Page 2 of There's Only One Sleigh
While that would explain why this woman is in my fire station, I still can’t wrap my head around why she’s looking for me at all. She looks like a lawyer. Is somebody suing the fire department? Sure, Mrs. Hoover was really upset we ruined her flower garden back in August, but we were trying to put out the fire in her kitchen at the time. Even for her, a lawsuit seems like an extreme level of crankiness, and not a proper thank you for the fact we saved the rest of the house.
Then it hits me—she’sDonovan’s assistant. This is the woman he sent to help me, even though I told him not to.
“That’s me,” I tell her.
Her scowl deepens, and she tilts her head slightly. “You’re Rob Byrne?”
“Yup. Still me.”
“Sorry, I was expecting?—”
Her words cut off and she takes a deep breath while I wonder what she’d been about to say. She was expecting somebody older? Younger? Taller? Somebody dressed in a suit like my brother-in-law wears, sitting at a conference table?
“I’m Whitney Forrester,” she says, shifting her coffee cup to her left hand so she can extend her right. “I work for Mr. Wilson, and he decided I’ll be helping you with the Charming Lake Christmas Fair this year.”
He decided. The way she phrases that isn’t lost on me, and I wonder if she thinks this situation is as ridiculous as I do. When she withdraws her hand, I realize I’d held on to that handshake a few seconds more than necessary.
“I apologize for being late, but my phone’s GPS didn’t seem to be accurate,” she continues, talking fast. “And directions like ‘take a right after the old feed store’ would be more helpful if the old feed store hadn’t—according to the third person I asked for directions—burned down when I was seven years old.”
“Sorry about that. We’ve been trying to get that GPS issue fixed so out-of-towners stop getting lost, and so we won’t have to rescue anymore cars from the snowmobile trail their phones told them to take, but it’s an ongoing process.”
She takes a quick breath and straightens her spine even more before pasting on a fake smile. “Well, I’m here now and ready to get started.”
I wonder what it would take to make herreallysmile. She’s here to help me plan this year’s Christmas fair, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make a little side quest out of making Whitney Forrester smile.
“We’ll be outside a lot. Did you bring boots with you?” I like the way her nose wrinkles when I say the wordoutside.
“I brought boots, yes, though planning is more of an indoor activity.”
The planning is, but the execution is not. I’ll probably keep that to myself for now, though. “Real winter boots? Or boots that look cute with your outfit?”
“Cute? I don’t docute, thank you.” She doesn’t smile. “I packed appropriate footwear for this trip. My mistake was thinking the Christmas faircommitteewould meet in an actual committee meeting room.”
My brother-in-law might be a suit-wearing pain in my ass, but he’s actually a really great guy. When he puts his phonedown and closes his laptop, he’s warm and funny and madly in love with his family. But I have a hard time seeing this woman putting her phone down and being warm and funny. If I asked her to hold a snowball, I probably wouldn’t have to worry about it melting.
“Committee?” I chuckle, even as I start plotting some way to get back at Donovan for this. “I’ve been called a lot of things before, but never a committee.”
“There’s no committee?” The icy mask slips, leaving confusion and maybe some anxiety in its wake. “It’s just you?”
“Just me,” I confirm. “If you’re looking for the Christmas fair committee, I’m your guy.”
Chapter
Three
Whitney
I’m a confident woman. I’m smart, I’m very good at my job, and people find me physically attractive. But right now I feel like I just walked into a middle school cafeteria wearing all the wrong clothes and I’m about to slip on spilled ketchup.
This is not at all what I expected.
I’m your guy.
I know what he meant, but the phrase echoes through my body, pinging a whole lot of nerves I’d rather not have pinged right now.
In my world, men wear layers. Even the most impeccably cut suit covers everything from the neck down. Sure, sometimes a guy will take the coat off and roll his shirt sleeves up, showing off some forearm, but mostly it’s all left to the imagination.
Looking at Rob Byrne doesn’t tax my imagination one bit. A dark blue T-shirt bearing a CLFD logo hugs his body as though it was painted on him this morning. His dark uniform pants are snug, and his feet are shoved into old, unlaced leather workboots that are broken down in a way that makes me think he just steps in and out of them as necessary.
