Chapter 8
Chloe crossed the employee lot of the Gazette, relishing the crunch of snow under her feet even as she took care not to lose her footing. The layer of white was thin and crisp from melting and refreezing the past few nights. But it still sparkled in the morning light, a cheerful herald of the Christmas season.
By February the snow would be old hat and no longer so welcome, but today, it was perfect. She didn’t even mind the way the cold seeped into her on the short walk to the employee entrance.
She adjusted the cardboard box under her arm, entered Elvis’s birthday on the keypad by the door, and stepped into the quiet building. At seven-thirty the Monday after Thanksgiving, all the doors she passed in the hallway were still closed.
The newsroom was dark and empty when she reached it, and she made short work of decking her desk. A swag of bargain-shelf garland across the front, a wooden stand-up MERRY CHRISTMAS sign on her desktop, followed by the pièce de résistance: her pre-lit, battery-operated mini-tree. It took just a few minutes to hang the little ornaments on it; after all, there were only a dozen of them.
Satisfied, she settled into her chair, booted up her computer, and started going over the list of story proposals she’d e-mailed to herself over the weekend. She felt refreshed, rejuvenated, and optimistic after two days away from the office. And Friday night had been an encouraging sign that Bret was fairly human, after all.
When the newsroom door swung open a few minutes after eight, she was surprised to see not only Bret, but Chuck as well. Early for Chuck. Late for Bret. Chloe had never beaten him into the office before.
“. . . two feet of snow in Utah already,” Chuck was saying. “We don’t know what cold is around here.”
“So I hear.” Bret was already shrugging out of his overcoat. He hung it on the rack that stood near the door leading out to the lobby. “Jake’s from Pennsylvania, and he says we have no idea what a real winter’s like.”
Chuck went to his desk, shook his own coat off to hang over the back of his chair. He greeted Chloe as he sat. “How was your Thanksgiving?”
“Great. How—”
“What’s that?” Bret interrupted. He’d stopped on his way to the editor’s office, his eyes on Chloe’s miniature Christmas tree.
“Oh.” Chloe sat forward, picking up a pen to point out the ornaments. “It’s the twelve days of Christmas. See, the topper is a pear, for the partridge in a pear tree. There’s a turtle dove over on your side—”
“I get it.” Bret’s gaze went from the tree to the swag of garland across the front of her desk. “You’re not going to get carried away with decorations, are you?”
Stunned, Chloe looked at her humble tree, then at Bret. If he had any memory of their conversation at The Snowed Inn, there was no evidence of it on his face.
As the silence in the room lengthened, he added: “It’s . . . distracting.”
“You know, you’re right.” To her surprise, Chuck stepped into the fray. He held one hand out in front of him as if to shield himself from the glare of the tree’s tiny bulbs. He swayed comically. “I’m starting to freak out.”
Bret’s eyes darted to Chuck with a look that could melt lead.
Chloe held her breath, afraid that Mr. Neutrality had picked the worst possible time to chime in. She didn’t want Chuck to get his head chopped off for sticking his neck out on her behalf.
Chuck switched on his computer, seemingly oblivious to Bret’s stare. By the time Bret turned back to Chloe, his glower had faded.
He gave a faint shake of his head. “Just don’t overdo it.”
Without another word, he went into McCrea’s office, closing the door behind him.
Okay, if she’d ever thought she and Bret were going to be pals, obviously that wasn’t happening.
Chloe sagged and turned to Chuck, bewildered. “Thanks,” she said. “But I hope I didn’t buy you any trouble.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Chuck pulled his keyboard toward him and started typing.
“I never thought—” She stopped. She didn’t think she needed to apologize for Christmas decorations. Unless . . . “Did I do something politically incorrect?”
“Nah. He goes to Tall Pine Community Church, same as me.”
“That’s where my parents go.”
“What about you?” His mildly chiding tone fell somewhere between that of a father and an uncle.
“I used to. When I came back up here after college and got my apartment, I kind of... got used to sleeping in on Sundays.”
