by Lisa Plumley
Why was she making a phone call again?
“Yes. Jason.” Chip’s tone sharpened. “How is he doing?”
“He’s doing brilliantly,” Danielle gushed. “He’s doing great work on the sales floor. Our customers love him. The staff does too. He has a real eye for window displays. Did you know—”
—he can make homemade toys? she was about to ask as her gaze fell on Jason’s toy race car on her bureau. As much as anything else, it was proof of his overall value to the company.
Jason could be so much more than a typical CEO. He could be a real asset. For instance, he could revitalize their More, More Moosby’s! exclusives. He might even be able to create new ones.
She didn’t know anyone who was more skilled with his hands.
“Fine,” Chip interrupted. “Have there been more protests?” Strangely enough, he sounded . . . hopeful? . . . about the possibility.
“No. There was only the one protest on the first day,” Danielle explained, “and Jason—I mean, Mr. Hamilton—defused it.”
“Just one, huh?” A disgruntled humph came over the line.
Next came more sounds of walking. A squeaky door opening.
Then . . . distant flushing? No. No, Chip couldn’t be . . .
“He’s made a wonderful impression on everyone here in Kismet,” Danielle said hastily and truthfully. She blanched as a faint splashing sound came through the phone line. “I’ve sent you some things as proof of that,” she told Chip even more rapidly. If he hadn’t read her e-mailed memos detailing Jason’s work by now, maybe her mentioning them would make him look. “I hope you and the board will consider his future very carefully.”
“We always consider the future very carefully,” Chip told her with unconvincing distractedness. “Even when Jason doesn’t.”
“Of course. What I mean to say—if I can be absolutely frank with you, sir?—is that Mr. Hamilton is making such good progress here in Kismet, that I honestly don’t think an expanded media tour will be necessary. When you’ve had a chance to review the materials I sent you, I think you’ll be very pleased.”
Chip gave a noncommittal grunt. Then . . . unzipping?
Oh God. He really was about to pee while on the phone with her. Danielle couldn’t believe it. This was very unprofessional.
Did she really want to work more closely with him?
“That’s all I wanted to say!” she chirped. “I’m afraid I have to run, Mr. Larsen. Thanks for speaking with me. Bye!”
She ended her call in the nick of time. Simultaneously relieved and disbelieving, Danielle stared at her phone. The corporate big leagues weren’t what she thought they were, if phone calls like that one were par for the course. Yuck.
Experiencing an intense urge to wash her hands and apply a gallon or two of hand sanitizer, Danielle hightailed it toward the kitchen, feeling her heart pound as she went. This was risky. If Chip Larsen reviewed her memos and didn’t agree that Jason was making good progress in Kismet, her credibility would be shot. But if he saw them and agreed with her, she might have just finagled herself and Jason a few additional days together.
Ordinarily, she wasn’t one for keeping secrets. She liked to be aboveboard in all things (okay . . . except for her very necessary inventory manipulation at work). But this time, when Jason had seemed so downbeat about her mentioning his CEO status and about discussing Moosby’s HQ earlier, she decided a little bit of light subterfuge might be in order. Just temporarily.
Just until she’d solidified . . . whatever this was between them.
It might, she knew, just be a fling. Realistically, it had to be a fling. Jason might be hinting about spending Christmas with her at The Christmas House B & B next year, but Danielle knew he couldn’t possibly mean it. She was pretty fantastic, but she wasn’t “date People magazine’s ‘sexiest man alive’” fantastic.
Almost as if to prove it, Karlie yelled out to her.
“Mom?” her daughter said from down the hall. “Zach’s going to barf! You’d better come quick. Bring some towels, too.”
Yep, Danielle decided as she hustled in that direction. Her life was pretty glamorous. Just the kind of thing a millionaire CEO really went for. In her dreams, that is.
Ten-year-old girls were not experts at hazing their mothers’ unwanted new boyfriends, Jason realized as he stood naked in Danielle’s bathroom clutching a hand towel to his groin. He could have sworn there’d been a full contingent of adult-size bath towels when he’d gotten into the shower. But when he’d gotten out again—on an emergency basis, because of Zach’s upset stomach—Jason hadn’t been able to find them.
