Do Not Open 'Til Christmas
Page 15
They continued up the stairs and down the hallway, peering into the roped-off rooms. They’d re-created the former stationmaster’s suite with an office that included a vintage typewriter, and a bedroom with its original furniture. A plaque on the wall boasted that the bathroom included a tub reportedly used by Winston Churchill on a 1929 visit, but to Chloe’s great disappointment, they couldn’t see it from their side of the velvet rope.
They returned to the hallway and stopped at the landing that led back to the stairs. Her camera temporarily at rest, Chloe leaned her folded arms on the railing and looked down at the heads of reporters arriving for the luncheon.
She smiled at Bret. “Look. Those people down there look like . . . slightly smaller people.”
Bret leaned his elbows on the railing alongside hers. “Think they’d like it if we tossed down breadcrumbs? Like ducks?”
It earned him a chuckle. And he wondered if, like him, Chloe felt a little reluctant to join the crowd.
“You’ve been here before?” she asked.
“The Harvey House? Sure. I like history, and I love obscure tourism.”
“This place is amazing.” There it was again—that unguarded smile. “But I meant the luncheon. Have you been to one of these before?”
“A couple of times.”
“Are you up for an award?”
He hadn’t thought to mention it. “I—yes.” He felt his face redden. “A story I did last spring on school test scores in Tall Pine, and why our students do better than the rest of San Bernardino County. It won’t win.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shook his head. That had sounded like a poor-me statement, or some kind of bid for reassurance. “Sorry, I wasn’t fishing. Just stating a fact. It’s not the right kind of story. You’ve heard the expression, ‘If it bleeds, it leads’?”
Chloe nodded.
“Well, it’s up against stories about gang wars in San Bernardino and the murder rate in Victorville. Those are just more—relevant.”
Her smile gone, she was studying him closely. Too closely.
Bret sighed. “I joke about it, but you know I don’t really want bad things to happen, right? It’s just that they do, and it’s important to write about them. Tall Pine is a great place to live, which makes it an awful place to write about.”
So why are you still there? He could see the inevitable question forming. To circumvent it, he looked down at the thinning group of people filing toward the ballroom below. “We’d better get down there and find our seats.”
As they turned away from the rail, he resisted an unexpected impulse to rest a hand on the small of her back. This vacation had unspoken rules, and he doubted Chloe was even aware of them. Today was his chance to enjoy being with her from a respectable distance, and maybe even pretend there was potential for something more. Just pretend. As long as he didn’t cross the line to try to make it a reality.
Although where that line was, and how close he could come to crossing it, was getting harder to tell.
* * *
At the entrance to the ballroom where the luncheon was being held, a beige-haired woman behind a table took Bret’s tickets in exchange for two adhesive name tags. Chloe grinned as she jotted her name on her tag with one of the black marking pens provided. “I always have the urge to write, ‘If lost, return to 325 Hilltop Road.’”
She slapped the tag just below the light blue shoulder of her blouse. Bret, who’d been known to quietly disregard name tags, reluctantly followed suit. They continued into the banquet room, which was filled with reporters, about half of them seated while the others stood chatting in clusters.
“You’re right,” he said. “It looks like a luggage tag convention.”
The room was more than half male, and memories of the Christmas party earlier this week surfaced in his mind. Bret wasn’t anxious to deal with predators of either the executive or the Mike-from-the-press-room variety. He was glad when Chloe opted to look for seats right away, and he was equally pleased when she chose a seat next to a woman with a smart-looking gray pageboy haircut. Bret sat at her other side, figuring he’d precluded any wolf attacks.
That was, until a twentysomething guy with eager blue eyes and a snappy red tie landed directly across from Chloe. His name tag proclaimed that he was Tyler Shepperton from the San Bernardino Sun.
It seemed to Bret that he’d met a lot of shallow, self-serving guys named Tyler.
“I’m Anne Rueland,” the woman on Chloe’s left said. “Are you two together?”
Chloe’s mouth formed an appealing “o.” Clearly she’d been caught off guard.
“We’re both from the Tall Pine Gazette,” Bret said. If that left a little ambiguity, he didn’t bother to clarify it. He nodded past Chloe. “I’m Bret. This is Chloe.”
Anne nodded back, her gray eyes keen but kind. If she’d been looking for personal details, she took the hint and let it go. “It’s nice to meet you both. I’m with the Mount Douglas Herald.”
For some people in Tall Pine, mention of Mount Douglas—the bigger town up the mountain with enough regular snowfall to warrant a ski resort—brought out a sense of rivalry. Chloe only smiled.
“So we’re neighbors,” Chloe said. “I think you probably win the award for longest distance traveled.”
While Chloe made small talk with their new friend, Bret noticed the kid across the table—sorry, you weren’t a man until you needed to shave more than twice a week—kept eyeing Chloe. She had to be aware of it. But as beverages were served and conversation spread over the rest of the table, Bret noticed something else: the way Chloe managed to acknowledge Tyler Shepperton while limiting eye contact with him. Bret thought again of the Christmas party. It must be a constant for her, contending with male attention, whether it was from executives, coworkers, or the occasional traffic cop.
