Love Finds You on Christmas Morning (18 page)

Early March, modern day

“Have I ever told you why I stole you away from Armand, Nikki?”

Nicole Tronnier dusted a trace of flour off the tip of her nose and gave old Mr. Fennicle a smile. “Of course you have, Harvey. I amazed you with my culinary prowess and sparkling personality.”

She placed a basket of warm rosemary biscuits near his plate. The pumpkin-potato puree and veggie medley looked perfect next to his rack of lamb, if she did say so herself. The rich winter colors were almost as important to her as the fragrance and taste of the food she served. “If anyone deserves the very best personal chef in North Carolina, it’s an absolutely spoiled multimillionaire like you.”

She saw him fight against the twitch of a smile.

“I resent your insinuation about me, young lady.”

“I call ’em as I see ’em, Harvey.”

“I’m an absolutely spoiled
billionaire,
at the very least. And that’s not why I lured you away. I’ve always been very fond of Armand and his fine restaurant. It’s one of the reasons I opened a plant in Charlotte, so I could visit him and still make money. Pilfering his star chef gave me no pleasure, and I could have found an equally gifted chef elsewhere, I’m certain.”

“But?” She crossed her arms. She adored this old man, and it had taken so little time to settle into fond banter with him once she joined the staff of his spacious Cary, North Carolina, mansion almost a year ago.

He closed his eyes and swallowed his bite of lamb, ecstasy in his expression. “Perfect.” He breathed a satisfied sigh. “But I saw you do something that put you over the top, in my book. I don’t suppose you even know what that was.”

“I gave you an extra-large slice of my mango-coconut terrine for dessert. Was that it?”

“Didn’t hurt, but no. Do you remember that odd fellow who made off with a dish full of food the day I met you?”

She frowned. “Odd fellow. No. What do you mean he made off with—oh, you mean the homeless guy in the fake waiter suit.” She chuckled at the memory.

“I was outside in my limo when that happened,” Harvey said. “I hadn’t yet entered the restaurant and was on the phone with one of my more boring advisors. I saw that fellow rush out of the restaurant, glancing back, forth, and behind. He was protecting that plate of food as if eagles would swoop down and carry it off.”

“Poor guy,” Nikki said. “I think he just wandered in off the street, fully intending to beg—from our customers or from the restaurant, I don’t know for sure. But he was in that old black suit, and a customer handed her dish to him to bring it back to the kitchen for reheating or something. She thought he was a waiter. And he thought he hit the jackpot.”

Harvey laughed. “When you stormed out the front door after him and nearly tripped over him, sitting there—”

“You never told me you saw all that, Harvey!”

“I did indeed.”

“Yeah, I remember it now. It was just like you said. He was so hungry he didn’t even run beyond the front stoop. Broke my heart.” She shrugged. “I had to redo the customer’s order anyway. No sense in wasting food.”

“I saw you pat his head, Nikki. Not only did you let him eat, you weren’t afraid to touch him.”

She sighed. “And
that’s
why you hired me?”

He focused on cutting his lamb. “Says a lot about a person, the things they’ll do when they think no one else is watching. If I’m going to have someone join my live-in staff, I want to make sure she’s made of the right stuff, not just able to
make
the right stuff.”

“Yep.” She nodded. “I’m pretty special, all right.”

Harvey’s personal assistant, Laura, walked into the dining room. “Excuse me, Mr. Fennicle.”

“Laura, please.” He tilted his head. “Call me Harvey. I’ve told you about that.”

She simply smiled. Nikki knew Laura would never loosen up enough to accommodate Harvey’s request. She had replaced his previous assistant who’d retired months ago, and she was still loath to so much as chat over a cup of coffee. After Nikki’s years of active social life in college and then working in bustling kitchens full of chatty coworkers, the lack of sisterly camaraderie was sometimes lonely.

“Elliot Kincaid in New York is calling,” Laura said to Harvey. “What would you like me to—?”

“Thanks, yes. Please tell him I’ll call him in about a half hour. And could you bring me those papers he sent down yesterday? I’ll look them over while I eat. Did you get dinner?”

“Yes, thank you.” She smiled formally at Nikki. “Very nice, Nikki. Thank you.”

