Scrooge and the Single Girl Read online

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “Well, this may come as a rude shock to you, but asking if you were going to be here never even occurred to me.” Yeah, okay. Maybe it should have occurred to her. Given what she knew about Caitlin Bravo, it all seemed achingly obvious now. But that was called hindsight and it and $3.49 would get you a venti latte at Starbuck’s.

  He was glaring at her, as if he suspected her of all kinds of awful things, as if he didn’t believe a word she had said. She didn’t even want to look at him.

  So she didn’t. She looked away, and found herself staring at the single place-setting and the thick hard-bound book waiting on the ancient drop-leaf table about three feet from the door. Delicious comfort food smells issued from the pot on the stove.

  “Answer my question,” he growled at her. “What are you doing here?”

  From the carrier, Missy meowed plaintively. “Look,” Jilly said with a sigh. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I swear I didn’t have a clue that you were going to be here.”

  He made a low scoffing sound. Jilly could see it all, right there in his gorgeous, lagoon-blue eyes. He thought she was after him. He believed she had known that he was staying here, that she’d followed him up here to the middle of nowhere to try and hook up with him.

  She threw up both hands. “Think what you want to think. The deal is, though I truly hate to put you out, it’s very bad out there. I’m stuck here for the night and we both know it.”

  He did more scowling and glaring. Then at last he gave in and muttered grudgingly, “You’re right. You’re going nowhere tonight.”

  Oh, thank you so much for admitting the obvious, she thought. She said, “Right now, I need to get a few things in from my car.” Missy meowed again. “Like a litter box and some cat food, for starters.”

  “All right. That’s reasonable.” Various coats and wool scarves hung on a line of wooden pegs beside the door. He grabbed a hooded down jacket. “Let’s go.”

  Nothing would have given her more pleasure than to tell him she didn’t need his help. But there was her pride—and then there were her suitcases, the cat supplies and the various exotic lettuces and veggies and the hormone-free fresh turkey she’d brought to roast for her happy single-girl’s Christmas feast. And what about that bottle of good pinot grigio she’d bought to enjoy with her Christmas dinner, not to mention the pricey champagne she’d bought to toast the New Year? No way she was leaving them outside to freeze. If she trekked everything in alone, it would take two trips, maybe three. And it really was cold out there.

  “Thank you,” she said tightly as she stuck her hat back on her head.

  Outside, even under the protection provided by the porch, the icy wind seemed to cut the frozen night like the blade of a bitterly sharp knife. Once they moved off the porch and into the open clearing, it got worse. They struggled against the wind, getting beaten in the face with freezing snow, finding no shelter as they passed beneath the single bare maple tree between the vehicles and the cars. It wasn’t really all that far; it only felt like a hundred miles.

  When they reached the cars at last, she went around to the rear of her Toyota and lifted the hatch. She passed him a twenty-pound bag of cat litter and another bag containing cat food and a plastic litter box. He managed to handle all that with one arm, so she also gave him the smaller of her two suitcases—it had her pjs in it, and a change of underwear, all she’d need for one night. Then, after giving him a backhanded wave meant to dismiss him, she turned to the bags of groceries and started going through them, consolidating the food items that had to go inside.

  Will hadn’t budged. “What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at her over the howling of the wind.

  “Just go on inside!” she shouted back.

  But of course, he didn’t. What was it about some men? Congenitally incapable of following instructions.

  “I asked you what the hell you’re doing!”

  So she told him. “Perishables!”

  He didn’t say anything after that. Just stood there, looking at her, eyes narrowed, mouth turned down at the corners, ice collecting in his bronze eyebrows, his ears and that handsome blade of a nose turning Rudolph-red.

  Jilly turned back to her bags of groceries. It didn’t take all that long to get everything that wouldn’t hold up in a freezing car down to four plastic bags—one of them being the turkey. She hefted the bags out of the car and shut the hatch.

  “Here,” Will shouted. “Give me—”

  “No,” she hollered back. “I’ve got the rest. Let’s go.”

