Page 97 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
Tanner wished he could summon even a glimmer of happiness about the holiday. He missed his family and desperately loved another man’s fiancé. A woman who used to be his.
A woman who’d loved him once. Or so she said.
Oh, yes, Merry Christmas.
CHAPTER5
Tanner stepped inside the Sentinel office and stopped short. Kate sat behind a scarred wooden desk, spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose, pencil tapping against the record book open before her.
Wonderful.
Charlie’s fidgeting the night before suddenly made sense.
“Hurry in, Charlie, it’s freezing,” Kate said without looking up.
He closed the door and walked forward, trying to mask the heaviness of his step. Pausing before his knees hit the desk, he searched her bent head, her tidy chignon. No sign of the rusty hairpin. His rusty hairpin. Probably have better luck searching the ditch along Main Street.
“I’ve almost finished the subscription accounts for” —Kate glanced up, stumbled— “for last month.” Her grip on the pencil tightened; a rosy streak crossed each cheek.
“Good news. Excellent.”
She stared for a moment, reached to brush her lips, then dropped her head, gazing at the record book. A shiver she probably didn’t want him to see worked its way up her arm. “If you’re following me or—”
“I didn’t know you would be here,” he said, anger peaked. “Honest.”
A sound—a dubious grunt he thought an apt description—met his ears.
“Really.” He hitched his hip on the desk. “I didn’t plan this. Charlie’s grand idea.”
“I can believe that,” she whispered.
“Tell you what, Kat, just pretend I’m not here. Like that evening we sat through dinner at the Chisom’s ball, right across from each other. Our eyes met twice, I think. Obviously, I’m easy to ignore.”
Another grunt as her pencil skated over the page.
“Actually, I would have arrived earlier in the day, but I was making up for lost sleep. Standing around in a poor man’s excuse for an alley half the night really took it out of me. Waiting for” —he tapped his finger atop the slanted figures marking her page— “waiting for...oh, what the hell was I waiting for?”
Her head lifted, amber eyes glowing in a pale face. Her anger was easily definable. Whatever else she felt, she tucked close. “I don’t owe you a blessed thing, Mr. Barkley. Not ten minutes behind my mother’s shop or sixty seconds in here. Your effrontery never fails to amaze me. Truly, never fails. Why...oh....” Her pencil arched across paper, the tip snapping when it bounced off the desk’s surface.
Tanner smiled, felt a responsive, aggressive tightening in his gut. He’d experienced this sensation many times with Kat. During one of their chess matches or, if they’d been in a bit of a combative mood, just before they made love. Well, he and Kate had been heading toward this confrontation for two years: two lonely, silent years. His palms slicked, and he rubbed them against his thighs. Jesus, he was ready. “Last night, you said you would be there. Listen to me. Give me a chance to work things out.”
“I lied.”
“Obviously. Getting pretty good at lying, aren’t you?”
She pulled her spectacles free and flung them to the desk, then stood and leaned in until their noses almost brushed. A broad band of sunlight washed over her, igniting her hair, bronzing her skin. She looked formidable and magnificent. “You bastard. I never lied to you. Not once. I gave you everything I had to give and more. What a fool, oh, what a fool I was.”
He released a breath, delayed taking another. The scent of sandalwood confused his thoughts, did strange things to his insides. “Don’t you think I know that? Why I tried so goddamned hard to talk with you. Explain—”
“Explain? Explain.” She brought her hand to her brow and squeezed, as if she could expel her thoughts.
“I never used one word you said in the story, Kat. Not one. I didn’t need you to get inside Asher’s business. I didn’t need your information. Not one damn thing you told me showed up in any of those articles. Your name, yes, but I didn’t plan that, Kat. I swear.” His fist hit the desk, sending papers to the floor. “By God, didn’t you read them?”
“No. Not after the first morning.” Her fingertips pressed hard, making dents in her skin. “I couldn’t endure the pain.”
“Goddammit, Kat, you didn’t read them? No wonder, then.” All the time they had lost. “I’d been bellying up to Asher for more than three months when I met you. Occasional games of poker at the club, late night political discussions over whiskey, constantly needling him to hire me. None of my articles had anything to do with you. I told Asher the truth, partially. Presented myself as a jaded heir to a banking fortune needing an office to waste a few hours of the day. He understood my situation all too well. Mirrored his. And, Sloane-Barkley wasn’t a bad contact for him to have. I had protected myself, my identity, and I knew it. My byline hadn’t run in the Times for three years. Not under my own name, anyway. He never guessed for a moment that I was not who I said I was.”
Kate lowered her hand, her eyes sweeping across his face. “That made two of us.”