Do Not Open 'Til Christmas by Sierra Donovan (13)

Chloe stepped into the apartment and shut the door firmly behind her, taking care not to show how hard it was to walk a straight line.

What had happened out there?

Bret was gone and the apartment was dark, so she was putting on her show of steadiness for no one. Still wobbly, Chloe reached for the light switch. In that fraction of a moment, she wondered why the scent of pine should hit her so strongly after just a few hours of being in Barstow, and why the smell seemed stronger inside. Then the lights came on, and she had her answer.

A humble Christmas tree stood in front of the drawn curtains, decked out in the oddball conglomeration of ornaments she and her roommates had pooled from their families’ old tree decorations.

Kate and Tiffany had gotten the tree without her. She batted away a childish disappointment at missing out on the ritual. When did they all have time to get the tree together, anyway? December was already nearly halfway over, and it was darned rare for all three of them to be together these days.

Chloe crossed over to the tree and bent to plug in the lights. The multicolored bulbs winked on, and she went back to the entryway to turn off the living room light again. The tree glowed brighter in the darkened room, and the cast-off ornaments looked a little better, too.

She sat on the couch and hugged a well-worn throw pillow to her chest as she stared at the tree.

And it had been, up to and including those last few wonderful minutes, before she did what she had to do and put a stop to it.

Now her job would be a bigger train wreck than it had ever been, and she’d probably lost a budding friendship in the bargain.

Chloe scrunched the pillow harder. This day had had a warning label written all over it. She’d known it and she’d ignored it. Obviously, she and Bret weren’t meant to be just friends, at least not if they were going to spend hours and hours alone together.

Or maybe he’d just grabbed her in an impulsive moment and was already wondering what in the world had gotten into him. Despite the blow to her pride, in a way, that would be better. That way, they could shrug it off and get back to business as usual.

Even if Bret could shrug it off—could she?

She watched the colored lights go blurry in front of her eyes. It didn’t count as crying as long as she blinked before—

“Hey! Is that—”

Startled, Chloe squealed, jumped up, and spun around. Kate, startled by Chloe’s shriek, shrieked back.

Her roommate stood in the doorway to the hall in purple sweats, hair rumpled. Down the hall behind her, a dim light showed from the now-open bedroom door.

“What are you doing here in the dark?” Chloe panted.

“I took a nap. It wasn’t dark when I went to lie down. What are you doing in the dark?”

Chloe nodded toward the faint glow of their little tree. “It’s not dark. I turned the tree on.”

“Close enough.” Kate walked over and snapped on the living room light. “You’re squeezing the stuffing out of that pillow.”

Chloe looked down and saw white fluff oozing from one of the pillow’s tired seams. She poked it back in. “It’s been doing that for a while.”

She wondered if her mascara was running. Probably not, because Kate didn’t appear to notice.

“How do you like the tree?” Kate asked. “We had a couple hours between the time I got home and Tiff went to work, so we decided to grab it.”

Chloe contemplated the tree again. It was a little shorter than her own five-two, and with their secondhand ornaments, it definitely looked better in the dark, but...

She found a smile. “It looks great.”

“Tiff saved some of your decorations for you to hang up.” Kate nodded toward the coffee table, where a few of Chloe’s favorites from home lay scattered.

Tiffany would think of that. Of course neither of them had meant to leave Chloe out. They probably even thought they were doing her a favor by surprising her with a decorated tree.

“Thanks.” Chloe was tempted to hug her, but Kate wasn’t the type to hug unless someone was crying or bleeding, and she had no intention of crying in front of Kate. Or admitting how badly she needed a hug. She dropped the world-weary pillow back on the couch before she squeezed any more life out of it.

“How was your thing?” Kate asked.

“Oh . . .” Chloe rejoined the pillow on the couch, feeling equally limp and worn out. “It was okay. Kind of a long day.”

“That guy’s working you like a dog.” Kate passed into the kitchen, and Chloe heard the refrigerator door open. After a brief moment of assessment, the door closed again. Kate called, “Want to go out somewhere and get a bite?”

Chloe felt a weak smile pull at her lips, but at least she didn’t have to force it this time. Going out to eat was one reason they never got around to springing for new throw pillows or Christmas ornaments. That, and the fact that this apartment was a way station.

