Once Upon a Christmas Eve (4 page)

Sunshine, he thought. She had a smile like sunshine. Warm. Renewing.

Healing.

That warmth seemed to touch something deep inside him. Something buried in a place he hadn't even realized existed until he felt the tension inside himself easing, too. He'd lived with that restiveness for so long it had become as familiar as breathing.

The unexpected thoughts came out of nowhere. Much like the unfamiliar need he'd felt to shield her from adding to her embarrassment at the hotel yesterday.

He wasn't at all sure what to make of her effect on him. He did know, though, that he had no business letting her affect him at all.

She'd removed a manila envelope from the portfolio. “These are copies of my profit and loss statements and projections for next year. It's what the banks said they needed, but if you need anything else, I'll get a copy to you as soon as I can.”

He took what she held, a faint edge entering his voice.

“You've been trying to get a loan.”

“Trying,” she admitted, suddenly cautious, though from his question or his tone, he couldn't tell.

“I'm not promising we can do business, either,” he warned. If he couldn't legitimately justify a partnership, Scott could always steer her in another direction, if that was what he wanted to do. For now, all he wanted himself was to make sure the lines between her and Scott stayed open. “You should know that being vetted for a partnership doesn't work quite the same way as applying for a loan.

“This is good,” he said, holding up the envelope, “but I'll
need to go over your books. I'll need to look around here, too.” There'd be inventory to verify, employees to discuss, possible changes to go over before commitments could be made. If they were made at all. “When is a good time for that?”

“Between two-thirty and five-thirty. That's when I'm closed to do the final prep for dinner or run errands if I have to,” she explained, wondering if it was her quick tension she felt. Or his. “My staff is almost always gone by three and comes back about five.”

Aware of movement in the kitchen, her voice dropped. “I'd really rather no one knows what all is going on until I have everything in place. It's bad for morale if staff thinks there's a financial problem.”

There was also the matter of her sisters. Since a couple of them tended to drop by unannounced, if her chatty staff knew what she was looking into, then her family might eventually hear. Her family would then want to know why she was sacrificing her financial independence and she'd have to tell them about the baby. She was nowhere near ready for that.

“Or Monday evening,” she added, more than willing to accommodate. “I'm closed then. And Sunday.”

Beneath the dark, windblown hair tumbling over his brow, Max's heavy eyebrows merged. “What do you mean, what ‘all' is going on? I can understand keeping financial arrangements private, but don't they already know you're hiring another chef?”

“Of course they do,” she assured him. They'd suffered through the other cooks right along with her. “I just…” She hesitated, scrambling to think of a graceful way to get past the totally unintended slip of her tongue. “I just have some personal things going on,” she admitted, minimizing
hugely. “Nothing that will affect what you're doing,” she concluded. “Honest.”

He wasn't sure he believed that. “Personal things” had a way of affecting everything else, which was why he kept his personal life limited to whatever helped him in business.

Behind him, quick footsteps came to a halt.

“Sorry, Tommi,” he heard the younger waitress say, “but you have an onion soup, two scallops and a panini.”

“Thanks, Shelby. I'm on my way.”

“I'll call you,” he said, stepping back as footsteps hurried off.

Her response was to hit him with that smile again as the other waitress came through, talking about someone out front who wanted to see her about booking a Christmas party for twenty on the ninth.

When he walked out, he could hear her telling the waitress they already had a party booked on that date, but that she'd talk to the customer herself. What he told himself was to stop wondering if she was still smiling and to focus on the questions she'd already raised about her business.

He could have staffed out all those queries. Most, he did. A couple, he looked into himself. But between what he found and the report that came back to him from L&C's data collection section, what he learned about the appealing Ms. Fairchild elicited far more questions than answers.

I
n the two days since Max Callahan had walked out of Tommi's kitchen, she'd tried hard not to dwell on what he might be thinking of her little operation. The prospects were just too discouraging. Now that she'd had time to consider just how big Layman & Callahan was, she had the feeling she was seriously out of their league when it came to investments.

Mostly, she'd considered Max himself.

She knew successful men. She knew handsome men. She knew wealthy players and sharks and the sort of guys who could sweep a girl off her feet, then walk away without a backward glance—the latter, from personal experience. The rest she'd grown up knowing, encountered in her mother's and Uncle Harry's social circles or rubbed elbows with working in upscale restaurants over the years. They were also the sort of men her older sisters tended to attract. But Max seemed to be in a league of his own—a combination
of all of the above. And the future of nearly everything she cared about rested in his very capable-looking hands.

With him due to arrive in minutes to go over her books, his hands were something she tried not to think about as she pulled a rack of steaming plates from the dishwasher and pushed in the next load. Thinking about them reminded her of what she'd felt when he'd touched her. The moment had been fleeting, less than a minute out of that whole awkward encounter the day she'd first met him. Yet, no matter how she'd tried to deny it, the need for the reassurance she'd felt at that contact still lingered. So had the unfamiliar, oddly threatening yearning he had aroused.

