Somebody's Santa

“But after that you don’t have no one to go home to and share it all with,” Zach said softly.

“How did you know that?” The observation left her feeling so exposed she could hardly breathe.

“You don’t dust around folks’s nicknacks and geegaws or throw out their calendar’s pages or run into them working on the day after Thanksgiving year upon year without learning a thing or two about those folks.”

The answer humbled her even if it didn’t bring her much relief. “I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, don’t think it’s my place to say—or sing—anything more, but I hate to leave without at least…” He scratched his head, worked his mouth side to side a couple of times then finally sighed. “I’ll just offer this thought.”

Dora braced herself, pressing her lips together to keep from blurting out that she didn’t need his thoughts or sympathy or songs. Because, deep down, she sort of hoped that whatever he had to say might help.

He lifted his spray bottle of disinfectant cleaner the way someone else might have raised a glass to make a toast. “Here’s to hoping this year is different.”

It didn’t help.

But Dora smiled. At least she thought she smiled. She felt her face move, but really it could have been anything from a fleeting grin to that wince she tended to make when forcing her feet into narrow-toed high heels. Just as quickly she fixed her attention on the papers in front of her and busied herself with shuffling them about. “Thanks. Now I need to get back to work. Can’t make a deal on merely hoping things will improve, can I?”

“On the contrary.” The challenge came from the tall blond man who placed himself squarely in her office doorway. “I’d say that hope is at the very core of every deal.”

Burke Burdett! Questions blew through Dora’s mind more quickly than those fictional eight tiny reindeer pulling a flying sleigh. But the words came out of her mouth fast and furious and from the very rock bottom of her own reality. “How dare you show your face to me.”

“Show my face? The view don’t get any better from the other side, Dora,” he drawled in his low, lazy Carolina accent.

Zach, who had worked the cleaning cart into the hallway by now, laughed.

Dora opened her mouth to remind him it wasn’t part of his job description to make assumptions about her or eavesdrop on her and her guests. The squeak, rattle, squeak of the cart told her Zach had already moved on, though. She was alone in her office with Burke Burdett.

But not for long.

She reached out for a button on her phone, hesitated, then raised her eyes to meet those of her visitor.

He had good eyes. Clear and set in a tanned face with just enough lines to make him look thoughtful but still rugged. But if one looked beyond those eyes, those so-called character lines, there was a hard set to his lips and a wariness in his stance.

“Give me one reason not to call security to come up here and escort you out,” she said.

“Well, for starters, I don’t think the poor kid you’ve got posted at the front desk knows how to find the intercom button to hear you, much less where your office is.” He dropped into the leather wingback directly across from her. Years ago an old hand had taught Dora that standing was the best way to keep command of an exchange. Stand. Move. Hold their attention and you hold the reins of the situation.

Burke had just broken that cardinal rule. And made things worse when he stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his boots at the ankle to create a picture of ease. He scanned the room, saying, “Besides, he was the one who let me in.”

Dora wasn’t the only one who noticed and befriended the people everyone else looked right past. “And what did you use to convince that so-green-he’s-in-danger-of-being-mistaken-for-a-sprig-of-holly security guard to get him to do that?”

“Use? Me? Why, nothing but the power of my dazzling personality and charm.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of your charm, Mr. Burdett. It’s more drizzle than dazzle.” She’d meant it as a joke. A tease, really. Under other circumstances, with another man, maybe even a flirtation.

Burke clearly knew that. All of it. He responded in kind with the softest and deepest of chuckles.

And Dora found herself charmed indeed.

“So the security kid is already sort of on my side in this deal,” he summed up.

“Deal?” She stood so quickly that her chair went reeling back into the wall behind her desk. She did not acknowledge the clatter it made. “There is no deal. You made that very clear to me when you cut me out of your family’s plans to save the Crumble and get things there back on track.”

