Do Not Open 'Til Christmas Read online

  Great. He probably thought she really believed the fugitive was still at large, over twenty years later.

  Maybe he wouldn’t place her. Maybe she looked different enough without her uniform. She’d pulled her blond hair into a bun this morning, in an effort both to keep it simple and to look professional. Unfortunately, she realized, that was pretty similar to the way she had to wear it when she waited tables.

  Right now, Chloe wasn’t sure if he’d noticed she was standing here or not. He was speaking to Chuck. “Ned’s missing in action. I’m going to have to steal the photographer for your nine o’clock. Can you shoot it on your phone?”

  Chuck shrugged. “Sure.” He nodded toward Chloe. “Uh, Bret? Miss Davenport is here.”

  Sharp dark eyes fell on her from behind his glasses, and Chloe’s stomach did a twist. Maybe he remembered and maybe he didn’t, but he looked as if he’d just found an overdue bill underneath his refrigerator.

  Resolutely, she put on her best smile and put out her hand. “I’m Chloe Davenport.”

  He accepted her hand, his smile tight. “The freelancer.”

  She held his stare and kept her smile. “Not anymore.”

  “Right.” He released her hand. “You’re early.”

  Early was generally a good thing. Clearly, not today. “A little.”

  “I’m putting out a few fires this morning. I’ll need about an hour to get my feet under me. Hold on.”

  He thumbed out a number on his cell phone.

  “Winston? Bret.” His voice returned to the brisk-but-polite tone he’d used with the receptionist. “I need to move our ten o’clock. Can we bump it up to eleven?” He nodded. “Great. See you then.”

  She only knew of one Winston in Tall Pine—Winston Frazier, the oldest member of the town council—but she couldn’t imagine anyone speaking to him in that brusque tone. He was a regular at the Pine ’n’ Dine, and every waitress called him “sir.”

  Bret lowered the phone and zeroed in on Chloe again. “You’re my new ten o’clock.”

  “Okay. Where do I—” She hefted her briefcase awkwardly.

  Bret glanced over the two rows of desks. He nodded toward the one behind Chuck’s. “That one.” It was littered with a hodgepodge of newspaper sections, a phone directory, a vintage-looking computer monitor, and a telephone Chloe hoped was actually plugged in. “How about if you get yourself situated, have a cup of—” His eyes darted to a coffee maker on a small cabinet against a wall, with about an inch and a half of coffee at the bottom of the pot. It looked lonely and cold.

  Chuck sidled to the exit, sending what might have been an apologetic nod in her direction.

  Bret took no notice. “Could you make a pot of coffee?” he asked her. “I’ll get with you at ten. Sharp.”

  As if that were settled, he turned away and headed for a side door at the other end of the office at high speed, dialing the cordless phone as he walked. Leaving her alone in the newsroom. With the coffee maker.

  If her new boss had paused long enough for her to draw a breath, Chloe would have been tempted to object. Probably just as well. His quick departure gave her time to remember her mother’s advice whenever her dad or her brothers were being sexist: Pick your battles.

  So, Chloe laid her briefcase down on top of the desk Bret had indicated and got to work.

  Her first day as a full-time reporter, and her first assignment was to make a pot of coffee.

  * * *

  For the next hour, Chloe watched Bret Radner with a mixture of apprehension and fascination.

  She’d only met McCrea in person twice, and she missed him already. The editor had definitely been a no-nonsense type, brief and to the point; she’d learned to keep her e-mails to him short, because sometimes he’d miss a question if she surrounded it with too much extraneous detail.

  Compared to this guy, McCrea was a model of patience and leisure.

  Bret made his way in and out of the newsroom with the speed of a tornado, but no tornado was ever so purposeful. The air around him practically crackled as he wore a path between the editor’s office and the desk across from Chuck’s, making and taking phone calls in quick, clipped tones. Physically, he wasn’t as imposing as either of her two brothers, but even from across the room, he intimidated the heck out of her.

  He got over to the coffee maker moments after the pot had finished perking and poured a cup with a brief glance in her direction before he vanished through another door, this one at the back of the room. The Gazette didn’t look that big from the outside, but obviously the building branched off in all directions.

