Bree had been in the messy, strangely unpleasant, and downright frustrating process of retiling the master bathroom wall when Charlotte’s call came. More like trying to retile the wall. The videos she’d watched made it all look so easy! So why then did some tiles jut out more than the others, and nothing exactly lined up, and certainly not without a fair bit of effort.
She closed her eyes. She’d think about all this another day. Right now, she was being asked to babysit her sweet little cousin once removed, as the family had discovered was the formal name for the connection. She’d read her books and rock her in that old, rickety chair, and she’d stop thinking about what a disaster she would be coming home to.
Bree quickly cleaned up her supplies, washed her hands, and changed. She didn’t bother with makeup tonight, and she kept her hair swept up in a ponytail. Less chance of Audrey pulling on it, and she so liked the finest strands, the ones that had maximum pain impact.
Charlotte’s apartment wasn’t far from the house, and Bree happily followed a snowplow most of the way there, only having to turn onto snowy, slick pavement when she pulled onto Charlotte’s side street. Her cousin’s apartment was on the ground floor of a two-flat, a former single-family home back in the day, no doubt, and in much need of loving care.
Maybe once she tackled her own home she could fix up Charlotte’s place a bit, Bree mused. If she ever finished, that was. What had once been a clear image in her mind of exquisite restoration was now turning into a physical mess.
A mess she wouldn’t think about just yet.
She hopped out of her car before she could think any more about that and hurried up the steps to Charlotte’s front door. She could hear Audrey wailing through the glass pane. Huh. So much for her fantasy of a nice, quiet, domestic evening with a cuddly little baby.
The door flung open, and Charlotte stood before her, Audrey red-faced and openmouthed on her hip, her nose running so profusely, Bree felt herself flinch. Suddenly arranging perfectly spaced subway tile seemed far easier than settling this crying baby.
“She’s teething,” Charlotte explained in lieu of a greeting, and opened the door wider to reveal black leggings, knee-high boots, and a cream-colored tunic. A sparkly necklace graced her neck, and…was that perfume Bree smelled?
Charlotte had told her she had a last-minute appointment. From the looks of things, it was more like a date.
The living room was, as usual, sprinkled with stuffed animals and building blocks and various plastic toys that lit up or played music. Some might call it a mess, but Bree didn’t mind. To her it felt lived in, homey. It was modest, with a mixture of furniture that came with the apartment or had been pulled out of Charlotte’s parents’ basement. But it was filled with love.
Filled with a lot more than Bree’s house was.
That heavy lump in her chest returned when she thought of what it must be like to have something to come home to other than some power tools.
“Do you want to go to Auntie Bree?” The question was clearly rhetoric. Charlotte wasted no time in handing the baby over, not that Bree minded.
She loved the soft feel of her. She never stopped marveling at how light she was, how easy to hold and maneuver.
The baby sneezed in her face. Bree blinked. Then froze. She could set the baby down, run for a tissue, but where would she put her? And she was sort of afraid to open her eyes for fear of what might seep in.
“Oh. Oh dear.” Charlotte muttered to herself as she hurried across the room to the bathroom, quickly returning with some tissue. “She sneezes if she’s cried too much.”
“Just one of her many funny habits,” Bree said, wiping first her face and then Audrey’s. The child seemed to brighten, startled by the gesture, and her sobbing faded into a hiccup. Bree laughed.
“I’m sorry to leave you with such a mess. She was asleep, but then when I got out the hair dryer, she woke up…”
Bree walked over to the couch and settled Audrey on her knee. She bounced it lightly, just enough to keep Audrey entertained, but not enough to jostle her stomach. (A lesson she’d learned the hard way the time Audrey deposited an entire bottle’s worth of milk onto her favorite silk top.) “You said you had an appointment?”
Charlotte didn’t meet her eye as she opened the closet door and pulled her coat from the hanger. “I shouldn’t be long.”
Interesting. So she was dressed up, and she’d dodged the question. Bree narrowed her eyes. “Where’s the appointment?”
“What?” Charlotte stopped buttoning her coat for a moment. “Oh. Um. Client’s house.”
“At this hour?” Bree whistled, not buying a word of it. It was nearly eight. This was beginning to sound more and more like a dinner date.
“Well, he works, and this was the best time…”
Ah. So it was a he. Of course it was.
“Well, it’s very accommodating of you.”
Charlotte wrapped a scarf around her neck. Not the chunky, handknit scarf that she’d made in their monthly knitting club, mind you. No, she pulled out her pashmina. The hunter-green one she always wore for special occasions.
“Customer service comes first,” Charlotte laughed. “Kate drilled that into me on day one.”
“It’s my motto, too,” Bree said. She bounced her knee a little harder, wondering how to get the information out of Charlotte. “So, this client. Dating material?”
At this, Charlotte gave her a long look. “You know I don’t have any interest in dating.”
Bree gave a small smile. “If you say so.”
Charlotte pulled her handbag out of the closet—her good leather handbag, not the canvas tote she used to keep her files or Audrey’s diaper supplies—and hooked it over her arm before closing the closet door. “Well, I’m off. There’s a bottle in the fridge if she gets fussy. Just heat it for sixty seconds and do the wrist check. But she’ll probably fall back to sleep soon. And I won’t be long.”
“Good luck!” Bree called, grinning mischievously.
Charlotte paused as she reached for the door handle. “Thanks. I have a feeling I’ll need it.”
* * *
It was past eight when Greg turned off his computer for the day, only the darkness through the windows and the rumble of his stomach confirming the time. He’d always had an ability to focus, to sit down and lose himself in his work. It was a trait he’d inherited from his mother, he supposed. Even if that was one of the few things they had in common.
