Page 8 of Stranded in A Small Town Christmas
As soon as Mom leaves the room, Donovan turns to me with a small crease between his eyebrows I think might be permanent. He really needs to relax more. “Are there going to be text messages in that phone that could get me in trouble?”
“No. When the police chief knocked on her door, my aunt locked herself in the bathroom and deleted all the texts. She thought that would make them disappear from the other woman’s phone, too.” I sigh, shaking my head. “She got a stern talking to, and she was extra embarrassed because she dumped the police chief to hook up with my uncle back in the day, so there’s some history and an unusually high number of parking tickets between those two. But she stopped contacting the other woman. The phone is safe.”
He looks like he has more questions, but Mom returns and holds a small black device out to him. In her other hand is the charging cord and a prepaid card for the phone. When he takes it and flips it open—because of course it’s a flip-phone—I brace myself for his reaction. The man undoubtedly owns the fanciest, most up-to-date tech on the market, and this phone is not that. It doesn’t even have a screen with a keyboard, and composing a single text message will probably take him at least fifteen minutes.
It’s probably a good thing it flips closed into a compact size because if he insults it and hurts my mother’s feelings, I’m going to shove that phone up his—
“Thank you,” he says. “I really appreciate this. I know you have the landline here, but it’s hard for me, feeling disconnected. Especially from my mom.”
Oh. So he isn’t a total jerk.
“I put a sticky note with the phone number on the back of this card,” Mom says, handing him the accessories. “And my number and Natalie’s number are on there, too.”
“This means a lot to me,” he says, and my mom beams. “Really. Thank you.”
Then she leaves us alone to eat, and neither of us talk. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until Mom set the plate in front of me. I’m also distracted by the noises coming from Donovan’s end of the table. They’re somewhere between a humming sound and a moan, and I know they’re showing his appreciation for Nana Jo’s lasagna. If I close my eyes, though, it’s way too easy to imagine him making those same sounds in my bed.
As soon as I swallow the last bite of my lasagna, I stand and gather my dirty dishes. “I’ll be right back. And do not even think about clearing your own place. It might kill my mother.”
“I’m not a guest. I mean, not a paying guest,” he says. “Yet.”
“It doesn’t matter. Guests, paying or otherwise, do not help.”
I walk out before he can argue with me. I couldn’t care less if he clears his plate or not, but I need a few minutes away from him—away from the noises he made and the way I can’t stop myself from looking at him. It’s just my luck that Mom hasn’t joined the rest of the family in the TV room, so once she realizes Donovan isn’t behind me, she snaps my butt with the end of the dish towel.
“He sure is a handsome one,” she says.
“Yup.” There’s no way I’m telling her he’s also rich. She might lock him in a closet and refuse to let him leave until he’s put a ring on my finger. “He was really worried about his mom, but thankfully he was able to talk to her and find out it’s just a sprained ankle before I had to tell him we weren’t going to make it there.”
“You can tell a lot about a man by how he cares for his mother.”
Donovan definitely cares for his mother. The man is willing to pay me a hundred thousand dollars to drive him to Vermont in a blizzard because she hurt herself skiing, not that I’ll share that detail with my mom. Sure, he seems like a nice guy now that he knows his mother isn’t fighting for her life in some rural hospital, but there’s still a chance he’ll forget about the deal he’d made with me two seconds after the town disappears from his rearview mirror. Until I have that money in my hand, I’m not getting anybody’s hopes up.
“It’s a magical time,” Mom continues, giving me a side-eye that makes me nervous. “Maybe a Christmas miracle brought him for you.”
“Super flattered you think it’ll take a Christmas miracle to find me a husband. And also, no.” Absolutely not. Sure, just looking at him makes my heart race and certain parts of my body ache to be touched, but he’s a billionaire.
Maybe that should go in the plus column, rather than the minus, but it’s not so much about the money. It’s about the lifestyle that goes with the money. Donovan’s undoubtedly a workaholic. His mother even teased him about never putting down his phone. It would be business first, and maybe there’s a few spare moments for a personal life, or maybe there isn’t. Travel. Fancy dinners. Entitled, manipulative people.
I’m a small-town girl, and my heart belongs to my family and my Charming Lake community. It doesn’t matter if Santa himself put Donovan in my path and had his elves abscond with his briefcase—a man like that’s not for me.
Chapter Six
Donovan
* * *
Of course I tell Natalie to precede me up the stairs. Ladies first and all that, plus she knows where we’re going. It makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is my inability to take my eyes off her ass as she climbs the steps. I’m usually a lot better at controlling my libido—at shoving down desire for a woman who’ll be a complicated distraction.
I prefer short, uncomplicated flings that don’t distract me from my businesses. And the women I get involved with want exactly the same thing from me. Maybe some nice dinners. Plus-ones at an event or two. A few orgasms. No expectations.
Natalie has expectations. She expects a big payout for a little kindness, which is something I can’t allow myself to forget.
“This is you,” she says when we reach the last door on the left.
I’m not sure what I was expecting—a lot of florals and ruffles, maybe—but the room is simple and elegant in neutral cream colors with sage and blue accents. The furniture, including a wardrobe and small writing desk, is done in the Shaker style, and I can practically feel myself relaxing.