“It can be a bad habit.” There it was, that faintly paternal tone, as he gave her the same mild rebuff she got from her own parents.
Then Chuck’s glance drifted toward Bret’s closed door. “Come to think of it,” he said, “Bret gets into the same habit every December.”
“Any idea why?” Suddenly the lights on Chloe’s little tree looked louder to her, more conspicuous. Thank goodness she hadn’t put them on the flashing setting.
Chuck started typing. “At this point, you know what I know.”
Whether or not the newsroom was a boys’ club, Chloe realized, boys didn’t tend to tell each other much.
Half an hour later, Bret’s door opened. “Story conferences. Chuck, nine o’clock. Chloe, nine-fifteen.”
This time when he retreated back into his office, he left the glass door open, as was his usual habit. Chloe contemplated her list of story proposals. Maybe she’d better rethink this list of topics. Trouble was, she didn’t have much time to brainstorm.
She joined Bret in his office promptly at nine-fifteen. She started off by pitching two of her non-holiday stories, and he approved them. He also approved the story about a third-grade class that was making shoebox gifts for underprivileged children.
She had a feeling it would get harder from here. “Christmas tree preservation tips,” she said.
“That’s more of a news brief.”
She nodded. She’d expected that. But she hoped it made a good segue to her next idea. “Speaking of Christmas trees, I got to thinking about the tree in the town square. I thought it might be neat to do a history—when the first tree lighting was, what kind of lights they used back then, find out if anyone knows how old the tree actually is . . .”
“Chloe.” Bret was shaking his head. “The tree is lit. It’s going to stay lit. If the tree goes out, then it’s news. If we wanted to run a piece on the tree, the time to do it was before the tree lighting.”
She didn’t even allow herself a sigh. She forged on. “The Christmas parade on Evergreen Lane is this Saturday—”
“We’ll run a brief this week.” Now he wasn’t even letting her finish her sentences. “And a stand-alone photo the day after.”
“Okay.” Think of yourself as a turtle, Chloe told herself. Just let it bounce off your shell. Because Bret obviously had a shell of his own, and whatever aberration had made him set it aside the other night, it was firmly back in place.
She skimmed her list. Bret had already approved two of her non-holiday topics; she only had one left. She should have spread them in between the others. But when seven out of her ten story ideas had to do with Christmas, what could she do?
Against her better judgment, she ventured, “You don’t care for Christmas much, do you?”
His face was expressionless. “It’s not my favorite thing, no.”
“Why?”
He barely lifted an eyebrow. “It probably goes back to that Christmas I spent working in a shoe-blacking factory when I was a kid.”
“That was Charles Dickens.”
“Oh. I knew it happened to someone.” Leaning back in his chair, Bret let a faint smile get through. Maybe he was pleased that she’d gotten the Dickens reference. Not that it mattered. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Not everyone loves Christmas, and in most cases, it isn’t news. There will be Christmas events to write about, I promise, and I’ll make sure you get your fair share of those. But we have to be selective. Things that matter to the community. Steer clear of puff pieces. All right?”
“All right.” Chloe skimmed her list again. Puff pieces. That stung. And it also brought her way up short. She pitched her last remaining non-holiday article; when Bret approved it, that gave her four out of the ten she’d come in with, plus a couple of news briefs.
She stood with a rueful smile. “I’m afraid the rest of these were a little too—jolly. I’ll e-mail you some more ideas by this afternoon.”
“Okay. Don’t forget, you have the next town council meeting Wednesday night. That gives you one more.”
“Right.” Chloe started to leave. Unable to help herself, she turned back at the door, trying to find some trace of the guy she’d seen at The Snowed Inn. “Bret?”
“Yes?”
What did it matter? She asked anyway: “Do you at least like snow?”
One hand went up to cover the lower half of his face, as if in thought. Chloe studied the upper half. Behind his glasses, something in his dark eyes may have glimmered. Could he possibly be trying not to smile?
He lowered his hand, and she saw no hint of merriment. “When I don’t have to drive in it. When it’s not blocking the roads and causing problems. Then it’s okay.”