Traffic cops aside, it shouldn’t be part of her job to deal with admirers diplomatically. He needed to remember that, before he became part of the problem.
But today, away from the office, he still wanted to pretend.
As Anne got involved in a discussion with a man from Victorville, comparing notes on their weather challenges, Chloe lowered her eyes from her latest admirer and started reading the program left at the side of her plate. Idly, Bret picked up his program as well. Chloe’s former instructor was the only one shown with a photograph, but below that, there were brief biographies of the other two speakers as well.
Somewhere along the line, McCrea had sent them updated information that included Bret’s bio. He hadn’t expected that. He skimmed the paragraph: born in Tall Pine, graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. . . .
He turned his own program face down and glanced again at Chloe. He knew she’d seen it when her eyes widened.
“Bret.” Lovely gray-green eyes stared at him. “You interned at the Washington Post?”
Her words fell into a conversational lull at the table, and suddenly all eyes were turned on him. He fought off a sense of discomfort. While Chloe was used to being looked at, Bret preferred to recede into the background, which served him well in his work as a reporter. When necessary, it made it easy to be a fly on the wall, to watch and listen and observe.
“The Washington Post?” Anne echoed, and of all the people at the table, he would have guessed she’d be the hardest to impress. Tyler looked relatively blank, and Bret tried to decide if he was jealous or clueless.
“It’s not as big a deal as it sounds,” Bret said. “They have a couple of dozen students go through there every summer.”
“But it has to be awfully competitive,” Anne said.
“What was it like?” asked a woman on Tyler’s left who’d been quiet up to this point.
He drew a breath. He definitely wasn’t used to being the center of attention, not like this. And although he didn’t look at her, he could feel Chloe staring at him with a million questions.
“Really exciting,” he admitted. “And ha
rd work. The place is intense.”
“So you walked where Woodward and Bernstein walked,” the man on Anne’s left said. Maybe that would clue Tyler in.
For the next five minutes, Bret fielded questions, and though the answers weren’t hard, he was surprised at how foreign it felt. He was used to being the one to ask the questions. And he was acutely aware of Chloe’s eyes on him, and all the questions she wasn’t asking. Not yet. But he knew she remembered their conversation that night at The Snowed Inn, and he’d be hearing from her later.
It had been the most dizzying, exciting time of Bret’s life, until it all came to a crashing halt. In the town of Tall Pine, the Washington Post might as well be on the moon. He never talked about it.
At last the conversation turned toward the film version of All the President’s Men, and Bret exhaled. By the time their food arrived, conversation had moved on to the quality of the chicken. Chloe delicately picked at her meal while Tyler Shepperton pelted her with questions about snow in Tall Pine.
Bret marveled at the way Chloe controlled the wattage of her smile. Polite, friendly, but not too encouraging. The way she had with Mike from the press room. The way she had with Lloyd Mossel, until she was leaving the building. Another thing she shouldn’t have to do. And then, on her way out, she’d felt safe enough to let the full brightness of that smile shine through.
He didn’t remember eating his chicken. And when it was time for him to speak before the first award was presented, he didn’t remember what he said. Thank God for preparation. He knew some people were terrified of public speaking, but for Bret, that came much more easily than dealing with a table of six.
His speech must have been coherent, because there was a decent round of applause as he made his way back to their table. At least they hadn’t fallen asleep. What Bret remembered was Chloe’s face as she made room for him to return to his chair.
And her smile was bright.
Chapter 12
As she watched Bret deliver his speech, Chloe couldn’t help feeling proud. No, proud wasn’t the right word. Proud implied that she played some part in his accomplishments, and that certainly wasn’t the case. A month ago, she hadn’t even known him.
“Some people say local newspapers are dying out,” he began. “I’d say they’d be very alarmed at the number of walking corpses here today.” A light chuckle went through the room. “But there’s a reason we’re here, even though the Los Angeles Times has regional sections for the High Desert, and the mountain communities, and the inland valleys.” His eyes traveled the room, landing on different tables by turns. “A reason why our neighbors usually say ‘no’ when they get a call from those Los Angeles telemarketers.”
Impressed was a better word, she decided. Bret had never struck her as an extrovert. But he could hold a room, the way he had at the impromptu staff meeting the other day. When he talked, people listened.
“My editor said something my first year that’s stuck with me ever since: you can only truly serve one community. Reporters from Los Angeles can get on the phone and learn the facts, but they don’t experience our freezes, our wildfires, our heat waves. They don’t have the firsthand understanding of what it means when a certain school principal retires, or a favorite store closes, or a new business comes to town. They can’t. They’re not omniscient, and they can’t teleport.” He shrugged. “They’re still working on the app for that.”
Another general chuckle. As Bret stood behind the podium, delivering his words with conviction, Chloe tried to decipher the latest piece in the jigsaw puzzle. He seemed to mean what he said. Yet he’d given every indication that he wasn’t happy in Tall Pine, that he wanted to do something more important. She looked down at her program again. He’d told her he’d always wanted to work for a paper like the Washington Post. How could he have never mentioned that he’d interned there? The bio couldn’t be wrong—he’d looked too embarrassed when it came up—but it didn’t make sense.
