Do You Believe in Santa? (15 page)

“I was just thinking this would be a good moment.” His finger continued its slow, lazy trail along the bottom of her lower lip. “I wouldn't have to move from this spot. . . .”

She waited, not sure where he was going with the thought, only sure that the feather-light touch of his fingertip was making her crazy.

“But I'd better go now,” he said.

She hadn't expected to hear
that.

For the moment, at least, Jake didn't move. “Tomorrow's Sunday,” he said. “You're off, right?”

“Of course. The store's closed Sunday.”

“You and two-thirds of Tall Pine. Okay, what I'd like to do—” His lips brushed briefly over hers again. “Scratch that. What I
need
to do is go and get a decent night's sleep. Then call you in the morning and spend every waking minute with you. If you don't mind.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Then, Monday, the real fun starts,” he said. “First thing in the morning, I have breakfast with Winston Frazier. And try to convince him I'm not the devil.”

Chapter 15

“A poached egg, orange juice, and a slice of dry toast.” Winston Frazier handed his menu to the waitress at the Pine 'n' Dine, a young brunette Jake didn't recognize. Her name tag said
Tiffany.

“A Belgian waffle, a side of bacon, and a cup of coffee, please,” Jake said.

Already, they were opposites. Tiffany left, and it was time for the small talk. Frazier surprised Jake by starting it off. “So how was New York?”

“Pennsylvania.”

“Pennsylvania.” A flicker in Frazier's slate-gray eyes suggested,
Same thing.

“Busy,” Jake said. “And warmer than here.”

“Yes, we've had quite a cold snap,” Frazier acknowledged.

“What I really didn't expect was the snow.”

Frazier looked at him quizzically. “Snow?”

“Saturday night.” Jake frowned. “There was even a little left over in the trees Sunday morning.”

Frazier shook his head slowly. “I was up at five a.m. Sunday. I didn't see a thing.”

Okay, weather could be pretty localized. Come to think of it, Jake hadn't noticed any evidence of snow around his hotel either, and that was barely five minutes from Mandy's house. But the blue spruce in her tiny front yard had definitely worn a sprinkling of white yesterday morning.

As their food arrived, Jake's cell phone chirped in his pocket. He grimaced inwardly as he brought it out and muted it. He'd thought the diner, like so much of Tall Pine, was in a dead spot.

“Sorry.” He pocketed the phone again. “Forgot to turn it off.”

Frazier eyed him curiously. “Aren't you going to check it?”

“Not unless it's from you, and that doesn't seem likely.” Jake reached for his coffee. “If it's important, they left a message. I'm with who I'm with.”

He'd learned that lesson the hard way, on his first project five years ago in Philadelphia, but Frazier didn't need to know that part. He was still studying Jake with a faint air of reassessment. Maybe having his phone go off hadn't been such an unlucky thing after all.

“So,” Jake said, “I came to hear your thoughts about the hotel project.”

“I think you have a fair idea of where we stand,” Frazier said. “So far Tall Pine's managed to keep out the corporate chains they've got everywhere else in Southern California. This is nothing personal. It's the Regal Hotel chain, in principle, that we have a problem with.”

Jake wondered how many people he was including in that “we.”

“Understood.” Jake's response brought a lift of Frazier's eyebrows. “I can see what you want to preserve. Tall Pine is a beautiful, quiet community. That's what visitors come here for. But there's no denying your town relies on the tourist trade. . . .”

Frazier's eyes took on a blank, polite stare that told Jake he was tuning out. Jake was talking too much again, he realized. And the whole purpose of this meeting was to
not
recreate the town council meeting.

Jake shifted gears. “Sorry. You've heard my spiel. What am I doing wrong?”

“Aside from trying to rebuild a place as soon as you get here?”

Hey, it's my job.
But Jake held his tongue.

“You've tried to make yourself at home too fast. We've all seen you around, trying to soak up local color. You probably mean well. But getting to know a place like this—it doesn't happen all at once. Some people might even think you're using Mandy Reese.”

As Jake lifted his cup, hot coffee sloshed onto his hand. “What?”

Frazier sliced into the flavorless-looking egg on his plate. “You take up with a local girl, learn about the town from her. Maybe you even think the council will look at you more kindly with her sitting next to you.” He shrugged. “People might think you were trying to do that.”

Inside, Jake sizzled. But when he answered, he kept his voice level. “They would be wrong.”

While Jake counted to ten in his head, Frazier calmly took another bite, letting the ball take another bounce in Jake's court. This felt a whole lot like a test. If Jake argued too vehemently, it could sound like he was protesting too much.

But Jake had spent the first half of his childhood being the new kid in town. He'd learned that sometimes you had to roll with the punches. And sometimes you had to stand firm.

“The fact is,” Jake said, “Mandy is reason enough for me to want to stick it out here. The company probably wouldn't mind if I let this one go. The funny thing is, I think Tall Pine would be a pretty friendly place if I were here for any other reason.”

“Possibly.”

Jake met Frazier's slate-gray eyes. “So,” he said, “since this isn't personal, tell me more about your concerns.”