He sat forward in his chair, as if waiting for her to leave.
Chloe got back to her desk. Nope, they definitely weren’t pals.
No big deal. If anyone had suggested she and Hal, her old boss at the diner, ought to be pals, she would have fallen over laughing.
Put on your shell, she intoned in her head. Be a turtle.
She’d make that her new mantra.
* * *
Bret had managed to go a year and a half without ever setting foot in The Snowed Inn.
Now he was here for the second time in a week. Right when the holiday season was kicking off.
But the monthly chamber of commerce meeting rotated from one business to the next, and he supposed December was a logical enough choice for the Christmas hotel. When Bret arrived, Angie Cleghorn from behind the front counter directed him to the Man Cave.
Bret blinked. “The what?”
Angie pointed the way to a set of double doors off the lobby, and Bret walked into a cross between a conference room and a den. Rustic and comfortable, it was free of Christmas trappings, except for a tall artificial pine tree in one corner of the room. Better. A long table against one wall offered a spread of coffee, doughnuts, and pastries.
Bret queued up in the short line for the coffee maker behind Diana Trask from the local pizzeria. Not everyone in the Man Cave this morning was male. Only about two-thirds.
“I was hoping for Mandy’s hot chocolate,” Ralph Kirkgaard said as he poured his coffee.
“Sorry.” Jake stood back from the line, waiting for the chamber members to serve themselves. “That’s a specialty item.”
“Paying customers only, you mean?”
“Something like that.” Jake had a rare ability to be diplomatic without being phony, a trait Bret admired.
Ralph Kirkgaard, on the other hand, he’d never cared much for.
“So, Bret,” Kirkgaard said as Bret poured his coffee. “How’s that little blond intern working out?”
Bret felt unexpected irritation prickle under his skin. He wasn’t sure which word annoyed him the most: little, blond, or intern.
He disregarded his annoyance and focused on the facts. “She’s not an intern, she’s a full-time staffer.” He kept his tone relaxed as he reached for the creamer. “I inherited her from McCrea when he went out of town. Turns out she’s a heck of a writer.”
“She can write?” It wasn’t Kirkgaard’s word choice that bothered him as much as the smarmy tone. The prickles under his skin grew into little flames.
“Sure, she can write,” Bret said easily, stirring in the creamer with a steady hand. “Now if only you could read.”
That brought a laugh from the half dozen people within earshot. Bret took a swig of coffee, ignoring the fact that it burned his tongue.
Sexism, Chloe had said, and he’d dismissed it automatically. But why else would anyone be so quick to assume a pretty little blonde couldn’t write?
Hadn’t he come darn close to assuming the same thing?
He took another drink of coffee, letting it scorch his tongue again.
“In fact,” he said, “I thought her story on hospice was pretty impressive.” He kept the same offhanded tone as he mentioned his other least-favorite subject.
There was a slight gap in the conversation, like a classroom full of kids who hadn’t done their homework. Really? At the front of the Sunday “B” section, and no one in the room had seen it?
“I missed that one,” Jake said. “I enjoyed the one about the snow plowers this morning, though.”
Bret nodded gratefully and took a more cautious sip of the hot coffee. Yesterday, after he’d shot down most of her Christmas story proposals, Chloe had whipped up a nice profile piece about the Galpin brothers, who ran the local snowplow service. She’d praised the two men as Tall Pine’s unsung heroes, giving credit where it was overdue. Clearing the roads was vital both to locals and the town’s tourist trade.
“I saw that one, too,” said Joe Velosa, from the recreation center. “It was cute.”
Cute. The story had been written with wit and personality. But was it cute? Bret wouldn’t have thought so. His own tolerance for fluff was pretty low.
As he was frowning into his coffee, Millie Bond arrived, bringing in a welcome breath of fresh air.
* * *
“The school provides most of the gifts that go into the shoeboxes,” Patti Moreno said over the phone as Chloe scribbled onto her notepad. “And my students bring in what they can. Candy canes, yo-yos, stocking stuffer type things. It doesn’t have to be much. But it gives the kids a chance to contribute, and it makes them more aware of kids who don’t have as much as they do.”
