by Lisa Plumley
How else could he have looked at a woman who was currently wiping Aiden’s runny nose while simultaneously singing along to “Run Run Rudolph” . . . and actually found her actions endearing?
He was so far gone that, when Danielle glanced up at him, saw him watching her, and smiled, he volunteered for more.
“I hear The Big Foot Bar does a wicked peppermint hot cocoa,” Jason said. “How about some adults-only time tonight?”
Danielle’s smile broadened. “I think I could persuade Gigi and Henry to babysit. In fact, I’d love to see them try.”
At her mischievous look, Jason loved her more than ever.
“It’s a date. I have a few things to do down at the store first.” For some necessary tasks, he needed access to a computer. He hadn’t brought one for what he’d thought was going to be a short-lived media tour. “But after that, I’m all yours.”
“I can’t wait.” Danielle gave Aiden a reassuring squeeze, then stood while pocketing her tissues. “Say, eight o’clock?”
Jason nodded. Aiden did, too. “I’ll show Gigi and Henry how to feed my goldfish!” he said. “They’re going to love Rudolph!”
“Gigi ought to be really good at Fashion Makeover EXTREME! ” Karlie suggested from the sofa, where she was curled up with a book. A smile quirked her lips. “Unlike some people who suck.”
“Maybe Henry can build robots,” Zach put in. “My friend Lorenzo’s big brother has the same set I got, and his robot is sweet!”
Jason had some plans of his own on those fronts, but it would be a while before he unveiled them. In the meantime . . .
“Eight o’clock is perfect,” he told Danielle with a squeeze of her hand. “I’ll be there.”
Half dressed in a skirt, lacy bra, and chemise, Danielle heard the doorbell ring at 7:45 sharp. Startled, she glanced at her clock, then at the clothing, hosiery, and footwear trailing from her closet to her bed. Boots vied with booties and sandals on her bedroom floor; sweaters challenged silky tops and tees; her fluffy orange jacket surveyed the whole scene with smug serenity, knowing it would be called into action no matter what else happened that night, given the wintry December weather.
Pondering all those items, Danielle still couldn’t decide what to wear. The Big Foot Bar wasn’t fancy. It was a friendly but grungy watering hole that catered to locals. Probably, a skirt was overkill. Maybe a pair of jeans and a cute top?
Ding dong. The doorbell chimed again.
Feeling flustered, Danielle threw on her robe and belted it. She scurried to the front door, casting an evaluative glance at her children as she went. Aiden, Zach, and Karlie seemed fine. Danielle didn’t hire babysitters very often. Given how much she worked, she liked spending her free time with her children as much as possible. Especially since her divorce. But tonight . . .
. . . tonight, she was going all out on the va-va-voom front.
“Woo-hoo! Look at you!” Gigi cooed as Danielle opened the door. Her friend sashayed inside with Henry bringing up the rear carrying some boxes. Gigi’s gaze took in Danielle’s hair, her makeup, and—lastly—her unfinished outfit. “All of the mêlée is catching up with you, I see. You are looking very fancy tonight.” Gigi edged aside Danielle’s robe and took a peek. “Right down to your lacy lingerie. C’est parfaite!”
“Hi to you, too.” Danielle clutched her robe to shut it. She wasn’t sure if her relationship with Jason qualified as a “mêlée,” per se, but it had been a whirlwind, for sure. That’s probably what Gigi meant. Blushing over the new bra her friend had noticed, Danielle nodded to Henry. “What are the boxes for? Wait—are those Moosby’s boxes you’re carrying?”
Gigi shrugged. “I needed for them to be out of the way before the Kismet Christmas Carol Crawl next week. We are going to have a lot of extra people in our store. Something had to give.” She gestured at Henry. “Where should Henry put them?”
Since Jason was still Danielle’s houseguest—and he still couldn’t know about her inventory manipulation—that was a good question. “In the garage,” she decided. “Right through there.”
She pointed, indicating the way for Henry.
“I’ll show you,” Zach volunteered. He jumped up.
