by Taylor Hart
“You too.” She stood there and watched the door shut, not knowing why she suddenly felt lonely without him. That was so stupid.
Her phone buzzed, and she picked it up. It was a message from her boss. You’re fired.
Tears of shock came to her eyes. She’d thought she only needed that money so she could possibly get to Salt Lake and to an audition. But now, she didn’t even know if she would be able to pay the rent. “Merry Christmas to me.”
Then determination from Mike’s words ran through her. She texted her boss back. I need my last paycheck, or I’m calling corporate.
Chapter 5
After a half an hour of driving around, not finding chains and getting a ticket, Mike pulled to the side of the road as snow came down even harder. He hit the steering wheel. “Dang it.”
He didn’t want to call his family and tell them the situation. His mother and sister were worriers. His father wasn’t normally, but he might be about this.
So he did what he’d seen Zoey doing. He prayed. He asked for God’s help and asked that he be shown a way. That he’d be able to help those around him and that he’d be safe. When he finished, he put his truck into gear and knew exactly what he needed to do.
When Zoey pulled back the door, Mike could tell she’d been eating the cheeseburger because she had ketchup on her face.
She quickly put down the fry she was holding. “I’m not on the roof of a building, so why are you here?”
Putting up his hands, he said, “You’re not, but I am.”
She stepped back. “Come in and tell me what you mean.” Her fingers brushed her face and found ketchup, and she blushed.
Tentatively, he walked into the cozy apartment. “It’s not a big deal you’re eating the burger. I bought it so you’d eat it.”
Zoey rolled her eyes. “Talk.”
Man, this woman was tough. “I need a place to stay tonight.”
She looked outside. “No kidding. Did you get a ticket because there’re, like, no chains to be bought anywhere?”
He grunted. “Yep.”
She relaxed and moved to the couch. “It’s not amazing, but it will do in a pinch. I have some sheets. And—”
“That’s not all I need.”
“What?”
“I …” There was no easy way to say this, so he just went for it. “Look, I mentioned my sister’s getting married. What I didn’t mention is that I was supposed to bring a date. My girlfriend was supposed to come to the wedding, so she could meet everyone. We’d been together about three months.”
“Don’t tell me she dumped you.” Zoey cocked an eyebrow.
He nodded. “Two weeks ago, but I haven’t told anyone yet.”
“You didn’t want to steal your sister’s thunder.” She sighed. “Typical hero.” Moving into the kitchen, she picked up the cheeseburger, took a bite, and leaned back against the table. “Continue,” she said through her bite. “This is interesting.”
He winked at her. “You shouldn’t talk with your mouth full.”
She fluttered her eyes sarcastically at him.
He wanted to tell her she kind of looked seductive when she did that, but he didn’t. “Anyway. I was thinking about how you’re here and I don’t know if you have plans for Christmas, but …”
“My boss at the truck stop just told me I am fired, so I guess not.”
“Did you tell him you get your last check?”
“Yes, but he hasn’t responded.”
He frowned. “Let me talk to him. What’s his number?”
“No. I’ll go over and talk to him in person soon.”
He sighed. “Sorry. That stinks.”
She nodded.
He had a funny sensation, like maybe this was all meant to be.
“So what did you want to do?” she asked.
“Will you …” He chickened out. No, it was stupid.
“What?”
He gulped. His palms were sweaty like when he was sixteen and about to ask Nellie Bells to prom junior year.
She crossed her arms. “Spit it out.”
The fighter in him pushed through. “Will you be my Christmas girlfriend?”
She looked perplexed.
The words came out fast. “Listen, my sister Lacey is marrying a guy named Dom. Two years ago, she brought him home as a fake boyfriend and everyone kind of fell in love with him, and now they’re getting married.”
“No,” she said flatly, letting out a rippling laugh. “That story is not helping your cause, by the way.”
This was coming out all wrong. “I don’t want that. I just … my dad was questioning me earlier. It’s like he knew I was lying about the girlfriend. I was driving around just now, and I kept thinking, what if I paid you to be my girlfriend for a couple of days? No expectations, just keep the town off my back, my dad off my back. Put a name with a face and smile and do the whole show. Then you’re back to your life in Billings.”
“You’re crazy. No.” She threw the cheeseburger down on the table and pulled a glass out of the cupboard. “No way.” She filled it and took a drink.
Following her, but keeping a distance, he shed his hat and gloves. “Why not? You need the money. I know you do. Your car is dead, and you just lost your job.”
She turned her back on him and put the glass on the counter.
Mike closed the gap, standing right behind her. “I could pay you two thousand dollars. I have it in savings. I could give you half now and half after if everything goes well. Then you could get your car into the shop. I’d even tow it there for you in the morning.”
She let the silence stretch just long enough to get awkward. “What about your cousin, Chelsea, in my nursing program? Is she going to be there?”
He sifted through the mounds of family information his mother had been giving him. He snapped his fingers. “Luckily, she’s not. Her family left on a cruise. My mom has been complaining that they’ll miss the wedding.”
When she turned back to him, she looked stumped.
