Do Not Open 'Til Christmas by Sierra Donovan (4)

Chapter 4

She was late. Or, more precisely, she wasn’t here.

Through his windowed wall, Bret eyed Chloe’s vacant desk, felt steam rise between his ears, and tried not to jump to conclusions.

It didn’t mean she was off on a job interview or, more irresponsibly, that she’d simply decided not to show up. Chloe seemed more conscientious than that. But then, he didn’t really know her, as her clandestine copying attested. And no matter how you sliced it, late on a Monday morning didn’t look good.

He tried to be patient. He didn’t even count her as late until Chuck rolled in at his usual ten minutes after eight. That, Bret had learned to expect long before he stepped into McCrea’s shoes. Chuck always made up for any lost time while he was here. But now it was eight-twenty, and with Chuck’s presence, Chloe’s absence became glaring.

Bret did a recount of the stories filed last week. Chuck had turned in a whopping fifteen articles, stepping up his pace without breaking a visible sweat, while Bret had completed a measly six. McCrea’s warning was coming true. Bret couldn’t write nearly as much as he normally did—not while he was editing everyone else’s work, chasing photographers, choosing from the national stories that came off the wire, and laying out the paper. He was putting in a lot of extra hours, including most of his Saturday to get the Sunday and Monday editions put together.

Three reporters, twenty-four local stories, counting Chloe’s three, plus all those press releases he’d had her write up. If you took out Chloe’s share . . .

Bret passed a hand through his hair and glared uselessly at her empty desk again. No point in living out every scenario, McCrea would have said. After all, she’d left her cat coffee mug on her desk, along with the custom-printed mouse pad she’d brought in. Somewhere she’d scared up an image of the now-retired comic strip reporter Brenda Starr with a speech bubble that read, “I didn’t go into journalism for money or fame.”

Bret gritted his teeth. A job interview at this hour on a Monday, he reminded himself, wasn’t likely.

He’d almost succeeded in getting focused on his plans for the day when she pushed through the door from the lobby at high speed, just shy of eight-thirty. She wore a skirt, not the best choice for a November day in Tall Pine, but if she’d been on a job interview, it had ended pretty quickly.

Dropping into her seat, Chloe shrugged her coat onto the back of her chair and cast a surreptitious look toward Bret’s office. Yep. I see you. He averted his eyes and tapped at his keyboard.

Patience, he reminded himself. Give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, there were all kinds of reasons for being late. And hadn’t he made up his mind last week to be nicer?

She was here. For the moment, he’d take it.

He waited a suitable amount of time before he got up to go to the lobby. Jen ought to have the weekend mail sorted by now, and it would give him a chance to stretch his legs. He’d been here nearly two hours already.

He passed Chloe with a nod, not acknowledging her tardiness one way or the other. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, the way he’d made up his mind to do.

In the lobby, Jen sat behind the reception counter, stacks of envelopes piled in front of her. She didn’t look up as Bret entered.

“Hey, Jen. Have you got—”

She scooped up a pile of mail, reached over the counter, and slapped it into his hand. “Here you go. Sorry.”

Bret sifted through the envelopes. “So how was your weekend?”

“Not bad.”

Something off-key in the receptionist’s usually placid tone poked through Bret’s contemplation of the mail. He looked up to find her intent on the task of distributing envelopes in the vertical files on the left side of her counter. Her movements seemed brisk and just a little harried.

That wouldn’t do. Jen wasn’t quite old enough to be his mother, but she generally gave off a calming presence that was almost maternal. The sane front line of defense in the Gazette’s chaotic little world.

“Everything okay?” Bret asked.

“Oh.” With a quick shake of her head, she looked up from her task for the first time with a distracted smile. Her hair was still shaped in its usual orderly brown waves, so nothing could be that amiss. “No big deal. Just running behind. My car wouldn’t start this morning, and I had to get a jump from a neighbor. I’m just playing catch-up.”

“Sorry. Not a fun way to start the week.” Bret glanced back down at his mail, but then his brain processed a pertinent fact. “So you don’t know if it’ll start again.”

“I’ll figure it out after I catch my breath.”

