Mistletoe Cinderella

Chapter Eleven

“Whoa.” Dylan couldn’t help the long, lingering once-over of the beautiful woman on the other side of the doorway. “You look amazing.”

He couldn’t put his finger on everything that was different. Her overall appearance wasn’t blatantly seductive as it had been for the reunion, but there was something more sensual about her than when she’d shown up at his apartment.

“Thank you.” She held up a square cardboard box.

“Pizza in case I burn the chicken?” he surmised.

“No, I brought dessert. Key lime pie from the diner.”

“My favorite.”

“I know. I mean…I heard that once. And I have a pretty strong memory.” She sighed. “You’re going to get a restraining order now, aren’t you?”

“No.” He brushed a piece of her hair behind her ear, just for an excuse to touch her. “It’s-Did you get a haircut?”

She nodded, looking pleased. “I thought guys never noticed stuff like that.”

“Is whoever told you that stereotype the same person spreading the story that guys can’t cook? People can be multifaceted, you know.” He was only just beginning to see how true that was…and beginning to wonder how it applied to him.

For the majority of his life, he’d thought of himself as a ballplayer, but just because his career had ended didn’t mean his life had. His thoughts flickered back to the practice he’d witnessed today. Despite what Dylan had told his mother about feeling obligated to Channel Six and the people who’d helped him get the job, he couldn’t help entertaining possibilities. Did he possess enough of the qualities that made Coach Burton so special?

He showed Chloe inside. After placing the pie on the kitchen counter, he led her to the living room, where he knew his mother sat in genteel impatience, not wanting to hover but dying to meet Chloe.

“C.J., this is my mom, Barbara Echols.” His hand went to the small of Chloe’s back as he introduced the two women currently most important in his life, women with whom he was developing unexpected relationships.

His mother rose to shake Chloe’s hand. “Oh, call me Barb.”

“And, Mom, this is C.J.” He felt Chloe tense as she worried that he’d add Beemis. He couldn’t do it. He wanted Chloe and his mother to get along, which could be compromised if protective Barb learned later about Chloe’s lies. Dylan himself still experienced twinges of residual anger, but he knew that he could forgive her deception. If he simply called her by name, it would put an end to this entire fiction. But would it also end a relationship between them before it had even begun? Instead of finding the courage to tell him herself, Dylan would take the choice away from her. He needed to know that she trusted him enough-that she could be trusted-to tell him on her own.

“You have a beautiful home,” Chloe said. She gravitated toward the fireplace. The mantel was graced by three framed pictures of Dylan. When he’d lived here, his parents’ wedding picture had dominated the ledge. Barb had removed it.

She joined Chloe. “If you want to see pictures, I have entire scrapbooks!”

“Mom, I’m sure-”

His mother sent an impish look over her shoulder. “Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be cooking?”

“Fine.” He returned her heckling tone. “But see if I ever bring a date home again.”

Chloe’s body jerked at the word date. In profile, he could see a light blush staining her cheeks. Several comments came to mind, but his mom’s presence stopped him from saying anything that might make Chloe more self-conscious.

After he’d retreated to the kitchen, he heard his mom poking around in the hall closet, looking for albums, followed by the murmur of female voices and occasional laughter.

It was ten minutes later that Chloe drifted into the kitchen. The change in her wasn’t just the hair. He could swear she carried herself differently, as if she was more comfortable in her own skin. She’d been at least a little skittish during all of their previous encounters; this was the first time he’d seen her at ease.

“Anything I can do to help?” she asked.

He had just topped the barbecue chicken breasts with slices of provolone cheese. The potatoes were done. “You can pull the salad out of the fridge, if you’d like. And the bottle of dressing. Mom makes it herself.”

“She’s sweet,” Chloe said, sounding genuinely affectionate and not like someone sucking up to her date.

“She likes you. She doesn’t open up so quickly to everyone.”

“Neither do my parents.” Chloe carried the salad bowl to the table. “They can be very…insular. They have good hearts, they just aren’t effusive. Or welcoming in the traditional outgoing sense. Even Natalie, who’s known them forever, still calls them Mr. and Mrs.-Oh, shoot. I stubbed my toe.”

He shot her a look of pure skepticism, but she wasn’t meeting his eyes at the moment. Chloe was not cut out for lying. She was too artless and straightforward. When was she going to realize that she couldn’t keep this up and just come clean?

Put us both out of our misery, sweetheart.

