Christmas with Him. Jackie Braun

IT WAS being around Chelsea and Kate and the wedding, or maybe it was the skirt—or more likely Alec and his stupid cutoffs—but Gwen decided she needed to do something active to remind her of her goals.

      Or at least fine-tune them a bit. As she unpacked her suitcase, Gwen reflected on what Laurie had said about the intrinsic value of playing caffeine fairy to the office workers in the greater Houston area. In the mornings when people arrived at their jobs after fighting the rush-hour traffic and were absolutely dying for that first cup of coffee, the Kwik Koffee machines were mighty important. And didn’t those cardiologists and astronauts and scientists drink coffee, coffee that her company made sure was fresh, hot and available? Didn’t it put them in the right frame of mind to begin their days of important discoveries and saving lives? Therefore, wasn’t Gwen actually helping the world?

      Okay, so that was a stretch, but she’d file it away for the next time Laurie downplayed their importance in the grand scheme of things.

      But she’d also realized that climbing up the ladder at her company was really only a means to her true goal: she, Gwen Kempner, wanted to live the life of a man. Not be a man, just get the same advantages.

      From where she stood—currently on a chair so she could shove her suitcase onto the top shelf of her closet—men had it pretty good and that was because they had conned women into helping them. They didn’t even have to be married—Gwen had noticed that the single men always seemed to have a girlfriend or even a spare mother to take care of them or wait for various delivery people. Men could even negotiate the after-five delivery times, whereas Gwen always got the, “Don’t you have a neighbor who’s home during the day?” question. Once, and she wasn’t proud of this, she’d taken half a personal day to wait for the cable guy for Eric.

      Never again.

      She needed somebody to help her, someone to take care of the little things so she didn’t have to.

      She needed a wife.

      Most career women did, and since they couldn’t have one, the superachievers who could afford to hired nannies, housekeepers and personal assistants. Gwen didn’t need a nanny, and she didn’t mind cleaning her apartment herself. But boy howdy, a personal assistant was sure looking good. The trick was to get the company to pay for one and they weren’t going to pay for a junior member of the regional director’s staff to have an assistant.

      So Gwen would just have to become a regional director.

      After sorting the clothes she was going to take to the dry cleaners tomorrow, Gwen looked again at the skirt.

      No washing instructions. In fact, no label of any kind. She couldn’t exactly call Chelsea on her honeymoon and ask her how the thing was supposed to be cleaned. The skirt looked fine and Gwen decided that Chelsea had cleaned it before she’d passed it on.

      Okay, then. Gwen hung it up, got out her laptop, plugged it into the phone line, flipped on the TV and proceeded to check her office e-mail. She’d missed work Friday and it would pay to get a jump on the week instead of spending Monday morning getting up to speed. That’s what people who wanted promotions did.

      Assuming there were no coffee crises requiring her immediate attention, she’d spend the rest of the evening coming up with a battle plan that would lead to a promotion. After all, the sooner she got an assistant, the better.

      ALEC STUDIED all the laundry detergents and picked the cheapest no-name brand he could find. Passing up fabric softeners—a luxury he hadn’t missed—he headed for the frozen food aisle to see if there were any ninety-nine cent TV dinners or frozen pot pies on sale three for a dollar.

      Instead, he found himself tempted by store-brand frozen pizzas. They weren’t big, but they were three for five dollars. However, right next to them—at two for five dollars—he found a more generously sized-and-topped brand. Before he could talk himself out of it, he’d grabbed the pizza and then had the insane impulse to buy a six-pack of domestic beer. His import days were gone for now. Unfortunately, as he stood in front of the cooler, he realized that even a six-pack was out of the question, so he snagged two oversize individual bottles and made his way toward the express checkout lane.

      What are you doing? It was the voice of reason, which had been remarkably silent when he’d accepted his grandfather’s gleeful challenge, but which could always be counted on to provide wet-blanket thoughts every time Alec contemplated anything that might be self-indulgent these days.

      But Alec knew what he was doing. He’d already done the math and would have enough quarters left for three loads of laundry, though only enough to dry two.

      So he’d dredge up fifty cents from somewhere or hang his jeans over the kitchen chairs for a couple of days. No big deal.

      Besides stranding Gwen at the airport, he was conscious of having hurt her feelings. Maybe hurt was too strong a word because Gwen didn’t seem the overly sensitive sort and they didn’t have that kind of relationship. But he felt a gesture was called for because he liked Gwen. He counted her as his first woman friend. Not a former girlfriend from whom he’d parted amicably and still ran into from time to time, but a person he’d met and come to know since he’d lived in the apartment on Westheimer. In fact, he thought of her as a person first and a woman after that—if at all—which was why he’d spoken without thinking.

      Somehow, they’d skipped all the messy girl-boy stuff and were just casual friends. He was pretty sure she wasn’t currently seeing anyone, though he hardly tracked her every move. He did know that she worked a lot of overtime, but then, so did he.

      In fact, he worked all the time. He had a nifty, nobrainer, thirty-hour-a-week job as the clerk in a pager store that was within walking distance of his apartment. The rest of the time he spent trying to get his fledgling business off the ground.

      But tonight, he would give it a rest.

      Alec handed the grocery clerk the ten-dollar bill, asked for his change in quarters, then shoved them into his pocket, noting a grease smudge on his arm as he did so.

      He’d changed the oil in a car. A self-satisfied smile creased his face as he walked toward Gwen’s car in the parking lot. He’d never changed oil before. Just to be on the safe side, he checked under Gwen’s car for any ominous puddles.

      Nope. All right!

      He’d spent way too much time and had called his brother-in-law three times, but he’d done it—unfortunately, not in time to pick up Gwen from the airport according to the plan. She’d been a real pal about letting him use her car and not making him grovel for it, either. These past few days it had been great to have a car again. He’d filled up the gas tank this morning, which had pretty much tapped him out. But he’d accomplished a lot on Friday. Meeting face-to-face with manufacturers, brochure printers, suppliers and potential customers for his portable exercise equipment was more effective than e-mail and phone. He’d made some good deals and had a couple of new leads, but no money had come his way.

      Well, payday from the pager store was tomorrow. Unfortunately, due to Christmas, he’d only worked twenty hours, but on the positive side, he’d already paid January’s rent.

      He pulled into Gwen’s usual parking spot, which wasn’t as close to her apartment as she was entitled. Some jerk who lived in the units across the back parked there. Alec had offered to challenge him, but Gwen wouldn’t let him and said that the walk was good for her. In his opinion, Gwen could use a stiffer backbone, but that wasn’t Alec’s business.

      He was only passing through.

      Alec showered, changed into his last clean T-shirt—a giveaway from some charity 5K run three years ago—grabbed the pizza and beer, and headed for Gwen’s apartment.

      He’d already knocked when he replayed their last conversation in his head and suddenly realized how his cheap frozen pizza and single bottle of beer offering would look.

      To stay in the running you’ve got to take her to clubs and restaurants and the bill runs up real quick…. Why didn’t he just bang on the door and shout, “You’re