“My pleasure.”

Although the woman hadn’t yet proven easy to cozy up to, Nikki still had hope. She watched Laura’s prim steps carry her out of the room and then returned her attention to Harvey. “Okay, I’ll leave you to it, then. Do you need anything else?”

“Only the fountain of youth, dear.”

She squeezed his shoulder and almost gave him a kiss on his feathery-haired head. “I’ll check on you in a little while. I have something special for your dessert.”

She returned to the kitchen and started tidying up. Harvey’s panna cotta was ready in the refrigerator. She only needed to drizzle the rose syrup over it before she served it to him. He loved trying new flavors, and this would be exactly that. Her old boss, Armand Gaudet, had introduced her to Italian rose syrup while she apprenticed under him in Charlotte.

Not for the first time, Nikki felt the tiniest twinge of guilt about leaving Armand, even though he had been completely gracious when Harvey offered her this job. There had simply been too many “God things” involved for her to ignore the opportunity.

Although she had moved away from Cary years ago in order to attend college and then train under Armand, she was definitely a family girl. She loved the city but missed her hometown. The three-hour drive between Charlotte and Cary made visiting her parents, sister, and old friends prohibitive. So for the location alone, she gave Harvey’s offer serious consideration as soon as he made it.

But there was another reason she couldn’t refuse the offer to work as personal chef to the eccentric Harvey Fennicle. He had doubled her income with a stroke of his pen on her employment contract. Nikki wasn’t money-hungry, but as long as she could remember, she had saved for a specific goal in mind. Now she might actually reach that goal.

Her family’s old home here in Cary—the home her great-grandfather William Tronnier and his brothers built for William and his new bride, Lillian—had been on the market for a year or more. Neither her parents nor her grandparents had maintained ownership of the Tronnier home, seeking instead to buy more modern homes for themselves and their families.

But Nikki’s fondest early childhood memories were wrapped up in that home. As a little girl, she’d thought Granny Lillian and Grampa William would always be around. And she’d thought the family would spend every holiday, especially Christmas morning, celebrating in their home. She wanted to bring those memories back into her family’s lives and futures.

The house was still beautiful but needed considerable refurbishing. Until Harvey Fennicle came into her life, Nikki had little hope of saving enough to purchase and remodel the home. Now she was close to having saved a sizable down payment. It wouldn’t be long before she could make an offer to the current owner. The house had been vacant for quite a while. Nikki had confidence in her chances.

She couldn’t think of anything or anyone that would stand in her way now.

Drew Cornell seldom awoke in a bad mood, especially on Saturday mornings. Regardless of how hard or how late he had worked the night before, he typically couldn’t keep from giving in to optimism within moments after waking. His golden retriever Freddie saw to that, padding dutifully from the plush living-room carpet into Drew’s bedroom the moment the alarm rang each morning.

The two of them had fallen into the kind of rhythm only a lifelong bachelor and his trusty best friend could after years of companionship. Five years, to be exact. Even the move to Cary nine months ago and the need to orient themselves to this small rental apartment hadn’t disrupted their routine for long. For his part, Freddie carried Drew’s running shoes in his mouth, dropped them at the side of the bed, and greeted Drew with his panting grin each day.

But this morning Drew was unable to welcome Freddie with the enthusiasm he usually demonstrated. Still facedown on the bed, he groaned and blindly reached his hand out to find the top of Freddie’s head and give it a cursory rub.

“Ugh. Okay. Be with you in a minute, pal.” At least those were the words he spoke into the mattress. He assumed Freddie would grasp his meaning despite the fuzzy enunciation.

Not only had he lost sleep worrying about his dad’s latest health scare, but he had spent more than an hour on the phone in the middle of the night, comforting his old girlfriend in California. Isabelle had already dated, fallen for, and been dumped by a new man since Drew moved to Cary this past year, and she tended to forget about the three-hour time difference when she leaned on Drew for a consoling ear. He didn’t have the heart to remind her when she called, crying, at three in the morning, that he needed to be up at six to start his day, even this weekend.

