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“Here you go.”
“Great.”
Cullen took the folder from her hands and stepped back. He’d thought that bringing in Paul’s administrative assistant would make his life easier, but this woman wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. For a widow, she was young and incredibly good-looking. Long, loosely curled red hair fell to the shoulders of her thick green cable-knit sweater. Her cheeks had become pink in the cold, accenting the green of her eyes. Lowriding jeans hugged a shapely bottom.
He wasn’t sure what the heck had happened when she’d fallen into his arms after she’d slipped on the ice. Their eyes had met and he’d felt a jolt of something so foreign it had rendered him speechless. He couldn’t blame it on the fact that she was attractive. He knew hundreds of gorgeous women. Women even prettier than she was. He couldn’t say it was because she was sexy. He knew sexy women. And he couldn’t say he’d felt a jolt because he was happy to see her. He didn’t know her.
But whatever the hell that jolt was, he was smart enough to ignore it.
He was also taking that damned bell off the door. The whole point of having an executive entry was so the workers didn’t know when he was there or he wasn’t!
“Come on. Show me how to send these letters to a remote printer.”
She followed him into the office of the current company president and her little boy followed her.
“What’s your name?”
“Harry.”
Cullen couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Like Harry Potter?”
“No, like my grandpa.”
He turned to Wendy Winston. “So your father was a Harry?”
“No, his grandfather’s name was Harry.”
Confused, Cullen stopped and faced them again. He looked from Wendy to Harry and back to Wendy again. They didn’t look a thing alike. So the kid probably resembled his dad which meant that Grandpa Harry had been her late husband’s dad. Whatever the deal, he really didn’t care. He was trying to make light conversation so the afternoon would go more smoothly. If they wanted to play guessing games, he wasn’t interested.
He turned and walked behind the desk, falling into the uncomfortable desk chair. With a few keystrokes he minimized his letters and left a blank screen. He rose and motioned for Wendy to take a seat in the chair.
“Show me which printer to send these to.”
She sat. “Okay. Well, you just do all the things you need to do to print—” Using the mouse, she clicked the appropriate icon to get the print menu.
When the print menu popped on the screen, he leaned down to get a closer look. The scent of something floral drifted to his nose. With a slight movement of his eyes, he took in her shiny red hair—more the color of cinnamon than autumn leaves—then let his gaze drift down to her shapely breasts.
Damn it! Why did he keep looking at her?
“Once you get this screen, you scroll to the top, click this menu to get the available printers, and choose this printer. Your documents will be sent to the printer by my desk.”
He cleared his throat. “Okay. I get it. Thank you. You can go now.”
She rose from the desk chair and caught Harry’s hand. “I can leave?”
“Yes. All I wanted were the financials and production reports, and to know which printer was closest.” He plopped down on the chair again and she turned to go but another thought struck him. “Wait!”
She faced him.
“You aren’t leaving town, are you?”
She laughed and he frowned. The last review in the personnel file for Wendy Winston had described her as quiet and unassuming, but extremely capable. He’d never know that from her behavior today. Of course, the way he kept staring at her, his attention continually caught by parts of her body he normally wouldn’t look at with an employee, wasn’t normal either. All because she’d fallen into his arms.
So maybe that brush had affected her as much as him? And maybe he should just ignore the way she was acting?
After a few seconds of silence, she gasped. “Oh, you weren’t kidding about my leaving town?”
“Why did you think I was kidding? Everybody else in this company is out of town.”
She gaped at him. “Because it’s the holiday! People are going to parties and visiting friends and relatives for Thanksgiving!”
“Right.” Because his holiday had been uneventful he’d almost forgotten it altogether. He looked down at his papers, then back up at her. “I’m not Scrooge. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t lose my source for information.”
She pulled in a breath. Her breasts rose and fell. Realizing he was staring, he jerked his eyes upward, cursing himself for acting like a horny teenager.
“No, Harry and I are staying in town. Even weekends.”
“Great.” Forcing his mind off her sweater and to the mission he was here to accomplish, he rubbed his hands together over the keyboard. “I’ll call you if I need you.”
She turned and left the office. Though Cullen had thought his attention was on the family business, where it was supposed to be, he couldn’t resist glancing up to watch the sway of her hips as she left.
Because her back was to him, he braced his elbow on his desk and his chin on his closed fist, letting himself watch as he tried to figure this out. He felt bewitched. But he couldn’t be. They hadn’t spent more than ten minutes together. And she wasn’t his type. He liked blondes. And she was a widow. A serious woman, not to be trifled with.
So he wouldn’t trifle. He would be the perfect gentleman for the few weeks he had to run this company, and then he’d leave Barrington, Pennsylvania, and, he hoped, never again even set foot in the town that bore his family’s name.
Wendy hustled Harry into the foyer of her echoing home. Her house was a monstrosity, a five-bedroom, three-bath mansion built in the eighteen hundreds that had been updated with the times, but had gone into disrepair when the last owner had left town and let it sit empty for over a year. She and her husband had purchased it with the idea of turning it into their dream home. They’d gotten as far as ripping out carpeting and finishing the hardwood floors throughout the house, chucking wood paneling in favor of plastered walls and installing a new furnace, roof and windows. But Greg had died before they even touched the bathrooms or the kitchen, which could best be described as early-American. As in Revolutionary War.
She turned up the thermostat to accommodate the howling wind outside and pointed Harry in the direction of the kitchen.
Creamsicle, her fat orange-and-white cat, thumped down the stairs and wrapped himself around her legs in greeting.
She motioned to the cat, diverting Harry’s attention to him. “Harry, this is Creamsicle. Creamsicle, this is Harry.”
The cat blinked. Harry grinned. “You have a cat!”
