Missing Christmas - Kate Clayborn Page 0,24
sinking sense of dread, how ill-equipped I am to handle this newness between us. Six years and all I’ve practiced with her is the missing part, and I feel the depths of my ignorance like a slap to the face.
“It’s the job,” she says.
“Of course it’s the job.” I’m frustrated with myself, with her, with everything that’s not us in that cottage. “We have to—”
Just then, the front door opens. Gil’s standing there, holding the same mug, wearing the same green sweater, except this time I think it’s turned inside out. “Pretty cold out here just to be standing around,” he says.
“Gil,” Kristen says, shoving the gift bag in his hand unceremoniously, but keeping a false smile pasted on her face. “Could you excuse me for a few minutes? I think I forgot something back at the cottage.”
For once I’m not the one who’s done the socially awkward thing in a business interaction, and while what I want is to simply drop this tray of cookies and follow her, it’s so out of character for Kristen that I feel a protective instinct to mitigate the embarrassment I know she’ll have later. I turn to Gil, still working out what I’ll say to excuse myself.
“That Christmas stuff didn’t work then?” Gil asks. He’s sipping from his mug, watching her stomp through the snow.
“Work for what?”
He shrugs. “I was wrong about you being married to her. But you want to be, right?”
“I—” I look away, watch Kris’s retreating form. Yeah, I want to be, but I’m not telling Gil that first. Hell, I’m not telling Kris that until we manage at least a few months in a functional relationship; I’m not a barbarian, or a doctor in a Santa suit. “How’d you know that?”
He takes another sip of his drink. Inside, I can hear his family laughing, pots and pans clanging.
“That look on your face when you came around here yesterday morning. That’s about what my face looked like for the whole first month I knew Romina, trying to get her to like me. She thought I was ridiculous.”
“Kristen doesn’t think I’m ridiculous.” Wait, does she? “Also I’ve known her for six years, not a month.”
Gil laughs. “You are ridiculous, then.”
I am, I think. But I say, “It’s because we wor—”
“Uh-huh,” Gil says, not letting me finish. “You know Romina was pretty worried about me changing my mind about the GreenCorp thing.”
I blink in surprise, both at the change of subject and at this admission, since I’d been working under the assumption, especially after that scene at the table yesterday, that it’d been Romina who hadn’t wanted to go. Any other day, maybe, and I’d be focused on this as a new piece of information related to the job. I’d be thinking, Change tactics. Work harder on Romina, and Romina will work on our behalf.
But right now, all I want is for Gil to stop talking long enough for me to go after Kris without it seeming rude.
“Guess she thinks like you, about the difference it could make. She’s worried I’ll regret it later.”
I tighten my hand on the tray I’m holding, my eyes going back to Kristen. “You don’t think you will?”
He sets down his mug on the arm of the wooden bench by the front door and reaches out to take the cookies. “Nah. I’ll find a way, with the tech. I pretty much try to put things in the right order in my life, and if I’ve got my wife and kid in the top two places, everything else tends to work out all right in the end.”
“I’m in love with her,” I say. That’s the right order. I feel it in my bones.
“Right.” He picks up the mug again, gestures it in her direction. She’s almost to the cottage door. “What’s all this, then?”
This, I think to myself, is the low moment.
And then I step off the porch and go after her.
Chapter Twelve
KRISTEN
Halfway to the cottage, and I know I’ve made a mistake.
I shouldn’t have run, and I know it. First of all, there’s the matter of how it must’ve looked to Gil, especially given my flimsy excuse, and he’s probably back in his house right now shrugging and giving a look to Romina, one of those married people something’s-going-on-there silent communications that’ll surely make it even more awkward when I do go back. For the family Christmas lunch they were kind enough to invite us to in the first place.
Second of all, I know Jasper will follow