The picture of Rebecca was still facedown on his desk. He turned it over and studied the picture impassively, before opening a drawer and tucking it under some papers. He’d come here for a quiet Christmas. In fact, he’d come here to forget about Christmas. Didn’t he have to deal with it enough, ten hours a day from the day after Mother’s Day through December 26?
Christmas had always been important in their house, but not in the traditional sense. It was the busiest time of the year for the company, and by the time it wrapped up on December twenty-fifth, his mother could do little but sit beside the crackling fire with a glass of sherry in her hand, smiling from a distance as he unwrapped the gifts her assistant or the nanny had purchased for him and had professionally wrapped in company paper. Christmas was an industry, a moneymaker. People wanted a magical holiday? Frost Greeting Cards could give them one, from the greeting cards to the wrapping paper to the ornaments they collected year after year. Frost was a part of every home at Christmas, a part of every memory, a part of a thousand feel-good moments.
Greg dragged out a breath. And now, for the first time in his thirty-four years, Christmas was invading his home.
He slammed the drawer shut. Marlene had stocked the pantry and fridge with food, but Greg didn’t feel like cooking. He was too hungry to weigh his options, too anxious to focus on another task. The proposal for the Burke’s Christmas display was coming along well, and tomorrow he’d go into the office to meet with the research and marketing teams. He knew that Frost Greeting Cards had what it took to beat out Darling Cards, but his mother’s earlier words haunted him, flitting back to the forefront of his mind any time he took a step back from his computer screen.
Would his mother really hand the company to Drew instead of her own son? No matter how many times he asked himself the question, Greg always came back to the same bitter realization: Yes.
Flicking off the lights to his office, Greg was nearly to the kitchen to scrounge up some cheese and crackers and a full bottle of wine when the doorbell chimed. Frowning, he walked back to the front of the house. A delivery, perhaps? He checked his watch. Highly unlikely at this hour.
But not, he thought as he flung open the door, as unlikely as the person standing before him.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise.” Greg grinned at Charlotte, but she barely returned the gesture.
She skirted her gaze to her left.
“I’m not here for long. I was just, uh, passing by, and I wanted to see if I’d left my portfolio here by any chance.”
Greg raised an eyebrow. So she wanted to dance around the issue. Well, he didn’t have time for games. He didn’t have time for much, as she herself had been so keen to point out. Not when his entire career was hanging on a damn Christmas party scheduled for less than two weeks from tonight.
Two weeks. Maybe he’d forgo the wine. Grab the whiskey instead.
He didn’t bother to feed into her excuse. “And here I was thinking you’d reconsidered my offer.”
“And which part would that be?” Charlotte asked. “The part about planning your party or the part about moonlighting as your date?”
“You said yourself that planning a party on this short of notice is a challenge. You were right.”
“So you still want my help?” Her voice seemed to lift at the end. A note of hope, perhaps?
He decided to hedge his bets, even though he’d spent an hour this afternoon calling event planners with no luck. “I do. For the party and the date.”
She narrowed her gaze on him. “You’re not going to let that go.”
“Look, I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t desperate.” He’d said it to make her sympathize with him, to make her think she was helping a poor guy out, but as the word came out he realized it was true. He was desperate, damn it.
“Desperate?”
“I mean—” Shoot. “I can’t show up to the party alone. It’s that simple.”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “So, what would I have to do? Just hold on to your arm and smile sweetly?” She batted her eyelashes and curled her lips into a smile that revealed a dimple. “Pretend I’m your girlfriend?”
He shoved his hands into his pockets and studied the grooves in the wooden floorboards beneath his feet as he considered his next words. His ridiculous predicament. “I don’t need you to pretend to be my girlfriend.”
A quizzical expression crossed her face. “Then what would I be?”
He sucked in a breath, holding her stare. For not the first time, he regretted ever asking Rebecca to marry him. Had he not, his mother might never have latched on to this idea. “My fiancée.”
Her jaw slacked. “No one would believe that!”
“Why not?” He was coming around to the idea. It could all be very simple, really. “I see half these people once a year, the rest I work with, but we don’t discuss our personal lives. They’ll believe it.” They had to believe it.
Sensing her hesitation, he said, “We met at a party in Boston. We’ve been dating for two years, and I popped the question over the summer. See? Easy. I took you to a little Italian place for our first date. We don’t have a wedding date set yet, but we’re thinking spring. That’s all anyone would care to know.”
“Where’d you propose?”
Greg thought back to the night he had gotten down on one knee, placed the ring Rebecca had picked out on her finger. He thought she’d be impressed, but something told him she expected something more lavish.
“Right here in this house.” How ironic.
Charlotte inspected him, frowning. “And then what? Are they going to think we broke up or something?”
Greg hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. He told himself it wouldn’t matter. If he landed the business, it would be good enough. It had to be. It should be. “You let me figure that part out. All I need is a party and a date.”
“I’ll need full payment for the event up front,” she dared to say.
He let out a half laugh. She was quick, he’d give her that, but he was no dummy. “Half up front, half on delivery. Full delivery,” he added. “And I want to see receipts from the vendors.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “You run a tough bargain for someone so desperate.”
“Take it or leave it,” he said. But he knew she would take it. He knew when she’d hesitated in his office. She wanted the job. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“I want a good reference for our company,” she continued.
“If the party’s a success, of course.”
“Oh, it will be a success,” she said.
“Do we have a deal, then?”
Her brief hesitation felt long. “You’ve got yourself a deal, all right.” She held out a hand. “Honey.”