My Only Christmas Wish

by J. M. Jeffries

  “There,” the guard said. He pointed at a monitor.

  Sophia was walking down the hall that led from the day care center to the employee elevator by herself. She looked around and smiled at a few clerks. One stopped to talk her, and then passed on.

  Sophia waited patiently for the elevator and, when the doors opened, she stepped inside and reached up to push a button. The doors closed.

  “We’re not certain what floor she stopped at. I’ve got a crew searching the first floor. They’ll be on the second in a minute.”

  Darcy felt Eli take her hand and hold on tight. Seeing his cool, calm facade cracking told her he was so much more than he wanted people to see.

  The phone rang and Malek answered. He listened for a moment and then grinned at Darcy. “She’s in the restaurant.”

  Before Darcy could say anything, Eli ran out the door and down the hall to the elevator. She caught up with him just as the door opened.

  “What is she doing in the restaurant?” Eli asked, looking mystified as he punched the floor button and the doors slid closed.

  “We’ll know in a moment,” Darcy said as the elevator jerked to a stop and the doors slid open.

  Darcy followed Eli into the restaurant and looked around.

  “Where is she?” Eli asked.

  “Ms. Darcy,” the hostess said. “I understand you’re looking for Ms. Sophia. She’s in the kitchen.”

  Darcy led the way into the kitchen and stopped in surprise.

  Sophia stood on a stool, a child-size apron wrapped around her and a chef’s hat on her head. She spooned something into a bowl and stirred vigorously.

  “Roo,” Eli said quietly.

  Sophia glanced up and smiled at him. “Hello, Daddy. You’re just in time. Chef Mario is teaching me to make the glazes for the pork chops. See?” She held the bowl out to Eli.

  “I see.”

  Darcy held her grin. The stuff in the bowl was a mess, but Sophia was delighted.

  “And if I do this right, he’ll make me the saucy chef.” She went back to her stirring, her tongue peeking out between her lips as she concentrated.

  “Saucy chef,” Eli replied, looking confused.

  “Saucier,” Darcy murmured quietly.

  Eli gave her a pointed look before turning back to his daughter. “What are you doing here?” Eli asked Sophia.

  She gave him a glance that told her she didn’t understand. “I’m cooking, Daddy. Ms. Darcy was supposed to bring me here today, but she had some stupid meeting.” She glared accusingly at Darcy. “So I came by myself. Ms. Darcy said I need to know things. And I wanted to learn how to cook. She said she learned to cook here.”

  Darcy found herself holding her breath. She hardly expected her words to come back to haunt her. She just wanted Sophia to understand that someday she would be running Bennett’s and she wanted Sophia to do it right.

  Eli held his anger in check, but the glance he gave Darcy was filled with rage. “Where is Chef Mario?”

  “Right here, sir,” a voice said from behind Darcy.

  She turned to see Chef Mario walk up to them. He was a tall, stick-thin man with a narrow mustache on his upper lip and an air of boredom about him. Yet he was one of the best chefs in Atlanta.

  She rested her hand on Eli. “Why don’t we go to your office, Chef Mario?” She grinned at Sophia. “Sophia is fine here for the moment.” As she turned, she flipped open her phone and called Malek. “Everything is under control. You can stand down, Malek.” She disconnected and followed Chef Mario as he led the way to his office.

  Compared to Darcy’s office, this one was almost spacious.

  “This is your fault,” Eli said, turning to Darcy as soon as the door closed. “You let her run around pretending to be all grown-up.”

  “You saw the security tape,” Darcy said. “There was never an opportunity for anyone in this store to take her. I’m sorry. I know I need to teach her to be more cautious, but every person in this store would have taken care of her. Not one person who works here would have let her leave with a stranger.”

  “I assumed she had permission to come,” Chef Mario said quietly. “And I should have checked. It is my fault for causing such concern.”

  Darcy smiled at him. “I understand, Chef Mario. Why don’t you head back to your duties while Mr. Austin and I have a little…discussion.”

