Together for Christmas (11 page)

He gave her a puzzled look. “Heather doesn’t have to leave town when she’s done with her TV special. In fact, afterward she’ll be
more
free to spend time with you and your parents. There just won’t be any Robo-Rudolphs, SnoFoam, Snowcel, acrylic icicles, or Mystic-Tan-spackled Michiganders around.”

But Kristen knew different. This was the first holiday season in years that Heather had been home. That was partly why her parents had jumped so hard on the Heather Miller bandwagon.

“She’ll leave,” Kristen told him. “Without an excuse to stay in Kismet, Heather will borrow someone’s private Learjet and head back to her real life. My mom and dad will be devastated. I can’t let that happen.” Turning away from that sobering thought, Kristen mustered a grin. “But hey, maybe you’ll see Heather in Cozumel sometime!”

“So you’re sacrificing
your
Christmas happiness for the sake of ensuring a big, cozy, family holiday for your folks?”

She hadn’t thought about it that way, Kristen realized. But that was about the size of it. She just wanted a little harmony.

“You don’t have to sound so befuddled by that.”

“I’m not. I’m not
befuddled
by family loyalty.” Casey didn’t sound completely convinced. “So tell me: What makes a perfect Christmas for you?”

She snorted. “As if
you
want to know, Mr. Grinch.”

“I mean it. Just because I don’t want one for myself, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate all the necessary elements. But it’s a personal thing, right? So when it comes to
you
. . .”

“All right,” Kristen said, deciding to play along. “I like having family and friends nearby, first of all. Which is at the crux of my problem with Heather’s Christmas invasion, actually, since she’s
here,
which is good, yet she’s ruining everything, which is bad. I like doing all the traditional things, too—decorating, baking cookies, exchanging gifts, going to parties.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Appearing deeply engrossed in what she was saying—while also deeply, irrevocably averse to everything she was talking about—Casey nodded. “That sounds nice for you.”

“I have to say, you seem as though you’d rather eat rocks than immerse yourself in Christmas.” Kristen angled her head toward the B&B outside. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

Now Casey appeared grimly determined. “I can take it.”

“Right. So you can keep an eye on Shane Maresca.”

“What’s more,” he went on, ignoring her leading statement, “I can make sure
you
have the Christmas you want this year.”

“Are you trying to bribe me or something? Because if you are—”
It might help me feel better about “distracting” you
. She couldn’t say that, so she tried something else. “It won’t work.”

“Consider it a favor. Just because I like you.”

Suspiciously, Kristen regarded him. She couldn’t help wanting that to be true. Because, despite everything,
she
liked
him,
too. “Really?”

“Yes.” Casey glanced out the window next, as though girding himself against the B&B’s festive façade. “Now. Will you come inside and help me survive this Christmas gauntlet?”

“Around here, we like to call it ‘checking in.’ It’s easy.”

“It’s not going to be easy.” Casey shook his head. “It’s going to be a big slice of tinsel-covered disaster pie.”

“Whoa.” Kristen held up her hands. “First of all, don’t malign the world of pie. Second of all, I’m your conscripted Sherpa, not your therapist. I’m not here to hold your hand.”

Casey’s warmhearted gaze suggested he’d like that . . . and more.

Probably, so would she. Better not think about that.

Heather’s sex tape. Heather’s sex tape.
He’d seen it!

Whatever else she did, Kristen remembered, she could not cave in and sleep with Casey. No matter how fun it sounded . . .

“I’m asking for your company,” he said, not seeming at all like a guy who watched grainy pornography. “For an afternoon.”

“I didn’t agree to that, either.”

“It was kind of implied when you rocketed into my car to escape your ‘paparazzo.’” He gave her a casual, all-too-knowing glance. “Or are you ready to tell me the truth about what that guy was really doing lurking outside your apartment?”

She’d been planning to tell Casey she intended to call a taxi from outside The Christmas House and then take her chances sneaking back into her aforementioned apartment. Or, failing that, retreating to Talia’s place for the night. But now...

Argh
. “How did you know it was my apartment?”

Casey only observed her. Patiently. And confidently.

