A Celebration Christmas

“Brenda is back. She stopped by my office today.”

“Who is Brenda?”

“My ex-wife.”

So that was her name.

Brenda.

Brenda and Cullen.

The Drs. Dunlevy or would that be Mr. and Mrs. Dr. Dunlevy?

“Okay.” The word came out flat.

She almost asked him if congratulations were in order. She thought about telling him that he was free to take Brenda to the Jingle Bell Ball, but she didn’t want to sound bitter.

Damn it. She’d been looking forward to going to the ball. Now she’d have to tell Sydney that she didn’t need to borrow that beautiful dress. And Sydney would get to say I told you so.

Nah, Sydney has too much class to do that.

But the I told you so would still go without saying, at least in her own head. She’d chosen, yet again, to ignore another truth.

When will you learn?

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Stop saying that, Cullen.” This time she wasn’t able to keep the edge out of her voice. “I have to go.”

He nodded. “Tomorrow night, I may be a little later.”

“That’s not a problem,” she answered coolly. “The kids and I will be working at the market. It closes at nine. After we clean up, I should have them home around ten.”

“Would it be possible for you to stay a little later than that?”

Oh.

Oh, my God.

He has a date.

She stared at him, refusing to help him out of this awkward pickle. She didn’t want to believe that he would actually have the audacity to ask her to babysit while he went out on a date. Not after he’d kissed her and tossed her out like yesterday’s news.

He cleared his throat. “Would you be able to stay with the kids until I get home?”

Oh, and meet Brenda? That was rich. And really smooth. While she’d been sorry for him over his earlier anguish over George, it all fell away once she realized what else was on his agenda. Yes, this nanny had boundaries, and she was going to enforce them now.

“Sorry, Charlie, no can do. We’ll see you when we get home at ten.”

She turned and walked away.

She wasn’t a femme fatale like Giselle or a world-class surgeon like Brenda.

She was simply the convenient nanny with whom Cullen had briefly contemplated hanky-panky and then run as fast as he could.

She would watch the kids during the hours they’d established because it was her job to do that, but she wasn’t hanging around late into the night while he went out on a date with his ex-wife.

She burned more with each step she took, but she wasn’t going to cry. There was no way she was giving him the satisfaction of that.

As she approached the booth, she took a deep breath and shoved her disappointment behind her wall.

She was such an idiot for letting things get out of hand. How could she let herself fall for him?

Well, that was then and this was now.

Things were over with Cullen and she needed to get over it.

And the first step toward that end was reminding herself that they couldn’t be over when they’d never really begun.

Chapter Ten

The following night, Cullen and Brenda agreed to meet at six-thirty in the bar at Café St. Germaine before their seven o’clock dinner reservation.

They planned to have drinks before dinner and catch up on everything that had happened since their last real conversation four months ago.

Brenda was late, as usual. So Cullen grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a Scotch and water. From where he sat, he had a great view of Main Street. The city had decorated the old gaslight-style streetlights with giant glittering stars and strung garland from lamppost to lamppost high across the road.

The storefronts had gone all out with their holiday window displays. On a Roll Bakery was even featuring loaves of Lily’s homemade stollen in the window.

Lily.

She was everywhere.

Everywhere he looked he saw something that reminded him of her: her bread in the window; the farmers’ market (he’d passed it on the way to Café St. Germaine); the athletic-shoe shop where she’d tried to take George to get his shoes before she ran out of gas. He harrumphed to himself when he recalled how she’d turned the tables on him when he was brooding over forgetting to pick up the boy.

He wasn’t excusing himself, but she was right. He knew he hadn’t purposely left the kid any more than she’d purposely run out of gas on the way to Dallas. None of the women he’d dated had been as forthright as Lily. Well, except for Brenda, and he’d married her.