  The door closed after the chef and Darcy turned to Eli, arms stiffly at her side.

  Eli paced back and forth. “My daughter doesn’t belong here.”

  “Why not? Where does she belong?”

  “She should be playing with her friends, playing with dolls, doing little girl stuff.”

  Darcy sighed. “She doesn’t want to do that. She wants to be here, to be a part of Bennett’s. She is doing little girl stuff. She’s just pretending to be a grown-up. All little girls do that.”

  “I don’t want Bennett’s to be her life.”

  Darcy felt a thread of anger slide through her. “What the hell is wrong with this life?” How much more insulting could he be? She’d grown up here and loved every minute of it. She knew the world was a different place now than it was twenty-five years ago when she’d wandered the floors of Bennett’s.

  “She can do better for herself.”

  Darcy rounded on him, her anger suddenly unleashed. “She’s going to want what she wants, not what you want.”

  “This isn’t want I wanted for me,” he said in a sudden burst of honesty. He turned around and stormed out.

  Darcy stood in the doorway as he walked up to Sophia. He said something to her and she shook her head. Chef Mario stepped forward and said something to Eli and he turned and stalked away, leaving his daughter on her stool diligently stirring her sauce.

  Wow! Darcy thought, not certain how to deal with Eli when he was like this. He was a mass of contradictions. She had to fix this. Somehow, some way, she was going to put that man back on the right path.

  Chapter 9

  Eli stormed out of the restaurant. When the elevator doors opened, he saw Silas sitting on his stool.

  “Good morning, Silas.”

  “Sir,” Silas said. “Which floor?”

  “Office floor.” Was Eli imagining it or was Silas being cool toward him? He swallowed his anger and tried not to glare at the old man. “What does a man have to do to earn the respect of the people who work here?”

  The elevator started to ascend. Silas looked startled. Obviously, not a question he expected. He pulled on the brake and stopped the elevator between floors. “We’re not expecting you to be our friend, but we do want to know if our jobs are secure. The least you could have done when the announcement was made was give us a clue.”

  The reason Eli hadn’t made reference about his future plans for Bennett’s in the announcement regarding the change of ownership was to keep the employees off balance, allowing him to keep control of the changeover. But now that he was finally in the store, he realized he wasn’t in control, Darcy was.

  “I’ve shopped at Dollar Bin,” Silas continued, “and frankly, I don’t like it. It’s a shoddy operation. Your customer service is terrible and your minimum-wage employees are rude. They’re only there for the paycheck until something better comes along. The only thing it has going for it is that it’s cheap. I can get cheap a lot of places. Now, Bennett’s is special.”

  A shoddy operation! “How do you propose I change that?”

  Silas regarded him steadily. “You tell your managers they need to make their employees feel like they’re part of something special. If your employees feel special, then your customers feel special. I’m tight with a buck, but when I go buy my four-dollar caramel macchiato every morning, I am greeted by someone who feels like they are part of something and that makes me feel like I�
��m special and they’re minimum wage.”

  A static sounded from the radio on his belt and a voice said, “Silas, is there a problem with the elevator? You’re between floors.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with the elevator,” Silas replied. “I’m just explaining to the boss man how things work around here.”

  The other man laughed. Eli was shocked. These people had no respect for authority. If Silas worked at Dollar Bin he’d be looking for another job. Eli thought about firing him right now, teaching him that Eli was the boss who held the life and death of every employee at Bennett’s in his hand.

  Eli paused to think more clearly about what Silas had just said while Silas watched him intently. Suddenly, Silas nodded.

  “Point taken, Silas.” Eli realized Silas knew exactly what was going through his head.

  “You’re a wise man, Mr. Austin,” Silas said.

  Totally deflated, Eli could only shake his head. How could a man who operated an elevator see more clearly than Eli?

  Silas started the stalled elevator, and when the doors opened Eli walked thoughtfully down the hall to his tiny office.

