Page 11 of Miss Christmas

“Deirdre, my friend, today you are witnessing a record being set.”

Her friend pursed her lips. She knew Scarlet too well. Dee sighed and went along anyway.

“Okay, I’ll bite. What record?”

“For the shortest-lived fling ever. So short, it almost can’t be counted.”

“You mean your flirtation with Will Regal?”

She nodded. She’d told her friend that she’d made a late-night phone call to Will and his promise to come by the luncheonette today. But, in a massive break with her typical protocol, she hadn’t uttered a word to Dee about the crazy, soul-blistering, utterly magnificent phone sex. How could she? She could barely wrap her own head around it. Over-the-top impulsive even for her, she only hoped she hadn’t blown her chance to get to know Will Regal better. Because there was some kind of connection between them. She’d bet her left tit on it.

She didn’t care that the connection was purely sexual as she gazed out the window into the late afternoon dark at passersby who’d started in earnest with the holiday shopping, carrying their bags. That’s what made it so exciting. Except he hadn’t shown, so maybe it had all been one-sided.

Damn him. She picked up the soapy cloth she’d been wiping the counter with and tossed it in the direction of the trash.

“Don’t worry, honey. I have a feeling he’ll be back.” Deirdre’s smile was uncharacteristically Cheshire-like. Her friend’s smiles were usually more the sour lemon variety. She’d grown used to Dee’s quirks but found it unnerving enough this time to raise her brows. Unnerving enough to distract her so that when the doorbell jingled, she jumped.

Even before she turned, her nerve endings alerted her to his presence. Spinning around as if she were a player in a musical, she faced the door to see Will Regal, tall, hunky, and imposing in his long dark coat, no hat hiding his dark wavy hair, an eager yet apologetic smile charming her before she opened her mouth.

“I never said what time I’d show up.” He came up against the counter separating them and leaned forward, cutting the space between them to a breath-sucking distance. But she didn’t back down and she didn’t forget to play her part as the wronged woman. It was too good a part to give up so easily. She hated that he’d made her wait until the last second.

“No matter to me. Lying bastards aren’t my thing.” She took a step back, but couldn’t move her eyes from his. Not even when her phone rang.

“Aren’t you going to get that?”

“Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t.”

Dee came up to her and looked at the phone. “Scarlet, I hate to interrupt your standoff, but I think you’d better take this call.” The tight, understated excitement in her friend’s voice made her flinch and she looked away from Will long enough to glance at the screen of her blaring phone. Regal Department Stores’ number flashed. She’d added it to her contacts earlier so she’d know if she got the call about the pageant.

Anticipation of another kind flooded her, competing with the pull of Will Regal the man. Suddenly the connection between the two spiked a shaft of fear into her. Fear that she might be doing something wrong.

“I have to take this call.” She slipped the phone from the stainless steel prep area behind the counter and walked away, along the counter and into the hall at the end that led to the storage room. She closed the door behind her.

“Hello, Scarlet Jones speaking.”

“Hello Miss Jones. I’m Frances Celini, calling from Regal Department Stores to let you know that you’ve been chosen to be a finalist in the Miss Christmas pageant.” Whatever else the woman said was lost in the skyrocket celebration exploding in her head. She jumped up and down and spun once before collapsing against a stack of paper towels. Onto step two in her pursuit of ten thousand dollars to bring her mother to the city.

“. . . tomorrow at nine a.m. in our offices on the eleventh floor.”

“Tomorrow? You want me to be there tomorrow?”

“Yes, Ms. Jones. Can you make it?”

Hardly. That was right in the middle of the breakfast rush and Wednesdays were their busiest day.

“Of course. I’ll be there.” She punched the call off lest the woman change her mind. How crazy was this? She had an actual shot at a ten-thousand-dollar prize. In time for Christmas. Her first impulse was to call her mother, but that was immediately replaced with the need to bound back to the counter before hunky Will escaped.

His showing up at the last minute didn’t seem like such a big deal to her right now. With too much enthusiasm she rushed back to the luncheonette counter to find Will and Dee the only ones left. They turned to her in unison. Dee immediately quirked her face into an I-told-you-so smirk.

Will looked quizzical and then almost guarded, like he was about to leave.

“Oh no you don’t—you’re not leaving until I share my good news.”

“I knew it,” Dee slapped the counter. “You’re a finalist, aren’t you?”

* * *

Apprehension competed with lust in an unholy battle, making his gut feel like a cement mixer. This was a bad idea. Fran had the worst timing in the history of bad timing. Or maybe not. He glanced up at his building across the street and the mostly darkened windows to find his office faintly lit. The old girl was still working, making calls. Shit.