by Lisa Plumley
Also, she liked that sign, too. A local artist had painted it. There was something irrevocably unpretentious and welcoming about it. Which was probably why Casey was calling her attention to it, rather than simply trudging uphill to his Christmas doom.
He wanted her to want to come with him. Willingly.
“I didn’t agree to this!” Kristen said from inside the car. She pantomimed reluctance to make her message clear. “You’re still trying to pit me against my sister. It won’t work.”
“Am I?” Casey held up his cell phone. “Will you take a picture of me beside this sign? It’ll blow my friends’ minds.”
If she got out of the car, Kristen knew, she was sunk. From there, it would be that much easier to heed the lure of eggnog and peppermint bark and evergreen garland and simply accompany Casey inside The Christmas House. There, she’d be twice as susceptible to his charms. Christmastime weakened her resolve.
Christmastime might even be capable of overriding the off switch she typically employed when it came to her libido—and men who failed her litmus test. Men like Casey Jackson.
Oblivious to her mental battles, Casey waggled his phone. He gave an enticing little smile, too, just to sweeten the deal.
Although that’s not precisely what tipped the scales in his favor, Kristen suspected she’d look back later and curse his relentless boyish charm. So far, it was proving to be her undoing. She couldn’t seem to not trust him, no matter how hard she tried. But Kristen did have the presence of mind—and the pride—not to make her (temporary) surrender look easy.
She cracked open the passenger-side door, then offered him a scowl from within the resulting gap. “If I spend the afternoon with you,” Kristen specified, “I want dinner, too.”
“Fine. It’ll be my treat.”
His instant acquiescence told her she should have asked for more. But Kristen was committed now. She got out, then tromped over to him. “Excellent! They serve an incredible buffet at the B&B, full of every single Christmas specialty you can think of.”
“Sounds nightmarish.”
“Just smile for the camera.”
Then Kristen snapped a photo of Casey beside the B&B’s holly-wreath-decorated sign, thereby sealing into posterity the moment when she stopped being officially skeptical of him . . . and started being willing to go along with him (at least partway) instead.
Chapter 8
Galaxy Diner, Kismet, Michigan
20½ baking, frosting, pastry-making days until Christmas
When Walden Farr emerged from the Galaxy Diner’s walk-in at the end of his shift, he wasn’t thinking about Christmas wishes. He was thinking, more or less, about the batch of spritz cookies he was chilling, the chocolate ganache he was planning for service tomorrow, and the likely improbability of anyone from his hometown, roughly three thousand miles distant, coming to see him at Christmastime.
It wasn’t because his family didn’t care. They did. But they couldn’t afford airfare for holiday vacations. They also couldn’t afford the time off from work (or the gas) needed to make a multistate road trip. At this point, although he had a good job, neither could he. That was just the way it was.
This year, like most years, Walden and his far-flung family would be having a very Skype-y Christmas. Video calling had its advantages, though. For one, if the Internet connection was sluggish enough—and he tied back his dreads—his mom might forget to nag him about getting a haircut. So that was a plus.
Walden believed in looking on the bright side. Most of the time, he was pretty good at it. That’s why, when Talia invited him to participate in the scheme she and Gareth were pulling off, Walden decided to go along with it. Because he knew they meant well. He knew they would probably succeed. And he—as the new guy in town—wanted to be in on the action when they did.
Also, he wanted to be near Talia.
He’d never met anyone cooler than Talia. She was mouthy and sarcastic and freaking unconquerable, and just being around her made him feel as though someone had cranked the dial to ten. He loved her energy and her loyalty and her weird purple hair. He was pretty sure she thought of him as a spatula-wielding, cake-baking freak of nature, but on the off chance she didn’t . . .
“Hey, Talia.” Offhandedly, Walden nodded at her as he entered the break room and glimpsed her there. “How’s it going?”
She turned to look at him, giving him a dizzying dose of big blue eyes and brainy intimidation. “You! You’re perfect!”
At her exclamation, her eyes got even bluer (if that was possible). Her excitement at seeing him crackled clear across the room. Her coolness touched him, too. And that was the moment when Walden starting thinking about Christmas wishes—thinking that he wished he could have Talia for Christmas. Because even though Talia’s statement was an unmistakable non sequitur, it segued so well with his dreams that Walden didn’t care.