“That’s nice.” Chloe smiled, scrawling rapidly to keep up.
“And they get a big kick out of decorating the shoeboxes. I bring in all kinds of gift wrap, ribbons, stickers, and stuff. They’re all so different.”
“Sounds like a perfect photo op.” Chloe eyed the clock on the wall. “You say the shoeboxes are ready to go. If I send a photographer over this afternoon, could we get some shots of the kids with the shoeboxes?”
“That would be great.”
Chloe adjusted the phone on her shoulder again. “Can you give me a time range, and I’ll find out if we have someone available?”
As she finished jotting down the information, Bret walked in, sifting through a handful of mail. For the second day in a row, he’d come in later than Chloe; he’d texted her this morning about a chamber of commerce meeting. He still wore his overcoat, and today a charcoal-colored knit scarf was draped over his neck.
He paused in front of Chloe’s desk as she hung up. “Remember,” he said, “learn to type your notes.”
Good morning to you, too. “The phone kept slipping off my shoulder when I used both hands to—”
“Headset. If there’s not one in your desk, there ought to be one in one of the others. If you can’t find one, let me know.”
“Okay.” She nodded, distracted. She couldn’t remember seeing Bret wear a scarf before. Closer up, she saw the yarn was actually a blend of different shades of deep gray and black. With Bret’s dark hair and eyes, it was striking. “Nice scarf.”
He looked up from the mail. “Don’t make fun.”
“I’m not. It has a beautiful texture.”
“Thanks.” He shook his head. “I feel like Fred from Scooby-Doo. You know, the guy with the ascot.”
Chloe tilted her head, trying to decide whether to ask the obvious question: Then why are you wearing it?
Setting the mail on her desk, Bret slid the scarf over his head and went to hang it on the coat rack by the door. “Early Christmas present. Millie Bond gave it to me at the chamber meeting. She used to cut my mother’s hair.”
Used to. Bret’s tone changed, and Chloe looked up. With his back turned, his expression was hidden from view. She had a feeling any questions wouldn’t be welcome.
“No wonder it’s gorgeous,” she said instead. “I wish I had a Millie Bond scarf.”
“Play your cards right, and maybe someday you’ll get one.” That sounded more like Bret. He took off his coat and hung it next to the scarf. “Sorry, but I need to hang on to this one. I’ll need it for the next chamber meeting.”
He didn’t like it, and still he planned to wear it. Interesting.
Bret picked the mail up from her desk and paused again, studying her with level dark eyes. Appraising? Disapproving? Whatever he was thinking, he didn’t say it.
Chloe fought to keep from shifting in her seat. “I’ll look for that headset,” she volunteered.
Bret nodded, tapped the mail on the edge of her desk, and went into his office.
* * *
“I’m sorry.” Bret shifted the phone from one ear to the other and kept his tone patient. “But I’m not really sure how it qualifies as news.”
“He’s had it since last winter,” Ed Hollingsworth insisted. “Now he says he hasn’t got it. Now, when a man borrows a chainsaw from his neighbor, he has a responsibility to give it back. Am I right?”
“Of course.” Bret pinched the bridge of his nose.
“So, it’s a matter of personal responsibility. It’s human interest. If we let this kind of thing slide . . .”
Bret let Ed run on for another minute. He had the gist of it. It was entirely possible that Mel Kruger still had Ed’s chainsaw and couldn’t find it. Or that Mel had returned it, and Ed had forgotten and lost it himself. Either way, it was hardly a matter for the Gazette, or for the local police. Which, thankfully, Ed hadn’t brought into the discussion yet.
When Ed ran out of steam, Bret said, “I’ll tell you what. My father has a chainsaw in his garage. If I bring it by Saturday, can you hold off on cutting your firewood until then?”
“Well—sure, I suppose. But—”
“Great. I’ll bring it over. Say hi to Wilma for me.”
