A Kiss at Christmas Read online

  Maybe now was the time for multiple fresh starts.

  As soon as he’d hung up the phone, all Parker had been able to do was think about the job while wandering around his apartment in a possibilities-fueled daze that had been both exciting and exhausting. He had pulled into work more than an hour later than he liked and of course, Kelli Ellis from Digital and Print Marketing had already taken his parking spot.

  He smiled thinking about yesterday, though. Who would’ve thought that a simple paper cup and a sharpie could’ve caused such a reaction? Enough of a reaction that he’d actually felt a little bad about it for a moment.

  He knew their pranks were childish. But they also added life to work—like a shot of espresso. They were a bright spot in his day, especially when he’d been going through hard things. As he was preparing the final mockups for their trade show displays for his two o’clock meeting in the conference room, he thought of Kelli again. When Greg had responded saying that he’d just missed being able to reserve the conference room because someone had requested it two minutes earlier, he knew that someone was Kelli. She had been the only other person in the office that early.

  And then it suddenly became available moments after she had discovered the spider cup. She was up to something, and he got more and more wary as two o’clock neared. He finished packing up his stuff and headed into the conference room five minutes before he was supposed to meet his boss, the product manager, and a couple of people on his team.

  Everything was fine, though. His meeting went great, and they finalized decisions on which mockup to use and what last-minute changes needed to be made. He left the room feeling pretty great and ready to get started on the changes. He had been second-guessing the direction he’d gone with this coming year’s event display and worried that it was the wrong choice entirely, but after that brainstorming session, he knew it was going to be the best they’d ever had.

  He was practically whistling his way back to his desk alongside his coworkers, and stopped dead in his tracks when his desk came into view. Sam and Hannah stopped too, and then they burst into laughter. They were the first to race forward and check it out. Parker stayed back a bit, unsure if he wanted to see it closer. Then, curiosity got the better of him, and he walked up to it.

  His entire cubicle was covered in cat pictures. No—on closer inspection, he saw it was just one cat; the pictures were just taken at all different angles. There were poster-sized cat pictures on the walls of his cubicle, one inch high pictures completely covering all four sides of the outside frame of his monitor, framed pictures of the cat on his desk, and an Ode to My Cat poem on the wall.

  On one wall, the one most open to everyone’s view, of course, there was a full-length picture of Parker that was a good two feet tall, cut out, with a speech bubble that said, “I love you, Princess Olive.” And of course, there was a speech bubble on a picture of the cat that said, “And I am willing to share my space with you, Parker. Most of the time.” The cat was even wearing a Santa hat.

  There were even pictures of the cat—Olive, apparently—covering every inch of his desk, underneath all his papers and office supplies. And little tiny pictures of Olive on the C, the A, and the T letters on his keyboard. And in one corner, a stuffed cat whose back legs were seated but front legs standing tall, sat looking regal and judgmental, with a Christmas wreath around its neck like a necklace.

  He couldn’t help it—he burst out laughing. This was good. And so not what he had expected. He turned to Sam. “Did you tell Kelli that I have a cat allergy?”

  “It may have come up in conversation.”

  He shook his head, and then pulled his phone out of his pocket when it started buzzing. Seeing it was his mom, he said, “You’ll have to excuse me,” to Sam and Hannah and then answered it as they both walked back to their own cubicles.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Sweetie. Is this a bad time? I hate bothering you at work—”

  “It’s totally fine, Mom. If it was a problem, I wouldn’t have answered. You know you can call anytime.”

  “You’re a good son, you know? Okay, so today is the last day that your dad and I can cancel our cruise reservations without penalty and—”

  “Don’t cancel, Mom. This is your thirty year anniversary. You guys deserve to go live it up to celebrate.”

  “I know. It’s just that it’s over Christmas.”

  “You love having your anniversary on Christmas Eve, and you should get to go on your anniversary trip during your anniversary.”

  Truthfully, Parker was going to miss them. Christmas Eve at home always consisted of celebrating his parents’ anniversary with a feast, followed by making gingerbread dream homes, then bundling up and going caroling as a family. It was going to feel wrong to not do that.

  Until this year, Christmas was one holiday that he looked forward to as an adult every bit as much as he had when he was a kid. But ever since Stephanie broke off their engagement, he’d lost all desire to celebrate Christmas at all. The magic it held was just gone. Still, though, he was going to miss it this year. But it wasn’t like he was going to have his parents skip the trip they had been planning practically his whole life.

  “I don’t know if it’s right to leave.”

  Parker twirled his pen, which now had a little eraser pushed on the top—like they used in elementary school—in the shape of a cat. Of course. “Ethan is fine to spend Christmas with the Garlands at their cabin?”

  Parker’s boss Adam walked over to his desk, some of the sketches from their meeting in his hand. Parker held up a finger, motioning for him to wait a moment.

  “He’s thrilled about it, actually. It’s on a lake, so he’ll be in heaven the whole time and we’ll be lucky if he even stops to think about us once.”

  “Then it’s right for you two to go.”

  ”It’s you I’m worried about, honey.”

