The Mistletoe Promise (10 page)

CHAPTER

Sixteen

Dan’s the kid in the sandbox who always wants the toy someone else has.

Elise Dutton’s Diary

Dan was waiting on the landing outside my apartment when I got home from work.

“Whassup?” he said as I approached. “I was just in the area, thought I’d stop by.”

“What were you doing in the area?” I asked. I unlocked the door and walked in.

“I came to see you.” He followed me inside, took off his coat, and threw it, then himself, on my couch. “So how was your date?”

“What date?”

“The one I caught you on. With what’s-his-name.”

“You didn’t
catch
me,” I said. “And don’t act childish. You know his name.”

“Dick?”

I didn’t answer.

“Dickolaus.”

I just glared at him.

“Whatever. The Nick-man. So where’d you meet him?”

“In the food court.”

“Oh, that’s cool.”

“
We
met in a Laundromat,” I said. “What does that make us?”

“Divorced,” Dan said. “So what, he’s like your boyfriend now?”

“Something like that. What’s it to you?”

“Kayla’s gone.”

“Gone where?”

“She cheated on me. With some old rich guy.”

“Am I supposed to feel bad for you?”

“Would it kill you to show a little sympathy?”

“She’s a cheater, what did you expect?”

“I expected she would be loyal.”

“Like you?”

“I was loyal to
her
.”

For a change,
I thought. I breathed out in exasperation. “What do you want, Dan?”

“I want you. I want us to be like we were.”

“That ship has sailed,” I said.

“You didn’t give me a chance. I stuck by you when you screwed up, but I slip up and you’re gone.”

“
You
didn’t stick by me. You divorced
me
.”

“Only because you were going to divorce me.”

“I never said I was going to divorce you. I should have, but I never did.”

“But you were
going
to.”

“You don’t know that. I don’t even know that, which is pathetic, since you were cheating on me with my best friend while I was in the ICU clinging to life.”

He looked at me for a moment and his voice softened. “Elise, it’s always been us. We understand each other. We’ve been through the storms together. We should be together. You know it.”

“I believed that once,” I said. “I don’t anymore.”

“Why, because some rich lawyer comes knocking at your door? He’s probably married.”

“No, he’s not married. Not everyone cheats like you, Dan.”

“A lot more than you think. How long have you known him?”

“A few weeks.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“You don’t know him well enough to not trust him.”

“Neither do you.”

I groaned with exasperation. “I’m not having this conversation. You need to leave.”

“Come on, ‘Lise. We match. Just admit it. If we didn’t, then why did you marry me?”

“I was desperate.”

“No, you believed in us. And you were right. Drop the lawyer and I’ll move in with you.”

“It’s not going to happen, Dan. Now you need to go. I have to go grocery shopping.”

He grabbed his coat and smiled. “You’ll come around,” he said. “Like a boomerang. You’ll think about it, then you’ll see the light. Who else knows everything about you? You know how people are when they learn about . . .”

“About what?”

“You know. Hannah.”

“Get out,” I said.

He remained undaunted. “See you later, ‘Lise.” He stepped across the threshold, then said, “Boomerang.”

I shut the door after him. As much as I hated hearing it from him, Dan was right. Whenever people made the connection between me and the woman in the newspaper who killed her daughter, they just mysteriously disappeared. I leaned against the door and cried.

CHAPTER

Seventeen

The annual ICE Christmas affair is about as classy as a truck pull, but without the dress code.

Elise Dutton’s Diary

The ICE Christmas party was a perennial redux—a potluck affair that was always held at my boss’s home in Olympus Cove. He lived in a Tudor-style house decorated with plastic reindeer in the front yard and a fake plastic chimney on the roof with Santa’s boots extending straight up as if he were stuck.

Nicholas had picked me up along with my pomegranate-and-poppy-seed-dressed salad. I brought the same salad every year, and took it home every year barely eaten, since most of the office avoided salad like a toxin. Still, Mark insisted that I bring it because his wife, Shelley, once remarked that she liked it. I had since concluded that she was only being polite since she hadn’t eaten any of it for the last two years.

Nicholas parked his BMW across the street from the house, and I carried my bowl up to the door.

“Shall I ring the bell?” Nicholas asked.

“No. They won’t answer; just walk in.”

He opened the door. As I anticipated, there was no one to greet us, and the only sounds came from the television in the family room.

“I’ll take your coat,” Nicholas said.

I set my salad on the floor, then took off my coat and handed it to him. “They put them in the living room,” I said.

Nicholas added our coats to a pile of outerwear already covering the crushed-velvet sofa. Then we walked into the kitchen. No one noticed (or cared) as I lay my salad on the counter.

My boss, Mark Engeman, was notoriously tightfisted, and the party’s food was grocery store platters of meat and cheese laid out next to plates of Ritz and saltine crackers dressed with cheese from a can. There were also jalapeño poppers, store-bought rolls to make sandwiches, and a large bowl of carrot-raisin salad, which was always Cathy’s contribution.

The one place Mark splurged was on beer. His refrigerator was stocked with all the Budweiser it could hold. There was also a plastic cooler filled with beer. I think he caught on that his guests rated the party by the level of intoxication they achieved, which was just one of many reasons that I was always the first to leave.

Everyone else was already there. Mark and his wife, Shelley; Cathy, who brought Maureen, her snarky sister. And Brent and Margaret, our two group escorts, whom we rarely saw because they were on the road more than two hundred days out of the year, with their spouses.