So he listened and tried to encourage her without slipping into telling her what she ought to do. Back when they dated, she’d taught him that was a big no-no with women. Just lend an ear or a shoulder, she had told him, and try to sympathize. For that pointer alone, he would always be grateful, even though the strategy seemed to drag problems on longer than necessary, as far as he was concerned.

Freddie pressed his cold nose up against Drew’s arm, which dangled over the edge of the bed. Drew pulled it in and pushed himself up.

“Right.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes. The dog tilted his head as if awaiting an explanation for this delay. His tail worked like a metronome.

Drew chuckled. “Okay, buddy. I guess skipping this morning’s run is out of the question.”

The moment he stood, the dog’s excitement kicked into gear. He dashed out of the bedroom as if his paws were on fire. Drew barely had time to brush his teeth and throw on his T-shirt and sweats before Freddie returned and sat at his feet, his leash in his mouth.

“Let’s try a change of scenery here, boy.” He tugged at the dog’s leash when the sidewalk forked in two directions. One side led to the park and the other to the mixed-use section of the residential community, where shops and small office buildings were clustered.

Their typical route took them through the park, but Drew needed caffeine earlier than usual today. The air was cold, and that had helped at first. But now that he had worked up a sweat and the cool air was more comforting than bracing, he was going to need something stronger. They’d stop at the coffee shop and take a more leisurely stroll home. He hadn’t missed a day’s run yet this week. He could afford to slack off on his return for one morning.

It was early enough that few shops or offices had even opened yet. But he could smell the heavenly fragrance from the Coffee Bean before he even rounded the corner.

When he did round the corner, however, a flash of fur whizzed past him so quickly that he almost tripped over it. His lack of sleep kicked in, and he grumbled about the near accident. People needed to hang onto their dogs better than that.

He halted abruptly, but Freddie had other plans. The retriever took off after the other dog, and Drew didn’t have a firm enough hold on the leash to stop him.

“Freddie! No!”

Before he even started running after him, a young woman ran past him, clearly in pursuit of the smaller dog.

“If your dog hurts mine—” She didn’t finish her threat. She had already passed him.

He laughed, incredulous. “If my dog hurts hers? Freddie! No!” He broke into a run when he saw all three of them disappear into the park.

By the time he caught up to them, the lightning-quick fur ball had come to a halt at the base of an old oak tree. He was a tough little red-haired cuss—a terrier—with short legs and a big-dog attitude. He alternated between barking at whatever had run up the tree and barking at Freddie, whose own pattern mirrored his exactly. The two of them didn’t seem to know which crisis was more important, their prey or each other. So they divided their energies accordingly.

The woman squatted next to the terrier and fiddled with the leash before picking up the dog and holding him as if she were about to run for a touchdown.

“Enough, Riley! That’s
enough
out of you. Calm down.” She glanced at Freddie and raised her voice. “You too. Shush!” She wore a frown when she turned around, obviously seeking the dog’s errant owner. She met eyes with Drew. “Oh.” That was it. Just “Oh.” But the word was full of annoyance.

Freddie continued to instigate barks here and there, and Riley couldn’t resist echoing him.

“Freddie.” Drew said it calmly. Now that he was this close in proximity to his dog, that was all he chose to say to assure him that all bark-worthy circumstances were under control.

The young woman nodded at him. “Well, Freddie, I would say nice to meet you, but I hadn’t planned on working up a sweat this morning, so I cannot tell a lie.”

“No, the dog is Freddie. I wasn’t introducing myself.”

He saw a flash of embarrassment in her expression. Again, she simply said, “Oh.”

Now that her frown was gone, there was no mistaking how pretty she was. Small, feminine, and clearly full of energy and sass. With her eyes downcast like that, her eyelashes looked as full and dark as her hair.

“I
would
have introduced myself,” Drew said, “but I was preoccupied with making sure my dog wasn’t attacking your precious little Poopsie there.”

She glanced up, but he continued before she could speak.

“And then there was your whole working-up-a-sweat thing.” With a quick wave of his index finger, he indicated that he was talking about her appearance, which was, in fact, lovely. “Pretty horrible.”

Her brown eyes widened before she seemed to figure out that he was teasing her. Even then, she struggled at making eye contact with him, as if she were shy or unwilling to loosen up.