His By Christmas

There was another flash and the booming sound of thunder. Then the lights went out.

“Isn’t that just swell?” Cal leaned back in his chair. “People, ordinary or otherwise, can’t do much of anything now. Including work.”

Justine glanced from the downpour outside to the irritated, angry look on Cal’s face. “Wow. Bummer. Since the business machines are out of commission, you might have to sit here and talk to me.”

“This would not happen in Blackwater Lake. And before you remind me the power can go out anywhere, I have a generator there.”

“Then why don’t you go back there?” That was a very good question, one she’d asked the first day and hadn’t received an answer to. Call it the weird vibe of electrical energy in the air, but now she wanted to know. “Now that I think about it, carrying on business at the level you seem obsessed with is a challenge here. So, why didn’t you go home after breaking your leg? What’s going on, Cal? And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’”

Chapter Four (#ucaf959fd-9ebe-5587-8ef0-b2f81d1e6665)

“But nothing is going on.”

Pushing back against a statement of fact had put Cal in this predicament in the first place. You’d think he would know better than to keep doing it. Maybe he wasn’t capable of learning, after all.

“Calhoun Hart, you’re a big, fat fibber.” Justine put her spoon down in her empty bowl. Her eyes narrowed on him and made him want to squirm, but he resisted the urge.

“I have no idea what you mean.” He’d been about to say again that there was nothing going on, but decided it was protesting too much. He had to play this just right. “And ‘big, fat fibber’? Really? Is this junior high?”

“And there it is,” she said triumphantly.

“There what is?” He looked around the shadowy interior of the villa. “And how can you see it without the lights?”

“You’re so glib.”

Her tone didn’t make the comment sound like a compliment, but that didn’t stop him from running with it. “That just might be the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“You tap dance pretty well for a man with a broken leg.” The words were spoken in a pleasant voice, but her eyes were still narrowed on him. “Your behavior is classic.”

“How?”

“It tells me that you’re hiding something.” She held up her hand and started ticking things off on her fingers. “You turned the conversation back on me being ‘junior high.’ Then deflected to electricity. And tap-danced to twisting my words into a compliment. You better start talking, mister.”

“Or what?”

“Now who’s acting all junior high?” she accused him.

He grinned. “Then I’m going for it all the way. You’re not the boss of me.” Since when was being on the hot seat so much fun? The only variable was Justine. “There’s nothing you can do to make me talk.”

“Oh, you’re so wrong about that. There are many, many ways I could bring you to your knees.”

“One comes to mind. Using my crutches for a bonfire on the beach.” He met her gaze and shrugged.

“There’s no reason I have to be that cruel. Or literal.” She tapped her lip. “I can think of a much quicker, much simpler way.”

“What could be easier than commandeering a man’s crutches?”

“I could call your mother.” She smiled slowly and with more than a little wickedness.

“That’s low, Justine.”

“A girl has to do what a girl has to do.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I wonder if there’s cell service during an electrical storm.”

For several moments Cal wasn’t sure that the pounding he heard wasn’t in his ears. His sneaky assistant frowned at her phone and he guessed Mother Nature was giving him a reprieve.

“You can’t call my mom. You don’t have her phone number.”

“Want to bet?”

He was beginning to wish he’d never heard the word bet. Little Miss Serene had a fairly ruthless expression on her face. Not unlike the stubborn set of her mouth when she refused to work overtime. She obviously wasn’t going to let this go.

“All right. You win. There is something.”

“Aha.” She pointed at him. “So you are a big, fat fibber.”

“Prevaricator. My vocabulary has improved since middle school.”

“Then start using your words and tell me what you’re up to. Pronto.”

“Would you mind if I sat on the couch and propped my leg up for this?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Is it a long story?”

“There are some things I need to explain. All to give you context,” he said.

“Well, we can’t go to work until the lights come back on anyway...”

“Good.” That would give him time to figure out how to say this so he wouldn’t drain all the reserves her soul had so recently stored up.

Cal pushed to a standing position and balanced on his right foot while he grabbed the crutches and propped them under his arms. He swung himself over to the huge couch and sank into it, then put the injured leg up and stretched it out.

“Do you want me to bring your plate over?” There was a spark of amusement in her eyes. “Keep up your strength for this?”

“Funny girl.” He’d lost his appetite halfway through. “No. I’ve had enough.”

“How about coffee?”

“Yes. Please,” he added.

She ferried cups, saucers and the insulated pot of coffee to the table then poured refills for both of them. Taking hers, she sat in the club chair beside him and looked expectant. “I’m listening.”

“Okay.” He met her gaze and had the absurd thought that she looked pure and innocent even when threatening to tattle to his mother. Hopefully his confession wouldn’t crush that out of her. “I’m a very competitive guy. Could just be my nature or where I fall in the family birth order.”

“You’re the second son.”

Cal remembered his brother telling him to get over second-son syndrome. “So it’s common knowledge.”

“Hart Energy is a subsidiary of Hart Industries. If one works there, it would be hard not to know.”