Sweet Tidings

by Jean C. Gordon

  “Like you said, it should be fun. Our own little Christmas secret. You won’t have trouble keeping it, will you? People’s respect for me as mayor could be damaged if the ruse got out.”

  “The secret? Of course not.” He ran his gaze over the beautiful, interesting woman sitting next to him.

  The pretend part, on the other hand, was cracking right before his eyes.

  Chapter 2

  The phone woke Amanda from a deep sleep that her alarm had failed to. A sleep she’d achieved finally in the early hours of the morning. She had only 20 minutes to get to work. Not that she had to punch a time-clock at city hall, but she worked best on a regular schedule.

  She glanced at her cell phone. The Mansion B&B. Amanda debated letting it ring. She wasn’t sure she was ready to face Eric yet today, even if it was only over the phone. Her finger punched answer anyway.

  “Amanda?”

  It was Sonja. “Hi.”

  “I’m glad I caught you before you left.”

  “What’s up?” Amanda rolled out of bed and took the outfit she’d planned for today out of her closet.

  “We have a problem here at the B&B. The plumbing to the suite Eric’s staying in is backed up. Jeff thinks it’s something with the outflow to the city sewer line.”

  Amanda put her phone on speaker so she could dress. “Have you called the Public Works Department?” She’d never figured out why people were so quick to call the mayor for problems that other city departments covered.

  “That’s not it.” Sonja corrected. “We have a plumber coming to check our line and will call Public Works if it’s something beyond our responsibility.”

  “Oh.” Amanda went to work on her makeup. “Then, what’s the problem?”

  “We don’t have any rooms Eric can move into.”

  Amanda wasn’t exactly following. “So you want me to ask around at city hall about places that may have openings?” It was all she could think of.

  “No, we have an idea. You’re friends …”

  “He can’t stay here. It wouldn’t look right.” She pulled her hair back into a French twist.

  “Right. That’s not our idea. Jeff and I were thinking of your mother’s place, only until the suite’s plumbing is fixed. She has all that room, and I know you’re concerned about her not getting out and socializing as she used to.”

  “Maybe. It would give her someone to look after. I’ll ask her.”

  “Thanks. Eric said he has things to do this morning.”

  “Okay, I’ll check with her this morning and let you know.”

  “Great. I’ll let you go.” Sonja hung up.

  Amanda gave the clock a final glance. If she drove, she could be to city hall by 9:00.

  Tracy waylaid her in the hall to the mayor’s office. “Eric Slade. The movie star Eric Slade is waiting for you in your office.”

  “Thank you,” Amanda said as if having movie stars drop in on her was an everyday occurrence, which it could be until Christmas. She smiled and walked into her office.

  “Hi,” he said, rising from his seat. “Did Sonja call you?”

  “She did.” Amana walked to her desk. Eric had gone super casual today. A black t-shirt and jeans. Somehow that made him look younger, despite the sprinkle of white in his beard. Her mind went randomly to the thought that she didn’t know how old he was, except he had to be older than her 38. “I haven’t talked with Mom yet. It might be better if we went over to her house and talked with her in person.”

  “Sure.” He sat again and motioned her to her desk. “But first, we have some unfinished business.”

  She pursed her lips and sat. “What?”

  “I know what you’re doing as part of our deal. I want to do something in return.”

  “You could couch-surf your stay in Indigo Bay for donations to the animal shelter’s fundraiser with each night going to the highest bidder.”

  Eric made a choking sound. “Sorry. I do surf, but I haven’t done that variety in 20 years.”

  She laughed. “I’m kidding. How about taking me to the Barks and Bows Gala the Saturday before Christmas to raise funds for the Indigo Bay Animal Shelter?”

  “Nice name. And easy request. But you have to let me buy the tickets.”