“Yes, but he’s old and moody, so you have to be nice to him.” She stooped down to pet Creamsicle, who ignored Harry—which was probably for the best. “I seem to remember something about Christmas cookies.”
Harry’s eyes grew as big as her cat’s belly. “Can we make them red and green?”
She began walking to the kitchen. “Hey, if you want to paint stained-glass windows on the church cookies, that’s fine by me.”
“We’re making churches?”
“I have a cutter for a church. One for Santa. An angel.”
She walked to the cabinet by the refrigerator. Her cupboards were knotty pine that actually made her dizzy. Especially when combined with the green-and-white print in the linoleum floor. She’d replaced the busy leaf-print curtains with simple taupe panels, removed the floral wallpaper and painted the walls a soothing sage color. But she hadn’t been able to replace the cabinets or the floor and the floor/cabinet combo sometimes gave her motion sickness.
“Here’s a bell, a wreath, a Christmas tree,” she said, pulling the cookie cutters from the deep drawer. “Let me grab the ingredients for the cookies and we’ll get this show on the road.”
“Don’t you think I should take off my coat first?”
She laughed, walking toward him, as Creamsicle waddled in and took his place on the floor in the corner, watching her and the newcomer.
“I don’t have any kids so I’m going to forget some obvious things every once in a while.” She unzipped his coat and tugged on the sleeve to pull it off then yanked his cap off his head. “Don’t be afraid to remind me!”
“Okay.” He pushed his glasses up his nose.
After stowing his coat and hat in the hall closet, Wendy gathered sugar, vanilla and flour from the cupboards and eggs, butter and milk from the refrigerator. Harry climbed on a chair.
“Oh, no! No sitting for you! You have to help.”
He peeked up at her. “Really?”
“Sure.” She handed him a measuring cup. “Fill that with flour.”
Standing on the chair, he peered into the canister, then back at her. “Fill it?”
“Just dip it in.” She cupped his soft little hand over the handle of the measuring cup and scooped it into the flour to fill it. “See? Like that.”
“Cool!”
“I’m guessing you’ve never baked before.”
He shook his head. “My mom didn’t have time.”
Wendy nearly cursed at her stupid mistake. The last thing she wanted to do was remind him of his mother, but before she had a chance to say anything, the phone rang.
Wendy walked to the wall unit talking. “You never having baked isn’t a big deal. In fact, it will be fun for me to teach you. Something new for both of us.” She lifted the phone receiver. “Hello?”
“This isn’t the right forecast.”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Barrington.”
“This forecast has draft written on it. Every copy in the file has draft stamped on it. Isn’t there a final version?”
“Yes.” She thought for a second, wondering why her final copy wasn’t in the file, but in the end decided it didn’t matter. “I probably have to print you another copy.”
“Great. I’ll see you when you get here.” He paused then added, “And don’t dillydally.”
He hung up the phone.
She sighed. “Harry, do me a favor and put the butter back in the fridge.”
He scooted off the chair and took the butter to the refrigerator. Right behind him with the milk and eggs, Wendy caught the door as he opened it.
“This is so much fun!”
She frowned. “Getting things out and putting them away again is fun?”
“Having somewhere to go!”
“You like going to work?”
“I like going anywhere. My mom didn’t go places.” He frowned then glanced at the floor. “She was sick.”
Wendy stooped down in front of him. Her own pang of loss rippled through her as she remembered Betsy. “I know she was sick. And I’ll bet you miss her. But I don’t think she’d want you dwelling on her.”
“What’s dwelling?”
“Thinking about her when she can’t be here. I’ll bet she’d want you to think happy thoughts this close to Christmas.”
Even as the words came out of her mouth they brought a rush of memory. Her mom had told her the same thing about Greg. That she shouldn’t dwell on him, their plans, their life. She remembered thinking that her mom was right and still being angry that he’d died, had left her when she’d loved him so much, needed him so much. Two years without him had taught her to be stronger, bolder and independent enough never to fall into the trap of needing a man the way she had Greg. But when her mom had said those words, she’d been devastated.
Harry, however, nodded sagely.
She rose and helped him with his coat. After shrugging into her own coat and getting her purse and keys from the table in the foyer, she caught Harry’s hand and led him outside into the driving wind and freezing rain.
Ice now covered tree branches and clung to the mailboxes of the row of older, but welltended homes. She paused in front of her little blue car, studying the icicles that hung from the door handle. It was so easy for a car to slide on ice. Walking might be safer. “I’m not sure about this.”
“About what?”
“The plant isn’t very far from here. We could actually walk.”
But it was raining. And Harry was a little boy. A simple ten-minute walk for her might not be so easy for short legs.
She frowned. “Never mind. We’ll drive.”
As they waited for the car windows to defrost, she said, “So do you know what you want to be when you grow up?”
“A fireman.”
“That’s a great job.”
“I want to save people.”
Wendy yanked her gearshift out of Park and into Drive. With his mother’s passing so fresh in his memory, there was no way Wendy would let him go down that road. Not this close to Christmas. If nothing else, she intended to give this little boy a break from reality. A few days or weeks of comfort and joy while social services employees hunted for his dad.
“Maybe if you’re good enough with the cookies, you might want to consider being a baker.”
He giggled. “Girls are bakers.”
“Not really.” As they drove to the plant, they talked about the different kinds of jobs he could consider then she took his hand again to help him navigate the icy parking lot. This time she needed her key to get in.
When they arrived in her office, Cullen Barrington was standing by her desk, looking at his watch.
“Five minutes? I told you to hurry, but I didn’t mean for you to be reckless.”
“I wasn’t. I don’t live far.” She rubbed her hands together before removing her coat. “We actually considered walking, but it’s freezing out there.”