“. . . So, until teleportation becomes a reality, keep doing what you’re doing. Know your hometown. Know your neighbors. And tell their stories. Thank you.”
Chloe applauded with the rest as Bret made his way back to their table. Halfway across the room, his eyes fell on hers, and she smiled. She couldn’t help it: proud was what she felt, whether she was entitled to or not, no matter how much he baffled her.
“That was very good,” Anne said as he reclaimed his seat.
“You have a knack for public speaking,” Chloe said. “Where did you pick it up?”
“High school debate team.” Bret grinned. “I liked arguing.”
The grin vanished in an instant, but she’d seen more of them today than she had in the month she’d known him.
When the waiter arrived a moment later with a coffeepot, Bret quietly slid the little pitcher of creamer toward Chloe. It didn’t mean anything. It was just consideration. It would be easy enough for Bret to remember she loved creamer in her coffee, since he took his the same way. But on some adolescent level, it touched her.
No crushing on the boss, she reminded herself. But Bret didn’t feel like the boss today. He felt like—
She picked up her cup with both hands and closed her eyes as she took a sip, willing the caffeine to work its magic. And bring her back to her senses in the bargain.
The coffee had arrived in the nick of time. It kept her going through the next speaker, a Columbia graduate from a paper in Riverside who wasn’t half as interesting, or succinct, as Bret. Then it was time for Dr. Macias to speak. She delivered her message with the same incisive wit Chloe remembered from the classroom.
Bret turned to her as they applauded at the end. “And you didn’t take her journalism class?”
Chloe shook her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
Even after only two and a half years, college seemed so long ago. And she hadn’t seen Dr. Macias since her freshman year. She’d taken a position at another college after Chloe’s freshman year. Dr. Macias might not even remember her. But chickening out wasn’t an option. Seeing her old professor had been the whole rationale for her trip to this luncheon.
So, after the awards—true to his prediction, Bret didn’t win—she stood with Bret in the small ring of people waiting to talk to the keynote speaker.
Dr. Macias finished a conversation with a blue-suited man and turned in Chloe’s direction. A faintly puzzled frown formed over her eyes, nearly as sharp and dark as Bret’s, and then her brows lifted in surprised recognition.
“Chloe!” She grabbed Chloe by the shoulders. “How are you? What are you up to?”
Chloe felt her cheeks flush as Dr. Macias released her. “I’m writing for the Tall Pine Gazette.”
“Oh, you came around. I’m so glad.” She looked past Chloe to Bret. “This girl was so smart. The last thing she needed was freshman composition, but it was a requirement. Her essays were wonderful. I kept after her to take journalism from me second semester. . . .” Returning her eyes to Chloe, Dr. Macias shook her head in a mock-scolding gesture.
Bret nodded. “She’s written some great features for us.”
Chloe didn’t know if she wanted to melt into the floor or sail around the room like an escaped balloon. Then she remembered her manners. “Dr. Macias, this is Bret Radner, my editor.”
“Acting editor,” Bret put in, shaking Dr. Macias’s hand.
“Elizabeth,” she said to Chloe. “We’re not in school anymore.” Then, to Bret, “Your speech was terrific.”
“Thanks. Yours, too.”
Standing beside Bret as they chatted, Chloe remembered the question that only Anne Rueland had put into words: Are you together? They’d gotten curious glances quite a few times today, and Chloe could sense the speculation. In a roomful of people she didn’t know, it hadn’t bothered her much. In Tall Pine, it would have bothered her a lot. She’d gotten the job on her merits, and she didn’t want anyone to think otherwise.
Not anyone that mattered, anyway.
* * *
Out in the parking lot, Bret opened the passenger door for Chloe. “I’m not sure she remembered you,” he deadpanned, then got in on his side.
Chloe chuckled, resting her head back on the seat. The conversation with Elizabeth had been a wonderful capper for the luncheon. “Thanks for the nice things you said.”
“Nothing that wasn’t true.” Bret started the car. When it came to displaying reactions, he and Elizabeth were nearly exact opposites. But Chloe knew he meant it. He wasn’t one to throw compliments around.
Not Monday through Friday, anyway.
They started down the highway while Green Day picked up where they left off on the stereo.
“She was right, you know,” Bret said. “You’re talented. If McCrea doesn’t have a slot for you when he gets back, you really ought to look into applying at papers down the hill.”
“Trying to get rid of me?” she said lightly, although his suggestion didn’t make her feel light.
“Not at all. But I know you went out on a limb when you took this as a temporary job. Just know that you’re good enough to grow into something bigger.”
Thinking of the battle she had producing enough stories per week for the Gazette, she bit her lip. Bret didn’t know about her late nights on the couch, hammering out first drafts to give her a head start on the next day.
“You will have one hurdle,” Bret said.
Or maybe he did know?
“You need to be prepared for the fact that eventually, you’ll have to say something bad about someone.”
He had a point there. She’d written about painful subjects, but she’d always been on the side of anyone she’d interviewed. “You’ve never written anything bad about anyone in Tall Pine?”
“You’ve got to admit, we’re pretty light on scandal. The biggest controversy that ever broke, I never wrote a word of.”