A Little Christmas Pretense

by Rachel A Andersen

  “Given the short timeframe and the demand on young Mr. Fortescue’s time while he’s here, Ms. Stone has graciously offered the use of her personal assistant, Cindy Ash, and one of the editors, Gillian Montgomery, for the duration of Mr. Fortescue’s visit.”

  Mr. Humphrey offered the women a friendly smile, but Cindy just stared at Margaret, unable to even blink.

  The woman had a predatory look of satisfaction playing on her features as if she dared Cindy to respond to the clear challenge. She imagined Gillian was just as surprised as she was by their new marching orders.

  Gillian was usually kept rather busy reviewing the new submissions for the next year’s publishing queue around the holidays. It was something she claimed to enjoy as long as she was well-stocked in hot cocoa. As one of the fastest readers on the team, she could get through even one of the longest, poorest written manuscripts before one of the other editors had even started.

  She was also known for giving the author more than a few pages to grasp her attention. Maybe that’s why Margaret had Gillian in her sights as well. It wasn’t as efficient as Margaret liked to keep things.

  “Of course, we’ll do what we can to be as accommodating of you both while you take on these extra responsibilities,” Margaret said.

  Cindy had to work hard not to roll her eyes at the woman’s phony look of sympathy.

  Mr. Humphrey offered Margaret a broad smile. “That’s precisely the kind of attitude which Mr. Fortescue expects of his senior management at this time. Cooperation, flexibility, and understanding.”

  The moment that Humphrey turned his eyes away from Margaret, her gaze hardened, and Cindy knew in that instant that there was no lightening of her load to come. She sighed and slumped against the back of her office chair as Humphrey's voice droned on and on about the logistics of the meeting.

  Just get an exit plan together before they manage to fire you, she thought to herself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Are you sure you can’t stay for some scrambled eggs?” Cindy’s Mom asked while Cindy filled a thermos with hot peppermint tea.

  She reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs. “It won’t take long, and I can even put them in a tortilla so they’re more like a breakfast burrito.”

  The thought of the cheesy eggs her mother would try to pawn off on her made her stomach turn in rebellion. She set the thermos down on the counter and put her hands on her mother’s arms. The sensation of the soft velvet of the robe helped to calm Cindy down just as her mother’s frenzy died with Cindy’s insistent touch.

  “Mom, I love you, and I appreciate you letting me stay over so I can get to the airport early, but I am not now, nor have I ever been, a breakfast first thing in the morning kind of person.”

  Carol bit her lip.

  Cindy could see the worry crease her mother’s forehead. “Your father always said that breakfast was the most important meal of the day.”

  A familiar ache settled in Cindy’s heart at the mention of her father. Another Christmas without him. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to celebrating Christmas with only her mother and younger brother. The lung cancer diagnosis had come as a shock, and after a nearly two year battle with the disease, her father had passed away nearly four years ago.

  They were getting close enough to the anniversary of his passing that Cindy wondered if grief accounted for her mother’s bloodshot eyes. Maybe she’d been more emotional this year than Cindy had expected.

  She kicked herself mentally. No matter how much easier it was for her to avoid this house and to avoid her mother to protect herself from her own grief, she was the only one close enough to watch over her mother. Her brother was living out in California, and he couldn’t be bothered to even come home for Christmas this year.

  Cindy hugged her mother. “I have some snacks in my purse. A granola bar, a bottle of water, some nuts, and some dried fruit. I’ll be okay.”

  “At least let me give you money in case the flight’s delayed, and you have a minute to grab yourself a wrap in the airport,” Carol said as she pulled away from her daughter. She put the eggs on the island counter before she walked over to the in-kitchen desk where she stored her purse.

  “Mom, I have money.” Cindy’s words fell on deaf ears as the woman retrieved a twenty dollar bill from her wallet.

