They had taken Dora in today as if she had never left after last summer.

They treated her like one of them. An old friend. No different than anyone, not even the town’s Top Dawg: Burke Burdette.

To be treated like one of the crowd had to drive a man like Burke, a man who defined himself by his position, his accomplishments, his respect as a leader, crazy.

Dora smiled to herself. Mt. Knott might drive Burke crazy, but she was just crazy about the place, and the people. She couldn’t think of a nicer, warmer, sweeter place to be during the Christmas season, and she looked forward to the town-wide event tomorrow night.

Burke hadn’t wanted her to stay for Mt. Knott’s Christmas kickoff. He’d asked her to come here, but now he did not want her to stay. Why?

If it were possible, she felt even more unwanted by Burke now than she had sitting alone in her office the day after Thanksgiving. What had she gotten herself into? And how did she get out?

ANNIE JONES

Winner of the Holt Medallion for Southern Themed Fiction, and the Houston Chronicle’s Best Christian Fiction Author of 1999, Annie Jones grew up in a family that loved to laugh, eat and talk—often all at the same time. They instilled in her the gift of sharing through words and humor, and the confidence to go after her heart’s desire (and to act fast if she wanted the last chicken leg). A former social worker, she feels called to be a “voice for the voiceless” and has carried that calling into her writing by creating characters often overlooked in our fast-paced culture—from seventy-somethings who still have a zest for life to women over thirty with big mouths and hearts to match. Having moved thirteen times during her marriage, she is currently living in rural Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Somebody’s Santa
Annie Jones

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

—Matthew 1:21

To my family far and wide (yeah, the older we get

the wider we are!): For all the merry Christmases

past and all the joyous new years to come, thank

you and God bless!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Questions for Discussion

Chapter One

Burke Burdett had lost himself.

The man he had always believed himself to be had vanished. Nobody needed him anymore. Nobody wanted him. Nobody even realized that he had gone.

It had happened so quickly he still didn’t know where he fit into the grand scheme of his company, his family or even his own life. But he did know this—years ago he had made a promise and now he had to see that promise through, even if it meant he had to go someplace he swore he’d never go to ask help of someone he swore he’d never see again. Even if it meant that he had to trade in his image of Top Dawg, the eldest and leader of the pack of Burdett brothers, to become somebody that nobody in Mt. Knott, South Carolina, would ever have imagined. If Burke ever hoped to find himself again, he was going to have to become Santa Claus.

Fat, wet snowflakes powdered the gray-white Carolina sky. Dried stalks of grass and weeds poked through the threadbare blanket of white. Everything seemed swathed in peace and quiet solitude.

Winter weather was not unheard of in this part of South Carolina, but Burke Burdett had rarely seen it come this early in the year, nor had he ever considered it the answer to somebody’s prayer. His prayer.

He looked to the heavens and muttered—mostly to himself but not caring if the God of all creation, maker of the sky, and mountains and gentle nudges in the form of frozen precipitation, overheard— “And on Thanksgiving Day of all times.”

It had to be Thanksgiving, of course, one of the few days when Burke took the time to actually offer a prayer much beyond a mumbled appeal for help or guidance.

This time he had asked for a little of each and added to the mix a heartfelt plea, “Please, prepare my heart for what I am about to undertake. Give it meaning by giving me purpose.”

If he were another kind of man, he could have waxed eloquent about love and honor and humbling himself in order to learn and grow from the experience. But he wasn’t that kind of man. He was the kind of man who wanted to feel productive and useful. There were worse ambitions than asking to be useful to the Lord, he believed.

So he had left his prayer as it was and waited for something to stir in him. It had stirred outside instead. Snow. In November.

The whole family had ooohed and ahhhed over it, and for an instant, Burke recalled how it felt to be a kid. And just as quickly he excused himself and drove awry from the family compound of homes.

Now in the vacant parking lot of the old building that housed his family’s business, the Carolina Crumble Pattie factory, Burke did not feel the cold. Only a dull, deepening sense of loneliness that had dogged him after spending a day surrounded by his family. In years past that family had consisted of his mom and dad, Conner and Maggie Burdett, his three brothers, Adam, Jason and Cody, and maybe a random cousin or two in from Charleston. This year two sisters-in-law and a nephew had been added. But it was the losses that Burke simply could not shake.

Age and grief had ravaged the tough old bird who had once been the strong, proud Conner Burdett, left him thin and a little stooped, worn around the eyes and unexpectedly sentimental.

Sentiment was not the Burdett way and seeing it in his father made Burke think of weakness and vulnerability. Not his father’s but his own.

Burke clenched and unclenched his jaw and squinted at the low yellow-and-tan building where he had worked since he’d been old enough to ride his bicycle there after school. It did not help that the realities of the changing market had their business by the throat and had all but choked the life out of what had once been the mainstay of employment for much of the town of Mt. Knott, South Carolina.

They had made a plan to deal with that, or rather, his brother Adam had. He had gone out into the global marketplace, learned new techniques and made powerful allies. He was the one, the family had concluded by an almost unanimous vote, who needed to take the reins now. That plan had come at a cost. Burke, who had always carried the title Top Dawg in the pack of Burdett boys, had been asked to step aside.

Step aside or be forced out. By his own family.

In doing so Burke had lost his place not just in the family but, he thought, in the whole wide world. Not that they had fired him outright. They had asked him to stay on in a different capacity, but they must have known he’d never do it. After all, who had ever heard of Upper Middle Management Dawg?

So he had tendered his resignation and never returned, not even to collect his belongings. Until now.

Adam was to take on the job that Burke had held, for all intents and purposes, for a decade now. Adam, with his expertise in international corporate business dealings. Adam, with his new ideas for marketing and distribution. Adam, with the one thing that made him the most honored in the eyes of Conner Burdett, the thing that would assure them all that their name and reputation and even their business would go on—a son.

Burke didn’t even have a girlfriend. How was he supposed to compete with that?

He wasn’t, of course. To know that, Burke only had to think about Adam and Josie and their son, Nathan, how happy they had looked today seated at the massive Burdett dinner table together. Love and joy and wanting the best for those you care about, doing your best for them, that was what mattered. Winning?

Winning, Burke decided as he let out a long, labored sigh, was for losers.

And for the first time in his life, Burke felt like a loser. Not because of the loss of his position with the company or the unlikelihood that he would become a husband and father anytime soon, but because he had failed at that one thing that really mattered in life.