Damn it. She couldn’t lie outright. “They should call you the Ninja Stalker,” Kristen grumbled, “not The Terminator.”

His gaze intensified. “Who calls me The Terminator?”

“Um,
everyone?
In L.A., at least. That’s what I heard.”

He pursed his lips. Then he nodded. Was it only her imagination, or did Casey seem a little . . .
hurt
by that nickname?

Before she could start feeling
too
sorry for him, he gazed through the frosty windshield. He frowned at the B&B’s sign.

“That’s how Heather got you to agree to pump me for information,” he surmised in a rough voice. “By scaring you with stories of the big baddie who’d come to cause her trouble.”

He was too close for comfort. Kristen squirmed, unwilling to admit it. “Hey, I don’t scare easily, remember?”

“Maybe not,” Casey agreed, “but you
do
seem to have a mile-wide loyalty streak. Obviously, Heather . . . doesn’t. She was willing to do whatever she had to do—even exploit your sense of sisterly solidarity—to keep me away from the set today. The question is, why? What exactly is going on down there?”

“Technically, that’s two questions.”

Decisively, Casey glanced at the B&B. “I’m going inside for a supersize dose of Christmas cheer. It’ll probably be lethal.” With a beguiling grin, he beckoned her. “Are you coming?”

She boggled. “Aren’t you going to the set of Heather’s TV special instead? A second ago, you said you wanted to know what’s going on down there.”

He’d also said that Heather had
exploited
her. That didn’t sit well with Kristen. She crossed her arms and waited.

But Casey merely smiled at her. “I’m not going to go down there and start raising hell right this minute, no. If that’s what you’re expecting,” he said. “That’s not how I work.”

His cryptic tone only piqued her interest. “How do you work, then?”

But Casey only squinted more attentively at the B&B. “I think I see that sweater-wearing dachshund you were telling me about. That’s a nice Christmas tree in the window, too. See it?”

Pointedly, Kristen didn’t look. But she felt the tug of those seasonal accoutrements, all the same.

“Seriously,” she insisted. “How do you work?”

“Stick close to me. Maybe you’ll find out.”

Casey flashed her a tempting grin. Then, before she could reply, he got out of the car. The driver’s-side door slammed shut in his wake. He tromped toward The Christmas House’s homespun sign. He put his hands on his hips. Then he grinned at the sign—almost as if he truly, genuinely
liked
it.

She didn’t get him. That’s partly why he was so disarming.

Also,
she
liked that sign, too. A local artist had painted it. There was something irrevocably unpretentious and welcoming about it. Which was probably why Casey was calling her attention to it, rather than simply trudging uphill to his Christmas doom.

He wanted her to
want
to come with him. Willingly.

“I didn’t agree to this!” Kristen said from inside the car. She pantomimed reluctance to make her message clear. “You’re still trying to pit me against my sister. It won’t work.”

“Am I?” Casey held up his cell phone. “Will you take a picture of me beside this sign? It’ll blow my friends’ minds.”

If she got out of the car, Kristen knew, she was sunk. From there, it would be that much easier to heed the lure of eggnog and peppermint bark and evergreen garland and simply accompany Casey inside The Christmas House. There, she’d be twice as susceptible to his charms. Christmastime weakened her resolve.

Christmastime might even be capable of overriding the
off
switch she typically employed when it came to her libido—and men who failed her litmus test. Men like Casey Jackson.

Oblivious to her mental battles, Casey waggled his phone. He gave an enticing little smile, too, just to sweeten the deal.

Although that’s not
precisely
what tipped the scales in his favor, Kristen suspected she’d look back later and curse his relentless boyish charm. So far, it was proving to be her undoing. She couldn’t seem to
not
trust him, no matter how hard she tried. But Kristen did have the presence of mind—and the pride—not to make her (temporary) surrender look easy.

She cracked open the passenger-side door, then offered him a scowl from within the resulting gap. “If I spend the afternoon with you,” Kristen specified, “I want dinner, too.”

“Fine. It’ll be my treat.”

His instant acquiescence told her she should have asked for more. But Kristen was committed now. She got out, then tromped over to him. “Excellent! They serve an incredible buffet at the B&B, full of every single Christmas specialty you can think of.”