Closest to the kitchen were Zoey and her date. As usual, Zoey had brought someone none of us had ever seen and would likely never see again, which made introductory conversation pointless. Her boy du jour was tall and muscular,
handsome but not especially bright-looking. He wore a sleeveless Utah Jazz jersey, which emphasized his biceps and myriad tattoos but seemed out of place considering the abundance of snow outside.

With the exception of Shelley and Margaret, everyone was sitting around the living room eating nachos and watching the Jazz play the Portland Trail Blazers. They had all gotten an early start on drinking, and empty beer cans littered the coffee table that three of them had their feet on. Cathy was the first to notice us. “Elise. Nicholas,” she said. “You made it.”

Everyone looked over.

“Hi, everyone,” I said.

Nicholas looked as unsure of himself as he had when he first approached me in the food court.

“Hey,” Mark said. “Help yourself to a beer. Got Bud in the fridge.”

“Thank you,” Nicholas said, making no movement to act on the offer.

“Come watch the game,” Zoey said.

“Go ahead, sit,” I said to Nicholas. “I’ll get us some food.”

Nicholas sat down on a chair next to the others. Zoey was holding an open beer. She already looked a little buzzed. She almost immediately leaned toward Nicholas, drawn like steel to a magnet. I walked to the kitchen table and began making ham and cheese sandwiches.

“Thanks for all the gifts you’ve been sending,” Zoey said to him. “Especially the cheesecake. It was
dreamy
.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” Nicholas said casually, politely
glancing at her before looking back at the television. “What quarter are we in?” he asked.

“Just started the third,” Mark said. “You ever watch the Jazz play?”

“Sometimes. We’ve got box seats,” he said. “At the firm.”

“And you’re a partner, right?” Zoey asked rhetorically.

“Yes.”

Zoey’s date just stared ahead at the screen, sucking on a beer, completely oblivious to her obvious interest in my date.

I walked back over with our food. “Here you go,” I said, handing Nicholas a plate with some of my salad and a sandwich. I sat down between Nicholas and Zoey.

“Thank you,” Nicholas said, turning all his attention to me. For the next hour we just watched the game, which the Jazz ended up losing by four points.

“They never lose when I wear this shirt,” Zoey’s date said angrily.

“Are you ready to go?” I asked Nicholas.

“Whatever you want,” he said.

“I’m ready.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get the coats.” He walked out of the room.

Zoey stood and walked out after him. I also stood up and walked out, stopping in the hall just outside the living room. I could hear Zoey talking. “So where did you and Elise meet?”

“We just bumped into each other. In the building.”

“I’m in the building,” she said. There was a short pause,
then she added, “I’m sorry we never bumped into each other. I mean, before you two.” There was another pause. “Is it serious? You and Elise.”

“You mean, would I be interested in exploring other romantic possibilities?”

“You’re so smart,” she said. “Yes. I mean, hypo”—she struggled with the word—”hypo, hypothetically.”

“That’s a big word,” Nicholas said.

“I’m not dumb,” she said. “Maybe a little drunk.”

“Hypothetically, no. I wouldn’t. And you better get back to your date.”

“He’s an idiot,” she said.

“We’ll just keep that to ourselves,” Nicholas replied.

I wasn’t surprised by Zoey’s antics, but I was still angry. I walked into the room glaring at her. “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Nicholas.

Zoey was either too drunk or too dumb to realize that I’d been listening. “Bye, Elise,” she said.

I didn’t answer her. I was fuming.

Nicholas took my arm. “Let’s go home.”

I didn’t say much on the way back to my apartment. Nicholas must have known how I was feeling because he didn’t pry. It had started snowing, and the BMW’s windshield wipers kept beat to the Christmas songs on the radio. The cheerful tunes were completely incongruent with the
thoughts running through my head, which were definitely not peace on earth goodwill to men.

Outside my apartment door Nicholas asked, “Are you okay?”

I blew up. “I can’t believe she hit on you.”

“Yes you can,” he said calmly. “She was drunk.”

“She would have done it anyway.”

“Maybe.”

“Why are you defending her?”

“I’m not. But don’t go too hard on her. If she was happy with her life, she wouldn’t have come after me.
And
she’d been drinking.”

I took a deep breath. “I don’t have to like her.”

“No. But you do have to work with her. So you might as well keep things civil.”

“Civil,” I said angrily. “I want to pluck her eyelashes.”

Nicholas laughed. “Promise me you won’t do that. Or anything else. Just let it go.”

“But she’s a—”

He put a finger to my lips. “This is for your good,” he said. “Trust me. Promise me.”

Honestly, I liked that he was touching my lips. “All right,” I finally said. “Why do you have to be so rational?”

“It’s a habit.”

After a moment I said, “May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“If it wasn’t for the contract, would you have hooked up with her?”

“No.”

“Why not? Everyone else wants to.”

“She’s not my type.”

“What’s your type?”

He just smiled. “Let me know when you figure that out.” He kissed me on the cheek. “Good night, Elise. I enjoyed being with you.” He started to walk away, then stopped and turned back. “Oh, do you know what today is?”

“No.”

“It’s our midpoint. We’re halfway through our contract.” He turned and walked away.

I watched him walk out to his car before going inside. His final words hurt my heart even more than Zoey’s betrayal.