Montana Secret Santa

by Debra Salonen

  She kissed Jack’s big black nose. “But we love you, boy. That’s why your brother’s here. He’s going to walk you every day and make sure you stay on your diet.”

  There goes one hour… but what about the other twenty-three?

  As if reading his mind, his mother looked at Jonah and said, “For your dad, worrying about not having something to occupy his time every minute of the day keeps him up at night. Running Secret Santa this year was going to make him feel needed… for a few weeks, at least.” Her slightly sarcastic tone told Jonah this conversation had come up before. “But when all of this happened with Matthew…”

  Jonah saw the worry on her face. In business, Jonah didn’t have time for emotion. He’d never shared any of what was happening to his sister with his staff—even though he’d made a couple of trips to Florida to help. One of his early mentors had stressed the importance of keeping his business and personal lives separate. Naturally, Jonah had had to learn that lesson the hard way. “Gracie needs you both. So do the kids.”

  Mom reached out to squeeze Dad’s hand. “We agree. And once we get to Florida, we’ll be too busy to think about what’s happening here. That’s why it’s important to us that you take our place at Secret Santa. You’ll give it a try, won’t you, dear? Please. This means so much to us both.”

  “And there’s a lot to do in a short time where the charity is concerned,” Dad added. “Christmas doesn’t wait for anybody.”

  An image of Krista Martin’s perfect lips flashed before his eyes. “From what Em said, your group is in trouble.”

  The two exchanged a look. “Our donation well seems to have dried up overnight. It’s incredibly discouraging.”

  “If it’s money you need—”

  Mom didn’t let him finish. “Money is only part of the problem. We need new blood, too.”

  Emily McCullough’s exact words.

  “And we heard you’ve already met Krista Martin, who is supposed to be filling in for Amanda Heller. I mean, Montgomery.”

  Her tone made the statement into a question.

  “I’m not sure she’d call what happened a ‘meeting’. Bindi shot between her legs and when I clumsily tried to retract the lead, together we knocked Krista over.” He looked at the beagle now curled into a tight ball between his parents. “It probably had the makings of a viral YouTube video, but, as far as I know, nobody filmed it.” Thank God. “We could be talking a lawsuit in the making. Krista insisted she has no plans to sue me,” he added.

  Jonah had been the target of lawsuits twice. When his first start-up became the object of a bidding war, a girl he’d dated off and on during his last two years of college returned for a hand out—even though she’d been the one to break up with him so she could marry the father of her child. Mistake number two was more recent, but no less disheartening.

  “Nerds like us are suckers for pretty women with secret agendas,” his roommate in college had told Jonah. “Watch and see. We can’t get a date worth shit now, but as soon as we make our first million, the scavengers will come out of the woodwork. Remember one thing, Jonah—pretty girls don’t date nerds.”

  “I remember meeting Krista last year at the Big Sky Mavericks’ New Year’s party,” Mom said, her face thoughtful. “She did all the publicity for the event, as I recall, and the ball was a huge success. I watched her work the crowd. Not only beautiful, but very good with people.”

  “Something nobody’s ever accused me of,” Jonah said, only half-joking.

  “Then you’ll make a good team,” Dad said. “Like your mother and me. Betts would be happy to stay at home and read all day. I’ve got to be out doing things with people in our community.”

  “Your dad tells people, together he and I make a whole person,” Mom said, giving her husband a playful tap on the shoulder. “I prefer to think we bring our separate strengths to the table and that makes us one badass team.”

  Jonah’s jaw dropped. He honestly didn’t think he’d ever heard his mother swear. But Dad laughed out loud and put his arm around her shoulders to squeeze her tight. He went in for a kiss, but Mom lifted her chin and sniffed. “The biscuits.”

  With that, they jumped into action—Mom helping Dad to his feet, the dogs scrambling to figure out what was happening.