Last summer, after working his way quickly up the corporate ladder at Global, Adam Burdett had returned to Mt. Knott with a scheme to buy out Carolina Crumble Pattie and get some satisfaction for all the perceived wrongs done against him by his adoptive father. It had all seemed a bit soap operaish to Dora, but as a good businesswoman she knew those were exactly the elements that put other people at a disadvantage in forging a business contract. Emotions. Family. Old hurts. They could push things either way.

In this case, they had eventually gone against Global’s proposed buyout. And in favor of Adam Burdett, and by extension, Dora. Together they had the wherewithal to save the company and the desire to do so. It wasn’t what either of them had planned, but then love had a way of changing even the most determined minds. Adam’s love for Josie—now his wife—his son, his family. And Dora’s for the town of Mt. Knott, its way of life, the thrill of a new venture based on the same kind of Biblical principles that had once motivated Global a few dozen mergers ago. And her love for Burke.

She hadn’t loved him right away but by the end of the summer, she thought she did love him. And she thought he loved her back.

Only she hadn’t been thinking. She had been feeling and acting on those feelings. Which had brought her full circle, only then she had become the one at a disadvantage in the contract negotiations. Dora was out. Adam was in. Burke had been nowhere to be found.

Burke glanced her way, then went right on surveying their surroundings. “This is a new deal that I’ve come to talk to you about today.”

“New deal? Why would I talk to you about a new deal? Or that old deal? You didn’t talk to me about that then and I don’t want to talk to you about…”

“Look, I’m here now, dazzling or not, with a new deal to discuss. The past is past. I can’t change it. Isn’t there anything more important for us to talk about than that?”

Only about a million things. Yet given the chance to bring up any of them all Dora could come up with was, “I can’t imagine what we’d have to say to one another.”

“I can. At least, I have some things I want to say to you.”

Her whole insides melted. Not defrosted like an icicle, dripping in rivulets until it had dwindled to nothing but a nub, but more like a piece of milk chocolate where the thumb and finger grasp it—just enough to make a mess of everything.

“You have something to say to me?” She bent her knees to sit, realized her chair was a few feet away and moved around the desk instead to lean back against it. “Like what, for instance?”

“Like…” He tilted his head back. He narrowed his eyes at her. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair.

The leather crunched softly, putting her in mind of a cowboy shifting into readiness in the saddle. Readiness for what, though?

She held her breath.

He leaned forward as if every decision thereafter depended on her answer, asking softly and with the hint of his smile infusing his words, “Like, what do you want for Christmas?”

She almost slid off the edge of the desk. “I…uh…”

What did she want for Christmas? “After six months of not so much as a phone message, you drove all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask me what I want for Christmas?” She stood up to retake control of what was clearly a conversation with no real purpose or direction. “Are you kidding me? Who does that?”

He could not answer her. Or maybe he could answer but didn’t want to. He just sat there.

And sat there.

She could hear him breathing. Slow and steady. See his eyes flicker with some deep emotion but nothing she could define without looking long and hard into them. And she was not likely to do that.

She cleared her throat. She could wait him out. She had waited him out, in fact. He had been the one who had come to her, not the other way around. Even though early on there had been plenty of long, lonely nights when she had wanted nothing more than to hop in her car, or in the company jet or hitch a ride on a passing Carolina Crumble delivery truck to get herself back to South Carolina to confront him. Or kiss him.

Or both.

She wanted to do both. Even now. Which made it imperative that she do something else all together. So she plunked down on the edge of the desk again and said the only thing that made any sense at all to her, given the circumstances. “What I want is for you to go back to Mt. Knott and just leave me in peace.”

“Peace. Yes.” His slow, steady nod gave the impression of a man who longed for the very same gift—but doubted he’d ever find it. “That I can’t promise you. That’s better a request for the One who sent his Son.”

“Nice save,” she whispered, thinking of how deftly he’d avoided her demand for him to leave.

“Best save ever made, if you think about it.”

