Her Secret Santa

by Jill Shalvis

  Ian stepped back in obvious shock.

  “You’re quitting.”

  “I think that’s just what I said. Let me rewind the tape.” She feigned listening to a handheld tape recorder and nodded. “Yes, that’s what I said. I quit.”

  “Why? Is it because—”

  “Because you and I fucked? No. Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I didn’t…” He sighed. “I’m not flattering myself. I know you weren’t thrilled with how I handled the situation.”

  “You dumped me after one night and said you couldn’t date an inferior.”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I was your superior and therefore could not date you. You remember that part about me being your boss?”

  “Only for two more weeks.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I got a new job. A better job.”

  “Better? Better than here?”

  She almost rolled her eyes.

  “Yes, Ian, believe it or not, some people, like, oh…women, for example, might not consider working with nothing but men the ideal workplace scenario. I like the guys. We get along okay. But I like women. I would like to have some in my life. I would also like to have a job where I don’t weld all day and then go home and weld some more for my other life. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “I don’t, no. You’ve stuck it out here longer than anyone thought you would.”

  “I had to fight tooth and nail to earn the respect of the crew. I’m a little tired of fighting to be treated like a human being. You can’t blame me for that, either.”

  “No.” Ian nodded. “So…where are you going?”

  “You know Clover Greene? Runs the nursery down the highway?”

  “Yeah, Clover’s great. I bought my weed whacker from her.”

  “I’m her new assistant manager. The pay is the same what I make here but the hours will be better, the work not as backbreaking. I don’t like going home too tired to sculpt. I’ve been putting my art career on the backburner too long. I don’t want to do that anymore. Something had to give,” she said.

  “Your art’s important to you,” he said. “I appreciate that. I hate to lose you. We’re not going to find another welder as good as you.”

  “You will. But you won’t find one as fun as me.”

  “You put truck nuts on my bumper to punish me for telling you we couldn’t keep sleeping together.”

  “So? It was just a prank.”

  “You didn’t hang them on my bumper. You welded them on my bumper. Giant. Metal. Testicles.”

  “Your truck needed a new bumper, anyway, and you know it.”

  “Flash…” She could tell he wanted to say something but wouldn’t let himself say it. Well, she knew how he felt. She’d wanted to say something for six months now. If only she could weld her mouth shut.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “Wait, I didn’t thank you for anything.”

  “I assumed you were going to thank me for leaving. I know I’ve been a…” She paused, searched for the right word. “A complicated employee. I know you’ll be more comfortable at work with me gone.”

  “I’d rather be uncomfortable and have you here.”

  “I’d rather work for a woman I respect.”

  “Than work for a man you can’t?” he asked, meeting her eyes. His jaw was clenched again, tight. She’d hurt him.

  “I respect you,” she said as softly as he’d said her real name. “I do. What I mean to say is…I’d rather work for a woman I don’t have feelings for than a man I do. I shouldn’t have made it about respect. I do respect you. I don’t like you very much, but I respect you.”

  “I came on your back.”

  “I wanted you to come on my back. How would us having very good sex make me lose respect for you? I’m not a man. I don’t lose respect for someone just because he has the bad taste to sleep with me. I consider it one of your finer moments actually. I respect you more for fucking me.”

  “I think about it sometimes. That night.”

  His eyes met hers for a tense moment before glancing away again.

  Flash placed her hand on Ian’s chest, over his heart.

  “Welcome to the club,” she said. She patted his chest and dropped her hand to her side. “I’m gonna go before I do or say something stupid. I’ve been known to do that. Examples include the truck nuts incident and that time I welded your desk drawers shut.”

  “Wait. You what?” He ran around to his desk. Every one of the desk drawers opened.

  “Made you look,” she said.

  Ian hung his head, slammed the top drawer shut so that all his pens and pencils rattled.

  “You’re evil,” he said.

  “Just giving you a hard time,” she said. “Gotta go, boss. I mean, ex-boss. Have a nice life.”

  She hopped off his desk and headed for his office door.

  “What are your plans now?” he asked.

  “Dinner at Skyway,” she said. “Clover says they have truffle fries.”

  “No, I mean, you know we don’t have any work scheduled until January 5. Your two weeks’ notice is kind of meaningless considering you didn’t have to work this month, anyway. Are you starting with Clover next week?”

  “Clover’s is closed until March, and she doesn’t need me to start until January. I’m going to enjoy the rest of the month off. It’s December, remember? Baking Christmas cookies, decorating Christmas cookies, eating Christmas cookies, lather, rinse, repeat. Basically eat cookies all month is what I’m doing. And sculpting. You?”

