by Lisa Plumley
Mark didn’t look that handsome, Danielle couldn’t help observing. Maybe Gigi had been right. Maybe pushing a new love into the face of an old love really was the fastest way to cure a former heartache. Why hadn’t Danielle met Jason two years ago?
“How do you like me now, mother-effers?” she yelled.
“Okay,” Jason said kindly. “It really is time to go.”
“Go? No way!” Danielle wriggled away from his steadying grasp. She stood, playfully took his hands in hers instead, then gave her hips a seductive swivel. “Come on, Jason. Let’s dance!”
“Dance to ‘Blue Christmas’?” Crystal arched her brow. “You two really are into making this whole hashtag truelove thing happen.”
“Hashtag truelove?” Confused, Danielle swayed. Maybe that was the name of the band who’d recorded the cover version of “Blue Christmas” playing on the jukebox. Bands had weird names these days. The weirder, the better. “Sure! You bet we are!”
“I didn’t know you two were really serious.” Mark cast a perplexed glance at Crystal, letting Danielle know that he and his new wife had discussed her recently. She was alert to all the telltale signs in him. “I guess I should have known you were,” he added. “I mean, since you let all that stuff appear in the media, Dani, especially with the kids inv—”
“Dancing,” Jason declared, “is a great idea.”
He whisked her away to the area near The Big Foot’s small stage, where local bands played live on weekends. With a smile and a smoldering glance, Jason pulled her into his arms.
Danielle stumbled in his direction. The room spun.
“Maybe I have drunk a teensy bit too much,” she said.
But then Mark and Crystal followed them onto the dance area—all but declaring a Kismet dance-off—and Danielle forgot all about her dizziness, fuzzy-headedness, and wobbliness.
“Oh yeah? You want to bring it?” she asked. “Bring it on!”
She attempted a flamboyant flamenco. Jason chuckled and pulled her back to earth into a more manageable slow dance.
“Slow down, Dancing With the Stars,” he murmured into her ear. His hips swayed. “We’ve got all night, remember?”
Danielle almost relented. That’s how good Jason felt.
But Mark wasn’t heeding any calls to reasonableness.
“Hey, is this stuff going to be on TV?” he asked as he leaned in while dancing with Crystal. “Or YouTube, at least?”
“That’s got to be why you’re acting so crazy, right, Danielle?” Crystal beamed as though seeing imaginary cameras.
They were both the crazy ones, Danielle knew. TV? YouTube?
Sure, Jason was famous. He was recognized worldwide. But it wasn’t as if paparazzi had trailed him to Kismet and then followed him nonstop. She would have noticed that. She wouldn’t have liked it, but she would definitely have noticed it.
Just the way she noticed his dreamy eyes right now. His handsome features. His steady hands and his fantastic sense of rhythm. Jason danced as though they did have all night to do it.
But she still kind of liked the idea of some movie sex.
“You’re so wonderful,” Danielle told Jason earnestly. “Thank you for helping me stick it to my ex and his wife.”
He gave a somber nod. But his lips quirked, as though he thought her intentions to rub her happiness in Mark and Crystal’s faces were silly. And maybe they were, Danielle knew.
They were also pretty darn gratifying. The parts of her that had been bruised and battered during her divorce loved getting their vengeance now. It was all possible because of Jason.
Feeling awash in affection and gratitude, Danielle raised her hands to his face. She meant to cup his jaw. Tenderly.
Instead, she slapped his cheeks like a towel-wearing man putting on Old Spice in an old-timey commercial. Whoops.
She covered her tipsy error by smiling broadly.
“I love you, Jason!” Danielle declared fervently, staring into his eyes. “I really, really love you!”
As Jason smiled back at her, the room spun even more.
“I love you, too,” he said, as if from far away.
But he said it patiently, almost accommodatingly—the way Danielle sometimes told Aiden that his drawings of big-headed stick-figure people were magnificent. Was Jason humoring her?
“No, I really love you!” Danielle said as they turned, still dancing, but not to another #truelove song. “I do!”