“Well?” Kate returned to the kitchen doorway. “We could go hassle Tiffany. Make her run back and forth with special orders.”

Chloe’s smile widened in spite of herself. “You’re mean.”

“I was kidding. We can be nice.”

“You go ahead. I’m wiped out.”

“You sure?” Kate cocked a hand on her hip. She was nowhere near as intuitive as Tiffany, but Chloe squirmed a little under her examination, hoping again that her mascara hadn’t smudged while she sat on the couch feeling sorry for herself.

Spending some time with her friends would be nice. She missed them, and it might get her mind off . . . things. But it would also mean keeping her smile in place, unless the mask cracked and she ended up spilling way more about Bret than she intended to tell. She didn’t want to do that. She felt foolish enough as it was. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure exactly what she felt. She needed some time alone to process.

Or maybe wallow.

“Not tonight.” Chloe nodded toward the coffee table. “I’ll stay here and hang my ornaments.”

“That’ll take about sixty seconds.” Not one to over-examine, Kate started toward the bedroom to change. “I could bring you something back. What kind of pie do you want?”

All right, Kate had some intuition after all.

“Banana, if they’ve got it. No, wait.” Chloe reconsidered. “Pecan.”

After all, it was Christmastime.

* * *

Bret hit the ball sharply to the left, and Jake Wyndham raced across the racquetball court to hit it. Too late. The ball hit the floor a second time as Jake crashed into the wall.

Jake let out a sigh of defeat and slouched against the wall to catch his breath. The ball bounced near his feet, unheeded. That had been game point.

Bret saw fit not to gloat. Instead, he asked, “One more?”

“No, thanks. I don’t think Mandy wants to be a young widow.” Racquet still in hand, Jake brushed damp brown hair off his forehead with the back of his wrist. He gave a wry grin. “Have you got any pent-up anger issues?”

Bret kept his expression carefully neutral. “Not that I know of.”

Bret bent and scooped up the ball with his racquet, bounced it on the mesh, and caught it in his hand. Like Jake, he was out of breath, but he felt better. A wonderful thing, adrenaline.

He’d been climbing the walls since last night. He couldn’t get those last moments with Chloe out of his mind, and he needed to. He’d started something he couldn’t finish, couldn’t even pursue to page two, and he had to vent somehow. So this afternoon, he’d called Jake and challenged him to a round of racquetball at the community center. They’d only played a few times before, and Jake always trounced Bret soundly.

Not today.

Jake crossed the room to the opposite corner, where his towel and water bottle waited.

He slid down the wall, sat on the varnished floorboards, and took a long drink from his bottle. Bret joined Jake and picked up his own water, but didn’t sit down as he drank.

“Thanks for getting away,” Bret said. “I’ll bet the hotel is crazy busy.”

“Can’t complain.” Jake rested the back of his head against the wall, eyes closed, but his tone held a note of satisfaction. He’d started up the hotel less than two years ago on a wing and a prayer, and Bret knew garnering support from the town hadn’t been easy. Jake cracked one eye open again. “What about you? Why the sudden urge to be athletic?”

Bret shrugged. “Just feeling competitive, I guess.”

“I’m competitive. Today you’re lethal,” Jake said. Both eyes were open now. “Sure there’s nothing up with you?”

That was the trouble with Jake. Too perceptive.

Bret bounced the ball with the racquet. “If there was I’d write to Dear Abby.”

He heard the terseness in his own voice as Jake’s expression shuttered faintly. It was one thing to discourage prying. Being flat-out rude was another.

He didn’t apologize, but he shifted to a friendly topic. “How’s Mandy?”

Right choice. Jake’s distant look vanished. After all, Mandy was his favorite subject. “Great. This is her time of year. Other people get stressed out, but she thrives on it.”

Oh, right. To talk about Mandy led right into Christmas. Bret wondered how much Jake bought into the whole Santa-sighting thing, but he didn’t ask. Jake had always struck him as a rational sort. Still, it did seem that people in Tall Pine tended to be more . . . fanciful these days.

Bret said, “She’s doing a great job with that little coffee bar.”

