Page 20 of Baby It's Cold Outside

A sense of calm and purpose settled over her as she pressed the button on the intercom. Maybe it was a little sad and pathetic to be coming into work on Christmas Day because she couldn’t quite face her empty apartment. But so what? Work had always been what grounded and sustained her, and she had an invaluable opportunity to start working on her pitch for next month’s PR forum while the store was blessedly quiet.

Charles, the store’s chief of security, answered on the second ring. “Oh my, Ms. Braithwaite, what happened?” he clucked as she stepped out of the rain. “You want me to get you a towel?”

“Don’t worry, Charles, I’ll be fine. I have some dry clothes in my office.” Or at least she hoped she did.

“What you doing here on Christmas Day, if you don’t mind me asking?”

She did mind a little bit, but pasted on a smile regardless. Americans had a habit of asking what they wanted to know and didn’t tend to see it as rude. So she wouldn’t either. That said, she didn’t plan to give Charles the real reason she’d walked six blocks in a freezing monsoon.

“I thought I’d take the opportunity to work uninterrupted, while there are no distractions.”

Charles’s warm brown eyes crinkled around the edges as he sent her a curious smile. “Well, it sure is quiet today. But you don’t want to stay too long, Ms. Braithwaite. Weatherman says the blizzard’s gonna hit soon.”

Ah yes, the mythical blizzard that the hysterical local weathermen had been banging on about for weeks.

“Don’t worry, Charles, I’m sure I’ll be fine. My apartment’s only six blocks from…”

“Six blocks is a mighty long way in a blizzard,” Charles interrupted in an ominous tone. “I already told Mr. Ryder he should light out before it gets dark, so I’ll say the same to you.”

“Mr. Ryder?” she asked confused. She didn’t know anyone on the staff by that name—or anyone else who was sad enough to be at work on Christmas Day.

“Mr. Ryder Sinclair,” Charles clarified. “He flew into JFK an hour ago. He called to say he’s stopping by to pick up a last-minute Christmas gift.”

“Oh, all right.” Of course, Mr. Ryder would be Lachlan Sinclair’s prodigal playboy son, named on the store’s website and letterhead as a “company director”—and whom every member of the female staff appeared to have a crush on—but whom Kate herself had never actually met.

Because apparently Ryder Sinclair’s definition of a “company director’s” job involved drawing a six-figure salary from the landmark department store that had been in his family for three generations and then disappearing for months on end on some mysterious undisclosed business. And getting photographed by paparazzi in his spare time with a parade of anorexic models, pinheaded actresses, and underdressed rock chicks surgically attached to his arm.

His impromptu shopping trip today neatly confirmed all Kate’s suspicions about the man. How irresponsible did you have to be to be buying a last-minute Christmas gift on Christmas Day? And how exactly did Mr. Ryder plan to pay for his gift, she wondered resentfully, given that all the tills were currently closed?

A gush of air from the loading bay made her shudder, all the reminder she needed that she was soaking wet. “I better go, Charles,” she said, deciding that Ryder Sinclair’s ethical turpitude and lack of foresight weren’t her problem—because unless she was extremely unlucky, she would be highly unlikely to bump into him. There were five floors of gift opportunities at Sinclair’s, and she was making a beeline straight to her office on sixth next to the toy department. Knowing the sort of woman Sinclair appeared to prefer, he’d probably be heading for lingerie on third. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye on the weather from my office window and head out if it worsens.”

After she reached her office, she stripped off her wet coat, sopping tights, drenched boots, and decidedly damp woolen shift dress and stood shivering in her matching bra and knickers. As she searched frantically for the gym wear she could have sworn she left there a week ago, Kate realized her colossally crappy Christmas had just gotten worse.

Chapter Two

What the hell difference is there between the Festive Fairy Princess and Santa’s Seasonal Sprite anyway?

Ryder Sinclair frowned at the virtually identical dolls in their glittery green-and-gold packaging and tried to make an informed decision. After five agonizing minutes of study, the only appreciable difference he could see was that the Seasonal Sprite seemed to have a good millimeter of extra cleavage. And he was pretty sure Gully wouldn’t notice that, because she was eight for chrissake—and a girl.

He flipped one of the boxes over to read the lurid scarlet lettering on the back, but instead of describing the doll’s virtues, it listed her whole damn life story—including the fact that she was head elf in Santa’s workshop.

Turning the box again, he stared at the doll’s mind-boggling cleavage barely covered by her miniature green elf dress.

Santa, you dirty old man.

He sighed and replaced the two boxes beside the others on the display, then rubbed his temple where the tension headache brought on by jet lag and extreme frustration was starting to bite.

Dammit, he’d been in the toy department for an hour at least and he still didn’t have a clue which doll to buy. He hadn’t seen Gully in over two months, so he’d phoned Christine from the airport in Afghanistan last night to get a ballpark idea of what his daughter might want—but Christine’s only suggestion had been a Christmas-themed doll. And there were like twenty of the damn things.

He glared at the array of boxes neatly stacked in a tower of concentric circles as frustration turned to aggravation. Maybe he should get Gully a selection of them? But he dismissed the idea almost as soon as it had occurred to him.

Turning up at Christine and Bill’s place in Ithaca tomorrow with more than one Christmas gift would mean suffering through another lecture from Christine about being present in his daughter’s life instead of trying to buy her affection—while getting the standard smirk of smug superiority from her husband, Bill.

After holding it together for two solid months in the sweltering hell of Helmand Province and dispassionately photographing everything from two-year-olds who’d had their limbs blown off by IEDs to soldiers who risked their lives on a daily basis but were barely old enough to shave, he was pretty sure his bullshit-o-meter wouldn’t be able to survive even a single glimpse of that damn smirk. Since punching Bill’s lights out for smiling the wrong way wasn’t an option with Gully there, he was going to have to make a decision about the doll, one way or the other, before he could head back to his apartment in SoHo and crash until he had to grab a cab to take him to Penn Station tomorrow.

He surveyed the tower for what he hoped was the last time and spotted a sparkle of silver among all the green and gold. But as he bent forward to read the script on the side, his boot connected with the boxes at the foundation of the tower.

“Crap.”

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