Sleigh Bells in the Snow (8 page)

Her gaze met the deep blue of his, and the sudden flash of chemistry punched the breath from her lungs.

It was like falling on an electric fence.

She grabbed his arm. “First thing tomorrow I’m buying proper footwear.”

She held his arm for as little time as possible and then paused in the doorway to tug off her boots and slide on shoes that gave her at least another three inches in height.

Pushing her boots into her bag, she smoothed her hair. “I’m ready.”

Jackson stared down at her feet. His gaze traveled slowly up her legs and finally ended up at her mouth. He hadn’t touched her but suddenly her lips tingled and her throat felt dry.

“We should—”

“Yeah, we should—” His tone was thickened and then he frowned slightly and turned to push open the door.

Sleigh bells jangled, breaking the spell. Kayla stared at the pretty cluster of bells tied to the door handle below a glossy wreath made of juniper and spruce.

“What are those?”

“My father proposed to my mother in a horse-drawn sleigh. She kept the bells as a memento and hangs them on the door at Christmas.”

Oh, great. That was all she needed. “Your mother loves Christmas?”

“Yes. She loves decorating for the holidays. Be warned—our tree is usually bigger than the one outside the Rockefeller Center.”

Digesting that less-than-welcome news, Kayla stared gloomily at the bells.

They were just decorations, she reminded herself. And at least her cabin was a Christmas-free zone.

She walked into the house and stopped in surprise as she took in the details of the room and saw the number of people crowded around the large table.

“Oh, I— This is—” She turned to look at Jackson, confused. “This is the kitchen.”

“That’s right.”

“The kitchen leads to your meeting room?”

The kitchen
is
our meeting room.” He closed the door on the cold and Kayla felt a flash of panic as she turned back to face her audience.

They were holding this meeting in the kitchen?

She glanced around and saw shiny saucepans and stainless steel. Bunches of herbs hung drying above the range. Surfaces gleamed, but this was no showroom kitchen. It was lived-in and loved. There were boots of various sizes lined up by the door and shelves stacked with recipe books. It was easy to imagine the three O’Neil boys rushing in from the snow, hoping to grab some freshly baked treats.

A woman hefted a large blue casserole dish into the oven and gave them a welcoming smile.

“You must be Kayla. We’ve heard so much about you. I’m Elizabeth O’Neil, Jackson’s mother. Alice and Walter, his grandparents—” she nodded her head in their direction “—and Tyler, Jackson’s brother. Jess might join us later but I’m sure you won’t mind that. Now come on in and let me take your coat.” She closed the oven door and hurried over, the smile still on her face, her arms outstretched.

Kayla took a hasty step backward, and the sharp heel of her stiletto drove hard into Jackson’s foot.

He swore under his breath and then his hands closed around her arms and he steadied her. “Do you have a license for that weapon?”

She didn’t answer. Terrified she was about to be hugged, Kayla thrust her hand out, almost winding his mother in the process. “Pleased to meet you.”

Jackson released her. “My mother is British, so you have that in common.” He smoothed over the potentially awkward beginning. “Thirty-five years ago she arrived to cook for a winter season and never left.”

“Why would I leave? I never saw anywhere more perfect than this place, and I’m sure Kayla agrees.”

Kayla was ready to agree to anything in order to get out of this Christmas grotto as fast as possible. “Absolutely. It’s stunning. Good to meet you, Mrs. O’Neil.”

“Call me Elizabeth, dear. We’re not formal.” Warm and friendly, his mother took Kayla’s coat, frowning as she hung it up. “It’s wet. Is it snowing again?”

“No. I fell.”

“You let her fall?” Elizabeth O’Neil turned reproachful eyes on her eldest son. “You didn’t hold her arm? Shame on you, Jackson.”

“It was my fault,” Kayla said stiffly. “I’m not used to walking on ice, but it won’t happen again.”

Elizabeth nodded approval. “Because next time you’ll hold his arm.”

“No.” Kayla had already promised herself she was going to keep physical contact to a minimum. “Next time I’ll be wearing better boots. I’m going to sort that out first thing tomorrow.”

