by Nancy Warren
A Sexy Christmas Romance Novella
by
Nancy Warren
Note: A version of this story first appeared in Merry Christmas Baby, Kensington Brava.
Copyright © 2013 Nancy Weatherley Warren.
All rights reserved.
This book was produced using PressBooks.com.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Author's note
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Chapter 1
“And it’s a wild one tonight,” Marisa Langley yelled into her microphone over the howling gale that swooped through Chicago like Old Man Winter throwing the hissy fit of the century.
Keeping her demeanor chipper in front of the WLPX camera wasn’t easy since her teeth, exposed by her bright smile, were chattering, her hair felt as if it was being yanked off her scalp by frigid fingers, and her jaunty red wool coat—the cashmere one which had cost her an absolute fortune-sported a thick dandruff of snow.
She was freezing. Her cheeks were numb with the cold, her nose felt like an icicle, and she wished she dared sniff before the icicle dripped. Of course, she couldn’t sniff during her live weather report. The best thing she could do was to get through her spiel as soon as possible.
“I’m up here on the roof of the W building,” she said as she did every night at this time. “I know it’s Christmas Eve, but if you can stay inside tonight, do it. Bundle up in front of the fire and get cozy. The.forecast is that tonight’s freezing temperatures and high winds will give way to a big snowstorm.” She gave her trademark meteorologist’s see-I-told-you-so grin and held up her hand to the white stuff. “We’re predicting ten to twelve inches more snow in the next twenty-four hours.” She’d done her earlier report with the usual satellite projections but she usually did the last weather segment on the roof. It was tradition.
She tried to keep her smile fresh and stop herself from squinting as she looked into the camera. Holding the hand cam, Rob Sheridon looked only marginally warmer than she. With no audience accustomed to seeing his face, he’d been free to wear a parka with a big hood that all but obscured his features. She had huge parka envy right now. Behind the bright light trained on her, he was like an overdressed angel, and when the wind picked up both he and the camera wobbled.
He made a wrap-it-up gesture with his fist, and she couldn’t wrap it up soon enough. Management insisted she do the final evening weather forecast out in the open, but she’d never entirely understood why. Would the people of Chicago believe it was raining only if they saw water dripping off the end of her chin? Would they accept a tornado warning only if they saw her rise in the air like Dorothy? At least Dorothy had Toto and a pair of killer shoes. All Marisa had was her camerameanie. If Oz included him, she’d throw herself back into the eye of the twister.
“Santa and the reindeer will encounter some stiff winds tonight,” she chirped, blinking to make sure her eyeballs hadn’t frozen solid. “Because we can expect more-”
The world plunged suddenly into darkness.
The camera’s light still shone like a candle in this storm. After wondering for a split second what had gone wrong, she became aware that it was only the battery-operated camera that hadn’t been snuffed. The special lights that had illuminated her were out. All around her, the high-rises of Chicago disappeared from stacks of brightly lit windows to nothing.
Blackness and silence stretched everywhere.
“Shit!” Rob yelled, his voice a whisper in the wind, and she heard the scrabbling of his boots running across the roof of the building.
Though they were transmitting live on the six o’clock news, the sky that had been so heavy with dark, smoky snow clouds all day was now black. Not a flicker of star or moonlight peeked through. She could barely see the microphone she still held in front of her face, or the freezing flakes that fell thick and fast.
Squinting, no longer caring that her eyes were starting to spill over in response to the biting cold, she watched Rob run, looking like a slow-motion blob in his white parka as he scrambled across the roof.
What on earth?
Her own gasp was swallowed by a cold gust as she realized the cameraman was racing for the door that led off the roof, as though it might be . . .
“Shit, the lock’s engaged,” Rob yelled.
“You mean the door shut on us?”
They came up here all the time. Lots of the staff did. The roof was used not only for on-the-spot weather forecasts but for lunches, smoke breaks, coffee breaks. The inner fire door had to be pushed open, but the outer one was always open. It must be locked at night, but she assumed maintenance took care of that.
“How could it have locked?”
“Automatic safety precaution,” he shouted over his shoulder. “When the power goes out it shuts and locks. If you were inside and there was a fire, you could get out.” He yanked on the door and swore some more, but it was clear to Marisa that that door wasn’t going to open.
“And if you’re already outside?”
His frustrated bang on the door pretty much answered that question.
As if she hadn’t already been cold enough, an iciness that had nothing to do with the weather chilled her bones. Rob returned to her side. “How long will it be until the door opens again?” she shouted over the worsening gale.
Her cameraman shook his head, a sharp back and forth of the parka hood, looking like an irritated polar bear. “Not until the power comes on. Or somebody remembers we’re up here.”
“Are you saying we’re . . .”
“Stuck,” he yelled back.
Stuck? Out here in the middle of a storm? With Rob? “Don’t you have your cell phone?” She never brought hers out for the on-roof broadcast because it was off anyway, and would mar the line of her clothing on-camera. But why couldn’t he have stashed a phone in that jacket? But his head shook in a negative.
