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“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.
Burke gave a small nod of his head, then looked up to catch her eye and winked. “That’s me. And if there is going to be Christmas in Mt. Knott this year, I am going to need your help.”
Chapter Four
“Okay, we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes.” Dora glanced out the window of his shiny silver truck. Her, tooling around Atlanta in a pick up with a South Carolina snack cake cowboy Santa-wannabe at the wheel—listening to country music’s finest, crooning Christmas carols on the radio. What happened to her policy of not trusting anyone, especially anyone named Burdett, again? What happened to her plan of ditching Christmas again this year by making herself scarce before sundown? What happened to this place that Burke had promised to show her, the one that would give her a reason to forgo the not trusting and the ditching and make her want to…
The lyrics to a song she’d heard moments before—“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”—popped into her head. Burke Burdett? Santa? Difficult to imagine. Kissing him? Hardly the kind of thing a serious businesswoman, an angry almost-girlfriend or a woman of good Christian character ought to be dwelling on! She stole a peek at his rugged profile and noted the way he seemed to fill up the cab of the truck and yet still leave a place for her to sit comfortably beside him.
“Burke?”
“Hmm?” He didn’t look at her and yet the casualness of his reply gave her a sense of familiarity no quick cast-off glance in a truck cab ever could.
She flexed her fingers on the padded car door handle and forced herself to study their surroundings as she counted off their recent itinerary. “I’ve seen the art gallery where some lady from Mt. Knott had her first show. The jeweler’s where your mother used to have special ornaments engraved. And the building of the accounting firm that employs the valedictorian of your graduating class.”
