Her Christmas Surprise (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Kristin Hardy

  “You’re not asking me about the job.”

  “I’m asking about your steak. Good sauce, too. You think they make this here?” He took another bite.

  “You’d be good at it, you know you would.”

  Lex let his fork drop to the plate with a clink. “I’ve got three other clients, Joe. International outlets. What am I supposed to do with them in the meantime?”

  “We’d make it worth your while. Bring you on in a salaried position, full bennies. Who knows, if it works out, it could turn into a long-term thing.”

  “Until you come back.”

  “If.” Flaherty held up his whiskey and inspected it. “If is the operative word. I’m fifty-eight. It’s time to start thinking about what comes next. This book thing is a trial run. We’ll see where it goes.”

  “You’d have a lot better luck getting me to say yes if you made it a contract job.”

  “I’ll take my chances.” He switched his gaze to Lex. “I want you in the organization. You belong there. With what you know, you could make a big difference.”

  “I do that in the field.”

  “This is just a different way of doing it. You need the right touch after the photo’s taken, as well as before, if you want it to have the impact you intended. Will you at least think about it? Tell me you’ll do that much.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Lex told him, with the feeling of the sand slipping beneath his feet.

  Being back in Manhattan was supposed to feel familiar, comforting. Keely couldn’t figure out why it didn’t. Instead, it felt strange, stifling—too many hurried people, too much concrete, maybe. Too much noise. And yet, she’d only been gone for a couple of weeks. Why, then, did she feel so much at loose ends, so disconnected?

  She’d gotten serious about cleaning up after Lex had gone, picking up, sweeping, vacuuming until some order began to emerge. As it did, some of the tension she felt began to abate. A glance around no longer slapped her in the face with the knowledge that strangers had invaded every corner of her home. Now it was low-grade, background anxiety.

  But it was still there.

  She’d searched everywhere to find some trace of Bradley, some clue about a password. There was no cryptic slip of paper tucked in a drawer, no writing on the wall with circles and arrows. She worked and thought about Bradley and scribbled down a few possibilities, but nothing she wanted to stake her future on.

  So she put Norah Jones on the stereo instead and sang along, tossing a couple of shirts and sweaters, and some jeans into her overnight bag. She was sick and tired of wearing the same thing.

  She was also sick and tired of cleaning. There was so much to do yet, and she hadn’t even started on the corner of her bedroom that she used as an office only gathered the strewn-about papers into an untidy stack. She should keep at it. Instead, she pulled out a gown for the gala and put it into a dress bag.

  When Lex rang the bell, she buzzed him in and waited expectantly as he walked through the door.

  “Wow,” he said as he looked around.

  “Wow good or wow bad?”

  “Wow, you’ve gotten a lot done.” He turned to her. “Wow, it looks better.” He slid an arm around her waist. “Wow, I really like your mouth,” he murmured, leaning in and browsing on it until she felt warmth spreading through her. They sank down to the floor together.

  A long while later, Keely stirred.

  “Where are you going?”

  “We can’t just lay around here all day having sex,” she moved to rise, reaching for her clothing.

  “Sure we can.” He reached for her. “Let me show you.”

  “No,” she said firmly, picking her sweater off the floor, “we have to get the train home.”

  “We’ve got until at least eleven. Or we could stay.”

  She thought longingly of spending the night with him, just the two of them. “There’s Stockton. And my parents. I’m not sure I’m ready to deal with the questions.” Because it would mean facing things she wasn’t ready to just yet. How could she explain what she was doing to her mother when she didn’t fully understand it herself? Because Jeannie would figure it out. Keely had only Nancy Pittman and her lily of the valley to thank for the fact that Jeannie hadn’t noticed already.

  And once she did, she’d have her daughter’s head examined. Assuming her daughter hadn’t already decided to do it on her own. But, oh, if she knew where Lex could take Keely with those hands, that mouth, Jeannie would understand.

