Together for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  The bleakness in his eyes made her sad. Impulsively, Kristen reached for his hand. She squeezed it. “Go on. Make it my problem. Tell me about it! Maybe you’ll feel better.”

  He actually appeared to consider it. Then . . .

  “You’d do better staying away from Shane Maresca. Tell Heather to stay away from him, too. She won’t take my calls, and I can’t get anywhere near her in person,” Casey said, “thanks to her very convenient quarantine.”

  “‘Convenient’? You don’t think it’s real?”

  “I know it’s real. That doesn’t mean it’s not convenient.”

  “Well, either way, it doesn’t matter,” Kristen said. “Heather’s never even heard of Shane Maresca. I asked her.”

  Casey frowned. “Then it’s worse than I thought.”

  But before Kristen could ask what he meant, another member of Heather’s TV special production crew wandered in. She picked up a cup of coffee and a mincemeat pie-in-a-jar to go, spied Casey, then trundled over to his table with her bag in hand.

  “Hey, Casey,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know that I did talk to Maggie about rigging the lights the way I knew they ought to be. We were able to come to terms with it.”

  “That’s good news.” Casey smiled at her. “So you win!”

  “Yep!” They high-fived. “Anyway, thanks for listening yesterday. That was a really enlightening conversation. Bye!”

  Looking pleased, the crew member left the diner. Kristen watched Casey as he watched her leave. Then she pounced.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “You talked to Maggie, too? And she happened to come to the same conclusion about the lighting?”

  “Something like that.” Casey gazed at her. “What difference does it make? It’s a good thing when problems are solved.”

  “It’s deceptive.”

  “Maybe that’s just what I want you to think. Maybe my spellbinding troubleshooter mojo is getting to you, too.”

  “Joke all you want. I’m onto you.”

  “Does that mean you’re done interrogating me?” Adorably, Casey feigned disappointment. “I was just getting into it.”

  “No, I’m not done yet.” Considering him, Kristen leaned more cozily into the booth. Around them, the usual hubbub of customers and crew went about their business, with their days brightened by Christmas carols and eggnog French toast. “I still want to know more about Shane. When I told you Heather hasn’t heard of him, why did you say it’s worse than you thought?”

  With clear reluctance, Casey sobered. He wrapped his hands around his coffee cup—nearly succeeding in sidetracking her with thoughts of how skilled and manly and mesmerizing his hands looked—then squinted at the nearest of the diner’s two charity Christmas trees. She was surprised it didn’t burst into flames.

  “Shane is an anti-fixer,” Casey finally explained, his tone wry but unswerving. “Since Heather’s TV special is already in trouble, he’s here to derail it completely.”

  That was unexpected. “Why would he do that?”

  “For the insurance money. The production company takes out insurance on every project—every movie, every TV show, every awards show or made-for-TV docudrama . . . and every holiday special,” Casey said. “Rather than sink unrecoverable cash into an already troubled production, sometimes the company would rather cut their losses and collect the insurance.”

  “You really mean this?”

  A nod. “The fact that Heather hasn’t even met Shane yet—that she probably doesn’t even know he’s here in Kismet—suggests he’s succeeding, too. From behind the scenes, where people like him work best.”

  “I dunno,” Kristen mused, considering everything she knew so far. “That sounds a lot like what you’re doing.”

  Casey’s gaze darkened. “Shane is here to ruin things. It’s what he does best. He just does it with a smile, that’s all. Sometimes, he starts early—doubling his chances of being hired by creating on-set dissent where it doesn’t already exist.”

  “But . . . an anti-fixer?” Kristen almost laughed. “That sounds so preposterous! That can’t be a real thing, can it? Come on. I might be a small-town girl, but I’m not that gullible.”

  “If it helps, think of him as a consultant,” Casey suggested. “I don’t know if he’s working for Heather’s network or a rival network or another production company with a similar show in the works. He could have been hired by more than one entity. He could have laid a lot of groundwork by now, too. I promise you, Shane Maresca is real. And he means trouble.”