  The picture that flashed in her mind of what Eric would look like in a tux took her breath away. “I’m not done,” she got out in an almost normal voice. “The shelter is having tours with a delayed-adoption clinic the Tuesday after the gala. The pets won’t go to their new homes until after Christmas. You can help me staff the time slot I signed up for, assuming you don’t have any pet allergies.” The man had to have some physical imperfection.

  “No allergies, and the adoption clinic would be a perfect progression in our Hallmark romance.”

  “And a crowd draw, I would think.”

  “Of course, who wouldn’t want to meet Madam Mayor in person.”

  She gave him a wry smile. “There is that.”

  Eric rose. “Let me know when you’re free to go talk with your mother about my lodging.”

  Amanda checked her desk calendar. She didn’t have anything scheduled. “We could go now.” Something in her was unwilling to let him go.

  “Tracy said you have office hours until noon.”

  He was on a first name basis with her administrative assistant. Of course he was. “I have nothing pressing this morning, and Tracy knows how to reach me if she needs to.”

  When she stepped around her desk. Eric gave her a once-over, lingering on her pencil skirt. “I borrowed one of Jeff’s bikes.”

  “And I’m not exactly dressed for a motorcycle ride. No problem. Mom lives close. We can walk.”

  “Walk it is.” He waited for her and took her hand.

  She gently disentangled it. “Not in city hall.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Somehow, she thought few people bossed Eric Slade, at least not more than once.

  At the sidewalk in front of city hall, Amanda slipped her fingers between his. She might as well take advantage of the opportunity to be the boss and lead him around while she had it. And the firm grip of his hand wasn’t a bad perk either.

  Amanda’s grip on his hand felt good and, to him, said a lot about her. She was a woman who was used to being in charge, who had a definite life of her own. A woman he’d genuinely like to get to know better, unlike anyone he’d been with or dated in a long time. They’d generally been using him as much or more than he’d been using them.

  He swallowed hard. That was sort of what their fake romance was. He shook his head. No theirs was a mutually beneficial agreement. But wasn’t that what a lot of his relationships had been? Call it what he might, it was still the same Hollywood game. You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours.

  “What?” Amanda interrupted his thoughts. “You shook your head.”

  “Nothing. I was thinking.”

  “Me, too. There’s a lot I don’t know about the real you.”

  He scoffed. “You might be better not knowing.”

  “I mean ordinary things people who are dating know.”

  “All right, ask me something.”

  “How old are you?”

  He hesitated, glancing sideways at her. Amanda couldn’t be older than her mid-30s.

  “It’s not a trick question.”

  “Forty-two.”

  “Your IMBd says 45.”

  He puffed out a breath. “Okay 48. And up until five months ago, I smoked cigarettes.” That brought a grin to her face that quickly faded.

  “Don’t tell my mother.”

  “About smoking?”

  “No, your age.”

  He cocked his head. “Why? Does she have a thing about you dating older men. I’d think you’re beyond having parental rules on your dating.”

  Amanda frowned. “Of course I’m beyond that. I have had a thing against dating significantly older men. A disaster with an instructor in grad school.”

  This was probably w
here he should change the subject, but it was just getting interesting. “What’s significantly older?”

  She shrugged before she shot out, “Ten years.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-eight,” she said as she turned the corner onto a residential street of stately old homes.

  “Hmm. When’s your birthday?”

  “What does …”

  “Humor me.”

  “July.”

  He breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Mine is in September, so I’m not ten years older than you. Problem solved.”

  Amanda slowed her pace to almost a crawl as they approached the only home on the street so far that didn’t have a perfectly groomed front lawn. “My father—sperm donor, really—was 15 years older than my mother. I first met him six years ago when he and my mother reconnected after his wife’s death.”

  She stopped talking. He waited. Eric knew Amanda had moved to Indigo Bay and opened her architectural and planning consulting firm about that time. She’d told him her mother had lured her there with talk of the delights of small-town beach living.