It was true, she realized as she almost yelled it. She meant it. She did love Jason. She loved him in front of everyone, from her ex-husband to her friends to the bartender.
“I love you, too,” Jason repeated, smiling broadly.
Because of that smile, Danielle wasn’t sure if he was indulging her or not. But as she gazed into his eyes, there on the scruffy dance floor of The Big Foot Bar, she thought she knew. She believed that Jason loved her back. It was . . . incredible.
Then, horrifyingly . . . “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Leaving Jason behind, Danielle ran to the ladies’ room with her hand over her mouth, feeling overwhelmed by liquor, long-delayed revenge, and the significance of what she’d just said.
No matter what, though, she and Jason were officially in love now. From here on out, things could only get better.
Chapter Seventeen
Standing in the alley behind Moosby’s, Jason tried for the sixth time in two days to reach Chip Larsen on his cell phone.
As usual, his chairman of the board didn’t answer.
It was time for the next step, then.
“I want you to stop all this hashtag truelove bullshit,” Jason growled into the phone as he left a pointed voice mail. “I never volunteered for any of this. I don’t want it. I don’t need it. I’m fed up with it. I know I said I’d do the goddamn media tour, but this isn’t what I signed up for.” He gritted his teeth, wishing this wasn’t happening. “Just. Make. It. Stop.”
Click. Jason disconnected the call, full of turmoil and frustration and—if he were honest—unexpressed terror, too.
It had been three days since he and Danielle had gone out to The Big Foot Bar together. Three days since she’d told him she loved him. Three days since he’d told her he loved her.
Three days since he’d snapped out of his dumb-ass love-struck fog of ignoring reality and awakened to the fact that if Danielle realized what had been going on, she’d be devastated.
On the other hand, Jason told himself as he gazed out at the snowy rooftops of Kismet’s decorated downtown businesses, maybe Danielle would give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she would let him explain. Maybe, when she finally found out about the social media stuff, she wouldn’t jump to conclusions.
After the Bethanygate scandal, Danielle was the only one who’d asked him to explain, the only one who’d believed him when he had. Maybe she would believe him again, about this mess.
Jason ardently hoped so. Because he hadn’t been talking out of his ass when he’d told her he loved her the other night.
It was true. Even if they hadn’t discussed it since then.
Clinging to his hope that, if everything went wrong, Danielle would be the one person he could count on to trust in his integrity and let him explain himself, Jason pocketed his cell phone. He drew in a big, bracing lungful of frosty, gingerbread-scented air, then opened the toy store’s back door.
When he entered the back room, Danielle nearly jumped out of her chair. She flung out her arms, widened her eyes—then deliberately leaned sideways in a way that covered her computer screen. Oh God. Had she seen the social media footage?
Jason’s heart stopped. His feet stuck to the floor.
But all Danielle said was, “There you are! What in the world were you doing in the alley? You hate the cold and snow.”
She hadn’t seen anything. Weak with relief, Jason grinned.
“It’s not so bad now that I’m dressed properly.” In a tone that teasingly matched hers, he added, “What in the wor
ld were you doing in here? You look . . .” How to put this? “Guilty.”
She did, it occurred to him. But he couldn’t think why.
She uttered an unconvincing laugh. “Pot, meet kettle.”
“Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
The earth should have swallowed him up right then. He might not have done anything, but he hadn’t stopped anything, either.
He’d been too busy falling in love. Real love. True love.
“Me either,” his true love declared. “I’m just . . . working.”
“Oh yeah?” Good. A change of subject. “On what?”
“Just checking up on my promotion.” Danielle didn’t budge from her incriminating computer-screen-obscuring position.
Inwardly, Jason swore. “I’ve been meaning to act on that.”
“It’s okay. I’ve got it covered,” Danielle assured him. “It’s not as though I need you to get promoted. I mean, if you want to put in a good word for me, I won’t stop you, but—”
“I absolutely do want to put in a good word for you. I will.” Hell. He’d let that detail slip through his fingers, too. Love had morphed him into a total screwup. “Soon. Very soon.”