Mike got nervous, like he’d really offended her. He raked a hand through his hair. “Never mind. This was a bad idea. Clearly.” He headed for the door, thinking he would just find a hotel. If they were all full, he’d just hunker down in some truck stop and settle in the café for the night.
“Wait.”
He stopped with his hand on the knob, his heart pounding. Slowly, he pulled back to face her.
“Let’s talk about this.” Her eyes were red, and she was blinking. She opened her arms. “Talk me through this.”
Hope sprang into his heart, and he thought about not having to face the Snow Valley gossips by himself. Zoey was beautiful, and it might be fun having her on his arm. “Okay, we tow your car to your mechanic tomorrow.”
“I don’t have a mechanic.”
“Right, we find someone for you. Then we head to Snow Valley. It’s a little over an hour from here.” His mind was spinning. “When we get there, it’s going to be controlled chaos because my dad and I are clearing the snow for the tents and my mom will be on flowers. She owns a flower shop, so believe me, the wedding flowers are going to be amazing.” He could smell them already.
“Flower shop?” She looked confused.
Mike nodded. “She’s so good at it. She’s one of the largest online dealers in Montana too. Anyway, Christmas Eve is the wedding. It’s at two o’clock. Then there’s the reception and dancing. Do you see why I can’t face all of this by myself? The whole town will be there.” He sighed. The wedding hadn’t even happened yet, and it had still worn him out. “Dom and Lacey will fly out on the night of Christmas Eve to go on their honeymoon. Christmas will be chill at my grandpa’s. Then on the twenty-sixth, we do a toy drive, and that night I’ll bring you back.”
“So I would be back for sure by the twenty-sixth.”
“We’ll just say you’re flying back to Boston.”
“Boston?” She snapped her fingers. “Right. That’s where you go to school. You’re at Harva
rd, aren’t you?”
How come it felt like a bad thing when she said it? “Yeah.”
She shook her head emphatically. “Rich, snooty, Harvard? No. I can’t do this.”
Closing the gap between them, he touched her forearm. “Please.” He found he not only wanted this for her; he wanted it for himself. “Listen, I told you that Snow Valley weddings and Christmas are awesome, and I told you how I wasn’t bringing a girlfriend. Frankly, that turns everything brutal for me. There will be all of the town gossips, the pity in my mother’s eyes—and if you knew everything she went through, you would agree she shouldn’t have to deal with a loser son.”
For a moment, she simply stared at his hand on her. Zoey Harper was breathtakingly beautiful. The red hair, the white, porcelain skin, the thick eyeliner that made her green eyes mesmerize him. Even the little stud in her nose. She was different from the other girls he’d dated. Scrappy. He liked it.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Let me give you the money. And you can save me from myself.” He laughed. “Do you know I even recently registered for one of Cooper Harrison’s online dating programs about how to keep the girl once you find her?”
Zoey frowned. “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”
“I’ll tell you later.” He pulled his hand back. “Just say yes. Say you’ll be my Christmas girlfriend.”
For a beat, she didn’t respond. Then a smile played at her lips. “I’m not gonna lie. I do need the money.” She let out a light laugh. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
He punched the air. “You won’t regret this.”
She moved to the kitchen table and stuck her hand inside the bag, taking out a fry and tossing it inside her mouth. “I already do.”
He chuckled. “You need to pack a swimsuit.”
“Why?” She frowned.
“You’ll see.”
“Just so we’re clear, this will never be more than a paid date.”
“Right. Yeah.” He didn’t know why, but he felt embarrassed, like she knew he was attracted to her. “It’s the deal.”
She nodded. “The deal. That’s all. I mean it. I gave my heart to Josh, and he took it with him when he died in that war zone.”
Sympathy flooded him for all that she’d been through. “No problem.” He surrendered his hands. “This will be a business deal, and I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”
“Plus, I won’t be able to stay any longer, because—” A huge smile washed over her face. “—I’m going to Salt Lake City to audition for The Voice on the twenty-seventh.” She laughed. “With your money.”
He was confused, then intrigued. “Really? You sing?”
She grinned. “It’s the thing I love.”
Chapter 6
The next morning Zoey sat in the passenger side of Mike’s truck and felt grateful. Last night, they’d talked for a while, but she’d felt a bit nervous and turned in early. This morning, true to his word, he’d helped find a mechanic down the road, and he towed her car, which saved her a couple hundred bucks. He went a step further and discussed what might be wrong with the car. It was simultaneously helpful and annoying that he’d taken over the whole issue.
“What are you thinking over there?” Mike asked just as they got on the highway that would take them to Snow Valley.
They had an hour-and-a-half drive, so she guessed it would be a good time to get everything in order. Order was what she liked. In school, in life, she liked order as much as possible. Lately, she hadn’t been able to control anything. “You didn’t have to act like you were in charge back there with the mechanic.” She sighed. “I’m grateful you did, though.” Casting a sideways glance, she met his eyes for a minute, then focused on the snowy, albeit plowed, road. The snow wasn’t bad this morning, barely coming down.
Mike drummed his fingers on the side door to the beat of the country song playing. He pointed at the radio. “Wait, is this a Texas Waters or Sloane Kent song?”