  “Uh-huh.” She remained doubtful. “Whereas you mean . . . ?”

  “Trouble.” Casey flashed her his most affecting, most flirtatious, most irresistible smile yet. “I never claimed to be harmless myself. I have a long and glorious history of causing trouble. The difference between me and Shane is that I’ve been spending my time making up for all the trouble I’ve caused.”

  Skeptically, Kristen eyed him. It was tricky business. Mostly because that latest smile of his gave her a serious case of the want-mores. As in, I want more of that smile. I want more of that rumbly, husky, bad-to-the-bone timbre to your voice. I want more of this conversation between us . . . and I want it to be personal, too. It was making it difficult to concentrate.

  Probably, Casey knew it, too. That’s why he’d chosen that particular moment to smile at her—to charm her into not asking any more questions. But Kristen needed to know the truth about what was going on . . . for Heather’s sake, if nothing else.

  Defiantly, Kristen straightened her spine.

  “Maybe Shane is just misunderstood,” she said staunchly. “Maybe he’s not ‘trouble’ at all. He seems nice to me.”

  Casey merely shook his head. “He probably does,” he said casually. “But one of the advantages of growing up in a lot of different households is that you learn how to read people pretty quickly. You have to. Otherwise, you don’t survive long.”

  “I see. Do you also learn how to manipulate people?”

  He arched his eyebrow at her, not saying anything.

  That’s how Kristen knew she’d struck a nerve.

  Because Casey always had something to say. Usually (unlike her) he had the right thing to say, at exactly the right moment.

  But Kristen couldn’t back down now. The words were already out there. The only thing that might possibly help was . . .

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was insensitive.”

  “No, it was a reasonable question,” Casey disagreed. “I respect you for not tiptoeing around me. I’m not made of glass.”

  “As far as I can tell, you’re made of machismo and dick jokes, with a big dose of charisma and pie love thrown in.”

  “‘Pie love’? Is that what you’re calling it now?”

  “You skipped ‘dick jokes’ to focus on ‘pie love’?”

  Casey laughed, leaving her feeling immensely relieved that he wasn’t hurt by her off-the-cuff comment. Whew. That meant things were okay between them. Their camaraderie was intact.

  Kristen didn’t want to risk dinging it again. Not even, she realized with a start, for the sake of getting to the bottom of Casey’s plans for Heather’s TV special. Because over the past few days, she’d gotten to know Casey much better. They’d hung out, they’d talked, and once—memorably—they’d even shot a few games of decidedly non-Christmassy pool at The Big Foot bar.

  Being around him had been fun. They’d taken their instant bond to a whole new level. In fact, if Casey hadn’t already failed her usual “should I sleep with him?” litmus test . . .

  Maybe, Kristen thought, he deserved another shot at it.

  Or maybe she should just forget about her test altogether.

  “What can I say?” he asked, obviously referring to his very convincing enjoyment of today’s pie-in-a-jar. “That walnut-caramel pie of yours is growing on me. Someday I might even like it.”

  “My diner customers think you want to marry it,” Kristen joked, “after yesterday’s
show-stopping performance.”

  “Or at least take it out a few more times . . . show it a good time.” Casey pulled a funny face. Then, with abrupt seriousness, he said, “I don’t manipulate people. That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “No. You’re just making them want what you want,” Kristen said. “If that’s not manipulation, I don’t know what is.”

  Casey gave her another smile. This one reached all the way to her toes and made them curl up with tingly excitement inside her boots. How was it that she’d made a terrible conversational blunder, stepped all over his difficult childhood, and basically interrogated him since she’d sat down . . . and Casey somehow made her feel as if she was the most remarkable woman alive?

  Going toe-to-toe with him this way was . . . invigorating. He made her feel unique. Fascinating. Brave. Necessary.

  All the things she believed she was, deep down . . . but still longed, on the inside, to have confirmed by someone else.

  “It’s called seduction, Pollyanna.” Casey pinned her with another knowing look. “It helps make the world go around.”

  “Maybe for you, it does. I prefer the truth.”

