The Mistletoe Motive(11)

Which is why it hurts all the worse when I’m hit with a one-two punch of recognition and dread. It’s not Jonathan Frost and his arctic glare greeting me, reminding me I’m three minutes late. It’s the Baileys, smiling warmly. The owners. Who are rarely here, and never first thing in the morning.

“Morning, dear!” Mrs. Bailey calls from the far end of the store.

Mr. Bailey strolls my way on a soft smile and waves me in. “Come in, Gabby.”

He’s wearing a cheery matching plaid bow tie and suspenders that coordinate with Mrs. Bailey’s skirt. They’re so precious, it makes a lump form in my throat. These people matter to me—their store and this job matter to me. And something’s wrong. I know it.

Rounding the large central display table, Mrs. Bailey wraps me in a hug. “Happy holidays, dear! The store looks gorgeous…” She pulls back, examining me as I try to smile back at her. “What’s the matter?”

“That’s what I want to know.”

Her smile falters a little. “Oh, Gabby, don’t worry. It’s just a little business chat. Everything will be fine.”

Mr. Bailey rubs his forehead and mutters to himself, “Just a little business chat.”

“Relax, George. Don’t get your suspenders in a twist.” Mrs. Bailey pats him gently on the arm, then turns back to me. “Gabby, go ahead and get unbundled there, then let’s have a seat around the table in the back room. Jonathan just called and said he’ll be here in a minute.”

“He’s expecting you?” My voice comes out a squeak.

Mrs. Bailey settles into a chair at one end of the table and frowns up at me. “I told Jonathan about the meeting last week when I stopped by shortly before he closed up. He said he’d pass along the information to you. Didn’t he?”

Some other bosses might use modern methods of communication like email or text messaging, or hell, even a call, but the Baileys are blatant technophobes. They don’t even have cell phones. I learn things from them in person, or I don’t learn them at all. Jonathan’s aware of this. It drives him up the wall. Apparently, not so much that he doesn’t mind using it to his advantage, though.

Wow. I knew he was a jerk, but this is a new low.

While a tiny part of me is actually relieved I haven’t had this hanging over my head for a week, seeing as my anxiety thrives in the soil of unknowns and I’d have spent the past seven days giving myself an ulcer, applying for unemployment, and pointlessly rearranging the bookshelves, I’m still overwhelmingly angry.

Because Jonathan doesn’t know that he spared me a week of anxiety.

He doesn’t know that, ideally, I’d have found out, say, a day in advance, given myself twenty-four hours to catastrophize and brace myself for the worst. He wasn’t trying to protect me from my mind’s talent for obsessive worrying. No, he kept this meeting from me so he’d have the upper hand. And I’m not letting that happen. Which means, I’m not telling the Baileys that no, Jonathan did not apprise me of this meeting, when it would amount to confessing I’m totally unprepared.

“Ohhhh,” I lie, unwinding my scarf, then shrugging off my coat. “That meeting. Of course. I just got my days switched around.”

Mrs. Bailey seems to buy it. “Understandable. I get so turned around this time of year. There’s too much going on!”

Smiling tightly, I glance up at the clock. Jonathan’s now ten minutes late. He’s never late. “So…where is Jonathan?”

“Here.”

I jump a foot in the air and clutch my chest over my pounding heart. I try to keep my gaze down, but I can’t seem to stop it from trailing up his body. My cheeks heat. After that steamy romance-audiobook-turned-dream last night, I can barely look at him. Except I kind of can’t stop looking at him.

His dark wavy hair is windblown. His pale green eyes glitter like frost-kissed pines. A splash of pink warms his sharp cheekbones, stung by the cold air, and he’s holding a to-go beverage carrier. Someone so evil should not be this hot. I can’t believe I had a sex dream about him. I want to bleach the memory from my brain.

“Gabriella.”

My eyes snap up and meet his. “What?”

He arches an eyebrow. “Could I get by?”

“Oh! Right.” I debate tripping him as payback for the meeting sabotage but think better of doing that in front of the Baileys. Instead, I step back and lean against the counter so he can enter the break room kitchenette, my mind spinning with possibilities of how I can make him suffer later.

Jonathan walks past me, the scent of peppermint and chocolate wafting from one of the cups he’s holding. That asshole. He got me my drink. He probably put arsenic in it.

My gaze follows him as he sets the hot beverages on the table and exchanges morning greetings with the Baileys. As Mrs. Bailey eases each cup from the carrier, Jonathan turns and shrugs off his coat. The wintry-woods scent of his body hits me, jarring new memories from my twisted dream last night—strong hands gripping my waist, flipping me over, lifting my hips until I’m on my knees. A rough palm sliding up my back, fingers curling around my hair, smoothing it from my face. Lips trailing down my spine, my ass, lower, then lower—

I scrunch my eyes shut and grip the counter, steadying myself against the heat flooding my body.

“All right, Gabriella?” Jonathan’s voice is rougher this morning, how I imagine it is right when he wakes up.