A Kiss at Christmas Read online

Page 4


  Only a few weeks later, she went into the break room to grab a soda to hopefully help her wake up from a late-afternoon slump, and caught him making out with his girlfriend before she was even his fiancée. Remembering what a hypocrite he was helped, too.

  She was just putting her stuff onto the moving belt when Parker went through the scanner. When he stepped through, the security officer stopped him, but she wasn’t close enough to hear what he said, and had to turn her focus to getting her own things through security. She wasn’t stopped at all, and couldn’t help but give him a smirk as he was being patted down and having his fingers tested for bomb residue while she strolled to her bags and grabbed her things.

  “Have a great Christmas!” she called out to him as she pulled her rolling bag behind her, grinning all the way to her gate.

  She had barely found a seat, hooked her shoulder bag on her suitcase, and pulled out her phone when she saw Parker walking down the wide aisle. She quickly typed a text to Valeria.

  Sleigh bells! I think he is coming to my gate!

  He can’t be going on this retreat, too.

  There’s no way he doesn’t have somewhere to go for Christmas.

  No way.

  Oh no. He’s sitting down. Please tell me he has family in South Carolina.

  We just happen to be going to the same state. That’s all.

  No way there’s that big of a coincidence. He’s going to the retreat.

  KELLI! DATE HIM!

  Oh my goodness, that’s perfect.

  Kelli rolled her eyes.

  We tried that once before, remember? It was a disaster. Most awkward date ever.

  Just because you accidentally wore two different boots on the date doesn’t mean you can’t try again.

  Kelli cringed at the memory. When she had put on two different boots, her plan had been to see which one looked better. But then Parker texted, saying that he was lost and thought he got the address wrong, and she’d forgotten that she hadn’t swapped into the winning pair before he got there. As people kept staring at her the whole date, she had assumed it was because her outfit was pretty incredible. Because minus the boot incident, it was.

  You forgot about me knocking his soda into his lap at the movie theater during that jump scare.

  Or that I had to leave the movie early because I got sick.

  Or that our waiter at dinner just happened to be someone I had dated and made comments about it the whole meal.

  Those kinds of things don’t exactly lend themselves to second dates.

  Yep. Any relationship between the two of you is doomed before it even starts.

  No use even trying.

  Stop it. They’re boarding us now, so sorry—no more time for sarcasm. Talk to you tonight!

  Kelli pushed the phone into its pocket on her bag, and then wheeled her suitcase over to where everyone was lining up. Once she got on the plane, she put her suitcase in the overhead bin and her bag under the seat in front of her. The seat on her plane ticket was the middle one, which was fine by her. That meant double the people to talk to during takeoff, the part that made her the most nervous. Plus, the middle seat was close enough to the window to see out without having to ask two people to move if she had to go to the restroom mid-flight.

  She looked up just in time to see Parker sit down in the aisle seat of the row right in front of her. What she’d told Valeria was true—this was a bad time for her to get into a relationship. But still, a part of her heart had hoped for a little bit of Christmas romance in her life, even though she knew the pain it would bring.

  Except not with Parker.

  That obviously wouldn’t work. That one date they’d gone on two and a half years ago had been only about three months after she started working at ZentCube, and it had made work so awkward. She had constantly been reminded of the experience and embarrassed all over again. That was not something she was looking to repeat anytime soon.

  Even if he did look mighty fine in his jeans and t-shirt—something she never saw him in at the office.

  Nope. She was completely ignoring him and not even noticing how good he looked at all. Instead, she chatted with the nice young man to her left who was flying home for Christmas and was very excited about it, and the mom on her right who was flying with her kids to visit their grandparents. The woman was nervous because she hadn’t seen her ex-in-laws in over three years and they always made her so uncomfortable. But she’d gotten a call last minute saying that her ex-father-in-law was sick and probably didn’t have long to live, so they booked flights just the night before and couldn’t even sit together.

  The woman’s story was fascinating, so before Kelli knew it, the plane was at cruising altitude and she had barely even noticed anything else during takeoff. Both of her seat-mates seemed to be done talking, so she pulled out her headphones, plugged them into her phone, and started listening to an audiobook.

  Through the teeny space between the seats, she had the perfect view of Parker. So she just enjoyed the curve of the muscles on his arm and the perfect amount of scruff along that strong jawline.

  He leaned forward to get his water bottle out of his bag, and she got to see his back muscles in action through his t-shirt. He flipped open the spout of the water bottle, and because of the change in pressure on the plane, a big burst of water shot through the straw and up in the air in a perfect arc, right her direction. She didn’t have time to do anything—not that she could’ve done anything, since she was trapped in the middle seat and wearing a seatbelt—before the water landed right on her lap.

  She let out a yelp of surprise, along with the handful of other people who witnessed it, as the cool liquid soaked through her pants.