  He closed the door and sat down in his chair, staring at the pile of folders neatly stacked in the center of his desk. He felt like a child who’d had his hands slapped.

  He wasn’t liking Darcy right now. Last night after their explosive kiss he’d had a glimmer that somehow they were on the same page. How wrong could he be? They weren’t and probably never would be.

  He had to get rid of her for his own sanity. She was disruptive. He thought he’d managed to find a relatively peaceful life and she was destroying all his hard-earned serenity.

  And his daughter. He loved her more than anything. Darcy’s influence was changing Roo, making her into something he didn’t want. He wanted Roo to be happy and he didn’t want her to be chained to Bennett’s the way he was chained to Dollar Bin. Yeah, he’d bought the store, made the decision to integrate it into his empire, yet he wasn’t getting the satisfaction he thought he’d get by owning Bennett’s. He’d only been here a week and he felt as if he were hanging on by his fingertips.

  Not that anyone deliberately put obstacles in his way, but each suggestion to streamline something had been undermined by Darcy. Employees agreed with him to his face, yet sought her out later.

  He had to get his life back on track. He pulled out his cell phone from his pocket and dialed his lawyer on his direct line. Maybe Jacob had a solution to what Eli could do to get Darcy out of his life and out of his store.

  “Hi, Jake,” Eli said when the lawyer answered. “I have a problem. I need to get rid of Darcy Bennett as cheaply and painlessly as possible. Arrange it for me.”

  He heard his lawyer sigh. “I warned you about her,” Jake said. “You knew going in Ms. Bennett is one of the most beloved women in Atlanta. Removing her from Bennett’s is not going to be easy and it’s not going to be cheap. And you’re going to get some really bad press from it.”

  Eli ran a hand through his hair. “Can you do something?”

  “You can lay her off. She’s a minimum-wage employee, subject to the same labor laws as anyone else.”

  “Thanks, Jake. Anything—and I mean anything—would help.”

  “I don’t like it, but I’ll do what I can.” Jake disconnected.

  Another one of her fans. Damn. Eli pulled a pad of paper to him and picked up a pen. Now that he’d made the decision to completely separate Darcy from Bennett’s, he realized he needed to think the whole idea through more carefully. Jake was a good lawyer and would do what he could, but Eli also knew he had to come up with a good reason, too.

  He made a line down the center of the page and on one side put the word Pro at the top and on the other side of the line he lettered in Con. Pros and cons of getting rid of Darcy Bennett.

  Number one on the Pro side was: She ran the store proficiently. He stared at the words and crossed it out. She was more than proficient. She was… He couldn’t think of a word to describe her abilities. The customers loved her. The staff loved her. Roo loved her. He liked her. In fact, he liked her way too much.

  Maybe he should start with the con list: Challenging my authority at every turn. He made the letters bold and large, almost pushing through the paper with his pen. Despite her delicious lips and curvy body, she made him crazy. And he didn’t like being crazy.

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Darcy Bennett was the most frustrating, aggravating, irritating and any other word ending in -ing he could think of. Yeah, she was also beautiful and gracious and— Wait…wait…wait, he thought, he was writing the con list. He stopped to regroup. He’d never been so conflicted before. He saw what he wanted and did what he needed to do to get it. And Darcy Bennett stood in the way of his control of Bennett’s.

  He rubbed his eyes. He shoved the paper away. This list wasn’t working. For every con item he could think of he had twenty-five pros.

  He stood up and started pacing back and forth across the tiny office, banging his shin on the corner of his desk when he turned. Whatever he came up with had to be her fault. Once she was gone, the employees would eventually adjust to him. After all, in this economy, they needed their jobs. But getting rid of Darcy was going to take finesse. Outmaneuvering her was not going to be easy.

