by Olivia Miles
Christmas had always been important in their house, but not in the traditional sense. It was the busiest time of the year for the company, and by the time it wrapped up on December twenty-fifth, his mother could do little but sit beside the crackling fire with a glass of sherry in her hand, smiling from a distance as he unwrapped the gifts her assistant or the nanny had purchased for him and had professionally wrapped in company paper. Christmas was an industry, a moneymaker. People wanted a magical holiday? Frost Greeting Cards could give them one, from the greeting cards to the wrapping paper to the ornaments they collected year after year. Frost was a part of every home at Christmas, a part of every memory, a part of a thousand feel-good moments.
Greg dragged out a breath. And now, for the first time in his thirty-four years, Christmas was invading his home.
He slammed the drawer shut. Marlene had stocked the pantry and fridge with food, but Greg didn’t feel like cooking. He was too hungry to weigh his options, too anxious to focus on another task. The proposal for the Burke’s Christmas display was coming along well, and tomorrow he’d go into the office to meet with the research and marketing teams. He knew that Frost Greeting Cards had what it took to beat out Darling Cards, but his mother’s earlier words haunted him, flitting back to the forefront of his mind any time he took a step back from his computer screen.
Would his mother really hand the company to Drew instead of her own son? No matter how many times he asked himself the question, Greg always came back to the same bitter realization: Yes.
Flicking off the lights to his office, Greg was nearly to the kitchen to scrounge up some cheese and crackers and a full bottle of wine when the doorbell chimed. Frowning, he walked back to the front of the house. A delivery, perhaps? He checked his watch. Highly unlikely at this hour.
But not, he thought as he flung open the door, as unlikely as the person standing before him.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise.” Greg grinned at Charlotte, but she barely returned the gesture.
She skirted her gaze to her left.
“I’m not here for long. I was just, uh, passing by, and I wanted to see if I’d left my portfolio here by any chance.”
Greg raised an eyebrow. So she wanted to dance around the issue. Well, he didn’t have time for games. He didn’t have time for much, as she herself had been so keen to point out. Not when his entire career was hanging on a damn Christmas party scheduled for less than two weeks from tonight.
Two weeks. Maybe he’d forgo the wine. Grab the whiskey instead.
He didn’t bother to feed into her excuse. “And here I was thinking you’d reconsidered my offer.”
“And which part would that be?” Charlotte asked. “The part about planning your party or the part about moonlighting as your date?”
“You said yourself that planning a party on this short of notice is a challenge. You were right.”
“So you still want my help?” Her voice seemed to lift at the end. A note of hope, perhaps?
He decided to hedge his bets, even though he’d spent an hour this afternoon calling event planners with no luck. “I do. For the party and the date.”
She narrowed her gaze on him. “You’re not going to let that go.”
“Look, I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t desperate.” He’d said it to make her sympathize with him, to make her think she was helping a poor guy out, but as the word came out he realized it was true. He was desperate, damn it.
“Desperate?”
“I mean—” Shoot. “I can’t show up to the party alone. It’s that simple.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “So, what would I have to do? Just hold on to your arm and smile sweetly?” She batted her eyelashes and curled her lips into a smile that revealed a dimple. “Pretend I’m your girlfriend?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and studied the grooves in the wooden floorboards beneath his feet as he considered his next words. His ridiculous predicament. “I don’t need you to pretend to be my girlfriend.”
A quizzical expression crossed her face. “Then what would I be?”
He sucked in a breath, holding her stare. For not the first time, he regretted ever asking Rebecca to marry him. Had he not, his mother might never have latched on to this idea. “My fiancée.”
Her jaw slacked. “No one would believe that!”
“Why not?” He was coming around to the idea. It could all be very simple, really. “I see half these people once a year, the rest I work with, but we don’t discuss our personal lives. They’ll believe it.” They had to believe it.
Sensing her hesitation, he said, “We met at a party in Boston. We’ve been dating for two years, and I popped the question over the summer. See? Easy. I took you to a little Italian place for our first date. We don’t have a wedding date set yet, but we’re thinking spring. That’s all anyone would care to know.”
“Where’d you propose?”
Greg thought back to the night he had gotten down on one knee, placed the ring Rebecca had picked out on her finger. He thought she’d be impressed, but something told him she expected something more lavish.
“Right here in this house.” How ironic.
Charlotte inspected him, frowning. “And then what? Are they going to think we broke up or something?”
Greg hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. He told himself it wouldn’t matter. If he landed the business, it would be good enough. It had to be. It should be. “You let me figure that part out. All I need is a party and a date.”
“I’ll need full payment for the event up front,” she dared to say.
He let out a half laugh. She was quick, he’d give her that, but he was no dummy. “Half up front, half on delivery. Full delivery,” he added. “And I want to see receipts from the vendors.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You run a tough bargain for someone so desperate.”
“Take it or leave it,” he said. But he knew she would take it. He knew when she’d hesitated in his office. She wanted the job. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“I want a good reference for our company,” she continued.
“If the party’s a success, of course.”
“Oh, it will be a success,” she said.