Ever since her son had begun spending more time with Jason, he’d become twice as attentive as usual. Zach had always been a caring kid, but now he was even more helpful. Danielle guessed that all the Lego-building “J” and “Z” had been doing together was leading to good things. Positive role model things.
Jason Hamilton: CEO, playboy, role model. Who’da thunk it?
“How do you know when you have too much inventory?” Karlie asked Gigi. “How do you know which things to move? Because I’ve been getting interested in entrepreneurship lately, and I . . .”
As her daughter astounded her by launching a discussion of retailing with Gigi, Danielle reevaluated the situation in the living room. At first, she hadn’t looked closely enough to realize it, but Karlie had been reading a book—something she hadn’t done much of since getting interested in video games.
Maybe Jason had had a positive influence on Karlie, too. After all, Danielle had heard the two of them discussing the specifics of Karlie’s Fashion Makeover EXTREME! video game in ways that Danielle simply couldn’t have pulled off without inciting an instant knee-jerk rebellion in her daughter.
“Gigi, come meet my new goldfish!” Aiden tugged Gigi’s coat sleeve, eager for her to see Rudolph. “He’s right over here. See? Look at him! Maybe you can help me feed him later.”
“Not too much food!” Danielle cautioned automatically.
But to her astonishment, Aiden was already one step ahead of her. “We can’t feed him right now,” her son was saying to his babysitter as he laid his hand protectively over the fish food Gigi had impulsively grabbed from beside the fishbowl. “Jason said if you feed Rudolph too much or too often, he’ll explode.”
At Aiden’s matter-of-fact tone, Danielle boggled. She’d tried to explain to her son in several different ways that it was important to carefully ration the goldfish food. It had never occurred to her to be quite as graphic as Jason had been. She hadn’t wanted to scare Aiden by being too direct about all the fish deaths he’d accidentally caused over the years.
Evidently, though, where her gentle entreaties had failed, Jason’s blunt warning had made an impression on Aiden.
“Ah. I see. We do not want to do that then, do we?”
“Nuh-uh. I love Rudolph!” A sly glance backward at Danielle. “Except he needs some other fish to keep him company.”
Aiden’s hint wasn’t lost on Danielle. She knew that her son wanted more goldfish. Until now, she hadn’t seriously considered giving in to his pleas—for his own good, of course.
Marveling at the changes she’d noticed in her children, Danielle watched them more closely. Zach was acting like a perfect junior gentleman. Karlie had started spending her video game time reading. Aiden had finally learned not to murder his hapless goldfish. She was about to go out for an adults-only date. That was something she hadn’t done in years, because she and Mark had gotten married and started a family right away.
There was only one explanation for all these changes.
Still . . . could Jason really have made this much difference in only a few short weeks? Danielle knew that he’d affected her in a big way. It seemed that she hadn’t noticed, until now, exactly how involved Jason had become with Karlie, Zach, and Aiden, too.
She couldn’t have special-ordered a custom boyfriend more perfect than Jason had turned out to be. If only he were staying. Or she weren’t going. Or things were just . . . different.
Because as an SUV door slammed outside and then footsteps sounded up her snowy front porch, Danielle remembered that the man who’d engendered all these positive developments was only going to be with her temporarily. For a variety of reasons.
None of which seemed very critical as Jason opened the door and then came inside, brightening at the sight of her visitor
s.
Wearing his new cold-weather gear with tousled hair and another casually tossed-on GQ-worthy scarf, Jason greeted Gigi and a just-returned Henry. He fist-bumped Zach, ruffled Aiden’s hair, then gave Karlie a genial, “How’s it going?” nod.
Karlie grinned in response . . . then seemed to remember that she was annoyed at the mere existence of her mother’s “stupid new boyfriend.” Sighing mightily, she slouched on the sofa again.
Danielle caught Jason’s quickly hidden downcast look.
She touched his hand, then drew him over to stand near the Christmas tree in a more private spot. “Don’t take Karlie’s attitude too personally,” she told him in a low voice. “Even at the best of times, Karlie can be a little standoffish. She’s a hugger, not a huggee. She likes to be the one who makes the first move.”