Bret hung up, aware that he’d probably just committed half of his Saturday to cutting wood. It was just as well. He could use the exercise, and he’d stick to fallen branches, per town regulations. Ed might be tempted to hack into some of the living trees. A seventy-two-year-old man shouldn’t be cutting firewood, anyway.
He turned his attention back to the e-mail he’d been contemplating before Ed called.
“Do tamales count as graft?”
Chloe’s voice pulled him away from his screen again. She stood in the doorway of his office, holding a big, flat plasticware container.
“Graft?” he echoed.
“Bribes. Kickbacks. You know, the kinds of favors we’re not supposed to accept as journalists.” Chloe hefted the container, a gleam in her eye. “Patti Moreno’s mother-in-law dropped these off in the lobby. They were really happy with the story on the shoebox gifts. This was a thank-you.”
“I see.” He wasn’t sure if Chloe was kidding about graft, but she was clearly pleased with the thank-you. And probably tempted by the tamales. They were a holiday tradition in a lot of Hispanic families, and from what he understood, a lot of work went into them. As a result, if you weren’t a family member, they were hard to come by.
Bret leaned back thoughtfully, keeping a straight face. “When you conducted the interview, did you do it on condition of free tamales?”
“No.”
“During the interview, were you offered tamales in exchange for a favorable article?”
The corners of her mouth tilted up slightly, showing that dimple just below the corner of her mouth. “No.”
Bret folded his arms and paused as if to consider. “I think you’re in the clear.”
“Good.” She broke into a full-on smile. “Because it’s almost lunchtime.”
She started away, then backed up a step, leaning backward this time as she peered in through his doorway. “Want me to heat up a plate for you?”
Bret hesitated. His ingrained reflexes told him to say no. But maintaining professional boundaries was one thing. Turning down homemade tamales was crazy.
He’d worked hard, especially since their chat at The Snowed Inn, to keep their relationship businesslike. He could hold his distance. Even if that smile of hers could light up a room.
“Yes,” he said, just as her smile began to waver. “Thanks.”
Kickbacks. Bret grinned to himself as Chloe walked away. Little did she know she’d be the recipient of a Millie Bond scarf by Christmas. At the chamber meeting yesterday, Millie had asked him her favorite color. As if Bret would have any idea. He’d finally suggested a sea green.
“Like her eyes?” Millie had asked.
The woman didn’t miss much.
A few minutes later, Chloe returned from the break room with two heated plates, and Bret cleared a spot on her side of his desk. He caught a flicker of surprise on her face. They both ate at their desks routinely, but sending her off to her own desk when she was sharing her bounty seemed just plain rude. And what could be more businesslike than sharing lunch with McCrea’s battleship of a desk between them?
Chuck was out somewhere on an interview. His loss.
She drew up the guest chair to sit across from him and took a bite, then closed her eyes and clutched the edge of the desk.
Bret’s fork stopped on its way to his mouth. “Whoa. Are they that hot?”
She shook her head, eyes still closed, until she swallowed. “No. That good.”
Bret pulled his eyes away, took a bite, and understood her bliss. “We owe Patti Moreno’s mother-in-law. Big time.”
“I ought to save some for Ned, too,” she said. “His pictures really helped make the story.”
Bret remembered stacks of gaily colored boxes in one photo, a group of beaming kids holding some of the boxes in another. “He has a good eye. And that Santa-type box in the foreground—I’ll bet Ned set it there.”
“He said that one was Patti’s favorite.” The box had been wrapped in solid red paper, with a black strip of construction paper around the outside for a belt, and cotton balls around the edges to suggest the white fur lining of a Santa Claus suit. Pretty imaginative for a third-grader. Bret wondered if the teacher had coached him.
Chloe said, “About the little boy who made that box.”
She paused, and Bret raised his head, afraid she might be about to tell him the child was critically ill or something.
Instead, she said, “Patti says he told her he saw Santa Claus last year.”
Bret’s fork froze again. “I take it you don’t mean at the department store.”
“No. I mean, like Mandy.”
