Once Upon a Christmas Eve (2 page)

Not once in the fifteen years he'd worked with the man had he known Scott to be serious about any female for longer than a weekend. But if she could get him to settle down and take his work more seriously than his play, he wasn't about to mess with the course of true love.

Whatever the hell that was.

Despite his own cynicism about the existence of the concept, having the guy take on the responsibilities of a relationship would be the best thing that could happen for Max himself. Because of that, he needed to keep Ms. Fairchild occupied.

“So…where do you work?” he asked, since she'd brought it up.

“The Corner Bistro. I own it,” she replied, sounding as if she'd thought he might know that. “The business, anyway. I lease the space.” She tipped her head, the soft arches of her eyebrows drawing together. “Scott didn't mention it to you?”

He couldn't imagine why he would have. “The Corner Bistro.” He repeated the name, trying to remember if he'd ever heard of the place. A nearly infinite number of eating establishments populated downtown Seattle and its neighborhoods. Some thrived in the highly competitive market. Others came and went with the speed of light. “I'm sorry, but I've been away a lot,” he admitted, drawing a blank. “I haven't kept up with restaurants here.”

“Only Scott deals in that area of your investments, then?”

“Excuse me?”

“I understand your company is quite diversified,” she explained, clearly thrown by his quick frown. “You just said you don't keep up with restaurants, so it sounds as if that must be one of his areas of expertise.”

He had no idea what his partner had told this woman, but Scott Layman definitely didn't handle the investment end of their business. The guy could barely manage his personal banking account. “We don't usually invest in restaurants.”

“You don't?”

“Not usually,” he repeated, and watched her surprise fade to an oddly deflated disappointment.

Doing a commendable job of regrouping, she gave a small shrug and picked at the edge of the smart leather portfolio in her lap. “I guess he must want to talk to me about catering an event, then. If that's the case,” she concluded, pondering, “it seems odd that he'd want to meet here instead of at the bistro.”

Scott's choice of a high-end hotel with a good bar and impressive rooms hadn't seemed odd at all to Max. At least it hadn't before now. Considering the nature of her comments and the discouragement shadowing her pretty brown eyes, he had the sudden and distinct impression
that her reason for being there had nothing to do with his partner's objective.

It seemed she was under the impression she was here for a business meeting. While he and Scott socialized far less than they once had, anything potentially business related was shared. Scott had mentioned nothing to him about any business dealings he might have with her. Everything the guy had said had made it clear he had a date.

“Did he give you reason to think he needed something catered?” he asked, wondering if that was the angle the guy was using to get close to her.

She looked up from her portfolio. “I haven't actually talked to him,” she admitted. “Not about why he wanted to see me today, I mean. This meeting was arranged…” With the blink of her dark lashes, she cut herself off. Her eyes, however, remained locked on his. “By a mutual acquaintance,” she concluded, then breathed in as if she'd just been sucker-punched.

An awful suspicion lodged hard in Tommi's chest. Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to her that this meeting would be about anything other than her bistro. Probably, she conceded, because protecting it and all it meant to her was so constantly on her mind. According to her mother, the bistro was all she ever thought about, anyway. That was undoubtedly true. It was her life. It just wasn't the life her mother had wanted for her.

“Arranged?”

Her glance fell. “By his secretary.”

“Scott's?”

Tommi shook her head, as conscious of Max's eyes narrowing on her as she was of his blunt curiosity. “No. No,” she repeated, suddenly wishing she was somewhere, anywhere else. “The other…person's.”

Suspicion had just developed a rather mortifying edge.

Her mom had finally come to accept her choice of career. But, as with her other three daughters, she'd been hinting lately at how she wanted Tommi to have a personal life, too. A personal life to Cornelia Fairchild had—also, lately—come to mean marriage and babies. This from the woman Tommi regarded as the queen of independence.

She had no idea what was going on with her mother on that score, but she now had the sick feeling that her mom had mentioned her desire to Uncle Harry. Tommi had always thought of the man her parents had known long before her dad had died as rather eccentric. While he could be amazingly generous at times, he also had a terrible tendency to meddle.

She'd draped her raincoat over the arm of the chair. Mustering as much calm as she could, she picked it up and rose to her feet. Just last month, Harry had attempted to fix up her little sister with a totally-wrong-for-her associate of his. It was because of that misguided mismatch that Bobbie had more or less accosted the man who was now her fiancé, but that was beside the point. Unless she was totally misreading the motives of the man who'd manipulated his own four sons into marriages, Harry had used the review of her restaurant as a ploy to fix her up, too.

