Do Not Open 'Til Christmas by Sierra Donovan (14)

“Close the door.” Tiffany’s abrupt tone didn’t sound like Tiffany.

Chloe hadn’t even stepped all the way into the apartment, but with the icy air rushing in on her heels, she was happy to oblige. After she did, she saw the reason for Tiffany’s urgency. A little brown and white cat trotted purposefully across the living room to meet her.

“What—” Chloe began.

“He was under the car in the parking lot when we left work,” Tiffany said. “Trying to keep out of the snow. He’s lucky we didn’t squish him.”

The cat wound rapidly around Chloe’s ankles, apparently in a big hurry to rub off as much fur as possible onto the bottom half of her slacks. She could hear his purr from where she stood. Unable to resist, she dropped to the floor and knelt to pet him. The feeling of the soft, slightly bedraggled fur set off an ache in her throat.

The surprise guest raced back and forth under her hand as she stroked its back. Cats were usually aloof. Not this one. He—She?—had the gangly, scrawny look of a cat that wasn’t quite full-grown.

Kate emerged from the bathroom, dressed in the sweats she’d undoubtedly just pulled on after taking off her uniform. Tiffany still wore her dated pink dress from the Pine ’n’ Dine.

Kate said, “We were thinking of calling him Rascal.”

Her roommate’s tone carried the hint of a challenge. Chloe looked up at Kate, who was clearly braced for an argument. Because, of course, their apartment rental agreement didn’t allow pets.

The cat let out a raspy meow when Chloe stopped petting him. He reared up on two legs to rub the top of his head against her hand.

“Are you guys nuts?” Chloe scooped up the cat, rewarded by an even louder raspy purr as he bumped his head against her chin.

Kate and Tiffany stared at her as if trying to regroup.

“You’ve got no imagination,” Chloe said into the silence. “‘Rascal’? Haven’t you ever heard of a thesaurus? Or a baby name book?”

“Yeah, pick up one of those around here and we’d have the town talking for days.”

“Search the Internet, then.”

The cat climbed toward her shoulder, looking for a place to hide in her hair. Chloe turned her ear toward his muzzle and listened to that wheezy buzz saw of a purr. She hadn’t had a pet since her first cat, Nipsy, died during her freshman year of college. She closed her eyes and stroked him some more.

“The apartment manager is going to kill us.” Kate, caught off guard, was now playing a halfhearted devil’s advocate.

“She’ll have to find out about him first,” Chloe said.

“We were afraid you’d say no,” Tiffany said. “You’re the one who’s usually a stickler for the rules.”

Was that who she was? If Chloe was the responsible one in this bunch, they were all in deep trouble.

“We don’t have to call him Rascal,” Tiffany said, her eyeliner faintly smeared. “How about Catsby?”

That was pretty good, actually. Tiffany knew the way to her heart was a literary reference, and Chloe did love F. Scott Fitzgerald. But . . .

An idea seized her. “Hemingway,” she said. “His name is Hemingway.”

Tiffany and Kate exchanged looks, as if to confirm that Chloe had just lost her mind.

Kate gave another shrug. “O-kay.”

The talk turned to cat food and litter boxes. Chloe kept petting Hemingway and let his noisy purr drown out the sound of her common sense. It wasn’t a great idea and she knew it.

But tonight, a lovelorn, raspy-voiced feline was just what she needed.

* * *

Bret was doing his best to immerse himself in the words on his screen when a familiar voice broke in on his thoughts.

“Bret, this is awful.”

Chloe stood in the door of his office. Not too far in, but she didn’t look like she was about to budge. Posture straight, feet planted firmly on the ground, she blocked his only exit. It was late morning and she’d waited until Chuck left for an interview, so they had all the privacy they needed, and he had absolutely no means of escape.

Cornering him in his own office—or McCrea’s office—was dirty pool. But she looked armed and ready for battle. Determined to break through his wall, which, for his money, was every bit as sturdy as a Lego tower.

Bret’s mouth went dry. He told himself that if he couldn’t handle a twenty-four-year-old cub reporter, he didn’t know what.