Bret folded his arms. “I’ll give you a jump at lunchtime and we can run it over to Alex’s Garage.”

Jen raised a neatly shaped right eyebrow. “Since when do you go to lunch?”

“Not since McCrea left. See? You’ll be doing me a favor. Don’t give me any guff about it, or no cheeseburger for you.”

He smacked the counter with the mail and started back toward the newsroom before she could argue.

Jen’s voice stopped him. “By the way, when are you going to give that poor girl the key code?”

Bret turned back, feeling a prickle of premonition. “What do you mean?”

“The new girl. Chloe. She was waiting in her car in the front parking lot for me to let her in. She’s beaten me here most mornings. Didn’t you ever show her the side entrance, or the employee lot?”

It hadn’t dawned on him. The twenty-four-hour employee entrance opened, not with a key, but with a code on a numeric keypad. He frowned. “You mean, give her the code? She’s only been here a week.”

“What do you think she’s going to do, wheel out the printing press? Steal the silver candlesticks?”

Bret shot her a warning look. Jen didn’t bat an eye, but her scolding expression looked more maternal than ever.

He shook his head at her. “You’re lippy when you’ve had a bad morning.”

He swatted the counter with the mail again and went back into the newsroom.

* * *

Behind her keyboard, Chloe tried to brainstorm three more story ideas to present to Bret. Last week he’d asked for five and turned down two of them. This week, she figured she’d better have no fewer than ten.

He returned from the lobby, mail in hand, and started past Chuck’s desk and hers. Then he turned and leveled a look at her that she couldn’t quite decipher. But it was milder than the veiled glare he’d given her when he passed by a few minutes ago.

“You don’t have a key code?” He looked at her, arms folded, a stance she was beginning to learn was a common one for him.

“A what?”

“For the employee entrance.” He inclined his head vaguely toward the hallway, in the direction leading away from the copier room.

“I didn’t know we had one.”

“You follow the hallway to the door at the end. The one that leads to the lot where the employees’ cars are parked.”

“I didn’t know we had—”

“The code is one-eight-three-five.”

She pulled her ever-handy notepad toward her.

“Don’t write it down. Memorize it. It’s Elvis Presley’s birthday, if that helps. January eighth, 1935.”

“McCrea’s a big fan,” Chuck chimed in, half-turning from his screen.

“If I have to change it before he gets back, I’ll change it to something that’ll really annoy him,” Bret said. “Perry Como’s birthday, maybe.”

Chloe frowned. “Why would the code change?”

A pause filled the air, and she wished she hadn’t asked. Chuck turned back to his screen. The answer was obvious: if an employee who knew the code quit. Or got fired.

Bret said, “Just stay away from the silver candlesticks.”

Huh?

While she pondered that remark, Bret unfolded his arms. “Story conferences this morning,” he said. “Chuck, nine o’clock. Chloe, nine-fifteen.”

And he went to his office, leaving Chloe with about twenty-five more minutes to brainstorm.

* * *

“And there’s a junior at the high school who makes money writing thank-you notes. She started her freshman year, and she’s put away almost enough for a car.”

Bret leaned back behind his desk, arms folded. Again. A faint smile quirked up at the corners of his mouth. “I’m detecting a theme here. That’s three local entrepreneurs so far, plus the two other stories.”

Chloe skimmed the list she’d printed out. “Mandy Wyndham is holding one more of her craft workshops at The North Pole Christmas shop.”

“That’s more of a news brief.”

She’d written plenty of those last week—little single-paragraph items that ran down the side column, with no byline. They didn’t count as stories. And if she didn’t get enough ideas approved, he’d probably drown her in press releases, and she’d probably never get a chance to meet her ten-story goal. Until last week, Frank McCrea had assigned the stories she’d written. Chloe bit her lip and reconsidered her list. She did know a lot of local entrepreneurs, thanks to small talk with customers at the Pine ’n’ Dine. She couldn’t think of much else to write about. Crime was low around here, and things didn’t change much. She’d have to—

“Tell you what.” Bret’s voice broke in on her thoughts. “Go ahead with the thank-you notes—I know a lot of people who could use that. That gives you five stories to work on for now. Get started on those. Things are bound to come up during the week. When they do, run them by me. Look for local issues. The kinds of things that tick people off. I know Tall Pine isn’t exactly a hotbed of controversy, but it’s not all sweetness and light.” He considered her with that level gaze of his. “How would you feel about covering the town council meeting Wednesday night?”