  “If your fourteen-year-old son is fine with it, I think it’s safe to assume that your twenty-seven-year-old son is okay with it, too.”

  “I never would’ve planned it if I hadn’t truly believed you’d be spending Christmas honeymooning it up on your own cruise.”

  He tried not to feel the stab of pain at her mention of how different his life should be right now. “I really will be fine if you go. I will find a way to celebrate Christmas on my own.” It was a lie—he hadn’t planned on celebrating at all. But he didn’t lie to his mom, and the guilt hit instantly. He vowed to listen to a Christmas song, or get a foot-and-a-half tall Christmas tree like Kelli had on her desk and put it up in his apartment. Some little thing that could be considered “celebrating Christmas” so it wasn’t a lie.

  “You will?”

  “I will.”

  “Okay, then, we’ll keep our trip. But if you change your mind, even last minute, you let me know and we’ll cancel and take the penalty.”

  “I will. But don’t worry—I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “I love you, Son.”

  “I love you, too, Mom.”

  Parker hung up the phone and turned to Adam, motioning at the papers in his hand. “More thoughts?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Adam looked down at the papers for a moment, like he’d forgotten he was holding them. “I was thinking that on this section here, where it says, ‘higher,’ the display should physically go higher.” He turned his attention back at Parker. “You don’t have anywhere to go for Christmas?”

  Parker shook his head. “But who knows? I might just hang out with friends.” Not a lie, because he didn’t say he was—just that he might. If all his friends weren’t either married or going home to their parents’ for Christmas, or both, which he was pretty sure they all were. “How much higher are you thinking? Subtle, or aim-for-the-ceiling?”

  Adam dropped the hand holding the plans to his side. “Come to my house for Christmas. Erin and the kids would love it. You can have Christmas Eve feast with us, watch Luke and Holly be Mary and Joseph, alongside a baby doll a
nd bunch of their stuffed animals playing the part of the stable animals. It’ll be unpredictable in the way only a two-year-old and a four-year-old can make it. Then you can stay in our guest room and we’ll open presents Christmas morning, you can see how great it is to experience the magic of Christmas through the eyes of little kids, and we’ll eat warm cinnamon rolls for breakfast. It’ll be great. What do you say?”

  It would be great. Exactly what Parker wanted. His breakup with Stephanie had been difficult, especially now, since they were supposed to get married the week of Christmas. The last thing he needed was to hang out with a guy who had everything Parker wanted, at a time when he was acutely aware of how much he didn’t have it. Especially when it was just a pity ask. His boss didn’t really want him there.

  “I’ll think about it and let you know. Show me what you were thinking about that display.”

  Adam studied him for a moment, and by the look on the guy’s face, he knew Parker’s promise to think about it was really just a way to stall him until he told him no. He lifted the papers he had been holding so they both could see and discuss them.

  Parker just needed to accept that the magic of Christmas was just a childhood thing that he should’ve grown out of. The magic was gone, along with any need to celebrate this year. He was fine spending it alone.

  Chapter Three

  As soon as Kelli heard voices mid-conversation as the conference room door opened, she grabbed her tape dispenser and the few random cat pictures that they hadn’t yet found a place for, and she and Valeria ducked into the break room before Parker and his team rounded the corner. They peeked through the one window that had a perfect view of Parker’s desk and waited.

  “I think you should start dating again,” Valeria whispered.

  “What?” The randomness of the comment caught her off guard.

  “You know, get back on the horse again. They say the longer you wait, the more you’ll fear you’ll get bucked off again.”

  “It’s not the right time.”

  “It’s been a year since you and James broke up. It’s time.”

  She was very sure it wasn’t time. One of the hardest things about the break-up had been James’s family. She had fit in with them, and could even see where her place was in his family. Breaking up meant breaking up with his family. And now that her own little family of two—her and her dad—were doing their own kind of breaking apart, she couldn’t expose herself to that possibility again with someone else.

  It wasn’t until months after she and James stopped dating that she’d realized she had fallen for him because she wanted a family so badly and his was so great. She didn’t trust herself to date anyone right now for fear that she’d make the same mistake again.

  Especially because, right now, she desperately wanted family. For the first time ever, she hated that ZentCube gave them nearly two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s. That was a long time to feel alone and like she didn’t belong anywhere. This year, she was dreading the break.

  Yeah. Definitely not time to start dating.

  “Shh! They’re coming!”

  She held her breath as Parker came into view and wished more than anything that from this angle they could see his face and not just his backside. Parker froze when he saw their handiwork, and Sam and Hannah raced forward to look at it closer. Parker’s dress shirt was fitted enough that she could see his back muscles perfectly, so Kelli watched them closely, along with his arms and hands. But not so that she could admire them—she’d stopped herself from doing that long ago. And then stopped herself again every day, just like she stopped herself now. No, this time she watched so she could interpret his reaction.

  The muscles in his shoulders twitched and his arms were rigid. She chuckled. He looked properly annoyed. Score one for her and Valeria.

  Then Parker laughed. A big, hearty laugh. That was unexpected. And, surprisingly, made her feel like she had won this particular battle in their “Let’s see who can annoy the other person more” war. Interesting.