  Jonah stayed where he was, watching his parents and their dogs hurry into the kitchen. His heart swelled with emotion he couldn’t identify at first then it hit him—contentment. He was happy. For the first time since he stepped off the plane in Bozeman, his interlude in Marietta didn’t seem quite so much like a prison sentence. And, in the morning, he’d spend time with a beautiful, driven woman who understood business and, reputedly had mad people skills.

  Honestly, he couldn’t wait.

  Chapter Three

  For the first time since his return to Marietta, Jonah woke before dawn, without an alarm clock or his mother calling to him that breakfast was ready.

  He sprang out of bed, dressed with considerable more care than usual of late. He didn’t want to blame this newfound energy on Krista Martin, but she had been in his dream last night. A crazy dream involving a street fair and chocolate-covered cotton candy. The combination sounded disgusting, but damn, if she hadn’t been selling the ooey-gooey confection hand-over-fist in his dream. And when she’d offered him one, the cone tipped backwards spilling a trickle of warm chocolate on her chest, just above the V-neck of her hot pink T-shirt.

  He’d opened his eyes, sweating beneath his usual pile of blankets, turned on and his mouth watering.

  Moving as quietly as possible to avoid waking the dogs, he made coffee and carried a cup, along with his laptop, to his favorite spot. Icy handprints of frost filled in the corners of the windows, making him glad he’d added a layer of thermal long-johns beneath his jeans, long-sleeve T-shirt, and hunter green wool shirt.

  He cupped his hands and blew on his fingers before recalling the last page he’d visited before Mom insisted he join her and Dad in a game of Scrabble. He’d needed all his focus and recall of esoteric scientific words to avoid utter humiliation from such fierce competitors.

  A hip, vibrant page filled the screen. The background image changed every few seconds, giving him a glimpse into the kind of design work the company did for its clients. He smiled at the two different versions of ads for Copper Mountain Chocolates. Both showcased Sage’s cocoa with the tagline—“What love tastes like” but the first was bold, sexy, and splashy—literally. A white cup against a bright orange background with liquid dark chocolate being poured into the cup and spilling out in a come-and-get-it-now sort of way.

  The image cried Krista Martin, in his opinion.

  The second version, while equally classy and on target, presented a dark background with a glass mug three-quarters filled with cocoa and topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles. Inviting. Yummy. Warm and cozy.

  To Jonah, this version was pure Sage.

  Both worked, which told him Krista was a person who listened and tried to create what her client wanted, even if Krista’s taste varied radically from the end result. As a boss and business-owner, he’d always valued—and tried to honor—the creative spark the people he hired brought to the table. Someone with vision had to help him transform his somewhat out-there ideas into that one thing everyone needed.

  In further reading, he gleaned that Krista Martin was committed to a partnership that seemed poised to do very well. She was in Marietta to stay. He’d agreed to dog-sit for two months tops. Then, he was headed back to his lab to figure out his next big thing.

  He didn’t have the slightest idea what that project might be, but once the germ of inspiration took hold, his brain would be too intently focused on problem solving to acknowledge any of the normal aspects of life. He’d forget to eat, work out, and bathe. He’d forget to return calls or text his friends and family to let them know he was still alive.

  People who knew him well generally tolerated these lapses, but girlfriends, he’d learned,
wanted attention even if he was busy thinking. And, watch out, if they thought their investment of time and emotional connection entitled them to more than a simple, “I’m busy. See you later” before he disappeared into his lab for weeks at a time.

  Krista interested him; there was no denying it, but why start something that had no future? Jonah could think of no logical reason at all. Beyond the obvious—to keep him from going stark, raving mad.

  “Good morning, merry sunshine,” Mom said walking into the room with a trio of mutts at her heels. “You’re up early.”

  “Dad told me there’s a gym in town. Normally, I bike to work. I don’t think that’s going to work around here.”

  She disappeared into the mudroom, but returned a second later with three dog bowls. “Your dad loves to bike in summer. I prefer gardening.” She seemed amused by the observation. “Will you walk the doggies for me before you go?”

  “Absolutely. I need the practice.”