The quiet sense of discipline about him spoke of a man accustomed to responsibility, of someone in control of himself and everything around him. The easy confidence he exuded made it seem as if he could handle anything thrown in his path. Then, there was that quiet sense of strength that made a woman fantasize about leaning on him, letting him bear her burdens for her. Or, at the least, taking them away long enough for her to adjust to their weight.

Not, she reminded herself as she added soap and lowered the washer's hood, that he had given her any indication whatsoever that he'd be inclined to allow such a possibility. And not that she had any intention of leaning on him or any other man. Despite her mother's murmurings of late about seeing her daughters “settled,” Cornelia Fairchild had raised all four of her girls to stand on their own, to deal with whatever came up and move on.

That, and to be financially independent.

There had been a time when Tommi probably wouldn't have had to worry about money at all. Her father had been their Uncle Harry's business partner and part owner of HuntCom, the computer company that had become the industry's giant. When her father had died a little over
eighteen years ago, the company hadn't been near the size it was now, but it had already been worth millions. They'd lived in a beautiful neighborhood, in a beautiful home. Tommi and her sisters had attended private schools with other children of privilege. They'd traveled, had a cook and a housekeeper and had truly lacked for nothing.

Unlike Harry Hunt, who happened to be brilliant when it came to computers but who treated his own sons with the compassion of a silicon chip, George Fairchild had been an affable, involved father who'd doted on his girls and their mom. Tommi had adored him. He hadn't seemed to mind that she wasn't as athletic and outgoing as Bobbie, as witty and cerebral as Frankie or as striking and musically gifted as Georgie. She'd been the quiet one—not shy so much as simply content to stay in the background, or hang out in the kitchen with the cook. Her dad had loved her brownies. Even the dry ones. Or so he'd said.

He'd been her knight in shining armor, her hero, the center of her universe. When an unexpected heart attack had taken him when Tommi was ten years old, she'd been devastated.

They all had been. But they hadn't just lost a husband and father. No one had known until then that George Fairchild had a gambling problem. He'd owned half of HuntCom, but he'd used most of his share of the company's stock to secure loans to support his habit. He'd mortgaged the house to the hilt, gambled away money he should have used to pay life insurance premiums, which meant there'd been little insurance at all, and left a mountain of gaming debt.

There were details Tommi hadn't been privy to; things her mother had chosen to spare her and her sisters and never shared in the aftermath of that shattering discovery. Though their mom had somehow made sure they stayed
in the same good schools, all Tommi had really known at the time was that they'd had to move from their lovely home, that their housekeeper and cook hadn't gone with them and that their mother had spent years paying off those obligations. Except to pay for school trips, she'd absolutely refused Uncle Harry's help. Her husband had created the mess, so she would clean it up. She would not rely on Harry's charity.

Tommi hadn't known if it had been pride or something more nebulous that had guided her mother back then. For all she knew, it might well have been self-preservation. After all, having placed all her faith in one man only to have him let her down so badly, it made sense that she wouldn't want to count on another. Or maybe what she hadn't wanted was whatever obligation Harry's help might have created.

It had been a lesson learned, though. One Tommi had taken to heart. If a woman didn't rely on a man, he couldn't let her down. Even after all these years, she remembered how lost she'd felt without her father and the awful uncertainty she'd grown up with, having had her sense of security so thoroughly shaken.

She couldn't remember exactly when she'd decided she would do whatever it took to get that sense of security back. She just knew she'd also promised herself that, once she had, she would never put herself in a position to feel that way again.

Yet, it was security that was missing from her life now, and what she needed badly to restore. For herself. For her child. The little life growing inside her at that very moment depended on her to make the right choices for her future. Her. It would be a girl. She felt that as surely as she did the need to at least pretend to be as strong as her mother had been back then.

It was the least of what her mother would expect of her now.

With that thought pushing her, she moved to her next task and opened one of the ovens to check the progress of her cassoulet. Breaking the crust, she ladled its broth over the mélange of meats and white beans. The motions were routine, and comforting in their familiarity. In her kitchen, she felt confident, capable. She had her father to thank for that. Cooking had become her escape from the awful pain of life without him all those years ago, as well as a way to contribute to her family's care. It was not knowing if the partnership she needed would actually materialize that made it feel as if the rest of the floor just waited to be pulled out from under her.

Then there was Max himself. The fact that he had her feeling so off balance didn't help at all.

The ladle clattered against the side of the pan. She didn't want the thoughts he provoked; that unfamiliar and persistent need to be assured that everything would be all right. It was up to her to make things okay. No one else. As for the need to be held, she'd chalk that up to hormones, pretty much the way she had her craving for the sugary, dry cereal that kept her nausea at bay in the mornings.

She couldn't believe she was actually eating the empty-carb-loaded stuff, much less eating it straight from its cartoon packaging. But she could use a handful of her hidden stash now.

The security camera above her back door sent images to the small monitor near the kitchen's wall clock. As the buzzer by the door's frame sounded and her glance darted to the screen, she just wasn't sure if the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach had been brought on by the heat of the dishwasher and oven or because her potential savior had just jump-started those touchy nerves.