She took a shaky breath. “So…your mom tells me you might be interviewing for a coaching job at the school?”

“I don’t know, maybe. But if I did get a job at Mistletoe High, we could finally have that dinner out I keep offering.” Seeing the anxiety creeping into her gaze, he pressed further. “Unless, of course, you wouldn’t be interested in seeing me socially? You’ve shot me down more than once. A man could get a complex.”

“I’m interested,” she murmured.

“Really? Sometimes it seems that you want to get away from me. Like in the grocery store parking lot, when I had to talk you into lunch. Or when you fled the reunion.”

“That had nothing to do with you! There were extenuating circumstances.”

“Such as?”

Chloe bit her bottom lip-hard from the looks of it. He wanted to rub his finger over the spot, soothe away the tiny hurt. Talk to me, Chloe.

“It’s a long story,” she finally said. “I’m not sure this is the time or the place.”

“I see.”

“Dinner’s about to be served, your mom’s just a few yards…I’m sorry.”

So was he. It was crazy that she could make him feel in the wrong, but he hated that she’d lost that alluring, unconscious confidence. She was stiff now, uncomfortable, and probably regretting that she’d accepted the dinner invitation. He’d been pushing, but he didn’t want to alienate her.

Luckily, between Barb’s presence and the natural mellowing properties of food, Chloe had relaxed again midway through dinner. She offered Dylan a slow, appreciative smile; there was a sleepy quality to her expression that made it all too easy to imagine waking up to that face, kissing her good-morning.

“A man who can cook like this,” Chloe proclaimed, “definitely deserves a better kitchen than yours. Something warmer, more interesting, vibrant.”

Warm, interesting and vibrant. Did she realize she was all three of those things?

Barb set down her fork. “That’s right. Dylan mentioned you were going to help him redecorate.”

Chloe nodded. “I went and saw the condo last week, made some notes after our meeting. There are some very cool virtual-designer sites where you can check out what different options would look like online.”

“Your generation and those computers!” Barb shook her head ruefully. “I can barely check my e-mail. I must have done something wrong, because people say they’re sending me stuff I’m not getting.”

“Do you want me to look at it for you?” Chloe volunteered. “It could be a simple fix, like your spam filter settings.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind,” Barb said. “Your parents obviously raised you right. Are they still in Mistletoe?”

Chloe started coughing so hard that Barb half rose. Dylan reached around to pat Chloe firmly on the back before his mother panicked and administered the Heimlich.

“Th-thanks.” She reached for her drink, her voice scratchy. “Went down the wrong pipe.”

I’ll bet.

Barb resituated herself in her chair. “I remember once when Dylan was a kid, I thought he was going to choke to death. Some older boy in the neighborhood dared him to see how many marbles he could put in his mouth, and one accidentally lodged in his throat. Scared ten years off my life.”

“Sorry,” he told his mother. He looked back to Chloe. “It was a stupid thing to do, but sometimes we just lose our common sense temporarily.”

He’d meant it as a subliminal invitation, a way to let Chloe know that he understood making mistakes and could forgive. A key difference between him and Michael Echols. It wasn’t Chloe who felt motivated to share but Barb. She began expounding on some of his less proud moments, stories that were funny twenty years later for an outsider but served as a reminder to Dylan of the vicious cycle he’d created for himself.

He’d been so angry with his impossible-to-please father that he’d acted out-accepting reckless dares, taking needless chances on the playgrounds, going for the laugh in class instead of focusing on difficult-to-process reading assignments. Naturally, all of these actions had led to his father labeling him an even bigger loser.

Dylan’s appetite disappeared, but since he felt it would look bad for the chef not to eat his own cooking, he continued to pick at his food while the ladies finished their dinners. The three of them worked together to clear the table and agreed to wait a little while before dessert. As his mom fired up the coffeemaker, Dylan and Chloe loaded the dishwasher.

“Were you serious about helping with the e-mail?” Barb asked hesitantly.

Chloe smiled. “Lead the way.”

The PC sat on a desk at the back of the living room. Dylan turned the television on low volume and checked scores while the two women behind him discussed different e-mail tools. He liked the way Chloe spoke to his mother. Barb was so far behind the Internet age, it would be easy for a person to sound condescending when answering her questions. It would be equally easy for someone who was an expert in computer technology to unintentionally give too much information, confusing his mother more than she had been in the first place.