  Keely sighed. “We really have to go,” she said.

  “I guess you’re right.” Lex rose and pulled on his jeans, trailing after her into her bedroom to watch as she finished her packing.

  “Do you see the charger for my BlackBerry anywhere?” she asked, poking around her desk and bureau.

  Lex picked up a framed photograph that was leaning against the wall. “Does this go here?” He nodded to a hook.

  Keely took the picture from him and turned it over. White sails, blue water. She and Bradley grinned out at the camera from their seats near the tiller of his boat. They’d taken the shot on Labor Day weekend a year before, just after they’d gotten engaged. His arm was around her shoulders; her hands were on his. In his tanned, sun-bleached smile, Keely searched for some hint of the mess that he’d already made of both of their lives. In her own expression there was only uncomplicated joy.

  She didn’t recognize that person, the woman who had faced the world with trust. How could she, she who knew better? How had she let herself get fooled, dropped into a desperate situation with less and less hope of escape? “What a sap,” she muttered, and dropped the photo into the trash can.

  She looked around the room, swiping her hair out of her face.

  “You okay?” Lex asked.

  “I’m just looking for my iPod,” she said, turning back to the desk and its island of chaos.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “My iPod,” she said desperately. “It’s one of the little ones. Blue.” She couldn’t bear for him to be kind just then. Stupidity had its punishment; she’d just gotten it a bit more than most.

  “I don’t see it,” Lex said, picking up books, moving papers around. “I saw a blue one at the house. Could Brad have borrowed it without telling you?”

  “I don’t see why not. He didn’t tell me about anything else.” Her throat tightened. It was one more thing. It was all too much.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, blinking fiercely. Nothing mattered. And she was getting sick, so sick of having meltdowns around Lex. She grabbed her bag and walked out of the room.

  “Hey.” He caught up with her and turned her around. “He didn’t deserve you.”

  “It’s not that.” Keely stopped. “I’m not usually a basket case,” she began.

  “I know.”

  “That’s the problem,” she burst out. “You don’t know. All you’ve seen is me being a mess. I’m not usually like this.”

  “I do know,” he said steadily. “I saw this place this morning, remember? I’m amazed that you’ve held together as well as you have.”

  “I just…” She let out a long, slow breath. “I can’t believe I bought it all. I look at that picture and there’s me, all smiley, dumb and happy. And there’s Bradley. He had the whole scheme in place back then. He was working with Skele, probably already sleeping around. He was doing it all and I didn’t have a clue.”

  He traced a finger along her jaw. “It’s not a crime to trust.”

  “It’s dangerous, though.” She looked at him soberly. “I can’t even trust myself. I don’t know who to trust, what to trust anymore.”

  “Trust this,” he whispered, and fastened his mouth over hers.

  They lay in bed together, the sheets twined around them, the sun long gone. Lovemaking had left Keely’s limbs heavy with sleepy languor. They needed to go home, she knew that, but somehow she couldn’t quite make it matter. Instead, she lay with her head pillowed on Lex’s chest.

  “So tell
me about you,” she asked.

  “Like what?”

  “Like how did you get into photography?”

  His fingertips trailed down over her back in soft, hypnotic strokes. “My grandmother. She gave me a camera for my birthday. I was eleven. I couldn’t get enough of it. Spent all my allowance on developing and film.”

  “Your allowance?”

  “Pierce was big on teaching us financial responsibility. It was part of his grand scheme to turn us into management material.”

  “I’m guessing he wasn’t big on the photography.”

  Lex laughed in genuine amusement. “He wanted to see me saving my allowance, not blowing it on artsy-fartsy crap.”

  “His words?”

  “Oh, yeah. He was a baby boomer but he wasn’t exactly one of those actualize yourself hippie types. He was more into self-actualization in the boardroom.”

  She couldn’t imagine anything less well suited to Lex. “I guess the two didn’t square with each other.”