“I get it.” Jason let his gaze rove over Danielle’s semi-dressed figure. Either he liked her current state of dishabille, or he was interested in helping her out of her clothes altogether. But all he said was, “Karlie’s cautious. That’s okay. She just needs time. Like mother, like daughter.”
“Are you saying I’m acting like a ten-year-old?”
He grinned to defuse her defensiveness. It worked. “I’m saying everyone should get to decide their own limits. Kids too. When I was a kid, I would have been a lot happier if I hadn’t had to hug my stinky old bearded uncle Oscar, that’s for sure.”
“It’s not that Karlie doesn’t like you.”
“It’s a little bit that she doesn’t like me.”
“She’ll come around eventually.”
“I’ll keep trying until she does.”
“I know you will,” Danielle said warmly, “and I appreciate that. Really, I do. So—”
Gigi stepped in. “As heartwarming as this is, Henry and I are not here to listen to you two behave like parents.”
Surprised, Danielle stared at her. “Parents? We’re not—”
“—acting like parents,” Jason finished for her. He cast Danielle a bewildered glance, then gave Gigi a decidedly uneasy-sounding chuckle. “I don’t know anything about parenting.”
“He doesn’t know anything about parenting,” Danielle confirmed. “Yesterday, he gave the kids cupcakes for breakfast.”
Jason straightened. “Again—tell me the difference between a muffin and a cupcake. Because they seem the same to me.”
“A muffin is breakfast. A cupcake is dessert.”
“So if I’d scraped off the frosting, then it would have been okay?” Jason persisted. “Because the way you freaked out, anyone would have thought I’d fed the kids Doritos and beer.”
“You’re not that clueless.” Danielle suppressed a smile. She’d loved that Jason had taken it upon himself to try to stir up some breakfast. “Besides, you did let me sleep in that day. That earned you some major points right there.”
“I brought you a cupcake, too. Which you ate! So—”
A piercing whistle cut short their discussion.
Henry took his fingers out of his mouth. He grinned.
“We’re here,” he clarified with a besotted look at Gigi, “so you two can go have a date. So will you get going already?”
Gladly, Danielle did.
And that’s how, with her friends’ blessing and her children’s cooperation, she got herself dressed, got herself out the door into a moonlit wintertime December night, and got herself onto her first real date . . . with her first fake boyfriend.
It was going to be fantastic. She just knew it.
Chapter Sixteen
To Jason, stepping into The Big Foot Bar with Danielle felt like coming home. The place was comfortable, welcoming, and a little raucous. It was full of pitted wood tables, beer-stained concrete, and liquor-company “stained glass” gimme lamps featuring logos of current and long-forgotten brands. There were neon signs on the kitschy wood-paneled walls, a jukebox in the corner, and several boisterous patrons. The only nod to the season was a limp felt Santa hat propped on a Jim Beam bottle.
It was a dive bar in the best sense. He loved it.
Clearly, this was where the locals came to unwind.
Beside him, Danielle looked around. “Sorry. You probably weren’t counting on someplace so grungy. We can go across the lake to Lagniappe on the Lakeshore instead, if you want. They serve real scotch, good wine, and those chichi ‘small plates’ of food that are all the rage in the tourist places right now.”
Jason inhaled the yeasty tang of beer. He examined the tables full of parka-wearing people just in from the snow.
He spied a waitress passing by with a tray loaded with peppermint hot chocolate drinks and shook his head.
“Not until I get one of those. This place is perfect.”
Danielle blinked. “It is?”
“It’s just like home.” Jason caught her surprised glance as he put his hand to the small of her back and steered them both to a free table. “I already told you about my past. Did you think I was pounding foie gras and champagne in between Dumpster-diving expeditions? I was eating beef stew from a can and drinking cheap beer. I wasn’t born a CEO, you know.”
They settled in at one of the close-packed tables. Jason nodded at the people he recognized from the store and his meet-and-greets; Danielle exchanged hellos with her friends, too.
“I can’t believe you like it here,” she said. “You must be a townie at heart.” She wiggled out of her fuzzy orange jacket and slung it over the back of her rickety chair along with her purse. “I guess that means you could be happy in Kismet.”
