Their Unexpected Christmas Gift

Which reminded him yet again that lawyer Vivian wasn’t someone for him to consider for anything beyond dinner tonight. She’d already told him in no uncertain terms that she placed a high priority on her career. Like his parents, her job consumed her life. Hours and hours of work, weeks and weeks of preparation. The kind of single-minded workaholic tendencies Nick steered clear of, especially when associated with a law degree.

Vivian sat down at the table, with Ellie in her basket on the seat beside her. As if to prove his thoughts true, Vivian set the almost empty bottle on the table, then pulled out her enormous black leather planner and her laptop. For a long time, there was only the sound of her fingers on the keyboard and the soft coos of the baby.

After a while, Vivian sat back, stretched and glanced over at Nick. “So, how’s the chicken coming along?”

He shrugged. “Since I’m making it for two after buying ingredients for one, I added some fresh linguini I made yesterday.” He scooped a ladleful of starchy pasta water out of the pot, then stirred it into the artichoke sauce, which began to thicken, velvety and rich.

“You make your own pasta? I can barely boil water.”

He picked up the pasta pot and crossed to the sink to drain it, then set the cooked pasta aside. “It’s not that hard. It’s almost…therapeutic to make pasta and bread. All that kneading is very zen.”

Now it was her turn to laugh. “If there’s one thing I could use, it’s a little zen.”

She did seem very uptight, as if she was held together with steel wires. That had been him, two months ago, when he was working with Carson and hating his job. “Growing up as the child of two lawyers, I know that lawyering is stressful. My parents operated on short fuses, still do. My brother Grady runs his own company, and my other brother and I used to provide tech support. None of us went into the family business, so my dad thinks we’re all failures, except Grady because he has a lot of zeros in his paycheck. I thought my job was stressful, but Grady’s was ten times worse. He was a working advertisement for avoiding that kind of thing.”

He hadn’t strung together that many words at one time in weeks. What was wrong with him? Pouring out his life story to a woman—a lawyer—who he barely knew? In his experience, nothing warm and fuzzy ever came out of a lawyer.

“And now you’re cooking?”

The lilt on the end of her voice made it sound like she thought he’d taken a step down the career ladder. And yes, he had in terms of salary and benefits, but his days were far less tense and most mornings, he rolled out of bed, his mind whirring with menus and ingredients and purpose instead of dread and tension. “It’s where I’m happy. I think.”

“You think?”

He used metal tongs to toss the pasta and sauce together. A quick taste, and then a dash of salt, and the meal was done. He grabbed two white plates out of the cabinet and set a fat twirl of pasta in the center, topped it with slices of chicken and a smattering of vegetables, then added sliced homemade bread on the side.

All to avoid answering that question of whether he was happy or not. The answer was complicated, and Nick didn’t feel like explaining anything complicated right now.

“Dinner is served.” He laid the plate before her with a little flourish, then handed her a rolled napkin with silverware tucked inside. “I can carry the baby upstairs, if you want to eat in your room again.”

A part of him hoped she’d say yes, and leave him to his kitchen and his solitude. And another crazy part hoped she stayed and ate with him.

“Oh, well, I wasn’t planning to eat in my room. I know I did before, but that was so I could visit with my sister, which really meant working a lot while she napped.” Vivian frowned, then the placid face was back, erasing any emotion. “If it’s okay, I’d like to stay here. I could use some company. I so rarely have any while I eat, and it’s been a hell of a day.”

Nick didn’t eat with the guests. He’d grown to prefer his meals alone, or occasionally taken with Della or Mavis. He’d flick on the television in his room and let some mindless sitcom or movie he’d seen a hundred times fill the silence. That way he could mope and stew, and not have to answer any questions about why he was or wasn’t happy. Or dwell on why he was still avoiding his grandmother’s last request.