He leaned back from his keyboard, but not too far, as if to remind her that he had important things to do. He folded his arms. “What’s awful?”

It was a patent bluff, but he had to start somewhere.

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t even.”

Okay, for a woman who made her living with words, that was weak. If she couldn’t say the words, maybe he could make it through this.

But before he could formulate his next obtuse question, she added, “That thing that never happened.”

Silently, Bret pulled in a deep breath.

He couldn’t meet her eyes without reliving some part of it. Not just the sock-melting kiss, but the sheer joy of being with her that day. The way she laughed. The way she grabbed for her camera phone when she saw something she liked. Her moral indignation when he suggested that the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper album was overrated, and Abbey Road was probably their best work. The way she smiled at him, which wasn’t quite the same way she smiled at anybody else.

Meeting her eyes brought all of that back. But he couldn’t avoid her eyes now, or his defense wouldn’t hold water.

“Chloe, you were right. We’re professionals. We can’t—” He shook his head, keenly aware that they were in his employer’s office, as if the walls were witnesses that could testify against him. “We just need to move past it.”

“But this isn’t like it never happened. It’s emphasizing the fact that it did happen.”

“In what way? What, exactly, am I doing wrong?”

He’d made sure his behavior was above reproach. On some hypothetical level he was aware that this was a sexual harassment suit begging to happen, although he didn’t think Chloe had that in her. Still, he’d written and read enough news to know that people often did things you would never expect. Especially when they were angry or hurt. But that wasn’t what really worried him.

It was himself he couldn’t trust.

“Stop being so polite to me,” she said. “I hate it. We were just starting—”

“To be friends?” He couldn’t keep the bitter edge out of his voice. Like it or not, friends was a word every guy hated hearing from the woman he was attracted to. Yes, he supposed that at some tottering midpoint, they’d been friends. But Bret had fallen over to the other side of that, and he couldn’t see going back. Yes, he liked Chloe. It was what drew him to her so strongly, with a pull that went beyond physical attraction. But trying to separate that liking from the part of him that wanted to close the distance across the room between them and—

Well, that could take years.

She’d been a willing participant. He didn’t think he’d imagined that. Her parted lips, her arms around his neck, that slightly confused look when he pulled back. He’d put that look there, and he couldn’t help feeling some satisfaction from that.

It made it that much harder for him to ignore that there was something between them. Something that went beyond an impetuous moment of heat. He never did anything impetuous, rarely did anything on impulse, and couldn’t remember the last time he’d done something because he so purely and simply wanted to.

Now she wanted to be friends?

And they said men were the ones who compartmentalized.

Focus, Radner. What had he been saying?

“This isn’t about being friends.” With difficulty, he picked up the conversational thread. “We’re colleagues, first and foremost. Anything that jeopardizes that is bad for both of us.”

“It’s a little hard to be colleagues when we can’t even stay in the same room together.”

“You’re the one who left yesterday.”

“I needed air. It’s hard for me to write when the air is thick. And you left right after I came back.”

“I had an interview.” Another patent lie.

“Bret.” She closed her eyes briefly before meeting his again. “I’m not trying to make this worse than it is. I just want a comfortable working relationship. If we could get back to where we were, even last Friday . . .”

The rest dangled in the air. Time travel isn’t an option, Bret thought, but he didn’t feel up to the comeback.

Bret looked beyond the lift of her chin and the set of her jaw. Her gray-green eyes were steady, and he had to give her credit. This wasn’t an attack. She wasn’t even being unreasonable. She was making an honest effort to cut through this mess, and however ill-advised, that took guts. More guts than he had.

She wasn’t asking him to confess to anything. She just wanted a little détente, a truce in what wasn’t even a war.

But he didn’t know how to deal with it differently. When he was near her, everything wanted to spill out. He wanted to say he’d meant every bit of it, that there was no other human being he’d rather spend time with, which was saying a lot, because most of the time he enjoyed being alone.

Of course, he couldn’t say that. Something akin to panic clutched at his throat. He was out of moves. He had to say something, maybe something to make her so angry she’d turn and leave. Because that might be the only way out of this.