  “Not as he saw it.” Lex kissed her hair. “Not as I saw it, either. I didn’t want his world. From the time I was a kid, he had this really clear vision of who and what I should be, no ifs, ands or buts.”

  “You were a person, not a piece of clay,” she murmured, raising her head to look into his eyes.

  “No, I was Aubrey Pierce Alexander III and I had a responsibility to the family and the company. Choice didn’t enter into it. The photography stuff he saw as rebellion. It drove him nuts, especially because I was screwing around in my classes. Photography was the only one I liked. That, I aced. Best in class, awards, the whole deal.”

  “You won an award?” she asked, delighted. “For what?”

  “Best nature study, I think. It was a picture of the brook in winter.”

  “That should have done something to change his mind.”

  “Oh, it did. He yanked me from the school and enrolled me in a prep school that advertised its discipline—and that didn’t have any art programs.”

  “What did you do?”

  Lex shrugged. “A few things I shouldn’t have. Got mouthy with some of the teachers. They weren’t the ones I was angry at but I was fourteen and they were trying to force feed me supply-side economics. I was bored, so I pulled some stupid stunts.”

  “Sneaking out of the dorms?”

  “Sneaking into some classrooms. Letting loose all the animals in the biology labs, loosening the screws on teachers’ lounge doorknob so that they all got locked inside at break, that sort of thing. When they’d had enough, they booted me out.”

  “What did Pierce do?”

  The corners of his mouth curved faintly. “Sent me off to a military academy. I got really good at doing pushups.” The smile held no humor. “By then I was sixteen and nothing was going to change my mind. Pierce lectured me that I wasn’t applying myself to my goals. Or his goals, rather. On my goals, I did fine. It’s surprisingly hard to get kicked out of military school, but I managed it three times. By the time we ran out of academies, I was almost eighteen.”

  Keely stroked her fingers down his cheek. “I heard rumors. You came home that summer, I remember seeing you.” Tall, dark, brooding. He’d shown up in the middle of a tennis match she’d been playing with Bradley. Looking back, she wondered how she’d ever missed the tension between the two brothers.

  “I was back that summer, but not for long.”

  The mother of all fights, according to Bradley, though he’d been sketchy on the details. Lex’s first brush with the law, or so Bradley had said. Keely wondered. “So what really happened?” she asked.

  “I think Pierce had given up on making me into who he wanted, by then. It had come down to a battle of wills. It was the day before my birthday. One of his control games was to keep me without a car, but my buddies and I wanted to go out. I asked if I could use one of the cars and he told me no. So I took it without permission.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was buddies with the sheriff, so he had me hauled in and held overnight. Happy birthday, son.”

  “My God.” She stared.

  “Once I got out, I went looking for him. Half an hour later, I was walking out to I-95 with my cameras and my passport and the clothes I had on me.”

  Eighteen and angry. And probably scared to death. “Oh, Lex,” she whispered.

  “It’s okay. It was a long time ago. Pierce is gone, things worked out.”

  “And you’re back home.”

  “Back in Chilton,” he corrected. “Not home.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  He looked at her for a long time. “It’s different than I remember. I don’t know if it’s because there’s no Pierce or that it’s changed. Or that I have.”

  “You’re different than I remember,” she said.

  “What do you remember?”

  “Surly, brooding. Hostile. Bradley always said you were trouble.”

  His lips twitched. “I am trouble.”

  “You did a good job of looking like it. You always made me a little uncomfortable.” More than a little, she remembered, but maybe it hadn’t been uncomfortable at all. Maybe it had been some part of her recognizing the first stirrings of the attraction that would exist between them, an attraction she had been in no way ready to face at fourteen.

  “I remember you, always in your tennis skirt, always with your hair brushed. You’re different than I remember, too.” Mischief glimmered in his eyes. “The girl I knew was headed for the Junior League and a lifetime of fancy lunches.”

  “Funny what happens when you lose your money.” Her tone was flippant.