  He gave her another of those dark, mean looks he was so good at. Now what? He was peeved because she wouldn’t let him carry the heaviest load? Was there no end to reasons for this man to be mad at her?

  She turned her back on him and started for the porch. He was right behind her when she got to the front door. She set down the bags in her right hand to reach for the knob—and his hand came around and grabbed it first. She resisted the urge to glare at him over her shoulder. He pushed the door inward. She picked up her bags again and stepped inside.

  It only took a few minutes to set up Missy’s comfort station in a corner of the bathroom, which was right off the kitchen. She let the cat out of the carrier as she dished up the Fancy Feast and filled a water bowl.

  Once Missy was taken care of, Jilly joined her in the bathroom, shutting the door on Will, who was standing by the ancient drop-leaf kitchen table, staring bleakly at the bags of groceries.

  Jilly used the facilities and washed her hands. When she entered the kitchen again, he’d moved her grocery bags to the long counter beside the darling, classic-looking round-sided Frigidaire. “What is this turkey doing in here?” he demanded.

  “The rumba?” she suggested cheerfully.

  He opened the Frigidaire and began stashing her lettuce and vegetables inside. “You know what I mean. You could have left it in your car.”

  “No way. If I’d wanted a frozen turkey, I would have bought one. That’s a free-range, all-natural fresh turkey and it’s going to stay that way.”

  He grumbled something under his breath. She couldn’t make it out and decided it was probably better if she didn’t try. He moved stuff around on one of the shelves in the fridge, then he picked up the turkey, stuck it inside and shut the door. “All right. Your cat is taken care of and the food’s put away. I’m going to eat now. It’s only franks and beans, but you’re welcome to join me.”

  Oh, how she longed to hold her head high and refuse. But Jilly really loved franks and beans. As far as she was concerned, franks and beans ranked right up there with Dinty Moore chili. With Kraft mac and cheese. With bacon burgers. With her hands-down favorite of all time: Cheez Doodles.

  And speaking of Cheez Doodles, she had several bags of them stowed out in the 4Runner. She should have thought to bring some along when they were lugging everything else inside.

  “Do you want the food or not?” her ungracious host inquired darkly.

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  He got down a plate, dug a fork out of a drawer. “Milk?”

  “Yes, please.” She found a glass in a cupboard and poured it for herself. Then they sat down, put their paper napkins in their laps and dug in.

  Oh, it was heaven. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. With effort, she restrained herself from making ecstatic groaning noises. At that moment, eating the hot, lovely food, she could almost be grateful that she’d found Will Bravo here, that she hadn’t arrived to find it all dark and deserted, had to start the fire herself and worry about being all alone out here in this creaky old house while a blizzard raged outside and her cell phone was on the blink.

  But then she looked up and caught him glaring at her and all her good will evaporated.

  He said, “Now tell me. Why are you here?”

  She shoved in another mouthful of beans, chewed them and swallowed. Then she gulped a little milk. Let him wait, she was
thinking. It’s not going to kill him. Outside, the wind wailed.

  Will went on scowling. Good gravy. How could she ever have imagined she might get something going with him?

  And okay, she’d admit it. At one time—up until just a couple of weeks ago, as a matter of fact—she’d cherished the doomed hope that she and Will might get it together.

  They had seemed to have a lot in common. Both from the same hometown, which was New Venice, Nevada, in the Comstock Valley, about twenty miles away from this dreary old house, down a number of twisting, turning mountain roads. They had both settled, at least for now, in Sacramento. And then there was the most obvious connection: his two brothers had married her two best friends.

  And also, well, she might as well admit it. She’d been blinded for a while there by the kinds of minor details that have made women fools for certain men since the dawn of time. Blinded by things like his good looks and his social veneer—okay, it was hard to believe, looking at him now, but Will Bravo could be a major charmer when he chose to be. And along with the charm, he had that slightly dangerous rep as one of those yummy bad Bravo boys. Oh, and she mustn’t forget his impressive professional credentials: Will was an up-and-coming attorney on the Sacramento scene. For a while there, she’d dared to imagine that just maybe Will Bravo could turn out to be the man of her dreams.

