His By Christmas. Teresa Southwick

could be easier than commandeering a man’s crutches?”

      “I could call your mother.” She smiled slowly and with more than a little wickedness.

      “That’s low, Justine.”

      “A girl has to do what a girl has to do.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I wonder if there’s cell service during an electrical storm.”

      For several moments Cal wasn’t sure that the pounding he heard wasn’t in his ears. His sneaky assistant frowned at her phone and he guessed Mother Nature was giving him a reprieve.

      “You can’t call my mom. You don’t have her phone number.”

      “Want to bet?”

      He was beginning to wish he’d never heard the word bet. Little Miss Serene had a fairly ruthless expression on her face. Not unlike the stubborn set of her mouth when she refused to work overtime. She obviously wasn’t going to let this go.

      “All right. You win. There is something.”

      “Aha.” She pointed at him. “So you are a big, fat fibber.”

      “Prevaricator. My vocabulary has improved since middle school.”

      “Then start using your words and tell me what you’re up to. Pronto.”

      “Would you mind if I sat on the couch and propped my leg up for this?”

      Her eyebrows rose. “Is it a long story?”

      “There are some things I need to explain. All to give you context,” he said.

      “Well, we can’t go to work until the lights come back on anyway...”

      “Good.” That would give him time to figure out how to say this so he wouldn’t drain all the reserves her soul had so recently stored up.

      Cal pushed to a standing position and balanced on his right foot while he grabbed the crutches and propped them under his arms. He swung himself over to the huge couch and sank into it, then put the injured leg up and stretched it out.

      “Do you want me to bring your plate over?” There was a spark of amusement in her eyes. “Keep up your strength for this?”

      “Funny girl.” He’d lost his appetite halfway through. “No. I’ve had enough.”

      “How about coffee?”

      “Yes. Please,” he added.

      She ferried cups, saucers and the insulated pot of coffee to the table then poured refills for both of them. Taking hers, she sat in the club chair beside him and looked expectant. “I’m listening.”

      “Okay.” He met her gaze and had the absurd thought that she looked pure and innocent even when threatening to tattle to his mother. Hopefully his confession wouldn’t crush that out of her. “I’m a very competitive guy. Could just be my nature or where I fall in the family birth order.”

      “You’re the second son.”

      Cal remembered his brother telling him to get over second-son syndrome. “So it’s common knowledge.”

      “Hart Energy is a subsidiary of Hart Industries. If one works there, it would be hard not to know.”

      “I guess. The thing is, that’s just a fact. It doesn’t convey any of the reality of growing up in Sam Hart’s shadow. We were born nine months apart.”

      “Twins the hard way,” she interjected.

      “That’s what my mom always says. Anyway, I had the distinction of trying to keep up with him, pretty much right out of the womb. I wanted to do everything he did, including getting my parents’ attention.”

      “This is where you own up to acting out.”

      He shook his head. “I did my best to be bigger, faster, stronger.”

      “Going for bionic?” Her mouth twitched, as if she was holding back a laugh.

      “No, only first.”

      “Ah.” She nodded her understanding. “And that could never be.”

      “I could never be firstborn, but in every other way I needed to win. School. Sports. Girls. We competed for the same ones.”

      A shrink would have a field day with the fact that he married a woman who had loved another man first. That man happened to be his brother Sam. Cal shouldn’t have been so surprised and hurt when it didn’t work out, but they said love was blind.

      “So, your whole life has been like the second-place car rental company that has to try harder?”

      “Yes. We run different companies under the Hart Industries umbrella, and I want him to be successful. I just want my bottom line to be better than his.”

      “That’s why you work so hard.”

      “Exactly.”

      She nodded thoughtfully. “But that still doesn’t explain why you didn’t go home after breaking your leg. In fact, it just makes me more curious.”

      “I was getting to that part.” As slowly as possible. He was dreading the expression of disappointment that he knew she would wear. The why of that was a mystery he didn’t have time right now to think about. He took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, then set the cup back on the saucer. “It happened at Sam’s wedding.”

      “It?”

      “Apparently my family was concerned about the fact that I hadn’t taken a vacation in a while.”

      “How long is ‘a while’?”

      “Four years.”

      “Wow. Long time.” Her eyes widened.

      “Then Sam made a crack about my social life.”

      “He thinks you’re burning the candle at both ends?” she guessed. “He doesn’t like your girlfriend?”

      “I don’t have one. And he—”

      “Said something about you not having sex, which got your macho all in a twist. Am I right?” she asked.

      “Not about the macho part, but the rest is pretty accurate. How did you know?” And why did she say it straight out without any awkwardness? Maybe because the lights were still out and clouds filled the sky. There was no way he could see whether or not she was blushing. It was one step shy of making love in the dark.

      “I know because I have brothers. Two.” She shrugged.

      “Okay.” He let out a breath. “His comment touched a nerve and then there’s the classic car—”

      “Just a hot minute. If this is you digressing to distract me, you should be warned that it won’t work.”

      “That never crossed my mind.” Because he’d already tried that and found out she was too smart to be sidetracked by his charming repartee. “It’s important.”

      “Okay, then. Carry on.”

      “Our grandfather left Sam his classic Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, even though I always told him I wanted it. He said it was about Sam being the oldest.” Cal sighed. “I really love that car. But apparently Granddad told Sam that I worked too much to care for the Duchess the way she needed to be cared for. To make a long story short—”

      “Too late for that,” she teased.

      He laughed. “Sam bet me that I couldn’t stay on this island for a month.”

      “By ‘stay’ I assume he meant vacation?”

      “That’s not what he said,” Cal stressed. “There was no stipulation about not working.”

      “But it was implied. That’s the very definition of vacation,” she insisted.