One Complicated Christmas Read online

  “What?” she shrieked. “Why orphans? What does Seth have to do with any kind of charity, let alone one for children?”

  “Don’t know. We didn’t get that far. I don’t know this man. He isn’t the bad-boy business tycoon I knew a year ago. I think he has a good twin who decided to take over for him.”

  “You might be on to something, because this certainly doesn’t sound like the man I met. Although, he is playing games. I mean, he didn’t tell you this ahead of time. About the orphans, I mean. Does he not realize how much work you’ve put into the proposal? Why you didn’t sleep all night and yet are still working now? What nerve. You should’ve slugged him.”

  “It actually wasn’t his fault.” I sighed, realizing my anger was at myself more than Seth. “Seth told Frank, but he didn’t pass that information on to me. I have a feeling Frank attempted to sabotage me to get revenge for Seth excusing him from our meeting. Although, that doesn’t make sense because he wants this contract. I’m not sure what to think anymore.”

  A bark drew my attention to my front window.

  Ashely didn’t say anything, which was uncharacteristic.

  “What? You want to ask me something, don’t you?” I peered out and spotted Seth playing with Souffle. I thought it was Seth. It looked like Seth, but the man was in jeans and a bright-green hat. No way he would wear jeans. I’d never seen him in anything but a suit. His custom suits were like my designer heels.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to upset you.”

  I swallowed a gulp of coffee courage, allowing the warmth to coat my insides before I listened. “Go ahead. You know you can ask me anything.”

  Seth threw the ball for Souffle, who bounded at lightning speed and caught it in the air.

  Ash cleared her throat and took in an exaggerated breath but still didn’t say anything.

  “Shoot, girl.” Perhaps it was the warmth that soothed me, watching this ex-boyfriend turned stranger play like a fun-loving vacationer, but I wasn’t scared to face Ashley’s normal inquisition.

  “I know I swore never to talk about this, and I haven’t. None of the other girls know. But maybe it’s time that you opened up.”

  So much for the soothing warmth. Her words shot fiery regrets through me.

  “What I mean to ask is if you’re going to be okay with the children and family thing with Seth there?”

  “Of course,” I said way too quick. “Are you still good meeting with us tomorrow to discuss some adventure plans?” I took a quick breath to force the one word I never liked to say aloud. “I know the kids will love whatever you come up with.”

  “Riiight. Um, you never told him, did you? I mean, about your condition.” Her words were like skewers poking through my heart.

  “Hey, it’s been a while since we had some girl time. Maybe we can have coffee or something before the meeting.”

  “Change the subject much?” Ash tsked. “Yes, on for tomorrow. And now on to a friend-vention. You need to talk about it. I know it’s painful and raw and awful, but you are not going to feel better if you don’t start dealing with everything. You’ll remain hidden on that mountain forever.”

  My fingernails tapped vigorously against my ceramic cup—something my mother would be smacking and chastising me for, citing inappropriate manners for a lady.

  “How can I move forward without telling anyone the truth? I mean, I’ve been out on four blind dates set up by my helicopter mom, in which the first thing they mention is marriage and children.” I watched Seth sit on the ground, rubbing Souffle’s ears and nuzzling her. That wasn’t the man that I once dated because he was safe. A man who could never want children since he was all about work. “The last blind date with Allergic Danny made me realize there was no way I could ever trust one of them with the truth. Not when they are only one degree of separation from my mother. I already have to deal with my mother thinking a woman is worthless unless she produces heirs.”

  I paused, but no comment from the Ashley help line. “How do I start dating a guy I can’t tell that I’m damaged goods who can’t give him a child because, oh, I got knocked up by the guy I thought I would marry after high school, lost the baby, had to have emergency surgery, and I can’t have kids anymore.”

  “You can’t. Not anyone your mother sets you up with, but Seth Mason isn’t just anyone. And he’s fifty degrees of separation from your mother’s world. If I remember correctly, he believed the only reason to go to a club was for a business meeting.”

