For This Christmas Only

by Caro Carson

  She glared at the photo, her eyes blurring again, of course, because she was upset, damn it. She had seen this smile on Saturday night. Early on, when he’d stiffly suggested she return to her friends and family at the festival, this practiced, cold smile had given her a moment of déjà vu. Through the beard and shaggy hair, through the flames reflected in his eyes and the bitter set of the lines in his face, she’d recognized that empty smile.

  Yoga breaths. She couldn’t freak out in her cubicle.

  She shoved the book into her backpack and placed her hands on the keyboard. She was on the clock; she’d better work. She needed this job, because she needed the financial aid package it was part of. She needed the financial aid to cover her tuition and discount her dorm, because she needed to finish her degree, because she needed the clout it would give her when she met with investors. It was all a cascade of steps. E. L. Taylor had taught her that.

  The very last step was supposed to have been his investment in her new business. She’d designed a better way to match caregivers and clients, a better way to meet the needs of both, but there was no conceivable way she could present it to him now. He’d be able to point to every part she’d already told him was weak. He’d laugh at her.

  No, he wouldn’t laugh at her. She wouldn’t give him the chance. She would never speak to him again.

  One minute later, without having pressed a single key, she dove under her desk again for her backpack and pulled out her book. The man in the photo was different in more ways than being clean-cut and clean-shaven. His expression was untroubled, unconcerned as he paused to look into the camera. It was the same expression she’d seen in his photos in business journals.

  Nobody else in her family enjoyed Shark Tank and its discussions of valuation and equity, but Mallory had watched clips of her hero’s guest appearance on her cell phone. He’d been polished, remote, somewhat amused.

  The man she’d met last week was hardened. It had been a struggle for him to interact with her at all, at first. She’d left him to his brooding, but he’d come after her, offering to buy her hot chocolate, wanting a chance to speak in complete sentences to a fellow human being. His sense of humor and his charm had gotten rusty with disuse. Because...

  Why? What had made the man in this photograph turn into the angry man she’d run to for protection?

  I don’t care. He lied to me.

  She tossed the book onto a stack of completed paperwork in the corner of her cubicle.

  That pile wasn’t going to get any higher today. Mallory couldn’t sit here until quitting time, waiting for the office door to open and Eli to walk out.

  Eli. Had that been a joke, too? E.L. sounded close to Eli. That must have made it easier for him to keep up the pretense.

  She was a dunce.

  Mallory logged out of her work profile. Students were allowed to modify their work hours for academic necessities, when exams needed to be studied for and special projects were due. She had a special project: find a new hero.

  She zipped up her backpack and headed for the door, leaving her book behind.

  * * *

  “Mallory. Mallory!”

  Mallory jumped a mile at the tap on her shoulder. She’d started wearing headphones after last Wednesday, when Mr. Taylor had surprised everyone by appearing weeks ahead of schedule. The music prevented her from listening for office doors opening and closing down the hall as the bigwigs like Mr. Taylor came and went at their leisure. This had made her a little less tense throughout the workday. She blended right in with the other interns who’d been doing it all semester.

  Still, she was embarrassed that her supervisor had to physically tap her on the shoulder to get her attention, even if her peers had to be tapped all the time. Her peers were generally nineteen.

  Mallory tugged on the string to her earphones, letting them fall into her lap with a little plastic clatter. “I’m sorry, Irene. Could you repeat that?”

  Irene handed her a set of forms. “I need you to complete this, print a fresh copy and deliver it to Mr. Taylor.”

  “Oh...no. I can’t. I’m busy.”

  Irene looked at Mallory’s monitor. “Busy doing what? Processing transcript requests? For goodness’s sake, take care of this first. Mr. Taylor is waiting.”

  Mallory dutifully spread the forms out on her desk, but the moment Irene’s office door clicked shut, Mallory opened a desk drawer and pulled out her mini cosmetics bag, the one she kept for touch-ups throughout the day to maintain her professional appearance.

  She’d been having huge debates with herself every morning on what to wear. Nothing as mundane as deciding which blouse would go with which skirt. Instead, she’d had to decide if she should wear business attire at all. She changed her mind daily.

  Eli—Mr. Taylor—knew she wasn’t required to wear it. He knew it was her silly way to pretend she had a job that required her to dress like an executive. Since he knew she was faking it, she should no longer try to fake it.

  On the other hand, she was so angry with Mr. Taylor for all the wisecracks he’d made about not meeting her hero if they weren’t equal, she was going to dress like an executive if he was going to dress like an executive.

  The daily debate gave her an outlet for her angry emotions. She pulled things out of her microscopic dorm room closet, tossed them on her institutional twin bed, made a mess and blamed Eli. She was afraid if she stopped dwelling on the trivial and started remembering how he’d hugged her while she’d cried, her tears would start again and never stop.

  This morning, dressing like an executive had won. She completed the forms in a ridiculously easy five minutes, hit Print, and touched up her powder and lipstick.

  Ready to enter the lion’s den? You can do this.

  Mr. Taylor kept the blinds on his glass door closed. She hadn’t seen him since he’d walked into the office last Wednesday and given her the shock of her life. She braced herself for the sight of him, then knocked.