Equally humiliating was the possibility that the enviably self-contained and all too disturbing man watching her had realized right along with her that she'd been set up.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course,” she hedged, conscious of Max rising as she slipped on her coat. “I'm just late.”

With her limited but lousy romantic history, the last thing she wanted right now—make that
ever
—was to get involved with another man. Angry with Harry, angrier with herself for getting her hopes up about help for the bistro when there'd been nothing to get her hopes up for, she
picked up her portfolio and reached beside the chair for her shoulder bag.

“I really need to get to work.” She tried to smile, trying even harder to appear as if she was only thinking of the time. “We reopen for dinner at five-thirty and I don't have backup.”

She'd meant to snag both straps of her bag. Instead, as agitated as she was, she caught only one, and then only its edge. The moment she lifted it, the strap slipped from her fingers and the oversize purse landed sideways on the carpet beside the chair skirt. Her hot pink day planner spilled out, along with a tube of cocoa butter lip gloss, a pen, her checkbook and a stub for the dry cleaning she kept forgetting to pick up.

She could feel heat rising in her cheeks. Embarrassed all over again, she sank to her heels and gathered up the pen and notebook. The lip gloss had rolled to a stop by Max's shoe. Before she could snatch it up, he did.

He'd crouched beside her. A heartbeat later, she felt his fingers curve above her elbow. Yet, instead of helping her up, he held her in place.

“Careful,” he said, as if he knew that all she wanted was to spin and run the moment she was upright. “There's a couple walking behind you.”

She didn't know which caught her more off guard just then: the gentlemanly gesture and the concern in his hushed tone, or the strong, steadying feel of his hand encircling her arm. There was an unexpected sort of support in his touch, something that felt oddly, inexplicably reassuring. That reassurance was probably only that he wasn't going to let her make a fool of herself by flattening unsuspecting hotel guests, but reassurance in any form was something she needed badly just then.

As he said, “It's okay now,” and helped her straighten,
that quiet support also seemed to tell her he wouldn't let go until she had herself together.

The strange calm that came with the thought lasted only long enough for her to murmur, “Thank you,” a moment before his hand slipped away.

Still towering beside her, he held out the lip gloss and checkbook he'd retrieved.

His palm was broad, his fingers long. But it was how capable his big hands looked that struck her as she took what he held. Her worldly wise waitress Alaina would say he had hands that would know how to hold a woman.

The fact that she wouldn't mind being held by a man she'd just met simply so she could feel that calm again told her that her stress level must be higher than she'd realized.

“Scott will be disappointed he missed you,” he told her, his deep voice as steadying as his grip had been. “But I'll tell him you waited as long as you could.”

She couldn't quite meet his eyes. “I appreciate that,” she replied, glancing as far as the slight cleft in his chin. Max Callahan was being incredibly gallant, she thought, though the word wasn't one she'd ever applied to a man before. Other than making her aware of how she could still feel heat where his hand had caught her arm, he was doing nothing to make her feel any more self-conscious than she already did. Still, not only was she certain that the meeting with his partner had been a setup, it now also seemed she'd been stood up, too.

“Can I have the valet get your car?”

“I took a cab.” With the bistro only a mile away, it had cost less to take a cab than it would have to park in the hotel garage. At the moment, though, she'd gladly pay double not to have to wait for a taxi to get her away from there. “But thank you. And thank you for letting me know why
your partner couldn't make it. I hope your client arrives soon.”

The faint smile she managed faded even as she turned away.

Max watched her go, more intrigued than he wanted to be by the number of emotions he'd seen cross the delicate lines of her face. There was an artlessness about her that spoke of sincerity, and she possessed no artifice at all. The women he'd known over the years were far more practiced at masking little things like awkwardness and embarrassment, and while she'd done a commendable job of maintaining her composure, there was no doubt in his mind that she'd felt both. He'd seen them in her profile as she'd snatched up her belongings, sensed them even more profoundly when he'd caught her arm to slow her down.

What he'd been aware of most, though, was how she'd almost unconsciously drawn toward him in the moments he'd held her there, and the totally unfamiliar sense of protectiveness he'd felt when she had.

Now, as then, he dismissed the feeling as an aberration. If he'd felt protective about anything, it was only of his partner's interest in her. She wasn't the sort of woman he'd be interested in himself, anyway—had he been looking for one.