She looked out into the hallway at the Christmas decorations going up. Global would not have a nativity scene, or any reference to the birth of Christ, and yet they covered the place in greenery, the symbol of life everlasting. All around her this time of year, the world came alive with symbols of hope. They rang in the ears, they delighted the eye, they touched the heart. It was such a special time, a time when one could believe not just in the wonder of God’s Son but also in the possibilities for all people of goodwill.

Maybe even for a person like Burke.

Maybe he had really come here because he wanted to know what she wanted. Maybe he needed to know that she could still want him, to tell her that he had made a mistake, to tell her that she…

He shifted forward again, clasping his hands. “As for me…”

As for me. He had asked what she wanted, ignored her reply and went straight for his real purpose in coming. Me.

Himself.

He didn’t want to know about her, he wanted to ask her to do something for him.

The moment passed and Dora stood again. She had to get him out of here. She had to keep him from saying another word that might endear him to her, that might give her reason to hope….

“As for you, Mr. Burdett.” She moved to the door and made a curt jerk of her thumb to show him the way he should exit. “I don’t really care what you want for Christmas.”

“Not even if what I want, only you can give me?”

Chapter Three

Burke had broken the first rule of negotiation. He had let his counterpart know the strength of her position. He had been upfront and told her that he wanted to make a deal and she was the only one he wanted to deal with. He might as well have handed her a blank check.

And he would have done just that if he had thought it would work.

It wouldn’t. Not with a woman like Dora. So he had done the next best thing, given her all the power in the situation. Now that, that was something she had to find compelling. Right?

Burke swallowed to push down the lump in his throat. He was not accustomed to anyone questioning his judgment and actions. Even when they included his limited charm, fumbling coyness and…Christmas cutesiness.

Who does that? Dora’s earlier question echoed in his thoughts. Who drives all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask a grown woman—one who clearly hates his guts—what she wants for Christmas?

Certainly not Top Dawg, the alpha male of the Burdett wolf pack. Certainly not him. And yet, that’s exactly what he’d done.

And he had no idea whom to blame for it.

“What do you want, Burke?” She folded her arms over her compact body, narrowed her dark eyes and pursed her lips, a look only Dora could pull off. A look that probably set countless underlings and more than a few superiors shaking in their boots. A look that made Burke want to take her by the shoulders and find the nearest mistletoe. “What could I possibly do for you?”

He forced the obvious and inappropriate answers aside and started at the beginning.

“It’s a long story. Goes back to my mom.” He squirmed in the fancy wingback. He tried to make himself comfortable but the back was too stiff, the seat too short, the leather too slick. Not to mention that his trying to pin his actions on his late mother, too flimsy.

He wasn’t a man who needed to assign blame, it was just that something had brought him to this point and he sure wished he knew what it was.

“Your, um, your mother?” Dora did not flinch but her no-nonsense squint did soften as she prodded him to say more.

He jerked his head up and their eyes met. He hadn’t planned on that happening. Hadn’t prepared for it—hadn’t steeled himself against the accusations he saw aimed like a hundred arrows right at him.

How could he have prepared a defense for those? He’d earned each and every one of those unforgiving, poisonous points. She had every right to hate him, or at least not to want to see him and to turn down his proposal outright. “Uh, yeah. My mother. Thing is she started this…it all started a long time ago, really. Long time before she was my mom or met my dad or had any idea that her life would turn out, well, the way it did.”

Dora looked away from him at last. Her shoulders sagged, but she kept her chin angled up, in that way she had that she thought made her seem brave and sophisticated.

Seeing her like that made Burke want to push himself up to his feet and take her in his arms and hold her close. To lay his cheek against her soft, black hair and tell her that when she acted that way he could see right through to the scared, lonely little girl he had seen in her since the first time she powered her way into the Crumble to try to buy it out.

She sounded the part, too, quiet with a tiny quiver that she forced to be still more and more with each word. “None of us knows the way our lives will turn out.”

“My mom did.” He matched her tone, without the tremor. “Or she thought she did.”