Chloe handled everything just right, encouraging the other woman with easy-to-understand, but not dumbed-down, explanations and liberal amounts of praise. Barb blossomed under the friendly tutelage, grasping terms quickly and asking even more questions as they went through drop-down menus and various settings.

Barb laughed at the explanation of “signatures.” “Althea Webb ends each e-mail with the oh-so-smug reminder that she won the cake cook-off this year and the year before. Do you know I used to think she typed it every single time?”

Chloe was in the middle of changing the display settings so that everything was larger and easier for Barb to read when his mom gasped. “Heavens, is that the time already? Oh, dear, I’ve monopolized your whole night! And poor Dylan has to get back to Atlanta in the morning.”

His broadcasts weren’t until evening, but he did have a station meeting at noon.

“Did you bring your notes and ideas with you?” he asked Chloe.

“Of course.” She stood, and he couldn’t help watching the line of her body as she stretched. “Is it too late to get started on those?”

“Why don’t you leave them with me. We can meet for breakfast on my way out of town to talk about what I might like.” This was becoming a habit of his, wanting to know exactly when he could see her again whenever they parted ways.

Unlike other guys in college or even at the high school, he’d veered far away from alcohol, nicotine and any kind of drugs. Not because of parental lectures, but because he wanted to protect himself physically, stay in top condition. Now the man college dorm mates had declared Mr. Squeaky Clean finally had a vice: Chloe Malcolm.

After a brief hesitation, she flashed a genuine smile. “I’d like that.”

They all adjourned to the kitchen for coffee and dessert, but his mom had barely filled three mugs before kicking them out of the house.

“It’s such a pretty night, the two of you should take your pie out on the porch,” she suggested, being about as subtle as Natalie had been when she left him alone with Chloe in the lobby of the reunion hotel.

He remembered the hint of desperation in Chloe’s eyes that night. If Natalie had stayed and the three of them had started chatting, would Chloe have relaxed? Would the situation have evolved differently? Or would she have faded into the background while he and Natalie conversed? Maybe her friend had done her a favor, throwing her in the proverbial water and challenging her to come up swimming. Looking at Chloe now, he couldn’t imagine this woman panicking over a brief drink with a guy. She was charming.

As it turned out, his mother was right about it being a gorgeous night. He leaned against the porch railing while Chloe took the rocker.

“Don’t get stars like this in downtown Atlanta,” he admitted.

“Do you miss it?” she asked him. “Living here? I love Mistletoe. I truly do. But sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out, settling.”

“For me, Mistletoe was a ‘best of times, worst of times’ situation. Which is the sum total of what I remember from Lit classes,” he joked. “Honestly, I was so focused on ball that I don’t remember details about much else. It’s only fair to tell you, when I walked into that reunion, Candy Beemis was just a name to me. I didn’t have any specific memories or preconceived notions attached to it when I asked you to dinner.”

“Really?” She sounded elated. The actual Candy would be clawing his eyes out by now.

For the first time it occurred to him how lucky he’d been to sit with the wrong girl. “Really. I asked you out because you were stunning and I wanted to spend more time with you.” He leaned in closer. “You still are, and I still do.”

She swallowed, then ran her tongue along her lower lip. He was overcome with a need to know what she tasted like tonight. His Chloe was always full of surprises.

“If it weren’t for that policy of yours about not getting involved with clients,” he began coaxingly.

“I…” Her gaze was troubled, the internal debate clear in her eyes. “I can’t. I want to, but I can’t. I should go, Dylan.”

Damn.

It wasn’t until she’d safely put a few stairs of distance between them that she said, “But I’m looking forward to breakfast tomorrow! We’ll talk more then.”

He watched her go to her car. It was on the tip of his tongue to call out Wait, Chloe, but if he did, he’d never know that she respected him enough, cared about him enough, to tell him the truth herself.

HER FIRST REAL DATE with Dylan Echols. Well, date might be too strong a term, but this would be their first meal in public. Chloe’s heart thudded madly in her chest. She’d agreed because it was so early in the day and the restaurant was on Dylan’s route back to the freeway, practically the outskirts of Mistletoe. Statistically this was the least likely place and time for her to run into people she knew. Still, her mouth was dry and her palms were damp.

How the hell did people commit crimes? If she were even pondering something illegal and happened to pass a police officer, she’d be seized with the uncontrollable urge to turn herself in. What you’re doing to Dylan is a crime. You have to tell him the truth. She realized that. It had been unfair to ever rationalize that he didn’t need to know, even though she’d never dreamed that their acquaintance would continue and evolve.

