Together for Christmas (34 page)

“Well. You should have told me that
before
I bought a new wig!” she said. “I thought you’d gotten tired of the old one. I thought maybe a newer, longer,
sexier
wig was what you wanted.”

Huh? Obviously, he’d have to be clearer about this.

“No more goddamn wigs!” Walden yelled. “I’m
done
.”

Talia flinched. She went on staring at him with those big, wounded-looking, indigo-colored eyes of hers. For the life of him, Walden couldn’t figure out why she looked so hurt.

“I’m sorry I yelled about it,” he told her, because that part was true, at least, and he really wasn’t sure what else to do. All he knew was that he had to make Talia quit looking so sad. “I guess I’ve kept this bottled up for too long. I should have said something sooner, but I didn’t know how you’d react.”

“How I’d ‘react’?” Her acerbic tone bit into him.

Talia advanced toward him as she said it. Menacingly.

Warily, Walden held up both hands. “Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but I thought you might be upset or something.”

His blundering attempt at humor didn’t fly.

“‘Upset’? Of course I’m upset!” Talia waggled the wig at him. “Do you think I
like
putting gross fake hair on my head? Do you think I
like
prancing around in this skanky, ridiculous coat? Wearing sunglasses in wintertime? Making out in alleyways?”

“Well, that last part was pretty nice,” Walden murmured, remembering it. He chanced a nostalgic glance at Talia, but she was obviously not on the same those-were-the-days kick he was.

“I’m doing all this for
you,
you lunkhead!” she shouted. “And now you’re telling me you don’t
like
it?”

“We’re both doing it for Kristen,” Walden clarified. “We’re doing it to keep the paparazzi away from the diner.”

“We are.”

It wasn’t
quite
a question. But it sounded too sarcastic to be a genuine statement of agreement. Fraught with the unwanted sensation that he was somehow making things worse, Walden frowned. “That’s what I just said.”

“I heard you! I’m not an idiot.” Talia shook the wig. “This only makes me a
temporary
dumb blonde!”

“If you heard me, then why—” Feeling frustrated, Walden broke off to give Talia a shake of his dreadlocks. Maybe if he started over from the beginning . . . “Look, all I’m saying is that I hate your wearing that wig,” he said in a gentler tone. “That’s it. I don’t know why you’re making a big deal out of it.”

“‘Making a big deal out of it’?” Talia’s eyes overflowed with tears. Angrily, she hurled down her Heather wig. “It’s
already
a big deal! It’s a big, fat, hairy, stinking deal!”

“Ew.” Tentatively, Walden made a funny face. Usually Talia liked when he did that. This time she didn’t so much as crack a smile. “That doesn’t sound very nice,” he joked anyway.

But Talia only stared at him. Exasperated. And hurt.

“You’re joking now.” Again, she gave him a supersize dose of sarcasm. Pacing, she added, “You’re making jokes. Now.”

“And you’re asking questions that sound like statements!”

“Because we’re having a fight! This is how I fight!”

“I’m not fighting with you!” Walden yelled, waving his arms and feeling confused. “I don’t want to fight with you!”

In the crashing silence that followed his shouting (which sounded a lot like fighting, he supposed, if he were being brutally honest with himself), they both stared at one another.

“Maybe I should just leave,” Talia said quietly.

“Maybe you should,” Walden said, because she obviously didn’t want to be there with him. She’d probably been looking for an excuse to end their let’s-help-Kristen charade. Talia probably wanted to pretend it had never happened and maybe wash out her brain with amnesia shampoo so she could forget kissing him—so she could forget acting as though she loved him.

Walden knew he ought to accept that. He did. The trouble was, he’d honestly believed things had gotten real between them.

All those long, intimate nights that he and Talia had shared. All those funny, heartfelt conversations. All those kisses and hugs and . . . and, well, all that X-rated other stuff that would only live on in his dreams now. They were all over with.

This was it,
Walden realized miserably. This was the moment when Talia realized she’d been hanging around with
him,
on purpose, for days now. This was the moment when she realized that the weird new guy at work had become—at least temporarily and for all intents and purposes—her de facto boyfriend.