  “My mom told me about that,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. We survived and I think my parents are happier for it.”

  “What about you?”

  “I survived, too.”

  “How old were you when it happened?”

  “A junior in high school.” She rolled onto her back. “My dad spent his time back then just managing our money. He did well during the bubble with day trading. Then again, everyone did. When the bottom dropped out, it was awful.” She swallowed. “I remember coming home every day to worse and worse news until I started to dread walking through the door. Just the atmosphere was toxic. Eventually, he wouldn’t even come out of his office, just stayed there all night doing after hours trading and trying to get ahead.”

  “Like trying to gamble your way back from a loss.”

  “Kind of,” she agreed. “It was brutal. In a way, it was almost best when everything hit rock bottom and stayed there. When he finally gave up, that was when he was able to start the recovery.”

  Lex stroked her hair. “It must have been tough on you.”

  She remembered the strain in the faces of her parents. She remembered weeping over the sale of the chateau in Provence where they’d spent August for as long as she could remember. She remembered the friends who’d melted away, talking about trips and things that were no longer a part of her world.

  Like Lara and the friends who’d melted away in New York.

  “It wasn’t the money and things, so much,” she said slowly. “What was hardest was that everything changed.” Her place in the world, in her community, was different. The security she’d always taken for granted was suddenly gone, and if that could happen, what could she depend upon? “For as long as I could remember, things just were. I trusted that. And then it all fell apart beneath me. Like stepping on granite and finding quicksand.”

  Like with Bradley, she realized in sudden shock.

  “Did I mention,” Lex said casually, “that my brother is a punk?” His gaze was steady on hers. “Since he’s not here to say it, and probably wouldn’t if he were, I’ll say it for him—I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what he’s done and what he’s put you through.”

  She stared at him, and suddenly it was as though every line of his face assumed some special importance. Suddenly his gaze seemed to widen to encompass her entire uni
verse. Time and breath stopped, as though the two of them existed between ticks of the clock, between worlds, between heartbeats. And the knowledge shivered through her, solid and undeniable.

  She was in love with him.

  Chapter Eleven

  “You don’t have to do this, you know.” Darlene stared at Keely across the bakery counter, exasperated.

  “I know I don’t have to. I want to. I can do it faster than you can and quite frankly, it’s in my own best interest. You might forget about it or mess it up and the IRS will come haul you off in shackles and then where will I be? A cruller junkie without a supplier.” Keely folded her arms in imitation of Darlene. “I’m not leaving here until you let me into your office. Unless you’re worried about the legal thing.”

  “I’m not worried about the legal thing.”

  “Then deal with it.”

  Darlene rolled her eyes. “All right, all right. Come on in.”

  Keely skirted the counter and walked through the swinging door that led into the bakery itself. “You know, in all the years I’ve been coming here, I don’t think I’ve ever made it into the back,” she commented as they passed the white counters and the wall of ovens. One of Darlene’s assistants turned a cake on a rotating pedestal while she spread on chocolate frosting with a long, thin spatula. Another pulled a pan of muffins from the oven. “I didn’t know you had elves. I thought you did it all by magic.”

  “There are only so many crullers one woman can make,” Darlene said. “I had to hire help to keep up with you.”

  “I can see how that might be.”

  They stopped before open door on the far wall of the room. “Okay, brace yourself,” Darlene said as she flipped on the light. “Welcome to my lair.”

  It was more closet than office, with barely enough room for a desk, a chair and a green plastic trash can. Notes on orders and ship dates covered an oversized wall calendar. On a white board, Darlene had inked the week’s staffing schedule. An old fashioned monitor and keyboard sat on the desk, amid teetering stacks of paperwork.

  Darlene leaned down and flipped on the CPU. “The printer’s behind the desk. I’ve got basic accounting and payroll software.” She clicked to start the program and punched in the password. “The file the accountant gave me is right here. You want coffee?”