  But not anymore. Her eyes were wide open now. She saw him for what he really was: sour, sad and angry. Lost and alone—and determined to stay that way.

  So let him. Tomorrow, when the storm was over, she’d pack up her Toyota, put Missy in her carrier and make tracks for home.

  “Jillian,” he said in a low, warning tone.

  She set down her glass and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “All right. It was like this. I needed an isolated cabin for a holiday piece I’m working on.”

  He was staring at her, a sneering curl to his mouth. She knew what he thought of her. That she was shallow, one-dimensional, flighty in the extreme.

  Far be it from her to disappoint him. “Originally, of course, I imagined a place with cable and central heat and a nice view of Lake Tahoe. One with a fully equipped kitchen and chef-quality appliances.” She waved her fork airily. “Unfortunately, it’s just been too crazy lately. One project after another, if you know what I mean. By the time I got around to making the arrangements, options were limited. More than limited. I couldn’t find a place.”

  “So you called my mother.”

  “No. First, I called Celia.”

  He blinked. Then he gave out grudgingly, “Makes sense.”

  And it did. Celia Tuttle, who was now Celia Bravo, had spent most of her working life as a personal assistant, first to a television talk-show host and then to the man who was now her husband, Will’s brother, Aaron. It was part of Celia’s job to know how to find just about anything anyone might need on very short notice.

  “Celia reminded me about this house,” Jilly told him.

  “And suggested that you give Caitlin a call.” He was getting the whole thing into perspective now, she could see it in his face. He was accepting the fact that she had been tricked every bit as much as he had.

  Caitlin Bravo was a hopeless matchmaker when it came to her sons. And Aaron and Cade were all taken care of now. Only Will had yet to find a wife.

  The son in question nodded wearily. “Okay. You called Caitlin. She offered you this place.”

  Jilly nodded. “Your mother was smart. She played it just right. She told me all about how primitive the setup would be, reminded me of all the old stories about your grandmother.” The house had once belonged to Caitlin’s mother, Mavis McCormack, known to everyone in Will and Jilly’s hometown as Mad Mavis. People whispered that Mad Mavis’s ghost still haunted the old house. “But somehow,” Jilly added, “your mother forgot to mention that you would be up here, too. Isn’t that surprising?”

  “Not in the least.” Will stared at the woman across the table from him. She’d taken off her big coat and her funny hat, shoved up the sleeves of her red-and-green turtleneck and dug right into the food he’d offered her. She had wild brown hair with gold streaks in it and sparkly gray-blue eyes under thick, straight, almost-black eyebrows—eyebrows so heavy they should have bordered on ridiculous. Yet somehow, they didn’t. Somehow, they looked just right on her.

  Attractive? All right, he’d admit it. She was a good-looking woman. If you liked them slightly manic and obsessively upbeat. She had her own business—Image by Jillian, it was called. She counseled fast-track execs and other professional types on how to dress for success—business casual, with flair. She also wrote an advice column, Ask Jillian. The column had started out as a weekly, but recently it had gone to Monday through Friday in the Sacramento Press-Telegram.

  Yeah, he knew all about Jilly Diamond. His mother had made sure of that.

  “I’m here every year,” he reiterated grimly. “And Caitlin knows it.” He was thinking that he wouldn’t mind strangling Caitlin as soon as he could get his hands on her. He was thinking that she deserved strangling. After all, he’d made it crystal clear to her that Jillian Diamond was not the woman for him.

  The woman who wasn’t for him said, “Well, Caitlin didn’t tell me you’d be here, or I promise you, I wouldn’t have come.”

  At first, he’d thought otherwise. The last time he’d seen her, at that party of Jane and Cade’s a couple of weeks ago, he could have sworn she was interested. It hadn’t been anything obvious. Just the feeling that if he looked twice, she would, too.

