A Temporary Christmas Arrangement

by Christine Rimmer

  Should she bring up the awkwardness last Friday night?

  She was trying to decide whether to get into that when he said, “I have to tell you, I was kind of worried I’d blown it. Every time my phone rang over the weekend, I just knew it would be you, calling to say you weren’t coming back.”

  She had a sip of fizzy wonderfulness. “I was afraid I had totally turned you off with my treatise on harassment.”

  He leaned a little closer. She could smell that wonderful cologne of his, woodsy and spicy and no doubt quite spendy. “Share your thoughts with me anytime.” He tapped his glass to hers.

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Anything. I mean it. It might get awkward—”

  “And weird?”

  He chuckled, the sound low and manly, stirring a promise of desire. “Yeah, that, too. But I kind of like the way you think. I appreciate that you say what’s on your mind.”

  “All right, then. Here’s to speaking the truth.” They touched flutes again. She sat back for a slow sip and her gaze fell on the brochure that was still on the coffee table. “So...considering building a container home?”

  He looked flummoxed for a second, but then he followed her gaze. “You mean this?” He picked up the brochure. At her nod, he dropped it back on the table. “The Acevedos are a husband-and-wife team. It’s a small start-up. Mia designs the houses. Sam runs the builds. They’ve been after me for a while to give them regular access to our used containers at a price that’s lower than we ordinarily get for them.”

  “Why would you do that—I mean, if you can sell them for more?”

  “I like what I know of the Acevedos. Mia’s a creative designer, and Sam’s a good builder—brings it in on time and on budget. They’ve built a couple of large, beautiful container homes for people I know who love what they did for them. But they’re not only in it to make it big. They’re hooked up with Homes for the Homeless, too. They build a couple of houses a year for them.” Like Habitat for Humanity, Homes for the Homeless built housing for people with limited incomes. “It’s important—you know, to give back.”

  She wanted to grab him and hug him—but if she did, she probably wouldn’t stop with just hugging. “Yes, it is.”

  “We’ve played a lot of phone tag so far, Sam and me. I never seem to get a moment to meet with them. He called again last Monday, as we were about to get in the car for the trip here. I felt guilty that I’ve kept putting him off, so I said if he and Mia were willing to come up to Valentine Bay, we could meet here, at the cottage. They’re coming tomorrow afternoon. Between you and me, it’s mostly a formality. I’m going to see that they get what they need from Stryker Marine, but I like a nice face-to-face before I seal a deal.”

  “I would love to be an eavesdropper at that meeting.”

  “You want to hire someone to build you a container home?”

  “I’m just interested. I minored in architecture at UO, and my senior project was hands-on with four classmates. We built a tiny container home right there on campus.”

  “Architecture? I thought you were all theater, all the time.”

  She realized she’d never explained her plans to him. “I’m thinking of changing things up career-wise, hoping maybe to get a paid intern job with an architectural firm—or an entry-level position in a company that designs the spaces people live in. I’m qualified right now to be a residential designer. And I’m planning on going back to school. I want a master’s in architecture from a NAAB-accredited college. And you’re helping me toward my new life goals, so thank you for that.”

  He looked confused, but interested, too. “Hey. Whatever I can do—which is what, exactly?”

  “You pay me well and I’m socking every penny away to move to Seattle in February. U-Dub in Seattle offers an accredited master’s degree. As for my next job, I’ve been applying for anything promising that comes up, but I think I’ll have better luck if I’m already in town and don’t have to relocate when the right job comes around.”

  “Whoa.” He finished off his glass. “You’re leaving Valentine Bay?”

  “I am, yes.”

  “What about your sister, the director? You two are close, aren’t you? And doesn’t she count on you to run the technical side of things?”

  “She does, yeah. But our lighting director can do my job. He’ll step up to the tech director position when I go. As for Hailey and me, I’ll miss her a lot. However, I just need to get out there and discover what I really want out of life. I love the theater. And yet I’ve always had this dream of helping to create the places people actually live and work. And Seattle’s not that far away. I’ll come home often.”

  He turned his body her way and brushed a hand against her shoulder. The simple touch shivered through her. “Why not try Portland? It’s closer.”

  She loved that he would even suggest she might move to his town. But she shook her head. “Seattle’s a bigger market. More opportunities.”

  “Yeah, but you know me, and I know a lot of people in Portland. Never hurts to use your connections. Networking is what it’s all about.”

  He was right. Too bad she was so powerfully attracted to him. The attraction made using him to get her new start feel wrong, somehow. “I don’t think so, Linc.”

  He held her gaze. Her lips kind of tingled with the memory of kissing him. She wanted to do that again.

  But right now, kissing him again seemed as unwise as agreeing to move to Portland and using his connections to find a job.

  She backed away a fraction.

  He did the same. “If you change your mind, you only need to let me know.”

  “Thanks.”

  He picked up the half-empty bottle of champagne. She set her glass beside his and he refilled them both.

  When he handed hers back, he said, “The Acevedos will be here at two tomorrow. You should meet them.”