Burke shuddered. The wind whipped at the collar of his brown suede coat. He pushed his gray Stetson down low, as much to hide the dark blond hair that everyone in town would recognize as to protect his head and ears from the cold. Today, Thanksgiving Day, he felt the cutting ache of the loss of his mother down to his very bones. She had died two years ago, come Christmas Eve. Two years.

Yet it felt so fresh that he could still feel the heft of her coffin as he led the procession of pallbearers that day. He flexed his hand as if to chase away the memory of the icy brass handle he had clutched to take his mother to her final resting place. But it had been too long.

He had let too much time go past and now he had to face the truth.

Until this year the running of “the crumble,” as everyone in Mt. Knott affectionately called the business, had kept him busy. It had occupied his time, his thoughts, his energy. He hadn’t even had time for dating, much less a real relationship, for seeing friends or making a real home for himself or any of the niceties most people his age took for granted. He certainly didn’t have time to take on some silly pet cause of his mother’s. One he didn’t understand, didn’t approve of and had only learned about when she was on her deathbed. Even if it was the one thing she had asked that Burke and Burke alone, of all the brothers, undertake. Her dying wish.

He swiped a knuckle across his forehead to nudge back his hat, ignoring the sudden sting of a flake that swirled beneath his Stetson to land on his cheek.

His finger brushed over the faint old scar that jagged across his eyebrow.

Conner had given it to him—the scar, not the business. The Crumble he had had to fight for in every sense of the word. He’d used the law, his family’s consensus and finally even his fists to win his birthright as oldest of the four Burdett sons. His birthright—his place as head of the Burdett household and CEO of the family’s already foundering enterprise.

Burke had gotten that scar the night he’d taken over as head of the family business. He’d been running it behind the scenes while his mother was sick, without much input at all from the rest of the family, but Conner’s name had always remained painted in gold on the glass of the door to the big office. Until that night. That night everything had shifted, like a great jutting up of land along a fault line. They had all known it would come one day but had done little to prepare for it.

That night Adam had cashed out his share of the Crumble factory, taken the inheritance his mother had left and run away. And Conner and Burke had pushed their always contentious relationship to the edge.

He hung his head. Even after all these years, even though he and his father had made their peace, Burke felt a pang of regret that it had gone so far. But his father’s grief over losing Maggie had driven them to the brink of bankruptcy. Adam’s actions had sealed the deal.

It was either challenge his father and take over or lose everything that they had worked to achieve.

Burke stroked the memento of that fateful night. Two things had happened then that would forever shape the rest of his life. First, he’d become a man, the leader of his family, the one they would all depend on. And second, he had decided, as he saw his father sobbing in misery over the remnants of what had once been a proud life, that Burke would never let himself need another person the way his father had needed his mother. It was a man’s choice, as he saw it. You cannot love one person that much and still have enough left to serve the many who depend on you.

He’d been true to his word on both counts. He’d applied the ruthless business tactics that his father had taught him, slashed jobs, cut the budget to the bone, stripped away bonus plans and reduced salaries, starting with his own. It wasn’t enough.

And as for needing anyone?

Need was some other person’s weakness. Not his. Ever. Except…

There was his mother’s dying wish.

A wish too long ignored.

A job that no one in Mt. Knott could know about, much less help him with.

He needed to take care of that.

Christmas was only five weeks away. Time was running out.

He’d looked at his predicament from every possible angle. In order to preserve everything his mother had worked so hard to keep secret for so many years, he would require a certain type of person. Someone from out of town. Someone who would work hard, collect her sizable paycheck and then go away before December twenty-fourth to leave his family and his town to celebrate the sacred holiday, without so much as a backward glance. Someone who shared his beliefs that business is not a personal thing, that sentiment breeds weakness, and that needing someone is not the cornerstone of a good life but a roadblock on the way to the top.

He forced his hat back down low on his head and made his way toward the building at last. He would duck inside and grab the box that had been waiting there for him ever since he had cleared out of his office to make way for Adam. In it he’d find a phone number on a business card. Tomorrow morning, he’d have to make the trek to Atlanta.

Chapter Two

“Working on the day after Thanksgiving, Ms. Hoag? I thought you’d be out shopping with the rest of the country.”

“Shopping?” It took Dora Hoag a moment to grasp the concept. “Oh, shopping! Christmas shopping. As in gifts and glad tidings and ho-ho-ho and ‘Hark! the Herald Angels…’”

Dora let out a low sigh.

She glanced up from the paperwork on her enormous desk at the salt-and-pepper–haired man, Zach Bridges, owner of the company who cleaned their office building. She knew him, just as she knew everyone on his cleaning crew, the night security guards, the lunch cart girls, everyone at the nearest all-night coffee shop and the company maintenance staff. Dora knew pretty much anyone who, like her, was still working long after others had gone off to…well, do whatever it was people who did not work all the time did when they were not working. She knew them, but they didn’t know her, not really.

Granted, each year she took off most of the month of December, using up some of the vacation days she hadn’t taken during the year. After seven years she thought ol’ Zach might have figured out that she did not need more time to go caroling, wrap packages or bake cookies. She was hiding.

Hiding from the hurt the most joyous time of year always had meant to her. After all, what happiness is there in the season of giving when you have no one to give to?

Dora supported all the charities, of course. She’d worked at missions serving food and dropped a mountain of coins in little red buckets. She went to the candlelight service at her church, and her heart filled with love as they sang the hymns about the baby born in the manger. But when the last parishioners had called out their goodbyes, Dora had always been alone. Like the last gift under the tree that nobody claimed.

“Let me guess. You’re the type who has all her shopping done before the stores even put up the first display. Oh, say, long about the end of September.” Zach’s smile stretched beyond the clipped edges of his mustache. “That way you don’t have to face the rush this time of year.”

Dora would have loved a reason to brave the throng and chaos this time of year to find just the right thing to express how she felt, to make someone smile, to give them…well, just to give from her heart. Instead she had work to do, and if she hoped to take her yearly sabbatical starting next week, she had to get back to it.

She flipped over a piece of paper in the file and narrowed her eyes at the long column of numbers. “I’m shopping all right. I just have a different idea of what constitutes a bargain.”

“Looking for a couple of small businesses to snatch up and use as stocking stuffers, eh?”

“Snatch up? You make me sound like a bird of prey swooping down for the kill.”

“Eat like a bird,” he said, emptying the day’s trash—an apple core, a picked-over salad in a plastic container, half a sandwich with just the crusts nibbled away. “And you’re always flitting around, never perching anyplace for long.”

“I’ve been based in this office for seven years, now, Zach.”