If she had to get stuck, why couldn’t it have happened when she found herself sharing an elevator with Hugh Jackman when she was in New York that time?
Or why hadn’t she been marooned when she and Chris Hemsworth were staying at the same hotel? Why, oh, why, if she had to be stranded alone with a man, did it have to be in the middle of a ferocious storm and with Rob who despised her?
He turned around and as usual refused to make eye contact.
She had the urge to push him off the roof, except the wind was doing a pretty good job without her help. Besides, she wanted that parka.
She looked around in the darkening gloom. The case wasn’t hopeless, she reassured herself. They weren’t stuck at the North Pole for goodness’ sake, for all it felt isolated and cold up here. They were in the middle of one of the largest cities in North America, surrounded by people, five-star restaurants, cars, hospitals, food, and emergency crews. Of course, at this moment, they might as well be at the North Pole.
They couldn’t get off this roof, and she had an awful feeling they’d be forgotten as everyone panicked at the power outage and then gave in to the inevitable and went home. However, the roof of W had at least one thing that as far as she knew, the North Pole didn’t. A smokers’ corner. When the smokers had complained about the wind up here, the station owner had glassed in a shelter. Closed in on three sides and roofed, it would offer her and Rob shelter from the storm.
This wasn’t a disaster, she reminded herself with determined cheer. It was a temporary annoyance.
If she tried really, really hard, she could even call it an adventure.
Rob walked back to where he’d left the camera, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and slogged his way to the shelter. Clearly he was more interested in the camera’s safety
than her own since he didn’t offer to help her or even glance in her direction. Typical. Still, she kept her gaze fixed on him so she could see where she was going. His big white jacket and his rolling, athletic gait were something to focus on.
He seemed huge in the uncertain light and kind of scary.
She smirked to herself. The abominable cameraman.
When he reached the shelter he ducked inside only long enough to place the camera on the wooden picnic table. It was still running, offering a little light. She didn’t know how long that battery would last, but doubted it would be more than a few hours. Then he emerged once more, hauled the metal trash can into the shelter, and popped out again, advancing purposefully on the second wooden picnic table, the one exposed to the elements, where employees. ate their lunch or sat and smoked on sunny days.
At last she reached him, conscious that she’d chosen the bright red cashmere for style over substance. Rob paid as much attention to her safe arrival at the shelter as he did to the random snowflakes that landed on his big shoulders.
For once, she decided, he was not going to ignore her.
“All right.” Marisa drew in a deep breath and nearly got frost bite of the lungs. “All right.” She would keep calm. “Everything’s going to be fine.” She put a brave smile on her face and tried to mean it. She’d taken a few acting classes back in college. She knew all about projecting a character. Right now she was feeling calm. Secure. Confident. Optimistic. “We’ve got the shelter so we can keep warm. We’ll be rescued before we know it,” she said.
Her plan worked. The little pep talk did get his attention.
Rob stared at her a moment, then shook his head so cozily ensconced in the warm hood of the parka. “Well, that’s good. We wouldn’t want any bad news.”
With a scowl he turned away from her, did some kind of martial arts kick, and snapped the weathered wood of the old picnic table’s bench seat.
The snap of the wood startled her as much as the violent action. “You’re so damned perky,” he said as though he were continuing a discussion she didn’t recall starting, “if you were going down with the Titanic you’d be trying to organize a skating party to the iceberg.”
“I would not!”
Another couple of kicks and some jumping up and down on the bench and he had freed a plank which he handed her.
Gee, thanks.
“You’re so busy looking on the bright side, you are missing out on reality.”
Irritation swept through her, and she welcomed it. At least it warmed her.·
“Yeah? Well, I faced reality and it sucks,” she said. “Reality is that we’re trapped up here for God knows how long in a blizzard.” Even saying the word made her feel cold. “I purchased this coat more for its looks on camera than for warmth. I’m starting to get hungry, my feet are frozen, I’m stuck with a man who despises me, and I’m a little bit scared.” Her voice wobbled, and it infuriated her. “I wish you hadn’t brought up the iceberg because that’s sort of how I feel up here. Like I’m stranded on one.” She drew a shuddery breath, feeling colder than ever. And with one.
He didn’t comment, but bashed more wood into pieces. As irked by the fact he was back to ignoring her as she had been when he’d belittled her, she continued: “I’m not an outdoor wilderness enthusiast like you. I don’t want to sleep in a snow cave and climb mountains and defy nature. I want to be in a nice warm restaurant ordering off the menu right now. Is that real enough for you?”
“That’s plenty real,” he said, finally making eye contact.
Oh, good. When she was strong and making the best of things he ignored her. But the minute she babbled through everything that was bad about their situation and drove herself close to the border of hysteria, she got eye contact.
She felt like Pollyanna trapped with Eeyore.
