Once Upon a Christmas Eve Read online

  Heat rising from the collar of his polo shirt, he glanced away, looked right back. As if he’d just caught the possessiveness in Max’s tone, his eyes narrowed.

  “Are you after her yourself?”

  A corded muscle pulsed in Max’s neck. “The only thing I’m after is for you to stop screwing around. We don’t abuse our business relationships. And what you need to remember,” he echoed in the man’s same posturing tone, “is that you wouldn’t still have this operation if I hadn’t come on board.” He’d have played it right into the ground. “Unless you want me to get her on the phone right now so you can tell her why you’re after her, you leave her alone.”

  Scott clearly took exception to having his hand called. He didn’t look too happy having his plans with his little goldmine gutted, either. But with no way to defend himself and his calculating now worthless, he seemed to think better of voicing any further displeasure in the moments before a knock sounded on the door.

  The instant it opened, Margie poked her head inside.

  “Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen,” she said, her neat gray bob swinging. “But, Scott, Kathy said you wanted to know when the box of documents you shipped from Singapore arrived. FedEx just left. She put them in your office.

  “Max,” she continued, all quick, professional efficiency as she walked in and slipped his mail into the inbox on his spreadsheet-covered desk, “Ross Hayden has called twice in the past hour. He said he spoke with you last week about moving their operation to Washington from San Jose. He wants to meet with you as soon as possible.

  “I made your reservations for Chicago on Monday,” she went on, seeming aware of the tension in the room, clearly intent on ignoring it. “If you want to tack that trip on, let me know and I’ll route you from Chicago to San Jose. It’s only two weeks until Christmas and flights are filling up.”

  The interruption had Max drawing a deep breath. “I’ll do that,” he told her. “Thanks.”

  He’d call their client now, he thought, turning to his desk. He had nothing else to say to his partner, anyway. With Scott avoiding eye contact with him as he followed his assistant out, it seemed apparent he didn’t have anything to add to their discussion, either.

  He wasn’t sure he trusted the resentment in his partner’s silence. Or if he trusted his partner anymore at all for that matter. More pressing just then was that he had no idea what was going on with the woman who was working so hard to take care of the business and the people she cared about.

  He wanted to know why she hadn’t gone to Harry Hunt for the money she needed to pay her new chef. The man was as rich as Croesus. What she needed would be the equivalent of pennies to him.

  He wanted to know what she was doing on the board of directors of a multibillion-dollar international computer corporation.

  He especially wanted to know why Harry Hunt was trying to marry her off, and offering bribes in the process. Scott had assumed that the man wanted to legitimize her baby, possibly even save face for her. But Max didn’t believe her pregnancy was the reason at all. She was trying too hard to keep that circumstance to herself. As far as he knew, he—and his partner—were the only ones who knew she was expecting.

  He jammed his fingers through his hair. The fact that he’d somehow thought he was protecting his partner by disclosing her condition now seemed laughable. Even as the thought registered, so did guilt. When he’d made that call, he’d also wanted to know if the information would change his partner’s interest in her. Now, as then, he didn’t question why that had mattered. All he considered was that Scott wouldn’t have been privy to the fact if not for him. Tommi hadn’t asked him not to say anything about her condition. Yet, he felt as if he’d betrayed her, anyway.

  He stood behind his desk, his hands on his hips, head down, jaw working. The questions demanded answers. The disgust, disappointment and protectiveness coiling inside him demanded that he step back and wait. He didn’t trust anything about what he felt just then. Least of all the intensity of it. Because of that, he wouldn’t allow himself to pick up the phone and call her. He’d hear from her as soon as she finished reviewing the final contract, anyway. Though she’d agreed to its terms, knowing her, she’d try one last time to talk him out of the wage clause.

  Having decided that much, Max started to make the call to their new client only to be interrupted by another call. Then, by Margie needing signatures. Then, by Scott, all business, wanting to know when he’d be available to talk about the WestLand properties. He’d decided to take a long weekend and go skiing, so the sooner the better.

  The fact that the unmistakably disgruntled guy would soon be off to play again suited Max just fine. With him gone for a few days, he didn’t need to worry just yet about what sort of payback his partner had in mind.

  Most of the interruptions, though, were from the questions that continued to nag him as he paced a trough in the carpet of his penthouse two days later.

  When Max finally picked up the phone at nine-thirty Sunday morning, he was on his tenth trip between the black lacquer and stainless steel of his rarely used kitchen and the long wall of windows overlooking the rain-grayed sound. Turning his back on the view he’d paid a small fortune to own, he punched in Tommi’s home number.

  He hadn’t wanted to call her at the bistro. He’d known she’d be busy. With others inevitably around, she wouldn’t have been free to talk, anyway. Since the bistro was closed for the day, and it still being relatively early, he figured now was as good a time as any to get his questions answered.

  Or so he was thinking when he heard the mechanical click of her answering machine and Tommi’s recorded voice saying, “Hi. It’s Tommi. If you need something that can wait until I can call you back, leave a message. If it can’t wait, call me downstairs. If I’m not there, call my cell.”

