His Holiday Crush - Cari Z. Page 0,2
have handled that meeting better myself. I thought by the end of it, they were going to beg to sign with you.”
I grinned back at him. “It did go well, didn’t it?”
“Like I said, couldn’t have gone better. What on earth did you do to impress the old man so much, huh?”
“I complimented his taste in movies.” Actually, I’d complimented his taste in classic cars, which had segued into a discussion of Bond films and eventually come around to talking about his business needs and how he might benefit from a different law firm representing him.
But that wasn’t the sort of detail Marcus cared about, and sure enough, he simply shrugged and said, “Well, whatever works is what I always say. I’ll approve the overtime so you can keep Jessie here late tonight to get things sorted for the next round of talks on Monday.”
“Of course,” I said, taking out my phone to write last-minute notes and set some reminders. The moment the screen lit up, it buzzed with an incoming call.
I was so startled I almost dropped it. Hal, the caller ID read. Why was he calling me? We’d just talked a couple of hours ago.
Actually…now might be as good a time as any to call off the trip.
“Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” I told Marcus.
Marcus gave me one more clap on the back and walked away, and I answered the call just before it tipped over into voicemail.
“Hal, hey, I’m glad you called back. Listen, things are ridiculously busy here. We just landed a major client, and I need to let you know that—”
“Hi, Max!”
Oh god, it wasn’t Hal. It was Marnie, his older daughter, newly turned eight and very proud of it. All the briskness dropped out of my tone as I replied, “Hey, sweetie! What’s going on? Why are you on your daddy’s phone?”
“I wanted to call you, Max! Daddy said he talked to you, but he forgot to let me talk to you, so I found your picture in his phone and pushed it. I put you on speaker so Steph can hear, too.”
“Wow, that’s…you’re…” Unexpectedly good with her dad’s phone. “It’s so nice to hear from you, Marnie. Listen, I’m still at work and have some things to finish, but I’ll call you tomorrow, and we can—”
“Max, you don’t have to call me!” She giggled. “You’ll be here already. Daddy said so. You can just talk to me in the face!”
Oh damn…I loved the way she mixed her metaphors, but I was less enthusiastic about letting her down. “Well actually, sweetie, that’s one of the things I wanted to talk to your daddy about. See, it’s so busy here right now that I don’t think I’ll be able to get up to see you this holiday.”
There was a long silence, finally broken with, “But…but Daddy said you would.”
“Daddy” had ambushed me with the invitation in a moment of distraction, and I’d given in. Now I needed to extricate myself as painlessly as possible, but it wasn’t going to be easy. I glanced at the clock on the conference room wall and winced. “I know, girls, but that was before my schedule got so out of hand, and now—”
“But you told Daddy you would come!” Marnie’s voice was getting shrill and a little distant, like she was rearing back from the phone. “First Mommy won’t come back and now you won’t come at all, and we can’t go and see you, and Christmas is going to be so sad!”
I could picture her little face crumpling, and I didn’t even want to know what Steph looked like—she’d almost completely stopped speaking since her mom left.
Oh my god, I was the worst person ever.
I was the Grinch who stole Christmas.
“Okay, okay. Please don’t yell. I…I’ll be there,” I said recklessly. There had to be a way I could do it. Even if it was just one night, I could do that for Hal and the girls. “Tonight, okay? I’ll be there tonight.” I could be out of the office by three, pack up and be on the road by three thirty, get to Edgewood by seven thirty, and have a little time with the girls before they went to bed.
We could drink hot chocolate, open the presents I’d sent them ahead of time, and I could talk with Hal once they were asleep and see how he was really doing with the divorce. Maybe convince him to bring the girls up to the city for New