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“Ms….” The barely audible voice cut out, followed by another buzz then, “This is…” Silence, another buzz. “…says that…” A longer silence, a buzz, then nothing, not even static.
She frowned.
Zach chuckled and gave a shrug. “Security. Brought in extra help for the holidays and made the new ones work this weekend.”
“Not like you, huh, Zach? You let your staff have the time off and came in yourself.” She admired that. It showed the character to put others before your own desires and the integrity to make sure you still meet your promised goals.
“Just the way I roll, I reckon,” Zach said matter-of-factly. Then he nodded his head toward the bin beneath her paper shredder, his way of asking if she wanted him to take the zillion cross-cut strips of paper away with the rest of the trash.
She shook her head. Nobody got a glimpse of her business, not even in bits and pieces. She glanced down at the pad on her desk and the silly little doodle of a very Zach-like elf pushing a candy-cane broom and suppressed a smile. It was only business, she admitted to herself as she tore off the page and slid it into the middle of the pile of papers waiting for the shredder. The man might come to some conclusions about her on his own, but she wouldn’t supply any confirmation. That was the way she rolled.
Never show your soft side. Never reveal all your talents, even the more whimsical ones. Never let anyone get a peek at what you think of them. Never share your dreams. Never act on anything in blind trust, not even your own feelings.
And most importantly, never let your hopes or your heart do the work that is the rightful domain of your history and your head.
She’d learned that lesson the hard way and not all that long ago.
She looked at the nest of shredded paper and blinked. Tears blurred her vision. The tip of her nose stung.
For an instant she was in South Carolina on a lovely summer day at a family barbeque. Not her family, but one in which she had thought she might one day find a place.
Dora Burdett. How many times had she doodled that name like some young girl in middle school with her first crush? Crush. What an apt word for what had happened to that dream.
She cleared her throat, spread her hands wide over the open file before her and anchored herself firmly in the present. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my work.”
“Always wheelin’ and dealin’, huh, Ms. Hoag?”
“I head Acquisitions and Mergers, Zach.” She raised her head and stared at the massive logo for GrimEx-Cynergetic Global Com Limited on the green marble wall beyond her open door, where professional decorators had already begun hanging greenery with Global gold-and-silver ornaments. “It’s my job to find the best deals before anyone else does.”
“One step ahead of all those poor saps who took the long weekend off to get a jump on the holidays, right?”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Those poor saps.”
How she so wanted to be one of them.
All her life that was what she had wanted most of all—to have somebody recognize what she had to give, and to accept it and her. Not as an obligation or duty or in hopes of currying favor but because…she mattered.
Dora had never truly felt that she mattered. She, the things she did, the things she thought, her hopes, her dreams, her. Not in that way when someone loves you despite your shortcomings. When someone not only wants the best for you but feels you are the best for them, that you bring out the best in each other. She did not grow up in a home like that.
Her mother died when she was born. Her overwhelmed father left his newborn in the care of a childless and already middle-aged aunt and uncle while he went away to “find himself” and “get his head on straight,” as people said in the seventies.
Apparently he never did either thing, because he never returned for Dora. Sometimes when Dora thought about him she imagined a man wandering about with his head facing backward, asking total strangers if they had seen his lost self.
Aunt Enid and Uncle Taylor did their best to care for her as their own. They started this by naming her Dora, which already put her at a disadvantage among peers with names like Summer, Montana and Jessica. So she kept to herself and worked hard, trying to make her foster parents proud. And for her effort she drew the attention of teachers and administrators. They called her “the little adult” and made jokes about her being “ten going on forty” and tried to get her to lighten up a little. But whenever they needed something done—from choosing a child to represent the school at a leadership conference to helping out in the office or being in charge of the cash box at the pep club bake sale—they tapped Dora.
She learned quickly that hard work and efficiency opened doors. It wasn’t the same as fitting in or mattering to someone but it came a close second. About as good as Dora thought she’d ever see.
Still, she couldn’t help wondering how different her life might be if just once someone had reached out and asked her to come through the doors her drive had created.
A small thing.
A shouted invitation to join a crowded lunch table.
A remembered birthday.
An explanation of why a certain blond-haired, South Carolina gentleman had slammed the door in her face when she had only wanted to…
“I’m dreaming of a…”
“Please, no Christmas songs, Zach.”
“Too early in the season for you?” the man asked, as he tossed his dust rag on top of his cart and began to back the cart out of the room.
“Something like that.” Especially when her mind had just flashed back to last summer and that family barbeque when she had thought that finally she had done something so caring and constructive that it would change her entire life. That the man she had offered to help, she dared hope, would change her life.
Dora Burdett.
She pressed her eyes closed.
Zach cleared his throat.
A twinge of guilt tightened her shoulders and made her sit upright, look the man in the eyes and produce a conciliatory smile. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those who wants to do away with Merry Christmas or any of the wonderful trappings of the season. I just…”
She put her hand over her forehead, as if that would warm up the old thought process and help her find the right words to explain her feelings. Except, it wasn’t her brain that was frozen against all the joyous possibilities Christmas represented to so many. She loved the Lord, and observed His birth in her own way. “I love going to church for the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. I love singing the hymns and all, but….”
“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.”