You! You’re perfect!
How many times had he fantasized about Talia looking at him, really seeing him, and then saying something like that?
Well, lots of times. More than he wanted to count.
“Perfect for what?” he asked, striving to keep his cool.
“For this.” Excitedly, Talia brandished a box.
He looked at it. “A home pregnancy test?” He shrugged. “Okay. If you’re that ready to get pregnant, I’m your guy.”
Wishing he was her guy, Walden started unbuttoning his double-breasted chef ’s jacket. He gave his hips a burlesque-style wiggle in a maneuver designed to make the most of his checkered-pants-clad bottom half. He grinned, then continued his bump and grind. “Get ready, future baby mama! Here I come.”
At his semiseductive warning growl, Talia guffawed.
“No, silly!” Grinning, she smacked him in the belly. She seemed to be caught by surprise when her fist didn’t encounter acres of doughy pastry chef flesh. She gave his abs a curious poke. “Hey, you’re kind of, um . . . cut, aren’t you? I mean, you’re really—” Her gaze lifted to mingle interestedly with his. Then she waggled the pregnancy-test kit. “This is for our scheme.”
Aha. He quit unbuttoning, leaving his chef ’s whites open atop his The Strokes T-shirt. “Our scheme to help Kristen?”
“No,” she deadpanned. “Our scheme to save the whales.”
“Ha ha.”
“Our scheme to make beer pong an Olympic event.”
“Very funny.”
But Talia was on a roll now. “Our scheme to take over the world!” she elaborated theatrically, her eyes sparkling. “Just like—”
“Just like we try to do every night. I hear you, Brain.”
Her eyes widened. Walden wasn’t sure why.
“But the pregnancy kit is for . . . what, exactly?” he asked patiently. “If you don’t want volunteers to get you pregnant—”
“That’s not what I came here for, Pinky.”
“Then what’s it for?” And why am I perfect for it?
Talia wasn’t ready to tell him. Instead, she went on gazing at him inquisitively. “Wait. You really got that reference?”
“To Pinky and the Brain? The cartoon?” Walden nodded. “I’m a grown man who makes a living frosting cupcakes. So . . . yeah.”
Her admiring gaze swept over him. Of all the things to have finally impressed her with, his connoisseurship of a 1990s animated TV show about a genius laboratory mouse and his feebleminded sidekick mouse had to be the most unlikely.
“Really?” Cagily, Talia asked, “What did you think of Wang Film Productions’ work on A Pinky and the Brain Christmas?”
Walden scoffed. “I think Tokyo Movie Shinsha did the animation on that one. What are you, some kind of amateur?”
Talia laughed. “An amateur who owns all twelve discs from the DVD box sets. And the graphic novels. And the Game Boy game.”
“Wow.” This time, it was Walden’s turn to give her an admiring look. “I think you’re my dream girl.” I know you are.
She nodded. Probably, Talia was used to
being someone’s dream girl by now and was totally unfazed by the concept.
“We should get together and watch it sometime,” she said.
Walden wanted to say yes. Gazing into her shining, cobalt-colored eyes, standing close enough to touch her, he wanted nothing more. A Pinky and the Brain-a-thon with Talia? Hell, yeah! But something kept niggling at him. Something like . . .
Like maybe Talia was already pregnant. With someone else.
Oh yeah. Forcibly, he dragged his attention to that damn box in her hand. “Do I have to overthrow your baby’s daddy first? Or is he cool with you having guys over? Because I’m a pretty wicked arm wrestler, so—” He offered her a comical tough-guy look, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him.”
“You’re not ‘a guy.’ You’re my friend! It’s fine.”
Ugh. The Friend Zone. The Chinese handcuffs of man-woman relationships. Didn’t she know how crushing that statement was?
“Look,” Walden said. “Do you have a boyfriend or not?”
“Oh.” Talia looked surprised. She glanced down at her pregnancy test, then looked up at him again . . . lingering on his midsection. “Is that what you’re asking? Because I thought—”
“That I was seriously looking for an arm-wrestling match?”
