She walked to just outside his office, still out of sight but close enough to hear if he was whistling. He wasn’t; he was on the phone with someone, saying, “No, I haven’t even had a chance to shop yet. This is our busy season, and I’ve been spending any extra time with Rachel and Aiden.” There was a pause for a moment, then he said. “I know. I don’t know why I’m procrastinating.”
Now she just felt like an eavesdropper, so she turned to go back to her desk, but then just as quickly did a u-turn and headed to his open doorway.
He saw her and held up one finger, letting her know to stay and wait. Which she did while also scrambling to come up with a question to ask him to justify standing in his doorway with her notebook. She probably should’ve thought of that before leaving her desk.
He finished the call and then hung up. Then his eyes met hers, and he said, “Good morning. Did you need to talk to me?” His professional mask was back up. It had been almost jarring yesterday morning, after spending Monday evening with the real Jack, but today it just felt normal.
“Yes, I was looking at the info sheet for the Samurai blenders at Copperstone’s but didn’t see where it’s going to be advertised.”
“Oh. I apologize for missing that." He glanced at a paper on his desk. “Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google Ads.”
She nodded, wishing that she’d thought about grabbing a pen, too, so the notebook in her hands would actually have a use.She drummed her fingers on the back of the notebook, trying to decide if she wanted to ask him or not. Then she took a step forward.
“Did I hear you say that you haven’t done your shopping yet?”
Shopping was one of the activity cards that Gran-gran had painted. She’d had such a fun time decorating the gingerbread trains with him, so why not do the shopping one with him, too? She was just so drawn to him. Being around him had awakened feelings for him that she hadn’t known she had, and she was curious about just how strong those feelings were. And she really wanted to see more of what he was like outside of the office.
He nodded.
“Do you want to go shopping with me today? Maybe it won’t seem like such a hurdle if we do it together.”
It felt weird asking him that in the office since it was such a professional space, not a personal one. And this felt like a very personal ask. But they’d had so many personal moments over the past week that it also felt okay. Like she was asking him as a friend, not as an employee.
Okay, a friend with maybe some very more-than-friends feelings going on.
He studied her for such a long moment, though, that she worried she shouldn’t have asked. The tightening of his jaw she saw probably meant that he was annoyed.
But then he gave a curt nod. “Okay.”
“Okay? Really? All right. Um, does right after work sound good? Then I won’t have to drive all the way back to Mountain Springs first.”
“Right after work is good.”
She might have been reading more into his expression than she should, but when he said that, his eyes sparked with something and the corner of his mouth tugged up just thesmallest amount. The two together gave her the impression that, regardless of his apparent quest to remain impassive, he was actually happy about going with her.
She smiled all the way back to her desk. She was going to go shopping with Jack. Just the two of them. She pulled out her cards from Gran-gran and leaned the shopping one against her monitor.
And then she wondered for probably the fiftieth time since Monday how it had been for him to walk into her parents’ house and see her big, noisy but loving family. What had he thought of it? Had he liked it or wanted to run far from it?
“What happened in there?”
Noelle jerked out of her thoughts at Bridget’s question. She’d been lost in her own thoughts so much that she hadn’t been paying attention to the fact that there were others around her, and she was apparently broadcasting her feelings all across her face. She needed to stop thinking about Jack at work!
Thankfully, she remembered what she had gone to his office for before she’d gotten distracted with asking him to go shopping. She cleared her throat. “Well, there was no whistling, but I did hear him talking about Christmas shopping, and he didn’t sound totally upset about it.”
Bridget raised an eyebrow. “I’m impressed. I wonder what made the Grinch change his ways.”
Lennox set a stack of papers on Bridget’s desk and put a hand up to his mouth and stage-whispered, “Maybe it is awho, not awhat.”
Bridget gave Noelle a look of curiosity so strong she was sure she would suggest they investigate. So Noelle gave the most disinterested shrug she could manage while having Jack on the brain and turned back to her work, trying desperately not to show all over her face her hope that maybe it was actually because of her.
Noelle saton a bench in the main hallway of the mall, glancing down the short hallway that led to the front doors, sipping the last of the cup of wassail she’d gotten from the kiosk next to her. She hadn’t planned to get one, but she’d arrived early, and the smells of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and apple cider that had filled the air had just been too much to resist. Even though it was a scent and a taste and a tradition that would forever be inextricably tied to Gran-gran and made a fresh wave of loss wash over her.
She let herself feel the feeling. To let herself miss Gran-gran. But she didn’t allow herself to think about her—she wasn’t about to start bawling in the middle of the mall, right before her boss met up with her.
She tossed the empty cup into the garbage receptacle just as Jack walked through the front doors. He was still wearing his slacks and light blue button-down, but he’d lost the jacket and tie and had the first couple of buttons unbuttoned. She tried not to stare, but good golly, how had she managed to work with this man for a year and a half without having even a tiny crush? Maybe it was because now that she knew more about who he was and had seen a bit of his heart, he was even more good-looking.
And that smile he gave when his eyes met hers had her knees buckling. It was just a slight one tugging at his lips, but his eyes smiled, too, and it told her that he was glad to see her, even if it was in a mall at Christmastime.