  “Come in.”

  She hadn’t braced for the sound of his voice. Her heart fluttered like a wounded bird in her chest. Come in was spoken by the same voice that had said There will never be another night like this one.

  She couldn’t think about that. She had to deliver these forms.

  There was nothing to it. She merely had to turn the doorknob, walk steadily across the carpeting in her sister-in-law’s cast-off classic pumps, place the forms on the corner of the executive desk, refuse to think that it was about as wide as the space between two parked pickup trucks in a dark field, turn around and leave.

  She did it.

  “Miss Ames.”

  She had her hand on the doorknob, ready to pull it shut behind herself.

  “Stop.”

  She did not.

  * * *

  The door shut.

  Taylor threw his pen onto his desk, cursing under his breath.

  Now he was going to have to come up with yet another stupid task to get her back in here. He couldn’t walk out to the open reception area’s cubicles and strike up a conversation. Everyone would be listening. Everyone would wonder how in the world they knew each other, which was precisely what they needed to talk about.

  He glared at the door that hid her from his view.

  He knew she hated the sight of him, but he did not hate the sight of her. It had been a week since he’d first walked into the offices of the university’s school of business. In that week, Mallory had stayed hidden in a cubicle that was almost in the back corner of the open reception area. He hadn’t managed to be within speaking distance until now, when he’d manipulated her to make it happen.

  He stared at the door. For perhaps six seconds, she’d been here, live and in person. He could recall the image now, every detail, an image so different from the others he had of her.

  She’d been so very pretty in the park whi
le dressed in pink, but she was stunning in a professional environment. Her hair was smoothed into an updo. Her trim skirt and tailored blouse looked as good today as they had in the days of Jackie Kennedy and Mad Men. If he hadn’t known they were her grandmother’s clothes, he never would have guessed.

  She wore black high heels. Red lipstick. It wasn’t a high-maintenance look, but a professional, powerful look. Stud earrings—pearls. A ring on her right hand, a blue stone, a tiny chip of a thing, nothing like the rocks he could provide. It was probably her birthstone. She’d turned twenty-nine this December, and he had been there for it, her fake boyfriend for one night. He wished it could have been more.

  You knew from the start it was only one night. So did she.

  Yes, so had she—but she was furious with him, anyway.

  In his mind’s eye, he focused on her face, looking for the nuances, until he had to admit that she did not look furious. Fury was an emotion that required effort and energy. He’d paid his therapist enough to buy a sports car to spell that out for him. Mallory had been only going through the motions just now.

  He couldn’t unsee the straight line of lips that should be curved, the flat affect on a face that should be expressive, the dead eyes of someone who was performing a chore solely because they had no choice. That was the very definition of servitude.

  That was Cinderella.

  With a groan, Taylor put his elbows on his desk and dropped his head into his hands. He couldn’t force her to perform tasks as if he were the wicked stepmother and she was the scullery maid.

  For the entire coming semester, he was going to be aware she was perhaps forty feet away from him, but he might never catch another glimpse.

  He picked up the forms that had wasted her time and dropped them into the trash can.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Learning Objective: Given an unexpected scenario, explain how the business will remain operational.

  —Senior Year Project by Mallory Ames

  The janitor would unlock the inner office.

  Mallory would know it was time for her mission to commence when she heard the vacuum sweeper shut off. Wrapping up the cord would take the janitor a minute, then he would pick up the trash can, bring it out to the main office space and empty it into his large bin on wheels. Since he cleaned the Executive-in-Residence office last on his rounds, he’d roll the large bin past the cubicles and out the main door, then return to fumble through his keys, relock the inner offices and leave for the day.

  While he rolled the bin out, Mallory would have two minutes to sneak in and out of Mr. Taylor’s office, like Tom Cruise stepping over laser beams, Ocean’s Eleven trimmed down to Ocean’s One.

  She needed to return a pair of gloves without seeing, speaking to or in any way interacting with their owner, the liar who had amused himself by watching his devotee break every rule in his book. Unfortunately, the man she wanted to avoid had begun working late hours. He was always still at his desk when she left for the day.

  Not today. He’d left just before the janitor had arrived. The moment he’d walked out the door, Mallory had taken the gloves out of her backpack and hidden them in her lap. It was time for her to get rid of her last trace of Eli.

  Closure.

  The vacuum sweeper went quiet. Mallory gave the buttery leather one last caress. The bin rolled past her. She made short work of the distance between her cubicle and Taylor’s office, walking with confident strides, even if their length was clipped by her pencil skirt. She set the gloves on his desk—but they looked too obviously out of place there. The janitor had just dusted. He might notice that they hadn’t been there two minutes ago.

  She picked them up and looked around, but every surface was clean and uncluttered. The gloves would be obvious anywhere.

  The desk chair wasn’t pushed in all the way. She ran around the desk to drop them on the seat, pushed the chair in, and turned to leave. No, the chair shouldn’t be pushed in. She pulled it out to where it had been, rushing now, then turned to the door—which Irene was blocking.