  “No cookies. Work,” he said. “I bought a new house. A new old house.”

  “Cool. Where at?”

  “Government Camp. An old ski chalet.”

  “Govy? You must like snow.”

  “Love snow. We have two feet up there already. Great view from my new kitchen.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “It’s a fixer-upper. I’m spending all month fixing and upping.”

  “A ‘fixer-upper’ ski chalet is still a chalet, Bossman. It’s like saying you bought a ‘low-end’ Rolex or a ‘used’ private plane.”

  “Fine. You win. I’m a spoiled brat, and I always will be. I didn’t earn what I have, but I’m trying to be worthy of it, okay? Which is why I didn’t want to keep sleeping with you, because when someone gives you power over someone else, you don’t abuse it. And whether you like it or not, I had power over you. More than you know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said quickly. “I’m only saying I have the power to hire and fire. I shouldn’t sleep with someone I can fire. I did it for you.”

  “Well, thank you very much for dumping me. It was very chivalrous. Good luck remodeling your chalet this December. You have to weld anything?”

  “A couple things.”

  “Clean your metal. Acetone’s good. If you don’t have any in the house, you can borrow my fingernail polish remover.”

  She gave him one last little look, maybe the last one she’d ever give him, and left his office. She kept her head up and her shoulders straight as she marched down the generic beige hall on generic gray carpets to the parking lot. Everyone was gone. No surprise there. Last day of work before the holidays, and everybody had shipped out the second they could.

  The only car left in the parking lot was Ian’s new black Subaru, which she was pretty sure he bought because he couldn’t look at his old car without picturing the truck nuts she’d welded to the bumper. She headed to her red `98 Ford Ranger, which had seen better days, trying to convince herself she was happy about leaving. And she was. She was excited about her new job. Clover Greene was about the kindest, friendliest woman she’d ever met, and she had a quirky green-haired teenage girl working for her as an office assistant—her kind of people. The nursery itself was like a well-manicured Garden of Eden. Everywhere she looked Flash saw inspiration for her metal foliage sculptures. Great people, safe place for w
omen to work, nice location, good pay, good benefits and fuel for her art. So yeah, she was thrilled about the new job.

  But.

  But…Ian.

  It wasn’t just that he was good in bed. He was. She remembered all too well that he was—passionate, intense, sensual, powerful, dominating, everything she wanted in a man. The first kiss had been electric. The second intoxicating. By the third she would have sold her soul to have him inside her before morning, but he didn’t ask for her soul, only every inch of her body, which she’d given him for hours. When she’d gone to bed with him that night she’d been half in love with him. By the time she left it the next morning she was all the way in.

  Then he’d dumped her.

  Six months ago. She ought to be over it by now. She wanted to be over it the day it happened but her heart wasn’t nearly as tough as her reputation. The worst part of it all? Ian had been right to dump her. They’d both lost their heads after a couple drinks had loosened their tongues enough to admit they were attracted to each other. But Ian had a company to run and there were rules—good ones—that prohibited the man who signed the paychecks from sleeping with the woman who wielded the torch.

  She pulled her keys from her jacket pocket and stuck them in the lock.

  “Flash? Wait up.”

  She turned and saw Ian walking across the parking lot toward her. He wore his black overcoat, and combined with his black Tom Ford suit, he looked more like a Wall Street trader than the vice president and operations manager of Asher Construction. Ian told her once he’d started out doing cleanup at his dad’s construction sites twenty years ago. Then he’d, gone to college, come home, and clawed his way up the ranks the hard way, by working his fingers to the bone while learning every job. If only he was still just a guy on the crew, maybe it could have worked. Now when she looked at him, she saw a man with money, power, and prestige, a man completely out of her league.

  “What?” she asked, leaning back against her truck door.

  He stood in front of her, face-to-face, but didn’t look her in the eyes. He stared off to the left where the peak of Mount Hood rose over the treetops.

  “Ian?” she prompted when it seemed like he was going to keep her standing there in the cold all day.

  “I need your help with something,” he said.

  “That must have been hard,” she said. “Asking for my help.”

  “It wasn’t easy.”

  “What do you need my help with?”

  “A project at my new place. It’s pretty delicate work. I don’t trust myself to do it.”

  “What’s the project?”

  “The house has a stone-and-iron fireplace. It’s what sold me on the place. But the fireplace screen is coming apart. It’s nice, original to the house. Would you maybe be willing to come up and take a look at it tonight?”

  “Has to be tonight?”

  “You busy?”

  “Would you be jealous if I was?” she asked.