Jake nodded. “That went way beyond what either of us expected. Turns out she’s got a real knack for hospitality. And since we brought Liv in to help with the business end, it’s filled a lot of the gaps for both of us. Mandy can focus on what she does best, and the customers love her.”

Jake’s smile said the rest. Between all the visions of Christmastime and wedded bliss, Bret’s satisfaction at kicking Jake’s butt started to wane.

“It was nice seeing you at the Inn a few weeks ago,” Jake added. “How’d you like the hot chocolate?”

They really had a thing about the hot chocolate there. “Good, especially considering I’m not a chocolate fan. I’m more of a coffee guy.”

“Sorry about that. Mandy can be a little . . . persistent with her sales pitch.”

“Like Joan of Arc with the English.”

Jake chuckled. So Bret hadn’t overstepped it on the snark that time.

Bret bounced the ball on his racquet as he felt that restlessness set in again. The game had been an unusual outlet, because he’d never tended to be very athletic. Jake had invited him to go for a run once, and Bret had tried it. After all, cardiovascular exercise was an idea he agreed with in principle. In practice, he’d found it to be the height of masochism. He supposed he liked to do his huffing and puffing with purpose. Even if it was only a game.

He bent to pick up the vinyl cover for his racquet and zipped it shut. He’d caught his breath, but his body still felt heated up from the workout. Jake was right; he needed to quit while he was ahead. The two games had been pretty high-octane for someone whose usual exercise didn’t extend far beyond his typing fingers. He needed to change that, and he knew it. Avoiding most of the known carcinogens wasn’t enough.

Jake stood. “Glad you called me up,” he said. “We ought to do this more often.”

“Okay. I promise not to put you in the hospital next time. Today was a fluke.”

Bret hoped so, anyway. If it meant getting his mind on a more even keel, he’d cheerfully go back to losing.

* * *

When he arrived for work Monday morning, Chloe’s white sedan was already in the parking lot. She’d beaten him to the office.

Of course, today he’d dawdled.

It never happened. Bret repeated the words in his mind like a mantra as he pushed open the door of the newsroom.

Chloe stood at her desk, phone held awkwardly against her shoulder while she leaned over to scribble on a notepad. She’d obviously just walked in and caught the phone ringing. Her purse dangled on her shoulder, and she still wore her coat; underneath, he glimpsed a soft-looking sweater the color of butter.

She looked up when Bret walked in, and he saw recollection fill her eyes. He felt it all the way to the marrow of his bones.

Everything froze as their gazes locked. Quickly, Chloe shifted her attention back to her notepad. Her purse slid off her shoulder.

Bret recovered his stride, passed her with a nod, and went straight to the editor’s office, closing the ineffectual glass door behind him.

It never happened, he reminded himself. Shut it off. Keep it in. Forget it.

He could do this. He’d been doing it, in one form or another, for the past seven years.

He sat behind McCrea’s desk and turned on his computer. A moment later an e-mail came in from Chloe.

Chloe didn’t always use e-mail for quick questions, but this was a day when technology was a blessing. Smart girl.

He typed his reply: Go for it. Thanks.

A moment later she was gone, without ever having taken off her coat. Bret fully exhaled for the first time and went to start the coffee.

* * *

By Tuesday afternoon, Chloe was ready to scream.

She had absolutely no grounds for complaint. Bret rarely emerged from his office, but that wasn’t unusual. He’d bypassed their weekly story conference due to the mountain lion sighting first thing Monday morning, asking her to e-mail him a rundown of proposed stories instead. Perfectly reasonable. And whenever he had reason to speak to her, he was unfailingly polite.

The politeness ate away at her. You were polite to people you barely knew. But what killed her was the way he didn’t look at her. At all. Not since his expression of dismay when their eyes locked first thing Monday morning. Now, when they talked, he focused on some point just over her shoulder, as if she were some kind of mythical creature who could turn him to stone if he looked at her directly.

It was one of those quiet afternoons, all three of them settled in to file their stories for tomorrow’s edition. Bret left his office and passed by without a word, on some unspecified errand through the door that led to the photo department. Chloe ignored the way he ignored her and tried to concentrate on the story on her screen. She sipped her coffee. Stale coffee, when what she really wanted was an energy drink. And maybe a bottle of Jack Daniel’s for the other hand. If only to get some kind of reaction out of Bret.