“That’s the kicker, isn’t it? When things don’t turn out the way you thought they would?” Try as she might to come off all cool and in control, his showing up like this had obviously thrown her off balance. “When you start down a path. You make plans. You pray about it and feel you’ve finally…”

She glanced out the door.

He uncrossed his ankles and set his feet flat, just in case he decided to up and bolt from the room. It wasn’t his style to do that kind of thing, but then again, neither was the way he had treated Dora earlier this year. Something about her made him do things he’d never thought himself capable of.

“Things just don’t…” She shuffled the files on her desk.

He looked down. He should have worn his new boots. Dora deserved for him to put his best foot forward, literally and figuratively.

Dora cleared her throat.

He crossed his ankles again, his way of making it harder to give up on his quest and hightail it back to Mt. Knott.

“Like you said,” she murmured at last, “…the way you thought.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the kicker. When things don’t turn out the way you wished they would.”

She’d said thought.

He’d said wished.

He wondered if she would correct him and in doing so bluntly and unashamedly confirm that they were talking about their own failed plans. If only she would and they could get it out into the open.

Burke was an out-in-the-open kind of man. Always had been—except when the good faith of a woman who didn’t have sense enough to give up on him was at stake. That’s how he’d gotten into this predicament in the first place.

He’d wanted to be upfront with Dora from the get-go, but the underhanded way in which his brothers had cut him from his spot as top dog of the family business left him hurt, humiliated and wanting to tuck his tail between his legs and hide. He knew that about himself. Knew that what he’d done, dumping her by pretending the only thing between them had been a business deal, was wrong. If she would only call him on it maybe they could sort it out and then…then what?

He shook his head. “You see, my mom, she had this plan for her life.”

Dora held her tongue.

He felt he had to forge ahead.

Fill the silence.

State his case for coming here after all this time.

And if he got what was coming to him in the bargain? He’d take it like he took every blow and disappointment he’d suffered in life, without flinching and letting anyone see his pain.

“College, travel, adventure. Mom had the brains, the courage and the means to do it all. Something I know you can relate…” Too soon. One look into her eyes and he could see he had tried to get her to invest in this on a personal level much too soon.

“Yes?”

No, not too soon. He’d read her all wrong.

He’d spent hour upon hour with her. They’d discussed everything from business to barbeque sauce. He’d even sat by her side and mapped out a future that would forever intertwine them, if only on their corporate income tax papers.

The things unsaid had promised more, and he knew it. Their laughter, their shared beliefs, their dedication to their work. Those things made it easy to be around Dora, something he’d never felt with another woman. They also made it easy to let go of her when their business deal fell through.

Fell through. Pretty words for having been kicked out by your own family and finding yourself left with nothing more to offer anyone, least of all a woman like Dora.

No position. No power. No purpose.

Burke knew that Dora needed those things for herself and from anyone involved with her. After the family had put those—position, power, purpose—out of reach for him, a personal relationship with Dora had become impossible for him.

He pressed on with his pitch. “My mother changed her life plans completely so that she could give her all to her family and the new dreams we would create together.”

Dora would never have done the same.

“So your mother made her choice,” she said. “Most women do. We tell ourselves we can have it all, and maybe we can but most of us know we can’t have it all and give our all, all the time. So we all make choices. That is something I can relate to.”

There was an eagerness in Dora’s eyes, an intensity. Did he dare call it hope? Or merely an openness to hope? It was so slim, so faint. He doubted she even knew she was revealing it. It embarrassed him a little and humbled him that he should have this advantage, no, this blessing. That he should get this tiny glimpse into something so personal, the best part of this woman he admired so much.

Not until this moment did he realize that while Dora Hoag might be living the life his mother had never realized, it was not by her own choosing.

That changed everything—save for the fact that he still couldn’t pull off any of this without someone’s help. Dora’s help. But now instead of wheeling and dealing to get it, he knew he had to win her over, make her want to do it as much as he wanted her to do it.