  Casey seemed taken aback by that. “Just because I might have made you want it doesn’t mean you don’t really want it. In the end, you’re still the one who’s feeling the desire.”

  “Wait a minute.” Kristen blinked, feeling confused. “Are we still talking about fixing things? Or not fixing things?”

  “I’m talking about manipulation, now that you’ve brought it up,” Casey said. “And the truth is, if you think you’re immune to being seduced, a hundred times a day, by the things around you and the people you meet . . . well, you’re just kidding yourself.” He relaxed in his side of the booth, visibly comfortable with the topic at hand. “But that’s all right. You’re in good company. Most people like to think they’re in control—”

  “I am in control!”

  “—when really they’re just operating on autopilot. That’s not living. That’s existing. And it’s prone to being nudged, with just the subtlest push, in any direction that comes along.”

  “So that’s how you do what you do!” Victoriously, Kristen pointed at Casey. “You push people when they’re not looking.”

  “Gee whiz. That makes me sound pretty gosh-darn awful.”

  At his aw-shucks routine, she couldn’t help grinning. It was a really poor fit for him. “If the shoe fits . . .”

  Appearing vaguely wounded, Casey shook his head at her. “Is that really what you think of me? That I’m manipulative? ”

  Kristen couldn’t deny it. “If the evidence is there . . .”

  Before she could press him further, a PA from Live! from the Heartland dropped by his table. “Sorry to interrupt, you guys! But Casey”—here, she turned to him with grateful, shining eyes—“I had to tell you how glad I am that we talked yesterday. Like I told you, I was convinced the reason the director was such a bitch to me—pardon my French—was because I sucked at my job. I just knew she was about to fire me! But I decided to talk to her after I saw you yesterday, just because I was feeling so strong and pumped up, and you’ll never guess what happened?”

  “What happened?” Again, Casey ignored his buzzing phone.

  “She’s getting a divorce!” the PA confided. “She’d been feeling really alone and sad about it, too. So we went for drinks at The Big Foot after yesterday’s pickups were done, and you know what? We’re getting along so much better now.”

  Casey nodded. “I’m glad. That was really smart of you.”

  “I know! Who knew?” The PA brightened. “Maybe I will have a career in showbiz after all. I seem to have a knack for it!”

  After a few words to Kristen about her “fab pie!” and other “awesome” menu items—including a request for one of Kristen’s top-secret recipes—the PA headed outside into the snow.

  “All right. That’s a nice outcome,” Kristen told Casey. “But I still don’t see how creating harmony among the production crew is supposed to put Heather’s show back on track.”

  “How else would I do it?” Casey looked truly mystified.

  “I don’t know . . . make them work harder?”

  He laughed. “Is that what you do here at the diner? You just crack the whip and expect everyone to fall in line?”

  This time, it was Kristen’s turn to laugh. “Not exactly.”

  “Problems don’t exist in a vacuum. Neither do solutions.”

  “Neither do ‘fixers,’” Kristen pointed out. “Or anti-fixers. Even if Shane Maresca is as bad as you say he is”—and she still had her doubts—“he’s probably not working alone,” she reasoned. “After all, you’re not. Not technically. You have me, and your new Galaxy Diner fan club, and all my friends. You’re not alone. Everyone is falling all over themselves to help you—”

  Casey only frowned, looking peculiarly fearsome.

  “—including everyone on the set of Heather’s holiday TV special. Unless . . .” Kristen went motionless as something else occurred to her. “What if it’s not Shane at all—”

  “You really have a thing for him, don’t you?” Casey grumbled. “I promise you, he’s not worth your goodwill.”

  “—and someone on the production is sabotaging things?”

  “That wouldn’t make you feel better about it.”

  “It would make me feel better about liking Shane.”

  Heaving a sigh, Casey shook his head. “You’re really going to make me do this, aren’t you?”

  “Do what?”

  “Defend Maresca. On purpose.”

  “You have to consider all the options, don’t you?”

  “Once I saw that jerkface, the options narrowed considerably.”