“There’s no rush. Chip’s not in the office anyway, so—”
“Chip?” Alarm bells clanged in Jason’s head. Danielle sounded so . . . well acquainted with that loser. “You know his schedule and you’re on a first-name basis with the chairman of the board?”
Danielle’s eyes widened. “Uh, isn’t everyone?”
For a moment, silence fell between them. Jason contemplated the fact that Danielle seemed completely conversant in the up-to-the-minute particulars of Chip’s busy schedule—and that she appeared to be pretty damn cozy with that jerk-face, too.
Then he realized what was going on. He was feeling defensive because of the Moosby’s social media mess. He’d omitted some facts he should have shared with Danielle. Now he was assuming that she was doing the same thing to him.
“You’re right. Chip does like to cultivate a ‘man of the people’ vibe inside the company,” he said. “It strokes his ego.”
“Gross.” Emphatically, Danielle shuddered. “Let’s not put ‘Chip’ and ‘strokes’ in the same sentence ever again. Okay?”
Was she overcompensating? She still seemed . . . guilty.
Had she been . . . colluding with Chip somehow? Jason wondered with dawning concern. After all, Danielle was ambitious. Even Chip had pointed out that much. Jason wasn’t entirely sure who he could trust anymore. He’d thought he could trust his pal Charley—and the intel he’d given him before he’d come to Kismet.
But all that reconnaissance had been proven wrong.
Edna Gresham hadn’t been the Moosby’s manager. Jason hadn’t had a cakewalk media tour ahead of him while hanging out with a quilt-making grandmotherly type. Instead, he’d been ambushed by Danielle and all her supersmart, extra-hot awesomeness.
It was almost inevitable that he’d fallen for her.
In retrospect, he was fortunate that Chip and his unknown spy were focusing on the more wholesome angle of Jason and Danielle falling in love at Christmastime in Kismet. Another conniving exec in Chip’s position might have tried for more salacious photos—something more akin to the snapshots of Jason with Bethany and her bare breasts. He was also fortunate that he’d realized what was going on before losing his mind and really having a stand-up alleyway quickie with Danielle.
Thanks to her sudden-onset nausea that night, the only thing Jason had done quickly was bring her cool compresses.
Still, despite his intentions not to mistrust Danielle, Jason couldn’t help wondering . . . “‘Gross,’ huh? You’ve met Chip?”
Danielle went still. He could see her mind spinning.
Formulating an excuse? A fib? If Danielle was conspiring with Chip—if she was somehow in on Chip’s oust-Jason plan...
Well, that would destroy him. He didn’t even like thinking of Danielle being pleasant to the man who wanted to remove Jason from his own company, much less helping him do it.
As much as Jason told himself he was being paranoid, Danielle was taking an incriminatingly long time to answer him.
Maybe she wasn’t being oblivious to her starring role in Moosby’s social media. Maybe she was being calculatingly silent . . . all the better to secure the promotion she wanted.
He couldn’t believe he was even thinking it about her.
Was this the kind of untrusting bastard he’d become, that he seriously doubted the woman he’d fallen in love with?
“Ohmigod!” Danielle exclaimed. “Look at the time!”
She switched off her monitor, then leaped from her chair.
“It’s almost time for the Kismet Christmas Carol Crawl.”
Grabbing a hank of silvery tinsel from the coat hook that housed her fuzzy orange jacket, Danielle slung that shiny stuff around her neck like a gaudy feather boa. She added a headband with protruding reindeer antlers, a jingle-bell necklace, and a pair of red-and-white striped gloves. Then she turned to him.
The Christmassy eagerness in her eyes made him nervous.
“What are you doing?” Jason held up his hands to ward her off. “I don’t like the maniacal gleam in your eyes.”
“Everyone has to get dressed up for the Christmas Carol Crawl.” Matter-of-factly, Danielle wrapped his neck with a felt scarf with appliqued gingerbread men on it. She smiled up at him. “Good thing you’re already wearing your coat, or I’d hit you up with a hideous Christmas sweater or a bedazzled vest. We have plenty of those left over in the store’s lost and found.” A wider grin. “Lean down so I can put this Santa hat on you.”