  He sat down at his desk again and slid the paper back to him. What could he do? He tapped the end of the pen against his chin. One thing on his side, more than anything else, was that he was the boss—though she didn’t act like he was the boss. He’d never before had an employee who wasn’t afraid of him. No one did anything in the store he ordered to be done without checking with her. The employees were discreet about it, but they still didn’t just hop to his orders.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. He wasn’t making any headway. All he could hope for was that Jake could find something.

  The rest of the day passed without another confrontation with Darcy. In fact, he did everything he could to avoid her. When he got home, he tried to keep himself focused on Dollar Bin business despite his thoughts continually wandering. Roo gave him a good-night kiss and went to bed. His mother sat in the living room watching TV.

  His cell phone rang. He glanced at the display. Surprised, he answered Darcy’s call.

  “I’m at Dexter’s. Come meet me for a drink,” Darcy said without preamble.

  He wanted to meet her, and didn’t want to meet her. “Why?”

  “We need to talk,” she answered. “Please.”

  “Fine, I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He disconnected.

  As he walked out the door, buttoning his coat, he saw his mother curled on the sofa, the remote in her hand.

  “Mom,” he said, catching her attention, “I’ll be back later.”

  “It’s late. Where are you going?”

  “Meeting someone.” He walked out the front door to where his car was parked. A winter chill pushed through him. Atlanta nights were cool and crisp yet not cold. He loved the weather this time of year. As he got into his car and started it, he thought about Darcy and why she wanted to see him.

  * * *

  Dexter’s was a quiet, elegant little restaurant tucked into the end of a strip mall consisting of upscale stores and restaurants and was one of Darcy’s favorite places to eat and explore. She came often to a couple of her favorite stores to look at their merchandise and determine what was selling. Afterward, she ate at Dexter’s. Like every other restaurant she favored, everyone knew her. The food and the service were excellent. And since she didn’t want to go home to watch her mother suffer in her very elegant, not-so-quiet manner, she’d come to the mall to shop and eat at Dexter’s.

  She sat at a corner table. The white-linen tablecloth was immaculate. Small candles were centered amidst a delicate spray of red tea roses. Her dinner had been cleared away, but s
he lingered over her wine waiting for Eli, hoping he’d call and tell her he wasn’t coming.

  Her phone rang and she answered it thinking it might be Eli, but her mother’s number showed on the display.

  “Just letting you know,” Marilyn said, “I’m heading out for dinner with an old friend and…and I won’t be back.”

  “Who are you going out with?” Darcy demanded, wondering if her mother understood what she was doing.

  “Darcy, you’re not my mother. I will see you in the morning.” Marilyn disconnected, and Darcy stared at the phone. Marilyn might be married to a bum, but having a quickie affair wasn’t the answer.

  She dropped her phone back into her purse and glanced at her watch for the tenth time. He wasn’t coming. Ten minutes had turned into twenty. She’d pushed him too hard. And he wasn’t someone who could forgive and forget. She wasn’t sure if she was delighted or disappointed.

  She needed to apologize. Sophia wasn’t her child and Darcy had interfered with his parenting. What would happen if she’d had a child that didn’t want to run Bennett’s for a living? Forcing them to do that could ruin them. Though she didn’t think she was ruining Sophia.

  Someday, Sophia might inherit Bennett’s and she would still need to know how to run it. If Sophia had shown any sign that she didn’t like being at Bennett’s, Darcy would have backed off.

  “More wine, Ms. Darcy?” her waiter asked.

  “Please,” she said.

  The waiter poured another glass of merlot and she sipped it as she watched the door to the dining room.

  She’d been lucky. Yeah, she’d wanted to be an artist, but deep down inside she always knew her talent was limited. She was a good technical artist, but she had no innovation. When she’d left art behind, she went back to Bennett’s because that was where her heart really lay.

  A shadow blocked the light and she glanced up to find Eli staring down at her. Her heart jumped at the sight of him looking cool and calm in his camel-hair coat. The memory of the kiss brought heat to her cheeks and she took another gulp of wine.