Once Upon a Christmas Eve (8 page)

Something shifted in his expression, something that tightened the carved angles of his face and darkened the depths of his too blue eyes. Yet, even as she felt her heart nudge her breastbone, his glance returned to hers. It was only then that she realized she was barely breathing—and that she hadn't moved.

“I need my coat,” he said.

He was waiting for her to hand him his overcoat from the row of pegs beside her. Totally unnerved by his effect on her, busy masking it, she plucked the garment from its hook, held it out to him.

With a distracted “Thanks,” he opened the door.

She could hear voices beyond the kitchen. Mostly, she was conscious of the man who grabbed his briefcase just before he answered the no-nonsense ring of his cell phone and walked out her back door telling his caller that he'd pay whatever was necessary to get some option back.

 

Needing distraction, Tommi was still wondering if she'd actually seen the heat she'd felt in Max's expression, or if her wildly fluctuating hormones had only made her imagine it, when he called at six-thirty the next morning. He wanted to know if he could stop by the bistro on his way back from the gym. He'd had a dinner last night that had led to an 8:00 a.m. meeting and he was booked solid through that evening. Dropping off what he had for her would be most convenient for him now. He could be there in five minutes.

Because she was avoiding the kitchen for the moment, specifically the cooking aromas, she'd answered the telephone under the bar in the front of the bistro. Telling him now would be fine, and to come to the front door, she hung up and finished the handful of Puff Pops slowly settling her stomach. Remembering what she'd promised a customer,
feeling brave, she'd added garlic to the stock for a pot of rustic mushroom soup.

She should have held off on the bulbous herb for another week.

The raw scent was gone now, scrubbed from her hands with lemon and soap, and the bulbs were mellowing in the simmering stock. She felt infinitely better than she had a while ago. To be on the safe side, though, she wouldn't go back into the kitchen until after Max had gone.

It probably would have been safer, too, to distract herself from the memory of his unnerving effect on her yesterday. Something about him seemed to affect her on some elemental level. But she didn't have time for distractions or to figure out what that something was. He was due there any minute.

M
ax thrived on challenge—lived for it, craved it. It didn't matter if the challenge was to shave seemingly impossible seconds from his fastest run, or close a deal others swore would collapse. It didn't always look like it to anyone else, especially those he left in his wake, but he wasn't trying to beat the next guy. He was trying to beat himself. The more successful he was, the more successful he needed to be. The need had become so ingrained he no longer knew why it was there.

He was well aware, however, that defying the odds was what drove him. As he pulled his black Mercedes coupe to the curb outside the darkened Corner Bistro, he wondered now what the odds were that the unrealistic and impractically soft-hearted Ms. Fairchild would listen to reason. Considering her reactions to his recommendations yesterday, he figured, “not good.”

Considering his reactions to her, he intended to let what
he was dropping off speak for itself and be in and out of her bistro in under five minutes. He'd never regarded himself as being particularly noble, but his sense of honor wouldn't allow him to trespass on another guy's turf—even if the guy hadn't done anything but stake his claim and leave town.

That also meant he'd leave her personal life alone. Whatever it was she was keeping from everyone, Scott could handle on his own.

The streetlamps still glowed in the predawn darkness as he jogged up to the bistro's front door and rapped on the glass. Standing beneath the arched awning, he saw a slender finger lift back an edge of the long shade marked Closed. The shade had no sooner fallen back into place than he heard the metallic clicks of a latch being unbolted and a lock opening.

The moment he stepped into the warmth of the dim room, Tommi closed the door behind him. The faint scents of cinnamon and something savory drifted from the kitchen. What he noticed more was that the top buttons of the longer white chef's jacket she wore were again undone.

“This will only take a minute.” Ignoring the enticing vee of skin below the hollow of her throat, he watched her slide lock and latch back into place and pulled a manila envelope from inside his sweat jacket. “I just want to point out a couple of areas on the recaps that might be confusing.”

The room held little more than shades of gray. Though bright light spilled through the open kitchen door, it barely reached a dozen feet into the quiet and empty space. The only other illumination came from the cone-shaped red pendant lights and the two spotlights above the small coffee and wine bar.

The bar was where she motioned. “Let's go back there. It'll be easier to see.”

With a small smile, she turned to lead him between the neatly set tables. He'd barely glimpsed her face, but the weak light made her skin look like alabaster, impossibly smooth, translucent, pale.

Despite the better light, her skin still had that pale quality when they reached the bar with its row of low stools.