She bit her lip. He wanted to do the same. To her. Gently.
“Well,” she prevaricated, “you are the new guy in town. It’s anybody’s guess what kind of kinky stuff you’re into.”
That was the Talia he knew and loved. “If there’s anything you want to know about me,” Walden said stoutly, “just ask.”
Her forehead wrinkled adorably. Not surprisingly, she did ask him something. “Okay. Do you like popcorn and cranberries?”
“Together? No. I’m not one of those molecular gastronomy guys. I mean, I learned how to do all that crazy stuff in culinary school”—technically, he’d aced all his classes and gotten A-pluses across the board—“but I’m not interested in subverting culinary expectations and deconstructing what it means to dine. I don’t serve ‘tasting’ menus printed on edible paper with fruit inks. I don’t want to juggle liquid nitrogen or offer ‘meat foam’ as an entrée. I really don’t think it’s satisfying to serve ‘essence of’ anything just to smell. You can’t eat a smell! Give me a good piece of pie instead.”
Talia look amused by his rant. “Oh. I see. Well, I’m only asking because I’m having a popcorn-and-cranberry stringing party tonight at my place, and I want to know if you’ll come.”
Walden was still confused. He didn’t want to step on any toes here. Was Talia asking him out on a date? Or was she just trying to leverage him into popcorn-and-cranberry slave labor?
He never would have pegged her for an old-school type who made popcorn-and-cranberry garlands for her Christmas tree in the first place. He would have guessed she was more of a retro-fake-silver-tree type.
Well, he liked a woman who surprised him, Walden decided.
But not if that surprise involved another man’s baby.
“But what about your pregnancy test?” he asked.
Gareth chose that moment to come along and pluck the box from her hands. Gleefully, he said, “That’s for me!”
“Huh?”
“I’m going to plant this pregnancy test in Heather Miller’s Dumpster.” Gareth shifted a satisfied look in Talia’s direction. “You know, the trash collection unit that the tabloid people are always digging through looking for gossip fodder?”
“If they think Heather’s pregnant,” Talia explained, “the resulting ‘baby bump watch’ will occupy a lot of time.”
“Time they won’t spend pestering Kristen?” Walden guessed.
“Exactly.” Gareth ripped open the box, crumpled up the instruction sheet, stuffed it back inside, then opened one of the testers, too. “Once I make sure this thing looks good and used, we’ll be all set. You’ve got to make it believable,” he added as he caught Walden’s aghast look. “I’m not going to pee on a stick myself, but if I toss a pristine, unopened pregnancy-test kit in Heather’s trash, it’s going to look like a setup.”
“It is a setup,” Walden reminded them.
“Yep. It sure is!” Gareth said, his bearded face alight.
He and Talia exchanged cheerfully devious looks.
“ ‘Baby bump watches’ are a fixture in tabloids,” Talia said. “If a starlet eats a big lunch, suddenly she’s gestating.”
Walden nodded. “And when Heather denies being pregnant—as she inevitably will—it will only create more ‘news’ about her.”
“Which is exactly what we need right now,” Talia agreed.
“So the press will be too busy going ape shit about this”—Gareth held up the freshly mangled pregnancy-test kit—“to harass Kristen.”
“I hope so.” Remembering all his friend had gone through recently, Walden sobered. “I thought Kristen was actually going to cry when her mom canceled their Christmas shopping trip.”
“That just about broke my heart,” Talia agreed, making him love her even more for her compassion. “The day before that, Kristen told me the press invaded the traditional Miller family holiday ice-skating-and-cocoa trip. They wrecked everything. Poor Grandma Miller couldn’t even slap on a skate without some fuckwit screaming her name. When they wouldn’t ‘play along,’ the paparazzi assaulted them all with flash photography anyway.”
Walden shuddered. He’d been on duty when the paparazzi had first overrun the Galaxy Diner, looking for any scoop they could get on Kristen’s famous sister. Among the pack of them, the cheap bastards hadn’t even ponied up a tip for their harassed waitress. He and Talia and Gareth had sneaked a tip for Avery onto the table themselves so she wouldn’t be stiffed.
