He loosened his collar. Damn, it had gotten hot in here.
Feeling his cheeks heat, he held Bridget’s gaze. Sure, she’d given him side-eye, rolled eyes, and glared at him more times than he could count. He’d liked all that—their usual tête-à-tête, toe to toe, Birdie versus Scooter battle of wills. But this look, this look made him want to crumple up into a ball. Yes, she was angry, but he could deal with anger. This look cut straight to the bone. Visceral disgust burned in her eyes like nothing he’d ever seen—or felt.
Aside from his connection to the Abbotts, he hadn’t felt all that much in many, many years.
And this was why he didn’t allow business to become personal.
He squared his jaw.
He’d spent a lifetime closing off his heart and muting his emotions.
She would not get to him. He simply wouldn’t allow it.
“It’s no joke at all, young lady. I’m surprised to see you here, Mr. Rudolph,” Agnes said, still smiling as if she weren’t about to lose everything.
Bridget gasped. “You make them call you, Mr. Rudolph?”
He threw up his hands. “That’s just what they call me! I don’t make anyone do anything!”
“Besides buy their business out from under them to make a buck,” she threw back.
Holy holly and the ivy hell! The mittens were coming off this vixen!
“We know of your bakeries. There used to be one by us in Boston,” Lori said, throwing a worried glance at her sister.
If he didn’t want her to marry his best friend, he’d be grateful she’d taken the microscope off of him—at least for the moment.
Tom nodded. “We wondered what happened when it closed suddenly.”
Soren glanced at the ovens. Maybe it was cooler in there because it had become blisteringly hot in this shop.
“I run an outreach center for homeless teens, and Cupid Bakery always donated baked goods to our center,” Denise added.
What he wouldn’t give for about two hundred of Tanner’s “special recipe” gummy bears. And even that probably wouldn’t be enough to improve this shit show.
He’d never had the different parts of his life intersect like this in one giant cookie-infused cluster fuck.
He’d done a damn good job compartmentalizing his life. His parents existed in a box. A box he tried like hell never to open. His work occupied another. His friendship with Tom and his relationship with the Abbotts were completely separate from those realms. He’d incorporated a very specific set of behaviors for work and shutting out his parents—the two places where he couldn’t let his guard slip, not even for a second.
It wasn’t that hard.
Not anymore.
Not with Fiona Traeger and Palmer Rudolph.
The divide between himself and his mother and father had happened gradually, like a crack in the ice. Slowly, one year of no contact turned into two, and two into four. And then, when he’d graduated from college only to look out into the crowd and see Grace, Scott, the judge, Russell, and Denise clapping as he received his diploma, he’d realized that the separation from his parents was complete. The unwanted child was no longer a child. He was an island unto himself, and this reality was mutually accepted by all parties.
It boiled down to this: Soren Christopher Traeger Rudolph was a ruthless man. But with the Abbotts, he was Scooter. The gangly kid they’d known since he was fourteen.
But who was he to Bridget? What box did she fit into?
She was supposed to be a fling, a fleeting romance on the periphery of his life. Instead, she straddled both worlds.
Soren or Scooter, she knew them both.
No one had ever bridged that divide.
And no one ever could because it would never work, would it?
All eyes were back on him. He needed to say something.
“What brings you to Kringle, Colorado? I thought you lived in Vermont,” he asked coolly.
If this wasn’t a Santa-sized mind fuck, he didn’t know what was. But he couldn’t reveal how affected he was by this twilight zone situation.
“I’m not sure if you know this, Mr. Rudolph, but Ernie is a member of the Fraternal Order of Bearded Santas. We have many friends who reside in Kringle now,” Agnes answered.
Of—freaking—course, Ernie was a member!
Was every dude with a real white beard part of this club?
“We had a little extra time on our hands this holiday season, and our friends invited us to stay with them in Kringle. We’re here through Christmas Day, and then we’ll head back to Vermont to see our children and grandchildren,” Ernie finished.