Not wanting to think about her skin, the shine of her upswept hair or anything else that might distract him from his purpose, he laid the papers he'd pulled from the envelope on the bar's black-granite surface.

“These are profit projections based on two different expansion phases. The second is a continuation of the first, so it shows you how you can grow in stages.”

She stood at his elbow, her attention on the sheets. He caught the soft scents of lemon and herbal shampoo. Moving the first sheet in front of her, more conscious of her scent than he wanted to be, he pointed to the bottom line.

“This is the projected difference in your gross income after a year with the first phase. I called the leasing agent for this building to get figures for leasing the vacant space next door. The initial costs of expansion would eat up a lot of the first-year profits, but after that, you'd see a forty percent increase.”

He pulled the other sheet forward. “The second phase has to do with staying open seven days a week and adding catering. That will require additional staffing,” he warned her, “but you'd have six months or so to work new people in.”

With the bistro not yet open, the space surrounding them felt different to him. There was no clinking of utensils and glass. No murmur of conversation. No bustle. Just a tune
from a radio in the kitchen that was so faint he couldn't even tell what it was. All that quiet made him even more aware of Tommi's silence as he watched her push back a strand of hair that had slipped from its clip. Her chef's cap lay on the stool beside her, set there, apparently, when she'd pulled it from her head and dislodged the strand that promptly fell back to her cheek.

She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

Discouraged, trying hard not to be, Tommi looked from the neat columns of figures on the pages. His bottom lines were truly impressive. Far beyond anything she'd ever imagined possible. But then, she'd never thought in terms of large profits, or a larger place. “Bigger” had never been part of her dream. She wanted her bistro just the way it was. Small. Intimate. Hers. And hers alone.

She already knew the status quo was no longer possible. It was just hard letting go, even though she knew, too, that she would have to concede parts of her dream to keep even a modified version of that dream alive. But all she could think about just then was of how much more work his more extensive plans would involve.

He hadn't mentioned expanding yesterday. Apparently, this was his alternative to moving.

Without looking from the pages, she quietly asked, “How soon would I need to do this?”

“If we enter into an agreement within the next couple of weeks, I'd push for mid-January. Realistically, renovations would take a month. You don't want to be closed that whole time, so we could have the wall torn out in a couple of days and a temporary one erected. You could stay open here while the bulk of the work is being done on the other side.”

She shook her head again, shoved her fingers through her hair. He had absolutely no idea how hard she was pushing
herself already. She hadn't even made it into bed last night. When she'd finally gone upstairs, she'd lain down on her comforter, folded half of it over herself and the next thing she'd known it was five o'clock in the morning. Because she hadn't set her alarm, she'd overslept by half an hour.

“How would I pay for it?”

“We'd advance the funds as our part of the buy-in. It's all written out in the proposal in there.”

Max nodded toward the envelope. After encountering her resistance yesterday, he now knew that she tended to get quiet when she was digging in her heels. Considering her now, he had the feeling she was either balking big-time or struggling hard to accept what should have been a no-brainer.

She hadn't bothered to brush the strand of hair back again.

Blocking the urge to do it himself, he pushed his hands into his pockets.

“Just look this over when you have a chance. While you're doing that,” he suggested, certain she was feeling proprietary, “keep in mind that this is a business decision. Not an emotional one. It's only logical that as successful as you've been so far, you'll be an even bigger success with careful expansion.”

He didn't believe emotion had any place in business. There was no room for sentiment. No logic in going with feelings. It seemed to Tommi that he couldn't have made that message any clearer had he written it across the top of each of the pages stacked so neatly in front of her.

She figured his convictions probably explained a lot about him. She just didn't attempt to figure out what all that was as she tried to imagine where she'd find the time or the energy to essentially double the bistro in size while she'd be doubling in size herself.

“I've never even considered expanding before. But I will,” she assured him, wishing they could have had this conversation later in the day, when she felt more like herself.

“As for emotion, it may not have a place in business for you, but it does for me.” It didn't matter that her energy was in the bucket at the moment, she needed to defend herself even if she didn't feel like it. He'd made himself clear. It only seemed fair that he know where she was coming from, too.

“This is my life,” she admitted, lifting her hand in an arc to encompass the space, “so this is everything I am that we're talking about. This is
who
I am,” she quietly emphasized. She looked from the kitchen doorway to the muted colors of the paintings on the walls, then to the dark windows behind her. “I can't divorce myself from what I do all that easily.”

“You're going to have to learn how.”