As a new hire, Chloe knew there was only one right answer to that. “Absolutely.”

“Don’t get too enthused. You’ll probably wish you brought along a good book. But here’s what you don’t do. Tempting as it may be, don’t read a good book, don’t check your cell phone, and in this case, take notes by hand. Don’t use a laptop. You don’t want anyone to think you’re browsing the Internet. The meeting has your rapt, undivided attention.” Before Chloe could get any more insulted, his mouth quirked up a little higher. “I recommend lots of coffee beforehand.”

Chloe brushed aside her indignation. “What’s my deadline?”

“Let’s say ten p.m. The meeting starts at six; it’s usually out by eight. I know it’s an evening-killer. But if you do have a laptop, you can stop somewhere afterward for a bite while you write it up.”

And, for the first time Chloe could remember, his eyes shifted away from hers. Leading her to believe he might remember The Night of the Unabomber at the Pine ’n’ Dine, after all.

Bret resumed, “You probably won’t have Internet connectivity to e-mail it from where you are, so just bring it in on a thumb drive when you’re done.”

“You’ll still be here at ten?”

“Please. I live here. For the next three months, anyway.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“That’ll do for now.”

Chloe stood, and Bret did, too, in what appeared to be a show of old-school manners. “Thanks,” she said.

“Don’t thank me. You haven’t been to the town council meeting yet.” As she started for the door, he added, “You’ll want to look up the articles on the last couple of meetings before you go.”

Annoyance prickled at her. Bret didn’t seem to think she had the sense God gave a grapefruit. “Of course.”

One dark eyebrow arched up over his glasses, and Chloe almost wondered if she’d said it out loud. But she knew she’d watched her mouth, if not her tone. So she didn’t back down from his steady dark stare.

McCrea’s clock ticked on the desk between them.

Bret gave her one of his brief nods. “Thanks.”

* * *

The torrent of press releases slowed, and Chloe had the vague feeling she’d passed some sort of initiation, although she wasn’t sure when or how.

Now that she had a key code, she started coming in earlier to get a jump on the day. Bret was always in his office by the time she arrived, even when she got there a few minutes after seven. And the coffee was already made. So it wasn’t just women’s work after all.

He still didn’t have much to say to her, and he rarely left his office. Not, at least, until late Thursday morning, when he emerged, took a seat at the desk across from Chuck’s, and unceremoniously started typing.

It was the desk he’d paused at frequently on her first morning here; it must be his spot when he wasn’t filling in as editor. Rather than sitting parallel to Chuck’s desk, it faced their row of desks at a ninety-degree angle, giving Chloe, who sat behind Chuck, a view of Bret’s face above his monitor. He’d barely sat down, but his speed and concentration suggested he’d been pounding away for the past half hour.

Chuck looked up. “Decided to come down from Mount Sinai for a while?”

“Shut up,” Bret said absently, with no visible sign of animosity. His typing barely slowed.

It reminded Chloe of the way her brothers talked to each other. She supposed she’d have to be one of the boys for Bret to say anything that rude to her.

“Hey, if you’re going to mingle with the mortals”—Chuck’s eyes were already back on his computer screen—“you’ll have to put up with our prattle.”

“That’s kind of the idea.” Bret gave a shake of his head. “I can’t get used to writing in there. Too quiet, or too boxed in, or something. I might save the office for when I’m wearing my editor hat.”

And just like that, they were a newsroom of three.

Bret’s fingers resumed their impressive speed, producing a steady, soft clatter of sound on the keyboard. It wasn’t anything like Chuck’s forceful hunt-and-peck jabbing. Or Chloe’s own sporadic output, broken by long pauses for thought. She forced her attention back to her own screen and reread her last paragraph. But there was a leak in her concentration now. She felt her attention pulled toward Bret, sitting across from her, probably wondering why she wasn’t typing. Just write something. Good, bad, or indifferent. You can always fix it later.