Jackson’s grandmother made a sympathetic noise. “I’m not surprised you fell. It’s so icy. I’m afraid to go out in winter since I had my hip done and as for the cold—” Alice O’Neil peered at Kayla from across the table. “Are you wearing thermal underwear under that sweater? The wool looks thin. And your skirt is quite short. We don’t want you catching cold while you’re here. Jackson, you should take Kayla to buy underwear.”

Kayla felt heat rush into her cheeks. “I—”
How was she supposed to respond to that?
She was used to small talk that involved observations on the weather or the traffic in Manhattan. Occasionally people touched on the economy. No one ever mentioned underwear. “I’m warm, but thank you for your concern.” She shot Jackson a desperate look, feeling like a deer circled by a pack of hungry wolves. “Shall I begin my presentation?”

“Why do young girls wear so much black?” Walter O’Neil added his contribution from the far end of the table. “When I was young, black was for funerals.”

“I love color. You’d look pretty in green, Kayla.” Alice held out a ball of yarn to Kayla, who stared at it as if she were being offered a grenade.

Jackson’s brother gave a slow, wicked smile. “We’re
very
pleased to meet you Kayla. And I love the skirt. Don’t change anything about it, especially not the length—unless you want to make it shorter.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t a nice skirt,” Alice said stoutly. “I said it was short and with the weather like this—”

“She’s warm, Grams. Don’t worry.” Jackson put his hand on Kayla’s back and urged her into the room. “And she looks smart in black. If people would listen for a moment, you’d discover she’s smart in other ways, too.” He pulled out a chair and offered it to Kayla, who sat gratefully.

They’d done the small talk now, so hopefully they could move on to business.

“I’m really excited to be working with you.” She thought she heard a snort from Walter O’Neil, but when she looked at him he was handing a fresh ball of yarn to Alice. “I’ve prepared a presentation that will give you a better picture of some of the ways in which we can help build your business.” She pulled her computer out of her bag. Just touching the smooth surface helped her relax. It was like suddenly discovering there was a trusted friend in the room. “I’ll start by going through a few of the campaigns we’ve run for other people.”

Glancing up she noticed the photographs lining the walls of the kitchen.

There was Walter O’Neil looking handsome with an ax clasped in his hands in a photo taken at least forty years earlier. One of the family dogs. Another of the three O’Neil boys dusted in snow after a snowball fight. There was Tyler standing on the podium collecting a gold medal, and a man she didn’t recognize—presumably the other brother—at his graduation. It was a visual record of the passage of time. The story of the O’Neil family.

Jackson followed her gaze. “My mother loves photographs. She also loves embarrassing us by displaying them for people to see.” There was amusement in his tone and something else. Love. This man loved his family. That was why he was here and not thousands of miles away in Europe, running his own business.

Realizing she was supposed to smile, Kayla smiled obligingly.

“The kitchen is where I spend my time.” Elizabeth turned on the heat under a pan. “Why wouldn’t I hang them in here? It makes me happy seeing Michael on that sledge. And I love that one of you boys taken right after that snowball fight. Look at their faces, Kayla—you can see what a handful they were. They loved the snow. Show them a slope of any sort and those boys of mine would ski down it. Didn’t matter what was at the bottom. They couldn’t play together without fighting but nor could they bear to be apart. Turned me gray prematurely.” But her face was all smiles, and she was clearly a woman whose life was fed and nurtured by family.

Feeling like an alien from another planet, Kayla hunted for something to say that wasn’t “get me out of here.” “They’re lovely photographs.” There was a thickness in her throat that hadn’t been there a few moments before.

It was this damn place,
she thought. This lovely, cozy kitchen all prepared for Christmas. There were bowls of pinecones and vases filled with long branches of forest greenery. Candles flickered on shelves next to handmade decorations and Christmas cards with scrawled messages of love.

She thought about her apartment in Manhattan. Sleek, stark and without a single homey touch. No messages of love.

“Kayla?” Jackson’s prompt cut through her thoughts. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” But it was a lie. She wasn’t all right.

Blocking out her surroundings, she tried to put her laptop on the table and discovered there was no room.

“Move your knitting, Alice.” Elizabeth O’Neil swept a small pile of yarn out of the way. “Have you seen Kayla’s computer? It’s so small. Isn’t technology fantastic?”

Kayla stared transfixed at the neat rows of gingerbread Santas waiting patiently in line to be iced.