  He didn’t have that feeling anymore. Now, she looked no happier to be stuck with him than he was to have found her at his door.

  And that was absolutely fine with him.

  He heard a strange, soft rumbling sound and saw something furry in his side vision. Her cat. It had emerged from the bathroom and was sitting beside his chair, looking up at him, eyelids lowered lazily, an expression of near-ecstasy on its spotted face, its orange, black and white tail wrapped around its front paws. The rumbling sound, he realized, was coming from the cat. The damned animal was purring so loudly, he could hear it over the howling of the wind outside.

  Jillian said, “Okay, Will. Now you tell me. What are you doing up here all alone for the holidays?”

  He turned from the scary look of adoration in the cat’s amber eyes and gave it to her straight. “I hate the holidays. I want nothing to do with them. I accept the fact that there’s no way I can avoid this damn jolly season altogether. But I give it my best shot. I decorate nothing. I don’t send a single Christmas card. I shop for no one. And I keep my calendar clear from the twenty-second on. I come up here to my eccentric dead grandmother’s isolated house. I remain here until January second, without television or an Internet connection, with only a transistor radio to keep up with the weather reports and my mobile phone in case of emergencies.” He indicated the Dostoevsky at his elbow. “I catch up on my reading. And I do my level best to tell myself that Christmas doesn’t even exist.”

  She stared at him, one of those too-thick eyebrows lifting. He waited for her to ask the next logical question, which was “Why?” When she did, he would tell her to mind her own damn business.

  But she didn’t ask. She only said, softly, “Hey. Whatever launches your dinghy.”

  They did the dishes together, not speaking. She washed and he dried.

  As he hooked the dishtowel on the nail above the sink, he said, “There’s a bedroom down here, off the living area. I’m in there. You get the upstairs all to yourself.” He gestured at the door beside the one that led to the bathroom.

  Jilly got her suitcase and her purse and followed him up a narrow flight of steps to a long, dark, spooky attic room. He flicked a wall switch at the top of the stairs. A bare bulb overhead popped on. In the hard, unflattering glare it provided, Jilly took it all in, from the single small window at the head of the stairs to the dingy gray-blue curtain in a pineapple motif at the opposite end.

  Someone had taken the t
ime to Sheetrock the slanted ceiling and to paint it and the low walls bubble-gum pink. Too bad they hadn’t bothered to cover the nails or tape the seams. The floor was the same as downstairs—buckling speckled linoleum. Three single beds were arranged dormitory style, with their headboards tucked under the lowest line of the eaves.

  Oh joy, Jilly thought.

  “There’s a double bed in the other room.” Will gestured at the curtain. “You’d probably be more comfortable in there.”

  She went through, set down her things and turned on the small lamp by the bed. This area was pretty much identical to the one she’d just left: Sheetrocked and painted pink, with a single dinky window at the end opposite the curtain. The head of the bed butted up under the windowsill.

  Will was standing by the curtain. “Everything okay?” He didn’t look as if he cared much what her answer might be.

  “Fine.”

  He left her, ducking back through the curtain. She heard his steady tread as he crossed the first room and went down the creaking stairs.

  The bed, which was made up already and covered in a threadbare chenille spread, consisted of a set of box springs and a mattress on a plain metal frame. Jilly dropped to the side of it. The springs complained and the mattress sagged beneath her weight. Lovely. She looked at the window and saw her own reflection, ghostly, in the glass. Up here, under the eaves, the eerie sighing of the wind was even louder than downstairs.

  She glanced at her watch. It was just seven-thirty. It would be a long, long night.

  However. She did have her phone. And she had a few pointed questions for Celia. For instance, did Celia know that Will would be at Mad Mavis’s old house? Was Celia in on the matchmaking scheme, along with the devious, domineering Caitlin?

  Jilly had a hard time believing that. For one thing, Jilly had never so much as mentioned to either of her closest friends that maybe—just possibly—she might have considered dating Will Bravo. And she’d also been careful not to ask questions about him. She’d scrupulously avoided showing too much interest when his name came up in conversation.