Grow up and get over it. If he could do the Vulcan thing, so could she. After all, she’d pushed him away, and she’d been right to do it. Now, if only she could get the sensory flashbacks to stop. Being kissed by Bret had been like a drink of water after a long drought. Except that a drink of water, as far as she recalled, had never made fire shoot out of her fingers and toes.

Where had he learned to kiss like that?

Sherry, maybe. At that thought, Chloe picked up a pen and flung it down on her desktop. It knocked over her paper clip holder and sent the little silver clips scattering.

“Hey.” Chuck paused his typing to glance over his shoulder. “You interrupted my nap.”

“Sorry.” Chloe placed her fingertips over her eyelids and rubbed, trying not to smudge her makeup. “I’m just really tired of looking at that screen.”

Her fingers helped to cool the scratchy feeling from her eyes, and anything else that might be making them burn.

“Are you okay?” Chuck’s voice came more clearly this time, and when she lowered her hands, he’d turned around to face her.

Now Mr. Switzerland was looking at her askance, and that absolutely wouldn’t do.

“Just a little stir-crazy.” Chloe stood to stretch, arching one arm over her head, then the other. At least Bret had been out of the room when she chucked the pen. She righted the paper clip holder and looked again at the story on her screen. All two and a half lines of it.

Instead of sitting down again, she grabbed her coat off the back of her chair. “Know what? I’m going to try a change of scenery. I’ll be back.”

She picked up the pad with the notes from her interview, another notepad for writing a rough draft—she’d long since given up on the briefcase—and left.

* * *

Bret returned from Ned’s office to find Chloe’s desk vacant, her screen blank. The blinking light on her monitor told him it had gone into sleep mode, rather than being turned off. So, most likely, she’d be back. After all, why wouldn’t she be?

He took advantage of the moment to get a cup of coffee. He hadn’t been drinking coffee as often lately, because doing so involved walking past Chloe’s desk. It was like a divorce, and she got custody of the coffee maker.

Even without Bret’s usual consumption, he found the pot less than half full. She was sure going through the stuff. Maybe she was one of those people with a natural immunity to caffeine. He remembered the way she’d nodded off next to him in the car, a somehow-intimate memory he should be trying to forget.

Aware of Chuck’s presence a few feet away, Bret stirred in the powdered creamer and refrained from asking where Chloe was. But as he raised his cup, he thought about the way she always closed her eyes when she took that first drink of coffee, as if to savor the moment.

Bret took a sip. Hideous. The stuff must have been sitting there since first thing this morning, and conscientious Chloe hadn’t wanted to waste a third of a pot by pouring it out.

Bret shuddered and started a new pot. “What we need is one of those pod coffee makers.”

“Some people try getting some sleep at night,” Chuck said dryly.

“That would be inefficient.” What had he been doing last night? Oh, yeah. Tossing and turning. Right.

Bret leaned against the wall next to the brewer as the coffee started to trickle into the pot. He eyed Chuck with borderline suspicion. “You never drink coffee. That’s not natural.”

“I got out of the habit. My wife used to be Mormon.”

Bret frowned. “Used to be, meaning . . .”

“Before we met. But she never did acquire a taste for coffee. So I . . . got out of the habit.” His broad, loose shoulders shrugged. On the surface Chuck seemed unaffected. But his overly nonchalant attitude gave Bret the feeling he probably missed her. A lot.

It was unusual for Chuck to talk about his wife. Bret knew that she’d died about four years ago, and that Chuck had moved to Tall Pine because he had an aunt up here who helped him with his two girls. Bret never brought it up, maybe out of tact.

Tact, schmact. He hadn’t asked because he knew the story wasn’t a happy one, and he hadn’t wanted to risk dealing with it. The same way he never talked to anyone about his mother’s death. Newcomers didn’t need to know, and he’d just as soon longtime locals forgot. Or, at least, didn’t remind him.

The coffee maker was taking its sweet time, though Bret knew from experience that it took exactly eight minutes to brew a pot. He decided he’d been out here long enough to make the question seem offhand. Casually, he asked, “Where’d Chloe go?”

“Somewhere else to write. She said she needed a change of scenery.”

