Black Friday, Gavin got to the bar at ten. He ended up closing down just before eleven the night before. Probably could have stayed closed with as little business as he had, but he hadn’t known and didn’t want to assume.
Since he was the only bartender scheduled, he’d only paid one cook and one waitress for the night. He didn’t lose money by any means but didn’t make much either.
He barely got the lights flipped on when he heard knocking at the front door that he hadn’t bothered to unlock yet. When he turned, he saw Jolene standing there, a massive smile on her face and her arms full of bags. What the hell?
Rushing forward, he unlocked the door and held it for her. “What do you have there?”
“Christmas decorations.”
He ground his teeth. “I thought I told you I wasn’t going to decorate.”
She brushed him off like a fly pestering her. “You don’t have to. I’m going to. I bought them too. My money, my time. Go be Mr. Bah Humbug over there.”
His jaw dropped. He wanted to remind her it was his business. That he was the boss. That he had the final say, but she’d already walked by him and started pulling everything out of the bags.
“Don’t you think you should have gotten my permission?” he asked, managing to find his voice.
“You would have said no, so why bother?”
At least she was smart enough to realize that. “Yet you’re doing it anyway.”
“Yep,” she said, turning her back and walking around the pub with a red garland. “Red is a good color in here. We should have shirts with the Fierce name on it. Red is a fierce color, don’t you think?”
He did. And he’d ordered a bunch of red T-shirts with Fierce on them just last week. Crazy how they thought alike, but he didn’t want to say that. Of course if he didn’t, she’d think it was all her idea.
“Already taken care of,” he said.
“What?” she asked, turning around and looking all over the room. Figure skater again in his mind, twirling and seeing everything. How the heck did she do that and not get dizzy?
“I ordered a bunch of shirts last week with Fierce on them.”
“Are they red?” she asked, and she was smirking at him when she said it. He didn’t know what to make of that.
“Why?”
“Just answer my question,” she said.
Damn, she was pushy when she wanted to be and he found his lips twitching in response. It should make him mad, but instead it turned him on. “Maybe.”
“That means yes.”
Then she turned and walked away from him and pulled more supplies out of one of the bags. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, as she climbed onto the booth and reached her hands over her head.
“Seeing how far up I can hang the garland. You’re taller; why don’t you do it?”
“Nope,” he said and walked away. She wanted to decorate? She could do it. He wanted no part of it. He’d made his voice clear.
***
Jolene was trying not to laugh at the disgruntled look on Gavin’s face. She didn’t think she was going to get her way and had taken a risk buying everything and walking in here like the steamroller her family often called her.
There’d been a moment there when she’d thought he might fire her. When his eyes narrowed and he started to look a little...fierce. Instead he followed her to her bags of loot and asked if she should have gotten permission first. Like that was ever going to happen and she told him so.
But trying to get him to help had been her mistake because now she was on her own and if it meant she was going to be taking a few steps back with Gavin, then so be it.
She loved Christmas though. Loved decorating and listening to carols, even singing along with them. It was the one day of the year her parents made their lives not seem too dismal. There would be a big feast of a meal and though there weren’t a lot of presents under the tree, it was festive. It was family. And it mattered a great deal to her to know her parents were trying to have one day where there were no tears or worries of the struggle they faced daily to just make ends meet.
She tacked up the red garland and then hopped back on the floor and walked to the other end of the room to see how awesome it looked. It’d be better higher, she thought, frowning.
Knowing she wasn’t going to get any help from the owner who was almost a foot taller than her five foot four, she grabbed a bucket and rag, brought it over, and set it on the table she decided to stand on. Since it was bolted to the wall, she’d be fine.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing now?” Gavin shouted from across the room thirty minutes later.
She’d kind of thought she’d get it done before he came back out, and figured he’d then notice how it looked and not say a word. She didn’t get that wish though.
“I’m hanging garland. My last one too. How does it look?”
“Don’t care,” he said, marching over and reaching for her. She hadn’t expected that and went to pull her arm back when he was trying to help her down and she ended up twisting and falling into him.
If his hands landing on her waist had her gasping, she didn’t care. Nor did she care that her eyes probably got all dewy doe-like as she gazed into his much darker ones filling with something like rage. He wasn’t feeling the same emotions she was. Bummer.
He set her on the floor, steadied her, and stepped back as if he’d gotten burned. What a nice blow to her ego.
“I’m all done now. You worried for nothing. I told you I had good balance.” Before he could say anything, she turned her back on him to hide her smirk, then picked the rag up out of the bucket and wiped down the table nice and clean.
“I should fire you over this,” he said and her heart stopped. Would he really? Could she lose the best job she’d had in years? Had she pushed just a little too far and would now have to go tell April they were back to square one? All over a red garland?
She turned and squared her shoulders, put on the most confident front she could and said, “Over some Christmas decorations?”
She wanted to add that it’d be petty but knew that’d be shoving it in his face and the easiest way to get her butt shown to the door.
“Maybe I don’t believe in Christmas. Maybe it’s against my religion. Did you think of that?”
She hadn’t. Oh crap. “Is it against your religion or beliefs?”
He hesitated, staring right into her eyes. She knew they were getting a little misty right now. She might have really overstepped herself and hadn’t meant to do that at all.
“No,” he said, then walked away from her. She let out a shaky breath and finished cleaning up. She had more decorations but wasn’t about to even consider hanging them now.
***
Gavin thought he’d shaved ten years off his life when he walked out of the kitchen and saw Jolene standing on the table, reaching up on her tiptoes trying to hang Christmas decorations! Was she nuts?
As if that wasn’t bad enough, when he reached for her so he could make sure she made it to the floor safe and sound, she’d lost the balance she always had and his fingers landed on her bare skin where her shirt had tugged up in the process.
He adjusted her as best he could on her feet and stepped back, fearful the traitor in his pants was going to make an appearance and embarrass them both.
Then she had to go and get all teary-eyed when he snarled at her when she tried to make light of why he didn’t want any reminders of Christmas in the bar. That made him feel like shit.
When was the last time he felt that guilty? Probably when he’d yelled at his mother as a teen when she wasn’t paying enough attention to him. When she was trying to hold everything together for him and his brothers, working lots of hours and maintaining the house. When she asked him to do something for her and he snapped and said he didn’t want to. That he wanted to hang out with his friends and if she’d paid more attention to him than his younger brothers she’d known what he was missing in his life.
It was the last time he’d ever raised his voice to his mother. He’d been fifteen and over six foot at that point. He looked more like a man than a kid and she’d told him that. That she’d forgotten at times he was still a kid and not the man of the house and she was trying as hard as she could. Then she burst into tears and locked herself in her room.
He’d left the house after that feeling like a heel, then walked around town and found his first part-time job. She’d never wanted to take the money for household bills, so he stopped offering. Instead, he spent it on the boys when they needed clothes or shoes. He tried to buy her gifts for her birthday and Mother’s Day because she didn’t get them from anyone else.
Never Christmas though. His mother always wanted to celebrate as if nothing happened, but he couldn’t. He pretended as best he could, but often left his brothers and mother to themselves and sat in his room alone wishing the night away.
His mother never bothered him or talked to him about it and he was thankful.
And here he was as an adult, running his own business having Christmas shoved in his face when it was the last thing he wanted.
Only he saw those tears in Jolene’s eyes and knew he couldn’t tell her no.