Page 2 of Miss Merry and Mr. Bright
“I really think that you should talk to me first, Jasper. Hey! Are you listening to me?”
Reese’s squawking through the phone barely registers with me as I open the door and my mouth falls open.
A young woman stands there staring at me and her gray eyes blink in confusion before she offers up the biggest smile I’ve ever seen. My mind goes blank and I stare at her, stunned.
Without that smile she’s kind of a plain girl but when she smiles her gray eyes light up with laughter and sunshine, practically glowing with youth and happiness.
She makes me feel old and tired.
“What do you want?” I grumble, sucking in my non-existent belly. Sure, I’ve started getting a bit of a dad bod since I turned thirty-eight but it’s nothing. You can barely tell.
She giggles and my head almost explodes. “I’m here about the job, of course. Your agent told me to meet you here today.” She glances down at a paper in her hands and her smile slips a little bit but then her eyes come up and the smile comes back out like the sun coming out of the clouds after a storm.
My eyes dart around when I notice that the rain’s stopped and there’s watery sunlight dappling my front porch and the girl in front of me.
What the hell happened to the storm?
“I’m sorry. Your agent said you might forget that I was supposed to show up today so she told me to make sure and remind you that you promised you’d do anything she said to keep your gallery showing.” She grins. “She’s so nice.”
“Yeah. She’s a peach. I’ll have to remember to send her something really good for her Christmas bonus.” Like a lump of coal. Because obviously she hired this girl for some reason and now I’m gonna have to play the bad guy and fire her.
“Listen, I don’t know what job that Reese promised you but there is no job. So you might as well just turn back around and go on home.” I wave my hands at her like an idiot. “Shoo!”
Her gray eyes dance with silver and green lights. “I’m sorry. I don’t think you can do that. Reese was very clear. She already hired me and you can’t fire me.”
“The hell I can’t.” I slam the door in her face and stomp down the hallway, my voice angry as I put my phone back up to my ear. “You have got to be kidding me. There’s no way in hell that thisgirl is staying here. And I don’t need any damn help to get my art show ready!”
“Too damn bad. I’m sorry, Reese, but I promised the gallery that you’d get an assistant to help you get ready. They’re too freaked out by the fact you’ve only got one piece ready and this was the only way to keep them from cancelling your show.”
“Cancelling my show! You’re not serious. I’ve never had anyone cancel on me in my whole career. Never!”
“You’ve never been this emotionally constipated.”
Wrinkling my nose, I glare at the phone. “That’s disgusting.”
“Paints quite the picture, doesn’t it? There’s nothing that you can do about this. She’s there until you get your pieces ready. Then if you want to you can let her go.”
“We’ll see about that.” I wish I had a regular rotary phone because I’d pay a fortune to be able to slam the receiver in her ear.
Then I stomp back to the door and open it, trying not to notice how pretty the girl with the angel’s smile looks as she asks, “Is everything alright?”
“No. But it will be.” Just as soon as I drive this cheerful little girl back to where she came from.
She just smiles and darts past me, her head lifting and her mouth forming a pretty “o”.
Damn if my dirty mind doesn’t start picturing that pretty mouth doing some very interesting things to my aching dick.
Groaning under my breath, I follow her back down the hall and to the parlor beside my studio.
“I can already see what’s wrong here.” She whips around and those innocent gray eyes light up as she claps her little hands. “You need to decorate for Christmas. This gloomy old place is sapping all your inspiration. But we’ll get all of it taken care of. Don’t you worry. Do you have any decorations or should I start looking at the stores?”
Sucking in a shaking breath, I glare at her. “I don’t like Christmas.”
“Everybody likes Christmas.” And then she wanders off and completely ignores me, leaving me growling and staring after her tiny figure.
This Christmas really sucks! Ugh!
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