Leslie Kelly – Wicked Christmas Nights: It Happened One Christmas (страница 8)

“That’s good—I’d hate to think you’ve spent the last six years in jail.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t stopped calling, you’d know where I spent the last six years,” she replied, ever-so-sweetly.

Direct hit. He winced. “Look, Lucy…”

She waved a hand, obviously angry at herself for having said anything. “Forget it. Water under the bridge.”

“You know what I was going through—why I left New York.” Of course she knew, she’d been there when he’d gotten the call that brought him back home.

“I know,” she said. “I understood…I understand.”

Maybe. But that not-staying-in-touch thing obviously still rankled.

He’d probably asked himself a dozen times over the years why he hadn’t at least tried to get back in touch with her once his life had returned to something resembling normal. Maybe a hundred times. It always came back to the same thing: he was stuck. His life was here. Hers was…anywhere she wanted it to be. And she’d wanted it to be in another country, and a completely different reality from his, which was filled with contracts and workers-comp issues and the cost of lumber.

She’d been off to capture the world one still image at a time. He’d been boxed in, chained to the past, owing too much to other people to just go and live his life the way he had wanted to.

Not that it had turned out badly. He actually loved running the business and had done a damn fine job of it. He was glad to live in Chicago. He liked the vibe of this city, the people and the culture. So no, he didn’t regret coming back here. He had only one regret. Her.

“And now here you are,” he murmured, though he hadn’t intended to say it out loud.

“Don’t make a big thing of it,” she insisted. “I had no idea you worked here.”

“And if you had known? Would you have taken the job today, risked bumping into me?”

She didn’t reply. Which was answer enough.

Lucy really was mad at him. Well, that made two of them; he was mad at himself. Plenty of room for regrets, with six years of what-ifs under his belt. But at the time it had seemed like he was doing the right thing—the best thing—for both of them.

Of course, he’d questioned that just about every day since.

“Excuse me, Ross?”

He glanced away from Lucy, seeing Stella, his administrative assistant, who he’d inherited from his father. Who’d inherited her from his father. Older than dirt didn’t describe her. She had dirt beat—you’d have to go back to the rocks that had been worn down into the dirt to describe her.

You wouldn’t know it to look at her. From the bottled black dye job to the floral-print dress, she could pass for fifty. But Ross knew she’d passed that milestone at least two decades ago. He dreaded the day she was no longer around to keep him organized.

Or to matchmake? He was going to have to have a talk with Stella about that. He knew his assistant thought he was stressed and lonely and spent too much time in the office. Plus, Stella knew about Lucy—she was one of the few people who did, having gotten Ross to reveal the story after one long, stressful day. But would she have gone to that much trouble—tracking Lucy down and getting her here? It seemed crazy.

If it was true, he would have to decide whether to give her hell for meddling in his private affairs…or thank her.

The way Lucy wasn’t bothering to hide her dislike made him suspect the former.

The thought that he might be able to get her to change her mind? Definitely the latter.

He didn’t deny he was still interested. Still attracted. Judging by the absence of a ring on her left hand, he suspected she was available—at least technically. So maybe it was time to take his shot. See if he could make up for six wasted years. See if there was any way she could forgive him for walking—no, running—away before they ever really had a chance to get started.

“Ross?” Stella prompted again. “Mr. Whitaker is about to leave, and he’d like to see you before he goes.”

Whitaker—a client who’d sent a lot of work their way over the past several years. He wasn’t somebody Ross could ignore.

“Okay,” he said, before turning his attention back to Lucy. “Wait for me.” It wasn’t a request.

“No, I really have to go. It was nice to see you.”

Said like she’d say it was nice to see an elementary school bully she’d loathed for decades. Damn. He’d screwed this up so badly. Six years ago, and today.

“Lucy, please…”

“Uh, Miss Fleming? If you’d step into the office, I can get you your payment right away,” Stella interjected. “I’m sure you’d prefer not to have to wait until after the holidays.”