He liked sophisticated, worldly women who'd experienced enough of life to not have expectations they couldn't realize on their own. He preferred a woman who knew the rules, who didn't expect him to bail her out of her latest crisis and who had no illusions about romance, being rescued by a knight in shining armor, living happily ever after, or whatever all it was some women called “the fairy tale.” He was nobody's prince. The only thing he was interested in rescuing was the lease his partner had let lapse. As for
living happily ever after, if Scott wanted to entertain the myth, that was fine with him.

He just wasn't interested himself. His own short foray into wedded bliss a lifetime ago had been an unmitigated disaster. As for family, a man couldn't miss what he'd never really had. He was doing just fine without encumbrances that would only slow him down, anyway.

He turned back to the chair, vaguely aware of conversations beyond him in the elegant lobby, but conscious mostly of the need to move to the next item on his agenda. He'd told his client and longtime sailing buddy, J. T. Hunt, that he'd meet him in the bar.

He had his coat over one arm and had reached for his briefcase when he noticed a slash of bright pink under the skirt of the chair beside him.

Crouching down, he pulled out a small wallet. It was the same bright color as the day planner Tommi had snatched up.

He flipped the wallet open, glanced at the driver's license. The Department of Motor Vehicles photograph didn't begin to do justice to her features, but he'd have recognized the intriguing woman in it even if her name hadn't been right there.

She just wasn't anywhere in sight when he reached the street to give it back to her.

Pocketing the wallet to give to Scott to return to her, he headed back inside. It was just as well she'd already gone, he thought. Out of sight meant out of mind.

She just wasn't out of sight for long.

“I'
m taking the last of the crab bisque, Tommi. The other order's for the ragout.”

Tommi looked from the pan of scallops she was sautéing. Shelby Hahn had clipped another ticket to the order wheel on her way to the stock pots. Her burgundy-tipped black hair stood in short gelled spikes around her narrow face. Narrower black glasses framed blue eyes made violet by the grape shadow covering her lids. The most demure thing about the bubbly young waitress and part-time spin-class instructor was her uniform. On her, the black blouse and slacks and short red bistro apron looked positively sedate.

Tommi gave the pan a shake, causing flame to surge from the gas burner of the big commercial stove as butter and olive oil splattered. Overhead, the exhaust hood droned. With her thoughts bouncing between her orders and her current situation, she barely noticed the familiar
white noise. On her good news/bad news scale, she was even for the day so far. The third bank had called that morning, turning her down and making the uncertainty she was living with loom that much larger.

On the upside, she'd once again managed to make it through her morning queasiness before anyone else had shown up. According to the mother-to-be sites she'd checked on the internet, the problem should be tapering off soon—right about the time it would become next to impossible to hide the more visible signs of impending motherhood.

She wasn't going to dwell on that. For now, she'd just be grateful her pregnancy wasn't noticeable and that she'd been spared morning sickness in the afternoon and evenings, too. As she pressed the sleeve of her white chef's jacket to her upper lip, she just hoped that the kitchen's heat wouldn't bring the sensation back before she could step outside for a break. In a pinch, she'd learned that she could always slip into the freezer. Cold helped. Enormously.

“We're down to two, maybe three orders on the ragout,” she said to Shelby, mentally calculating the orders that had come in for it. Running low on specials was another reason to hope the lunch rush was easing. “How are we doing out there?”

“There's no one waiting to be seated,” the waitress replied, dishing up bisque, “and some of the tables have cleared. Oh, and the guy who ordered the ragout wants to know when you'll have the rustic mushroom soup on the menu again.”

As soon as I can stand the smell of raw garlic in the morning,
Tommi told herself.

“Is that Ernie? From the copy place?” she asked, thinking of the balding customer who ate there every other Tuesday. He loved her rustic mushroom.

“It's not him. This guy said his broker told him he needed to try it.”

God bless word of mouth,
Tommi thought. “Tell him I'll make it next week. Friday,” she decided, praying that by then she could handle the bulb's pungent scent. “And thank him for asking.”

“Will do.”

Behind her, the long shelf below the plating station held stacks of white dishes. A square plate mounded with fresh mixed greens sat on its stainless-steel surface. Turning with pan and tongs in hand, she arranged the seared scallops atop the leaf lettuce and escarole. Adding a drizzle of honey-chipotle vinaigrette and two oval parmesan crisps, she moved the garnished dish to the end of the station.