  “No, he’s the man I thought I could have a future with because he wouldn’t want kids. But now…now you should’ve seen his eyes light up at the word children. And right now, outside my window, he’s playing with his dog like she’s everything to him.”

  “Listen.” Ashley chose her soothing tone. “You don’t know what the man wants. You thought he wanted to leave you behind so that he could find another woman to be his show-mance for clients. Apparently, that wasn’t true, because he’s back.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s back for me.” I sighed, realizing I’d gotten myself all twisted up over nothing. “Thanks, Ash. I realize now that I way overreacted to all of this. He didn’t return for me. He returned to have this event because he’d traveled here when he was a kid. That must be why he wanted to have the party here. I mean, it makes sense. It’s the only happy childhood memory he has. The one where his father picked him up and spent the weekend with him before taking him back to his foster family again. He’s from foster care, so it would be natural for him to want to give orphan children a good Christmas.” I rotated my shoulder, relieving the ache in my neck. “Seth Mason is just another client.”

  “You keep telling yourself that, but we both know that isn’t true.”

  I huffed. “What are you saying? You just agreed that I was right about why he returned here.”

  “Maybe, but that isn’t the only reason.”

  “Oh, please.” I set my mug down on the cloth coaster to open my laptop to resume work now that I’d had my Mason meltdown and I could move on. “What other reason could he have? He left, remember?”

  “That isn’t how I remember it. If I remember correctly, he mentioned going away together, and you told him to go away on his own.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean for a year.” I laughed with a hysterical giggle chaser.

  Ashley let out a long breath that whistled through the phone. “Come on, girl. You might lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me. You know he’s interested.”

  A piece of me didn’t want to hang up the phone and work. That one little part, okay, big part, wanted to know if it was true. Had Seth Mason returned for me? “What makes you think he’s still interested in me? And why now, after a year?”

  “I can’t answer that, but think about how he showed interest in you last time… Did he lean in when you were talking? Touch your hand or shoulder when it wasn’t necessary? Did he smile or look at you in that I’m interested way?”

  My head ached with the combative thoughts. Left brain said he almost cost me my job. Right brain said he touched my shoulder. And it only became more gray gravy from there. “I don’t know. What if I’m reading too much into it?”

  Ashley chuckled. “I tell you what. Next time you’re with him, watch how he moves. Does he stand close or walk so close that your knuckles brush? Does his gaze remain on you while you’re talking instead of veering away to something going on in the background? And the one foolproof way you know if he’s interested for sure…”

  “What?” I asked before I bit my bottom lip to keep my mouth from opening again.

  “If he kisses you, even on the cheek, you’ll know he’s here to get you back.”

  My brain hurt. “He didn’t and he won’t kiss me,” I said as if I believed my words.

  “Okay then, I only have one question for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you want him back?” Ashley’s question sent a static charge to my every nerve.

  “I don�
�t know.” I pulled up a folder on my computer with pictures from last year. One showed us next to the fireplace standing hand in hand, as if we would be together forever. That night I was happy, content, hopeful. But then…the next day was the death of our relationship.

  Chapter 7

  “I see that you still choose manual labor over a good marriage.” Mother’s voice echoed from my childhood, young adult failings, and through my lodge kitchen.

  A chilly breeze shot through the area from a door open nearby, or perhaps it was from the realization that my mother had crash landed into my world. A place she’d sworn never to visit.

  My hand trembled so much that I had to abandon my slicing and dicing for lunch prep before I lost a finger. I steadied myself to prevent my voice from quivering. “Mother? What are you doing here?” I set the knife on the counter and wiped my hands on the dishtowel at my side.

  Her black-with-red-heel Manolo Blahnik heels click-tapped closer. I knew them from the sound of the distinctive red tip clinking against the tile floor. One hitting harder than the other due to her bad knee. Not that she’d ever admit to anything wrong with her. Shoes I knew. The only trait I inherited from my mother was a love for designer shoes. The rest of her was an enigma to me. “I thought it was time we had a sit down.”