“Seven years, and I’m still dusting the same office chair. Ain’t ever in it long enough to wear it out and requisition a new one.”

“Point taken.” She laughed. For a moment she considered quizzing the man on what else he had concluded about her over the years, but a flashing light and a buzz from her phone system stopped her.

“Ms….” The barely audible voice cut out, followed by another buzz then, “This is…” Silence, another buzz. “…says that…” A longer silence, a buzz, then nothing, not even static.

She frowned.

Zach chuckled and gave a shrug. “Security. Brought in extra help for the holidays and made the new ones work this weekend.”

“Not like you, huh, Zach? You let your staff have the time off and came in yourself.” She admired that. It showed the character to put others before your own desires and the integrity to make sure you still meet your promised goals.

“Just the way I roll, I reckon,” Zach said matter-of-factly. Then he nodded his head toward the bin beneath her paper shredder, his way of asking if she wanted him to take the zillion cross-cut strips of paper away with the rest of the trash.

She shook her head. Nobody got a glimpse of her business, not even in bits and pieces. She glanced down at the pad on her desk and the silly little doodle of a very Zach-like elf pushing a candy-cane broom and suppressed a smile. It was only business, she admitted to herself as she tore off the page and slid it into the middle of the pile of papers waiting for the shredder. The man might come to some conclusions about her on his own, but she wouldn’t supply any confirmation. That was the way she rolled.

Never show your soft side. Never reveal all your talents, even the more whimsical ones. Never let anyone get a peek at what you think of them. Never share your dreams. Never act on anything in blind trust, not even your own feelings.

And most importantly, never let your hopes or your heart do the work that is the rightful domain of your history and your head.

She’d learned that lesson the hard way and not all that long ago.

She looked at the nest of shredded paper and blinked. Tears blurred her vision. The tip of her nose stung.

For an instant she was in South Carolina on a lovely summer day at a family barbeque. Not her family, but one in which she had thought she might one day find a place.

Dora Burdett. How many times had she doodled that name like some young girl in middle school with her first crush? Crush. What an apt word for what had happened to that dream.

She cleared her throat, spread her hands wide over the open file before her and anchored herself firmly in the present. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my work.”

“Always wheelin’ and dealin’, huh, Ms. Hoag?”

“I head Acquisitions and Mergers, Zach.” She raised her head and stared at the massive logo for GrimEx-Cynergetic Global Com Limited on the green marble wall beyond her open door, where professional decorators had already begun hanging greenery with Global gold-and-silver ornaments. “It’s my job to find the best deals before anyone else does.”

“One step ahead of all those poor saps who took the long weekend off to get a jump on the holidays, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Those poor saps.”

How she so wanted to be one of them.

All her life that was what she had wanted most of all—to have somebody recognize what she had to give, and to accept it and her. Not as an obligation or duty or in hopes of currying favor but because…she mattered.

Dora had never truly felt that she mattered. She, the things she did, the things she thought, her hopes, her dreams, her. Not in that way when someone loves you despite your shortcomings. When someone not only wants the best for you but feels you are the best for them, that you bring out the best in each other. She did not grow up in a home like that.

Her mother died when she was born. Her overwhelmed father left his newborn in the care of a childless and already middle-aged aunt and uncle while he went away to “find himself” and “get his head on straight,” as people said in the seventies.

Apparently he never did either thing, because he never returned for Dora. Sometimes when Dora thought about him she imagined a man wandering about with his head facing backward, asking total strangers if they had seen his lost self.

Aunt Enid and Uncle Taylor did their best to care for her as their own. They started this by naming her Dora, which already put her at a disadvantage among peers with names like Summer, Montana and Jessica. So she kept to herself and worked hard, trying to make her foster parents proud. And for her effort she drew the attention of teachers and administrators. They called her “the little adult” and made jokes about her being “ten going on forty” and tried to get her to lighten up a little. But whenever they needed something done—from choosing a child to represent the school at a leadership conference to helping out in the office or being in charge of the cash box at the pep club bake sale—they tapped Dora.

She learned quickly that hard work and efficiency opened doors. It wasn’t the same as fitting in or mattering to someone but it came a close second. About as good as Dora thought she’d ever see.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering how different her life might be if just once someone had reached out and asked her to come through the doors her drive had created.

A small thing.

A shouted invitation to join a crowded lunch table.

A remembered birthday.

An explanation of why a certain blond-haired, South Carolina gentleman had slammed the door in her face when she had only wanted to…

“I’m dreaming of a…”

“Please, no Christmas songs, Zach.”

“Too early in the season for you?” the man asked, as he tossed his dust rag on top of his cart and began to back the cart out of the room.

“Something like that.” Especially when her mind had just flashed back to last summer and that family barbeque when she had thought that finally she had done something so caring and constructive that it would change her entire life. That the man she had offered to help, she dared hope, would change her life.

Dora Burdett.

She pressed her eyes closed.

Zach cleared his throat.

A twinge of guilt tightened her shoulders and made her sit upright, look the man in the eyes and produce a conciliatory smile. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those who wants to do away with Merry Christmas or any of the wonderful trappings of the season. I just…”

She put her hand over her forehead, as if that would warm up the old thought process and help her find the right words to explain her feelings. Except, it wasn’t her brain that was frozen against all the joyous possibilities Christmas represented to so many. She loved the Lord, and observed His birth in her own way. “I love going to church for the candlelight service on Christmas Eve. I love singing the hymns and all, but….”

“But after that you don’t have no one to go home to and share it all with,” Zach said softly.

“How did you know that?” The observation left her feeling so exposed she could hardly breathe.

“You don’t dust around folks’s nicknacks and geegaws or throw out their calendar’s pages or run into them working on the day after Thanksgiving year upon year without learning a thing or two about those folks.”

The answer humbled her even if it didn’t bring her much relief. “I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, don’t think it’s my place to say—or sing—anything more, but I hate to leave without at least…” He scratched his head, worked his mouth side to side a couple of times then finally sighed. “I’ll just offer this thought.”

Dora braced herself, pressing her lips together to keep from blurting out that she didn’t need his thoughts or sympathy or songs. Because, deep down, she sort of hoped that whatever he had to say might help.

He lifted his spray bottle of disinfectant cleaner the way someone else might have raised a glass to make a toast. “Here’s to hoping this year is different.”

It didn’t help.

But Dora smiled. At least she thought she smiled. She felt her face move, but really it could have been anything from a fleeting grin to that wince she tended to make when forcing her feet into narrow-toed high heels. Just as quickly she fixed her attention on the papers in front of her and busied herself with shuffling them about. “Thanks. Now I need to get back to work. Can’t make a deal on merely hoping things will improve, can I?”