“What if I don’t want to wear a Santa hat?”
“You can’t go on the crawl without it.”
“I’m pretty sure I can.”
“No, getting dressed up is the tradition.” Danielle waved the Santa hat menacingly. “Don’t make me get the elf shoes.”
Jason swallowed hard. Agreeably, he leaned down six inches.
That goofy Santa hat landed on his head at a rakish angle.
“Perfect!” Danielle beamed up at him. “Some people go all out for this. Reno’s sister, Angela—Nate’s wife—is one of them.”
“She can have my share.”
“Don’t be a buzzkill.” Danielle adjusted his scarf, which might seriously have been crafted by Edna Gresham. “It’s going to be fun! The Christmas Carol Crawl is sort of a traditional caroling expedition turned neighborhood block party turned Christmas-themed trick-or-treating turned pub crawl.”
“Pub crawl?” Jason brightened. “That’s more like it.”
“Minus the booze,” Danielle explained, “plus lots of kids, plus all the local businesses and their staffs. Everyone heads downtown, dressed in their Christmassy finest, and meets at the town square. They fan out from there, caroling as they go, stopping at all the local businesses to shop, play games, and collect treats. The crawl started as a way to support the locals when tourism took a dip a few years ago, but everyone had such a good time that it’s become an annual event.”
“Moosby’s is one of the participating businesses?” Jason guessed. No wonder the toy store’s inventory had looked peculiar to him. It had probably been shuffled to make room for the tables of treats and eggnog that Gigi and Henry had set up on the store’s sales floor. “It’s unorthodox,” he said. “You probably should have gotten permission from HQ before signing up the store to be one of the participating businesses.”
“Come on. You’re not a stickler for rules . . . are you?”
At her hopeful expression, Jason couldn’t disappoint her.
“Nah,” he fibbed. If Chip had been there to see what they were doing, his chairman of the board would have turned Jason’s cooperation with an innocent carol crawl into a major corporate transgression requiring immediate removal as CEO. But Chip wasn’t there. He was probably gallivanting around, scheming to have Jason replaced with one of his cronies,
as usual.
“I’ll make an exception this time,” Jason joked. “Just as long as you don’t break any more rules, you miscreant.”
Danielle’s smile wobbled. “Takes one to know one, hooligan.”
Good. Everything felt (relatively) normal between them.
Jason hooked his thumb toward the sales floor. “I’ll just go check on the Christmas Carol Crawl prep. Unless there’s something you need me to do back here?”
Meaningfully, he shifted his gaze toward her monitor.
Show me what you’re hiding, he commanded telepathically.
Sadly, he wasn’t Professor X. His command didn’t work.
On the other hand . . . “You can do me,” Danielle offered.
Her flirtatious glance immediately switched him into yes mode. “Any place. Any time.” Jason reached for his belt. “Now?”
“Mmm-hmm. I thought you’d never stop talking.”
Danielle wrapped her arms around his neck, drew him closer for a kiss . . . then made Jason forget all about everything else.
Danielle hadn’t even finished pulling on her sweater and reassembling her silvery tinsel boa before the doubts she’d been pushing away came roaring back. Full strength, meaner than ever.
Damn it. She didn’t want to feel this way.
Not about Jason. Not about them together.
Not about herself.
But the truth was, Jason had caught her today in the midst of doing some very critical multitasking. She’d been (of course) taking care of some ongoing inventory manipulation. She’d also been e-mailing Chip Larsen, something she’d decided to do when she hadn’t been able to reach him on the phone.
She hadn’t wanted Jason to know about either of those things. But she had wanted to nudge Chip into making a decision about her promotion. Preferably without Jason’s input. Danielle really didn’t want to take advantage of their relationship.
She needed to know, though, if taking a new job and moving to L.A. was even a possibility for her. Because if Chip decided against giving her an executive position, there was no reason she and Jason couldn’t take their relationship to the next level. There was no reason she couldn’t love him all the way.