Tommi had just ladled wild mushroom and beef ragout into a boule of warm country bread and handed it to Shelby to serve to the table with the bisque when Alaina Morretti came through the swinging door.

The older waitress wasn't carrying an order ticket. With a relieved smile for that, Tommi flipped off the burner and stepped to the triple sink on the back wall. Anyone watching would think she was just rinsing her hands. Mostly, she was letting the cold water splash against her wrists.

“There's a man asking for you. A seriously gorgeous man,” Alaina pronounced. With a hand on one rounded hip, her other rested at the base of her throat. Above her fingertips winked the silver Best Soccer Mom necklace her kids had given her for her last birthday. “We're talking Michelangelo quality here. Carved, sculpted. And that's just his face. I'm betting there's some major muscle going on under all that Armani.”

The divorced mother of three had sworn off men herself. At least until her demanding brood was grown and she found the time and the nerve to put herself out there again.
A short series of even shorter relationships had left her totally gun-shy. That didn't stop her from looking, though. “He wants to see you when you have a minute.”

Tommi pulled a paper towel from its dispenser. Beneath the short white chef's toque covering her hair, one eyebrow shot up. “Is he a customer?”

“I've never seen him here before. He just walked in and asked for you.”

Drying her hands, Tommi headed for the door and peeked out the small square window on the side marked “out.” Her glance darted past the wine bar where two gentlemen visited on tall black stools and past the short rows of tables lining her cozy bistro's old brick walls. Several of her seven white-clothed tables for two were still full, as were the two four-tops in the middle of the narrow room. The rest had already been reset with utensils and a tumbler sporting a red napkin that had been rolled, folded and tucked inside.

“He said his name is Max Callahan.”

Even before she heard his name, Tommi's focus had landed on the tall, dark and disturbing man in the black overcoat talking on his cell phone by the hostess desk. At several of the tables—those occupied by females, anyway—heads leaned together as whispers were exchanged. Max didn't seem to notice the attention he drew. His only interest seemed to be in his call and the time as he glanced at his watch and turned away as if to keep his conversation private.

Tommi almost groaned—would have had the clearly curious Alaina not now been at her elbow. She'd spent a lot of time lately trying to find something positive about bad situations. There were times when she'd had to dig really deep for that bright spot. And finding something even remotely encouraging about her embarrassing non-meeting
with Scott Layman had been a greater challenge than most. Especially the part where his partner had witnessed that humiliation.

Apparently, she wasn't even going to be allowed the little silver lining she'd finally found. The only good thing she'd come up with about yesterday's fiasco was knowing she'd never have to see Max Callahan again.

Now looking out the window herself, the older woman leaned closer. “Is he the one who sent the flowers?”

The huge bouquet of red roses near the far end of the wine bar had been delivered midmorning. After reading the card that had come with it, Tommi had felt embarrassed all over again by Scott's seemingly sincere apology for having left her waiting. She'd also left the bouquet out front. Keeping it in her office made the gift seemed too personal. Besides, the crimson blooms were the closest thing she had to Christmas decor at the moment. Though every other commercial establishment in town had had their holiday decorations up for what seemed like weeks, she hadn't been able to get into the holiday frame of mind enough to even hang a wreath.

Her only comment to her staff about the sender had been that he was a businessman who'd sent them in apology for having to miss an appointment.

“No. No, he's not,” she said, killing her waitress's speculation. She had no idea what Max was doing here. She just knew she didn't want to see him out front while she still had customers. “Show him to the kitchen, will you, please?”

 

Rainwater dripped from Max's open overcoat as he ended the call from his secretary. Facing the wet street from the dry side of the glass door, he distractedly snapped his cell phone onto his belt clip. It wasn't raining hard outside, but he'd had to park a block down from the five-story,
redbrick building where Tommi's establishment anchored one corner. Between the curved green awning over the brass and glass door and the way she'd had The Corner Bistro stenciled in gold on both large windows, the place had been easy enough to find.

He'd have taken off his coat had he thought he'd be there long, but he'd only come by to do what his partner hadn't had time to do himself before Scott had left for Singapore.