Her lush bottom lip snagged between her teeth, Lucy looked torn. Ross glanced at Stella, wondering if she was intentionally using some stalling tactics to keep Lucy around. Then again, if she’d been trying to set them up, she probably wouldn’t have interrupted about Whitaker, no matter how important a client he was. So maybe this whole thing had just been luck. Good luck. Incredibly good luck.

And maybe it meant he was going to have another chance with the woman he’d so foolishly let slip away.

HMM. MONEY OR DIGNITY? Go with the bossy assistant, or run like hell? Decisions, decisions.

Normally Lucy would have been heading toward the door the second Ross’s back was turned. She had work to do, editing, photoshopping, cropping…plus all the stuff a small business owner was responsible for, but which often slipped through the cracks when the customers kept walking steadily through the door.

They wouldn’t be walking through the door on Christmas weekend, though, so she should be able to catch up. And one thing she needed to catch up on was ordering. She had some equipment to buy, and paying for it by December 31 would make her tax bill a lot lighter come spring.

Which meant she should really stick around for the money. They’d offered her a lot, both for her time, and for the portrait packages the company had preordered for every family. It might even be enough money to get the new laptop and the new lens she needed.

Ross stared at her, not pleading, not ordering. Just asking her to wait, give them a chance to talk. To catch up on old times? Seriously, what was there to say except, Hey, remember that time we had crazy wild sex in a pile of fluff in Santa’s workshop?

Good times.

Times that would never be repeated.

“I really should go,” she said.

The administrator, who had a brusque manner that said she didn’t like to take no for an answer, didn’t take no for an answer. “Don’t be silly, it won’t take five minutes. It will save our accountants some trouble.”

She eyed the woman doubtfully, suspecting this place did not keep their receipts and canceled checks in empty Amazon.com boxes the way she did.

“After the party, the offices shut down until New Year’s. So I’d really like to get this taken care of today, clear the party off the books, if you will.”

Huh. Sounded like every business had to deal with that pesky little IRS thing, even businesses as big as this one. Which, judging by the size of this brand-new six-story office building, and the fact that Elite Construction took up every floor of it, was very big, indeed. She wondered again what Ross did here. Obviously he no longer swung a hammer—he was dressed like a corporate guy.

She couldn’t help wondering what had happened to his dream of someday buying a piece of property and building a house on it, every stone, every shutter, every plank of wood put there with his own hands. Had Ross given up his dreams? Or had they merely changed, like hers had?

As if realizing his presence was making her reluctant, Ross said, “I should go. It was great seeing you again, Lucy.”

“You, too.”

She forced a tight smile, wishing she could hit Rewind and go back a half hour to think of something else to say to this man. Something breezy and casual, something that wouldn’t have revealed how she felt about not hearing from him after that one magical holiday. Something other than, “Well, if you’d called, you’d know where I’d been for the past six years.”

Weak, girl. So weak. She could almost hear Kate’s voice scolding her for making that snotty, hurt-sounding comment. Even though, now, there would be echoes of a baby and a toddler crying in the background as they had the conversation. Kate had married Teddy and started repopulating the planet.

Lucy, meanwhile, had managed only sexual affairs after Ross. But she hadn’t come anywhere close to falling in love. Not after the one-two punch she’d taken at twenty-two. First Jude, then Ross—the latter being the one who’d truly taught her about love and loss. Her poor heart had formed an exoskeleton thicker than an insect’s. Since then, she’d made love ’em and leave ’em a way of life, only substituting the love with do.

Even Kate had been impressed.

She watched him walk away, noting that he didn’t look back. His departure should have made it easier to stick around for a few minutes to get paid. Instead it just pissed her off. Ross was always the one who got to walk away. One of these days she wanted to be the one to make the grand exit.

But grand exits didn’t buy lenses and laptops. Money did. She’d spent a lot moving her studio from New York to Chicago. Yes, she was building a reputation and business was good. This one check, though, could do some nice things for her bottom line.