  He walked forward to check out their display of cat affection, which was pretty great if she did say so herself. She knew he was seconds from turning around to see if he could see the person who had done it—like he’d guess it would be anyone other than her—so she said, “We better get out of here.” Instead of walking out the door on their usual side, they took the door on the opposite side of the break room and walked the long way around, so Parker wouldn’t see them. She chuckled the whole way.

  They had almost made it back to their desks when Kelli’s phone buzzed with a notification. She looked at the screen, eyebrows scrunched together, while she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

  “What is it?”

  Kelli held the phone to where Valeria could read it.

  “Carla Cook... Isn’t she the assistant to one of the bigwigs?”

  Kelli nodded, and opened the text with a shaking finger and read the message out loud. “‘Hello, Kelli. Merit Casselman and Graham McNeil would like to meet with you today at three-thirty in Building HQ, on the third floor. Please let me know if you’ll be able to make this meeting time.’ Why do the CEO and the CTO want to meet with me?” She glanced back the direction of Parker’s desk. “Do you think I’m in trouble for the cat prank?”

  “How would they even know? Besides, that’s not exactly something you’d get called on the carpet for.”

  But Kelli’s stomach had already fallen, her ears were on fire, and she was suddenly feeling very lightheaded. “I don’t know. It’s got to be something.” Her mind raced, trying to figure out what she could possibly be in trouble for. Wouldn’t they just have her boss talk to her if she wasn’t doing something right? Or maybe even someone from Human Resources? Why in the world would the two co-founders of the company need to see her?

  She looked at Valeria. “Did you get a message?”

  Just as they reached their desks, Valeria picked up her phone that she’d left behind. “Nope. No emails at all. Maybe it’s for something good.”

  “You don’t get called to the third floor of headquarters for something good.”

  Valeria glanced at her watch. “Well, you’ve got twenty-two minutes until you need to be there. What can we work on that will take your mind off of it for a few minutes?”

  “Nothing.” Kelli shook her head. “I think maybe I should just head over there now.”

  Getting there early had been a mistake. A winter snowstorm was just rolling in, and big, fat snowflakes were covering her coat and hood by the time she’d walked three buildings over to headquarters. She stomped her feet in the lobby, shook the snow off her coat, and then took the elevator to the third floor. She had seen Merit Casselman quite a few times over the two-and-a-half years that she’d worked at ZentCube, and had met Graham several times, too, but she had never been to the third floor before.

  The receptionist on the third floor led her to Carla, who directed her to a seat outside of Merit’s office, facing a Christmas tree she couldn’t even focus on, to wait for him to finish the meeting he was in. The walk hadn’t helped to calm her racing heart. The cold air hadn’t cleared the lightheadedness. Forcing herself to do calm breathing as she sat and waited didn’t stop her leg from bouncing. And nothing stopped her from feeling like she was sitting outside the principal’s office, about to find out exactly how much trouble she was in.

  Finally, at three-thirty-two, the door opened, and Kelli stood. The two head honchos were shaking someone’s hand and talking in happy voices to him, but Kelli’s brain was so full of worries that she hadn’t thought to notice if the guy was wearing a ZentCube employee badge or not. As the man was walking away, Graham turned to Kelli. “Welcome, Miss Ellis. Please, come in.”

  She shook both of their hands and then swallowed as she walked into the office. Instead of sitting down across the desk from them, like she had imagined, Merit motioned to a seating area in the other half of the office, where two chairs and a couch were arranged around a coffee
table. Not knowing which seat to take, she sat in the closest one—a padded armchair—and wiped her hands on her slacks, straightening them while also making her hands less clammy.

  Graham sat down in the other armchair and Merit sat in the middle of the couch, his arms spread wide on the back of the couch, looking about a million times more comfortable than she felt. Of course, he wasn’t the one being called in to talk to the big boss.

  “Every year,” Graham said, “we take about a dozen employees on a Christmas retreat. Have you ever heard anyone talk about it?”

  Kelli shook her head. Should she have? Or was it something she wasn’t supposed to hear about?

  “Every year it’s a little different, but we always go to our managers and ask if they know of anyone on their teams who doesn’t have a place to go for Christmas. Then we take a look, narrow down the list as needed, and form a group.”

  They wouldn’t be smiling so much and chatting about fancy retreats if she was in a lot of trouble, right? So maybe they wanted her to do something? Like make some kind of marketing materials for the retreat? It was weird they were coming to her directly instead of going to her boss or the marketing director, but she could do that. Or should she already have been doing that and she somehow missed the message that she was supposed to?

  “We’ve gone several different places in the past,” Merit added. “But during the summer, Graham sent me to The Royal Palms resort in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and it was amazing!”

  Graham chuckled. “And he’s not just saying that because he met the love of his life, Elise, while he was there.”

  Merit grinned, and Kelli saw a hint of a blush. This was all great, but she still didn’t understand why she was here, in Merit’s office. She wanted to run her sweaty palms across her slacks again, but she was trying to be professional, and the thought just ended with her not having a clue what to do with her hands. So she just set them beside her legs on the seat.