other hand, the last thing he wanted was to get involved in a decorating thing. The entire holiday season was something he didn't so much ignore as he did endure. He didn't have the luxury of ignoring it. There were too many parties to attend and too many clients to remember with gifts and cards and whatever else Margie reminded him needed to be done to pretend the season didn't exist. So he simply tolerated it instead, and used it as a marketing tool.

“If you're willing,” Tommi conceded, “that would be great. I usually put lights around the windows. The little white ones like those,” she said, motioning to the pre-wrapped lights on the fake firs. “But I'd been thinking about just going with ‘simple' this year.” The savings to her personal energy aside, she'd thought it would be pretty
enough with the lights on the little trees reflecting on the windows at night.

But pretty enough wasn't as pretty as it could be.

She didn't care at all for the idea of doing less than her best.

“If you were a customer here,” she prefaced, “which would you rather see? Understated decorations, or more festive ones?”

“I'm not the right person to ask.”

Tommi opened her mouth, closed it again. Considering his list of opinions about the rest of her operation, she had trouble believing that he'd go mute on something so visible. “But you eat out,” she reminded him as they started around the corner. “Do you think people feel something is missing if decorations are subtle?”

“It depends on how they feel about this time of year. Some people probably want all the…trappings,” he called them. “Some people don't.”

The breeze blew a loose strand of hair across her cheek. Tipping her head so the wind could blow it back, she glanced over to see that he still had his hands jammed into his pockets. His left hand jingled his keys. Despite his conversational tone, there seemed to be a hint of defensiveness in his voice. That same subtle guard etched his profile as she stopped short of the bistro's front door.

He was one of those people who wished Christmas would disappear. She felt that as surely as she did her own disconnect from the season now. She just had no idea how long his aversion had existed.

“I wasn't thinking of how difficult this time of year can be for some people.” She'd been so caught up in her scramble to regain her sense of security that she'd considered little beyond what was required of her. “I know what
you mean, though. I had a hard time with holidays for a long time, too.

“I was ten when my dad died,” she said, since he already knew she'd grown up without him. “Before that, I remember Christmas being this wonderful sense of anticipation with parties and lights…”
And feeling utterly safe in that little world,
she thought. “For a long time after, Mom went through the motions for us, but it was never the same.

“It took a long time to really look forward to the holidays,” she admitted, picking up a wreath from atop the plastic tub of lights. “But seeing everyone else happy made me happy, too. So, the spirit did come back. Just in a different way.”

Lifting the wreath to the chalkboard mounted between the front door and the window, she hung it on the little hook above it. The words on the board,
Welcome to The Corner Bistro,
weren't actually written on it in chalk. She'd just had them painted to look that way.

With the greeting now encircled in noble fir and pine, she turned to meet the quiet curiosity in his otherwise guarded features.

“I'm sorry about whatever it was that took the joy out of the season for you, Max. If whatever it is was recent, or if this time of year is still difficult, please don't think you need to help with any of this. I'll quit now and we can go inside.”

He'd stopped toying with his keys, but the guard in his expression remained as he considered her. “It stopped being difficult a long time ago. I just look at it all now as a way to maintain client contacts.” He nodded toward the box beside her. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

She'd all but asked him to open up to her. At least a little. She truly didn't want to overstep herself, and she certainly
didn't want to make a potentially recent hurt worse. She just needed badly to know more about him.

Even without the need to know who she might be going into business with, she would have wanted to know what memory of his home had brought the quick distance about him the other day, and why he'd been so adamant about a man's obligation to support his child when he'd just as clearly not liked the idea of having children himself. She wanted to know, too, why she sensed such restlessness in him. And what made him so inherently kind, yet so closed and inaccessible.

She wanted to know if he ever felt the need to let someone in.

“I'm sorry about your father,” he said, but gave her nothing else.

The breeze picked up the scent of fresh pine from the wreath, scattered curled leaves down the wet sidewalk. With the tails of the red ribbon on the ring of greenery fluttering behind Tommi, Max watched the sympathy in her expression give way to apology for having bumped into something obviously uncomfortable for him. There was something more there, too. He just wouldn't let himself wonder what it was as she murmured, “Thank you,” and turned away.

Her perception had caught him completely off guard. So had her concern for him. Not sure what to make of either, or how to take away the quick unease he'd caused her to feel, he settled for dismissing the concern as inconsequential and tried to ignore the rest.

“If you don't mind, you can help me put lights around the windows.”

Thinking she looked more tired, and more wary, than she probably realized, he looked up. The top of the window was only nine feet or so from the sidewalk. Not far, but too
far to stretch. “I don't mind. You shouldn't be on a ladder, anyway.”

“Why not?”

Max's expression remained utterly unreadable to Tommi. So did his glance as it slid to where her jacket covered her stomach.

“You just shouldn't.” A frown finally surfaced. “How do you hang those things?”

“On the clips. They're inside the frame. But wait a minute,” she said, catching his arm as he started past her.

Conscious of how the muscle in his jaw jerked when he met her eyes, she pulled away her hand. She didn't step back, though, not even from his odd displeasure. Though the street was all but deserted, she didn't want her voice to carry on the chill breeze.

“I'm only pregnant,” she murmured, afraid her condition was influencing him after all. “It's not like a disease or a disability, Max. I can do everything I usually do. I told you the other day that I'll keep up all the things I've always done here. I meant that.”

“I wasn't insinuating that you couldn't keep up.”

The woman was determined to a fault. Stubborn, too. But what he saw in her gentle features looked too vulnerable for him to believe it was just her independence driving her.

“I was only thinking that you look pretty tired, and that you might not want to fall.” He hated that she kept stressing so much. It couldn't possibly be good for her. “The ladder is wet and your soles are leather. Mine aren't.”

Her glance fell to their feet. Her boots were suede with a stylish little heel. His heftier ones were made for hiking. He was just being logical, she realized. And thoughtful. The way he had been at the hotel. And the other day when he'd stayed close so he could catch her again if she fell.

He was looking out for her.

That realization touched her in ways she knew she shouldn't let matter, but mattered far too much, anyway.

“Just for the record,” he added, “I have no doubt that you'll continue pushing to do everything you do. Stop worrying. Okay?”

His phrasing lent an odd edge to his assurance. But that assurance was all she cared about just then.

“Does that mean you'll drop the on-site manager clause?” she asked.

The edge faded.

“We'll drop it,” he agreed. “We'll go with a modified silent partnership.”

“Modified?”

“Come on. Hand me some lights before it starts raining again,” he said. “We'll talk while we get them up.

“By modifying,” he explained, climbing the ladder as she unwound the string of clear lights, “I mean the company will take our agreed-on forty percent interest in your business in return for paying for the expansion. For the first year, we'll also pay all salaries, including the new chef's.” He took the string she handed him, turned to the window. “You'll retain full creative and managerial control and send us monthly reports, but we'll set caps on salaries and insurance.”

Her sixty percent left her with controlling interest. That part was huge. It was the part she couldn't control that bothered her. “I'm still not comfortable with cutting pay and benefits.”