“Hi,” she breathed, a smile spreading across her face.
A beautiful, perfect, joyful smile filled his face, too. How had she not been falling for this man from the moment she’d started working here?
The second he’d switched from his natural reaction at seeing her to a logical, thought-out worry was evident on his face. She knew that something along the lines of “I’m the boss, so this isn’t appropriate” was churning in his mind. But she could also see hints of something else. The same longing that she was feeling. She wanted to tell that part of him to stay strong. She really wanted it to win.
“Good morning.”
“How was the rest of your weekend?”
He opened his mouth like he was going to give the answer that first came to mind, but then he shut it again. Then he said slowly, pausing after every word or two like he was choosing his words with great care. “It was... good. I can’t say it came without worries.”
Oh, no. He had definitely been spending a lot of time thinking about the boss/employee thing. In an attempt to keep things light, she put on a big smile and said, “It sounds like you need a night of Christmas fun to keep your mind off your worries.”
He just studied her, not responding, and she could see the care in his eyes. Then his eyes shifted to the door behind her, and he turned back to his coffee. Noelle turned around just in time to see Lennox, who had strode into the room, falter in his step as helooked between the two of them, trying to decipher what had just been going on.
Noelle acted like nothing was out of the ordinary and opened the fridge, putting her lunch inside. “The meeting’s at two-thirty, right?” There. She’d just made it sound like that’s all they’d been talking about.
Jack nodded, then gave Lennox a nod and said, “Good morning,” then walked out of the break room.
Lennox clearly hadn’t bought her “Let’s talk about the meeting” cover. Probably because the meeting was always at 2:30 on Mondays.
He glanced at the doorway Jack had left through then back at Noelle. “So, what was that about?”
“Just an issue with a client and my part in it.” She didn’t mention that Jack was the client. And she definitely didn’t say that her part in it had been falling in love with him.
Since she’d thrown herself under the bus with the comment, Lennox seemed to buy it. He grimaced. “That’s no fun. Good luck.”
That was twice in less than twenty minutes she’d been wished luck on something that needed more than luck. It wasn’t like Jack was going to stop being her boss, and it didn’t appear that her heart was going to stop wanting a relationship with him.
twelve
JACK
Jack went backinto his office, shut the door behind him, set his coffee on his desk, then ran his fingers through his hair. The moment Noelle had walked through the doorway into the break room, his entire body had filled with happiness. Like it had forgotten all the time he’d spent worrying over the past day and a half. His body just felt more alive whenever she was in the same room.
But Lennox’s reaction to catching them in the teeniest tiniest bit of a moment together was precisely the reason why it was so wrong to have fallen so fully for Noelle.
He knew Friday that he’d stepped over a line in the sand that he’d drawn for himself. He’d known then that the smart thing to do—the responsible thing to do—would’ve been to call things off then. Yet he didn’t.
And then, during Saturday’s activity, there had been no time to think—just time to react as they raced through the scavenger hunt and made everything they needed for the tree. There hadn’t been time for the logical part of him to keep shouting that he was making a wrong choice. He was usually so good at self-discipline. How had he let himself get into a situation with such considerable consequences to his heart?
And now that he was looking back, he realized he had been brushing over that line and redrawing it for a couple of weeks. Opening himself up more and more to Noelle.
He sank into the chair behind his desk and couldn’t stop thinking about the way Noelle’s face had lit up when she walked into the break room. And what it did to his stomach to see the woman he’d been falling in love with for the past year and a half having such a joyful response at seeing him.
Which made him think about the look she’d had on her face right before she had kissed him. He wanted to experience seeing that look on her face every day.
But then, like all the emotions had been standing in line to see him, the moment that one stepped away, the next one he’d experienced that night stepped forward. After their kiss, he and Noelle had joined the rest of her big family to see the results of everyone’s Mystery Santa Hat offerings.
And as he stood, surrounded by all of them, he thought about how much he’d been falling for Noelle’s family, too. They were everything he had grown up without. Rachel and Aiden meant everything to him. He never would’ve guessed that his heart had room for a family that big, but then they went and surprised him, too, and showed him how much he actually needed them. He saw it in Rachel’s face during the hayride and Aiden’s every time they did anything at Noelle’s parents’ house.
And all of that scared him. Because he was still Noelle’s boss, which meant that hecouldn’thave a relationship with her.
All through that night, the emotions within him battled. He sat at Noelle’s side as Becca, Corbin, and their four little kids performed a sweet version of the first Christmas, with Joseph wearing a colander as a hat, Mary wearing a Superman cape, a shepherd wearing a bedazzled scarf instead of robes and holdinga stuffed bear instead of a sheep, a wise man wearing a suit coat that was so long on her that it dragged on the floor, a second wise man wearing swim goggles and arm floaties, and baby Jesus constantly climbing out of the giant mixing bowl that was supposed to be the manger. The wise men placed gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh at baby Jesus’s manger, but were actually a mixing cup, a microphone from a preschooler’s karaoke machine, and a lint roller that baby Jesus kept trying to put in his mouth.
And then they watched as Katie and her date reenacted the scene from the movie Elf when he sang, “I’m singing! I’m in a store, and I’m singing!” Her date played the part of Buddy the Elf, and Katie played the roles of Jovie, the store manager, and several people in the store, hurrying to change costumes and props with each line.
Laughter had filled him as they watched both skits, loving sitting next to Noelle and being with all her family. Yet, sadness that it all was going to go away had quickly fought with that laughter.