“I’ll get her some postcards,” Bret said. “Maybe that’ll keep her at her desk.”

The coffee trickled into the pot like sand into the bottom of an hourglass. It had been going for about four minutes, he estimated.

He heard Chuck’s chair creak a bit. “By any chance could there be an elephant in the room here?”

Bret turned his head sharply. Chuck was leaning back as if he were on a lounge chair in the middle of summer.

“If there is it’s going to stay muzzled,” Bret said. “Or corralled. Or whatever it is they do with elephants.”

“Okay, okay.” Chuck raised both hands. “But hypothetically, I don’t see anything wrong with two attractive, red-blooded kids—”

“Hypothetically, I’m her boss,” Bret said. “And you have a vivid imagination,” he added, half a beat too late.

“Is there some kind of law against it? Or a company policy?”

Chuck didn’t look like the devil. But his line of conversation was appealing and persuasive. In the face of those simple questions, Bret’s personal code of conduct seemed a little less . . . imperative.

But Chloe had pushed him away, and Chloe had her reasons. Good ones.

“If there’s not a rule against it, there should be. A boss and an employee—there’s nothing ethical about that.”

“You’re not the one who hired her. And I sure haven’t seen any favoritism. If anything, you make things about five times harder on her than you need to.”

“Tell that to the chamber of commerce.” At Chuck’s blank look, Bret shook his head. “Never mind. It’s a moot point.”

“Sounds like you’ve given it some thought.”

First Jake, and now Chuck. What was this, get-in-touch-with-your-feelings week?

“Sounds like you’ve got too much time on your hands,” Bret said.

Probably still about two minutes to go on the coffee. But he’d stood here long enough. He slid the pot out from under the stream of coffee, slipped his mug in its place, and poured in some coffee from the pot without letting any of it spill. The result would probably be just about as bitter and nasty as the pot he’d poured out, but he had work to do. And having Chuck play amateur Oprah Winfrey wasn’t helping.

* * *

When Chloe left the Pine ’n’ Dine at four, the afternoon had gone gray. She’d spent over an hour writing there and finally had a decent first draft to show for it. Not bad, considering that her pen had barely moved for the first twenty minutes. She’d been too busy composing mental discussions with Bret. Because she knew she had to go back to the office, and she was already dreading it.

The silent treatment had never been big in her family, and this was getting darned close to it. With all of Bret’s distant civility, the office felt like a glacier, or a sensory deprivation tank. Almost as if she was being punished. She didn’t think Bret meant it that way. But something had to change. She never thought she’d miss the days when he was just her professional nemesis. Looking back, it seemed so much easier.

Sherry hadn’t been at the diner. Just as well. In her current frame of mind, Chloe was bound to ask too many of the wrong questions, and that could get embarrassing fast.

A light fog had settled over Evergreen Lane as Chloe started toward the public parking lot. It wasn’t dark yet, but you couldn’t call it daylight either. The Christmas lights had come on, and she wondered whether the grayness had triggered a sensor to turn them on, or a proactive human had hit a switch.

The colored lights against the gray-white mist had a strange beauty. Not quite gloomy, but—wistful? Melancholy? Unable to resist, Chloe backtracked half a block so she could turn around and capture more of the view with her phone’s camera.

Pensive was the word, she decided. The foggy street matched her mood in an almost soothing way. She took a few more photos, longing to capture it, knowing that a flat rectangle could never quite re-create the feeling.

She lowered her phone to review the pictures. When she reached the end of the Evergreen Lane photos she kept going, thumbing back to the ones she’d taken at the Harvey House in Barstow. She reached the picture she’d taken of Bret on the stairs, and Chloe bit her lip.

It was a lucky shot, as most of her best pictures were—a moment of happenstance when things came together just right. He’d looked good in that gray blazer, the same one he wore every darned day. But there was something different in his demeanor, a little looser, more relaxed. She’d shifted the camera slightly and gotten it just in time—a quick click before he caught her aiming it at him, before the moment got away.

It was a good picture of Bret, but it was more than that. It was the way he was looking at Chloe. Not at Daddy’s girl, not at a piece of arm candy—but at her. She could see a slight softening of his usual sharpness. He wasn’t quite smiling, but almost. She enlarged the photo with her thumb and forefinger, like the glutton for punishment she was.