“Bret?” Jen’s voice came over the intercom on his phone. “You have a call on line two.”

He raised a finger to Chloe. Saved by the bell.

Or so he thought, until he answered the phone.

* * *

“This is Bret,” he said into the phone, his tone no different than the dozens of other times Chloe had heard him say it.

Then everything changed.

In her life, Chloe had seen plenty of people blush, even turn red. But although she’d read it in hundreds of books, she didn’t think she’d actually seen anyone go pale before.

As Bret listened silently to the voice Chloe couldn’t hear on the other end of the line, he rose from his chair as if lifted by marionette strings. He said only four words: “I’ll be right there.”

He hung up and rounded the desk. “Sorry,” he murmured, brushing past Chloe as she stepped back. With a quick economy of movement, he made straight for the door of the newsroom, snatching his overcoat off the rack so quickly that the rack tottered.

Chloe stared after him, a cold knot forming in her stomach. Whatever had happened, their little melodrama suddenly seemed very secondary.

She went out to the front office and asked Jen, “Who was on the phone for Bret?”

The receptionist’s light brown eyebrows furrowed. “Winston Frazier. Why?”

Chloe wrapped her arms around herself. “Bret just left”—his movements had been too purposeful for a bat out of hell—“in a big rush.”

Jen’s frown deepened. “Let me know when you hear anything. I’ll do the same.”

The older woman was obviously fond of Bret, and Chloe wondered how much Jen knew about him. But she resisted the urge to ask any prying questions.

Chloe did the only thing she could think of under the circumstances. She went back to her desk and did her best to write coherently.

* * *

Nonresponsive. It was one of Bret’s least favorite hospital words.

Bret sat beside Winston Frazier in one of the dated vinyl chairs in the waiting area of Tall Pine Hospital’s emergency ward. If it turned out to be enough of an emergency, they’d send an air ambulance to transfer Bret’s father to one of the larger hospitals down the hill. It had come to that once before, resulting in a heart bypass four years ago.

“I came over to pick him up for lunch, and he was slumped on the couch,” Winston said. “I couldn’t wake him up.”

Bret nodded. He’d heard it before. Winston’s needle was stuck, replaying the same story. That was atypical for him, the only indication that he was anything other than his old crusty self.

Winston had seen his dad through a lot, but this was the first time he’d had the dubious honor of being on hand for the initial medical emergency. It looked and sounded a lot like a stroke, but in Bret’s experience, it would take quite a while before they heard any results on the tests the hospital was running right now.

What Bret wondered, but now wasn’t the time to ask, was how Winston had gotten into his father’s house. David let a lot of things slide, but even in Tall Pine, he wasn’t one to leave doors unlocked. The sight of Winston, in his perpetual button-down shirt, clambering in through a window would have been something to witness.

Bret hoped one day he’d be able to laugh about it. It all depended on how things turned out today.

“You were meeting for lunch,” he realized. “You haven’t eaten.”

“It’s only been about an hour,” Winston said. “It’s not like I’m going to keel over.”

Bret glanced at the time on his cell. One forty-five. Which made it closer to two hours, he estimated, since Winston found his dad “nonresponsive.” Looking at the time reminded him of something else: the office.

He’d left a story up on his screen and Chloe basically standing in a cloud of dust. He ought to touch base. He doubted there was much danger of missing any major medical developments at the moment. His dad hadn’t regained consciousness, but his vital signs were stable.

Bret stood. “I’ll check the cafeteria and see what kind of health food they have in the vending machines.”

“I told you, I don’t need anything.”

Bret aimed a meaningful look at Winston. “Maybe not, but I don’t want to wind up looking after two of you.”

He left the waiting area, but before he went to the cafeteria, he walked outside. The hospital’s eighty-year-old concrete walls made cell reception hit or miss, even with Bret’s service provider. And anyway, Winston probably would have chucked Bret’s phone across the room if he tried to use it to text or e-mail the office. The older man didn’t have a lot of patience with modern technology.