  Apparently, she assumed anyone calling would know “downstairs” was the bistro. Just as apparently, the majority of her callers had her various numbers.

  The usual beep sounded.

  “Tommi, it’s Max,” he said, resuming his pacing. “Call me when you get this. I’m at my condo. Here,” he added, because he had one in Chicago, too, and started to leave his number when the line clicked again.

  “Max? Wait. Let me turn this off.” Her disembodied voice sounded faintly breathless. “There,” she said, her voice clearer. “Sorry. I was down the hall.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Tommi replied, heading back across her small living room to close her door. Ignoring the effect of his voice on her heart rate, she flipped the latch and turned down the already low volume on the radio. “I was just down the hall helping Syd when I heard the phone.”

  “Why did Syd need help?”

  “He used the wrong remote to change channels again. He’d picked up the one for the DVD, so he messed up his TV when he started punching buttons. He couldn’t get his news show.” Wearing sweats, she padded past her sage-colored sofa with its taupe throw pillows and botanical prints above it and sank into her favorite chair.

  “If you’re calling about the agreement, I’m almost finished reading it. That’s what I was doing when Essie called.” The document sat with her cup of now cool herbal tea and box of Puff Pops on the end table beside her. “It arrived Friday, but this morning was the first chance I’ve had to get to it. It was second on my list for today.”

  Curiosity entered his tone. “What was the first?”

  “Sleeping in.” The next item on her list was Christmas shopping for her staff and her family—which had provided the perfect excuse for not joining her mother for lunch. She needed pants, too. She hadn’t been able to zip her jeans at all that morning.

  “That would be a priority,” he agreed, his deep voice shaded by something she couldn’t quite identify. “How did your private parties go? Did you call the culinary school for backup?”

  His casual questions came as a relief to her. It had been a week since she’d seen him, and their conversation that
next day had been businesslike and brief. She just hadn’t been able to forget how remote he’d seemed when he’d last walked out of her kitchen—or to escape the little ache that had grown the more she’d thought about what he’d lost so long ago. First, his mom. Then, the wife he’d hoped would anchor him after that loss.

  She now knew he’d once wanted the ties that made a person feel committed, connected and a part of something more than himself. That desire clearly no longer existed. He’d somehow abandoned it—along with whatever dreams he’d once had of a family of his own.

  Yet, he’d awakened those dreams in her.

  She’d gone twenty-eight years without wanting to risk her heart and soul on a man. But she now knew what it was like to long for someone she could honestly share with, someone she could truly trust, someone she could love and who could love her back.

  “I did,” she told him, finding it truly ironic that the only man who’d ever managed that feat should be one with arrow-proof walls around his heart. “I had two students do prep work for me. Andrew and Shelby were totally on top of everything else.”

  “Maybe you should keep those students through the holidays,” he suggested. “Or go ahead and hire more help now if those students can’t work when you need them.”

  “I won’t need more permanent help until after the expansion.”

  “Has your energy come back?”

  She’d turned sideways in the chair. With one leg drawn up, she blinked at the tiny hole in the knee of her sweats. “Pardon?”

  “You said your energy was supposed to be coming back soon,” he reminded her. “Has it?”

  Concern. That was the note she hadn’t been able to identify. It was also what had the tension easing from her shoulders.

  “I think so.” The effect of his voice was nice, almost as soothing as the strange calm his physical touch could bring. “It was a really busy week and I kept up, so it must be improving.”

  “How about the dizziness? Have you taken any more dives for the floor?”

  “I never actually hit the floor,” she reminded him.

  “Only because I caught you.”

  “True,” she conceded, remembering too easily how she’d found herself cradled against his rock-hard chest. Despite being so tired she could barely move, she’d fallen asleep with that memory last night. And the night before. And the night before that.

  She really missed him.

  “No more dives.” She saw no harm in her silent admissions, or in indulging her little fantasy, or imagining the sense of protection she’d felt with him holding her. It wasn’t like he’d ever know. “No more dizziness.” The morning sickness had also ebbed considerably, but he hadn’t known about that. The only reason she’d reached for the cereal this morning was because she’d craved it. That and green olives.

  “Thanks for asking.” Her hand unconsciously stole over her stomach. “It feels strange to answer questions like that.”

  “You still haven’t told anyone else?”

  “Not yet.”

  The sound of a television on his end had grown fainter. Moments ago, the volume had increased, only to ebb and rise again. She had the feeling he was pacing when his voice cut back in.

  “Just so you know, I told Scott.”

  Caution had entered his tone, or maybe it was defense.

  “I imagine you had to,” she conceded. “Health and physical ability are legitimate considerations in a partnership. I’ve just been waiting to mention it to anyone else until our agreement is signed. I want to be able to honestly say my financial situation is secure. That will be important to my family.

  “Especially my mom,” she confided. “She’s always been adamant about her girls being financially independent. I need her and my sisters to know I have everything under control.”

  With her legs tucked beneath her, she reached for her tea. Once the papers beside her were signed by her and L&C, she had no excuse to avoid her inevitable familial powwow. She would tell them all together. No way did she want to deal with repeat performances.