“On the contrary.” The challenge came from the tall blond man who placed himself squarely in her office doorway. “I’d say that hope is at the very core of every deal.”

Burke Burdett! Questions blew through Dora’s mind more quickly than those fictional eight tiny reindeer pulling a flying sleigh. But the words came out of her mouth fast and furious and from the very rock bottom of her own reality. “How dare you show your face to me.”

“Show my face? The view don’t get any better from the other side, Dora,” he drawled in his low, lazy Carolina accent.

Zach, who had worked the cleaning cart into the hallway by now, laughed.

Dora opened her mouth to remind him it wasn’t part of his job description to make assumptions about her or eavesdrop on her and her guests. The squeak, rattle, squeak of the cart told her Zach had already moved on, though. She was alone in her office with Burke Burdett.

But not for long.

She reached out for a button on her phone, hesitated, then raised her eyes to meet those of her visitor.

He had good eyes. Clear and set in a tanned face with just enough lines to make him look thoughtful but still rugged. But if one looked beyond those eyes, those so-called character lines, there was a hard set to his lips and a wariness in his stance.

“Give me one reason not to call security to come up here and escort you out,” she said.

“Well, for starters, I don’t think the poor kid you’ve got posted at the front desk knows how to find the intercom button to hear you, much less where your office is.” He dropped into the leather wingback directly across from her. Years ago an old hand had taught Dora that standing was the best way to keep command of an exchange. Stand. Move. Hold their attention and you hold the reins of the situation.

Burke had just broken that cardinal rule. And made things worse when he stretched his legs out in front of him, crossed his boots at the ankle to create a picture of ease. He scanned the room, saying, “Besides, he was the one who let me in.”

Dora wasn’t the only one who noticed and befriended the people everyone else looked right past. “And what did you use to convince that so-green-he’s-in-danger-of-being-mistaken-for-a-sprig-of-holly security guard to get him to do that?”

“Use? Me? Why, nothing but the power of my dazzling personality and charm.”

“I’ve been on the receiving end of your charm, Mr. Burdett. It’s more drizzle than dazzle.” She’d meant it as a joke. A tease, really. Under other circumstances, with another man, maybe even a flirtation.

Burke clearly knew that. All of it. He responded in kind with the softest and deepest of chuckles.

And Dora found herself charmed indeed.

“So the security kid is already sort of on my side in this deal,” he summed up.

“Deal?” She stood so quickly that her chair went reeling back into the wall behind her desk. She did not acknowledge the clatter it made. “There is no deal. You made that very clear to me when you cut me out of your family’s plans to save the Crumble and get things there back on track.”

Last summer, after working his way quickly up the corporate ladder at Global, Adam Burdett had returned to Mt. Knott with a scheme to buy out Carolina Crumble Pattie and get some satisfaction for all the perceived wrongs done against him by his adoptive father. It had all seemed a bit soap operaish to Dora, but as a good businesswoman she knew those were exactly the elements that put other people at a disadvantage in forging a business contract. Emotions. Family. Old hurts. They could push things either way.

In this case, they had eventually gone against Global’s proposed buyout. And in favor of Adam Burdett, and by extension, Dora. Together they had the wherewithal to save the company and the desire to do so. It wasn’t what either of them had planned, but then love had a way of changing even the most determined minds. Adam’s love for Josie—now his wife—his son, his family. And Dora’s for the town of Mt. Knott, its way of life, the thrill of a new venture based on the same kind of Biblical principles that had once motivated Global a few dozen mergers ago. And her love for Burke.

She hadn’t loved him right away but by the end of the summer, she thought she did love him. And she thought he loved her back.

Only she hadn’t been thinking. She had been feeling and acting on those feelings. Which had brought her full circle, only then she had become the one at a disadvantage in the contract negotiations. Dora was out. Adam was in. Burke had been nowhere to be found.

Burke glanced her way, then went right on surveying their surroundings. “This is a new deal that I’ve come to talk to you about today.”

“New deal? Why would I talk to you about a new deal? Or that old deal? You didn’t talk to me about that then and I don’t want to talk to you about…”

“Look, I’m here now, dazzling or not, with a new deal to discuss. The past is past. I can’t change it. Isn’t there anything more important for us to talk about than that?”

Only about a million things. Yet given the chance to bring up any of them all Dora could come up with was, “I can’t imagine what we’d have to say to one another.”

“I can. At least, I have some things I want to say to you.”

Her whole insides melted. Not defrosted like an icicle, dripping in rivulets until it had dwindled to nothing but a nub, but more like a piece of milk chocolate where the thumb and finger grasp it—just enough to make a mess of everything.

“You have something to say to me?” She bent her knees to sit, realized her chair was a few feet away and moved around the desk instead to lean back against it. “Like what, for instance?”

“Like…” He tilted his head back. He narrowed his eyes at her. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair.

The leather crunched softly, putting her in mind of a cowboy shifting into readiness in the saddle. Readiness for what, though?

She held her breath.

He leaned forward as if every decision thereafter depended on her answer, asking softly and with the hint of his smile infusing his words, “Like, what do you want for Christmas?”

She almost slid off the edge of the desk. “I…uh…”

What did she want for Christmas? “After six months of not so much as a phone message, you drove all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask me what I want for Christmas?” She stood up to retake control of what was clearly a conversation with no real purpose or direction. “Are you kidding me? Who does that?”

He could not answer her. Or maybe he could answer but didn’t want to. He just sat there.

And sat there.

She could hear him breathing. Slow and steady. See his eyes flicker with some deep emotion but nothing she could define without looking long and hard into them. And she was not likely to do that.

She cleared her throat. She could wait him out. She had waited him out, in fact. He had been the one who had come to her, not the other way around. Even though early on there had been plenty of long, lonely nights when she had wanted nothing more than to hop in her car, or in the company jet or hitch a ride on a passing Carolina Crumble delivery truck to get herself back to South Carolina to confront him. Or kiss him.

Or both.

She wanted to do both. Even now. Which made it imperative that she do something else all together. So she plunked down on the edge of the desk again and said the only thing that made any sense at all to her, given the circumstances. “What I want is for you to go back to Mt. Knott and just leave me in peace.”

“Peace. Yes.” His slow, steady nod gave the impression of a man who longed for the very same gift—but doubted he’d ever find it. “That I can’t promise you. That’s better a request for the One who sent his Son.”

“Nice save,” she whispered, thinking of how deftly he’d avoided her demand for him to leave.