But she’d let it go on so long. How could she explain what she’d done in a way that didn’t make her sound pathological? In a way that didn’t make him never want to speak to her again?

“C.J.! Over here.” He waved from a back booth. Was it her guilty conscience, or did his voice boom extra-loud as he signaled her?

She hurried to sit across from him, her back to the restaurant’s entrance. “Morning. Before I forget, here are some more URLs I wrote down for you.”

As he took the sheet of paper torn from a memo pad, his thumb swirled over her palm, pressing gently against pressure points she hadn’t known were there. It shouldn’t have been any more sexual than two kids holding hands, but she nearly trembled at the contact. Sitting with him last night on Barb’s front porch, Chloe had yearned for more physical contact. She’d bolted in part because she didn’t trust herself alone with him. She’d been infatuated with him in high school, but the feelings that had seemed so all-encompassing at the time were nothing compared to the rising desires of an adult woman who’d come to know Dylan more intimately.

A curly-haired waitress wearing a faded uniform and funky green horn-rimmed glasses took their orders. After she’d gone, Dylan held up the list Chloe had made of sites and brief notations about each.

“Thanks for these. You sure are going to a lot of trouble.”

“Not really.” The very fact that Chloe had the time to devote to Dylan and his condo was a glaring neon arrow pointing to her lack of love life. Friends like Natalie spent leisure hours getting ready for dates, going to movies with new boyfriends, shopping for anniversary and Valentine’s Day gifts. Chloe spent her free time watching reruns of House. She suspected, though, that even if her Web site business kept her so busy that she put in sixty-hour weeks, for Dylan she would have made the time. “Besides, I’ve been enjoying myself. The site listed at the bottom of the page is entirely too much fun. You can scan in a photo of your room and mess with colors and stuff. The models are crude, but if you’re at all a visual person-”

“Oh, I am.”

“Most men seem to be,” she agreed. “When I did student tutoring-”

He raised an eyebrow and looked as if he might interrupt. Chloe hastily tried to recall what kind of student Candy had been. Plenty of cheerleaders and varsity athletes had been on the honor roll, but the idea of Candy selflessly helping her peers was laughable.

She spoke faster, trying to prevent an interruption even though she’d momentarily lost her train of thought. “I found that guys always absorbed the point faster when they had a diagram or map or illustration. I got really interested in the different ways people learn.”

Dylan’s expression had changed from questioning to thoughtful, and he nodded.

“It’s about knowing how each person gets the best results,” she continued. “Like, some people do better with music playing in the background while others need the quiet to focus. Some you joke with to cajole results, others…Well, you get the idea. You’d tell me if I was boring you, right?”

“You’re not. Quite the opposite,” he said. “I was thinking that you did an amazing job with my mom last night.”

Chloe flushed with pleasure, but didn’t feel she could take credit for Barb. “She was a quick study. Since my parents moved into the senior living complex, I’ve started offering short computer tutorials to the residents there. They’re not exactly part of the Internet generation, but they still want to be able to access digital pictures of the grandkids and look up occasional recipes on the Web. It’s all basic. You could teach it just as well as I could.”

He shook his head. “I worry that we fall back on what we know. Whether we want to or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“For example…” He stared beyond her, collecting his thoughts. “I’ve heard children of alcoholics are more likely to become alcoholics themselves even though that sounds counterintuitive. You’d think that someone who had witnessed that kind of destruction would be the last person to put their own loved ones through it.”

“A girl who grew up in my neighborhood used to nag her mother to stop smoking. She even got in trouble once for hiding her mom’s cigarettes. Ironically, whenever I see her now, she’s smoking outside the Dixieland Diner. Is that what you mean?”

“Exactly,” he said grimly.

But Chloe was still confused. What trait was Dylan concerned that he might have picked up, might pass on? The teacher who’d probably made the biggest impact on him was Coach Burton, who was beloved around these parts. And Barb Echols obviously adored her son. Five minutes in the same room with them confirmed that. Chloe frowned, searching her memory banks for any impression of Michael Echols. When she’d brought up the subject of Dylan’s father previously, he’d shut her down. She’d assumed that was Dylan’s reaction to his father’s death, but now she wondered.

“With your interest in learning styles,” Dylan asked, “did you ever think about becoming a teacher yourself? Schools can always use good instructors who are attuned to their students and flexible with their teaching styles.”

