“The only thing that’s been misunderstood is the degree of her lunacy.”
* * *
Nathan looked at the young woman who’d been occupying far too many of his thoughts. There was no denying she wasn’t his usual type. Since he hadn’t dated a woman in over three years, not since the spectacular disaster of his divorce, could he really claim to have a type at all? One thing he did know, she was as far removed from his ex-wife as any woman could be physically.
Lisa had been tall and slim, blonde, never a hair out of place and her makeup always perfect. Holly Merriweather, because he’d made it a point to learn her name even if he’d never planned to act on it, was always frazzled. Her black hair seemed to be perpetually falling out of the ponytail she favored, and he’d yet to see her in makeup. She was also petite, enough so that the top of her head would fit just below his chin. Her height wasn’t the only difference. With her generously curved hips and full breasts, she looked like a throw back to another time. Soft, sweet, utterly feminine, and with an innocence about her that called to him, she was dangerous. She should have been posing for pin up photos in the forties and fifties. Or now. She could pose for one right now and he’d buy a copy for every single room in his house.
“Why?” she asked. “Matchmaking? None of it make any sense!”
It was such a direct question, he couldn’t avoid answering it. “Barbara isn’t a lunatic...I realize all of this would make it appear otherwise, but she’s just concerned about me.”
“So concerned about you that she locks you in your own store on Christmas with a total stranger?”
Nathan shook his head.“She had this idea that I was attracted to you, and she’s enough of a romantic to think throwing us together in an impossible situation would...”. He let the sentence trail off. There was very little he could say at that point that wouldn’t result in a sexual harassment suit.
“Why would she think that?”
He shrugged. “Barbara is a romantic, full of wild notions. She’s also more like a grandmother to me than just an employee. She feels entitled, I suppose, to meddle in my affairs?”
She sank onto the bench that faced the escalators, her shock plainly written on her face.“There are easier ways to set you up on a blind date! Why would anyone go to this much trouble?”
Because Barbara didn’t want him to have just any blind date. She wanted him to have a blind date with Holly and the only way that could happen was if they were thrown together by force. The circumstances weren’t ideal, but he was honest enough to admit that if they weren’t locked in together, he would never have approached her. The divorce had been a miserable experience, and while he didn’t think all relationships were destined for failure, the reasons his relationship with Lisa had failed hadn’t changed. The business still took too much of his time and attention. Then there was the fact that Holly Merriweather worked for him. That created an entirely different set of added complications.
“I haven’t dated much,” he admitted finally. “Not since my divorce. Well, at all, actually.”
“So she thought this would be the blind date story to end them all? I know she’s older than she looks, but this is positively Austenian!”
Nathan smiled at her wry tone. “Well, I’d hardly call this a date, and since I have access to your personal file, blind is a stretch, I wouldn’t call the night a total loss yet. Would you? If nothing else, it’s an adventure.”
He watched her process that statement, saw the doubt, the confusion. Every thought and feeling was written on her all too expressive face. She’d be a terrible poker player.
With a sigh of resignation, she sealed both their fates. “If we’re going to be stuck here all night, we should at least be comfortable. It’s too dark in your office and too… close.”
“The furniture department is that way.” As he pointed, he took her hand, leading her through the darkened store. It was only in case she tripped, he told himself. Then why does it feel so right?
3
Seated on a luxurious leather sofa, Holly surreptitiously studied the perfect profile of a man she’d often fantasized about. It wasn’t necessarily that her fantasies were naughty, although some of them certainly were. Some were born more out of loneliness than lust. The idea of sitting on a couch, snuggled up with someone before a roaring fire while they sipped wine and talked late into the night—that scenario had come up more than once for her. And now, sans the roaring fire and with coffee instead of wine, it was coming true. He’d seemed so far beyond her reach only hours earlier. But the more they talked, the more real he became to her. He wasn’t just this perfect, beautiful man. She was being given a chance to see the person behind the name and the suit… and she liked him even more.
Somewhere, he’d come up with candles that now sputtered on the coffee table in front of them. Really, she couldn’t have picked a better place for make believe. Relaxing by candlelight in a luxuriously appointed room with a gorgeous man beat the hell out of a lonely night in front of the television with a diet TV dinner.
The expanse of the store allowed her to, not forget exactly, but at least ignore the fact that she was stuck. And that their current situation looked, at least from the outside, like a romantic evening helped with the charade.
They’d been talking for an hour or more. It had been surprisingly easy to open up to him, to feel comfortable with him. He’d also retrieved the sandwiches and they’d had dinner together. It wasn’t a date, but it strangely felt like one. Looking up, she could just make out the outline of the chandelier above them.
“I love this store.” She uttered the admission softly. “I’ve always loved it. It seemed so glamourous to me when I was a child.”
“I never thought about the glamour,” he said with a frown. “Though I suppose it is —or was—in a very Victorian way.”