“Best save ever made, if you think about it.”

She looked out into the hallway at the Christmas decorations going up. Global would not have a nativity scene, or any reference to the birth of Christ, and yet they covered the place in greenery, the symbol of life everlasting. All around her this time of year, the world came alive with symbols of hope. They rang in the ears, they delighted the eye, they touched the heart. It was such a special time, a time when one could believe not just in the wonder of God’s Son but also in the possibilities for all people of goodwill.

Maybe even for a person like Burke.

Maybe he had really come here because he wanted to know what she wanted. Maybe he needed to know that she could still want him, to tell her that he had made a mistake, to tell her that she…

He shifted forward again, clasping his hands. “As for me…”

As for me. He had asked what she wanted, ignored her reply and went straight for his real purpose in coming. Me.

Himself.

He didn’t want to know about her, he wanted to ask her to do something for him.

The moment passed and Dora stood again. She had to get him out of here. She had to keep him from saying another word that might endear him to her, that might give her reason to hope….

“As for you, Mr. Burdett.” She moved to the door and made a curt jerk of her thumb to show him the way he should exit. “I don’t really care what you want for Christmas.”

“Not even if what I want, only you can give me?”

Chapter Three

Burke had broken the first rule of negotiation. He had let his counterpart know the strength of her position. He had been upfront and told her that he wanted to make a deal and she was the only one he wanted to deal with. He might as well have handed her a blank check.

And he would have done just that if he had thought it would work.

It wouldn’t. Not with a woman like Dora. So he had done the next best thing, given her all the power in the situation. Now that, that was something she had to find compelling. Right?

Burke swallowed to push down the lump in his throat. He was not accustomed to anyone questioning his judgment and actions. Even when they included his limited charm, fumbling coyness and…Christmas cutesiness.

Who does that? Dora’s earlier question echoed in his thoughts. Who drives all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask a grown woman—one who clearly hates his guts—what she wants for Christmas?

Certainly not Top Dawg, the alpha male of the Burdett wolf pack. Certainly not him. And yet, that’s exactly what he’d done.

And he had no idea whom to blame for it.

“What do you want, Burke?” She folded her arms over her compact body, narrowed her dark eyes and pursed her lips, a look only Dora could pull off. A look that probably set countless underlings and more than a few superiors shaking in their boots. A look that made Burke want to take her by the shoulders and find the nearest mistletoe. “What could I possibly do for you?”

He forced the obvious and inappropriate answers aside and started at the beginning.

“It’s a long story. Goes back to my mom.” He squirmed in the fancy wingback. He tried to make himself comfortable but the back was too stiff, the seat too short, the leather too slick. Not to mention that his trying to pin his actions on his late mother, too flimsy.

He wasn’t a man who needed to assign blame, it was just that something had brought him to this point and he sure wished he knew what it was.

“Your, um, your mother?” Dora did not flinch but her no-nonsense squint did soften as she prodded him to say more.

He jerked his head up and their eyes met. He hadn’t planned on that happening. Hadn’t prepared for it—hadn’t steeled himself against the accusations he saw aimed like a hundred arrows right at him.

How could he have prepared a defense for those? He’d earned each and every one of those unforgiving, poisonous points. She had every right to hate him, or at least not to want to see him and to turn down his proposal outright. “Uh, yeah. My mother. Thing is she started this…it all started a long time ago, really. Long time before she was my mom or met my dad or had any idea that her life would turn out, well, the way it did.”

Dora looked away from him at last. Her shoulders sagged, but she kept her chin angled up, in that way she had that she thought made her seem brave and sophisticated.

Seeing her like that made Burke want to push himself up to his feet and take her in his arms and hold her close. To lay his cheek against her soft, black hair and tell her that when she acted that way he could see right through to the scared, lonely little girl he had seen in her since the first time she powered her way into the Crumble to try to buy it out.

She sounded the part, too, quiet with a tiny quiver that she forced to be still more and more with each word. “None of us knows the way our lives will turn out.”

“My mom did.” He matched her tone, without the tremor. “Or she thought she did.”

“That’s the kicker, isn’t it? When things don’t turn out the way you thought they would?” Try as she might to come off all cool and in control, his showing up like this had obviously thrown her off balance. “When you start down a path. You make plans. You pray about it and feel you’ve finally…”

She glanced out the door.

He uncrossed his ankles and set his feet flat, just in case he decided to up and bolt from the room. It wasn’t his style to do that kind of thing, but then again, neither was the way he had treated Dora earlier this year. Something about her made him do things he’d never thought himself capable of.

“Things just don’t…” She shuffled the files on her desk.

He looked down. He should have worn his new boots. Dora deserved for him to put his best foot forward, literally and figuratively.

Dora cleared her throat.

He crossed his ankles again, his way of making it harder to give up on his quest and hightail it back to Mt. Knott.

“Like you said,” she murmured at last, “…the way you thought.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s the kicker. When things don’t turn out the way you wished they would.”

She’d said thought.

He’d said wished.

He wondered if she would correct him and in doing so bluntly and unashamedly confirm that they were talking about their own failed plans. If only she would and they could get it out into the open.

Burke was an out-in-the-open kind of man. Always had been—except when the good faith of a woman who didn’t have sense enough to give up on him was at stake. That’s how he’d gotten into this predicament in the first place.

He’d wanted to be upfront with Dora from the get-go, but the underhanded way in which his brothers had cut him from his spot as top dog of the family business left him hurt, humiliated and wanting to tuck his tail between his legs and hide. He knew that about himself. Knew that what he’d done, dumping her by pretending the only thing between them had been a business deal, was wrong. If she would only call him on it maybe they could sort it out and then…then what?

He shook his head. “You see, my mom, she had this plan for her life.”

Dora held her tongue.

He felt he had to forge ahead.

Fill the silence.

State his case for coming here after all this time.

And if he got what was coming to him in the bargain? He’d take it like he took every blow and disappointment he’d suffered in life, without flinching and letting anyone see his pain.

“College, travel, adventure. Mom had the brains, the courage and the means to do it all. Something I know you can relate…” Too soon. One look into her eyes and he could see he had tried to get her to invest in this on a personal level much too soon.

“Yes?”

No, not too soon. He’d read her all wrong.

He’d spent hour upon hour with her. They’d discussed everything from business to barbeque sauce. He’d even sat by her side and mapped out a future that would forever intertwine them, if only on their corporate income tax papers.