  Midway through the hour, Bret got the call he’d apparently been waiting for. “Ned? Where the heck are you?”

  He’d come to a momentary stop in front of the desk across from Chuck’s. Standing with one arm propped on the desktop, he said, “I don’t get it. Your wife’s in labor, not you.”

  Chloe studied his face for any sign that he was joking. She saw no change in his expression.

  Then, as the person on the other end responded, he grinned—an expression she’d never seen on him before. “Same to you.” The grin faded as he eyed the desk blotter calendar in front of him. “This is early, isn’t it?” Another pause. “Okay. Keep us posted. Give Debbie my best.”

  He switched from the cell phone to the telephone on his desk. Chloe wasn’t sure what had happened to the cordless handset. “Jen? Could you get me McCrea’s list of freelance photographers? Ned’s going to be out for awhile. Debbie’s in labor. Yeah, two weeks early . . . Do you know if we have an account with the florist?” He nodded. “But hold off until we hear how it goes.”

  As he hung up, Chloe volunteered, “Two weeks isn’t that bad.”

  He looked at her as if surprised to see her still there. “So he told me.”

  And he sped off to the reception area.

  Chloe sipped her coffee and returned to the task of straightening—or finding—her desk. The newspapers covering the top ranged in age from two weeks to two years old; she set them aside for recycling. The phone did, in fact, have a dial tone, and the computer hummed to life when she turned it on. The drawers were filled with curious archeological artifacts: stray teabags, broken pencils, absolutely no working pens, and half-filled memo pads with scribbled notes dated three years ago. Had it been that long since they had another reporter?

  She thought Bret might forget her, but he returned to stand in front of her desk promptly at ten. “Okay. Let’s back up and start from the beginning.” He extended his hand to her again. “I’m Bret.”

  “Chloe.” She leaned across the desk to shake his hand again and got the same brief, firm squeeze as before.

  Did he remember her from the Pine ’n’ Dine? He gave no indication. Good.

  Bret leaned back to sit against the top of Chuck’s desk, arms folded in front of him. Chloe wondered if he realized what a closed-off posture that was. She wondered if it was intentional.

  “So,” he said. “This is your first full-time news gig?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He closed his eyes briefly, as if he’d just witnessed a ten-car pileup. “Basics.”

  Then his eyes opened, and the onslaught of instructions began.

  “Work day starts at eight. Deadline is two-thirty, but we’ve never taken that literally. It was designed for the best of all possible worlds, and this isn’t it. But unless you have an appointment, which you’ll let me know about, you need to be back at your desk by then. We’re short-staffed here, as you can see, so I need boots on the ground pretty quick. By the end of two weeks, I’ll expect you to be filing ten stories a week. . . .”

  Without taking her eyes from Bret, Chloe felt around on her desk for the pad of paper she’d left there. Thank God she’d brought her own pens.

  Bret nodded. “Yes, put that at the top of your list: always have a notepad ready.”

  If he saw any irony in that statement, Chloe couldn’t tell, because as soon as her pen was poised, th
e torrent of information resumed.

  “When you’re doing a phone interview, use a headset and take notes on your keyboard, not by hand. It’s faster and it’s way more accurate. And when you quote someone, make darn sure it’s what they said. No paraphrasing.”

  That was almost insulting. “I would never—”

  “Good. No profanity of any kind, even in a quote. We’re owned by Liberty Communications, which owns over four hundred newspapers across the country. They’re very conservative, and believe me, we want to keep them happy.”

  By the time Bret came to a stop, she’d filled five pages with scribbled notes. She just had to trust that she’d be able to read them later.

  He pushed up from Chuck’s desk. “Generally I’ll be meeting with you on Mondays to go over story proposals for the week. We’ve already lost too much time today, so have at least five ideas ready for me tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, I’ll get you some press releases to write up into news briefs. That should keep you busy.”

  As Bret retreated to the office formerly occupied by McCrea, Chloe sat back, took a deep breath, and exhaled it. She had a feeling it would be her last chance to breathe easily for quite awhile.

