Rusty Nailed (Cocktail, #2)(52)

“Did you cancel our trip to Brazil?”

“Brazil?” he asked, looking guilty.

“Yes, Brazil. When I talked to Jillian today, she told me about a conversation you had with Benjamin—that you’d canceled our trip. Did you?”

He was quiet for a minute, his eyes unreadable.

“Yes.”

He had. He really had.

“You want to tell me why?”

“I was going to surprise you,” he started, walking over to me, dodging ginger parts.

“Most guys surprise their girlfriends with trips, Simon—not the opposite,” I snapped, throwing the cookie sheets into the sink and squeezing soap all over them. I scrubbed at them furiously, splashing suds everywhere. “Why in the world would you do that?”

“I wanted to—”

“Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working? How much I was looking forward to that trip?”

“I know; I just thought that—”

“You can’t just up and cancel something like that without talking to me! I literally can’t believe that you—”

“Would you just listen to me for a second? Jesus!” he exploded, slamming his hand down on the counter, crushing more gingerbread men. “I wanted to spend Christmas with your folks, Caroline. I invited them here.”

The sponge fell from my hand. “You . . . what?”

“I wanted us to have a real Christmas this year, so I called your mom and dad and invited them to stay with us. I thought I’d surprise you. They’ll be here the day before we were supposed to leave. I know how disappointed you were when you couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving, so I thought they could come here,” he said. “I had no idea you’d get so upset, believe me, or I would have talked to you about it first.”

My thoughts whirled; emotions crashed and banged around inside. Touched? Overwhelmed? Surprised? My eyes filled with tears as I crossed to him through the gingerbread carnage.

“You really want to spend Christmas with my family?” I asked, taking his face in my hands.

“I do,” he murmured, his eyes full of something I couldn’t pinpoint. “Weird?”

“No, babe. So sweet,” I whispered, holding him tightly.

His arms slipped around my waist and he kissed the top of my head. “Are you still mad?”

“I was, but I’m not now,” I replied, leaning in closer to his ear. “But next time, just talk to me, okay?”

“Promise,” he whispered into my ear, then kissed me fierce. “I’m going to get us the biggest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen.” He grinned, his face full of excitement. Crisis over. He took off his jacket and surveyed the cookie damage. “Now, what can I do to help?”

“You can start by helping me clean up this mess. Then we need to get these packed up if we’re going to make it to the party before Sophia and Neil Round Three begins,” I said, handing him a broom.

He started to clean up, whistling along to “Frosty the Snowman.” I turned back to the soapy sink, wiping my tears away. One of them belonged to Rio.

? ? ?

The stage for Sophia vs. Neil Round Three (known in conventional circles as Mimi and Ryan’s Christmas Party) was set the second Neil showed up with a hot nerd. A hot nerd, you ask? Let me back up a bit . . .

Sophia had met a new guy at a symphony benefit. Bernard Fitzsimmons, associate professor of applied physics at Berkeley and vice president of the Bay Area Musical Appreciation Society, had the pleasure of meeting Sophia at a Music in Schools program fund-raiser she was performing at. Being incredibly talented as well as gorgeous, she was often called upon to perform at charitable functions, especially ones that were musically inclined.

They shared a cab and a kiss after the event, and Sophia invited him to the party. He was wicked smart and wicked cute, both attributes complementing each other nicely.

Neil got wind of this development, orchestrated carefully and quite purposefully by Mimi to be clear—“Oh, she’s going for the hot nerds now, huh?”—and he went on the hunt for his own Hot Nerd. He ended up meeting Polly Pinkerton, the head of a research lab at UCSF Medical Center, specializing in the effects of pesticides and insecticides on child development. She was appearing on the morning show on the local NBC affiliate, and Neil spent the entire time in the green room flirting with her over a pot of hazelnut French roast. Hopped up on caffeine, he saw her as the perfect Hot Nerd to bring to the party. But he also genuinely enjoyed her company, and had seen her a couple of times before the party.

They both brought nerds to an ex fight, and neither was ready for the outcome.

Bernard? Cute, yes. Smart, yes. Boring, yes. I’d been stuck in the kitchen with him and Sophia for almost thirty minutes discussing beige walls and their place in home interiors, because Bernard loved HGTV, don’t you know. Sophia had been giving me the “sorry” eye all night, but I understood.

He was what Carrie Bradshaw had called a “great on paper” guy. Unfortunately he was as dull as paper too. I was in the middle of discussing sand vs. stone and trying to stop myself from biting off my own arm so I had something to beat him with, when I heard Neil’s voice from the entryway.

Sophia froze. I froze. Bernard waxed poetic on the beauty of a periodic table painted in the softest hues of putty and bone.