Kathleen O'Brien - Mistletoe Man

“I’m sorry that took so long,” she said suddenly, and he looked up to see that she had cradled the receiver. Sighing, she rubbed the back of her neck with one hand. “I think this must be the onset of adolescence. She argues with me about absolutely everything.”

“Yes, I hear the teenage years can be fairly hairraising,” he said politely. “I assume Christy doesn’t consider going to her grandparents’ house exactly a trip to Disneyland.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Lindsay said, still kneading her neck. “Come to think of it, the old place does bear a slight resemblance to the Haunted Mansion.” She walked over to stand near him by the fire, her upraised hand resting behind her head, her loosened braid spilling in thick, dark waves over her arm. “But you’re right, of course. Christy doesn’t feel comfortable with her grandmother. Even before our parents died, we were never—” she seemed to be looking for the right word “—very close.”

“Well, maybe we’ll get lucky, and the storm will pass through quickly,” he said. He hoped it would, and not just for her sake. For three years now he had spent the winters up here alone. The snowbound days were the best. Cut off from work, friends, television, telephone and sometimes even Roc, he could sink numbly into the brooding silence. It felt right, this frozen prison. It was the only time he didn’t have to pretend to anyone, and he wouldn’t welcome having Lindsay Blaisdell as a cellmate. “You may be able to get home before she’s out of school tomorrow.”

“Oh, good heavens, yes! I have to get home by tomorrow,” she exclaimed, wide-eyed, as if she hadn’t considered the possibility that this could go on longer than twenty-four hours. “It’s only four days till Christmas!” She added the last as if that fact alone decided the matter.

He hesitated, hardly able to credit the ingenuous faith he heard in her voice. Apparently she still believed that Fate intervened to protect the dreams of the innocent. Usually such naiveté made him impatient—he had made a religion of facing difficult truths, and he insisted that those around him do the same.

Natural disasters didn’t pause for Christmas dinner. The storm front might stall right over them, trapping them here for days, only to be followed by treacherous winds, buried roads, ice storms, downed trees and power lines, a hundred dangers that would make escape impossible. She might be smarter to plan on celebrating New Year’s Eve with her little Christy.

Those were the facts, whether she liked them or not. But, strangely, the words wouldn’t come. He found himself curiously reluctant to burst that bubble of guileless innocence. It was really a rather pretty thing, though useless, of course…and doomed, too, like an exquisite ice sculpture sparkling under a noonday sun.

And so he didn’t speak. A moment of silence stretched into two, then three, as she toyed abstractedly with her braid and he sipped at his coffee.

In a moment she sighed and, letting go of her hair, seemed to straighten herself and return to business.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll need to telephone Robert, too,” she said, her manner crisp, as if she regretted her lapse into such a personal discussion. “He’ll be wondering when I’m coming back. I’ll be glad to charge it to his calling card—”

Daniel shifted against the cushions. Obviously she was uncomfortable with being obliged to accept the hospitality of a man she disliked. He understood the reluctance to put herself in his debt, but this was absurd. What would be next—offering to pay for her meals? “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “Call direct. I’m quite sure my company won’t go bankrupt over a few extra long-distance bills.”

She smiled coolly. “Sorry. It’s just that over at Hamilton Homes, you see, we worry a lot about things like that.”

“Yes,” he agreed, glancing at the stack of documents. “I suppose you do.” But she was still smiling, and he realized that her comment had been mildly sarcastic. So—she wasn’t quite as naive as all that, was she?

She drew a deep breath. “Mr. McKinley—”

“Daniel,” he corrected. “We’re living together, remember?”

“Yes…Daniel.” But she swallowed the last syllable, and he knew she felt funny saying the name. Well, that was only natural, he supposed. If she still worked for him, he would never have invited her to use his first name. And he suddenly wondered whether, if he made the clearly mad move of buying Hamilton Homes, she would be his employee once again.

“When I call Robert,” she was saying, “he’s going to want to know where the negotiations stand. I know you said there was only one chance in a million that you would ever accept this deal—”

“Right.”

She met his gaze directly, though a certain rigidity in her posture made him wonder if she were as tranquil as she’d like him to believe.

“Is that still your position?” She took a deep breath. “You’ve seen the papers now. Has anything in those documents changed your mind?” Her gaze finally flickered. “Or anything in our discussion?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “As I told you—I haven’t learned anything from those papers that I didn’t know before,” he said. “And I haven’t heard you say anything I hadn’t heard you say before, either, have I?”

She shook her head slightly. “I suppose not.”

“So, no. Nothing has changed. The odds were one in a million before you got here, and they remain one in a million now.”

“Are you sure?” She turned her deep, wide gaze on his face, her eyes studying his searchingly. “You see, Robert really can’t afford to cherish hopes that are worthless. If there isn’t even that one remote chance in a million, we’ll need to pursue other options.”

“Other options?” He let his skepticism seep into the words.

She flushed, but her voice was firm. “Yes. So I hope you’ll be honest, and you won’t hold out false hope just so that things won’t be so awkward while we’re stuck here together.”

“Awkward?” Putting his coffee mug back on the end table, he stood up. The motion brought him within a foot of where she stood, and he could smell the sweet floral scent of her perfume, which had been released by the warmth of the fire. He felt a sudden flare of irritation toward Robert Hamilton for letting her venture out into the corporate jungle to do his dirty work for him.

“I’m not afraid of ‘awkward’, Lindsay,” Daniel said bluntly. “In fact, where business is concerned, I thrive on it.” He gestured toward the telephone. “So go on-call Robert and tell him the fates have given him a reprieve. It’s a million to one right now, but you’ve got until this blizzard passes to improve the odds.”

Half an hour later, Lindsay followed the rhythmic sounds of a pounding ax until she came to the source of the noises, a small woodshed just outside the kitchen door. Assuming that she would find Roc splitting logs, she eased open the door just a few inches and poked her head out.

To her surprise, though, it was Daniel, not Roc, and immediately all other thoughts slipped out of her mind like rain down a windowpane. No longer in the suit and tie he’d been wearing when she first saw him, he now wore jeans and a blue-striped shirt, the sleeves of which had been rolled up above his elbows to allow a greater range of motion.

He didn’t seem to notice the cracked door. His attention was focused on the large, squat cylindrical log that stood on some sort of pedestal in front of him. His legs were planted with a squared-off determination, and his bare arms were raised high and to one side. They seemed to hold just a second, and then, with a sudden, violent grace, they swept down, burying the head of the ax several inches deep into the log. Bracing one boot- clad foot on the pedestal, he worked the ax free and then set up a new log and prepared to strike again.