She wrote:

There. A whole paragraph, even if most of the words were a quote from Millie. Verbatim, of course.

To her left, the unbroken sound of Bret’s typing continued. Did he ever stop? Chloe listened. After a moment, she was reassured by a temporary pause, only to hear him pour on the speed again as if to make up for lost time.

She sneaked a look at him. Even in college, she’d met very few men who’d bothered learning to touch-type. Most of them typed with two fingers like Chuck, or they made big, sad eyes at their girlfriends and asked them to type their papers.

Clearly, that wasn’t Bret. She couldn’t help being fascinated by the relentless clamor of keystrokes, the fierce look of concentration as he studied his screen.

Okay, it was kind of hot.

She remembered a joke she’d read once in a women’s magazine: Any man becomes exciting if you think about him long enough.

She just needed to get out in the daylight a little more. But she’d always liked the smart ones. Except that this one was her boss, not to mention the fact that he—

Bret glanced up suddenly, dark eyes locking on hers. “What?” he prompted.

Heat flooded her face. She stammered, “How fast do you type?”

He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Seventy, eighty words a minute?”

Chloe could type that fast. She just couldn’t think that fast. And apparently Bret had never been through the indignity of a typing test. A few job applications had put her in a room with thirty other women, typing like drones for five minutes until a timer went off. It was like a cattle call. One of those things they pulled on women.

She managed another paragraph about Millie Bond, doing her best to shut out the presence of the typing dynamo across from her so she wouldn’t get caught watching him again. That had been embarrassing.

And she needed to focus, because she needed to turn in two stories a day if she was going to make it to ten in a week. She’d only finished one Monday, so she was already an article behind. She’d started doing some of her writing on her laptop after she got home. Maybe that was why her mind was so sluggish today. That, and the fact that it was raining.

She stood and went to the coffee maker. She’d gone out on a limb and brewed a second pot before Bret came out of his office. She poured a cup, added the vitally necessary creamer, and allowed herself a moment to stand beside the little cabinet as she took her first sip. She closed her eyes and let the slightly stinging warmth and flavor flood her senses. There was nothing like fresh coffee.

She opened her eyes. This time Bret was watching her.

He remarked, “Our coffee consumption is up since you started here.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’ll pick up an extra can.”

“Not what I meant. All I’m saying is, if you drink more coffee than Frank McCrea, you just might have a problem.”

“It’s one of the other two major food groups.” Chloe cupped her hands around her mug’s warm sides. “Coffee and chocolate.”

“Coffee, I’ll grant you. You can keep the chocolate.”

“You’re kidding.”

She stared at him in what wasn’t entirely mock horror, but his eyes were on his work again. What kind of person didn’t like chocolate?

As she settled back into her chair, Chuck hit a key with a definitive smack and stood to stretch. “School board story coming your way.” He nodded at Bret.

Barely glancing up, Bret returned the nod, fingers still in motion. Fascinating.

Chuck paced a slow circuit around the room. He showed no interest in the coffee. Were she and Bret the only ones who drank it? That was concerning. The pot she’d discarded had been nearly empty. Maybe one of them did have a problem.

“What is it about rainy days?” Chuck completed his brief stroll and returned to his desk. “We don’t even have windows in this room, and I still feel restless.”

“Back to work,” Bret said brusquely. “You can get started on your dream story: EVERYONE GOES TO BED EARLY.”

“Better than your dream story.” Chuck settled into his chair. “TALL PINE SLASHER ON THE LOOSE.”

“Hey, I told you. Just one lousy murder. Of a really evil tourist.”

Chuck glanced at her over his shoulder. “What about Chloe? What’s her dream story?”

She smiled a little. Chuck was always kind to her, but he’d remained as neutral as Switzerland between her and Bret. She’d probably never make it into the boys’ club, but the question felt like a conscious effort to include her.