  She could do this.

  Writing for a newspaper hadn’t been her first choice for a job, but then, her career plan hadn’t been especially well thought-out. She’d had the conversation dozens of times in college.

  What’s your major?

  English.

  Oh. You want to be an English teacher?

  No. A writer.

  Oh, like a newspaper reporter?

  No. Probably something in marketing . . .

  That had been vague enough to shut them up.

  She’d been told what a versatile major English was for going into anything from marketing to the legal field. Somehow she’d believed it. What she really wanted, she supposed, was a solid day job so she could pursue something more creative on her own time.

  Chloe knew what she was good at. She excelled at writing, and she loved it. She just didn’t know how to make a living at it. Especially in Tall Pine. So, six months into her stint as a waitress, when the Tall Pine Gazette had advertised for freelance reporters, she’d cracked. As it turned out, she enjoyed it far more than she expected. But writing a few stories a month certainly didn’t earn enough for her to quit the Pine ’n’ Dine.

  Now she had this, while it lasted.

  Ten stories a week for the next three months. Including interviews and research, as well as writing them. Not to mention coming up with enough story ideas that would pass muster with her new boss.

  She could do this.

  It was this, or back to waiting tables.

  * * *

  Bret closed the door of McCrea’s office behind him and resisted the urge to lean back against it and bar out the outside world. With glass walls, that wasn’t an option. So, keeping his back straight, he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  He’d been wrong about one thing: her eyes weren’t blue.

  There was some blue in there, but they were more of a deep gray, with a hint of green if you looked long enough. Like the ocean on a stormy afternoon. Especially when he’d asked her to make coffee. And now he remembered her snarky joke about the Unabomber. So, not a china doll.

  But she still didn’t look much like a reporter, unless you counted the ones you saw on TV shows, with that bright smile and that shiny briefcase. Pretty enough to make him wonder, again, if McCrea had been thinking straight when he hired her.

  He wouldn’t invest much time in her—couldn’t afford to—until he knew whether she was going to last beyond the first two weeks. He’d set the bar pretty high. But no higher than McCrea had set for Bret when he started here.

  She’d pan out or she wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t let a pretty face sway his judgment.

  Chapter 2

  Chloe landed on the well-worn plaid couch, clunked her stocking feet on top of the cheap wooden excuse for a coffee table, and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t have the apartment to herself long.

  But it shouldn’t be hard to doze for a few minutes, after the two days she’d had. On the inside of her closed eyelids, she saw her computer screen at the office, with its eccentric news editing software and square gray cursor blinking at her. Until the cursor started moving by itself. Backward, over the words she’d just typed, their meaning unintelligible. The letters blurred and faded away . . .

  And the front door opened, jarring her halfway out of her skin. Kate came blustering in with Tiffany right behind her, both still dressed in the obligatory pink Pine ’n’ Dine uniforms. How had they both pulled the day shift the first week Chloe was gone?

  “Hey, sunshine.” Kate held out a narrow white box. “Dick Rickard misses you.”

  Chloe sat bolt upright, this time not because she was startled. Dick was one of her nicest customers, an older gentleman who loved the Early Bird dinner special. And if Chloe wasn’t mistaken, that white box contained candy from Sue’s Sweets on Evergreen Lane. It might not be a heaping plate of her mother’s mashed potatoes and gravy, but it would do for comfort food tonight.

  Not worried about spoiling her appetite for her frozen dinner, Chloe took the box from Kate and snatched the lid off. She scrutinized the chocolates. A lot of times, the oval ones had maple filling, her favorite. She picked one up and bit into it.

  “Orange.” Oh, well. The candy was a gift, and chocolate was chocolate.

  “If you look inside the lid, there’s a diagram that shows you which ones are which.” Tiffany perched on the arm of the sofa on Chloe’s right.

  “That’s cheating.” Chloe contemplated the rows of candy in their little brown paper nests. Was it her imagination or did it seem a little roomy in there? She tilted the box, and the candies slid, exposing quite a bit of the white cardboard bottom. She cast a distrustful look, first at Tiffany, then at Kate.

