by Jenny Hale
There it was—that look that she saw glimpses of, that look that could melt her heart: it was the look of the vulnerable little boy that he once was, and the tenderness in his heart swelling up. Before she could process anything else, his lips were on hers, and it was as if they were meant to be there, as if she’d been waiting her whole life to feel this. They were a perfect fit, their movements effortless and exhilarating, his breath mixing with hers, the warmth of his mouth, the taste of his lips…
He pulled back, clearly as shocked by it all as she was.
She scrambled to get the moment back. “Do you have to go to your meeting? Stay.”
The corners of his mouth turned up. “Yes, I have to go.” It was clear to her that he wasn’t thinking about his meeting, yet he’d said he had to leave.
Noelle tried not to let her disappointment show.
“But I’ll find you right after.”
Chapter Eleven
Noelle opened the door to her suite to find Jim standing in her doorway.
“Mr. Harrington would like you to meet him in his office. He said to bring your coat and scarf,” Jim told her.
“Did he give a reason? Should I take anything else with me?”
“He didn’t say, ma’am.”
“Okay, thank you.”
She’d just finished helping William get to the dining area to have a snack. She’d assisted him with a crossword puzzle while he ate, but then William had told her that he planned to have a cup of tea and he’d be happy to find his way back to his room on his own. The slow walk would do him some good, he’d said. And if he needed help, Jim was there to take him back. She’d tried to explain to him that she was here for this particular reason, but he’d shooed her off, telling her he wanted to be alone while he had his tea. She was torn between needing to do her job—the nature of which she still wasn’t entirely clear on, as she’d never received a formal job description—and treating him like anyone else she knew, allowing him space when he politely asked for it.
With a quick check of her makeup, she ran a comb through her hair, grabbed her coat, scarf, and gloves, and headed toward the office. When she got there, Alex was in jeans again, wearing a coat, and smiling that smile of his.
“Busy?” he asked.
Unsure how to answer, she said, “I’m working today, but I’m not busy at the moment. William wanted to be alone.”
“I told Jim to take care of my grandfather for the next few hours. He likes Jim. You and I have a working date.”
“We do?”
“Yep. Follow me.”
He led her to the front door and opened it to reveal the most gorgeous charcoal-gray Audi S8 that she’d ever seen. Even in this winter weather, it was sleek and shiny like he’d just driven it off the lot. When they got to it, he opened her door and she slid into the leather interior, the surface so soft that it felt like she was sitting on a bed of satin. The console rivaled NASA’s mission control, a navigation screen set for a destination she didn’t recognize. Alex got in and started the engine, the car barely making a sound as he put it in gear and sailed off like he was floating instead of rolling on four tires.
“Where are we going?” she asked, noticing how the car must be temperature controlled because she wasn’t the least bit chilly, despite the fact that snow was looming in the forecast.
“I want to show you something. I hope you like champagne.”
“I do,” she said curiously, “but I don’t usually drink while I’m working.”
“Well, we haven’t done anything quite like we usually would, have we?”
She thought back to that kiss and smiled as she looked out the window, trying to hide her elation at his comment. She didn’t want to feel like she was feeling; it didn’t make things easy, given her situation, but she couldn’t deny her emotions. She wouldn’t admit to herself that she hadn’t asked him about the bakery or let herself think of how he’d ruined it, because then the magic between them would be gone. It was selfish of her, but she just wanted to enjoy herself and this man for a little while. When she was with him, she had fun, and it had been a long time since she’d had feelings like these.
They were quiet as they headed toward their destination, the anticipation nearly killing her. Alex had turned on some music that hummed low in the background as the car swooshed around corners and slid down the road effortlessly. Finally, Alex pulled up outside the city’s arena, where Noelle had watched football games and concerts, and put the car in park. It was an enormous indoor facility; it could easily hold twenty thousand people. The parking lot was empty.
Alex walked around to Noelle’s side of the car, opening her door. Then he led her to the entrance, where a man greeted him by name and let them in. They were ushered up to one of the VIP press boxes. Inside, a single table was positioned near the window, overlooking the center of the arena. It was empty, a white circle of nothing surrounded by a sea of empty seats below them. She lowered herself down into one of the chairs, Alex sitting across from her. Positioned in front of them were two flutes of champagne and in between, a small platter of cheeses and crackers. His eyes were on her, almost delighting in her confusion.
Suddenly, Christmas music played through the speakers in the room and the lights dimmed. The arena was completely dark with the exception of a single white beam of light at the edge of that empty circle. Then, appearing as if by magic, there was a flash of sparkling red, the scraping of ice skates, and Noelle realized that she was watching a skater on ice.
“That’s Melissa Simone, the Olympic ice skater,” he explained. “We have exclusive seats to watch her dress rehearsal for tonight’s performance of Winter on Ice. They prepared a table just for us—we’re the only two in the city who get to see it.” The woman stopped and waved in their direction before turning and spinning away, gliding gloriously across the ice. Suddenly, she was twirling so fast that she was a blur of sparkles, the music rising to a crescendo and then subsiding. Their press box was close enough that Noelle could see the shavings of ice shooting out from the woman’s skates. “How did you manage to organize this?”