“Do we have a deal, then?”
Her brief hesitation felt long. “You’ve got yourself a deal, all right.” She held out a hand. “Honey.”
Chapter Nine
For the first time in months, Charlotte had a plan. Okay, so it wasn’t necessarily a great one, but it was better than nothing. With the first check from the Frost party, she would pay off November’s rent, her cell phone bill, and the minimum payments on both her credit cards, even though the one had been cruelly canceled this morning, right in the midst of the holidays. The second payment would go to January and February’s rent—wherever that would be—and by then, fingers crossed, the buzz from the Frost party would have opened more doors.
For now, she had a month without rent. And a month without a home, technically. Her stomach churned as it did every time she remembered that tidbit.
Still…it was a fresh start, Charlotte decided, forcing those optimistic feelings to push through. She smiled into the sunshine. Come the New Year, all would be right again. The mess of this past year would be behind her, soon a dark, distant memory. She’d find a new place—a better place—and she’d take control of things again. She was going to make smarter choices, starting today. All she had to do was get through December, and they’d be on their way.
First stop: the Frost mansion.
Snow had fallen overnight, covering the tree branches and sidewalks with a fresh blanket of dusty powder. With Audrey strapped into her car seat, snuggled in a soft pink flannel blanket, Charlotte finished scraping the windshield, wincing at the freezing wind that burned her cheeks.
She glanced up at the apartment house that had been her home for the last few months and set her jaw. No use dwelling on another failed attempt of getting her life in order.
She tossed the scraper into the trunk on top of Audrey’s disassembled crib, three trash bags of toys and clothes, and the half of the rest of her belongings that weren’t already packed into the passenger seats. The apartment had come mostly furnished, allowing for an easy exit. She let out a shaky sigh as she wrestled to shut the trunk. When she arrived at the Frost house, she had to maintain a sense of control; that was first and foremost. The last thing she needed was for Greg to think she was the desperate one, that she needed him more than he needed her. No, she knew what happened in that type of situation, and it usually didn’t work out in her favor. There was no greater disservice a woman could do to herself than to let a man think you needed him. Look how far and fast Audrey’s father had run when she’d turned to him for help.
Pressing her lips together, Charlotte banished all thoughts of Jake with a steely determination and climbed into the driver’s seat. There would be no thinking about him right now. She was getting her life back. She was setting an example for her daughter. And it was starting today.
“It’s the start of a new life, Audrey,” she called to the backseat, but of course, her words fell on uncomprehending ears. Charlotte flicked on the radio, aching for the sound of an adult voice. Lately she’d been talking to herself when she was at home. Oh, she’d start with talking to Audrey, but a baby could only give so much reaction, and eventually the need to fill the silence had transformed into conversations with herself in front of the mirror, in the shower, or even in front of the television. She threw hours of energy into trying to get Audrey to talk to her, even though she knew it was pointless. She was too young, of course. She started dreaming of the day her little girl was older, when they could walk hand in hand down the street, chatting and laughing. And oh, wouldn’t Jake be sorry then. Wouldn’t he have missed out.
She frowned at the road. That dream didn’t include coming back to a run-down one-bedroom apartment, and it sure as heck didn’t include maxed-out credit cards and the inability to independently provide Audrey with all the things she deserved in this world. Especially when her father was flitting between his eight-bedroom Misty Point “cottage” and his Beacon Hill brownstone.
She cranked the volume to drown out the thought, just as the radio announcer said, “It’s December second, folks, and you know what that means!”
“It means only twenty-three more days until Christmas!” Charlotte replied. She grinned at Audrey’s reflection in the rearview mirror.
“So tell me, what do you have planned for Christmas? Twenty-fifth caller wins a holiday compilation CD, and the lines are going wild. What’s your plan for the holiday? Will the Wake-Up Guy here. I’m listening.”
Charlotte gripped the steering wheel and pressed her foot on the gas, anticipation fueling her with sudden energy. “So here’s the plan, Will. I’m out of an apartment, and I won’t have cash for a new one until the start of the year. I could ask my sister for an advance on my paycheck, but for about a thousand reasons, the least of which is that I am tired of looking like a screwup in her eyes, I can’t do that. I can’t ask my parents, either, because they have done enough. So instead, I’m thinking of asking my fake fiancée to let me crash in his mansion. That’s right. My fake fiancée, Will. I mean, most of my high school friends are married and have moved away by now, and the best I can do is play house…” She blew out a breath and flicked off the radio as the twenty-fifth caller screamed with joy over their free CD.
Charlotte rolled her eyes. If only life could be that simple. If only her problems consisted of what to make for dinner that night, chicken or pasta again, or whether the Saturday night movie would be a romantic comedy or, sigh, another action flick. She longed for mundane. For a routine, dull, humdrum domestic life. Once she had wished for pomp and flash, for designer clothes and a lifestyle she only watched from afar. The sparkle that shimmered off the surface of the yachts down at the marina, the glitz that filled Main Street each summer season. Now she wished for someone to just sit across from her at the breakfast table. A manageable dream, but one nonetheless unfulfilled.