“I never meant for this to happen, you know,” she said, accidentally confirming his innermost fears. “It was so easy at first. Putting on that wig, making out with you, pretending we were a couple . . . I didn’t realize how out of hand it would get.”

“I know.” Manfully trying to behave like an adult about this, Walden squared his shoulders. “You didn’t even like me.”

“I mean, Gareth and I kind of drafted you into this in the first place,” Talia was saying, distractedly talking over him, “even though it was obvious that subterfuge didn’t come naturally to you. I’m lucky it lasted as long as it did.”

“Me too,” Walden had to admit. Because . . . why not?

Then he realized exactly what Talia had said. “Did you just say you’re ‘lucky it lasted as long as it did’?” he asked.

“Didn’t ‘like’ you?” she asked in a tone of equal (if belated) amazement. “You thought I didn’t like you?”

They stared at one another. Again, silence fell between them. And that was when Walden realized
this
was a monumental moment, too. Because this was the moment when he had a chance to make it or break it with Talia. This was the moment when he could go for broke—or just go back to sugaring cranberries.

“You
didn’t
like me,” he said bluntly, opting to go for it. After all, he had nothing left to lose. “We’ve worked together for months. All I ever heard from you were stories about this guy or that guy or some other loser you were going out with.”

Talia gawked at him. “I was
trying
to seem in demand! I was
trying
to make you think I was a hot commodity! But you never even looked twice at me—not until I put on that stupid wig.”

“Oh, I looked at you, all right,” Walden said, liberated by the fact that she was leaving anyway. At least he could finally play it straight with her. “I looked at you plenty!”

“Well, I never saw you!”

“I did it! Okay? I couldn’t help myself!”

Seeming almost pleased by his admission of helplessness in the face of her incredible allure, Talia touched her close-cropped lavender hair. Then, “You’re still shouting at me!”

“You’re shouting at me!”

“That’s because you’re being an idiot!”

“I am not! I’m being honest!” Realizing he was still yelling, Walden deliberately lowered his voice. “I don’t like that wig because I’d rather be with the
real
you.” Bravely, he stepped close enough to touch Talia’s face. Because she hadn’t left yet, and maybe that meant he still had a chance. “The real you is a million times more beautiful than that. Putting on anything that obscures who you really are ought to be a crime.”

Talia gazed up at him. She sniffled. “Really?”

Somberly, Walden nodded. “Every time I saw you wearing those ginormous sunglasses, I wanted to rip them off your face and stomp on them. Because they hid your beautiful eyes.”

“Aw. That’s so Neanderthal of you. So sweet.”

“
And,
” Walden added, high on honesty and bravado, “because they made it impossible for me to see what you were thinking.”

“You can’t do that anyway,” Talia joked, “if you thought I didn’t like you. I thought
you
didn’t like
me
—not until I put on that Heather wig, at least.”

“That’s crazy talk,” he blurted, because he couldn’t stop himself. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

“I thought you were mad because I came over without wearing the wig today,” Talia confided further. “You looked at me with such disappointment on your face. It kind of broke my heart.”

Oh. That explained why she’d come into his apartment with such a tentative demeanor at first, Walden realized. Because for the first time, Talia had arrived at his place
without
wearing her Heather wig. He’d been too engrossed in sugaring cranberries—and feeling exasperated at the wig—to notice that at first, but obviously, Talia had been worried about his reaction to the real her. Which explained why she’d rushed to grab that damn wig when he’d groused at her, too.

They were having their first colossal misunderstanding.

He decided to consider it a landmark moment—and a positive development, too. After all, at least they were both still there talking. That was something to be glad about, wasn’t it?

“I was grumpy because you didn’t use the key I gave you,” Walden explained, beginning to feel maybe things
weren’t
as dark as they seemed. “Again. You never use it! Why do you think I—”

“I lost it,” Talia said sheepishly. “I didn’t want to say so. And anyway, I thought you only gave me that key so we could conspire to be Heather and her bohemian boy toy more easily.”

Walden shook his head. Her face felt warm and familiar and beloved beneath his palm, and he never wanted to stop touching her. Talia meant everything to him. “All I ever wanted was to be you and me, together. That’s the whole reason I did all this crazy Heather-and-Heather’s-boyfriend impersonation stuff.”

