Kissing Santa Claus. Jill Shalvis

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      “I can’t believe I’m standing here, in the middle of the night, bargaining over a kiss. With you.”

      He grinned, but she stepped back. And took the box of food, hugging it, almost too tightly from the sound of crinkling cardboard.

      “Why don’t we move straight to the friendship part,” she said.

      He lifted his hands. “Okay.” Then he shook his head. “Turns out it doesn’t feel any better fourteen years later. The rejection thing,” he clarified.

      “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing a day from now, much less a week, or a month. My life is…complicated. In ways it hasn’t been in a very long time. I can’t handle further…complications. Not right now.”

      “It might have just been pleasant,” he said, teasing her, wishing he wasn’t so disappointed but respecting her wishes.

      Now that smile came back, and it did things to him, surprisingly intense things, which made him wonder if perhaps she hadn’t made the wise move.

      “It might have been pleasant for you,” she said, “but I can pretty much guarantee it would have ranked a lot higher on my scale.”

      Now it was his turn to stand there and stare.

      “I really need to—you know.” She gestured her head, toward the back of the building.

      “Um, yeah. Right.” He turned and walked back to the front door. “Don’t forget to lock up behind me.”

      “I won’t,” she said, staying where she was.

      He supposed so they didn’t risk being in each other’s personal space again. He paused at the door, though, then looked back at her. “I think you’re right. When we kiss, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more than pleasant.”

      5

      Holly heard the tapping on the door downstairs and immediately stopped shoving the large packing crate toward the dormer window and away from her makeshift bed. Sean?

      She knew it was foolish, the little skip her heart took, the extra zip in her pulse. Even if it was him, there was no point in getting all schoolgirl-crushy about it. She’d spent far more time thinking about their almost kiss in the wee hours last night than she should have, especially considering the laundry list of things she absolutely had to be thinking about. It was more than a little mind-blowing to know, to even think, that Sean Gallagher had been attracted to her. Ever. But they were adults now, and she had some very adult responsibilities to attend to. Ones that left no room for reliving childhood fantasies. Much less contemplate trying to turn fantasy into reality.

      She used her reflection in the pane of glass in the china cabinet that was shoved up against the wall behind the door to push at her hair and check her teeth. Realizing she was primping, she stuck her tongue out at herself and tried to get her head in the place it needed to be as she walked downstairs. The fantasy was pretty damn good if her dreams last night had been any indication, and he’d been right about time only enhancing the details of those fantasies, but the dream world was the realm in which all thoughts of Sean Gallagher were destined to remain.

      She pasted a professional, friends-only smile on her face, prayed it was even in the ballpark of looking believable, and turned the corner at the base of the stairs into the main part of the shop…only to have the smile fade and her shoulders involuntarily slump a little when she spied who it was at the door. And who it wasn’t.

      She wasn’t ready for this conversation, but she’d known word would get out she was back and she’d have visitors before too long. She’d just hoped that too long would have been a little bit longer before this particular visitor popped up.

      She gave a nod to Mrs. Gillespie as she unlocked the door. Arlene Gillespie had worked part-time for her mother for more years than Holly had been alive. She was a tiny wisp of a thing, even smaller than Holly, not the type to indulge in chitchat, though she knew her antiques and could give you, in great detail, the provenance of each piece in the store’s entire and ever-changing inventory without ever having to refer to a single catalog. Holly was certain she’d been a librarian in a former life.

      Her expression was much as Holly had always remembered it to be, neither smiling nor frowning, but merely intent. She opened the door and stepped back to invite her in. “Mrs. Gillespie, how nice to see you.” That was another quirk of hers. Everyone, even her peers, had always called her Mrs. Gillespie. It was only because her mother had signed her paychecks that Holly even knew her first name.

      “So, you’ve finally come back,” Mrs. Gillespie said without preamble.

      Holly closed the door behind her and did her best not to roll her eyes as Mrs. Gillespie unwrapped the long knit scarf that was swallowing her neck whole and unbuttoned her olive green overcoat. She left her hat on, but did take her gloves off. Which meant this was not going to be a brief visit. Lovely.

      “How have you been?” Holly asked.

      “My bursitis doesn’t appreciate the cold weather, but, otherwise, I can’t complain.” She laid her gloves and handbag on the counter and gave the store a keen once-over before turning back to face Holly. “When will you be re-opening? This close to the holidays, you’ve already forfeited most of your seasonal profits.”

      Holly held her gaze, most likely like a deer in headlights. Something about the way Mrs. Gillespie focused on a person made it next to impossible to prevaricate. “I—I’m not sure I will be.” There, she’d said it. Put the words right out there.

      Mrs. Gillespie surprised her by nodding. “You never did have a head for this. You’re more the dreamer.”

      “Dreamer?” Holly was honestly surprised by the description. Eight years spent surviving in the very cutthroat world of advertising had hardly made a dreamer out of her. She’d always thought her mother was more the dreamer, living in a fantasy world of sleigh bells and Santa Clauses.

      “Running off to Europe, head in the clouds, wanting to become a famous painter.” She turned her attention back to the store. “What would you call it?”

      “I work in advertising.”

      Mrs. Gillespie didn’t seem to give any more credence to that comment than Sean had the night before. Holly continued. “I don’t know what my mother has told you, but painting is not—”

      “What keeps food on your table, I’m aware.” She turned back to Holly. “Your mother found a way to make her passion pay for itself. She has a good eye for both whimsy and collectibles, and the business education to know how to turn a profit at it.” She cocked her head slightly and clasped her hands in front of her coat. “What will you do with all she’s built here?”

      Holly was at a bit of a loss as to how to respond to that. On the one hand, Mrs. Gillespie didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised that Holly might not attempt to continue on in her mother’s footsteps, and although not entirely easy to read, she wasn’t thinking there was disapproval there, either. “I don’t know yet.” Which was absolute honest truth. She’d spent the day and a half since arriving looking over the books, checking the inventory, the title to the building, which her mother had owned for some time now, and the taxes on the building, all of which her father had neatly categorized, summarized, and filed in tidy folders and binders in her mother’s office. СКАЧАТЬ