Together for Christmas (7 page)

She glanced up. “It’s a very nice watch.”

He felt stupidly as though she’d approved of
him
. All of him. Absolutely and wholeheartedly. But that was ludicrous.

He
wasn’t his watch. Just like
she
wasn’t her pie.

All the same, Casey heard himself say, in a rough and gullible voice, “Thanks. I’d like to try more pie-in-a-jar, please.” He glanced at the menu. “Pumpkin, this time.”

It wasn’t breakfast. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t even what he’d intended to order. But Casey couldn’t help it.

“Pumpkin?” Her gaze tangled with his. She seemed to hold her breath. “I thought you didn’t like my pie.”

“Meh.” He gave a careless gesture. “It had promise.”

His surrender was all in his tone, and you’d better believe she heard it. He would have been disappointed if she hadn’t.

She grinned again. Looking at her smile, Casey felt like a hero.
He’d
made that happen. It was his biggest coup today.

“You realize, of course,” Kristen said as he was inwardly exulting to himself, “that this means I win.”

That’s where she was wrong.
So
wrong.

Casey exhaled, feeling the electricity between them zap away. And . . .
gone
. “You had to spoil the moment, didn’t you?”

She blinked. “What moment?”

She really
didn’t
feel that connection between them, he realized. It was probably just as well. He moved his arm, taking away both his watch and his defenseless wrist with its defenseless nerve endings and its defenseless bare skin.

Kristen Miller had a very arresting way of touching someone. Just now, with him, she hadn’t even been trying. How in the world would her touch have felt if she’d been
trying
to make him feel as if he’d die without more of her hands on him?

“You didn’t win,” Casey pointed out, “because I still didn’t agree to rent your outrageously overpriced booth.”

“You will,” Kristen sang out. “After the pie kicks in.”

“We’ll see about that.” Casey watched her gleefully scratch down
pumpkin pie
on her order pad. Out of lingering curiosity, he asked, “How come you asked if I’d seen Heather’s video?”

An enquiring look. “Have you?”

“If I hadn’t,” he hedged, hoping to keep his options open, “I’d be the only man in this hemisphere who’d resisted.”

Kristen’s mouth turned downward. She nodded. “Probably.”

“So . . . why ask?”

“Oh.” Cheerfully, she put the end of her pen in her mouth. She lightly bit down on it, then smiled and took it away. “Well, because I was curious. And because I was considering . . .
you,
and that question happens to be my own personal litmus test.”

Casey didn’t get it. “Litmus test for . . . ?”

“I thought you were cute,” she clarified. “But I make it a policy never to sleep with any man who’s seen that sex tape.”

And she thought he’d seen it.

Realizing that, Casey wanted to slap his own dumb, purposely misleading mouth. This was what he got for hedging his bets. Sometimes you really couldn’t have it both ways.

Not often. But sometimes.

“That seems kind of . . . limiting,” he said blithely.

“It’s called ‘having standards.’ You should try it.”

“I do. That’s why I don’t like pie.”

“You just ordered pie!”

They were back to this again. “I was trying to be open-minded.”
I was feeling empathetic toward you, just like you were toward me
. “But there must be other diners. Other pie—”

“There’s no other pie like my pie,” Kristen said assuredly. “And there’s no other diner with a booth for rent like
my
diner with
my
booth for rent. It’s a limited-time offer, too, so . . .”

“I’ll take it.” He did, after all, have her right where he wanted her. It was a classic reversal. Because he’d threatened to leave earlier, she’d felt compelled to make him stay. That’s why Kristen thought she was winning. “But only for one-fifty.”

“One seventy-five,” she countered, giving him a sneaking suspicion that she
did
know how to negotiate. A little. Maybe he was still underestimating her. “And you agree to eat a jar of pie at that table, in public, every day you’re here.”

“Hey.” With a pseudo frown, he patted his lean midsection. “Are you trying to fatten me up?”

Kristen laughed. “As if. They’re small jars.”

But there was a flicker of interest in her gaze as she followed his movements. She took in his suit, his shirt . . . and his physique, all in turn. She might as well have had X-ray vision, because that’s how exposed he felt under her attentive gaze.

He liked it. He liked confident women, and he liked
her
.

Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was interested in something more than a business proposition, Casey reasoned. Or maybe Kristen had intuited the presence of his black boxer briefs and was imagining what they looked like on him, even now.

After all, turnabout was fair play.

“
And
while you’re here, you have to do your best to pretend eating pie is a semi-orgasmic experience for you,” Kristen added, seeming more like a savvy marketer than a woman who was picturing Casey in his skivvies. Her eyes lit up again. “Like an in-person advertisement for my pie-ina-jar.”

He grinned. “Can I add ketchup?”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”

“Can I get you to show me around town so I don’t get lost?”

She seemed taken aback. She recovered quickly, with an offhanded wave. “If all you want are directions, I noticed about twenty people who were willing to be your own personal Sherpas just now. You don’t need me.”

“Maybe I want you.”

She gave him a forthright look. “If you do, you don’t have to pretend you might get lost without me. You can just say so.”

“I have a terrible sense of direction.”

“I’m not a human compass.”

“You’re going to feel bad if I get lost in a blizzard.”

Her smile dazzled him. “It wasn’t a blizzard.”

“Says you. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”

“You just need to get out in the weather some more. Really get acclimated. Try snowshoeing. Or skiing. Or ice-skating. You could even take lessons! After a few hours, you’ll—”

“Be a mansicle. I’m not built for cold weather.”

She didn’t even pause to consider the potential double entendre contained in that sentence, much less crack another smile—the smile Casey suddenly craved. He was really slipping.

“The bottom line is, I’ve got too much to do to be a babysitter.” Kristen turned around, hung his order ticket, then scoured her diner with an assessing look. She returned her gaze to him. “No matter how handsome you look while asking.”

He couldn’t help preening. “Thanks.”

“Or how transparently obvious you are while doing it,” she added, dishing out a shrewd look. “I already told you—I’m not going to help you bring down my sister’s TV special. If you want to skulk around town digging up dirt on Heather—”

“That’s
not
my intention,” he said sharply, wondering why his usual charm seemed to malfunction around her. “I—”

“—you’ll have to do it with GPS. Or an old-timey map. Because I doubt anyone around here will help you with
that
.”

While Casey contemplated that potential setback, a momentary silence fell in the diner. Conversations nearby lapsed. Kristen appeared triumphant. Then, an instant later . . .

“I’ll help him,” someone said from behind Casey.

Kristen’s gaze swiveled to a spot over his shoulder. She spied the person who’d volunteered to offer guide services.

Another Christmas song kicked in over the sound system, reminding Casey that he was dealing with Christmas’s number one fan: Kristen. She wasn’t his soul mate. She couldn’t be. She’d willingly programmed “Last Christmas” by Wham! on her diner’s sound system. Any pairing between them was doomed.

But finding true love wasn’t his mission in Kismet. Working his magic on Heather’s problematic holiday TV special was.

So, ready to take the next necessary step in this job, Casey swiveled on his chair with his hand outstretched.

“Thanks!” he began, prepared to meet and enchant his new guide-about-town. “I—”

Abruptly, he recognized the person standing there.

The jovial greeting he’d planned stuttered to a stop.

“Aw, hell,” Casey grumbled instead. “It’s you.”

“You who?” Kristen asked, all sweetness and spice.

But Casey didn’t want to tell her. Because this Heather Miller job had just gotten one thousand percent more complicated, and he needed to regroup. Not because this job was happening at Christmastime. Not because Casey had a sudden-onset case of the hots for a certain diva pop star’s cute younger sister. And not because it was snowing outside.

This job had just gotten more complicated because Casey wasn’t the only troubleshooter in town. Apparently, the agency was double-dipping. Because Shane Maresca was in Kismet, too.

“You . . .
you,
apparently. Hi.” In lieu of Casey’s expected introduction, Kristen offered Shane a handshake. “Welcome to the Galaxy Diner.” She shot a puzzled glance at Casey. “I didn’t think Casey knew anyone in town. He’s lucky you’re here.”

Lucky
. Ha. In the wake of that massive misstatement, Shane Maresca, pro that he was, managed to keep a straight face. Die-hard equanimity was a perennial in his bag of tricks.

“Pleased to meet you, Kristen,” he said. “I love your diner. Former fifties gas station, right?”