  Tiffany looked a little shame-faced. Kate shrugged. “We taste-tested a few.”

  Chloe tried to muster the energy to glare at her roommates. Tiffany, with her short, dark hair and passion for punky eyeliner, probably had the softest heart of anyone she knew. And Kate, with her straight, shoulder-length brown hair, always speaking before she thought. Chloe had known them both all her life, even though she and Kate hadn’t really been friends until their junior year of high school. Kate had spiked a volleyball that smashed straight into Chloe’s face, Tiffany had rushed to her defense, and Kate had apologized profusely while the three of them tried to stem the flow of Chloe’s bloody nose. Somehow, out of that messy experience, the three had forged a bond that had lasted through all the comings and goings of Chloe’s college years.

  There was no point getting mad at them. After all, it wasn’t reasonable to expect self-control when chocolate was involved.

  “Thanks for saving me some.” Chloe tried for a little sarcasm, just on general principles, but she knew it didn’t convince anyone.

  It would have taken a sledgehammer to get through to Kate, anyway. “How was Day Two with Simon Legree?” Kate plopped onto the couch on Chloe’s left, suspiciously close to the box of chocolates.

  “Ask me tomorrow.” Chloe gestured weakly toward the open box of candy. After her roommates each grabbed a piece, she closed the lid. “I don’t think I have any words left in me right now.”

  Even from across the newsroom, Bret’s presence had hung over her like a vaguely disapproving shadow, and she couldn’t dispel the feeling he was just waiting for her to screw up. For the past two days he’d barely gone near her, except to drop more press releases on her head. How she was supposed to get any work done on the three out of five article ideas he’d approved, Chloe didn’t know. But at least she had an interview scheduled for tomorrow morning. She’d better be able to speak English again by then.

  Maybe Bret was God’s way of trying to cure her of her weakness for smart, quiet guys. The kind who had never approached her in high school, either because they were too sh
y or they just plain weren’t interested. Bret was like one of those guys grown up—just take away the quiet and shy and add in a healthy dose of terror. It sounded like the perfect vaccine to Chloe.

  “You could come back to work with us,” Tiffany said.

  “Or we could break his legs,” Kate chimed in.

  Chloe huffed out a weak laugh in spite of herself. But the laugh and the chocolate were just what she needed. She didn’t plan to jump ship for the Pine ’n’ Dine, at least not until this fill-in gig was over. And when McCrea got back, there was always the chance it could turn into something permanent. After all, unless you were planning a career in restaurant management, no one wanted to wait tables for too long.

  Through her bleary eyes, for the first time, Chloe saw this apartment for what it was: a way station. The lumpy couch, donated by one of Tiffany’s ex-boyfriends. The coffee table, a discarded woodshop project from Kate’s older brother. And the brick-and-board bookshelves Chloe had thought were so ingenious the first time she’d constructed them in college. By her senior year, they’d looked a little tacky and tired even back in the dorm.

  This place was temporary, and in most ways, that was a good thing.

  But for right now, it was nice to know that either of her friends stood ready to beat Bret to a pulp—at least metaphorically—on her behalf.

  There was just one thing. This town was small, and words had echoes. “I didn’t call him Simon Legree,” she murmured weakly.

  With that pronouncement, she vowed she was officially done talking for the day. She slumped silently, flanked by her roommates, who eyed the candy box like two sparrows on the prowl for a dropped sandwich crust in a parking lot.

  Chloe gave up and pulled the lid off the box. “Okay, have at it. Just save me some of the oval ones.”

  And she let her head drop onto the back of the couch.

  * * *

  Wednesday morning, and it was shaping up to be a long week.

  Bret’s newly inherited office felt more and more confining, its glass walls cutting him off from the newsroom more than letting him see into it. It was unexpectedly hard to write in here. Somewhere along the line, he’d not only mastered the art of working with activity around him; it felt strange trying to work without it. He closed the window of the article he’d been working on—he was spending way too much time second-guessing his own prose—and returned to editing some of the material for tomorrow’s paper.