  She started to turn down the offer, on principle.

  But he did have a point. She’d pretty much decided to switch her career focus from theater to architecture. That meant she needed to make connections with people in the business of construction and design. Plus, container buildings fascinated her. “It’s doable. I can take the kids to the theater at one. Hailey will make sure that Maya is taken care of...”

  “It’s settled then. Leave the kids at the theater for an hour or two and I can introduce you to Sam and Mia.”

  * * *

  Sam Acevedo was a big guy with sandy hair and a ready smile. Harper liked him at lot.

  She liked Mia even more.

  A tiny woman with thick, wavy black hair and striking obsidian eyes, Mia was sharp and so creative. She loved that Harper had helped build a container home in college. The two of them talked design ideas. By the end of the meeting, they’d exchanged digits and promised to keep in touch.

  In the meantime, Sam and Linc had made a deal. Acevedo Hybrid Homes would be acquiring shipping containers from Stryker Marine at a deeply discounted price.

  When the couple drove off in their quad cab, Linc shut the door and turned to Harper. “Move to Portland. I’ll bet you can get yourself a job with Mia and Sam.”

  She laughed. The guy was shameless, but in such an appealing way. “They’re a start-up—you said it yourself. They’ve been in business for what—three years? They don’t need a design intern at this point.”

  “They need to grow, and that means soon they’ll have to hire someone to work with Mia on the design front. Why shouldn’t that someone be you?”

  She avoided answering that loaded question by observing, “Sometimes you remind me of Hailey.”

  He frowned. “That’s good, right?”

  “You’re both so certain that you know what needs to happen next and how to make it happen.”

  “In this case, I do know what needs to happen—you, working with Mia a
nd Sam.”

  “Yeah, but sometimes you have to let other people find their own way.”

  “Nah. I know better.”

  She gave him the side-eye. “What did I tell you? Just like my sister—and come to think of it, Roman’s kind of that way, too. He and Hailey are always getting crossways with each other because she knows how it has to be, and so does he, and their ideas of how it has to be don’t always match up.”

  Linc’s frown had deepened. “But see, I know I’m right about this.”

  “Oh, of course you are. But I’m still doing it my way—and right now, I need to get back to the theater.”

  “Wait.” He caught her arm.

  Her stomach hollowed out, just from the warmth of his strong fingers pressing, imprinting themselves on her skin through the long-sleeved T-shirt she wore. “What?”

  “I keep meaning to drop by over there, see what it’s all about.” His voice was low, half-teasing.

  She answered in kind—softly. “Are you saying you want to come with?”

  “Yeah.” His eyes were on hers. She could stand here in the front hall forever, just the two of them, his warm hand still wrapped around her arm. “I think I will.”

  “That’s good.” She wanted to reach up, thread her fingers into the thick, coffee-brown hair at his temples, feel the texture of it against her fingertips. “I like Mia. A lot.”

  “I had a hunch you would.”

  “Thank you, for encouraging me to sit in on your meeting.”

  “You’re welcome. Networking. It’s what it’s all about.”

  Reluctantly, she eased her arm free of his grip. “You coming or not?”

  He grabbed the key from the bowl by the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Linc was thoroughly enjoying himself. Things were good with him and Harper again, and he really liked just being with her.

  It continually surprised him, how easy and right he felt around her. She kind of put a whole new light on everyday activities. Even a short drive to the old theater downtown became fun and interesting.

  She pointed out the twisting driveway up to old Angus McTerly’s house as they passed it. A few minutes later, when they entered the historic district, she showed him the art gallery that Daniel’s wife, Keely, owned and ran.

  He constantly found himself thinking that from now until New Year’s wasn’t going to be enough for him when it came to her. He needed more time to get to know everything about her, which was why he’d decided that he would keep after her until he convinced her that Portland was the place for her.

  Lucky for him, he had five days a week for the next month—more if he could get her to work a few weekends, too. Surely in that amount of time he could make her see that she would find the right job for her in Rose City.

  “Here we are,” she said, and pointed at an empty parking space right there on the street twenty feet from the front entrance of the Valentine Bay Theatre. He pulled the SUV in at the curb.

  The theater was one of those classic 1920s movie and vaudeville palaces. Outside, it had a lot of plaster moldings and Moorish-looking arches. Inside, it was white stucco walls, more arches and thick pillars holding up the lobby ceiling.

  Harper led him into the auditorium where Hailey, with Maya on her hip, paced back and forth in front of the stage. Maya seemed content to chew on her blue teething toy and stare at Hailey with rapt fascination as Harper’s sister directed a large group of kids through a song centered on a lost angel on Christmas morning—or something like that.

  It was hard to tell what the song was about, exactly. The kids up on stage kept laughing and arguing as Hailey and a very calm, statuesque woman with dark copper skin and light brown hair coiled in thick locks tried to corral them and get them to focus.

  “This is the finale,” Harper whispered in his ear just as he spotted Jayden up there on the stage snickering at something the little girl standing next to him had said. “It’s their first time through it.”