  Parker immediately turned around, an embarrassed, apologetic look on his face, before he noticed that it was her that his water had landed on. Then she swore his expression turned to one that said this was payback for her spilling his drink in his lap on their date so long ago.

  He did press the button to call a flight attendant, though, and the nice lady got her plenty of paper towels to soak it up. But her efforts didn’t exactly leave her jeans dry. Please let them dry before we land, she silently prayed. She could only imagine how embarrassing it would be to walk through the airport once they landed looking like she’d had an accident on the plane. Especially with Parker there to see it. She didn’t know the ten others who were going to this same retreat, but she suspected she would know them well by the end of the week, and she didn’t want this to be their first impression of her.

  Once the excitement of the surprise fountain and the wet pants died down, the cabin lights dimmed, and everyone with window seats around her started closing the shades. Between the lowered lights and the hum of the airplane, drowsiness hit her pretty strongly. Her dad had come over to “spend Christmas” with her last night before they both left on their separate trips, and she couldn’t bear to cut the evening short to pack when she got to see him so infrequently lately. Plus, she kind of wanted to remind him that she was his daughter and they had a bond. She had to do all she could to make sure she wasn’t forgotten.

  So he left late, and she stayed up even later packing. Then she had to wake up super early to get ready for the day, finish packing, drive all the way to airport parking—which had been a bear of a drive with all the holiday traffic—take the shuttle to the airport, go through security, and still make it to her flight without being rushed. And she was feeling the lack of sleep now.

  The audiobook could wait. She wrapped her headphone cord nice and neat, slipped it into its pocket in her bag, slid her phone in alongside it, then pulled out her neck pillow and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Six

  Parker pulled his ear buds out of his ears. He’d been watching a movie on the screen attached to the seat in front of him when the five-year-old seated next to him that he’d been chatting with at the beginning of the flight started crying.

  “Hey, buddy. Do you need help with anything?”
<
br />   The kid shook his head, but he still kept crying. Not a loud cry—just an upset one.

  “Are you hungry? I still have my cookies from when they brought us snacks.”

  Still, he just shook his head. Parker glanced at the teenaged girl sitting by the window, and she just shrugged like Don’t look at me—I don’t know what to do. He heard the flight attendant right behind him talking to someone. Maybe he could get her help afterward.

  “Do you need something to drink? Or do you need to go to the bathroom?”

  The boy shook his head. “I just want my mom.”

  The flight attendant tapped Parker on the shoulder, so he turned his attention to her. “Excuse me, sir. But do you mind switching seats with the boy’s mother?”

  “Oh, not at all. Of course.” He hurried to pack his headphones, water bottle, and cookies into his shoulder bag, said goodbye to the kid, then stood up to see where she wanted him to move to. The flight attendant was motioning to the aisle seat in the row directly behind him.

  “Thank you so much,” the boy’s mom said before slipping into Parker’s seat.

  Parker nodded, then stared at the seat the woman had vacated. It was the one right next to Kelli. Maybe he should’ve asked where he’d be moving before agreeing. At least Kelli was asleep—maybe they could avoid any awkward chatting. Especially if that chatting was going to end up being about his water landing in her lap. He sat down next to her and pulled out his ear buds.

  He started the same movie again, hoping to pick up where he left off, but he was having troubles keeping his mind on it when he was so close to Kelli. Ever since he had caught the tail end of her phone conversation with James in the copy and print room years ago, he had forced himself to only think of her as a coworker. Even though James, from what he saw at a couple of company parties, wasn’t nearly good enough for her. And then he had started dating Stephanie. But now they were both single, and he was noticing her again in a way he hadn’t allowed himself to for so long.

  He didn’t know why he was allowing himself to think about her now. As Stephanie had not-so-nicely pointed out, he enough flaws of his own to prove that he wasn’t good enough for Kelli, either. Besides—he had thought he and his ex were happy, and hadn’t seen their breakup coming. He didn’t trust himself to know when things were actually going wrong anymore.

  He turned the volume on the movie up even more and made himself concentrate on it.

  Which worked for a good thirty minutes. Then Kelli turned slightly in her sleep, and she leaned over, resting her head on his chest and shoulder. And the scent of her freshly-washed hair was right there.

  He should wake her up.

  Except she looked so peaceful, so relaxed. Maybe she really needed the sleep. Maybe he could just nudge her back upright enough to stay in her own seat without waking her up. Slowly, he shifted her direction, moving her toward the middle of her seat. It took a minute, but he got her there. He carefully started pulling himself back, testing to make sure that she wasn’t going to fall over when he wasn’t holding her up.

  Eventually, he got to where his shoulder wasn’t touching her anymore, and he started breathing again as he moved back to his normal position in his seat.