  Her mother pressed the bill into her hand. “I know you, sweetheart, you’re not going to quit your job because you’re not absolutely sure about what the next step is, but you’re absolutely miserable at your job.”

  Cindy grimaced. Was it that obvious?

  Carol turned her deep brown eyes up into Cindy’s, and for the first time, Cindy could see the ever-increasing lines on her mother’s face.

  Her voice trembled, and she moved past Cindy so that she could put the eggs back in the refrigerator. “Sweetheart, if your father’s death taught me anything, it’s that life’s too short. I don’t want you to get to the end of your life without having lived out your dreams.”

  Cindy pocketed the bill from her mother with a heavy sigh. “Daddy didn’t die without having lived out his dreams. You were his dream. We were all his dream.”

  Carol’s eyes filled with tears as she steepled her hands in front of her lips. “He wanted so much more out of life than just his accounting job. I should have just told him to quit his job and take flying lessons like he wanted to. I should have pushed him to become the pilot he’d always wanted to be.”

  Her mother’s voice wavered with unshed emotion, and Cindy wrapped her mother up in another hug. “Daddy would be the first to say he had a good life, Mom.”

  As she pulled back, she smiled. “And so do I. Workplace drama notwithstanding.”

  “I just worry about you,” Carol said with a wan smile.

  “I hear that’s what mothers do.”.

  A chirp from the cell phone she’d placed on the island counter caught her attention before she could say anything about how much she did appreciate it, even if it did occasionally make her feel like a child instead of a grown adult. “Mom, that’s the alarm. I love you, but I’ve got to go if I’m going to get there in time.”

  Her mother waved her away as she grabbed the thermos and her cell phone and headed out the door. “I love you, sweetheart! Good luck today!”

  CINDY DASHED INTO THE airport, only pausing long enough to press the lock button on her key fob before she got into the unadorned underground entrance to the airport. The warm air was welcome as she stepped through the automatic doors, and she stopped for a moment just to appreciate the miracle of modern heating and cooling. The inventor of these systems didn’t get enough credit in her book.

  She relaxed her shoulders as she thawed and walked toward the escalator before her. As she reached the top, she saw the screens announcing arrivals and departures. She reached into her purse for the cell phone she had thrown on the top just before exiting her vehicle. She pursed her lips together as she pressed the home button to activate the phone.

  She winced as she saw Margaret’s text.

  Fortescue’s flight delayed by two hours. Stay and wait.

  Stay and wait? Cindy thought to herself with a sigh. Of course Margaret would imagine that she had nothing better to do even just at the office than sit and wait for Alastair Fortescue III’s flight.

  Cindy sat outside the small TSA booth for gates forty-nine through fifty-four, reached into her purse for her book, and started to read.

  “Good book.”

  Cindy looked up from the well-worn pages of her childhood copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, surprised for a moment that someone had spoken to her. She blushed as a light-haired man with piercing sage green eyes looked down at her with an amused smile on his lips. The light behind him had changed significantly, indicating a brighter morning than she had seen when she’d last looked up from the book. She must have read several chapters already. She looked at the crumpled aluminum in her hand. Yes, she’d gotten lost in the book a
gain.

  She closed her book quickly as if she was trying to hide it from him. “It’s a family tradition. Harry Potter and Christmas. We read the books and watch the movies. Childish, right?”

  Actually, it was a tradition she had started after her father’s death. He had read the books with Cindy when they’d first come out so it had seemed like a very appropriate homage to him when he died to read the books as a family and watch the movies. Cindy usually never got past the first book, but it was enough to wrap her in loving memories of her father.

  He shook his head. “There’s never anything childish about a good book, no matter the genre.”

  He gestured to her sign, and his gaze narrowed as if he was thinking critically about something. “You’re looking for Alastair Fortescue III? Name’s a bit pretentious, don’t you think?”