Kristen widened her eyes. “Yes! How’d you guess?”

“I’ve always been a big fan of the populuxe aesthetic.” Shane gave a deliberately modest shrug. “But then I’m a helpless retro-futurist at heart when it comes to architecture.”

“Me too!” Kristen appeared flattered. Her cheeks turned pink. Her smile broadened. Her voice lowered, full of instant camaraderie. “Most people don’t notice the intricacies of the restoration work, but this place was a wreck when I got it.”

“Well, it’s beautiful now,” Shane said. The bastard. He gave her an audacious, approving smile. “Just like its owner.”

Kristen tittered. Her blush deepened. “Aw, thanks.”

That was it. Casey had had enough. “Never mind about that guide thing, Shane,” he said casually. “I was only kidding.”

Maresca gave him an “oh, are
you
still here?” glance.

Kristen did, too. That rankled. “What do you mean?” she asked. “You just said you needed a guide in case you got lost.”

“Lost?” Shane suppressed a chortle. Sort of. Jackass.

“I never get lost,” Casey told her. “And if I did, the last thing I would need is directions from my archrival.”

“
Archrival?
” Kristen frowned, glancing from Casey to Shane and back again. “But I thought
I
was your—I mean I—” She broke off, then cleared her throat. “I’ll get that pie for you.”

Then she took herself across the diner, leaving Casey alone with the only real arch nemesis he’d ever had . . . his one and only former best friend.

Chapter 6

Galaxy Diner, Kismet, Michigan
Christmas Takeover: Day 8½

Kristen strode into her diner’s office, made a note to order more extra-potent Vietnamese cassia cinnamon for baking pies with, and—on her way out—nearly collided with her friend (and longtime trusted employee) Talia McCoy.

Talia was headed toward her employee locker wearing a purposeful look. Also a flashy ankle-length, leopard-print coat, sunglasses, and her wintertime diner “uniform” of a denim skirt, flannel shirt, tights, and boots. In Talia’s case, the whole ensemble was accessorized with several piercings, a couple of tattoos, and something new but not unexpected: long, blond hair.

Talia’s wavy hair was usually cropped to earlobe length and colored in a vivid lavender (at least most recently), giving her a vaguely rockabilly Tinkerbell look. But Kristen wouldn’t put it past her adventurous friend to try something new.

“Hey! New look?” Kristen asked.

“New . . . what?” Talia blinked. Then she touched her head. “Oh yeah! This!” Laughing, she whipped off her long, blond hair. She opened her locker, stuffed in that headful of fake hair, then shrugged. “Just something I was trying out. But judging by all the catcalls I got on the street on my way here, this look is less ‘punk-rock Brigitte Bardot’ and more ‘daytime hooker.’ I think I’ll pass for now.”

“I dunno. I kind of liked it.”

“
You
would. You’re a natural blonde.”

“So?”

“So you don’t understand the travails of the less follicu-larly blessed.” Talia retrieved her nametag. She pinned it on. “Blond hair is automatically eye-catching.”

“And lavender hair isn’t?”

“Well . . . you’ve got me there.” A businesslike glance. “So, how are things going here? It looks like quite a crush out there.”

“Was everyone mobbing a particular tall, dark stranger?” Kristen asked wryly. “Were they letting him crowd surf past all the tables or maybe erecting a monument to his awesomeness?”

“Um, no.” Gazing into the employee mirror opposite the time clock, Kristen fluffed her lavender hair. “What’s got into you?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“I’m serious.” Via the mirror, Talia cast her a worried glance. “You haven’t been yourself since your sister blew back into town. I know it’s been hard on you having Heather—and her entourage—back after all this time, especially with all the crazy Christmas stuff they’ve been doing. So . . . let’s have it.”

Kristen hesitated. This was going to sound silly, but . . .

“Do you think it’s weird to be irked that you’re
not
someone’s only archrival?” she asked abruptly. “I feel really competitive about this, for some reason, and I—”

“Wait.” Talia froze with her arm in the air, caught in the midst of straightening her eyebrow ring. “
You’re
someone’s archrival?”

“Well, I
thought
I was,” Kristen said in a disgruntled tone she couldn’t help (or believe). “But now I’m not so sure.”