The bells on the shop door jingled just before five, and Mandy looked up from the register to see Jake in his polo shirt and the navy windbreaker.

Mrs. Swanson, on her way to the door to turn around the
Closed
sign, greeted him first. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks. That's good to hear.”

There seemed to be an extra layer of gratitude in his voice, and he looked tired. Mandy closed the register, walked up and greeted him with a hug. “How'd the breakfast meeting go?”

“Interesting. I'll fill you in once you're free.”

“I was just getting ready to count out the register.” Mandy rounded the counter, opened the register and pulled out the cash tray. “I'll be ready in fifteen minutes.”

As she moved toward the back room to count the money, she was aware of Mrs. Swanson's eyes going from her to Jake. The woman didn't miss much, and Mandy had the feeling she was measuring the degrees of warmth between the two of them.

Behind her, she heard Jake asking Mrs. Swanson, “Did you get any snow Saturday night?”

Mandy could almost hear her boss's puzzled frown. “No. It never snows here before Thanksgiving.”

“That's what people keep telling me,” Jake said.

When Mrs. Swanson left, Mandy was still in back counting out the cash drawer, so Jake sauntered through the shop. The displays had shifted quite a bit since he'd been gone. He noticed a small section of turkeys and pilgrims alongside the fall pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, waiting for their turn on center stage of the off-season table. Then his eyes wandered to the south wall of the store, where a pair of matching frames—one red, one green—caught his eye. He didn't think they'd been there before. Inside the frames, he saw two cleanly reproduced newspaper clippings.

Jake strolled over to take a look. The red-framed clipping on the left showed the profile of a dark-haired little girl with a microphone held in front of her by someone who wasn't in the shot. The headline read,
TRUE BELIEVER: LOCAL FOURTH GRADER SAW SANTA CLAUS.

The article elaborated:

Jake noticed the article didn't include an interview with Mandy, just a retelling of her earlier interview with the television reporter. The green-framed article on the right featured a very recognizable photograph of Mandy standing behind the counter of The North Pole, smiling shyly.
SANTA SIGHTER GOES TO WORK AT CHRISTMAS STORE.

The piece went on to quote Mrs. Swanson at length, describing her new employee as “a natural” and hedging somewhat about the store's past struggles to stay afloat with the previous owner.

A smile twitched at Jake's lips. Not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but a small-town newspaper could do worse.

“Oh,” Mandy said from behind him. “You found them. That didn't take long.”

“The frames caught my eye. Where were they before?”

“Behind the counter. I sort of accidentally-on-purpose dropped one a few months ago.”

“Because of me?”

She nodded.

Jake gestured toward the second article. “You don't say much in here.”

“I was eighteen. And I felt so awkward. Mrs. Swanson did most of the talking. I felt like a prize cow.”

Jake put his arm around her shoulders. “She knows you're more than that. You know that, don't you?”

“I do now. She's been really good to me.”

He thought back to his conversation with Winston Frazier this morning, and with Sherry the other night. It seemed to him a whole lot of people knew Mandy was special. And she seemed so unaware of it herself.

He turned her to face him. “You amaze me.”

And before she could ask him a silly question like why, he kissed her.

Mandy lowered her eyes, fingering his collar. “Now tell me about your meeting.”

“Oh. That.” He clasped his hands loosely around her waist. “It's a tough one to call. Frazier definitely doesn't love the idea. And my phone went off right when we were starting. I was afraid—”

It occurred to him he hadn't seen a message when he checked his phone after the meeting. He pulled it out to look again. No notification of a voice mail, and the first text he'd received hadn't come until after breakfast.

He frowned. “You weren't trying to call me, were you?”

“No. And I sure wouldn't have tried you during . . .”

Jake's frown deepened as he scrolled over the phone's screen.

“What is it?” Mandy asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Literally nothing. No text, nothing on the Missed Calls log . . .” He shrugged and re-pocketed his phone. “Weird.”

Phantom cell phone calls, highly localized snowfall . . . he was starting to wonder if he'd fallen into the Twilight Zone. But it seemed to be working for the good, so maybe he just shouldn't question it.

Mandy's voice pulled him back from his thoughts. “So what did Winston say?”

“Kind of a compromise. He says he's going to make sure the public knows the item's coming up at the next town council meeting, so they can fire all their questions at me.”

“That's Wednesday, right?”

“I know. Two nights from now. I'm not sure how he's going to rearrange the laws of space and time, but—”

Jake's cell phone rang in his pocket. With a faint air of premonition, he fished it out, one arm still around Mandy. “Jake Wyndham.”

“Mr. Wyndham, this is Bret Radner with the
Tall Pine Gazette.”

Jake glanced at the byline on Mandy's two articles. No Radner up there. Of course, this wouldn't be one of those sweet human-interest stories. But two minutes later, Jake had agreed to meet the reporter for an interview back at the cafe where he'd met with Frazier that morning.

Hanging up, he looked at Mandy apologetically. “I'm sorry. Dinner plans are on hold. Guess who's being interviewed for tomorrow's paper.”

“You're kidding. That's awfully tight.”

“Well, they manage it for the local football scores, don't they?”

“Only if the games don't go into overtime.”