  He watched her measure River Jack’s portion of diet dog food then fill the other two bowls. “It’s a bit of a pain to have to feed them in different rooms but, when Jack first joined us, we weren’t paying attention and he would nose Bear out of the way, inhale Bear’s food, and then return to his own as innocently as an angel. When we took him to the vet and found out he’d gained weight in the month we’d had him, we realized we needed to be more watchful.”

  Jonah reached down to pet the dog’s head. “River Jack, I sympathize. Sometimes it’s tough to do what’s good for you.” He looked at his mother and added, “We had a state-of-the-art gym at Wa-L and the employees who wanted to could wear wireless activity trackers to help them chart their number of steps. I think the last count was around fifty percent who signed up, but only half of that group actually worked out.”

  Mom rolled her eyes. “Good Lord. Big Brother monitors how many push-ups you do.”

  Jonah grinned. They’d had this discussion before. He unbuttoned the top three buttons of his wool shirt to display the screen print slogan he’d come up with to motivate his employees, “Exertion + oxygen = brain food = $$” on the front of his bright tangerine training shirt. “It works.”

  Mom sighed. “You and your dad. Hopefully I’ll be motivated to exercise in Florida.” She sounded more resigned than enthused. “I left the number for the gym beside the phone. But even an hour or two at the gym and walking the dogs twice a day isn’t going to be enough to keep a brain like yours stimulated, honey. That’s the real reason your dad and I volunteered you to take our place at Secret Santa. It’ll get you out of the house and keep you interacting with people.”

  He understood her concern. “Mom, I haven’t had an episode of depression since college. It was just that one time.”

  She gave his arm a squeeze. “I know. And, believe me, I’m glad, but my brother thought he’d beat his depression, too.”

  Mom’s younger brother committed suicide when Dad and Mom were first married and Mom had never stopped worrying that the tendency somehow ran in her family. “Buddy was smart, like you. He tinkered with toasters, motors, Mom’s electric iron from the minute he had the eye-hand coordination to take things apart and put them back together.”

  Jonah had heard this before but he sipped his coffee and let her vent, knowing she needed to get something off her chest.

  “Our father had been an inventor, too. He was head mechanic for an implements dealer in Arlington, South Dakota. I still have his patent for a part in a threshing machine around here somewhere. But I remember when his moods would take over. The whole house would go silent, as if even the walls were holding their breath.”

  Jonah’s depression, which had been diagnosed early and treated successfully, never reached the stage where he considered taking his life. And since that time, he’d stayed too busy, too physically active and too distracted by his inventions to succumb to the dark pit of despair.

  Jonah put his arms around her and hugged her tight. “Mom, I knew the risk when I signed the do-not-compete clause. But burnout is just as big a tripping hazard as boredom. I swear the most popular hyphenated buzzword in every Silicon Valley café and coffee shop today is—work-life-balance.”

  She looked up and put her hand to the side of his face, a gesture he remembered from childhood. “That sounds like a good thing.”

  “Apparently, it is. But you know me. Compulsive thinker and doer. That’s one of the reasons I’m here. The only way for me to avoid getting sucked into somebody’s creative think tank or start tinkering in my shop is to step away from temptation completely.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jonah. And extremely grateful. But I don’t want to worry about your mental health the whole time I’m in Florida.”

  “Then don’t. I’ll be fine. I did some research on your Secret Santa program and it looks interesting. I’m curious. That’s a good thing, right? Not to mention, I get to sample Sage Carrigan’s hot cocoa. Just the smell of it yesterday made my mouth water.”

  Only a small stretch of the truth. He was anxious for the meeting to start and his mouth was watering, but, at least, part of that could be attributed to the idea of working with Krista Martin.

  *

  Krista leaned closer to the bathroom mirror and poked the puffy bags under her eyes. “Delightful.”

