Page 96 of Stay this Christmas
He shrugged. “I’m an open book.”
I wasn’t. At least, I never had been. I’d always kept my personal life separate from work, sometimes even from family. Then again, I’d never had all that much to hide. And I didn’t want to hide what I had with Sam.
Leaning forward, I rested one hand on his chest, drawn to those soft lips still smiling at me. I’d nearly reached them when another knock sounded at the PT door, breaking us apart for the second time. Honestly, we should have soaked in all the privacy we had at the Hideaway, since everywhere else we went seemed determined to interrupt us.
Olivia stood in the doorway, eyebrows raised, no waggle or shimmy in sight.
All my eagerness to have my relationship in the open fizzled out knowing my director had seen us like this. Sam stood frozen with the mistletoe poised above him for another second before he brought his arm down.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Do you have a minute, Harper?”
Sam turned to me, a silent apology in his eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
I nodded as he disappeared out the door, taking the mistletoe and most of my pride with him.
“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have been in such a…compromising position here.”
Olivia walked into the PT room, brushing off my concerns with a quick shake of her head. “Not an issue. As long as everything’s consensual and doesn’t interfere with your work, it’s not a problem.”
“It’s very consensual.”
“Great.” She nodded as though topic closed. “I wanted to talk to you about next week.”
I sucked in a breath, disappointment already crawling through me. Her chipper voice somehow sounded like the Grinch rising up to snatch my Christmas break away. Keeping a light smile on my face I didn’t feel, I hoped I looked unaffected. “Oh?”
“A few of the residents have expressed concern you won’t be available for sessions next week.”
“It’s a holiday.” Futile to point it out, since she already knew.
She ticked her head to the side as though the holiday were debatable. “I was thinking we should let them schedule appointments after Tuesday. Give you Christmas, the day after, then you can come back in. Just for the ones who actually schedule. I doubt it will be many.”
I doubted it would be many, too, but the point remained she’d effectively eliminated my time off. Whether it was one patient or ten, coming in to work over what should have been a holiday break meant the same thing either way.
I should have told her absolutely not, that I deserved this time off and the patients could wait a few days. But the fear of letting them down—and finally finding out whether I was irreplaceable here—kept my mouth shut.
“Thanks so much, Harper,” she said, her smile shining brighter. “You’re really coming through for us. You’re part of what makes Fiesta Village such a wonderful place to live.”
Then she turned and walked away, leaving me both flattered to be needed, and discouraged to have to make yet another compromise in order to stay.
* * *
Ready to drown my disappointments in about a hundred margaritas but figuring it was still too early for day-drinking, I found Callie waiting for me at Lupe’s Escape.
“I’m sorry I’m late. Something came up at work and it kind of threw me off.” Probably shouldn’t admit I’d sat in a bathroom stall for fifteen minutes processing how easily my Christmas break had been revoked, and how I’d done nothing at all to stop it.
I didn’t think Olivia would fire me if I pushed back on her plans…but I couldn’t be sure, either. She’d been so worried about keeping up with our rival retirement center, I didn’t have a ton of confidence she wouldn’t just find someone else more willing to work through holidays.
“It’s like five minutes,” Callie said with a laugh. “I would have been mad if you’d showed up earlier, I was on a Candy Crush streak.”
The waiter showed us to a table, and we settled in. Even though I’d been the one to invite Callie out, it’d been so long since I’d tried to make friends, I suddenly had no clue what to talk about. The weather? Our jobs? How she got her hair to fall in such perfect waves?
“I like your necklace,” I said.
She looked down and laughed, jiggling the string of multi-colored raw penne pasta hung around her neck. “A gift from a student,” she said with a teasing smirk. “It’s a Xander Goranson original.”
“That’s cute.”
“I forgot I had it on. Perils of working with five-year-olds.”