His tendency toward happiness made her smile. “I think it’s Sloane Kent.”
Mike hummed to the tune. “Man, those Kent brothers. They’re crazy.”
Of course she knew who the Kent brothers were. They were a sensation. “I seriously am obsessed with Sloane Kent. He’s one of the guys on The Voice now, did you know that?”
Mike cocked an eyebrow at her. “No.”
“He’s amazing.” She shook her head, thinking she would die to be on his team. She glanced back to Mike. “I’m serious. You don’t need to feel like you’re responsible for my car repairs.”
He tapped her shoulder in a playful way. “I’m your boyfriend for the next four days, and you’re my girlfriend, so suck it up.”
The term girlfriend felt better than she had thought it would.
“What?” he asked.
Playing with a string on her pants, she confessed. “I’ve been called a widow for the past year. It made me feel old and sad and horrible.” She tugged the string out triumphantly. “I guess girlfriend is better.”
He grinned back at her, then wagged his finger. “And listen, you shouldn’t hitchhike.”
She didn’t respond.
“I mean it. And you shouldn’t stand on the top of buildings in a blizzard, either, for that matter.”
She blew off his comment. “Desperate people do desperate things, okay?”
Glancing at her, he let out a breath. “Am I the next desperate thing? Is that what this is?”
She shrugged. “Pretty much, but if you didn’t notice, you sounded desperate last night too.”
He grunted.
She tried to focus on the reason she was really doing this: so she could go try out for The Voice. “So let’s go over everything I need to know so I can keep this girlfriend thing alive for you.” She swallowed. “You told your parents I was coming, right?”
He shrugged. “Not yet.”
“What?”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll just tell them you flew in last minute.”
“Great.” Now she was even more nervous. “Tell me who I am.”
“Right. Ann and I met at a debate tournament we were both judging.”
“What?” Zoey hadn’t considered she might have to be called another name. “Ann?”
Mike nodded. “Ann.”
“It sounds so … proper.”
Mike laughed. “She was that. Very prim. Proper. She liked to write poetry.” He sighed. “I’ve read Mom and Dad some of her poetry before.”
“No!”
“She was pressuring me to.” He averted his eyes back to the road. “But your hair color was the same, so that works.”
This mortified her. “What?”
“Hey, it was. And she would never let me take pictures of her face, because she felt like the Native Americans had it right, and anytime people take pictures of themselves, it takes a piece of their soul.”
Baffled, she shook her head. “I can’t be this girl, even with the same hair color.” That detail annoyed her, and she didn’t know why.
“It’s fine. Really, it won’t be hard. She has no social footprint.”
For a few moments, she had to think about if she could do this. She cringed and thought of the money and the audition. “What kind of poetry?”
“Annoying stuff. Classics. Byron. Yates. I don’t know.” He let out a laugh. “The truth is, she broke it off with me because she didn’t think I was cultured enough. I never wanted to do her hoity-toity things.”
Zoey thought about this. “Okay, so I’m a boring, snooty person.”
Mike pursed his lips. “Pretty much.”
“Why did you date me?”
“Exactly.” He pounded out another song with his hands on the steering wheel. “Oh, this is that Texas Waters song about being born to live.” He rocked out to the song.
She laughed. “I can’t believe you’re in the Harvard Business School.”
He turned down the radio and looked offended. “Hey, top of my class at MSU. You should
have seen my project, too. That’s what really got me into Harvard. A scholarship.”
“Ohhh. What was the project?” she challenged, interested.
He gave her his full attention. “There are these people all over the world that need wheelchairs. And access is tough. There are resources through the government, but people aren’t in place to distribute them. What I did was create a viable business plan to take advantage of government resources to get the wheelchairs into the right hands to give out, if the people meet the restrictions, and still make money to pay the workers.”
She was impressed. “That’s cool.”
He snorted. “It was cool. Truthfully, I couldn’t have done it without my dad. I had the idea, but he helped me take it from concept to reality. My dad, he’s like a business guru. You want to know anything, you ask him. He consults for companies and helps them get the right processes in place.”
“Great, now I’m not intimidated or anything.”
Mike laughed. “No, he’s not like that. Not a jerk. He’s the coolest guy. Very dedicated to growing his business and helping me and my sister and her almost new husband and whoever else in Snow Valley needs help, and his first priority is my mother.”
Her heart softened. “That is cool.”
“They have a really amazing love story. I’m not going to get into it all, but it’s part of what makes them so wonderful.”
Their love story sounded interesting, but she tried to focus. “So what are you going to do after you graduate from Harvard?”
“I don’t know. My dad wants me to go to California and manage his business.”
“You don’t want that?”
He looked a bit annoyed. “I didn’t say that.”
She tried not to get too invested. “You just looked like you didn’t want to when you were talking about it.”
He was quiet. “I don’t think I want to live in a big city.”
“Why? There’s a variety of places to eat.”
He laughed.
“I’m serious.”
“You want to go to a big city?”
“Yep. Get out of Montana, see the world. I can be a nurse anywhere. They even have travelling nurses where you can be in different places sometimes and get to see a lot.”