  Her news would just be so much easier to deliver with Max there to support her. If nothing else, he’d distract the daylights out of her mom and the rest of the Fairchild women.

  “Wouldn’t all this have been easier if you’d just gone to Harry Hunt?”

  She had her cup halfway to her mouth. At her Uncle Harry’s name, her hand froze midair.

  “I understand the need to be independent,” Max insisted. “I just can’t help wondering why you put yourself through hoops applying for loans and working out a partnership deal instead of going to him. It seems to me you could have saved yourself a whole lot of stress.”

  “How do you know I know him?”

  “Scott said he introduced the two of you at some charity thing a while back. Hunt referred to you as his surrogate niece, and told him you’re on his board of directors. I can’t imagine why you’d need us with his kind of money. Or with what you must earn being on that board. Why didn’t you list that as an asset? Or him as a reference?”

  Uneasy, she drew back from setting the tea on the table.

  “I don’t earn anything from that position,” she admitted, hopefully killing his assumptions about whatever wealth he thought came with the “perk” that felt more like an obligation than anything else. “Please tell me this isn’t going to affect our partnership.”

  “This conversation has nothing to do with our agreement, Tommi. Other than that I don’t understand why you want it.

  “Now,” he continued quietly, “what do you mean you don’t earn anything from your position?”

  Tommi rarely mentioned the Hunts to people who didn’t already know their connection. She especially didn’t mention to strangers why her family was connected to them to begin with.

  But Max wasn’t a stranger. He knew as much about her as anyone ever had.

  The realization should have disturbed her. The only reason it didn’t was because he’d exposed a part of himself to her she felt certain not many people knew about, either.

  “My sisters are also all on the board. And my mom.” All anyone had to do was look at the annual report to discover that. “Except for my mom’s, all our positions are honorary. Uncle Harry gave them to us when we graduated from high school. He also gave each of us a monetary gift,” she decided to call the $100,000 he’d bestowed on each of them. “That’s how we paid for our educations, and how I opened the bistro. He’s been generous to our family, but just because we know him doesn’t mean we look at him or any of the Hunts as an ATM. We make our own way.”

  Any of the Hunts, she’d said. J.T. would know her, Max thought.

  “Mind telling me how you know them?”

  “That would depend on why you’re asking.”

  There was no mistaking her caution. Considering the wealth Harry Hunt and his sons possessed, he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t doubt for a moment that there were those who might try to get close to her just because of whatever influence she might have with any one of them.

  His partner included.

  He just wished that caution wasn’t there. Not with him.

  “I’m just asking…” As a friend, he thought, because that was the easiest way to excuse the protectiveness he felt toward her. “Because I’m trying to figure out the ‘surrogate’ part in all of this. I don’t have any ulterior motives, Tommi.” He set his mug of coffee on the slab of colored concrete his decorator had chosen as a coffee table. “If you’d rather I let it go, I will.”

  He didn’t want to. But he would. For now.

  For long moments, he heard nothing but the low drone of a pregame show on the flat-screen television above the granite fireplace. Behind the glass fireplace screen, flames shot in little jets from a bed of blue glass beads. He’d flipped on the gas switch as much to put some animation in the room as to take the edge off the chill. That was why he kept the TV on when he was there, too. All the hard, sleek surfaces in the high and expansive place looked gre
at. They just didn’t offer much in the way of warmth.

  Odd, he thought, that he hadn’t considered that until now.

  “We know them because my father was Uncle Harry’s business partner,” he finally heard her say. “His sons are like cousins. They’re older than we are, so we weren’t close growing up, but they’re like family.”

  “Your dad was his business partner?”

  “Mom and my dad knew him even before they were married. I’m sure that’s why Uncle Harry wanted to help with expenses after Dad died. And why he gave us the board positions later. They’d all known each other since they were kids.”

  “But your dad had to be worth plenty in his own right.”

  “He probably was,” she quietly concluded. “I won’t go into what all happened, and there’s a lot I don’t know, but he’d pretty much mismanaged his and mom’s finances. We had to move and things changed quite a bit,” she admitted, sparing him the details, “but we never went without anything we really needed. Mom insisted on that. She also insisted on taking care of everything herself. Uncle Harry got around that by focusing on us. Monetarily, anyway.”

  The man had never been much on personal connections, she told him. But her mom firmly believed education was the only road to true independence. Since that became the focus for all of her daughters, she allowed herself to accept whatever might enhance or fund that goal from Harry. But that was all.

  Max listened for nuances, but Tommi never ventured near whatever it was her father had done to mismanage what must have been considerable assets. Even all those years ago, HuntCom would have been worth millions. Because he sensed she was protecting her father’s memory and, maybe her mother, he wouldn’t ask. Nor did he ask why she thought Harry wanted her married badly enough to offer a bribe to get the deed done. He didn’t want anything to change the soft, confiding tones of her voice as he sat back on his leather sofa in his sweats and nursed the coffee that didn’t taste anywhere near as good as hers did.