“Well, you wanted to help Kristen, too.”

“A little.” Walden smiled. “Mostly, I wanted
you
.”

“
I
wanted
you
.” Talia reached up to cover his hand with her palm. She squeezed his hand, giving him a look so adoring that it nearly stole away his breath. “I’m not as fearless as I seem, Walden. Not one hundred percent of the time. Not about things that really matter.” She inhaled a deep breath, then gazed into his eyes. “
You
really matter. You’re kind and funny and sexy and strong, and I really like you, and when it started looking like we might actually have a chance together, I got so freaked-out thinking I might blow it that I . . .” Talia shrugged. She offered him a sardonic grin. “Well, I guess I blew it. Ironic, right?”

Her sarcastic tone was back. It was there, Walden realized in that moment, to cover up her vulnerability. Her sarcastic tone was there, if he paid attention, to alert him that Talia needed something from him.

This time, he did a better job of rising to the occasion.

“Nobody’s blown anything,” he said. “All that’s happened is we had a fight. We cleared the air. Then we kept talking until we understood each other. That’s how it’s supposed to be.” He gave her a long look. “We just survived our first fight! That’s kind of great, right?”

“No. I hated every minute of it.” Talia shuddered. “I hate fighting with you. I never want to do it ever again. Okay?”

“Not okay.” Regretfully, Walden shook his head. “Because we’re going to have misunderstandings sometimes. We’re going to disagree about things once in a while.”

“Oh no, we’re not,” Talia shot back.

Her eyes sparkled at him. It took him a second to realize why. She was disagreeing with him about disagreeing with him.

“Funny.” Walden smiled at her. “All I mean is, you don’t have to act like you’re bulletproof. Not with me. I’m not here because you’re cool and tough and amazing—”

“You’re not? My illusions are shattered!”

“Well, not
just
because you’re cool and tough and amazing,” Walden amended. “I’m also here because I love you. No matter how goofily I might express it. So let’s start over. Okay?”

“Okay, but . . . wait.” She frowned. “You
love
me?”

Talia’s awestruck tone—and her frown—nearly made him quaver. Because Walden had been too busy speaking from the heart to realize exactly how vulnerable he was making himself just then. Now it was too late to take it back—too late to be safe.

“I love you more than bittersweet chocolate,” he told Talia ardently, going all-in now. “More than kouign amann or pâte feuilletée and brown butter tarte tatin or croquembouche with pâte à choux and fleur de sel caramel and crème pâtis-sière. More than all the best viennoiserie in the whole wide world—”

“Um, translation for
non
-pastry chefs, please?”

Walden smiled. “I love you with all my heart and soul, Talia. I love everything about you, from your purple hair to your tattooed left foot to your smile and your laugh and your obsession with drawing hearts on every frosty window you pass.”

She blushed. “You noticed that?”

“I notice everything when it comes to you. You’re fascinating to me. Why do you think I’m here?”

“Well, for the sex, of course.” Talia counted that off on her fingers. “Also,
Pinky and the Brain
trivia. Sex. Joint subterfuge perpetuated on the paparazzi. Sex.” A wide, beautiful grin broke over her face. “Oh, and frequent sex.”

“Mmm-hmm. While I’m not denying that I love the sex,” Walden said, taking her into his arms, “because I definitely
do
love that, there’s a lot more going on here between us.”

“Like the way I love having your arms around me?”

“Yes, there’s that.”

“And the way I love hearing your voice when I come in to work, and seeing you creating something amazing, and knowing that no matter what it is, you can always make it sweeter?”

“Um, maybe that.” Walden frowned in dawning confusion. “Are you giving me a pastry chef recommendation or—”

“I’m saying I love you, too, dummy!” Laughing, Talia shook him. Or at least she tried to. Given the discrepancy between his big body and her smaller one, she mostly accomplished a sort of wobbly shove. “You’re the most impressive man I’ve ever met.”

“It’s the dreadlocks. They make me look cool.”

“It’s
you,
” Talia disagreed, tipping upward to kiss him. She stroked his face. “You have integrity, Walden. You have the ability to make the whole world brighter, just by being in it. So if you think you can put up with a wisecracking sidekick—”