Somebody's Santa. Annie Jones
She loved the Lord, and observed His birth in her own way. “I love going to church for the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. I love singing the hymns and all, but….”
“But after that you don’t have no one to go home to and share it all with,” Zach said softly.
“How did you know that?” The observation left her feeling so exposed she could hardly breathe.
“You don’t dust around folks’s nicknacks and geegaws or throw out their calendar’s pages or run into them working on the day after Thanksgiving year upon year without learning a thing or two about those folks.”
The answer humbled her even if it didn’t bring her much relief. “I’ll bet.”
“Anyway, don’t think it’s my place to say—or sing—anything more, but I hate to leave without at least…” He scratched his head, worked his mouth side to side a couple of times then finally sighed. “I’ll just offer this thought.”
Dora braced herself, pressing her lips together to keep from blurting out that she didn’t need his thoughts or sympathy or songs. Because, deep down, she sort of hoped that whatever he had to say might help.
He lifted his spray bottle of disinfectant cleaner the way someone else might have raised a glass to make a toast. “Here’s to hoping this year is different.”
It didn’t help.
But Dora smiled. At least she thought she smiled. She felt her face move, but really it could have been anything from a fleeting grin to that wince she tended to make when forcing her feet into narrow-toed high heels. Just as quickly she fixed her attention on the papers in front of her and busied herself with shuffling them about. “Thanks. Now I need to get back to work. Can’t make a deal on merely hoping things will improve, can I?”
“On the contrary.” The challenge came from the tall blond man who placed himself squarely in her office doorway. “I’d say that hope is at the very core of every deal.”
Burke Burdett! Questions blew through Dora’s mind more quickly than those fictional eight tiny reindeer pulling a flying sleigh. But the words came out of her mouth fast and furious and from the very rock bottom of her own reality. “How dare you show your face to me.”
“Show my face? The view don’t get any better from the other side, Dora,” he drawled in his low, lazy Carolina accent.
Zach, who had worked the cleaning cart into the hallway by now, laughed.
Dora opened her mouth to remind him it wasn’t part of his job description to make assumptions about her or eavesdrop on her and her guests. The squeak, rattle, squeak of the cart told her Zach had already moved on, though. She was alone in her office with Burke Burdett.
But not for long.
She reached out for a button on her phone, hesitated, then raised her eyes to meet those of her visitor.
He had good eyes. Clear and set in a tanned face with just enough lines to make him look thoughtful but still rugged. But if one looked beyond those eyes, those so-called character lines, there was a hard set to his lips and a wariness in his stance.
“Give me one reason not to call security to come up here and escort you out,” she said.
“Well, for starters, I don’t think the poor kid you’ve got posted at the front desk knows how to find the intercom button to hear you, much less where your office is.” He dropped into the leather wingback directly across from her. Years ago an old hand had taught Dora that standing was the best way to keep command of an exchange. Stand. Move. Hold their attention and you hold the reins of the situation.
Burke had just broken that cardinal rule. And made things worse when he stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his boots at the ankle to create a picture of ease. He scanned the room, saying, “Besides, he was the one who let me in.”
Dora wasn’t the only one who noticed and befriended the people everyone else looked right past. “And what did you use to convince that so-green-he’s-in-danger-of-being-mistaken-for-a-sprig-of-holly security guard to get him to do that?”
“Use? Me? Why, nothing but the power of my dazzling personality and charm.”
“I’ve been on the receiving end of your charm, Mr. Burdett. It’s more drizzle than dazzle.” She’d meant it as a joke. A tease, really. Under other circumstances, with another man, maybe even a flirtation.
Burke clearly knew that. All of it. He responded in kind with the softest and deepest of chuckles.
And Dora found herself charmed indeed.
“So the security kid is already sort of on my side in this deal,” he summed up.
“Deal?” She stood so quickly that her chair went reeling back into the wall behind her desk. She did not acknowledge the clatter it made. “There is no deal. You made that very clear to me when you cut me out of your family’s plans to save the Crumble and get things there back on track.”
Last summer, after working his way quickly up the corporate ladder at Global, Adam Burdett had returned to Mt. Knott with a scheme to buy out Carolina Crumble Pattie and get some satisfaction for all the perceived wrongs done against him by his adoptive father. It had all seemed a bit soap operaish to Dora, but as a good businesswoman she knew those were exactly the elements that put other people at a disadvantage in forging a business contract. Emotions. Family. Old hurts. They could push things either way.
In this case, they had eventually gone against Global’s proposed buyout. And in favor of Adam Burdett, and by extension, Dora. Together they had the wherewithal to save the company and the desire to do so. It wasn’t what either of them had planned, but then love had a way of changing even the most determined minds. Adam’s love for Josie—now his wife—his son, his family. And Dora’s for the town of Mt. Knott, its way of life, the thrill of a new venture based on the same kind of Biblical principles that had once motivated Global a few dozen mergers ago. And her love for Burke.
She hadn’t loved him right away but by the end of the summer, she thought she did love him. And she thought he loved her back.
Only she hadn’t been thinking. She had been feeling and acting on those feelings. Which had brought her full circle, only then she had become the one at a disadvantage in the contract negotiations. Dora was out. Adam was in. Burke had been nowhere to be found.
Burke glanced her way, then went right on surveying their surroundings. “This is a new deal that I’ve come to talk to you about today.”
“New deal? Why would I talk to you about a new deal? Or that old deal? You didn’t talk to me about that then and I don’t want to talk to you about…”
“Look, I’m here now, dazzling or not, with a new deal to discuss. The past is past. I can’t change it. Isn’t there anything more important for us to talk about than that?”
Only about a million things. Yet given the chance to bring up any of them all Dora could come up with was, “I can’t imagine what we’d have to say to one another.”
“I can. At least, I have some things I want to say to you.”
Her whole insides melted. Not defrosted like an icicle, dripping in rivulets until it had dwindled to nothing but a nub, but more like a piece of milk chocolate where the thumb and finger grasp it—just enough to make a mess of everything.
“You have something to say to me?” She bent her knees to sit, realized her chair was a few feet away and moved around the desk instead to lean back against it. “Like what, for instance?”
“Like…” He tilted his head back. He narrowed his eyes at her. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair.
The leather crunched softly, putting her in mind of a cowboy shifting into readiness in the saddle. Readiness for what, though?
She held her breath.
He leaned forward