  No kidding, he thought.

  The lights kept changing—flashing and blinking, going very low and then suddenly flaring blindingly bright. Apparently, the guy up in the light booth was working something out in the middle of rehearsal.

  The accompanist, on piano, patiently stopped and started as kids interrupted to ask questions, and Hailey called a halt every few minutes to give suggestions and then have them go over this or that section of the unrecognizable song yet again.

  Beside him, Harper whispered, “What do you think?”

  Looked like pure chaos to him. But he was having a good time watching the confusion unfold. The kids seemed happy and he was sitting next to Harper. He couldn’t think of anywhere else he would rather be. “Great!” he replied with a lot more enthusiasm than the disaster up on the stage could possibly inspire.

  Harper chuckled. The sound sent a ripple of pure pleasure rolling through him. How strange that just the sound of her laugh gratified him in a physical way. He thought of Alan Hollister, sitting in the kitchen at the West Hills house in Portland last Monday morning right before he and Jean left for the airport. The older man’s face had lit up with pure happiness when he heard Jean laugh in delight at something Jayden had said.

  Even when Linc was a boy and his parents were still making an effort to give him and Megan a real family life, he’d never seen his father react to his mother as if she captivated him completely the way Jean did Alan.

  “I know what you see right now looks like a catastrophe in the making.” Harper’s warm breath teased his ear. “But wait till the opening performance. The children want to do their best and they will. It always turns out beautifully.”

  He gave up the pretense of admiring the so-called show and turned to gaze directly into those gorgeous gray-blue eyes. “If you say so...”

  “Lincoln Stryker, when have I ever steered you wrong?”

  He couldn’t help slanting a quick glance at her supple mouth. That mouth had him remembering Thanksgiving night and the steaming-hot kisses they’d shared. He wanted to kiss her again. If he ever got that chance, he would have sense enough not to ruin a perfect moment with apologies.

  Yeah, more than once over the weekend without her, he’d promised himself that if she would only come back to help him with the kids, he would keep it strictly business.

  But that was then. Now, with her beside him, he knew he’d only been lying to himself. No way was he keeping his distance from Harper Bravo.

  She was a revelation to him, so different from the women he’d been with before—sophisticated women, who harbored secret agendas, incurious women, completely uninterested in other people’s children.

  Yeah. A revelation. That was Harper Bravo.

  And he wanted more of her. She’d already made it excruciatingly clear that she didn’t consider herself his employee, that she was a free agent and her own boss. Any intimacy they shared would be because they both wanted it. Didn’t that clear the way for him to get to know her better?

  Sure seemed like it to him.

  From now on, he wouldn’t miss any opportunity to get up close and personal with her.

  Chapter Six

  “So how about a movie or something?” he suggested that night when they met at the foot of the stairs after putting the kids to bed. His pulse thrummed in his ears as he waited for her answer. He just knew he would crash and burn. That she would look at him regretfully and say it wasn’t a good idea.

  But then she grinned. “Sure. First, though, I have to run over to my cottage and grab a few things I need to work on.”

  Yes! She said yes!

  His pulse throbbed all the harder, with triumph. He could barely hear himself think and wondered vaguely if he might be a candidate for a sudden, early heart attack.

  “What things?” he demanded. Not that it mattered in the least. She could
bring a trailer full of woodworking equipment and set up shop in the living room, get a power saw going in there for all he cared.

  She leaned a little closer. He caught a sweet whiff of vanilla and lemons and had to resist the urge to pull her into his arms. “Some of the costumes for the Christmas show need minor alterations and repairs,” she explained. “I can do those while we watch.”

  “Fair enough. Popcorn?”

  “Sounds pretty much perfect to me.”

  She left. By the time she came back ten minutes later, he had the popcorn ready. She took a Perrier and he had a beer. They sat on the sofa, with the tree blazing bright and the outdoor lights winking beyond the picture windows.

  At her feet sat a basket full of stuff that needed mending.

  He set the bowl of popcorn on the coffee table, plunked his ass nice and close to her and picked up the remote. “So, a romantic comedy?”

  She slanted him a look. “I’m in the mood for horror. Something really gory would be fun.”

  He kind of got off on just looking at her. She seemed to glow from within and he loved her pointy little chin and prominent cheekbones. And those dimples...

  He could write poetry about those dimples of hers.

  Which was pretty damn spooky. Linc Stryker had never written a poem in his life.

  She glanced up from mending a split seam on a set of plush antlers mounted on a fuzzy brown headband. “Not a fan of horror movies, huh?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Horror movies. You don’t like them?”

  He realized he’d been staring at her—ogling her, really—and felt more than a little embarrassed. “Oh. No—I mean, I’ve got no problem with horror movies. You just surprised me is all.”

  “Oh, right. Because I’m a woman, I should automatically want to watch a love story.”

  “Whoa. Did I say that? I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Good—not that I don’t love a good love story...”

  “Uh. Great to know.”

  “It’s just sometimes I want the blood and the gore.”