She'd followed the quick motion of her hand with her head, looked back to him just as abruptly. But feeling less than fabulous at the moment, feeling the sudden need to sit, she wasn't about to repeat her unintended performance yesterday and go toe-to-clog with his three-piece-suit, investor-knows-best insistence.

He wasn't wearing a suit right now, anyway.

And the logo on his sweat jacket seemed to be wavering.

She felt warm. She suddenly felt awfully dizzy, too. But just as she realized she'd turned her head too fast and the room started to spin, mostly what she felt was the tilt of floor.

Max saw what little color Tommi had drain from her face. Now looking as pale as milk, she lifted her hand to her head.

He was two steps away when she swayed sideways. One, when his heart jerked and her legs buckled. Catching her as she crumpled, he felt her lithe body sag against his. Chest to breast. Hard stomach to feminine belly. Thigh to thigh.

He swore. She felt as limp and light as a rag doll as he braced her behind her knees and lifted her in his arms. But even as he looked around for some place to put her, not sure at all what he'd do when he got her there, he could feel tension returning to her muscles.

She raised her head, lifting her hand as if she thought she might still be heading for the floor.

“Easy.” He murmured the word, adjusting his arm across her back so her head could rest on his shoulder. “I won't let you fall.”

Her response was a moan, followed by a small, “What happened?”

“You fainted. I've got you,” he assured her. “Just hang on a minute.”

“I'm all right.”

“Like hell you are.”

“I am,” she insisted, her voice half a shade stronger.

“Indulge me, then. I'm going to sit you down.”

Catching the lower rung of a bar stool with the toe of his running shoe, he pulled the stool out and eased her onto it. He didn't let her go, though. Her limbs still seemed weak, her movements a little slow as she touched her unsteady fingers to her forehead. Afraid she might fall over, he kept one arm across her back so her shoulder rested against his abs.

“Is anyone else here?” he asked.

She lifted her head as she gave it a shake. Apparently deciding that sort of movement wasn't a good idea, she went still and murmured, “No.”

“Who do you want me to call?”

“No one. I'm okay,” she repeated, her hand trembling as she pushed her hair from her face. “Really. I just need to sit here for a minute.”

He could feel her warmth seeping into him. Trying to ignore the awareness of her that came with it, he eased his hand to her shoulder. With his free hand, he tipped her chin so he could see her face.

He'd wondered before if her skin would feel as soft as it looked. Skimming her cheek with his fingertips to tuck back a strand of hair she'd missed, he knew now that it felt even softer than he'd imagined.

Confusion settled in her dark eyes an instant before her lashes swept down. He barely had a chance to notice that her color seemed marginally better before she swallowed, hard, and turned her head away.

Realizing what he'd so unconsciously done, he started to pull back. No doubt his touch had just made her more uncomfortable than she already had to be.

Aware that she wouldn't look at him, he eased back far enough to be sure she would stay upright. He didn't want the concern he felt, or the uncertainty. But there were only a couple of things he could think of that might account for what had happened just now. Both could also explain why she was so desperate for help with her business.

He wanted to believe it was only practicality pushing him as he sat down close enough to catch her should the need arise.

“Are you sick, Tommi?”

There was no mistaking the guard in his tone. Certain it was there because she'd alarmed him, burning with embarrassment because of that, Tommi looked to where he sat a foot from her shoulder.

“No. No, I'm not sick. I'm perfectly healthy.” Her doctor
had said so, last week, just before she'd handed her a bottle of prenatal vitamins. “Really.”

Her dizziness had faded, but she still felt off balance as his questioning glance narrowed on her face. The feel of his strong arms around her, holding her, supporting her, had pulled hard at the longing deep inside her chest. She'd never felt that sort of longing before she'd met him. She hadn't even known such a feeling existed. The assurances he murmured had fed that yearning. For those brief moments, he'd let her know that she didn't need to worry, that he had her and everything else under control.

Then, there was the way he'd touched her, the unexpected and unbelievable gentleness she'd felt in him when he'd tucked back her hair.

Needing to lean on something, trying to ignore how badly she wished she could lean on him, she turned to face the bar.

With her elbows propped on it, she rested her head in her hands.

Beside her, Max angled toward the bar, too.

“Perfectly healthy,” he repeated, watching her. “So if you're healthy, what caused you to turn the color of chalk and pass out?”

“I turned too fast.”

“I've seen you turn faster than that,” he reminded her, apparently alluding to the way she sometimes moved about her kitchen. “Has this happened before?”