Max's secretary had said he'd be there at three-fifteen. The man was nothing if not punctual.

“Come on in,” she called, pushing the heavy pan back into the heat.

With all in her kitchen under control for the moment, she rested her hand over the uneasy sensation in her stomach and tossed the hot pads onto the prep station. She didn't have time to get to her Puff Pops. Hearing the solid thud of male footsteps coming through the alleyway door, she opted for the rescue she used when others were around and made a quick dash into her small walk-in refrigerator.

There, between a rack of eggs and dairy on one side and fresh-that-morning Dungeness crabs and halibut steaks on the other, she unbuttoned the top buttons of her chef's jacket and peeled back the layers of fabric to let the cold air hit her upper chest. The double-breasted garment was designed to cover a cook well enough to keep hot, spattering liquids from reaching flesh and burning, and also to button the opposite way so the fabric always appeared clean, but lately, all that material could feel awfully warm.

Even as the blessedly cold air cooled her skin and filled her lungs, she realized the sensation in her stomach now seemed mostly like knotted nerves.

Slowly breathing out, insisting to herself that it was the situation causing the anxiety and not the man she was about to see, she stepped from the chilly space prepared to offer him a business-like hello and a cup of coffee.

Her glance had barely moved from the broad shoulders of his trench coat to the carved lines of his profile when her greeting froze. Max had stopped not far from where the dishwasher quietly sloshed and steamed through its cycle. Rather than facing into the kitchen and looking for her, he aimed a scowl in the direction he'd come.

He must have sensed her there.

With his dark eyebrows drawn into a slash, his narrowed glance darted from the back door to where she'd emerged from behind one of stainless steel. The charcoal color of his coat deepened the quicksilver blue of his eyes. The sight of her seemed to deepen his frown.

“What's wrong?” she asked.

He looked from the knot of hair on her head to the deep vee of skin she'd exposed below her collarbone. The fuller feminine cleavage she'd recently developed seemed to catch his glance, holding it long enough to cause her heart to bump hard against her ribs.

Having quite effectively quickened her pulse, his eyebrows tightened an instant before his focus flicked to her face.

“Do you always leave the back door unlocked?”

Conscious of where his eyes had touched, just as aware of his inexplicable displeasure, she nudged one side of her lapel a bit higher. “Only when the front door is bolted and I'm expecting someone back here.”

“You should rethink that. That alley is pretty secluded. Anyone could have walked in,” he informed her, his attention fixed firmly on her face. “There were two derelicts out there just now, hanging around the Dumpster.”

She'd thought before that he wasn't a man to waste time. She was now convinced of it. He hadn't even been inside before he'd started noting the pros and cons of his possible investment. If the thoughtful furrows in his brow were any indication, he was already thinking in terms of illegal entry, increased insurance rates, replacement costs and potential claims for bodily injury.

“I don't make it a habit,” she assured him, because she really wasn't careless. “Are they still out there?”

“They left when they saw me.”

The scowl undoubtedly did it, she thought. And his size.
He still didn't strike her as the total jock-type the way his partner had. He seemed more urbane than that. Still, there was no denying the large and commanding quality about the man. “Was the older one wearing a Mariners ball cap and the other a red knit hat and a fatigue jacket?”

“You know them?”

“I know they're not dangerous,” she assured him. “They come around every day when I close for the afternoon. They just had lunch, so they were probably finishing their coffee. May I take your coat?”

His frown remained. It just changed quality as he set down his briefcase. Shrugging off his outerwear, he handed it over with a distracted “Thanks,” and absently straightened the jacket of his beautifully tailored suit.

The fabric of his overcoat held the heat of his body, and the subtle scents of fresh air and something woodsy and warm. She'd breathed in that unforgettable combination before.

Now, the scents brought back the memory of what she'd spent two days trying to forget: the feel of his hand protectively circling her arm, and the stabilizing calm in his deep voice when he'd warned her of the couple she'd have undoubtedly mowed down in her haste to leave the hotel.

Realizing she was hugging his coat, hoping he hadn't noticed, she murmured, “You're welcome,” and headed for her office to hang it behind the door.

“Do they come around every day?” he asked, following.

“Only when it's not raining. I think they stay at a shelter or wherever it is they sleep when the weather's bad.” She didn't know what to make of the disapproval in his tone any more than she did the unconscious need she'd felt to hold in his warmth. It wasn't as if the admittedly disreputable-looking men hung around out front and scared
away customers. Unless someone walked past the alley on their way up or down the block, no one would even know they were there. “I usually have a couple of servings of the previous night's specials left over, so that's what I give them. If I don't have that, I make them a sandwich and give them whatever soup I've made for the day.

“In return,” she pointed out, talking from the other side of her office door, “they pick up any trash the wind has blown into the alley. Since they're out there for a while when I'm here alone this time of day, I don't have to worry if I need to leave the back door unlocked, like I did for you.”

“But you don't know anything about them,” he concluded from the hallway.

His tone was as flat as the crepes she'd had on the menu for breakfast. When she opened the door, his expression held that same dispassion.