  “He had terminable cancer. Mom gave up everything she’d built for herself. She was career military. And she moved back to Indigo Bay, her hometown, to take care of him. I gave her a hard time, a really hard time about it. Coming here to take care of that old man who’d had nothing to do with us for all that time.”

  Eric could almost taste the bitterness in Amanda’s words. “How long did he live?”

  “He hung on for four and a half years, until he’d drained everything out of Mom.”

  Eric knew this was dangerous ground, but he needed to know Amanda as much as possible. For their charade, of course. “I take it you two never reconciled.”

  She stopped short at the end of the next driveway. “He never acknowledged me. He only wanted Mom.” She cleared her throat and motioned to the house. “We’re here. It looks like Mom didn’t talk with the teen next door who was supposed to have mowed her lawn yesterday.”

  A woman came to the front screen door. She opened it as Amanda called, “Hi,” and walked him up the driveway to the walk leading to the wraparound front porch.

  “Amanda, you should have called first,” the woman scolded in a voice that had a much-more-pronounced South Carolina accent than Amanda’s. “The house is a mess.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” Eric assured her as he took in the woman. He could see where Amanda got her looks from. But her mother looked older than he’d expected. Amanda had told him before that her mother was barely out of her teens when she’d had her.

  “No, it’s not,” the elder Ms. Strickland said. At least he assumed it was Ms. Strickland. Amanda hadn’t said anything about her parents marrying.

  He almost missed Amanda’s slight nod as her mother sized him up much as he had her. He scratched an itch on his forearm. Did Amanda mean yes, the house was a mess or no her mother was just saying that?

  “You and your friend can sit on the porch and I’ll bring us all some sweet tea to drink while you tell me why you’re here.”

  “We might as well take the swing and get the neighborhood talking,” Amanda said.

  She settled on the swing, and he sat appropriately close with his arm on the backrest behind her. “Your mother doesn’t know who I am, does she?”

  “Oh yeah, she does, and for some reason she isn’t happy about it.”

  “Oh, I didn’t read that at all.”

  Amanda raised an eyebrow.

  “And here I thought I was pretty experienced in reading women.”

  Amanda patted his knee, causing him to squeeze the swing’s padded back rather that her shoulder he wanted to squeeze.

  She left her hand on his knee. “Don’t worry, Mom’s opinion won’t affect our dea…plans.” She changed her wording as they heard the screen door creak open and left her hand on his knee while taking her glass of tea with the other hand.

  Amanda’s mother’s gaze remained fixed on her daughter’s hand while handing him his drink. Then, as she moved to sit down, her gaze went to the magazine holder sitting between the swing and her chair. One of the popular tabloid magazines with a face she was currently very familiar with leered from the cover.

  “Mom!” Amanda took the magazine from the holder. “You don’t buy this magazine?”

  “Certainly not. Lucille and I trade magazines. That must have been in the ones she brought me. So, you must have a reason for taking off work to come here.”

  “Yes, but first where are my manners? Mom, this is Eric Slade. Eric, my mother, Lisa Strickland.”

  “Nice to meet you, Ms. Strickland” he said with his most photogenic smile.

  “You can call me Lisa.”

  That was something. Although Amanda’s earlier suggestion about couch-surfing for animal-shelter donations was looking more attractive.

  Amanda glanced from Eric to her mother and back. This was going well—not. She removed her hand from Eric’s knee, and he dropped his arm to her shoulders. Give me a break. She reminded herself that this was for charity and took a cleansing breath. “Eric is here visiting Jeff and Sonja for the holidays. But they have a plumbing problem in the suite he’s booked and have so other rooms available while the problem is getting fixed.”

  “I see.” Her mother looked at Eric’s arm, frowned, and said, “He can’t stay with you. You’re the mayor. How would that look?”

  “Exactly what I thought,” Eric said.

  Her mother’s expression remained the same. Amanda wasn’t sure he was helping matters, particularly with the way the corners of his mouth were twitching. “Yes, Sonja suggested I ask you if Eric could stay here. You have lots of room.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “I’ll pay you what I’m paying for the B&B suite,” Eric offered.