  She’d stayed up much too late researching alternative ways of transporting chocolates. Most current options on the market were clumsy, unattractive and expensive as heck because they depended on speedy delivery service rather than providing a temperature-controlled parcel, which could be shipped more reasonably without paying for express courier charges. And speed simply was not an option in some areas—say the Australian Outback, for instance.

  In the process, she’d become distracted by several other interesting links—a 3-D chocolate printer, which made her brain go into hyperdrive, imagining the possibilities using Sage’s recipes, and a number of sites extolling the virtues of Jonah Andrews’ brain.

  She’d never met a human computer, and had a hard time reconciling the dog-walker she’d met with the man a techno-blogger labeled, “a slightly less obsessive Steve Jobs.” By the time she’d signed off her laptop and closed her eyes, she had a more complete picture of Jonah Andrews’ public persona. Her take? Meh. Nerds with money to burn had never been one of her fantasies.

  And, yet, Jonah had popped into her dreams once or twice. Never long enough to do what she needed him to do, but wasn’t that the way with men? Quick to flirt and stir up trouble, but never big on the follow through. At least, that had been her experience to date.

  She finished her makeup with a light application of mascara. She’d skipped her workout to run by the office before the Secret Santa meeting at nine. Normally, Copper Mountain Chocolates didn’t open until ten, but Sage had decided to extend her hours during the holiday season.

  Krista dressed quickly, pushing away the temptation to add a bit of NYC flair to her weather-appropriate wool slacks, warm sweater, and practical boots ensemble. So what if she was meeting Jonah Andrews across a table for the first time? This is business. Nothing more.

  She’d just added a fistful of granola to a cup of plain yogurt when her phone started playing “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel. Her ringtone for Jezibel. Her eldest sister.

  “Good morning, Jez. This is early for you.”

  “Mom’s got a hard-on for Christmas. She’s serious this time. She even turned down a job. A Brad Pitt movie.”

  Krista’s empty stomach turned over. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You can read about it in Variety. Or Twitter. Hash tag say-she-didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “She wants the whole family together for the holidays.”

  Krista groaned. Mom’s vision of a Martha-Stewart-slash-Food-Network extravaganza traditionally emerged right after Thanksgiving but had yet to manifest into the real deal—no matter how much time and energy Krista put into the plan.

  “Tough. I’m not falling for that again. Rem
ember last year? My year to do LA? Where was Mom? In Mexico. With Diego.”

  Supposedly their mother had planned to travel back to the States with Krista’s oldest brother who was in Mexico filming his popular telenovela, and their flight was canceled because of a revolt or a terrorist threat or something.

  “Guatemala. She was in Guatemala. Diego went there so she didn’t have to be alone.”

  “Whatever. This is my year to go east.”

  “I know, Ta-ta, but Mom says Dad’s coming, too.”

  “Bullshit. And stop calling me that.”

  Jez laughed. Krista had hated the childhood nickname even before she found out what it meant. “Believe it or not, Mom’s got her assistant looking for a five- or six-bedroom house near you.”

  Krista nearly dropped her phone in her bowl of cereal. “What? Why? I mean, you’re joking, right?”

  “Mom said she wants a white Christmas and she feels badly that none of us has visited you in god-awful Montana—her word, not mine—so… guess who’s coming for Christmas?”

  Krista’s stomach answered with a loud, complaining sound. “Lucky me,” she muttered, barely hearing her sister’s list of dates and details.

  She needed cocoa. Preferably intravenously.

  Chapter Four

  The scent of warm chocolate tickled Jonah’s nose and made his mouth water the moment he stepped into the festively decorated Copper Mountain Chocolate Shop. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. An image came to mind of his grandmother serving him a mug of warm cocoa with a dozen tiny marshmallows bumping into each other. She’d spooned them into his mouth, one-by-one. “Mmm… mmm… mmm.”

  The happy memory brought a smile as he slipped out of his father’s one-size-too-big winter coat. He’d already stuffed his newly purchased stocking cap into one pocket, along with the subzero gloves he’d ordered online from the airplane as they circled Bozeman waiting for the sky to clear so they could land.