A memory, long buried, awoke in her brain.

Despite the warmth of the kitchen, the chill spread through her. She felt horribly cold.

“Are you hungry, honey?” Alice carefully lifted a Santa onto a plate and pushed it toward her. “Aren’t they beautiful? Try one. They taste as good as they look.”

“No, thank you.”

Alice clucked with disapproval. “You young girls are always dieting, but of course that’s why you’re so lovely and slim.”

“I’m not dieting. I’m just not hungry right now.” There was a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Jackson’s grandmother reached across and patted her hand. “You don’t need to be nervous, honey. And we’re just so grateful to you for giving up your holidays to help us.”

The kindness almost finished her.

“Why are you doing that?” Walter narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Why aren’t you at home with your family?”

Elizabeth frowned. “Walter!”

“I’m just asking myself what sort of person chooses to work rather than spend Christmas with their family.”

The sort of person whose family didn’t want them.

Kayla gripped her laptop. “I’ve prepared a presentation for you. I hope it will help show some of the ways Innovation can help you with your business.”

“This place is about families,” Walter barked. “It’s about togetherness and making memories. What do you know about that?”

Nothing.
She knew nothing.

“That’s enough, Walter.” Elizabeth thumped a plate down in front of him.

“I just don’t see what a Brit who works in Manhattan can possibly know about our business, that’s all. She’s an outsider.”

The word slid into her like a blade.

She knew nothing about functioning families, but she knew all there was to know about being the outsider.

Just for a moment she was back in her stepmother’s house, standing frozen behind the Christmas tree where no one could see her.

Why does she have to come to us, David? I want it to be just the four of us. Why can’t she just go to her bloody mother?

It was as if Walter had found a loose thread in a sweater and pulled. Kayla felt herself unravel. Feelings she’d kept carefully locked away tumbled out.

Drowning, panicking, she turned to Jackson. “I need to plug my laptop into your projector, please.” The feelings pressed in on her, dark and terrifying, and she pushed back, refusing to allow them to take hold.

“There is no projector.”

“No projector?” She couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d told her he’d built a hotel and forgotten to include bedrooms.

“It’s not high on our priority list right now.” That intense blue gaze was searching. “Just turn your laptop around and we’ll look at your screen.”

“No projector.” Kayla snatched in a breath as she tried to navigate this latest obstacle. “No projector is just
fine.
”

Alice placed a freshly iced Santa on the rack. “I always find icing something helps me relax. Give Kayla a knife, Elizabeth, then she can help.”

“I can’t cook. I’ve never iced anything.” Fingers shaking, Kayla swiveled the laptop and fished her notepad out of her bag. “You’re obviously busy so I’ll be as quick as I can.” For her own sake, if not theirs. She needed to get out of here.

“If she can’t do something simple like ice a gingerbread Santa,” Walter muttered, “how the hell is she going to work magic on this place?”

Jackson’s jaw tensed. “If you ask her, she’ll tell you. That’s why she’s here, but so far she hasn’t been able to get a word in edgewise. And I don’t need her to cook. I employed a chef.”

“Even though we already had a perfectly good chef, but we’re not going over that again now.” Walter glared down the table at Kayla. “We’re listening. Show us the magic.”

An expectant silence spread across the room.

Feeling as if everything was happening in slow motion Kayla stared at Walter, then at Elizabeth and finally at Alice, who was carefully adding buttons to Santa’s iced coat.

“Kayla?” Jackson’s voice was controlled. “We’re ready to hear what you have to say.”

She didn’t have anything to say. There was nothing in her head except the past.

Usually she was articulate, but panic had shorted her circuits.

Then she remembered it was all on her screen, but her screen was pointing toward them and she couldn’t see it. “I prepared a presentation that demonstrates some of our experience in this area.”

Alice squinted. “I might need my other glasses. Elizabeth, do you have my other glasses?”

“They’re in your bag where they always are.” Elizabeth handed them to her, and Alice slid them onto her nose and leaned forward.

Kayla adjusted the angle. “From the moment we get up in the morning to the moment we go to bed, we are deluged by messages.” Oh, God, she sounded like a robot. She needed to liven it up and make it more personal. “We live in a fast-moving world where the news changes by the minute so the challenge is how to make yourself heard amongst the noise.”