“Hey, relax,” he said. “The power outage won’t last long.”
Then why was he bashing tables apart? She eyed him and the pile of lumber at his feet. “What are you planning to do?” she asked. “Rub two of those sticks together and make fire?” If he didn’t want perky, then fine. She could also do sarcastic.
“Somebody left a pack of matches inside.” He motioned with his head toward the shelter. The chances that the matches were dry and still flammable struck her as slim to none, but if he wanted to bash a picnic table to bits, she wasn’t going to stop him.
She turned and trudged over to the shelter.
“While you’re in there, go through the trash can,” her companion ordered.
Oh, this was getting better and better. “What am I looking for, dinner?” ·
“Paper. Anything that will burn. Dump everything else out and crumple the paper.”
She turned back. “It worked.”
He glanced up at her, his green eyes squinting against the wind. His cheeks were ruddy, and she noted that he needed a shave. “What worked?”
“Your plan. I am no longer perky.”
Chapter 2
Shrugging deeper into her coat, she walked a few steps along the now snow-covered roof and ducked into the shelter.
For a moment the world seemed amazingly quiet without the howling in her ear.
The camera light illuminated the book of matches lying on the picnic table along with the sports section of the Tribune and a take out coffee container knocked onto its side. Honestly, couldn’t people dean up after themselves?
She reached for the matches. They were the kind you paid a couple of cents for in a corner store or got free at restaurants. This matchbook advertised a local pizza place. She opened the dented cardboard cover, and inside were three matches that looked pretty fresh.
Maybe they had a chance at a fire after all.
She glanced over at the trash can and then out at Rob, who was now viciously attacking the second bench of the picnic table. She was certain that he’d got the best end of the deal in their division of labor.
Wrinkling her nose, she approached the trash can. The smell of stale coffee and banana peels sat like top notes above the aroma of garbage. She could tell Rob to do his own filthy garbage duty, but she didn’t know how long the camera light would last, and even the possibility of warmth and fire outweighed her squeamishness. Still, she wished she could see more clearly what was inside.
No way she was sticking her hands in there. Instead, she bent down, lifted the can from the bottom, and upended it.
Her leather gloves were the exact shade of her coat. It had taken her days of shopping to match them. For what she’d paid for these gloves, Rob Sheridan could have a whole new wardrobe with money left over for a haircut.
She glared at the karate kid out there and grit her teeth, hoping she’d kept the receipt for the gloves so she could find the store again and replace these that she was pretty certain she’d never wear again.
There was a lot of paper and other combustibles in the resulting pile. She pulled out the least gross of the crushed paper sacks, old newspapers, and the take-out cups that seemed to be made of cardboard rather than Styrofoam.
Soon she had a nice pile of crumpled papers, including the sports scores she’d found near the matches, and wilderness man was stomping her way with a stack of wood formerly known as picnic table.
“There’s the paper,” she said, pointing to her handiwork. He grunted.
Her smile was so brittle she almost cut herself. “And it was such fun rooting through filthy garbage to collect it, too.”
“About time you got your hands dirty,” was all he replied.
Her arm banged down so hard on the still-whole picnic table that his camera rattled and rolled to its side.
“What is your problem?” he said, righting the camera.
“Why do you despise me so much?” she snapped. It was a strange question; but this was a strange circumstance, and the normal rules of social interaction-where she would pretend not to notice that he couldn’t stand her-temporarily didn’t apply.
She was a nice person. Frie
ndly, competent, easy to get along with. She didn’t mess up on camera more than anyone else-in fact, she thought she did a pretty good job, making Rob Sheridan’s job easier. And he acted as though she were beneath his notice.
They were stuck together, and she was already sick of the company.
Her question obviously startled him. He glanced up, actually engaging her in momentary eye contact. All right! Progress. And then hunkered back down and continued arranging pieces of wood and paper in the rusted metal trash can in some complicated arrangement she suspected he’d learned while lighting bonfires atop Everest.
She waited for him to deny that he loathed her or make up some excuse, and was already sorry she’d asked the question when he said, “You’re a phony.”
Her mouth fell open, and she waited for more, but that appeared to be the sum total of what he had against her.
“A phony?” she finally asked. “You don’t even know me.”
“You’re all perkiness and sunshine, the good news only girl. I swear to God, when you have to report that it’s raining, it’s like you can’t even bear to say the words. You only want to have the sunshine.”
“You’ve been rotten to me since I started here, and that’s it?
That’s the reason? Because I’d rather report sun than rain?”
There was a tense silence when the howl of the wind echoed her own feelings.
“You asked me for the reason. I gave it.”
Except that she wasn’t nearly as shallow as he seemed to think. Or as stupid. In fact, she wasn’t stupid at all. Sure, she was a determined optimist, but she was also smart about people. And there was more to his dislike. Something he wasn’t telling her.
She kept silent while he worked, then handed him the matches, not at all surprised when the first one he struck instantly blazed its little red heart out.