The things unsaid had promised more, and he knew it. Their laughter, their shared beliefs, their dedication to their work. Those things made it easy to be around Dora, something he’d never felt with another woman. They also made it easy to let go of her when their business deal fell through.

Fell through. Pretty words for having been kicked out by your own family and finding yourself left with nothing more to offer anyone, least of all a woman like Dora.

No position. No power. No purpose.

Burke knew that Dora needed those things for herself and from anyone involved with her. After the family had put those—position, power, purpose—out of reach for him, a personal relationship with Dora had become impossible for him.

He pressed on with his pitch. “My mother changed her life plans completely so that she could give her all to her family and the new dreams we would create together.”

Dora would never have done the same.

“So your mother made her choice,” she said. “Most women do. We tell ourselves we can have it all, and maybe we can but most of us know we can’t have it all and give our all, all the time. So we all make choices. That is something I can relate to.”

There was an eagerness in Dora’s eyes, an intensity. Did he dare call it hope? Or merely an openness to hope? It was so slim, so faint. He doubted she even knew she was revealing it. It embarrassed him a little and humbled him that he should have this advantage, no, this blessing. That he should get this tiny glimpse into something so personal, the best part of this woman he admired so much.

Not until this moment did he realize that while Dora Hoag might be living the life his mother had never realized, it was not by her own choosing.

That changed everything—save for the fact that he still couldn’t pull off any of this without someone’s help. Dora’s help. But now instead of wheeling and dealing to get it, he knew he had to win her over, make her want to do it as much as he wanted her to do it.

Without giving her any warning, he stood and held his open hand toward her. “Let’s get out of here.”

She looked at his outstretched palm then at the door. “You go first.”

“Stop playing games, Dora.”

“At the risk of sounding repetitive—you first.”

“I don’t play games.” He dropped his hand.

“I know.” She folded her arms again. “And you don’t make a trip to tell someone something face-to-face that could easily be said on the phone or by e-mail.”

He acknowledged that with a dip of his head.

“So just say what you came here to say and then kindly get out,” she said quite unkindly.

“You’re right. I did come to tell you something. And ask you something. But first I have to show you.” He reached into his inside coat pocket.

Her arms loosened slightly. Her shoulders lifted. “If you were any other man, I’d expect you to pull out a small velvet box after a statement like that.”

“Small? Velvet?” His fingers curled shut inside his coat. “Oh!”

She tilted her head and gave him a smile that was light but a bit sad. “I don’t play games, either.”

“I’ll say you don’t.” He shook his head. She’d gotten him. He’d come here thinking he knew what he was walking into and how to maintain control of it and she’d gotten him. To his surprise, he didn’t mind. In fact, he kind of liked it. He liked this feisty side of her. “But you sure do a have an overactive imagination, lady.”

“Overactive? Because I once thought of you as a man of his word?”

Suddenly he liked that feistiness a little less. “Hey, let’s not go there, Dora.”

“Where else would you like to go, Burke? You seem to be up for a lot of travel all of a sudden. Coming here. Wanting me to go someplace with you. Maybe we should add a little trip down memory lane to your itinerary.”

“Memory lane?” He smirked.

“What?” Lines formed in her usually smooth forehead. She pursed her lips and waited for him to say more.

“Just a pretty old-fashioned term, don’t you think? I’d have gone for a play on time travel.” He was trying to lighten the mood.

She wasn’t having any part of it. “I was raised in a pretty old-fashioned home by my great-aunt and uncle. It’s the way they talked, I guess. It’s not so unusual. You knew the meaning.”

The meaning he knew. The tidbit about her upbringing he hadn’t known. Did it make any difference? Probably not to his plan, but it did explain a few things about her outlook on the world and the world’s outlook on her. Nobody got her, not really. Nobody knew her.

Try as he could to stop it, Burke found that she was bringing out the protective nature of his Top Dawg personality again. To keep from caving into that or allowing her to rehash how badly he had handled things between them last summer, he stepped forward. He pulled the business card he had gone to retrieve from the Crumble out of his pocket. He gazed at the off-white rectangle with raised black lettering atop brightly colored shapes for only a moment before he handed it to her.

“What’s that?”

“That’s where I want to take you.”

“To a doctor’s office?”

“A pediatrician’s office.”

“Why?”

He moved to the doorway. “Come with me and I’ll explain everything.”

She did not budge. “So far, you haven’t explained anything. You haven’t answered a single one of my questions. Why should I let you show me this place?”

“Showing is simple.” He held out his hand again. “Answers are complicated.”

She ignored his gesture and raised one arched, dark eyebrow. “Then uncomplicate them.”

Uncomplicate a lifetime of mischief, hope, happiness, tough choices and intricate clandestine arrangements? Couldn’t be done.

Rattle. Squeak. Rattle.

Zach and his cleaning cart went wobbling by the open door.

Burke grinned. Maybe he couldn’t just hand her the whys and wherefores of his situation, but if Dora wanted answers he could at least give her one. “You asked me who comes all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask someone what they want for Christmas. It’s not so hard to figure out, really, if you think about it.”

Zach’s raspy voice rang out in a Christmas carol about Santa Claus.

Dora frowned.

Burke jerked his head toward the open door. “Go ahead. Say it. You know you want to. Who makes a trip to ask someone what they want for Christmas?”

“S-Santa Claus?” she whispered, as Zach rounded the corner and his song faded.

Burke gave a small nod of his head, then looked up to catch her eye and winked. “That’s me. And if there is going to be Christmas in Mt. Knott this year, I am going to need your help.”

Chapter Four

“Okay, we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes.” Dora glanced out the window of his shiny silver truck. Her, tooling around Atlanta in a pick up with a South Carolina snack cake cowboy Santa-wannabe at the wheel—listening to country music’s finest, crooning Christmas carols on the radio. What happened to her policy of not trusting anyone, especially anyone named Burdett, again? What happened to her plan of ditching Christmas again this year by making herself scarce before sundown? What happened to this place that Burke had promised to show her, the one that would give her a reason to forgo the not trusting and the ditching and make her want to…

The lyrics to a song she’d heard moments before—“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”—popped into her head. Burke Burdett? Santa? Difficult to imagine. Kissing him? Hardly the kind of thing a serious businesswoman, an angry almost-girlfriend or a woman of good Christian character ought to be dwelling on! She stole a peek at his rugged profile and noted the way he seemed to fill up the cab of the truck and yet still leave a place for her to sit comfortably beside him.

“Burke?”

“Hmm?” He didn’t look at her and yet the casualness of his reply gave her a sense of familiarity no quick cast-off glance in a truck cab ever could.

