You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology (24 page)

Whether or not it did, he had the decency to at least pretend he didn’t notice that she’d been crying, answering her smile with a floppy one of his own.

Floppy
was a good adjective for the stranger. His wavy, dark-brown hair flopped over his forehead, his neck, and his ears. His nose was a little too big and the tip of it too round for his face, but it—and his thick eyebrows—gave his face character and intelligence. It was that intelligence she’d reacted to earlier, flirting back instead of slinking off to the mop closet for a nap. And it was that intelligence that answered the question that had been lurking in the back of her mind since he’d walked in that morning.

Yup. He was cute.

“Can I sit down?” he asked, gesturing at the empty seat across from her.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. She needed company—someone cute, smart, and not creepy. Someone from outside this little forgotten town.

“You still working?”

“What?” She looked down, a little surprised to see that she was still wearing the Creamsicle-colored outfit. “No. I just don’t want to go home.” That was less embarrassing to admit that than to tell him she didn’t really have a home anymore.

“Can I buy you dinner? No strings. Just dinner.” His eyes gleamed with sincerity.

“I work here. Babe’ll feed me for free.”

“I’ll take you somewhere else, then. I saw a steakhouse.”

“No, not there.” Gary liked to go there, and the owner liked her stepfather’s nasty, mean sense of humor. “There’s China Garden.”

“Is it good?”

She shrugged. “It’s good compared to the other Chinese restaurants in the area. They have pork and seeds.”

“Pork and seeds?”

“Pieces of smoked pork you dip in hot mustard, then sesame seeds.”

His eyes widened, and for a moment she wondered if he would make fun of the small town and its Chinese restaurant where pork and seeds were the highlight. But he only said, “All right,” and started sliding out of his chair.

“Do you need directions?” she asked as she pushed herself out of the booth.

“Nah. I’ve got a GPS and three phones. If I get lost, I deserve to starve.” Then he laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I was lost this morning with those three phones and GPS. I had no idea where I was. But I found Babe’s, so it worked out in the end.”

“Oh.” The subtle compliment made her heart feel big and the tearstains on her cheeks unimportant. “I just need to change. I’ll meet you there in a couple minutes.”

He hesitated for a moment, and she wondered if he was worried she’d stand him up. “What’s your name?” he asked instead.

“Selina.”

“I’m Marc. See you at the China Garden in ten minutes, Selina.”

She nodded. It was just dinner and he was a stranger who was going to leave town at any moment, but the night was looking up.

*

She pushed open
the large wooden door and scanned the restaurant for a now-familiar head of hair and the tops of slightly-too-big ears. The restaurant looked the same as it had since she was a child—the same red vinyl booths, the same red carpet with gold flecks, the same red Chinese lanterns with black script hanging from the ceiling. As a nod to the season, “Silent Night” was playing and there was fake greenery above the cash register.

She almost missed Marc, whose head was blocked by the salad bar in the middle of the restaurant.

“Hey,” she said as she slid into the booth. Even though this wasn’t a date, her heart fluttered.

Of course, if it wasn’t a date, what the hell was it?

“Hey,” he said back. “You look nice, but I miss the Popsicle look.”

“Thanks.” She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on last night, when she’d been driving around town, but the jeans fit well and she liked the funny cartoon potato on her purple T-shirt. It was silly, but she needed a little silly in her life.

“Don’t get me wrong, the uniform was cute, too.”

“Hey,” she said, pursing her lips against her smile at his compliment. “I thought this was a no-strings-attached dinner.” Marc’s awkwardness and the way he laughed at himself about it had been part of what had put her at ease originally. But Gary never took no for an answer, and she needed to make sure Marc did, even if it was just dinner.

“What?” His eyes crossed in confusion for a brief second before realization dawned. “Oh, the compliments. Men in this town must operate under different rules from what I was taught if compliments mean more than what they are at face value. You’re pretty. I like your company. I invited you to dinner for the latter, but the former doesn’t hurt. But all I want is someone to talk to. I’ve been driving alone for a while.”

“Okay.” She shook her head, more at herself than at him. “It’s been a rough night and a long day. I’m not normally so suspicious.”

“None of us are at our best when we’re tired, and you seemed exhausted even this morning. If it makes you more comfortable and more willing to keep me company, be as suspicious as you like. I’ll be over here, keeping my hands to myself.” He was smiling, and the light in his eyes was both sympathetic and friendly.

Maybe she really could trust him. Maybe he was exactly who he claimed to be and would be and do what he said he would.

There weren’t many people in her life she could say that about.

The waitress came to take their order then. Selina ordered pork egg foo young—her favorite—and Marc ordered chow mein and pork and seeds.

“I’m curious about those pork and seeds,” he said after the waitress left.

“I’m guessing it’s not authentic if you’ve never had any.”

He waved her off. “Or maybe it’s incredibly authentic, which is why you can only get it at this restaurant.”

She laughed, pleased with the way he turned her inexperience back to compliment her. “Not just here. It’s an Idaho Chinese-food specialty. You can get pork and seeds at Costco.”

“Nothing more authentic than that.” His gentle teasing put a smile in his tone, even though he’d said the words with a straight face.

“You can comment on their authenticity after you eat them.”

She was smiling so much her cheeks hurt. Marc was better than a distraction. Even though she still didn’t know where she was sleeping tonight, she was actually enjoying herself, which she wouldn’t have thought possible an hour ago.

“Fair,” he said, inclining his head.

The waitress came back almost immediately with the appetizer. Marc stared for a moment before laughing. He had a nice, cheerful laugh. Even with his uncertainty about the pork and seeds, there was no indication that he was laughing
at
her or at Idaho’s regional variations on Chinese food. Instead, like her, he was facing change in his life and the joy of a simple pleasure was a welcome relief.

