Cole For Christmas

Cole thought back to the icy looks that had put his initial attraction to Anna in deep freeze. She’d grilled him relentlessly about why he was pursuing an assistant position when he was qualified to be a marketing director.

He’d claimed to be aiming for her job because he couldn’t very well tell her the truth.

The part about him needing work while he was getting to know his father would have been fine. The part about him being a mole trying to figure out why profits were lagging wouldn’t have gone over as well.

Cole wanted to reveal his connection to Skillington Ski up front, but Arthur Skillington had talked him out of it. Arthur claimed Cole would be more likely to get to the heart of the problem if the other employees, whose jobs were at risk, weren’t on guard around him.

Mostly because he wanted to please a father he’d never known but already loved, Cole had gone along with the plan.

He hadn’t let dating Anna enter his mind, primarily because the wrong word from him could get her fired.

“Well, no, I can’t say I thought about asking her out right off the bat,” he said. “At first, she struck me as…cool.”

Grandma Ziemanski’s wrinkled hand flew to her chest. “You think Anna’s cruel?”

“Not cruel, Mom. Cool. And he doesn’t mean now. He meant then.” Rosemary leaned across him to get the point across to her mother. “Tell us what you think of Anna now, Cole.”

His gaze once again honed in on Anna. Although up to this point her marketing efforts hadn’t been enough to pull Skillington Ski out of its slump, at work she struck him as intelligent and competent.

But her mother was interested in his personal assessment. As he tried to form one, firelight danced over her. It infused her golden skin with warmth and made it seem as though her brown hair was spun through with red and gold highlights.

Grandpa Ziemanski snatched the Santa hat from her mop of brown curls and covered his own bald head. When Anna threw back her head and laughed, her face seemed to glow.

“I think she’s the most captivating woman I’ve ever seen,” Cole said under his breath.

“Captivating?” Rosemary nodded. “That’s a good word. Much less trite than beautiful.”

“You don’t think Anna’s beautiful?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

Cole jerked his gaze from Anna to her grandmother. “Yes,” he refuted quickly. “Yes, of course I think she’s beautiful.”

“And captivating,” Rosemary added, sounding smug. She squeezed his arm. “I knew you felt that way about my daughter the minute I saw you.”

“How did you know, Rosie?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

“The face,” Rosemary said. “There’s always something glowy around the eyes.”

Anna picked that moment to slant him another one of those disapproving looks. A shard of guilt speared through Cole.

She’d spent a good portion of the last few hours trying to make her family understand they weren’t dating, and here he was looking at her with “glowy” eyes and expounding on their non-existent romance.

It was a terrible way to repay her for the kindness of asking him to dinner with her warm, wonderful family.

“So when did you change your mind about Anna being cruel and decide you wanted to ask her out?” Grandma Ziemanski asked.

“He didn’t say cruel, Mom,” Rosemary cut in with an audible tsk. “He said cool.”

“Alright already. Then let me put it another way.” Grandma Ziemanski peered at him. “When did the cools turn into the hots?”

Cole was about to point out that he didn’t have the hots for his boss when he realized he needed to face facts.

A few hours ago, on the sidewalk in front of the house, a definite thaw had begun when he noticed she was nervous about introducing him to her family.

The notion of Anna being apprehensive about anything had thrown him, and he’d glimpsed a different, softer woman in those moments under the starlight.

After watching her talk and laugh with her family over dinner, he’d concluded that woman and not the cool, detached one who came to the office every day was the true Anna.

He tapped his chin with a knuckle while he thought about how to phrase his answer so that it was both truthful and non-inflammatory.

Yes, he was attracted to Anna. But, no, he couldn’t become involved with her.

“Anna asked you out first, didn’t she?” Rosemary asked when the moments lengthened without a response. “That’s what you don’t want to say?”

“No,” Cole said quickly, then thought of the invitation to dinner. “I mean yes, but—”

“That Anna has always been too straightforward for her own good,” Rosemary said. “Did you know she told Brad Perriman right there in the living room in front of all of us that she didn’t want to date him? Not that he accepted that. But in this case, I suppose we should be thankful.”

“Look, I should confess something here,” Cole began before the women could jump to any more conclusions.

“I already know,” Rosemary said. “Don’t you think I noticed the way she’s been glaring at you?”

“What do you know?” Grandma Ziemanski asked her daughter.

“That Anna made Cole here promise to tell us he was only a friend.”

“That’s true,” Cole said. “But—”

Rosemary patted him on the hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupted. “We knew Anna wasn’t telling the truth about you not being her boyfriend as soon as we saw you.”

WHAT WAS COLE telling her mother and grandmother?

Anna tried to convey with a long, penetrating look that he needed to be careful of what he said.

The main reason she didn’t bring home men was that the Ziemanski women seemed to think she needed a husband. Anna wasn’t against marriage but she’d yet to have a truly successful relationship.

Before unleashing her family on a man, she needed to be sure she not only loved him but trusted him. The way she’d never trust a man who panted after her job.

She’d had Cole in her sights long enough to notice that teeth were flashing on either side of him. Didn’t he realize things weren’t going well if her mother and grandmother were smiling?

She’d have to head over there and set things straight but not until Julie and Drew, her sister’s husband of three months, understood the situation. She turned back to them.

“So now you see why I couldn’t leave Cole all alone in the office on Christmas Eve, right?” she asked.

Julie giggled, prompting Anna to notice that Drew was nuzzling a spot below her sister’s ear. She frowned.

“Are you two even listening to me?”