Judging by the smug look on Karlie’s face, she’d managed to sneak away with all the towels except the single letter-paper-size scrap of terry cloth currently clutched in Jason’s hand.
“Your big, dumb, new boyfriend doesn’t know how to take a shower,” Karlie continued shouting down the hall in her mother’s direction. “He got in without checking for towels first.”
As tactics went, hers was pretty weak. It wasn’t exactly a criminal-worthy failing to wind up towelless. Also, he had checked first. But even if he hadn’t, Danielle couldn’t possibly mind. Wet and irked, Jason grabbed a handful of shower curtain for additional coverage. His feet pooled water onto the bathmat.
“You know how you hate having to bring us towels in the middle of a bath,” Karlie bellowed, going on with her tattling. “Especially when you’re in the middle of an important call.”
Judging by the newly triumphant gleam in the girl’s eyes, that was the key. Danielle’s phone call. She had friends. She chatted with them. She kept in close contact with Gigi and Henry and the rest of the Moosby’s staff, too. So Jason didn’t dwell on Danielle’s “important call.” Especially since poor little Zach was still slumped over the toilet bowl, waiting to heave.
“Are you feeling any better, buddy?” Jason asked with concern. He would have patted the kid’s back for comfort, but he needed both hands to stay decent. “I opened the door as fast as I could when I heard you guys pounding on it to get in.”
“I know. Thanks.” Zach gave a weak nod. Then, gamely, he offered Jason a thumbs-up. “Too many whoopie pies. Ugh.”
Danielle arrived, full of mingled competence and alarm.
She took in the situation in a glance. Making a sad face, she crouched beside Zach. She patted his back. “Are you okay?”
Zach nodded feebly. “Just a false alarm, I guess.”
Danielle examined him closely. She gave a faint frown.
Aiden lingered in the doorway, watching with big, hopeful eyes. He was wearing Abominable Snowman pajamas and carrying a copy of How the Grinch Stole Christmas for his bedtime story.
“Do we get to stay up late because Zach is sick?”
“Zach isn’t sick. He’s fine now.” With an experienced air, Danielle lay the back of her hand against her son’s forehead. She smiled at him. “How many whoopie pies did you eat?”
“Umm . . . four?” Zach grimaced. The color had returned to his face now. He seemed 100 percent recovered. “You did give us all that money, Mom. We figured we should buy a lot of whoopie pies. They were supposed to be for sharing with you guys, but . . .”
The boy shrugged elaborately, giving a sheepish smile.
“Next time, I want change. Okay? Karlie should have known better.” Danielle looked up, her attention caught by something besides Zach for the first time: Jason. Her gaze landed on his groin first—since it was at eye level—then slid upward. Her eyes got bigger than Aiden’s. “Aha. That explains why I was supposed to bring towels.” Self-consciously, she said, “Sorry, Jason.”
“It’s all right.” He’d nearly drip-dried now. “Z, I’m glad you’re feeling better. You really toughed it out there.”
“I did.” Zach’s gaze shone with hero worship. “Thanks, J.”
Clearly, they’d forged a deeper instafriendship than Danielle had realized, if they already had nicknames for each other. All the same
. . . “This would have been an excellent time to have two bathrooms,” Danielle said apologetically. “If we did—”
“You couldn’t have had two bathrooms!” Karlie swooped in to say. “Because you and Dad were practically broke when you bought this house,” she reminded her mother. Her tone was rich with the echo of family lore. “You were newlyweds. You couldn’t afford a fancy house with two bathrooms. You were young and in love!”
“We were young and naïve,” Danielle disagreed, plainly not embarking on the sentimental journey her daughter obviously wanted to encourage. “Turns out, two bathrooms is a necessity.”
“Dad’s new house with Crystal has three bathrooms and a hot tub,” Zach volunteered, always willing to talk up Crystal. He poked around in the vanity cabinet, then withdrew something fluffy. “Hey, here are the towels. They’re right here.”