  “Hello,” Mallory said, faking calm confidence like her life depended on it. “I was just leaving for the day, unless there’s anything else you need from me.”

  “I need you to come up with a good explanation for whatever it is you’re doing in Mr. Taylor’s office.”

  It sucked, having a sharp boss.

  Never be afraid to speak the truth.

  Shut up, Mr. Taylor.

  But Mallory followed the advice. “I was putting Mr. Taylor’s gloves back where they belong.”

  “I saw you pick them up from his desk just now. I haven’t had the staff sign the nondisclosure agreements yet because we weren’t expecting Mr. Taylor until January, but not entering his office after he’s locked it is common sense. You cannot go poking around an office after its occupant has left for the day, especially when that office is occupied by a celebrity.”

  “I’m just returning his gloves.” Mallory picked them up. “Look. They’re just gloves.”

  “How did you get his gloves, if you didn’t just pick them up off his desk, which I’ll remind you I saw you do? Why would you have his gloves in the first place?”

  The park, the hand-holding, the bonfire, the wishes—Mallory hesitated a moment too long. Irene lost her patience.

  “There is no circumstance that excuses this. I’m sorry to see you go, but I have no choice. You’ll need to get your personal belongings from your desk. Your belongings, not anyone else’s.”

  Mallory’s life crumbled before her eyes. “Please. I’m begging you to believe me. I had his gloves legitimately. Without this job, I will lose my dorm. I will literally be out on the streets.”

  A male voice interrupted, slightly amused, supremely confident. “I didn’t see the memo that there would be a meeting in my office after five.”

  Irene was as flustered as Mallory, but Mallory hoped she hid it better.

  “Mr. Taylor,” Irene said, getting out of his doorway by coming into the office, allowing Mr. Taylor to enter as well.

  “Irene.” He acknowledged her with a nod as he walked to his desk and picked up his mail. “How are you doing, Miss Ames? I hope the gloves were warm enough.”

  Her heart was pounding as hard as it had when she’d faced her family and negotiated a salary. She faked the same calm confidence now. “Yes, they were.”

  He held out his hand.

  She put the gloves in them. “Thank you, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Anytime. I did try that table-side guacamole, by the way. Great suggestion.” Then he held up his finger as if to stop her from answering, when she had absolutely nothing to say, and he gave Irene one of those don’t waste my time looks. “Did you have anything for me?”

  “No, Mr. Taylor.”

  “Thank you.” He said it like you’re dismissed. “And Irene, I trust Ms. Ames is still gainfully employed? I didn’t overhear everything, but there’s no reason to fire someone when it was my idea for her to borrow my gloves. I was going into a restaurant as she was coming out. It was a cold enough night that I had come in my car. I noticed she had no gloves and she was going to walk somewhere on campus.” He questioned Mallory. “Your dorm?”

  “No, it was the library.” She could pretend with the best of them—which would be him.

  He turned back to Irene, seeming to be supremely bored with the detail he’d asked for to add some authenticity. “She told me to get the guacamole, and I told her to wear my gloves and give them back once she found hers. Any questions?”

  “None.”

  “Good.” He turned his back on Irene. “Can you stay a minute, Ms. Ames?”

  Irene left and pulled the door shut.

  Eli’s—Mr. Taylor’s—blue gaze was piercing. “Why are you avoiding me?”

  The panic she’d just endured left a fine tremor in Mallory’s
hands, in every muscle. She wanted to collapse. She couldn’t. She was speaking to her hero like they were equal.

  Equal-ish.

  She leveled her own no-nonsense gaze on him. “Let’s see if I can remember. You lied to me about your identity, kissed me, then dumped me and walked away without a word of explanation. That sums it up.”

  “It wasn’t the best time for an explanation. I knew I would see you again on campus, and I had every intention of having this conversation with you when we were neither outdoors, cold, nor emotional.”

  “How nice for you to know that you’d be speaking to me later, but I didn’t know that when you walked away.” She stabbed herself in the chest with her own finger, right over her heart, right where it had hurt so badly that night, and every night thereafter, when she’d wondered where he’d gone and fretted over how he was feeling.

  “Mallory, I am so sorry.”

  She hadn’t intended to let her pain show. She reached for her anger, instead. “You’re so sorry for what? For stringing me along? For enjoying an evening pretending you weren’t a multi-millionaire, so you could get your kicks as Joe Average, putting dollar bills in donation jars? You stood there in the parking lot and watched me cry, and then had the nerve to give me that pep talk about how I wasn’t pretending all these wonderful traits, while you were the one who was pretending the whole time.”

  “For that, I am not sorry, because nothing about that conversation was pretend.”

  “You know I’m faking my way through life at the moment, but it’s because I’m aspiring to a better standard of living. You don’t do it to sink to a lower level. You aren’t supposed to fake that you’re enjoying a cup of hot chocolate at a stupid small-town festival.” With a stupid small-town girl.

  “I did enjoy the hot chocolate.”

  “You’re obscenely rich. Astronomically rich.”

  Eli—Mr. Taylor, damn it—paused for a moment before answering. “I’m at a loss here. What does being rich have to do with my enjoyment of a cup of hot chocolate?”