Page 72 of Santa's Baby
“As I said, that would never happen. I’d have admitted my actions and taken the fall myself.”
“But WHY? What the fuck?!”
She flails her hands in the air as though I’ve lost the plot, and the sight of her, frazzled and barely covered by my night robe only stokes my insanity. In a moment of madness I reach out and take her hands in mine.
“Because I HAD to. I couldn’t bear the thought of you being with anyone else. That night, at the club, when I heard you getting fucked like a slut behind those bins, I wanted to burst in and push him the fuck off you. BecauseIwanted you! ME! Not HIM! And ever since then, since our firstproposaltogether, it’s all I can think about.” She’s wide eyed as I take a breath. “I didn’t get a wink of fucking sleep knowing you were at the glory wall, on your knees being taken by a load of clients who don’t mean a fucking thing. So I lost my mind, ok? I called up your calendar and put in a proposal of my own, and then I abused my authority. I used my founder login to postpone everything else I could, right the way up until Christmas. Because I wanted to. That’s why.”
“Wanted to orneededto?”
“You already know the answer to that, Tiffany. You said it yourself in the bathroom.”
“I want to hear you say it for yourself.”
The fire in her eyes has dimmed to glowing embers. The tension in the air is so stifling I can barely speak.
“Needed to,” I tell her. “I needed to. And so fucking help me, if I was back in that moment, staring at your jam-packed calendar with my heart in my hands, I’d do it all over again.”
I feel like a defendant awaiting a verdict. Vulnerable in ways I haven’t felt since Jeanette left me, my heart on the floor, exposed, with the potential to get trampled to shit.
“You should have told me,” she says.
“I agree, yes, I should have. Or more specifically, I should have asked you. I can only offer an apology and assure you it won’t happen again.”
She looks up at the ceiling. “We’re both going mental.”
“No doubt about that, but as I said earlier, it feels like we’re two very different peas in the same pod. And so help me, I love it. I haven’t felt this way in years.”
I let my words sink in, her hands still in mine. She blinks and more tears fall. Her bottom lip trembles.
“This could fuck us both up so bad.”
“I know.”
“Why me?” she asks. “You must have been with hundreds of women. You’re a founder, and a businessman, with years under your belt to find someone perfect, so why me?”
“Because my idea of perfect doesn’t come along all that often, Tiffany. The only taste of what I thought was perfect was an ex-wife who didn’t want myperfectin return, and walked away.”
Her eyes slam into mine.
“She left you?”
“Yes, she left me. Differences, arguments, growing apart.Irreconcilable. That’s how the divorce papers term it.”
“Did you want her to leave?”
I hate talking about Jeanette. I usually avoid it at all costs.
“Yes, and no. No at the time. I was a wreck. Later, I felt it was for the best. Good riddance, I’d tell myself. Then slowly, the loneliness crept in. It’s easy to ignore it when you’re busy. Work and charity, the Agency. All good reasons to forget that you’re coming home to an empty house and bed every night. Christmas is always hard. I do the grotto to ease my own pain as well as give people joy. And then you walked in.”
She smiles. “Walked in and plonked my butt on your lap.”
“Indeed. It wasn’t your butt that turned me into a madman though, it was your face. Your smile, your eyes, the way you raise your eyebrows when you laugh.”
The goddess takes her hands from mine and points a finger at her watery eyes. “Looks great right now, yeah?”
“You will always look beautiful to me, Tiffany.”
“Yeah, well, like you said, we must be two very different peas in the same pod.”