The fact that Scott had forgotten to mention that he was leaving two days early was just one more straw in the haystack of frustrations that had accompanied Max inside. Scott's secretary had assumed Scott had talked to him about the change he'd had her make. Margie Higgins, Max's assistant, had thought the same. Max had actually learned of the earlier departure purely by coincidence from J. T. Hunt last night. J.T. had been HuntCom's chief architect before he'd left his father's multibillion-dollar computer company a while back and gone into business for himself. Aside from the consulting work Max had done over the years with him and his brother Gray, HuntCom's CEO, he and J.T. shared a mutual interest in sailing. That interest had prompted last evening's meeting. J.T. wanted to sell his sloop to buy a bigger one for his growing family. Max had introduced him to a client interested in buying it. Conversation had inevitably turned to their respective businesses, though. That was when J.T. had innocuously asked about the expansion sites Gray was meeting Scott in Singapore tomorrow to see.

Max knew Scott tended to be pretty laid-back at times, but it wasn't like him to forget something as basic as keeping him in the loop with a major client. Scott was a smart
man. He knew it took teamwork to juggle projects of the size they constantly dealt with.

Just as he knew how hard it was to get prime Upper East Side office space.

For months, Scott had been totally onboard with the idea of opening a New York office. He had even said he'd be willing to relocate there himself. He would handle the clients and accounts in the East. Max would do the same with the West. They'd split responsibilities at their Chicago branch. All they had to do was move some experienced staff from Chicago and Seattle to work in New York, hire the best of the best as they always did to fill in the gaps in all three places and they'd be up and running.

Except, now, they didn't have an office—which meant Max needed to look for another one.

With irritation climbing up his back over that little addition to his already crowded agenda, Max tried hard to imagine what was going on with his partner. The only reason he could come up with for Scott's lapse—and for his failure to mention his change in plans—was the guy's uncharacteristic preoccupation with Tommi Fairchild.

“Mr. Callahan?”

At the sound of his name, he turned to the middle-aged waitress with the short chop of blond-on-blond hair. Like the younger waitress with the even shorter hair in shades that reminded him of a bruise, her long-sleeved black blouse and slacks looked as crisp and sharp as the smooth red apron tied low at her waist. He liked their look. It was at once trendy and professional. Their boss had good taste.

“Tommi will see you in the back. Come with me, please.”

With a pleasant smile, she turned for him to follow. It
was only as he did that his preoccupation faded enough to appreciate the surprisingly cozy, urban yet rustic space.

He'd noticed the framed reviews on the wall by the hostess desk, and been vaguely aware of the constant murmur of the patrons' conversations. What he noted now were the two huge paintings of wine bottles in reds, burgundies and shades of slate hanging on one of the tall brick walls. Like the mural painted over the boarded-up window in the storefront next door, those same colors slashed across an equally sizeable abstract on the opposite wall of white.

Conscious of his large frame, he moved along a narrow aisle formed between the occupied tables. As he did, he became even more aware of the mouthwatering aromas that had reminded him when he'd walked in that he needed lunch.

Since he'd been on the phone with Margie at the time, and knowing he had a 1:30 conference call, he'd already asked his secretary to order him a sandwich to eat at his desk. Noticing a freshly delivered, rather incredible-looking panini in front of a guy at the wine bar and the size of the shrimp on a plate of pasta by his companion, he thought now he should have just ordered to-go from here.

The blonde waitress held open the right side of a pair of narrow swinging doors.

Murmuring his thanks, he stepped past her, reached inside his overcoat pocket and walked into the small, efficient space.

The room behind him offered texture, comfort and warmth. Here, stainless steel seemed to be the surface of choice. Racks, pots, pans, appliances. Much of it bore the patina of wear. Some shone with a glint that spoke of more recent purchase. All of it looked scrupulously organized. What had the bulk of his attention, though, was the unease
in the features of the woman he'd met yesterday as she turned from setting a pan in a long, deep sink.

The white double-breasted chef's jacket Tommi Fair child wore over loose black pants was buttoned to her throat. A short white toque covered her head. Even with her hair hidden, he remembered its shine and its color. That rich warm brown held the same shades of gold as the flecks in her dark and wary eyes.

He had no idea why he remembered those details. Especially since he wasn't close enough to note much about her eyes other than the caution clouding them when she offered a small smile.

“Hi,” she said, walking toward him as she wiped her hands on the apron tied at her waist. Looking as hesitant as she sounded, she stopped ten feet away. “What brings you here?”

He knew she'd been embarrassed yesterday. Beyond embarrassed, probably, considering how totally she'd misconstrued the reason for his partner's interest in her. There seemed to be another element to her discomfort now, though.

From her puzzled question, she clearly hadn't expected him.

“Didn't Scott call you?”

“He called this morning,” she confirmed, looking as if she wasn't at all sure what that had to do with his presence. “He apologized for not being able to meet yesterday.”