  She laughed as she marked her page and put the book in her shoulder bag. He’d just said the thing she’d been nervous to say out loud since Mr. Humphrey had revealed Alastair Fortescue’s son’s name. “A bit, I guess, but then again, his grandfather started the publishing firm I work for, so I guess he’s rich enough that it doesn’t really matter. Maybe it even comes with the territory.”

  The man in front of her grinned, and Cindy felt a rush of joy swell in her being. As dashing as he looked on his own, that smile was enough to knock her over without a second thought.

  “Sounds like it.” He extended a hand as he reached across his body with the other to secure the strap of a messenger bag on his shoulder. “I’m Richard Prince, personal assistant to the pretentious inheritor you have on your sign.”

  Cindy’s smile fell immediately. Her eyes darted around the crowded airport terminal, searching for some sign of the man she had imagined to be in his late-forties, wearing a three-piece gray suit, with an air of sophistication and grace.

  Richard, who was in his mid-thirties and had his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans, didn’t seem like he could work for a man like Cindy had imagined.

  He sat beside her in one of the pleather waiting seats in the corridor of the Kansas City International airport terminal and set his bag beside him on the floor.“You can relax. He’s in the bathroom behind us.”

  She exhaled slowly, closing her eyes as she said the smallest prayer of gratitude that she hadn’t been overheard to insinuate that her new boss might be stuffy and pretentious. She didn’t need that kind of headache in her life with Margaret making as many demands as she was bound to these days with senior level management on their backs.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said with a relieved chuckle as she turned back to her companion. “I—I should really get a handle on what I say in front of strangers.”

  Richard relaxed in the seat beside her. “Doesn’t bother me. I think it’s refreshing to find someone who’s so open with what she’s thinking.”

  He sighed, and Cindy watched his gaze grow distant as if he was thinking of some far-off scene which was pressing on his mind. “You don’t know how often I just wish that people would say what they actually mean.”

  Cindy’s brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

  He nodded. “I mean, as a personal assistant, I get the unvarnished truth about who I’m working for, but I’m talking about when I go out on a date. It would be nice to find a woman who cared enough about her appearance to look polished, but who doesn’t feel like she has to work hard to impress me. More than that, I just want someone who is able to be honest about what she does or doesn’t like, someone who isn’t just telling me what she thinks I want to hear.” He rolled his eyes before he looked back over at her. “It’s exhausting.”

  Cindy quietly gathered up her things from where she’d been sitting. She tossed the aluminum remains of her breakfast into a nearby trash can, grateful when the little ball went straight into the hole instead of bouncing off the rim. “I get that. I’m Margaret Stone’s personal assistant, and she asked me to come and wait for you and your boss.”

  “I’m sorry about the delay. I wish we could have communicated it to you better.”

  Richard studied her, his lips pursed slightly. “I did tell Ms. Stone that we would be perfectly fine just hiring a car service for the week given how unpredictable travel schedules can be in the winter. We didn’t need an entourage.”

  “Ms. Stone insisted on the personal touch as she often does,” Cindy said with a casual shrug. It was refreshing to hear someone else recognize just how ridiculous Margaret could be about her requests. “Besides, I’m usually pretty well prepared for different eventualities.”

  She pulled her bag up off the floor and retrieved the protein bar she’d hidden in it just that morning. “I came prepared for the long haul.”

  Richard laughed as he peeked over the edge of the oversized bag. Books, magazines, snacks, a notepad and pen. “If you had a change of clothes in here, I’d say you were over-prepared.”

  Cindy leaned in closer as if she was revealing some big secret to him. “That’s in my trunk.”

  Richard’s face broke into an amused expression that seemed to light him up with joy. He clapped a heavy hand on her back in approval. “I like you, Cindy. I think we’ll get along well this week.”

  Cindy felt her face flush, but in an instant, Richard removed his hand from her back and stood almost at attention. His gaze was on the entrance to the restroom just over Cindy’s shoulder. She turned to look over at what he was seeing in confusion.

  “Mr. Fortescue! Ready to get the bags?”