“It looks that way.” Jason signaled the waitress to bring two of those liquored-up peppermint hot cocoas. “Unlike you?”
“Well . . .” Seeming thoughtful, Danielle looked around. “I like it here,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean that Kismet is the best place for me overall. The job market is bad—”
“Your job isn’t at risk.” Not if he could help it.
“—even for folks working in the tourism sector,” she continued, “which used to be unbeatable around here. And cultural events are few and far between in Kismet, unless you really like snowmobile races and the county fair—”
“Nothing wrong with a Tilt-A-Whirl and a livestock show.” He grinned. “Plus, I’d like to try a snowmobile race. I think I could win.”
“—and the schools don’t have any of the advantages of big-city schools,” Danielle added. “For instance, we don’t have—”
“Overcrowding? Budget cuts? Discipline issues?” Jason moved his arm to make room for the waitress to set down their drinks. Both were topped with whipped cream but no holiday sprinkles. This wasn’t Starbucks. The high-proof alcohol wafting upward from those chocolaty drinks almost made his eyes water. “I hate to tell you this, but kids can be real terrors, no matter where they live or who their parents are. I’m proof of that.”
“You’re not so bad.” Seeming to give up on her quest to convince him Kismet was subpar, Danielle leaned back. A holiday song from the ’80s began playing on the jukebox. “You might have had a rough beginning, but you’ve succeeded big-time.”
Her smile of approval made Jason want to launch an IPO or handcraft some new toys. Instead, he sipped his hot cocoa.
Extra-strength, boozy, minty chocolate was delicious.
“Except for your penchant for girly drinks.” Danielle shook her head. “Aren’t you supposed to knock back vodka shots? Swill a six-pack of beer? Drink a sophisticated 007-style martini?”
Jason scoffed. “I like this. You might have noticed by now,” he told her, “that I don’t care what people think of me.”
“You must care a little. You’re here, aren’t you?”
Obviously she was referring to his on-demand media tour.
“I came here as a compromise with the board, yes. But once I’d spent a little time here . . . nope. I still don’t care about the public at large.” He hoped that, someday when Danielle heard about or saw those sleigh-ride photos—and the new images that
had somehow been appearing over the past couple of weeks—she would remember his words tonight. She would know that he hadn’t taken advantage of her—especially not for the sake of placating the public. “Believe me, it would have been easier to go along with the just-apologize playbook. But I did nothing wrong.”
“Well . . . this morning I remember you were pretty naughty.”
Her flirtatious glance made his pants shrink a size. But he was determined to give Danielle a long-delayed night out—not to whisk her straight back to her house for some private time.
“So scoff all you want at my drink choices,” Jason said with a proud lift of his supersugary drink, “but this is the best thing I’ve had in my mouth since this morning.”
Oops. Remembering Danielle’s naked body, her urgent cries . . . the incredible way the two of them had felt when coming together . . . that wouldn’t encourage him to stay in public with her. Jason knew that no mere boozy hot cocoa could compare with that.
Being with Danielle was a dream he hadn’t known he wanted.
Now that he did, he wished things were less complicated.
Whoever was still sharing photos with Chip and the Moosby’s media team wasn’t Jason. Probably, it was the spy who’d been trailing him in Kismet. But Jason didn’t know how to stop it.
For the moment, he settled, as he sometimes did, for pretending the ongoing Moosby’s social media campaign wasn’t happening. It was nicer to flirt with Danielle in a grimy bar full of regular Joes and girls next door, all of them getting ready for Christmas in their own unique, down-home ways.
“Oh yeah? The best thing you’ve had in your mouth since this morning?” Seductively, Danielle leaned nearer. She’d never looked prettier—or more beloved. “If you say that a little louder, the whole place will know what we’ve been up to.”
“Screwing each other’s brains out?”
“Mmm-hmm.” A nod. Another touch. A trailing caress up his arm. “I have to say, I didn’t know sex could be . . . like that.”
Jason couldn’t help grinning. “Like what?”