Her phone had been worth the extra money she’d paid for it. The image enlarged beautifully, and the expression on his face was there. The same look he’d gotten when he started to leave her at her door, right before he spun around and—

She hadn’t imagined it.

It never happened, Bret had said after they kissed. This picture assured her it did happen. Not just the kiss, but that day. Like Camelot, one brief and shining moment. One glimpse of what things might have been like in some alternate universe.

With a few quick jabs of her finger, she deleted the picture.

And just as quickly, retrieved it again.

* * *

Back at the office, she plunked down in her seat and started typing up the rough draft from her notepad. A few minutes later, Bret walked out, stopping only long enough to pull his overcoat off the rack near the door. It was all she could do to keep from screaming under her breath. But she didn’t want to draw Chuck’s attention any more than she already had. It could be her paranoid imagination, but he seemed to be casting a few more curious glances today, breaking his pattern of laid-back observer. Not that she could blame him. Things were pretty weird around here today.

Typing the words from her notepad reminded her of her old process. Even in college, she’d done most of her first drafts longhand on legal pads. In the back of her mind, she imagined Bret’s voice, admonishing her against doing the same work twice. But it wasn’t quite true. She always revised as she typed.

A few minutes before five, Chuck stood and shook on his coat. “Chloe?”

She gulped and looked up, doing her best to keep her expression vacant. “What?”

“There’s snow in the forecast for tonight. I checked Facebook, and it’s already coming down on some of those streets higher up the hill. Don’t stay too late.”

She glanced toward Bret’s door. He’d left it open, so he’d definitely be coming back to the office tonight.

She nodded. “Okay.”

Chuck left. She finished typing the story, fleshed it out, smoothed it over, and sent it to Bret’s in-box. By that time it was after five-thirty. Usually she was here until about six. If she left now, she could avoid crossing paths with Bret.

Part of her wanted to cross paths with Bret. To tell him . . . what? To stop being so polite? It had almost made sense at the Pine ’n’ Dine, when she was talking to him in her head. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Chloe sighed, then e-mailed herself the notes she’d typed during a phone interview earlier today. She could work on it at home and get a head start on tomorrow’s workload. If she left now, she could avoid Bret and the worst of the snow. Definitely the smart way to go, she decided.

As she walked down the hall, she could see the white flakes falling in the parking lot through the glass door of the employee entrance. The late afternoon chill hadn’t been so bad, but it would be colder now. And wet. And if they’d gotten much snow, she’d need to scrape her windshield before she got into her car.

Chloe waited a moment, her hand on the door. In the security lights of the parking lot, the fine white particles glinted against the now-dark sky. She could barely make out the bumper of the car nearest the door.

She tucked her head down, pushed open the door, and plunged outside. Cold and wet, but at least the wind wasn’t blowing. Chloe pulled her coat around her and glimpsed the grille of the first car she passed. It had a Mustang pony logo in the center. Her heart twinged.

She raised her head to locate her car, a few spaces down the short row in front of the sidewalk. And saw him.

Actually, she could only see the back of Bret’s black overcoat, collar upturned against the snow, and his dark hair above the collar, already dotted with white flakes of snow. Leaning over the hood of her car, he was using the edge of a credit card to scrape the crust of snow from her windshield.

Chloe slowed her steps. She heard the rasp of plastic against glass, probably the very sound that had kept Bret from hearing her approach.

She reached the front of her car, and he turned to look up with a start. Guiltily, as if she’d caught him slashing her tires instead of clearing her windshield. He stepped back with an awkward nod.

She’d been frustrated all day. She still was. But he’d just done her a kindness. In the snow. All her roughly composed speeches died away.

Not that it would have done her any good. The cold, wet night didn’t exactly invite conversation. Even if she’d been prepared to clear the air with Bret, this wasn’t the time.

And he was already circling the rear of the car next to hers, taking the long route away from Chloe to get back to the sidewalk.

“Be careful on the road,” he said over his shoulder. “Good night.”

She watched him stride briskly toward the employee door with the sure steps of someone who had years of experience walking over fresh snow.

“Thanks,” she called belatedly after him.

He disappeared into the building, like one of Dickens’s lesser-known Christmas ghosts.