filled with visions of Taryn waking him up for an early-morning naked tryst. She got to see Nick naked and she got the best waffles on earth. I'm back to disliking her, Christmas spirit and family candle company be damned.
"Now she'll be cranky this afternoon and that'll be my fault."
Okay, enough. Now he's describing her like she's some errant child? What a disgusting misogynistic jerk!
"Luckily we'll be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean by the time my sister calls to ream me out about messing up her schedule."
Wait. His sister? I rewind the conversation and remove my assumptions. "You had a sleepover with your niece?" My brain is trying its hardest to merge the idea of the Nick I know from work with the idea of him having a sleepover with his niece, Abby. I've met her a couple times. Last year at the company Christmas party and once over the summer when Sara brought her to the office. She's a spirited and messy little girl the way most toddlers are.
"You babysit?" I finally manage to sputter, turning in my seat to get a better look at him.
"For my niece, sure. Pays twenty bucks an hour, so why not," he adds with a shrug then laughs when he sees the look on my face. "I'm kidding. My sister and her husband went to a holiday party last night and their regular sitter canceled. They were going to be out late so I told them to just leave Abby with me overnight."
"Huh," I can't help myself from saying.
"My sister warned me that she wakes up at an unreasonable hour, but I didn't heed her warning. Like every jackass without kids of their own I thought I'd just put her to bed late and she'd sleep in the next morning." He shrugs and flashes me a grin that makes my heart nearly stop. "That little hustler stayed up through an entire viewing of Christmas Dogs and still woke up at a quarter to six."
Oh, sweet Lord. The visual of Abby in a set of footy pajamas cuddled up on the couch with Nick watching a Christmas movie just flashed through my mind and it's… strangely hot.
And unsettling.
"What did you do with her until Honey Jam opened for breakfast?" I ask, still trying to wrap my head around this previously unknown side of my boss. It's like finding out there's a spinoff to A Christmas Carol in which Ebenezer is the hot, fun uncle.
"We watched Christmas Dogs. Again. Start to finish." Nick shakes his head ruefully, a small smile tugging at his lips. "She's fixated on that movie and she's on a one-toddler mission to spread the word because she knows the second you stop paying attention. I thought I could catch up on some emails on my phone while we watched it the second time but damn, she'd wave her tiny hand around yelling ‘pause it, pause it,’ as if I was going to miss out on some pivotal plot point during the second viewing. Then she'd stare at me like I was hiding cookies from her until I put the phone down and gave the movie my undivided attention."
Well, crud.
I think my heart just grew two sizes.
For Nick.
What is even happening right now?
"Well," I finally manage, "that sounds like a nice sleepover."
"It was," he agrees. "Not how I want to spend every weekend just yet, but it was nice."
Just yet? So Nick thinks about spending weekends like that? Saturday nights with a movie at home, kids with footy pajamas, breakfasts at the Honey Jam Café? Since the first day he arrived to take over the Flying Reindeer Toy Company I've been making assumptions about his suitability for Reindeer Falls itself. He seems too big to be here. Too worldly to find it interesting. Reindeer Falls is the picture of Midwestern values, suburban to its core. Candy Cane Princess crownings are the heart of a city like ours. I pegged Nick as an urban loft kind of guy. I thought he was here begrudgingly, only because he had to be in order to run the company. I never once imagined that he wanted to be back in Michigan.
"We'd have let you sit with us at breakfast," he adds, with a sideways glance at me, a sly grin playing at his mouth. "If we'd seen you there."
I stare at his profile for a bit, a mile passing, then another. Nice Nick is a trap, I remind myself. Like waiting for the day after Thanksgiving