  I tried to remain calm and turned with ballerina grace to face her while remembering to keep my chin up, shoulders back, slight smile to my lips. The way the first finishing school instructor had taught me so as not to give Mother reason to criticize or scold. Of course, she was fired when I was nine and sat improperly at one of my parents’ parties.

  Mother stood in perfect form, her purse one inch from her elbow, arms not crossed over her chest but poised with one wrist over the other and her feet turned straight forward.

  I adjusted my right foot to match her stance.

  Not one hair moved when she stepped away from me, her lips tightening at the edges, but the fact that she reacted at all had the same level of impact as if she had fainted or had run from the room screaming. “I can’t talk to you when you look like that.”

  Frosty nips stung all over my skin as if Christmas fairies in ice slippers danced the Nutcracker on me. I glanced down to check my list of etiquette. Proper stance, hands at my sides not in pockets, hips straight. Nope, couldn’t figure it out. “What?”

  “That apron. Remove it before you bring tea. I’ll wait for you by the fire that janitor man is building for me in the main room.” She removed her gloves, one finger at a time.

  “He’s not a janitor.” I spoke out of turn and received a painted-on ebony eyebrow lift, but she didn’t speak. She only tap-clicked out of my kitchen. Thank goodness, too, because in another few seconds of restricted breathing, I’d pass out. An event that would land me in a nurse’s care at my mother’s house behind a locked door that not even a knight could break through.

  Margie rushed from the office. “That perfectly primped prima donna is your mother, isn’t she? Yikes! She’s everything you made her out to be. I slipped back into hiding the minute I saw her reprimanding gaze. I mean, I felt like the Grinch on my knees begging Santa for a Christmas gift.”

  “She has that effect on people.” I removed my apron and placed it on the hook in my office. When I returned, Margie already had the water on to boil and the china tea set ready on a tray with a single red carnation in a glass vase. “Don’t try to impress her. You’ll never succeed. I’ve been trying to gain her acceptance all my life, and nothing.”

  I checked my eye makeup, my hair, my clothes, reapplied lipstick, and then retrieved the tea tray. “Thanks, Marg. I owe you one. Feel free to come get me for a cooking emergency if I don’t return in twenty minutes.” I slipped through the doorway into the main room, where I found Mother with perfect posture on the edge of the couch, ankles crossed.

  “Don’t you have staff to serve, my dear?” she asked in a sweet tone that disguised her disappointment to the untrained ear.

  “Yes, I have a personal maid, butler, and an elf, but I thought it would be nicer if we had some time alone.”

  “Sarcasm is not attractive.”

  I poured her tea two-thirds up the cup without a drop spilled and then passed her the cup perched on a saucer. “Here you go.”

  Her nose wrinkled and then relaxed. “Darjeeling at this hour?”

  I ignored her jab and poured my own.

  “No scones? I thought you were a chef.” She sipped with no sound, her pinky raised.

  “If you are here to judge me and tell me that I’m wasting my life, you can leave now. And don’t try to hold money over my head. As far as I know, you wrote me out of the will years ago.”

  “I’m shocked at your lack of appreciation that I came all this way for a visit, especially when I canceled all my appointments. You think that I don’t care about you, but I do, that’s why I’m here and so urgently. Really, Emmeline, you can be so ungrateful.” She placed her cup on the saucer and returned it to the tray. “You have always been so sensitive, so I thought I would come here in person to protect you.”

  “Protect me from what?” I abandoned my own hot tea.

  Mother examined a pin-sized dot on the napkin in her lap, removed it with the tip of her fingers as if it were dynamite, and dropped it onto the table in front of us. The woman who always had control of every word and emotion looked…unsure. Fear bubbled inside me. There was little on this earth that would shake my mother. “What is it?”