“Actually, I was an education major for all of one semester, not that it mattered since I was only getting started with core classes at the time.”

“What made you change your mind?”

The reason sounded so lame she hated to say it, but she owed him the truth about something. “Performance anxiety, the idea of standing up in front of an entire class. One-on-one tutoring was a different story. I don’t do well in front of crowds. At least, not alone,” she added quickly, before he asked any questions about cheerleading. “When I was doing something on a team, the pressure wasn’t the same.”

That was what had appealed to her about the Academic Decathlon, where they all sat onstage together and could confer over the answers, versus the debate team, which involved individual turns standing at a podium.

“I can understand the comfort of being surrounded by a team,” Dylan commiserated. “I think that’s been affecting me lately. For more than a decade, I had one team or another. Some of the guys who play for Atlanta still call me, but they have crazy schedules and it’s uncomfortable now that I’m a civilian.”

She tamped down the impulse to offer herself up as his new team. “I know it will probably never be the same, but do you think that after you’ve been at the television station longer, you’ll develop a similar sense of camaraderie?”

Frowning, he toyed with a packet of sugar. “Not unless they reassign the lead guy to another solar system. He’s all ego. He likes himself way too much to spare any affection for others, but he specifically dislikes me. On a personal level I don’t care. It’s not that I want to be his new golfing buddy or anything, but knowing I have to deal with his bs on top of whatever else is going on at work just adds an extra layer of frustration to a job that I’m learning as I go.”

“Do you think he feels threatened by you? There was…a girl like that once, who went out of her way to make me feel like an insignificant bug even though all I wanted was to avoid her.” Chloe thought of last night, when he’d told her he remembered very little about Candy. It had been a relief that Dylan wasn’t attaching any of the woman’s negative qualities from years past to Chloe. Such a hypocrite. She’d wanted him to associate her with Candy’s popularity and charisma, but didn’t want to take the blame for any lesser traits. “Natalie insisted she was jealous.”

“Maybe. Maybe they’re acting out of insecurity.” He grinned. “Or maybe they’re just asses.”

She let out a peal of laughter, his matter-of-fact comment helping to exorcise the last ghosts of adolescent insecurity. All through high school, she’d been unable to think of a comeback, to stand up for herself in a memorable manner. For weeks she’d felt herself changing, evolving. Perversely she half wished someone would insult her so that she could test herself. There was a possibility that now she could react with wit, or at least aplomb.

As long as the person making the cutting comment wasn’t Dylan. That-

“Well, hey, there.” The friendly female greeting came from mere inches away, and Chloe jumped. “I thought that was you I heard laughing, Ch-”

“Brenna!” And this is what I get for challenging the universe. Not that the tall redhead was likely to make an insulting comment, but seeing her here definitely shot Chloe’s supposed aplomb all to hell. “Um, have you met Dylan Echols? He’s a new client of mine. We were just having a consultation. Dylan, this is Brenna Pierce. She runs her own pet-sitting business. She’s Mistletoe’s dog whisperer. And cat whisperer. And iguana whisperer.”

Chloe knew she should really shut up, having already belabored a mediocre joke, but she was worried that as soon as she stopped talking, Brenna would mention the new Web site mock-ups Chloe had done for her.

Brenna was shaking Dylan’s hand, her gaze frankly admiring. “Nice to meet you. I’ve heard about you, of course. You won’t regret hiring this genius. She-”

“Does the fact that you’re singing my praises mean you had a chance to look over the design suggestions?” Chloe interjected. She felt rude, panicked and generally nauseous.

Though Brenna looked surprised by the interruption, she nodded. “They’re so fantastic my only concern is choosing the right one. All of them had-”

“Positive energy, right? That’s my motto!” Did anyone else notice how manic Chloe sounded? “Brenna, Dylan’s on his way out of town after breakfast, so we’re trying to squeeze this in. Do you want me to call you later about what you’d like me to do?”

“Sure.” Brenna was eyeing her as if she thought Chloe had started the day with way too much coffee. Still, she took the hint, turning to go. “It was nice to meet you, Dylan.”

I’ll need to do some damage control later, Chloe thought. She’d cut Brenna off at least three times in a two-minute conversation and had tried too hard to seem bubbly and unconcerned, veering into deranged. She didn’t want to lose Brenna’s account.

Glancing back at Dylan, she acknowledged with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach that she risked losing something far more valuable.