  But within five minutes, she shifted again and her head found his shoulder. She had the neck pillow, so that wasn’t what had pulled her toward him. Maybe she just needed the support of being able to lean on something. Once, when he was in college, he was on the bus headed home for Christmas, and he fell asleep and woke up leaning against the shoulder of a woman the age of his grandma. He’d been embarrassed, sure, but also really grateful. It had been the best sleep he had gotten in a while. Sometimes you were just really tired and you needed the kindness of the person sitting next to you to be a support. He could do that. He just needed to turn the volume of the movie up louder to keep his thoughts off her.

  When the captain’s voice came over the intercom asking to prepare the cabin for landing, Kelli jerked awake with a scream. Still looking like she was in the fog of sleep, she realized that she had been leaning against someone’s shoulder and seemed embarrassed and unwilling to make eye contact. She wiped the edge of her mouth with her knuckles, which must have told her that she had been drooling, because her eyes flew to his shoulder. Then she did make eye contact with him, and jerked to more alertness.

  “Parker! What are you doing here? Was I sleeping on you?” She reached out and wiped at the small wet spot she had left, and then whacked at it with the back of her hand. “Why did you let me sleep on you?”

  He couldn’t help the smile. “Hey, don’t blame me. I was just sitting here, minding my own business. You’re the one who invaded my space. I tried to push you back.”

  Her cheeks were flushed, and against her blonde hair, which was straight and down—something he almost never saw when she was at work—it was beautiful.

  “Well, maybe you should’ve tried harder.”

  “I should’ve. Your snoring was making it difficult for me to hear my movie.”

  Her eyes narrowed at him. “I did not snore.” Then she turned to the guy on the other side of her. “Did I snore?”

  He looked every bit as amused as Parker was, but shook his head no.

  She faced forward in her seat, hands folded in her lap, a satisfied smile on her face. A smile that was hiding residual embarrassment. Maybe he should’ve woken her up. Except if he had, she still would’ve realized that she had fallen asleep on Parker’s shoulder and still would’ve been embarrassed—she just would’ve gotten an hour less sleep out of the deal.

  The plane landed and taxied to the gate. When it was their turn to deplane, he stood up in the aisle and took a step back, motioning for Kelli to go first. An olive branch. She must’ve been feeling some embarrassment still, because she stood up, slung her bag over her shoulder, and then jerked her suitcase out of the overhead bin and started power walking up the aisle.

  “Hey,” the guy who had been sitting at the window said. Then he turned to Parker. “What’s her name?”

  “Kelli.”

  “Hey, Kelli! That’s my bag!”

  Kelli froze, her back to them, then turned around, cheeks flushed even more, and walked back to their row as Parker pulled out the bag he was fairly certain was hers and set it on the floor in front of her. This time, she really strode with purpose out of the plane, head held high, shoulders back. Parker smiled at her the whole way.

  They were heading the same direction, so even though Kelli had gotten the head start, she eventually must’ve brushed off the embarrassment, because she stopped moving like she was trying to win a speed-walking competition and started walking at a normal pace. He thought it was safer to be near her then, so before he knew it, they were walking side-by-side. He told himself he was drawn to her simply because she was the only person he knew in the state, and it was just human nature.

  As they were riding down the escalators leading to baggage claim, she grabbed his arm with her free hand and said, “Look! They sent drivers to get us!” As soon as she realized she was holding onto his arm, she let go.

  All Parker could think about was the way it felt to have Kelli’s hand on his arm, and how empty it felt to have it disappear so quickly. But he did look the direction she had pointed to see two drivers in black suits, with the black driving cap and everything, and they were both holding signs that said ZentCube on them.

  After getting their luggage, it became obvious who the twelve of them going on the retreat was as they all gathered around the two drivers. Parker recognized several of them from company functions, and one from working with some people in building B—he was pretty sure the guy’s name was Davis—but didn’t know anyone else well enough to know their names. The twelve of them split up, six to a car, which ended up being a limo. The kind with two bench seats that faced each other.

  As they made the drive from the airport to the resort, Kelli kept looking from window to window, trying to take in all the sights, which were beauti
ful, actually. He didn’t think he was the only one in the car who probably would’ve missed it if Kelli hadn’t been so enthusiastic about seeing everything.

  He really liked it when people appreciated all the amazing things surrounding them. He always had. How had he forgotten that so fully when he’d been making wedding plans with a woman who was impressed by nothing? How had he lost that part of himself while they’d been dating and engaged? Maybe it was good that Stephanie had called it off.

  Huh. That was a new thought. He had been crushed when his ex ended things, and he hadn’t quite gotten over feeling badly about that. His realization that it was a good thing felt like a piece of his shattered heart was just put back in place.

  But that didn’t mean he should be thinking of Kelli. She deserved someone better than him. She deserved someone whose list of faults wasn’t a mile long.

  Kelli turned around and knocked on the window between them and the driver. It slid down. “Yes?”

  “Um, that sign said that the check-in for the Royal Palm Resort was right back there.”

  The woman driving said, “That’s not where you’re checking in.”