“It’s such a beautiful old building,” she commented, looking up at the tall plastered ceiling. It was one of the few things that Elizabeth Bishop hadn’t destroyed. “When I came here as a child, I used to pretend it was a castle and that I was a princess. What about you?”
He shrugged. “I certainly never thought I was a princess,” he replied.
Holly laughed. “Seriously. You did come here as a boy, didn’t you?”
“I did,” he admitted, looking around fondly. “I loved being here. It fed my imagination. I used to sword fight with broken mannequins in the storage room.”
Holly smiled at that, easily picturing him as a beautiful boy with starry eyes. “Did you win?”
He chuckled. “They trounced me every time.”
They grew silent for a moment, not in an uncomfortable way. But it wasn’t exactly a companionable silence either. And the longer it drew out, the more Holly felt the tension between them. Was it just because they both knew they’d been thrown together in the hopes that there would be a spark? Or was she being foolish in hoping that maybe the spark was real?
Unable to stand it any longer, she asked, “Why would you work on Christmas Eve if you don’t have to?” It was a personal question, but she figured getting personal was no longer taboo.
Nathan settled back on the couch and propped his feet up. “I’m going to be honest with you, Holly, but this is very sensitive information.”
“Cross my heart.” To prove the point, she did just that, drawing a cross on her chest with her index finger. Despite the dim light, it was obvious to her that his gaze had followed the movement of her hand. And it seemed that his gaze lingered for a moment longer than necessary. The candlelight thankfully hid her answering blush.
Eventually, he looked away, clearing his throat as he did so. “My stepmother was running this store into the ground. If the will hadn’t finally been settled and the store reverted to me, within a year, Bishop’s would have been bankrupt. As it stands, it’s going to take a miracle to pull it out of the hole she’s dug… and I’m not sure I can swing a miracle.”
Fear gripped her then. Running the coffee s
hop wasn’t her dream job, but she loved Bishop’s. Her grandfather had worked there for almost forty years. Every Christmas as a child, she’d marched proudly through the store in her best dress and winter coat to sit on Santa’s lap. Bishop’s wasn’t just where she worked, it was part of her history. It was also one of the last connections she had to the people who’d raised her. Working there, working where they had worked, was important to her. It helped her to feel like they weren’t completely gone from her life.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Before we lost power, I was reviewing marketing plans that Elizabeast had commissioned prior to being deposed.”
She couldn’t help but snicker at his name for his stepmother. Elizabeth Bishop had been a horrible person, a midlife mistake made by the elder Bishop, and they’d all paid for it dearly. Long time employees had fled from her tyrannical ways. Her improvements to the store were anything but. It had seemed as if she was trying to make the store fail.
“Are they any good?” she asked with trepidation.
He shook his head and made a face. “They’re horrible. At least the ones I’ve looked at. The thing is, and this isn’t common knowledge, I know nothing about Bishop’s day to day running anymore. It takes me twice as long as it ought to for even mundane tasks… not because I don’t understand business, but because Bishop’s is being run like a company from before my time.”
“Oh, I know. The time clock is one of those old fashioned ones with paper cards,” she said.
He blinked. “Are you kidding?”
“No,” she said. “It really is. Some of the younger employees don’t even know how to tell time on an actual clock. They stand there in front of it and watch their cell phones to know when to clock in.”
“I didn’t know that,” he admitted. “It’s just one of the many things I don’t know. I’m starting to think I wasn’t worthy to inherit the business, after all.”
“Of course, you are. And you do know this store! You know what counts! You’ve only been here for a month and you know the employees by name. You know what department they work in. This is your birthright. It’s been in your family for generations,” she replied.
“That’s true enough, but while she had control of the store, I wasn’t even allowed on the premises. Now, I have to clean up the mess—messes— she’s made, in a market that is far from favorable, and I have to find some way to revitalize an independent department store when for the most part, they are a dying breed.”
“Well, I know from what I’ve heard at the coffee kiosk that our online shopping experience is terrible,” Holly said. “That doesn’t help the store itself, but if that can be improved, it could help the bottom line.”
“It will… that’s actually one of the first changes I’ve made. The site is still being constructed, but it should be completed before the big President’s Day sale,” he said. “But all of the market analysis that’s been done and all the surveys show that the people who shop us online are the same people who shop in the store. We’re not going to draw in new customers that way. And right now, most of our customer base is aging. Grim as it might be to say it, we need to be courting younger shoppers or Bishop’s will die along with our existing ones.”
Holly shivered, as much out of fear as from the growing cold. “I hate what she tried to do to this store. It’s like she wanted it to fail. Bishop’s is about history and old world luxury and she tried to turn it into this new, shiny, trendy place. But there are dozens of stores in town that look like that! And the whole thing about Bishop’s that made it special was that it didn’t try to be everyone else.”
He smiled at that, albeit sadly. “How do you know so much about Bishop’s? I know you’ve worked here for a few years, but you talk about it like you grew up here.”