“How did they get wedged under the sink?” Danielle asked, her attention diverted from sneaking surreptitious glances at Jason’s nude arms and legs and chest and . . . well, pretty much all of him except the most critical parts. “That’s weird.”
“Yeah.” Karlie chuckled. “Really weird.” She sniffed. “Maybe your dumb new boyfriend thinks that’s where towels go. All bunched up in a heap next to the extra toilet paper. Weird.”
Jason raised both arms in surrender. “Hey, I was just minding my own business, having a nice, normal shower—”
“Trying out my peppermint body wash,” Danielle observed, stepping a fraction closer to sniff his skin. Her eyes gleamed at him with appreciation and good humor. And desire. “Nice.”
“It’s not nice!” Karlie’s expression turned belligerent. “You told us that soap is off-limits. We can’t even use it.”
“—when everybody burst in here so Zach could spew,” Jason finished. The truth was, he’d cadged some of Danielle’s body wash because it made him feel stupidly closer to her. He was an idiot. “I stepped out to help, couldn’t find a decent towel, and here we are. Z, if you’d just hand me one of those, please—”
“No prob, J.” Zach tossed a larger towel. “All yours.”
The boy’s camaraderie-filled, man-to-man tone almost cracked him up. Divertingly, though, Jason realized he couldn’t towel off with everyone in the bathroom. He wasn’t trying to host a peep show. Meaningfully, he cleared his throat.
Danielle caught his expression. She grinned.
“That’s it, everybody. Time to clear out.” She clapped her hands like a maternal drill sergeant. “Your regular bedtime bathroom shifts will resume in a few minutes. Let’s go.”
Zach and Aiden obediently marched off to their rooms.
Karlie, however, slumped against the bathroom vanity with classic preteen exasperation. “But Mom! Jason broke the rules!”
Danielle blinked. “What rules?”
An infuriated exhalation. “About needing more towels? About interrupting you when you’re on an important phone call? About being naked in front of three little kids? How about that, huh?”
Danielle hid a smile. “Jason isn’t naked. He can’t very well help being too big for that little hand towel, now can he?”
She’d noticed. Jason couldn’t help preening.
“Mooom!” Karlie wailed. “I think I’m traumatized!”
“You’re fine.” Danielle cast another hasty up and down glance at Jason. He wished he knew what she was thinking. “As far as the rest goes . . . no harm, no foul. That’s what I say.”
“Argh! You never say that!” Karlie complained.
“I just did. Now shoo. Off to bed with you, sweetie.”
“I need to get into the bathroom too, you know!”
“Just as soon as Jason is done. The sooner you leave—”
“Fine.” Karlie whirled around, her long braid swinging. In the midst of preparing to storm away, she narrowed her eyes at Jason. “The only good thing about you,” she informed him heatedly, “is that you like it here! Unlike my mom!”
Behind her, Danielle flinched. She looked concerned.
Evidently, Danielle had told her kids about their potential move to L.A. Just as evidently, the idea hadn’t gone over very well. Jason felt sorry for that. He also felt sorry that Karlie wasn’t ready to like him. Purposely, he smiled at her.
“I do like it here,” he said, trying to fix that. “Kismet is nice. It’s full of Christmassy stuff. Who doesn’t like that?”
“Me.” Karlie jerked up her chin. “I hate Christmas. This is going to be the worst Christmas ever. All because you’re here.”
Then she did storm away, leaving Danielle behind to gaze worriedly after her. Jason looked at them both, so alike and so upset, and knew that somehow, he’d really screwed up this time.
Unlike with Bethanygate, he felt awful about it, too.
“I’m sorry, Danielle.” He clutched both his towels, no longer caring about his nudity or Danielle’s reaction to it. Less lascivious events were more important now. “I really thought I could help your kids adjust to your dating again.”
“You have,” Danielle assured him, seeming to feel a little better as she glanced at him. “Do you think I don’t know this would have been inevitable eventually? No matter who I was dating? To Karlie, nobody’s ever going to measure up to her dad. I just didn’t realize she was still hoping we’d reconcile.”
Jason frowned. He steeled his resolve. “I’m not giving up, you know. Unless you want me to. If you want me to, I will.”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing.” Danielle cast a racy, lingering look in his direction. “Including all of . . . that.”