Outside, the recent snow glared brightly on either side of the carefully shoveled walkway in front of the hospital. Fa-la-la-la-la.

The incongruity of the sunshine hit him full force. For the first time since Winston’s call, Bret had a moment alone to react. Maybe that wasn’t a good thing.

Before he tried to contact anyone, he leaned against the rough, irregular stones of the building’s wall and closed his eyes. He sucked in several deep breaths.

It was a desperate, two-word prayer, but God would know what he meant. Not another parent. Not at Christmastime, again. God wouldn’t do that to him. Right?

As if God didn’t have bigger things on His mind than how Bret’s father’s fate might affect Bret personally. This wasn’t about Bret, it was about David Radner. His dad’s disregard for his own health carried risks and consequences. But still. Surely God had a few more plans for David, instead of letting him passively run out the clock?

Please, he added. Amen.

A few deep breaths later, he turned his attention to something he had some control over. He sent a message to Chloe’s e-mail: I’ll be out for a few hours. Tell Chuck to write his head off and send the stories your way when he’s done. Give them a good going-over. And I left a story up on my screen. It’s mostly done. See if you can turn it into English.

He tapped the “send” button and waited.

Chloe’s reply was quick. Will do. Where are you?

He’d known that was coming. He bit his lip. Tall Pine Hospital. Family emergency.

Chloe wrote back: Who?

Bret’s jaw tightened. My father.

No more questions, please, he willed.

He had reasons for e-mailing rather than calling. Number one, he didn’t need to worry about his voice giving anything away. Number two, it gave him an excuse to be brief.

Number three, it didn’t seem as real if he didn’t say it out loud.

Her response came back: I hope everything’s okay.

A platitude, really. The kind of thing anyone would say. But from Chloe, it felt genuine. And thinking about the fingers that had typed it stirred emotions Bret had no right to feel, especially now.

Bret closed his eyes again and tried to focus on the jagged stones digging into his back. Somehow, during the past few weeks, he’d forgotten about this.

He’d been fighting to keep Chloe at a proper distance for professional reasons. It was the right thing to do, for him and for her, because it was the ethical thing to do. This way, he wasn’t a boss involved with an employee, and she wasn’t the pretty blonde too many people already took at face value. It was all true. But those reasons were just the beginning.

Anyone who got close to him became a part of this scenario. The medical crises, the ups, the downs. Especially the downs. Somehow that had never occurred to him before. The point had been moot, since he’d never gotten too involved with anyone since he came home from D.C. Or maybe that was another reason, subconsciously, that his relationships had a way of crashing before they really got started.

If he kept everyone at arm’s length, no one had to see him like this.

He gulped in cold air, remembering that other December, seven years ago, when everything had been peeled away and he’d felt like he was walking around without his top layer of skin.

Thinking about Chloe in those terms was ridiculous. He barely knew her, really, although something at the core of his being insisted otherwise.

He visualized the paper, in its orderly physical columns, and tried to piece together everything that needed to happen to get it on the stands tomorrow. One column at a time. It helped. When he had his thoughts sufficiently gathered, he worked up another e-mail of instructions, this time to the layout department.

Once he knew he wasn’t going to fall apart, he went back inside to search for cafeteria food.

And to wait some more.

* * *

Chloe relayed Bret’s instructions to Chuck, then made a quick trip to the reception area to give Jen the update.

She walked back into the office, temporarily at a loss. She’d come in this morning loaded for bear, wasted a lot of energy trying to pin Bret down, and had spent the last two hours trying to write an article since Bret shot out of here. Now that it was written, her circling thoughts had free rein, and she had trouble even reading her own words to check the story over. She had a feeling Bret’s article would sound a lot more like English than hers did.

“Doing okay?” Chuck offered.

“I’m fine.” Her father wasn’t the one in the hospital. Thank God.

One more look at her article, she decided, to get the thing polished up and done before she tackled Bret’s. She sat down at her desk. “Do you have any idea what’s wrong?”

Chuck shook his head. “He doesn’t really talk about his family. I’m pretty sure his mother’s gone.”