“I own the building.”
Noelle let that sink in. This wasn’t some little bakery or coffee shop. This was a state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar facility. And he had ownership of it. The words had rolled off his tongue as if it were nothing at all. The scope of this gave her pause and she looked back at the skater. He’d probably made one call and this whole thing was put together immediately. “Do people always entertain you at your whim like this?” she asked. She was willing to bet that they did.
He looked amused, unconcerned by her question. “If I ask, those who work for me do, yes.”
“Is that what I’m doing now—entertaining you?”
He sobered, and she worried she’d been a little too direct with her line of questioning, but that was the only way she knew to be. It was important he understand that she wasn’t going to play around. If he was interested in knowing her better, then fine, but he wasn’t going to take her out just to pass the time.
“I wanted to do something nice for you,” he said, making her feel like the worst person in the world. “I don’t know about your other employers, but I don’t usually go around kissing my staff.” He rested his forearm on the table casually, as if they were talking about the weather.
Noelle looked out at the skater again as she did a triple turn on one skate, her right leg bent at the knee, her arms in the air above her like a ballerina. When Noelle turned back toward Alex, he was watching her.
“This is amazing. Thank you,” she said, feeling uneasy in this new and unusual territory. “I’m just not used to this sort of thing.”
The corners of his mouth turned upward in that way of his, fondness in his stare. “What, people being nice to you?”
“No, people arranging previews of sold-out shows for me.”
He put his chin in his hand, leaning in with a look as if he couldn’t get enough of her, making her feel light
headed, all the thoughts whooshing out as if they’d been blown by a mental windstorm.
“It’s how I show you that you’re important to me,” he said.
Was she important to him, or was he playing games with her? She didn’t want to think that way, but his relationship with his grandfather came to mind, and she had no other explanation. She hadn’t said anything, but she could tell he was reading her thoughts.
Alex rolled his eyes playfully. “For whatever reason, you believe that you shouldn’t receive attention when you’re pretty fantastic. I wanted you to feel that today, so I planned this for you.” He took her hands, the music making this all seem like some sort of dream.
“That’s very sweet of you to say, but I feel like I don’t know you at all,” she said.
“What do you want to know?” He leaned across the table toward her, those lips just inches from hers.
“Tell me what you loved about your grandmother,” she said, almost breathlessly. She didn’t want to turn the conversation to William and sour what was there between them, but perhaps knowing more of Alex’s side of things would help her understand if she was making incorrect judgments about him. Maybe she was just wishfully hoping that she and her family were wrong about him, that he was some sort of wonderful person who cared.
His hands moved around to her wrist and then back to her palms where their fingers intertwined. He invaded the last bit of space they had, only the table between them, the spicy smell of him overwhelming her as their movements flowed like wine, perfectly in sync, like coming home.
“She used to sing to me at bedtime,” he said. “When I was eleven and far too old for it. I’d roll my eyes, trying not to smile at her, but what I refused to admit was that I loved it. She made me feel cared for, and when she sang to me, it was her way of showing affection, so I soaked it in.”
The Christmas song that had been coming through the speakers died down and then there was silence. Alex looked down at her almost giddily. She felt it too, tingling down her spine, making her limbs feel like they couldn’t work, causing her to question everything she’d ever done that she thought had made her happy before. Nothing, apart from having Lucas, had felt like this.
“She had so much love to give. Now I think back on those times and wish I’d told her how great she was instead of brushing her singing off like it was a little joke. I should’ve told her that I’d never forget it. She was alone like I was, and she understood. That was why we were so close, I think.”
“But she had William.”
“No, she didn’t. She spent almost her whole life here raising my father and then me, while my grandfather stayed in New York, only coming back on the odd day. She confided in me once when I was about eighteen that she always felt like she’d done something wrong, and she warned me to make sure that when I found the person I loved, I should let her know how special she was every single day. She was wracked with insecurity about it. She said that she should’ve known when my grandfather proposed. He couldn’t even find the family ring. It had been passed down for generations to the women in the family, and left for him, and he couldn’t even keep up with it. He lost it before the proposal.”
“He lost it?”
“Yes. Once the next-generation Harrington is of marrying age, the ring is passed to him, and a new ring is given to the current ring-holder as a gift, always on the wedding anniversary. My grandfather was given the ring for safekeeping. It’s never surfaced. He bought my grandmother a ring, and it was beautiful, but she always wondered if his decision to marry her had been because of pressure from the family instead of love, otherwise he would’ve guarded the family ring with his life. She worried that he might actually have it and had been saving that ring for someone else. She was a little superstitious about it. It was known that all of the marriages in this house were happy ones. My grandparents never lived together here, nor did they share the ring that the others did. If he was saving it for someone else, or if someone else has it, I’d never forgive either of them.”
