The Night Before Christmas. Tawny Weber

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СКАЧАТЬ to accept reality than to keep dragging this out.”

      Hailey hated reality.

      Especially when Doris dished it up with such bitter relish. It was as if she reveled in negativity. Hailey shifted her gaze from her own image to the woman behind her.

      What a contrast.

      Preparing for the meeting, Hailey was dressed in business chic. A black leather mini paired with leopard-print tights, a black silk turtleneck and a brushed cotton blazer with satin lapels. Along with her favorite boots and black knee-high schoolgirl socks, the look was savvy, sassy and modern. Just right for wowing a department-store tycoon and a fashion powerhouse.

      And behind her was the elf of Christmas gloom.

      An elf that knew the business inside and out, could finagle suppliers’ fees down to pennies, worked magic with the books and, next to Hailey, was the best fill-in seamstress Merry Widow had ever seen. Which made her indispensable.

      Indispensable gloom.

      Not for the first time, she wished she were the kind of person who could tell Doris that her bad attitude wouldn’t be tolerated and suggest the woman get her act together or clear out her desk.

      But every time Hailey thought about doing it, she thought of everything the woman brought to the company. Then she remembered how lousy Doris’s home life was, how Merry Widow was all she really had.

      And whenever the older woman pissed her off so much that she forgot all that, the minute she got ready to get in her face, Hailey’s tongue swelled up, her head buzzed with panic and she freaked out.

      It wasn’t that she was a wimp. She was a fierce negotiator in business, a savvy designer who insisted her company be run her way. She was smart. She was clever. She was strong.

      She just sucked at confrontation.

      Partially because her father had once told her that arguments always left scars. That even after making up, the memory of the conflict would forever change the relationship. Given that his advice had come on the heels of a hideous family drama that’d cost Hailey a whole year away from her new half brother, she’d taken the lesson to heart.

      But mostly because she hated making people mad at her. Her mom had got mad and left her dad. Her dad got mad and refused to talk to Hailey. She’d seen plenty of mad in her life. Which was why she tried to avoid it like the plague.

      “You want one of these cookies?” Doris asked, a frosted reindeer in hand. Doris shot Hailey a sour smile, bit the head off, then said around her mouthful, “Might as well eat up now, since things are gonna get tight after we go out of business.”

      “We’re not going out of business,” Hailey insisted, lifting a cream lace scarf to her shoulder to compare, then switching to one of vivid red cashmere.

      “Right. Bet you still believe in Santa Claus, too.”

      “We’re not going out of business,” she said again. “Our sales are up ten percent over last year. Our projected first quarter should double that, easily.”

      “The Phillips kids are calling their daddy’s note the first of the year,” Doris reminded her like a persistently cheerful rain cloud.

      Rotten kids. Or, really, greedy adults.

      When Hailey had bought Merry Widow Lingerie from Eric Phillips three years ago, they’d agreed that he’d take a percentage of the profits for five years, with a final payment of the agreed-upon balance at the end of that time. When he’d died in the fall, though, his kids had found a loophole in the contract, insisting that they could call the entire debt. They’d given Hailey until the end of the year, which was mighty big of them, in their opinion.

      Without a significant contract the size of, oh, say Rudolph department stores, the bank wouldn’t consider a loan in the sum the Phillipses were demanding.

      Just thinking about it made Hailey’s stomach churn, an inky panic coating the back of her throat.

      No. She put the mental brakes to the freak-out. She wasn’t going there. She’d found her answer; she just had to believe in it. She was going to snag this Rudolph-department-store contract.

      Negative thinking, even the kind that had her second-guessing her date tonight, would only drag her down.

      Giving her reflection a hard-eyed stare, Hailey vowed that she was going to rock this meeting and wow her date. As long as she didn’t strip him naked and nibble on his body, she wasn’t crossing any ethical work-relationship boundaries. Right?

      Right.

      Now she just had to get Doris off her back.

      “When I pull in this department-store deal, we’re golden. I can pay off the note, Merry Widow will be mine free and clear, and we’ll be set,” she assured the other woman.

      “Do you bake special cookies to set out for Santa, or are you comfy settling for store bought? And those stars that fall from the sky, how many of those wishes actually come true for you?” Doris gave a pitying shake of her head. “You listen to me, miss. You keep going through life with your head in the clouds like you do, you’re gonna fall in a big ole ditch one of these days.”

      What was it with the people in her life? Her mother was always warning that she’d get taken advantage of. Her friends worried that she was wearing rose-colored glasses. Even her father... Hailey bit her lip. Well, her father barely noticed what she was doing. But every once in a while, he did throw out a caution warning of his own. It wasn’t as if she were Pollyanna with no clue. Hailey was a smart, perceptive woman. She’d made it to twenty-six without a major heartbreak, owned her own business and paid her bills on time. And unlike anyone else in her family, she hadn’t had to resort to therapy and/or addictive substances along the way.

      “I’m just saying, you might want to look at your alternatives. Me, I can retire anytime. But the rest of the team, don’t they deserve a little heads-up so they can start looking for new jobs? It’s all well and good to keep your hopes up,” Doris said, her tone indicating the exact opposite. “But you can’t let your Mary Sunshine attitude hurt other people, now, can you?”

      “Everything is going to be fine. Why don’t you focus on doing your job and let me do mine,” Hailey snapped, her words so loud and insistent that the other woman dropped her cookie and stared.

      She closed her eyes against Doris’s shocked look. Hailey never snapped. In a life surrounded by simmering emotional volcanoes, she worked hard to be calm water. Mellow. Soothing, even. She’d grown up watching the devastation negativity and emotional turmoil caused, had spent her childhood trying to repair the damage.

      And, of course, on the oh-so-rare occasions that she did respond to stress with a negative reaction, she always got that same horrified, might-as-well-have-kicked-a-puppy-and-cussed-out-a-nun look from people.

      “I’m sorry,” Hailey said with a grimace. “I’m just nervous about the meeting this afternoon. I want to make a good impression, to show Mr. Rudolph and his team that I’m the designer they want.”

      “You think the perfect scarf is going to make that dirty old man pick you as his lingerie designer?”

      “I think the right look will show him my sense СКАЧАТЬ