Bret studied her briefly. “That’s easy,” he said. “FIREFIGHTER RESCUES KITTEN FROM TREE.” His eyes glinted. “AGAIN.”

And he went back to work without missing a beat.

Chloe laughed, because it was funny. If there was one thing she’d learned growing up in her family, it was how to take a joke.

Then her eyes went back to her article about Millie Bond’s knitting.

By her story conference in Bret’s office the next Monday, Chloe had a solid idea for an article that extended well beyond light and fluffy. She saved it for last.

Taking a deep breath, she said, “I’d like to do a story on hospice care.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

It was exactly what he’d said when she told him she’d never studied journalism, and he wore virtually the same expression. Unreadable. She’d kind of expected it. And yet, somehow, she hadn’t prepared a response.

Bret saved her the trouble. Sitting back in his chair, arms folded, he asked, “How’d you come up with that topic?”

For that, at least, she had an answer. “November is National Hospice Month. The local visiting nurses’ association has been running ads in the paper all month.”

“Right.” He stared at her. “It’s a pretty heavy subject.”

“Well, it’s not exactly kittens in trees.”

“Chloe.” Had he called her by name before, if she wasn’t twenty feet away? “That was a joke.”

“I know.” She held herself straight. “But there’s a little truth in most jokes. You had a point. My stories have been pretty light. But that doesn’t mean that’s all I can do.”

He surveyed her from across the desk, as if he were measuring her. He was about as physically distant as he could get without hitting the bookcase with the back of his chair. “Sure you don’t want to try something a little lighter first? Like maybe global thermonuclear war?”

“It’s timely,” she pointed out.

His eyebrows dipped slightly, the only change in his near-blank expression. “Do you know someone who’s been through something like this? Lost a family member?”

“No. But I’ve heard my mom talk about it. She worked with a lot of the visiting nurses, and she always admired people who worked in hospice. A lot of them are volunteers. She said it takes someone with a really special heart to see someone through the end of their life.”

Bret nodded slowly and pinched the bridge of his nose above his glasses. “All right. Let’s look at this for a minute. For this story, you’d be interviewing—who? Not a hospice patient.”

“No.” It had crossed her mind, but obviously that was out. “I thought—a family member of someone who’s passed away. Not last week or anything, but someone who’s been through the process in the last year or so. And one or two hospice workers. I’d start by getting in touch with the visiting nurses’ association, see if there’s anyone they’d refer me to.”

“Okay.” Bret fixed her with one of his dark-eyed stares. “But go easy on this one. I wouldn’t usually advise a reporter to be sensitive, but this is one of those times. You’re going to be asking people about a difficult subject. I don’t want my phone ringing.”

“Understood.”

“And this one’s going to be more involved. Allow yourself some extra time on it, but don’t make it your only project. Keep getting the simpler stories written while this one’s in the works.”

“Got it.”

He inclined his head, still leaning far back in his chair. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather solve nuclear war instead?”

“I’ll be careful.” Chloe stood. She’d gotten the go-ahead; better not to prolong the discussion and give Bret more time to raise objections. “Anything else?”

“No. We’re good.” As Chloe started to leave, Bret sat forward, elbows on the desk. “Get the door on your way out,” he added.

* * *

Bret watched Chloe’s retreating sweatered back through the glass door as she left.

He didn’t see any sign that Chloe’s motives were anything other than innocent. And she’d never struck him as a spiteful person. Still, what were the odds?

He didn’t waste any time. He pulled the phone toward him and called the visiting nurses’ association. He dialed the number from memory.

Some things, you didn’t forget even when you wanted to.

“Paula? Bret. I wanted to give you a quick heads-up.”

Chloe’s first stop was the coffee machine. Good.

“Bret. How are you doing?”

“Good. Thanks for asking. You’re going to be getting a call from a new reporter. She wants to do a piece on hospice. She’ll want to interview a staffer, and ask for some contacts. Use your judgment,” he said. “If you tell her it’s not a good idea to interview family members, I’m pretty sure she’ll back off. And I’m sure this goes without saying, but—don’t mention my mother. I don’t think she knows anything about it, and that’s the way I want to keep it.”