“Maybe he actually lost it. And maybe it really had been an accident. He didn’t seem like he was hiding anything. He really loved her, from what I can tell.”
“Well, actions speak louder than words, and he wasn’t here very much to prove her wrong.” He lifted his champagne, clearly halting the conversation. “We always get caught up in my family when we’re together. Let’s not do that,” he said with a smile. “Let’s just talk about us.”
She lifted her flute from the table.
“To Christmas,” he said with a smile. “And all the surprises it brings. You are a surprise that I’d never expected. I’m so glad you’re here. Cheers.”
They touched glasses and she turned her attention back to the skater, who’d begun the next routine, trying to keep her excitement at bay. The way his gaze had landed on her made her hands begin to tremble, and if she hadn’t turned away, she knew that she’d have rattled her glass onto the table, so she put it in her lap and focused on the performance.
“Are you enjoying the show?”
She nodded, daring to look back at him. With an inhale of breath, she’d steadied herself enough to make eye contact.
“What kinds of things do you like to do?”
She nibbled a cracker before responding, assessing the things she did for fun and wondering what he’d think. But then again, what did it matter what he thought? If he really liked being with her, he’d like doing the things she did, right? “Well, my favorite thing to do is karaoke with my friends Phoebe and Jo. I bring down the house with my impression of Beyoncé singing ‘All the Single Ladies’.”
That curiosity that made her stomach do a jig bubbled up. From the way his eyes creased at the edges she could tell he liked her answer. “I’ve never done karaoke,” he admitted.
“You haven’t? Why not?”
He laughed. “I suppose I just haven’t had the right person ask me.”
“Is that a dare?” His laughter always put her at ease.
“Are you inviting me?” He uttered the question with a challenging undertone.
“It sounds like you’d like to be invited. You must really want to unleash your inner rock star. Go on, you can admit it.”
He chuckled, obviously delighting in her banter. “Let me know the next time you go and I’ll be there. I wouldn’t miss your Beyoncé routine for anything in the world.”
The rest of the afternoon went just like that: they shared a few laughs and were able to be completely honest with each other, and she couldn’t have had a better time.
Chapter Twelve
“What did you think?” Noelle asked Lucas as he wiggled in the auditorium chair, the seat bottom popping up behind him. Phoebe had given them two tickets to her children’s theater production of The Princess and the Pea. Phoebe was the princess.
Lucas smiled, the half-empty bucket of popcorn still in his lap.
“Phoebe said we could go backstage if you want to. Once everyone’s cleared out, the crew will show you how the stage lighting works. How does that sound?”
Lucas nodded, getting up, the seat springing to a close, and gave her the popcorn bucket. Noelle grabbed their coats and handed Lucas his. Then she snagged a piece of popcorn as she led the way backstage.
Phoebe was still in her princess dress, this one green with a cream-lace trim and matching stockings. She was sitting on a stool, her back to the lighted makeup mirror, a smile on her face. “Hi!” she said, pushing her ringlets away from her face. Noelle offered her the bucket of popcorn and Phoebe plunged her hand in, grabbing a few pieces. “Lucas, how was the show?” She popped the pieces into her mouth, chewing with a smile.
“Good,” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Want to meet the stage crew?”
Lucas nodded, following Phoebe as she took him by the hand. She introduced him to a few of the guys, who led him over to a large panel of switches and levers.
“How’s the new job?” she asked after returning to Noell
e, pulling the clip out of her hair and running her fingers through her red curls. She then pulled it all up into her fist and wrapped a band round it, her usual after-show bun.
Noelle hoped Phoebe didn’t see her flush. She wasn’t ready to tell her that she’d kissed Alex Harrington. “Weird,” Noelle said instead, and made a face. Focus on the job. “I don’t know what to do with William Harrington. It’s a little like being a babysitter.” She remembered William’s own words when she’d met him. “I told him I’d run his errands, I clean up after him, I make sure he has his meals and his medicine, and I help him with crossword puzzles and his hobby buying antiques. But I feel like I could be doing so much more.”
“Sounds like a great job to me. He could be awful or gross or something.”
“I’m here!” Jo said, clicking in on her heels and taking her coat off with a flourish. She set it on another stool and then unwound her scarf. “Sorry I couldn’t make the show—meeting.” She made a face.
“Well, you aren’t five, so you didn’t miss much,” Phoebe said with a grin. “Noelle was filling me in on working at the Harrington mansion. She says it’s weird.”
Jo pulled a chair over from one of the tables at the side and sat down, leaning forward, concern on her face. “Weird?”
Noelle glanced over at Lucas, who was sending beams of red light across the stage under the direction of one of the crewmembers. She rubbed her face. “I don’t feel like looking after someone is the right job for me.” She didn’t even want to think about William and Alex and how they were making absolutely no sense, the two of them contradicting each other, making it more uncomfortable, or the unexpected chemistry she and Alex now had…
“You’ve barely been there any time,” Jo said.