Instead, she was whipping through town in a car she’d had since she shared it with her sister in high school, her meager possessions packed into every nook of its interior, en route to a bona fide stranger’s house where she hoped to spend Christmas. She was living the life.
Audrey’s first Christmas. She hadn’t even bought her any presents yet. She had meant to, but then that credit card had unexpectedly reached its limit. She knew her parents would shower Audrey with gifts, but it wasn’t the same as something from her. Still…A first Christmas should be a special time, captured forever in the form of dozens of photographs, spent nestled around a tree with an ornament that said BABY’S FIRST CHRISTMAS. It should be spent in the comfort of home, not at the whim of whoever was willing to take them in for the month.
Next year would be better. She had a year to make sure of it.
With that promise made, she turned into the long driveway of the Frost house and pulled to a stop.
Perhaps sensing that the mood in the car had suddenly shifted, or perhaps just expressing her feelings over the fact that the car had stopped moving, Audrey began to wail. My sentiments exactly, Charlotte thought miserably as she stared up at the large stone house through the windshield. It felt just as intimidating today as it had yesterday.
She had half a mind to shift gears and floor it back onto the main road, but one proper glance back at that sweet little face and those eyes that held hers so earnestly made her pause. She closed her eyes, only for a second. She’d do anything for Audrey, and this had to be done.
“Here goes nothing,” she muttered, releasing her seat belt and pushing open the door.
She hesitated with the car seat, wondering if she should remove it from the base or carry Audrey on her own. It would be easier to make a quick getaway if she didn’t have to deal with that three-point harness. She stared at the contraption, one of so many large plastic items that had come into her life in the past seven months, and unhooked Audrey with a click.
She hurried up the winding path to the front door, sheltering Audrey’s face in her neck against the biting wind, and pressed the doorbell with a determined finger. It had seemed like such a good idea this morning. Now, however, her stomach rolled over as the latch clicked and the door swung open.
“Charlotte.” Greg stood in the open doorway, his feet bare and his hair wet. She could smell the fresh soap on his skin. He glanced from her to Audrey and back again, his expression crumbling with confusion. “I didn’t expect you so early.”
Charlotte gave her most confident smile and said, “I figured I’d get an early start on the project.”
Greg didn’t reply; his focus had drifted to Audrey, his eyes watchful, his expression alarmed.
Charlotte cleared her throat and continued. “I’ve had a bit of a problem with my apartment. There’s an issue with the heating system,” she repeated the story she’d created last night when she had rocked Audrey back to sleep, knowing she wouldn’t find any sleep and that the baby’s schedule for once had nothing to do with it. “I, um, had to move out for a bit. I figured it might make sense for me to stay here. It might lend some credibility to our…situation.”
Now she had his attention. Greg tilted his head toward her, his brow growing to a point. “Here?” he repeated. “You want to stay here?”
She hadn’t expected him to be overjoyed, but the bewilderment in his tone rattled her.
“Why not?” Charlotte shrugged. “You need a fiancée, and I need a place to crash.” She gave a breezy smile, but her heart was doing jumping jacks. Why had she ever thought he would agree to this?
Greg inhaled deeply, his brow drawing to a point.
“My stuff’s in the car,” Charlotte prompted when he said nothing more, realizing Greg was barely registering anything she was saying.
“Who’s that?” Greg interrupted abruptly, his stern gaze trained on Audrey.
C
harlotte hesitated and then plastered on her biggest grin yet. “This is my daughter,” she said casually. She could feel her smile waver as Greg’s eyes widened. “Her name is Audrey. Isn’t that pretty?” she added quickly, hoisting the baby higher on her hip. “I have a thing for old movies, watched way too many of them when I was pregnant, and…” And she was blabbering. And bringing more attention to the fact that she had a child. A child that he didn’t seem very thrilled by.
If he turned them away, they’d be back where they started, only worse. She’d have to go live with Kate, make up an excuse for why she was out on the street, claim a pipe had burst at her apartment or some other temporary problem, until she figured out next steps. The thought of lying to Kate made her queasy—but the thought of telling her the truth…Having to drag her into yet another problem sparked by Jake, and right before her wedding nonetheless…So much worse.
“You never said you had a baby,” Greg finally said. Though he was speaking to her, his eyes never left Audrey, who, Charlotte noticed in a rush of relief, had decided to smile, proudly revealing all four of her tiny teeth.
“Well, we just met yesterday,” Charlotte said brightly, determined not to go down without a fight. “It didn’t come up.”
Charlotte clutched her daughter closer to her chest. The last thing she needed was another man who couldn’t handle her child, even if this was just a temporary situation. If Greg was going to have a problem with Audrey, she’d leave. No looking back. It had been hard the first time around, when Jake had made it clear where he stood, but it had become easier in time. Audrey needed Charlotte. She was her mother. And she didn’t have room in her life for anyone who couldn’t understand that. Client or not, she wasn’t going to let anything make Audrey’s first Christmas worse than it already was.
“Hmm.” Greg frowned and then looked at Charlotte with sudden curiosity. “What about her father?”