Chloe took a sip of cold coffee and stared at her screen. The words looked like gibberish. She forced her eyes to the top of the article and started reading again, line by line.

In the next few hours, Chuck churned out five stories with mind-blowing efficiency, and Chloe cleaned them up, managing not to groan out loud over the misused punctuation. The execution was messy, but the words themselves were clean and direct.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said.

“Necessity. I don’t second-guess. I need to be out of here on time. Kids grow up fast.”

Chloe nodded wordlessly. She’d picked up bits and pieces about Chuck’s wife, and it sounded like the girls had lost a great mom. But he was determined not to let his aunt, a woman in her sixties, take over Annie’s role completely.

A few minutes before five, she had a text from Bret. On my way back in. Chloe relayed the message to Chuck.

“Good.” Chuck pushed back from his desk, but didn’t reach for his coat. “Need anything from me?”

It seemed like everything in the office was code these days. Chloe had the feeling Chuck was really asking her whether she wanted him to stay. If it weren’t for her, she was sure Chuck would have waited long enough to talk to Bret.

“I’m good,” she said. “Thanks.”

Chuck picked up his coat. “Give Bret my best,” he said, and left.

He seemed to understand a lot more than he was saying.

Chloe eyed the congealing coffee in her mug and got up to make a fresh pot. It was a safe bet that it wouldn’t go to waste tonight.

Bret walked in ten minutes later. With a characteristic nod, he hung his overcoat on the rack. His posture was intact, but his face looked weary and shadowed.

“How’s your dad?” Chloe looked up from the screen she hadn’t really been reading.

“Fine. Thanks for asking.” The corners of his mouth tugged up faintly, but Chloe wouldn’t have called it a smile. “False alarm. More or less.”

He returned to his office. Chloe poured herself a fresh cup of coffee that, for once, she didn’t really need. A few minutes later, an e-mail from Bret landed in her in-box.

It wasn’t unusual for Bret to e-mail her from the next room, regardless of his mood. But after a day like this, she couldn’t just leave. She went to his office and stood inside the doorway—not too far this time—and waited for him to acknowledge her.

He looked up from his screen. Blank, expectant, and tired.

“There’s fresh coffee,” she said. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”

“You already have. Thanks.” His eyes went back to his screen, a pretty clear dismissal.

She shouldn’t press. She’d already put her hand in the cage once today, and she still couldn’t seem to leave it alone. “What happened?”

With a heavy sigh, Bret pulled back from his computer. “Extreme hypoglycemia. It looked like a stroke at first. But it just means maintaining a proper diet. We’ll see how that goes.” His lips twitched. “I got them to keep him overnight, so we don’t chance going through the same thing tomorrow morning.”

“How old is he?”

“Sixty-six. I have a sister in Cincinnati who’s eight years older than me. I came along a little late in the game.”

Old age wasn’t something she’d pictured yet for her parents. “My folks are in their fifties.”

“Enjoy it while you can.” His voice was dull and flat.

Okay, that did sound like a dismissal. Reminding herself of her turtle shell, Chloe started to turn away.

“Chloe.” Bret’s voice was quieter.

She turned back. He rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “I’m sorry. That sounded terrible. All I meant was—”

“I know what you meant.”

For a moment, his expression was unguarded, the pain in his eyes clearly visible. Pain, fatigue, and maybe something else.

Before she could put a name to it, the shutters went up again. “Okay.” His eyes returned to the screen. “Like I said, false alarm. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I can probably get out of here in about a couple of hours if I buckle down.”

“Bret—”

“Chloe. I’m all right.”

She glimpsed his eyes again. Hurting. Exhausted. “Okay,” she said. “Good night.”

She ached to do more, but clearly that was off the table.

That conversation, that ridiculous conversation that she’d started this morning, seemed like years ago. What had she hoped to accomplish? What Bret wanted, what he needed, was for her to be a reporter. No more, no less. She could do that.

Bret had more on his plate than she realized, and she wasn’t helping. She needed to stop fussing over that-thing-that-never-happened.

In short, she needed to grow up. And do her job.