“Sounds nightmarish.”

“Just smile for the camera.”

Then Kristen snapped a photo of Casey beside the B&B’s holly-wreath-decorated sign, thereby sealing into posterity the moment when she stopped being officially skeptical of him . . . and started being willing to go along with him (at least partway) instead.

Chapter 8

Galaxy Diner, Kismet, Michigan
20½ baking, frosting, pastry-making days until Christmas

When Walden Farr emerged from the Galaxy Diner’s walk-in at the end of his shift, he wasn’t thinking about Christmas wishes. He was thinking, more or less, about the batch of spritz cookies he was chilling, the chocolate ganache he was planning for service tomorrow, and the likely improbability of anyone from his hometown, roughly three thousand miles distant, coming to see him at Christmastime.

It wasn’t because his family didn’t care. They did. But they couldn’t afford airfare for holiday vacations. They also couldn’t afford the time off from work (or the gas) needed to make a multistate road trip. At this point, although he had a good job, neither could he. That was just the way it was.

This year, like most years, Walden and his far-flung family would be having a very Skype-y Christmas. Video calling had its advantages, though. For one, if the Internet connection was sluggish enough—and he tied back his dreads—his mom might forget to nag him about getting a haircut. So that was a plus.

Walden believed in looking on the bright side. Most of the time, he was pretty good at it. That’s why, when Talia invited him to participate in the scheme she and Gareth were pulling off, Walden decided to go along with it. Because he knew they meant well. He knew they would probably succeed. And he—as the new guy in town—wanted to be in on the action when they did.

Also, he wanted to be near Talia.

He’d never met anyone cooler than Talia. She was mouthy and sarcastic and freaking
unconquerable,
and just being around her made him feel as though someone had cranked the dial to ten. He loved her energy and her loyalty and her weird purple hair. He was pretty sure she thought of him as a spatula-wielding, cake-baking freak of nature, but on the off chance she didn’t . . .

“Hey, Talia.” Offhandedly, Walden nodded at her as he entered the break room and glimpsed her there. “How’s it going?”

She turned to look at him, giving him a dizzying dose of big blue eyes and brainy intimidation. “
You!
You’re
perfect!
”

At her exclamation, her eyes got even bluer (if that was possible). Her excitement at seeing him crackled clear across the room. Her coolness touched him, too. And
that
was the moment when Walden starting thinking about Christmas wishes—thinking that he wished he could have
Talia
for Christmas. Because even though Talia’s statement was an unmistakable non sequitur, it segued so well with his dreams that Walden didn’t care.

You! You’re perfect!

How many times had he fantasized about Talia looking at him, really
seeing
him, and then saying something like that?

Well, lots of times. More than he wanted to count.

“Perfect for what?” he asked, striving to keep his cool.

“For
this
.” Excitedly, Talia brandished a box.

He looked at it. “A home pregnancy test?” He shrugged. “Okay. If you’re
that
ready to get pregnant, I’m your guy.”

Wishing he
was
her guy, Walden started unbuttoning his double-breasted chef ’s jacket. He gave his hips a burlesque-style wiggle in a maneuver designed to make the most of his checkered-pants-clad bottom half. He grinned, then continued his bump and grind. “Get ready, future baby mama! Here I come.”

At his semiseductive warning growl, Talia guffawed.

“No, silly!” Grinning, she smacked him in the belly. She seemed to be caught by surprise when her fist
didn’t
encounter acres of doughy pastry chef flesh. She gave his abs a curious poke. “Hey, you’re kind of, um . . .
cut,
aren’t you? I mean, you’re really—” Her gaze lifted to mingle interestedly with his. Then she waggled the pregnancy-test kit. “
This
is for our scheme.”

Aha. He quit unbuttoning, leaving his chef ’s whites open atop his
The Strokes
T-shirt. “Our scheme to help Kristen?”

“No,” she deadpanned. “Our scheme to save the whales.”

“Ha ha.”

“Our scheme to make beer pong an Olympic event.”

“Very funny.”

But Talia was on a roll now. “Our scheme to take over the world!” she elaborated theatrically, her eyes sparkling. “Just like—”