She flexed her fingers on the padded car door handle and forced herself to study their surroundings as she counted off their recent itinerary. “I’ve seen the art gallery where some lady from Mt. Knott had her first show. The jeweler’s where your mother used to have special ornaments engraved. And the building of the accounting firm that employs the valedictorian of your graduating class.”

She hoped she hadn’t missed anything. He’d told her it would all make sense in time so, ever the bright, obedient girl, she had tried to make mental notes as they drove along.

“Yeah?” He seemed engrossed in reading the street signs.

If he didn’t know where they were going then why had he brought her along? And why had she come? She squeezed her eyes shut to put her thoughts back on track.

She crossed her arms and tipped up her chin. “So far you haven’t really shown me anything that supports your claim of needing me to help you play the jolly fat guy.”

“Hey.” He tapped the brake lightly and stole a sly, amused glimpse her way at last. “Is that any way to talk to Santa?”

“You are not Santa.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded, with an expression that was neither jeering nor jovial but somewhere in between. Then he made a sharp turn, and used the momentum of their shifting center of gravity to lean over and whisper, just beside her ear, “But I’m on his team.”

“Oh, right.” She shivered at his nearness. “Team Santa. I suppose you have the T-shirt and matching ball cap?”

“No can do. Team Santa is strictly a hush-hush kind of deal.” He sat upright behind the wheel again and fixed his eyes straight ahead. “Not that I would look devastatingly cute in said hat and shirt.”

He would. He’d be downright adorable, with his suntanned skin and deep set eyes that twinkled when he knew he had the best of a person in a given situation—and Burke always had the best of everyone in any situation. He knew it and so did she.

She couldn’t take her eyes off him now. So strong, so confident, so manly but with just a hint of boyish excitement over this odd adventure he insisted on dragging her into. This was the Burke she had known last summer. The one she had wanted so much to give her heart to, right up until his last quick, cutting phone call when he’d ended their professional and, by extension, personal relationship based on the results of the family meeting. Correction: the Carolina Crumble Pattie board of directors meeting, a board made up of the members of the Burdett family. This Burke and the man who had torn her dreams to shreds with a soft-spoken and deceptively simple, “nothing personal, just business,” seemed to be two entirely different people.

A man like that…he was not to be trusted.

That reminder made it easier for her to sit back and create a little verbal distance. “I suppose next you will try to tell me that you’re an elf?”

“Why do you think I let my hair get this shaggy?” He tapped the side of his head. “To hide my pointed little ears.”

“Really?” She did not look his way. “I thought you let your hair grow out for the same reason I keep mine short.”

“Because it makes you look like a little girl all dressed up in grown-up clothes?”

“No.” She crinkled up her nose at his way-off-base guess. “Because…um, does it?”

She put her hand to the back of her head. If anyone else on earth had said that she’d have given them what for, but coming from Burke, it had a sweetness that took her by surprise. She had always suspected that he could see the young Dora, the frightened, lonely and longing-to-belong child who lurked just beneath her polished surface. The notion warmed her heart. And chilled her to the core.

“That’s not…that is…the point is, we both keep our hair the length we do for the same reason.”

“I hope not. My hair is long but I hope not long enough to make me look like a little girl!”

“I like your hair.” It wasn’t all that long, really, just grown out enough to add to the overall appeal of this man who was rough-hewn, unfettered by convention and free from any kind of vanity or fussiness.

“Do you?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” she said, more softly. Almost childlike, almost flirty. The CD had stopped playing a few minutes earlier and she didn’t have to compete with sleigh bells and steel guitars to be heard.

He looked into her eyes for only a moment before he squared his broad shoulders and stuck out his chest. “Then I guess I’ll cancel my regular appointment with the barber.”

“You don’t keep any regular appointments with a barber, Burke. Just like I never miss mine.” She sat in the truck with posture so perfect that only the small of her back made contact with the upholstery. “I wear my hair short for the same reason you don’t bother to keep yours trimmed. I’m too busy with my work to bother with upkeep and style.”

He did not dispute that, just turned the wheel and took them down a quiet residential street in a part of town Dora had never seen before.

They fell silent.

The air went still around them.

Dora should have let it go. Let him make the next move, the next comment. He had brought her here to prove something, after all. She didn’t need to ramble on, cajoling and teasing and then retreating, hoping he would follow. That phase between them had passed. Now it really was just business.

Nothing personal. Just business.

No, not even business.

Once he had shown her the last of these places—he seemed to think they would add up to something that would somehow affect her—and shared this story of his, she’d probably never see him again. If she were smart she’d just keep her mouth zipped and wait it out until he dropped her off back at her office building.

“So if your hair hides your ears then I guess you wear that cowboy hat of yours all the time to hide your pointed little head?” So much for keeping her mouth shut.

“Elves don’t have pointed heads.” He frowned. Actually frowned as if he had to think that over and make the point quite clear.

She gulped in a breath so she could launch into an explanation that she had meant it as a joke.

He beat her to it by adding, with a wink, “It’s just our pointy little hats make it look that way.”

She laughed at the very idea of Burke in a pointed hat. “Someone sure is aiming to get on the naughty list.”

“Aww, you haven’t been that bad. Lots of people make cracks about elves and helpers and Santa’s weight issues.”

“I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you, for fibbing about wearing a pointed hat.”

“I’m not fibbing.” He looked quite serious, but couldn’t hold it and broke into a big grin. “And I have the photo to prove it.”

“Then prove it.”

“Uh, I, uh, I don’t have the photo with me.”

She shook her head. “For a second there, you almost had me believing you.”

He went quiet then. Not silent, not still, but quiet with all the power, control and even reverence that implied. She could hear the tires on the road, the squeak of the seat cushions, the beating of their two battered hearts.

Her skin tingled. Her throat went dry.

For only a moment it was like that, then Burke turned to her, his intense, serious eyes framed by playful laugh lines as he whispered, “Believe me, Dora.”

Oh, how she wanted to—to believe him about the hat, his being Santa and, most of all, that he needed her in a way that he needed no one else in the world.

But life had taught her that those kinds of beliefs only led to disappointment. So she kept it light, played along. “You in an elf hat?”

His eyes twinkled. “With red and green stripes, a plump pom-pom and a brass jingle bell on the end.”

“What are you going to tell me next?”

“That this is what I wanted you to see.” He pulled into a parking lot, slid the truck into a space and cut the engine. “This is why I need you.”

“To go to a pediatrician? What? You need me to hold your hand while the doctor holds your tongue down with a Popsicle stick and makes you say ‘ahh’?” What was he trying to pull?