  Amanda rubbed her forehead. Wrong again. Mom was likely to take that as meaning she needed financial help. As long as Amanda could remember, Mom had prided herself at being able to take care of herself—and Amanda, too, when she was growing up.

  “I don’t need you to pay me,” her mother said right on cue.

  “I wouldn’t feel right not doing something to reciprocate.” Eric looked at the lawn and the house. “Do you have anything that needs to be done around the house and grounds?”

  “There are a few things. I don’t know if you could handle them.”

  Amanda stared at her feet. But, when she looked up, Eric didn’t appear the least bit insulted.

  “I wasn’t always an actor. I worked construction summers while I was going to college and when I first started my acting career. It could help me get back in shape.”

  Amanda felt his muscled thigh resting along hers. He looked in good shape to her. “Eric still does his own movie stunts,” she blurted for whatever reason.

  “Some of them,” he clarified.

  “All right. You can stay here until your suite at the B&B is ready. Give me a little time to clean up the house before you bring your things over.”

  “Thanks. Should I bring lunch, too?” he asked.

  “No. I’ll fix something.”

  Eric placed his hand over Amanda’s on her leg. “You going to join us for lunch?”

  Did she detect desperation in his voice and touch? She smiled to herself. “Sorry, I’ve lost a good part of my morning at city hall. I’ll send out for something and eat at my desk.” She placed her empty tea glass on the porch next to the swing. “It’ll give you two a chance to get to know each other.” And give me a break from both of you.

  Eric pushed the swing back to stand and caught Amanda off-guard. Her foot hit her glass, which rolled toward her mother who bent and scooped it up.

  “Amanda Jade,” her mother admonished.

  One corner of Eric’s mouth quirked up, and Amanda was hard-pressed not to smile back.

  “You know those are the glasses from your grandmother’s house. I only have the four of them.”

  Eric rose and hande
d his glass to her mother with a slight bow.

  “Suck-up,” she said in a soft voice he may or may not have heard, rising to stand beside him.

  “Hell-oo.”

  All three of them looked toward the sidewalk to Lucille and Princess now making their way up the driveway.

  Amanda’s stomach dropped. She’d lost enough of her office time already and might have to make her consulting call from city hall, mixing governing with business. Something she didn’t like to do or see anyone else doing.

  “I couldn’t tell from the street who you had with you, Amanda. But my stars, it’s Eric Slade,” she said from the bottom of the porch stairs.

  “Come up and meet him,” Amanda said.

  “Can you take Princess? The steps are a little steep.”

  “I will.” Eric reached down and took the little dog. He glanced from the dog’s bejeweled collar to Lucille’s matching heels and went down the steps to give Lucille an arm up, as well.

  “Such a gentleman,” Lucille gushed.

  “Yes, he is.” Both Lucille and Eric were blocking her only escape route unless she leaped over the porch rail to the lawn.

  “But a naughty one.” Lucille nodded toward the magazine holder. “I hope you’re not going to play with our Amanda’s affections. What are your intentions?”

  Eric handed Princess back to Lucille. “I intend to spend as much time as I can while I’m here getting to know her better.”

  Lucille looked at him approvingly.

  Her mother lifted her eyebrows.

  Eric assumed a self-satisfied Cheshire Cat smile.

  And Amanda wanted to be alone in her office, planning for a successful town holiday season. Not to mention thinking through the serious doubts she had now about pulling off their romance charade.

  How could she have left the good citizens of Indigo Bay of her simple list of pros and cons?

  Chapter 3

  Amanda had declined his offer to walk her back to city hall, leaving him with the two older women. On closer look, and in contrast to Lucille, Lisa appeared younger than he’d initially thought. The salt and pepper hair had thrown him off. The age span between Lisa and him might not be much more than that between Amanda and him.