“Not to mention how those jackals have affected business here at the diner,” Gareth said, practically reading Walden’s mind. He shuddered too. “Some of the regulars can’t even get in anymore—and that’s with Heather’s supposed ban in place.”
They all knew that Heather’s unexpected and over-the-top arrival in Kismet—and her “down-home” holiday TV special—had thrown a monkey wrench into Kristen’s holiday this year. Kristen was way too nice to say so, but she’d been struggling. So together, Talia, Gareth, and Walden had decided to help her out.
Their first step had been to try getting the press officially banned from the Galaxy Diner. That hadn’t worked. Next, they’d approached Heather and asked her, up front, to do something about the situation. That strategy had resulted in the cease-fire/safety-zone deal that was supposed to keep the media away from Kristen’s business and her apartment. None of them (except Kristen) was naïve enough to expect it to last long.
Sometimes, Kristen had way too much faith in her sister.
Sometimes, friends had to step in to help friends, too. Even if that meant going a little above and beyond. But Kristen was worth it. They all loved her. They wanted her to be happy.
“There’s only one problem,” Walden mused, considering how best to accomplish that goal. He pointed at the soon-to-be-planted “evidence” of the pregnancy test. “How’s Heather supposed to be believably pregnant when she hasn’t been seen publicly dating anyone since her split from that hockey player?”
Gareth frowned. “You have a point.”
“I already thought of that! The only solution is for our Heather to have a new boyfriend.” Talia looked pointedly at Walden. Again. Excitedly. Just the way she had earlier. Maybe even more so. “A really hot-and-heavy boyfriend. You know, the kind of guy who can practically knock up a girl just by giving her a sexy look? A man’s man. A macho man. A studly stud.”
Walden and Gareth gazed at her in perplexity. “You can’t tell any of that by just looking at a guy,” Gareth protested.
Walden was too busy fighting an urge to bump and grind his way into Talia’s heart to join his friend in manly concord.
Talia gave them a pitying look. “That’s where you’re wrong! You can tell a lot about a guy just by look
ing at him—if you’re packing enough imagination, that is.” She tossed another heady, overtly suggestive glance at Walden. “Anyway, since I’m the best Heather impersonator of the three of us—”
“You’ve already proven that you’re the only plausible Heather impersonator of the three of us,” Gareth cut in, eyeing the leopard-print coat, huge sunglasses, and sexy blond wig still visible in Talia’s employee locker. “You’ve been doing a great job with that, too, by the way. Kudos.”
“Yeah. I thought Kristen almost caught on when she saw me earlier today,” Talia confessed in an aside. “But she was too engrossed in that troubleshooter guy showing up.” She glanced approvingly at Gareth, then added, “Way to think on your feet with that ‘matchmaking’ plan of yours. Now if Kristen notices anything suspicious about what we’re up to, she’ll just chalk it up to our supposedly secret ‘matchmaking’ activities.”
“Exactly my plan,” Gareth agreed, tapping his temple.
“You do make an excellent ‘Heather’ decoy,” Walden added, coming in late with his compliment but wanting in on the action all the same. “Even if I do prefer your real purple hair.”
Talia smiled at his compliment. His heart almost stopped.
Then, “Speaking of which . . . back to our scheme! I say I should get to decide who’s going to portray my superhot boy toy. Right? Right.” Wearing a mischievous look, Talia put her fingertips to her chin. She glanced at Gareth. Then at the break room. Finally her gaze fell on Walden . . . then roamed all over his body. “Hmm . . .”
Her contemplative, potentially naughty tone should have scared the bejeezus out of him. But it didn’t. Walden was an adventurer at heart. He wanted to do his adventuring with Talia.
“Pinky,” she said, “are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
There was no way he was missing his cue. “I think so, Brain,” Walden said in his best cartoon-mouse voice, “but . . .”
“You are going to be ‘Heather’s’ new baby daddy. It’s set!” Smugly, Talia crossed her arms. “Unless you don’t feel potent enough, of course.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “How about it, stud? Do you feel like impersonating a pop star with me?”