  The other man who walked out of the bathroom merely nodded. He took a moment to glance down at Cindy. “Let me guess, Margaret’s girl?”

  Cindy turned her gaze back to Richard before she returned it to the other man who, like she had originally predicted, was wearing a three-piece gray suit and a serious expression on his face. A hint of gray feathered the dark hair at his temples and in his goatee, and if she had to guess, she would peg him somewhere around forty-five. Not far off the mark, she thought with a flash of pride at her correct supposition.

  Still, she thought as she studied him. She didn’t like him. Margaret’s girl? Was she a secretary from the 1940s?

  “This is—” Richard trailed off as he turned back to Cindy. “I don’t think I ever got your name. I know you work for Margaret Stone, but other than that—”

  “I’m Cindy Ash.”

  She stood and extended her hand first to her new boss, who shook it with and then she turned a smile to Richard. “I guess I got distracted.”

  “A pleasant distraction, I hope.” Richard winked at her.

  She had to tamp down the beginnings of a look which would have been more appropriate for a date than for a business exchange.

  She looked back at Mr. Fortescue. “Did I hear you were looking for baggage claim?”

  He nodded, and she collected her bag before she pointed down the curved corridor. “It’s actually not that far. We’ll see it in no time.”

  She pulled the straps of her bag over her shoulder as Mr. Fortescue and Richard stood ready to infiltrate the holiday crowd together. “It’s really not that hard to navigate our airport. Each terminal is just one big half-circle.”

  “It’s one of the things I love about the Kansas City airport,” Richard said as he kept step with her. “The bigger airports, you know, O’Hare, SeaTac, Dulles, LAX, they’re so hard to navigate because they just try to cram so much into the space, you know?”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Cindy shrugged as they arrived at the baggage carousel where a group of weary travelers waited for their bags to come on the conveyor belt for their identification and collection. “I’ve actually never really gone anywhere. I mean, Disneyland when I was a kid, so I’ve been on an airplane, but I think it was a red-eye flight so I was probably asleep.”

  “We should fix that.” A hint of a smile played on his lips as he looked over at her.

  “We?” she asked, surprised by how she had instant butterflies fluttering in her belly at the promise smoldering in his secretive ex
pression.

  He grinned, confirming to her that she had read his flirtation and intention correctly. “By we, I mean Fortescue Publishing, of course.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “What exactly would Fortescue Publishing be doing sending me around the globe? I’m just a personal assistant.”

  They found the circular conveyor belt surrounded by a crowd of waiting passengers. “You won’t be one forever. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I have ambition beyond this gig.”

  She had expected a conservative British assistant to come over with Mr. Fortescue, but the man seemed to have an American accent, and he spoke far less formally than she would have expected in someone flying in from Heathrow.

  Still, he wasn’t wrong. She had other ambitions, starting with the handwritten manuscript in her purse. Anxiety crept up her neck and made her feel exposed.

  “I may have a thought or two about my future,” she murmured casually. She noticed Alastair Fortescue’s eyebrow rise over the newspaper he had lifted up once they’d come to a stop in front of the baggage claim setup. She wondered to herself if he approved of her sense of ambition or if he was wary of it.

  “Most of us do.” He leaned in toward her with a teasing expression playing on his features. “Even if you stay a personal assistant, if Margaret Stone gets promoted to President and CEO of the company, you’re going to find yourself doing a lot more travel.”

  Mr. Fortescue coughed, and Richard rolled his eyes in the direction of his boss. “Hey, it’s not like Humphrey wouldn’t have announced the possibility of you leaving things in her capable hands.”

  She watched the two men in fascination. She’d never seen a personal assistant interact with his boss like this.

  A warning sounded from the baggage claim, and immediately, she heard the metallic clatter of the belt beginning its movement.

  “I guess that’s my cue.” Richard quickly removed his messenger bag and set it beside Cindy’s leg. “Watch my bag?”