The Mistletoe Motive(14)

My hands turn to fists.

“I’ll admit this much,” he says, his voice cold and deceptively soft. “I’m cerebral and strategic, Gabriella. I anticipated everything said in today’s meeting. But spare us both the bullshit that I’m the only one who’s had a less than forthright agenda since the day I was hired.”

“Says the guy who kept this meeting from me!”

He shuts his eyes and grits his teeth. He knows he’s busted. “I meant to tell you. I swear.”

“Oh yeah?” I fold my arms across my chest. “When?”

“Yesterday, but—” He clears his throat. “Yesterday threw me off, and I forgot. I had every intention of telling you this morning, the moment you got here. But then the Baileys—for the first time ever and in the worst timing ever—got here early, and then I got delayed because that damn coffee shop that makes your fancy peppermint chocolate milk—”

“Hot cocoa!”

“Same thing! They messed up your order, so I had them make it again, and when I got here, I was too late. I could see it as you glared daggers at me. You’d already decided I left you in the dark on purpose.”

“You’ve known for a week,” I fire back. “Why did you wait until the last minute?”

He scrubs his face. “I guarantee you, Gabriella, if I explained myself, you wouldn’t believe me.”

I glare up at him. “Got me all figured out, have you?”

“Like you aren’t just as guilty of that mindset?” He stares down at me, jaw clenched. “You think you’ve got me all figured out, too. And you can’t stand me for it.”

“I…resent you,” I admit, hating how my voice wavers.

He arches an eyebrow. “That much is clear.”

“You make me feel inadequate,” I tell him through the lump in my throat. I blink away tears. “When they hired you, all I could think was you’re here because I’m not good enough.”

His expression falters. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but he’s not fast enough. I’m on a roll.

“I’ll admit that I have, at times, been petulant about your condescending, solitary reign of budget-cutting terror, Mr. Frost, but I’ve spent enough of my life being looked down on and dismissed, and I’m not doing that anymore. I have every right to stick up for myself.”

He looks stricken now, his eyes darting between mine. He takes a step closer. I step back and bump into a table of books, sending a stack cascading to the ground. “Gabriella—”

“I love this place. With my whole heart,” I whisper, the fire inside me burning brighter. “And we have three and a half weeks to save it.” Pushing off the table, I step into his space, until I’m reminded that while I’m tall, Jonathan’s much taller. Our chests brush. Our eyes meet. “Three and a half weeks until the shop closes for the year. Barring a financial miracle, expense cuts will come. One of us will have to leave Bailey’s.”

His eyes search mine for a charged, silent moment. “It’s that simple?” he says.

“It’s that grim. You heard them. You know the numbers even better than me.”

“I do.” Jonathan stares down at me, fierce, unblinking. “And I’m not giving up that easily. I’m not walking away without fighting for this, Gabriella.”

I glare up at him. “I anticipated that. So here’s how it’ll be decided. Whoever sells the most books this month, that’s who gets to stay.”

He’s silent for a long, tense moment. And when he speaks, his voice is flat and cold. “That’s the only way you can see it.”

“I’ll concede raw book sales isn’t the most comprehensive measure of managerial competency, but let’s face it, from here on out, the winner will be leveraging what the other has brought to the place. Without me, you’d have a bookstore frozen in 1988. Thanks to years of my influence, you have a beautiful space to welcome and sell to your customers, brimming with inviting, personal touches; an accessible, intuitive layout by genre and subgenre; and an entire calendar year of already-scheduled events and book signings. Thanks to me.”

“And thanks to me,” he says, “you have an HVAC system that isn’t singlehandedly melting the polar ice caps, costing a small nation’s GDP in a utility bill and driving customers away with its inability to regulate temperature; a data-driven inventory expansion strategized by key segment customers; oh, and of course, that minor detail, a payment and bookkeeping system that belongs in the twenty-first century.”

I sniff. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“The air-conditioning blew a fuse twice a week, the radiators were a ticking time bomb, our inventory had no basis in consumer analytics, and that ancient bronze abacus you called an ‘antique’ was both inefficient and the culprit for countless mischarges.”

I gasp. “Gilda. I miss her.”

“Gilda.” He glances up at the ceiling, as if in a plea to God for patience. “You were manually entering prices on a Victorian cash register.”

“A gilded Victorian cash register. Gilda had character!”

“She caused an IRS audit!”

We glower at each other. Our faces are dangerously close. Shit, he smells good. Like evergreens and winter air and woodsmoke. I feel an embarrassing rush of heat stain my cheeks.