Betting On Santa. Debra Salonen

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      She barked out a laugh. “That’s like being almost pregnant. Speaking of which, want to go inside for my latest craving? Bananas and capers on saltines.” He made a gagging sound. “No? Well, go on then. What happened?”

      “A month or two before Sunny left, I got drunk at the Oasis. Remember that bar down the street from the office? It’s also right around the corner from the apartment build ing Sunny was managing. She found me crying in my tequila.”

      “Over Crystal? Damn, that woman had her head screwed on backward. All she ever cared about was looking beautiful and being seen by all the right players as she drove around in her fancy car. You are so lucky to be done with her. So, anyway, this Sunny chick shows up and…”

      “We talked. And she tried to dance with me…. Until it was obvious I couldn’t walk, much less dance. She took me back to her place.”

      “Her one-bedroom apartment.”

      “I slept on her couch.”

      Annie looked at him, but didn’t say anything for a minute. “Well, someone doesn’t get pregnant by association. If you have any doubts about what happened, there must be more to the story.”

      “I woke up the next morning in her bed. Alone. She was at work. I don’t remember getting into her bed. I don’t remember having sex with her—I’m sure I didn’t. You know me, Mr. All About the Vows.”

      She went over and put her arm around him. “I do know you, and I’m sure you’re right. Sharing a bed isn’t the same as swapping genetic material. So, there really isn’t a problem, right? You told the Oregon sister that you weren’t the daddy and sent her back to San Antonio—where she should be, by the way. I mean, who leaves the bedside of her comatose sister to hunt down some lead from a diary?”

      Cole gave her a look he knew she’d understand.

      “What? You think I’m being judgmental?”

      “She’s doing what you would do. She and her mother can’t both be in Sunny’s room, because one of them has to keep the kid busy. How do you entertain a toddler in a strange town?”

      Annie’s eyes went wide. “You like her. And feel sorry for her.” She stepped back, a hand at the small bulge in the waistline of her brightly flowered cotton pajama bottoms. “No, Cole. No. This isn’t a hawk with a broken wing. Or a three-legged cat. Or a cowardly dog who barks at his own shadow. You’ve got the biggest heart in Texas, but you can’t save everybody who falls into your life with a sad story. Didn’t you learn your lesson with Crystal?”

      “I learned a lot of lessons from Crystal, but this isn’t the same. Tessa doesn’t want anything from me but a little swab of DNA, and frankly, I’m not worried about that. If it turned out the kid—Joey, his name is Joey—is mine, then I’d be okay with that. Your baby would have an older cousin.”

      “That’s not how it works, Cole. You don’t just open your mouth and give them spit because they ask. First, you protect yourself. You call a lawyer and—”

      “My lawyer won’t talk to me until I pay off my bill.”

      “Oh, stop. You’re being obtuse. This is your future, Coley-boy, and I’m not going to let some stranger trash it when you’re just now getting back on your feet. I’ll go see her in the morning and—”

      Cole recognized that particular tone. He called it her crusader voice. He took Annie’s shoulders in his hands and made her look at him. “No, you won’t. She’s going back to San Antonio in the morning, and I told her I’d come see her at the motel where she and her mother are staying. I want to visit Sunny. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that there’s a beautiful young woman who might be dying. The rest of this will shake out. Got it?”

      Annie closed her mouth in a pout that her husband claimed to find endearing but Cole knew meant trouble. “I’m going home now, Annie. Leave it alone. Promise?”

      He squinted at her sternly until she nodded, but he had an uneasy feeling she was going to spend the rest of the night figuring out a way around her promise.

      “Where’s Blake, by the way?”

      “Had an early meeting. Decided to stay in the condo.”

      Annie and Blake were still working out the logistics of their complicated lives, but Cole had no doubt they’d figure it out eventually. They loved each other and that was what counted.

      “Your ankle’s bothering you again, isn’t it?”

      “Nothing an ice pack and a couple of painkillers can’t handle.”

      She frowned. “Cole. When are you going to see that orthopedic specialist I recommended?”

      Never. “I’m busy. I have to work, remember?” He could tell from the concern in her eyes that she didn’t buy his excuse for a minute. She knew the circumstances around the injury. She knew too much. “I’m leaving now.”

      She followed him to the edge of the porch and watched him walk to his car. “You have a right to live without pain, Cole. Dad would hate it if he thought you were suffering because of him.”

      He pretended not to hear. Nobody could say what Tim Lawry thought, and the man sure as hell wasn’t here to set the record straight.

      TESSA AWOKE at dawn and managed to work a good hour at her laptop before Joey woke up. She and Marci had rewarded themselves with a month’s vacation each to celebrate

      A.R.E. Consulting’s successful year. Marci and her husband had spent November in Scotland and England. Tessa had planned to use a few of her abundant frequent-flier miles to head to Hawaii the first week in December then return home to paint her spare bedroom. That had been before she got the call about Sunny. Autumn and Tessa had had to pack up and leave so quickly Tessa hadn’t been able to clear everything off her calendar. She’d rescheduled her final couple of follow-up appointments during an extralong, weather-related layover in Denver, but she hadn’t gotten a chance to firm up her first-of-the-year contact list before she left town.

      A.R.E. was an acronym for what Tessa and Marci believed was an ongoing process needed to keep any business—big or small—solvent, growth oriented and viable. Assess, Reassess and Evaluate. Their partnership was a perfect model. Every quarter, they set aside one afternoon to go over their records and reports. As she often told clients, “Taking a cold, hard look at your company can save a lot of heartache down the road.”

      Tessa and Marci had already set the date for their fourth-quarter review. December twenty-sixth. The day after Christmas. Tessa had planned to have her January clients in the queue, contracts in hand, but now it appeared Marci would have to handle January.

      The least Tessa could do was provide a nice, neat contact sheet, complete with payment schedule. If each of these potential jobs panned out, she and Marci would be looking at doubling their income over the year before.

      Unfortunately, the contact list was quite spread out geographically. Las Vegas. Baltimore. Anchorage. Houston.

      “Houston.” She closed her eyes and tried to picture a map of the state of Texas. She’d been to Dallas twice, once to attend a small-business seminar and a few years later to teach a workshop at the same seminar. She had a vague recollection СКАЧАТЬ