  “I just thought it would be better hearing it from me first. You know, instead of a stranger.”

  My mind spun with things one never wants to think about: cancer, heart disease, Mother going broke. “Are you dying?”

  She nudged the undesirable tea tray farther from her, as if risking contamination. “No. Not yet anyway. You’re stuck with me a few more years.”

  “Mother. That’s not what I meant. We have our differences, but we’re still family.”

  She relaxed into her normal blank façade. “Yes, well, I fear that there is an issue in regard to your life choices.”

  “I know you hate that I work here, but I’m a chef and that isn’t going to change.”

  “No, not your work. Although I don’t approve. This is your relationship history.”

  Dear Lord in heaven, did she find out? Did she know about the baby? I didn’t care about the money, but for some unknown reason, I still cared about my mother’s love and respect. I bit my lip, trying to buy time before I faced the horrible, ugly truth. A decade-long secret exposed. I felt raw and vulnerable.

  “You have been labeled a player. A woman who frolics from man to man. I fear that your reputation will tarnish our name.”

  I shot up. How could I sit still if she knew about my past? About my baby? “What are you talking about?”

  The room was stifling hot, so I walked away from the roaring fire, away from her judgmental gaze.

  “You didn’t even give Donald a chance. He’s a good man with a good family. What are people going to think?”

  My pace slowed, muscles disengaged, and I thought I’d collapse at the relief, but my temper revved. “That’s all you care about is the family name. Relax, I’m not dating around, Mother. I’m not like that.”

  “No, but you are a polarized magnet to losers.”

  “Dramatic much, Mother?”

  She smoothed her skirt, warning me she was devising a plan of attack. “Is it being dramatic to care that my daughter may have no future? Everything I do is out of love. Why are you against having a good-quality man in your life?”

  “You mean a man with a name and money,” I shot back.

  “Is it wrong to have both? Why do you choose men who aren’t worthy of you, darling? I mean, do you recall your choice after high school? The fire I had to put out when he was arrested?”

  “For an unpaid parking ticket, Mother.”

  “That was just the beginning. Think about it, dear. That boy was no man worthy of you.”

  She had a p
oint on that one. Something I was too young and in love to see at the time. “I’ve grown, Mother. I am wiser, and you need to trust that I know what I’m doing in my life.”

  A door squealed upstairs, so I hoped Frank wasn’t eavesdropping, but I lowered my voice, knowing Mother would follow my lead since she cared about what people thought. “Listen, you need to give me space.”

  “I will if you explain one thing to me. What was wrong with Donald? I mean, he was a nice man, good job, handsome, charismatic, good name.”

  I fought for a reason that it didn’t work. No way I could explain that it wouldn’t work because I’d have to live a lie with him. I’d never be able to tell him my shameful secret. Not when he was part of Mother’s world. “He is allergic to dogs.”

  She blinked. “You don’t have a dog.”

  Woof.

  I turned to find Seth with Souffle at his side. “Sorry for interrupting.”

  Mother shot me a sideways another-man-not-worthy look. “What is he doing back here?”

  I cleared my throat, ignoring Mother’s glare. “He’s—”

  “I’m here to win your daughter’s heart.” Seth strutted into the room, matching Mother’s confidence with each muscle fiber movement. “You see, after I left to return to my life in California, I realized I’d given up on the one person who was perfect for me, all because I felt threatened by her independence and drive to succeed in her chosen carrier.”

  Mother’s face relaxed from judgmental to hopeful. “That’s why you left?”

  “Yes.” He let go of Souffle’s collar, and the dog raced around Mother and then returned to Seth’s side. Mother froze like a reindeer in a semi’s headlights. “You see, my company is international, so I thought I needed a woman on my arm who would support me and raise me up in my world.”

  “My dear Emmeline is perfectly suited for such a life. She’s been groomed in that world and is an excellent choice.”