He drew a deep breath. And took another bite.
Long before she was Mandy Wyndham, when she was nine or ten, Mandy had told a local television reporter she’d seen Santa Claus in her living room. To this day, she’d never backed down on her story, and it was now the stuff of Tall Pine legend.
Chloe forged ahead. “Patti says she had two students last year who told her the same thing. Do you think maybe I could—”
Bret covered his face with his palm, trying, for just a moment, to wish this away. His hometown was turning into Christmas Central, bit by bit, year after year. And apparently Chloe was as infected as anyone. Because she sounded serious about this story idea.
When he lowered his hand, of course, Chloe was still there.
Bret shook his head. “I think that article’s been done pretty definitively around here, don’t you?”
“Don’t you think there’s kind of a human-interest thing here? Maybe sort of a Tall Pine tradition?”
“Mass delusion? Like the Salem witch trials?”
She let out a long, slow breath. “No. The opposite. Like—maybe faith is contagious. Or hope.”
He kept his tone even. “Okay, so you do realize that those kids probably talked to Mandy when she worked at the Christmas store. And she must have told them the story about how she saw Santa Claus.”
“Sure.”
“And children are highly suggestible.”
She bit her lip. “But I’m not sure that detracts from—”
“And kids are also fond of telling tall tales.”
“But—” It took a moment for Chloe’s next words to come out. “What if they really do believe it?”
“Let’s say that they do.” Bret struggled once again for patience. “I remember what happened with Mandy. I was two grades ahead of her in school, and I heard about it. People gave her guff about that story for years. She never did live it down.”
“She lived up to it instead.”
He shrugged. “She stuck to her guns, I’ll give you that. But maybe she’s tougher than other kids. The teasing she went through, I wouldn’t wish on any fourth grader. Have you thought about that?”
“But it’s happened more than one time. And we wouldn’t have to quote the kids by name.”
“You think their classmates wouldn’t know?” He leaned back in his chair, reluctantly abandoning his tamales. “I understand what you want to do. A nice, heartwarming story. But you could be causing some kids trouble for years. And we deal in facts, not fiction. Your stories already skew a little bit”—he uttered the troublesome word—“cute.”
Bret saw indignation flash in her gray-green eyes, saw the defiant thrust of her chin. And saw the set of her jaw as she tamped down her reaction. She had an impressive amount of self-control, even if she wasn’t good at hiding her reactions.
He hadn’t made her angry intentionally. But watching her temper flare, then watching her pull it back in, was a sight to behold.
“Okay,” she conceded at last. She returned to her tamales, but he could tell she was far from blissful now. “Bret?”
He took another bite. “Hmm?”
“You don’t think Mandy was telling a tall tale. Do you?”
“Mandy? No.” His tone softened. “I know she really believes—whatever it was she saw.”
Chloe’s eyes locked on his, as if she were measuring him. “You like her.”
“Of course.” He blinked in surprise. “I never said I didn’t. Everybody likes Mandy. In fact, between you and me, she and Jake are two of my favorite people.” He frowned. “Just don’t quote me on that.”
“Why?”
“Journalistic objectivity. It’s my job to be impartial.” He inclined his head. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Journalistic training. It’s my job to ask questions, right?”
“Yeah, but you can’t interview me. That would be unethical.”
Besides, I’m the guy who asks the questions. Having the shoe on the other foot felt more than a little uncomfortable. Why did she keep trying to get under his hide?
Chloe Davenport just needed to learn about professional boundaries.
One little thing needled at him. He had a question of his own. “Chloe?”
Uncharacteristically, her eyes were on her plate. “Hmm?”
“You know Mandy didn’t see Santa Claus, right?”
She hesitated long enough to make him wish he hadn’t asked. No. No. No. This was the Tall Pine Gazette, an island of rationality in this sentimental town. Until Chloe walked in, with her bright smile and her Christmas decorations, at his toughest time of the year.
“I don’t think so,” she said finally. “But it’s nice to think about.”
It wasn’t the reassurance he’d hoped for.