It had been a long time since Selina could say she’d felt
joy
in life, and Marc’s was contagious.

“It’s literally pork and seeds,” he said, a smile beaming across his face.

“That’s what I said,” she pointed out on a laugh, picking up a thin slice of pork, its exterior pink—from being smoked, she always assumed, but food coloring was just as likely. “Watch me. You dip it in the mustard, then in the seeds, and it’s delicious. Authenticity be damned.”

Marc followed her lead and tried a bite. “This is good. And here I was thinking dinner with you couldn’t get any better.”

She raised a brow at him. “Do you have a stock set of lines you use on women?”

“Only the pretty ones,” he said with a wink that magically made him seem both goofier and cuter at the same time.

Maybe it was because she was tired. Or maybe it was the pleasure streaming through her veins that she hadn’t felt in what seemed like years. Or maybe it was the way he pursed his lips when he’d spoken, as though he hadn’t thought he was going to get away with it. Whatever it was, she couldn’t help laughing.

He grinned. “They don’t usually work so well. Actually, they usually fail and I end up stumbling over my tongue like an ass. But if you keep smiling, I’ll keep spouting them.”

His face went suddenly serious. “I mean them, though. In case you had any doubts . . . I mean every word I say to you. The past couple months have been a series of ups and downs for me. They’ve been mostly ups, really, but I’m feeling a bit lost with myself right now. I’m still floundering around in my life and in my head, but in that diner, I found you, and I can tell that you are worth knowing.”

Her heart fluttered. Actually
fluttered
in her chest and made her cough. Though the cough might have been from embarrassment. The rush running through her body was a mix of pleasure and embarrassment. Both feelings could be equally responsible for anything from the odd feeling in her heart, to the cough, to the flush creeping up her neck.

“How was the museum?” she asked, not sure she wanted to acknowledge what he’d said.

“Closed, like you said. And I didn’t see anyone on a horse or any model airplanes in the air. And the Wolf People weren’t doing tours, so I didn’t see any wolves, either. Nice gift shop, though. They seemed like a good cause so I bought a couple stuffed animals to give as baby gifts.”

“That’s too bad.” She didn’t know why he would be wandering this part of Idaho, especially when winter was setting in. A good storm would trap him here, in a place where he seemed to have no purpose other than to drive around. “Even if I don’t believe you’re here to see the sights, I don’t want them to be disappointing.”

Marc reached out like he was contemplating another piece of pork, then changed his mind. After wiping his fingers on his napkin, he eyed her. “Why do you think I’m here?”

“Drug dealer on the run?” she said, only half joking. “That’s the only reason I’ve been able to come up with that explains someone being up here with no discernable goals and three phones.”

He barked with laughter. “Oh man. I wish I’d recorded that.”

“Why?” she asked, surprised at how hard he was laughing. Her joke hadn’t been that funny.

“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at your guess.” He lifted the back of his hand up to his mouth to slow his chuckles. “Okay, maybe I am laughing at your guess, but that’s because my friends will never believe it. I’m not the nerdiest person I know, but only because the competition is steep.”

“Then what do you do?” she asked, even more curious now. “Gun runner? Drug dealer? Transporting illegal hamsters? Those are the only reasons I can think for three phones.”

“Illegal hamsters,” he said, chuckling again and shaking his head. “What kind of TV do you watch?”

“Only the good stuff.” She was smiling now, too.

He paused, and she wondered if he wasn’t going to tell her what he did, if they would part as unknown to each other as they had been when he’d walked in the door. “Would you believe I developed a texting program for cell phones that sends encrypted texts via SMS and that I just sold it to the largest tech company in the world?”

“That doesn’t sound too far from the black market rodent trade,” she said as she leaned back in her booth, folded her arms, and evaluated him. He met her comment with his own forthright gaze. It wasn’t just the lack of smile on his face that made her realize he was serious, but his eyes were deep and true. If she had sold some tech thing—she had only the shallowest notion of what encryption even meant—to the company she suspected he was referring to, she would be bouncing up and down with joy, possibly even throwing money up in the air for anyone around to catch.

But for all his smiles and flirtations, Marc was made of different stuff. Or maybe such an enormous life change was more profound than Selina could imagine.

“I can pull up the articles on my phone, if you don’t believe me,” he said, reaching into his back pocket for one of those smartphones he carried. She thought she heard a faint tremble in his voice.

Money was serious business. Having been poor—or nearly so—her entire life, Selina knew that as a truth. But the hitch in Marc’s voice wasn’t just about the grave implications of money. It seemed important to him that she believed him. Not only because he wanted to be believed and thought of as honest, but the way his eyes focused on her made her think he needed
her
to believe him. The sudden realization made her blink.

“I’d, um, I’d like to see, but not because I don’t believe you. I’d like to celebrate your success with you. I’d be
honored
to celebrate your success with you.”

Misgivings flashed across his face, but then he pulled out his phones. He must have saved the links to the articles because it only took him three taps on the first phone to bring something up. He handed the phone to her. As she looked down at a
Wall Street Journal
article on the screen, she saw him touching his other phones out of the corner of her eye and setting them faceup on the table.

Selina had believed Marc—she really had—but seeing the article with dollar amounts, pictures, and details had the truth settling itself on her shoulders like a thick wool blanket. It should be comforting, and it definitely brought a warmth to her chest, but too much could feel like a burden.

She set the first phone on the table, and he nudged another one toward her. “I built the platform with a friend,” he said. “The money isn’t all mine.”