“No. Not to go to the doctor, to see what she’s doing.”

“What? Seeing patients?”

“On the Friday after Thanksgiving.” He nodded, his gaze scanning the lot.

Dora took a moment to follow his line of vision. It did not take long for her to come to a conclusion. “This is some kind of clinic?”

“Every Friday, even holidays—except Christmas and when the Fourth of July falls on Friday.” He watched as a little boy scurried ahead of a young woman carrying a baby and then held the door to the office open. “A clinic for people who have jobs but no insurance. Just the doc’s way of giving back because once upon a time somebody did something nice for her.”

“And what does that have to do with Santa Claus coming to Mt. Knott, South Carolina?”

He hesitated a moment, gripping then repositioning his large, lean hands on the steering wheel. He started to speak, held back, then took a deep breath. Finally, he worked his broad shoulders around so that they pressed against the window and his upper body faced her. His brow furrowed. His eyes fixed on her then shifted toward the children. He kept his voice low as if he thought one of them might hear. “Do you know the story of the first Santa, the real Saint Nicholas?”

She kept her backbone pressed to the seat and her cool gaze on the man. “I think the real question here is, do you know how to answer a question directly when it’s put to you?”

“Humor me,” he said with grim sobriety just before he broke into a crooked grin.

It was the grin that got her. She sighed. “The real Saint Nicholas? Hmm. Turkish? Skinny fellow, too, not the bowlful of jelly Clement Moore described. Or the ho-ho-hokey, soda pop–swilling, round-cheeked invention of American advertising.”

“Right. The Bishop of Turkey. He surreptitiously gave bags of gold to girls who otherwise would not have had a dowry so they wouldn’t be pressed into servitude or prostitution.”

Now she moved around in the seat, impressed. Suspicious but definitely impressed. “You said that like a kid reading off a plaque in a museum.”

“Close. Only the museum is my mom’s office in the attic of our family home, and the plaque is a caption under an old print from a book she has framed there.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I’d like…”…to see it someday. The rest of the sentence went unfinished. She had no business inviting herself, not only into the home where Burke had grown up, but into his late mother’s office. “I’d like to know how that relates to this pediatrician’s office in Atlanta?”

“Easy. The original saint gave money to girls in order to give them the power to make better lives for themselves, and by extension better lives for their families and their communities.”

“And this doctor is doing the same?”

“Because?”

“Because she…” Dora looked at the office once again. On the sign with the doctor’s name was the symbol of a gold coin with a wreath encircling a Christmas stocking. “Because once upon a time that doctor got a visit from Saint Nick?”

“Who is?”

“You.”

“My mom.” His gaze dropped for a moment and the grief seemed so real and still so fresh in him that Dora did not know how to respond. She didn’t have the chance, as he quickly recovered and met her gaze with his sad and solemn eyes. “From the time she decided to stay in Mt. Knott and raise a family instead of traveling the world, my mother gave out grants and scholarships to deserving girls and young women who otherwise would not have had the opportunity to make better lives for themselves.”

“Wow. She paid for their college?”

“She helped. And not just college. Private high schools. Vocational training. Trips. Conferences. Art supplies.”

“Art…oh, art supplies. So the artist, the jeweler, the accountant were all…”

“Just the artist and accountant. The jeweler is where she has the gold medallions engraved that she gave the recipients to let them know they were chosen.”

“She didn’t present them in some kind of ceremony?”

“She kept it quiet. The jeweler sent them from here so no one would ever know who they came from.”

“People suspected the Burdetts, though. They’d have to.”

“If they did, no one ever said.”

Dora studied the coin with new eyes and understanding. “There’s writing around the edge.”

“‘We give to others because God first gave Christ to us,’” he said, without even looking at the sign or the coin he had just quoted.

“And no one knows about your mother’s good works? Really?”

“Only the accountant who manages the financial side of things, me and now you.”

“Not even your brothers? Or your dad?”

“It’s a secret Mom entrusted with me alone on her deathbed.”

“Oh, Burke.” She reached out to touch his face, to lend support and comfort.

“But me alone? I don’t think I’m up for the job.”

Job. Only business. She curled her fingers closed and put her fist to her chest.

“That’s why I need your help. I need someone who isn’t from Mt. Knott to help me pull this off. Because as a Burdett I can’t do anything in Mt. Knott in secret.”

“Including taking me out there to manage this for you,” she reminded him, switching swiftly into organizational problem-solving mode. “How would you ever explain that?”

“Oh. Yeah.” He scowled. “Unless…”

“Yes?” She needed him to come up with this solution, not because she didn’t have one to offer, but because it was his project. She had no intention of investing in it emotionally or even mentally unless he could find a way to win her over to it. Which meant she wasn’t getting involved.

“Well, you were out there all last summer and no one questioned that.”

“I was in negotiations to buy into your business then.” She folded her arms and clamped them down tight. “I don’t suppose you want to revisit that?”

“There’s a lot about last summer I’d like to revisit.”

And a lot of memories she wanted to send packing. She shut her eyes. “Burke, I…”

“Just come out and stay at the family compound, Dora.”

“What?”

“We won’t have to say why you’re there. People probably wouldn’t believe anything we told them anyway.”

“I can’t just leave work.” It was the first thing that came to her mind. Not a lie or a means of deceiving him but just a gut reaction, telling the man the kind of thing he’d expect her to say.

The crooked grin returned. He shook his head slowly. “You save up all your vacation time all year and take it in December.”

“How did you know that? Did Zach tell you?”

“Who?”

“Zach, the…” The closet thing she had to an old friend. She sighed. “Never mind. Just tell me how you knew that.”

“Because you told me.”

“I did?”

“One night when we talked about the future. You said if you ever got married you’d want it to be in December.”

Her cheeks grew hot. She found it hard to swallow. Marriage? The future? She remembered that night, but not the things they had said—just the way it felt to be near Burke, to sit out on the porch beneath a blanket of stars. Had she really let her guard down so completely? “Was I under the influence of Carolina Crumble Patties?”

“Maybe.”

“Sugary foods get to me, you know. Make me say things I don’t necessarily mean.” As did certain men.

“You meant this.”

“You said a lot of things I thought you meant, Burke.”

He did not say a word in his own defense.

He couldn’t, she realized. And just that quickly she also understood that she could not help him, even with this worthy cause. She could not allow herself to be that vulnerable again, especially not at Christmas.

She looked out at the doctor’s office building again. “Just because I don’t go into my office most of December doesn’t mean I don’t have things to do.”

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