  “You have a hickey on the side of your neck that you’re trying to hide under your collar. Not that I noticed.”

  “Except you noticed.”

  “Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I noticed. Who’s the lucky guy? Or girl?”

  “Nobody you know. Old friend from high school who moved back to town a month ago. We reconnected. And then disconnected.”

  “Didn’t work out?”

  “Do you care?”

  “Yes,” he said. He said it very simply. Just “yes” as if what he wanted to say was “obviously I care.”

  She shook her head, not at Ian but at her own stupidity for thinking she could have had something meaningful with this jerk she’d dated for a week.

  “He was cute, he was smart, he was a good kisser, and he thought my art was awesome. But after a couple week he said he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t date a professional welder when he worked as a teller at a bank. His friends would never let him hear the end of it, he said. He just couldn’t date a woman, no matter how hot—his words, not mine—who came off as more of a man than he did. I said that was fine. I didn’t want to date a guy who was less of a man than I was, either. He called me a couple nice words after that and then he was gone. Good riddance to him and his poor little ego..”

  “You have to stop dating beneath you.”

  “I slept with you.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  She laughed.

  “You’re cute,” she said. “I wish you weren’t.”

  “It’s a curse.” He grinned at her. “You know, you could have told that guy you weren’t going to be a professional welder anymore.”

  “I could have, yeah. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t sleep with a guy I don’t respect. A man who can’t respect a woman doing a supposedly ‘man’s job’ isn’t going to respect a woman who does ‘women’s work,’ either. I’m glad it ended before it got serious.”

  “You feel that way about us, too? Glad it ended before it got serious?”

  “It was already serious before you kissed me, Ian.”

  “I didn’t know. I had no idea you… It never occurred to me you had feelings for me,” he said. “Except attraction. That I’d noticed.”

  “You look as good in your suits as out of them and that’s saying something.”

  “Let me take you out tonight,” he said. “Dinner. Then you can come back to the house and help me with the fireplace. We’ll hang out. It’ll be fun. It’ll be normal. We can end things on a good note instead of feeling shitty about what happened.”

  "Or didn’t happen."

  "Or didn’t happen, yeah."

  “Do you even like me?” she asked. “As a person, I mean. I insult you, I welded truck nuts to your car, I scare the newbies and I make eighteen dollars an hour while you make eighteen dollars a minute.”

  “Dad makes eighteen dollars a minute. I make low six figures. I’m on salary, you know. I don’t own the company. I just run it. If I screw up, I get in trouble or get fired just like anyone else who works for my father.”

  “Except the rest of us aren’t senator’s sons who are going to inherit the family business someday no matter how badly we screw up.”

  “Dad’s only a state senator.”

  “And your ski chalet is only a fixer-upper.”

  They were silent a long moment. She knew he was waiting for her to bend a little, to say yes to dinner, to say yes to ending on a good note instead of on this…whatever this was…this awkward painful note.

  “I’m going to miss you,” he said. “You keep me honest.”

  “I insult you. Often.”

  “Somebody has to, right?” he asked. “Everybody else sucks up to me.”

  “That’s the damn truth,” she said.

  “Please? Hang out with me tonight. Take a look at this thing in my house and see if you can fix it. Then we can go to the brewery. My treat. A thank-you for your help. We can pretend to be friends for one evening, right? Then maybe eventually we won’t have to pretend?”

  “Why do you want to be my friend?”

  “You carry a blowtorch in your backpack and I had to pay five hundred bucks to get those fucking truck nuts off my bumper,” he said, meeting her eyes finally. It was his eyes that had gotten to her first—a blue so bright you could see the color from the other side of the room, the other side of the world. “Of course I want to be your friend. It’s safer than being your enemy.”

  She smiled, because she had to after an admission like that.

  “Please, Flash. One apology dinner. I’m even buying."

  Ian was a strong and smart and it meant a lot to her that he wasn’t ashamed to humble himself a little. A real man. He wasn’t afraid of her even if he joked he was. Which is why she shouldn’t be doing this, having this conversation with him, thinking these thoughts. She cared too much about him already. He’d crushed her before and he could crush her again. She absolutely should not spend any time alone with him ever again, not if she didn’t want to get hurt like before, an
d God knows, she didn’t want to get hurt like before. She was still hurt.

  “I’ll go get my torch,” she said. “But you better make good on the brewery or your fireplace screen won’t be the only thing I solder to the floor.”

  “You’re sexy when you’re threatening permanent damage to my genitals,” he said.

  She patted his shoulder.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  ISBN: 9781488024245

  HER SECRET SANTA

  Copyright © 2009 by Jill Shalvis.

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