“I did in a way. Every Easter dress I ever had. Every Christmas dress, my senior prom dress. My first training bra, all came from here. Mostly because of my grandfather’s employee discount. Otherwise he and my grandmother would never have been able to afford to outfit my sister and I.”
“Your grandfather worked here?” His eyes widened as he remembered. “Bill Merriweather. The shoe man.”
Holly laughed again, thinking how thrilled her grandfather would have been that he was remembered that way. “Yes, he loved working here. There was nothing he couldn’t tell you about men’s shoes. He knew that department inside and out...I’d come down with my grandmother on Saturdays that my grandfather worked. We’d all have lunch together out by the fountain. I cried when Elizabeth got rid of it.”
“It’s still here,” he said. “It’s stored on the fourth floor with everything else. The good thing about my contesting the will was that any changes she made to the physical property had to be temporary. The original plasterwork and marble floors are under this god-awful carpet and brass and glass.”
Holly frowned. In all her years of working there and even before, coming there as a child, that was something she’d never known about Bishop’s. “I don’t remember a fourth floor.”
“There was a restaurant up there, and the bridal department used to be up there, but they moved it down to the second floor in the 70’s and shut the restaurant down,” Nathan explained. “It’s mostly storage now.”
An idea sparked for Holly, fueled by her grandmother’s love of everything related to weddings. During the year of chemo and constant illness, she’d sat with her grandmother and watched one horrible reality show after another. Bridezillas. Weddings from Hell. Surprise Weddings. Weddings on a Budget. Every variation of reality show imaginable about weddings and wedding dresses, and they’d watched them twenty four hours a day until Holly couldn’t stand it anymore. But now, knowing that the space existed and that it likely had the same incredible architectural details as the rest of the building, those horrid shows had sparked an idea. “So you have these empty vendor spaces on the first floor that you need to fill, and you have a fourth floor space that’s as big as this floor, right?”
“Yes. What are you thinking about?” His tone was dubious at best.
“Just hear me out. It might sound crazy, but I think it bears considering,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’m willing to listen to any pitches employees have about how to turn this store around.”
“Bishop’s is synonymous with weddings,” Holly said. She was gesturing wildly, unable to contain her excitement. “Brides come here to register. They buy their wedding dresses here, they register for their china here, their crystal and barware… All of the traditions that are associated with weddings for the wealthier and more upscale clientele in this city… all of that is centered around Bishop’s.”
“That is true,” he said. “That’s always been true for this store.”
“Then why not make Bishop’s a one stop shop for weddings? Employ a florist, a caterer and hair stylists for those empty spaces on the first floor. Turn that abandoned fourth floor into an event space... My sister worked at a hotel last summer between semesters and wedding venues are booked at least six months in advance in this city!”
He stared at her blankly for a moment and said absolutely nothing.
Holly’s excitement faded at his less than enthused response. What did she know, after all? She was just the coffee girl. “Never mind. It was a dumb idea.”
* * *
Nathan stared at her for a moment longer before shaking himself out of his daze. “No, it isn’t. That’s brilliant, Holly!”
“Do you really think so?”
“It’s definitely thinking outside the box. I’d have to talk to the lawyers and see what we’d need to do about liquor licenses and how that would even work, and the health department because nothing in that restaurant would be up to code… but I’d rather take the capital we have and plow it into the store to give us a fighting chance than horde the money and watch us sink.”
“I think it could really be something,” she said breathlessly.
“I think it could
too,” Nathan agreed.
Impulsively, filled with excitement at the idea that he now had a starting point to save the business his great-great grandfather had founded, Nathan reached out for her. He pulled her close in a fierce hug.
He hadn’t intended to hug her. But it was an impulsive gesture, one that should have been celebratory or maybe even a little congratulatory. But the moment his arms closed around her, he knew he’d made a terrible mistake. She was soft and pliant, her body molding to his in a way that—well, it wasn’t professional. Drawing back, he stared down into her stunned, upturned face.
It was quick, a matter of seconds and then he moved back from her, putting distance between them. The tension as they stared at one another in that long moment after was palpable.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” Nathan said. “I wasn’t trying to be forward or …. or inappropriate. It was just a brilliant plan, and I got caught up in the excitement.”
She just blinked at him for the longest time, confusion shining in her eyes. Finally, she offered a small smile that didn’t quite ring true.“It’s okay,” she answered. “I didn’t mind.”
Nathan shook his head. “No. I’m your employer, Holly, and the situation we’re in is an unusual one…”
She reached out and put her hand over his. “It’s okay. I’m not going to sue you because you got excited and hugged me. I know you didn’t mean it that way!”
But he did mean it that way. That was the problem. “I’m sorry we’re stuck here. I’m sorry that I’ve burdened you with things that you shouldn’t have to think about. But I can’t tell you what a relief it is to talk to someone about all of this… and I think your idea is amazing. It could well be what I need to bring in a big investor and really turn this thing around. You, Holly Merriweather, might have just saved your job, mine, and the jobs of everyone else who works here.”
Making Merry: A Christmas Romance Page 3