Hmm. She was more resilient than he’d given her credit for, Jason realized. At least she was if her gesticulating fingers indicating him, his nudity . . . and, he imagined, his overall willingness to bare himself to her meant anything.
He thought they did. They definitely did.
Danielle Sharpe didn’t do anything halfway. Including looking at him, kissing him, confusing him . . . counting on him.
He must have been crazy, Jason realized, to have mixed himself up with a divorcée and her three children. This wasn’t just some lark he could forget after a wild weekend. This was real life. For Danielle, Karlie, Zach, and Aiden, there would be no gallivanting off to Antigua to forget about this afterward.
The realization was sobering. Jason wasn’t sure he was ready for so much responsibility. He hadn’t been thinking long-term when he’d come up with this plan. On the other hand, he’d been shouldering big jobs since he was just a scrawny kid.
Nowadays, he had much bigger shoulders.
“I think you’re the one who hid all the towels in the cupboard,” Jason teased her. “Nice try. I’m on to you now.”
“Are you? I doubt it,” Danielle said. “I bet I can still surprise you.” Then she did just that by tossing him another interested look—and, just when he expected her to say something mischievous, Danielle added, “You did a good job with Zach tonight, by the way. Usually he’s really freaked out by getting nauseated, but you calmed him down faster than ever. Thanks.”
Then, without waiting for his response, Danielle closed the bathroom door and headed down the hallway in pursuit of her sulky daughter, leaving Jason behind to towel off, admire her resourcefulness, and think about what she’d just said, too.
Maybe—just maybe—Jason thought, he did have what it took to survive small-town schmaltziness full-time. Maybe he even wanted to do that. He couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just trying to run away again, the way he’d done with his vacation. He couldn’t even be sure he knew what the hell he was doing. The only way to find out was to go all in with Danielle. . . to snag enough time in Kismet with her to know if things were real between them.
He’d tried to do that earlier today. He wouldn’t know if he’d succeeded until Chip Larsen deigned to look at the sleighride video footage and photos Jason had e-mailed him.
The bottom line was, Jason needed more time with Danielle. If those photos of his sappy, happy, Christmastime f
amily fun in snowy Christmas Town didn’t do the trick to convince Chip and the board that Jason was a new and improved man, nothing would.
Twenty minutes after the very last “good night” and the very last lights-out for her three kids, Danielle crept into her quiet living room with two glasses of spiced mulled wine, a heart full of hopefulness, and an unexpected sense of surprise.
Jason had lighted the Christmas tree for her, she saw. He’d also, if the sight of him on all fours underneath that Douglas fir was any indication, taken it upon himself to water it.
Danielle loathed watering the Christmas tree. First, there was the ignoble, butt-wagging posture required (although Jason made that look really good). Next, there was the threat to her hair. Because every time she crawled in there to try to wedge a long-spouted watering can into the tree stand’s basin, she got pine needles stuck in her curls. Finally, there was the reminder that if she didn’t do it, nobody else would. Everything in her household was up to her to take care of now. All by herself.
Including Christmas.
Not that she couldn’t handle that. She could. Of course. It was just that, sometimes, Danielle wanted to share those responsibilities. She wanted to feel she was part of a team.
A Christmastime team . . . that lasted all year long.
Shaking her head at her own gullibility, she stood there with her clove, cinnamon, and citrus-spiked Merlot for a minute, watching Jason do the tree watering. His arms were longer than hers. His tolerance for sticky sap, falling needles, and the threat of being crushed to death by a toppling tree (admittedly not very likely) was clearly much higher than hers was, too.
Jason was excellent at pitching in where needed. Whereas Mark had required something close to a bullhorn and a cattle prod just to make him notice something needed to be done around the house, Jason somehow noticed and then did things on his own.
“Would it be weird of me to imprison you here until all my Christmastime stuff is done?” Danielle joked, finally trading her view of his backside for his attention. “Suddenly I’m dying to find out if you’re any good at baking cookies, wrapping gifts, and hanging stockings. Oh, and going Christmas caroling.”