Without giving her any warning, he stood and held his open hand toward her. “Let’s get out of here.”

She looked at his outstretched palm then at the door. “You go first.”

“Stop playing games, Dora.”

“At the risk of sounding repetitive—you first.”

“I don’t play games.” He dropped his hand.

“I know.” She folded her arms again. “And you don’t make a trip to tell someone something face-to-face that could easily be said on the phone or by e-mail.”

He acknowledged that with a dip of his head.

“So just say what you came here to say and then kindly get out,” she said quite unkindly.

“You’re right. I did come to tell you something. And ask you something. But first I have to show you.” He reached into his inside coat pocket.

Her arms loosened slightly. Her shoulders lifted. “If you were any other man, I’d expect you to pull out a small velvet box after a statement like that.”

“Small? Velvet?” His fingers curled shut inside his coat. “Oh!”

She tilted her head and gave him a smile that was light but a bit sad. “I don’t play games, either.”

“I’ll say you don’t.” He shook his head. She’d gotten him. He’d come here thinking he knew what he was walking into and how to maintain control of it and she’d gotten him. To his surprise, he didn’t mind. In fact, he kind of liked it. He liked this feisty side of her. “But you sure do a have an overactive imagination, lady.”

“Overactive? Because I once thought of you as a man of his word?”

Suddenly he liked that feistiness a little less. “Hey, let’s not go there, Dora.”

“Where else would you like to go, Burke? You seem to be up for a lot of travel all of a sudden. Coming here. Wanting me to go someplace with you. Maybe we should add a little trip down memory lane to your itinerary.”

“Memory lane?” He smirked.

“What?” Lines formed in her usually smooth forehead. She pursed her lips and waited for him to say more.

“Just a pretty old-fashioned term, don’t you think? I’d have gone for a play on time travel.” He was trying to lighten the mood.

She wasn’t having any part of it. “I was raised in a pretty old-fashioned home by my great-aunt and uncle. It’s the way they talked, I guess. It’s not so unusual. You knew the meaning.”

The meaning he knew. The tidbit about her upbringing he hadn’t known. Did it make any difference? Probably not to his plan, but it did explain a few things about her outlook on the world and the world’s outlook on her. Nobody got her, not really. Nobody knew her.

Try as he could to stop it, Burke found that she was bringing out the protective nature of his Top Dawg personality again. To keep from caving into that or allowing her to rehash how badly he had handled things between them last summer, he stepped forward. He pulled the business card he had gone to retrieve from the Crumble out of his pocket. He gazed at the off-white rectangle with raised black lettering atop brightly colored shapes for only a moment before he handed it to her.

“What’s that?”

“That’s where I want to take you.”

“To a doctor’s office?”

“A pediatrician’s office.”

“Why?”

He moved to the doorway. “Come with me and I’ll explain everything.”

She did not budge. “So far, you haven’t explained anything. You haven’t answered a single one of my questions. Why should I let you show me this place?”

“Showing is simple.” He held out his hand again. “Answers are complicated.”

She ignored his gesture and raised one arched, dark eyebrow. “Then uncomplicate them.”

Uncomplicate a lifetime of mischief, hope, happiness, tough choices and intricate clandestine arrangements? Couldn’t be done.

Rattle. Squeak. Rattle.

Zach and his cleaning cart went wobbling by the open door.

Burke grinned. Maybe he couldn’t just hand her the whys and wherefores of his situation, but if Dora wanted answers he could at least give her one. “You asked me who comes all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask someone what they want for Christmas. It’s not so hard to figure out, really, if you think about it.”

Zach’s raspy voice rang out in a Christmas carol about Santa Claus.

Dora frowned.

Burke jerked his head toward the open door. “Go ahead. Say it. You know you want to. Who makes a trip to ask someone what they want for Christmas?”

“S-Santa Claus?” she whispered, as Zach rounded the corner and his song faded.