  Kristen smiled. “Says you.”

  “These problems didn’t start out of the blue,” Casey argued. “Someone has been deliberately causing trouble on set for a while now. The trouble began with location and wardrobe issues and is continuing now with interpersonal conflicts and oddball delays. Whoever’s at fault, they’ve been doing a pretty effective job of exploiting typical onset problems.”

  “Making mountains out of molehills?”

  “Exactly. Just like Shane would do, as someone who’s intimately familiar with these things. Turning small problems—like that PA’s lack of confidence or her boss’s sloppy divorce or the rigging crew’s ongoing lighting dispute—into big ones is the no-brainer way to create a believable disruption.”

  “Or to turn a promising holiday TV special into a troubled one,” Kristen surmised, worried now that if Casey didn’t help her sister, Heather’s TV special would be history for sure. “All it would take,” she went on, “are a few well-placed rumors and a detailed knowledge of the people involved to stir up trouble.”

  “The kind of trouble that would lead to the production being canceled and the company collecting the insurance money.”

  But Kristen wasn’t ready to go with that theory. “Shane wouldn’t have enough knowledge of the people involved to really stir up trouble,” she guessed. “Not at first, at least—”

  “You’d be surprised how quickly we can get up to speed.”

  “But an insider would know all those things. Right?”

  At Casey’s reluctant nod, Kristen felt a total rush.

  She was right! Maybe. No wonder Casey liked his job. Figuring out problems this way was surprisingly engaging.

  Feeling like Watson to his sexy Sherlock, Kristen asked, “But why wreck the special? These are people’s jobs! Surely whoever’s at fault doesn’t want to risk winding up unemployed.”

  Casey made a face. Maybe he’d spotted another sidewalk Santa. “Evidently, someone feels their job isn’t at risk.”

  “Well, the only person who fits that description—”

  Is Heather, Kristen realized with a jolt. Her brainstorming fun came to an abrupt end as she realized it was true. Her sister probably was the only person on the entire Live! from the Heartland set whose
job was immune from being cut. She was the only one who was essential to the holiday special’s success.

  Suddenly, Kristen wished she hadn’t leaped to Shane Maresca’s defense. No matter how friendly he’d been. She hadn’t expected her alternate theory to point straight at her sister.

  “—must already know that you’re in town now, ready to raise hell and take names,” she prevaricated, unwilling to reveal her potential suspicions of Heather. They were still sisters. Kristen owed her that much loyalty, at least. But, all of a sudden, Heather’s “quarantine” did seem twice as convenient.

  “Are you sure everyone you’ve dealt with is one hundred percent susceptible to your manipulation technique?” Kristen asked, suddenly hoping they were. “Because otherwise—”

  “It’s not a ‘manipulation technique’!” Casey broke in, looking aggrieved. “You have got to stop calling it that.”

  “Hey, I like to call a spade a spade.”

  “And you look damn sexy while doing it,” he agreed roughly. “But you’re killing me here. I’m not the bad guy.”

  She shrugged. “I like to come to my own conclusions.”

  “And you’ve already decided the worst about me?”

  On the verge of admitting that of course she hadn’t decided anything about Casey (because honestly, who could have?) except that she wanted very much to know if he slept in the nude, if he preferred Guinness or Budweiser, if he liked her as much as she liked him, and if there was any chance he hadn’t seen Heather’s sex tape, Kristen hesitated. Why did Casey seem so upset? Just because she’d said he manipulated people? He was The Terminator!

  This couldn’t be the first time he’d come face-to-face with his own dubious conciliation techniques—but it was the first time Kristen had seen him looking so troubled. Granted, the major signs of his distress were a single ticking muscle in his jaw and a certain hard-edged glimmer to his eyes, but still . . .

  “At least give me a chance to change your mind,” he said.

  Kristen considered it. “How?”

  Cheering up, Casey angled his head toward the back of the diner. “Let’s go in your office,” he suggested. “I’ll try to ‘manipulate’ you, and you tell me how you feel about it.”