| |
“Jamie? Love?”
Jamie came slowly awake to Alex’s hand stroking through her hair. Blinking her eyes open, she looked up to find him leaning over the bed, fully dressed in suit and tie.
“Alex? What...?”
“I have to go to work for a little bit, baby. I’m sorry. I know that I said I’d be around to help you set up for tonight, but there’s been a mistake with one of the big accounts, and Paul needs me in to help oversee. It’s not something he’s dealt with before on his own.”
“Couldn’t it wait until after Christmas?”
Alex shook his head. “I wish it could, but if it’s left as is we could lose a lot of money over the next few days, and if I go now I don’t have to cut into our vacation.”
As much as she wanted him to stay home, Jamie could see the logic in what Alex was saying. She sighed, and levered herself up from the mattress. “Drive safely, then, and come home soon.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.” Alex leaned down to steal a quick kiss, and Jamie curled her hand around the back of his neck, drawing him into another.
“Don’t forget to give the staff their Christmas bonuses either.” She pulled him against her one more time for another kiss.
“Okay,” Alex said, chuckling. “That’s enough.” He gave her a smile that made heat curl in her center. “Later, though, I’m going to collect on that promise.”
Jamie stretched her arms above her head, arching her back and loosening the tension in sleep-tight muscles. Alex’s eyes followed the curves of her body. “I’m counting on it,” she said seductively.
Alex leaned down and picked up his briefcase. “Somewhere, looking like that when I can’t touch you qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. Especially covered in cookie mix. You’re like my own personal Christmas dessert.”
“Then you’ll just have to hurry home if you want to taste me.”
She smirked when Alex made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and left the room in a hurry. Three kids and a business later, she still had it.
Jamie glanced at the clock. Six in the morning. It wasn’t quite enough sleep, but since she was already awake she crawled reluctantly out of her warm bed and went to get ready for the day. Shower first.
The good thing, she supposed, was that there wasn’t too much to do before everyone arrived. All of the decorations had already been put up, and most of the cooking was done. They had the cookies still to decorate, though, and that was likely to require a kitchen-cleaning after. The twins would have to be wrangled into wearing their nice clothes. And there were a lot of little details to attend to.
At least they weren’t awake yet, although Jamie didn’t doubt they would be soon. She took advantage of the quiet while she had it, showering first and then cleaning the bathrooms and tidying up the toys left out from the night before. By the time they stirred a short while later, she felt like she’d accomplished something.
She got Markie from the crib first, the twins bouncing out of bed to greet her with demands for breakfast as soon as she walked through their door.
“And good morning to you, too,” Jamie laughed. “Come on. Let’s go get breakfast, then.”
Down in the kitchen Jamie let Jake out the back door, and got the kids into their highchairs so she could make them some food.
“After breakfast, we’ll decorate cookies. How does that sound?”
“Cookies!” Benton shouted.
“Yes,” Jamie agreed. “Cookies. We’re going to make them pretty. Lots of colors. And sprinkles. Sound fun?”
Lilli nodded vigorously. Markie, of course, didn’t care. He was happily squishing banana slices on his tray.
“Okay. Eat your breakfast, then, and we’ll make cookies.”
The twins finished in record time, and Jamie cleared away their dishes and set them up with cookie decorating supplies. She was reasonably sure she was going to regret giving them access to that much frosting, but the sheer joy on their faces was worth it.
There were cookies in the shape of Santa and snowmen, and snowflakes and trees. Jamie put icing of different colors in shallow bowls, and set out sprinkles.
This would have been a lot easier with Alex around to help, Jamie reflected as Benton immediately went to dip his entire hand in the closest bowl of frosting.
‘What kind of cookie do you want first?” Jamie asked them, reaching over to wipe Benton’s hand clean.
“That one!” Lilli said, pointing at a tree-shaped cookie.
“And Benton? Cookie?”
He screwed up his face in thought, considering the options, and then pointed at a cookie shaped like a snowman.
“Okay. Tree for Lilli. Snowman for Benton.”
“Mommy? What ‘bout Markie?”
“Markie is a little too young to decorate cookies,” Jamie explained to her daughter. “But next year when he’s bigger you can show him how, okay?”
“Yes,” Lilli said decisively.
“Good. I’m sure he’ll be very excited. Now, you have to be careful when you’re decorating, okay? Try not to make a mess.”
Benton chose to decorate his snowman with blue frosting, and Jamie helped him spread it without getting more than half of it on the counter, a task easier said than done. Then she helped Lilli with her pink tree.
It really was a shame, she thought as they started on a second set of cookies, that Alex wasn’t there with them. He would have enjoyed getting to help the kids decorate. She settled on taking pictures with her phone and sending them his way.
While the twins decorated and Markie played with blocks on his highchair tray, Jamie finished icing the rest of the cookies for the party.
“Look, Mommy!” Benton pointed at the snowflake he’d just made, green and covered in sprinkles. “Snow.”
Jamie smiled. “That looks so good, sweetheart. We should leave that one out for Santa.”
Benton puffed out his chest proudly.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, Lilli?”
“Mine, too?” Lilli shoved her plate with its two decorated cookies toward Jamie.
“Yes,” Jamie said. “Yours, too.”
When both of the twins had decorated four cookies and the rest of the batch was ready, Jamie took one of the nice plates out of the cupboard for Santa’s cookies, and they laid out two of each of the twins’ creations.
“Santa is going to love these,” Jamie told the twins as they set them on the table in the living room.
“Milk?” Benton asked when they’d set the plate in place.
“We’ll put some out later,” Jamie said. “Milk has to stay cold. Now, how about you help Mommy clean up the kitchen, okay?”
Jamie swallowed a laugh at the expressions on their faces.
“That’s part of decorating cookies,” she told them. “You have to clean up afterward.”
The twins had very little enthusiasm for cleaning but Jamie turned it into a game, teaching them how to wipe the counters while the sponge kept slipping out of their tiny hands. That seemed to delight them endlessly.
As they cleaned, Jamie reached for the remote and turned on the television to check the weather.
“—We're looking a pretty sharp drop in temperatures this afternoon,” the weatherman was saying when she found the right channel. “And with that is going to come heavy snow and strong winds. If you're not inside already, you're going to want to be when this storm hits. Authorities are advising people not to drive after 6pm, and to stay somewhere secure and warm.”
A winter storm. Jamie’s stomach dropped. Alex was out there, and he still had to drive home. Not to mention all the people leaving Reid Enterprises today and then everyone who was coming for Christmas Eve dinner tonight. It wouldn’t be too much trouble to move the party forward by an hour so that everyone arrived by the time the weather got bad. Maybe Alex would be home by then.
Just to be sure, Jamie picked up the phone and called him. It went straight to his voice mail.
That was fine, she told herself. There was nothing to panic about. It was only ten. There was plenty of time for him to get back from work before she needed to worry.
When she called Christine, her sister answered on the second ring. “Jamie, did you see the weather? They’re saying—”
“That’s why I called, actually.” Jamie watched Benton and Lilli finish wiping the last of the frosting off the counter. “I was thinking we could move the party forward, if that works for you? That way everyone can get here before the weather is bad.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea, though? Are people going to be able to drive home safely?”
“They can stay here if they need to,” Jamie pointed out. “We have more guest rooms than anyone could ever possibly need.”
Her sister laughed. “Yeah. Okay. That’s true. I’m sure no one would mind getting a night in a luxury mansion.”
“All expenses paid!” Jamie joked.
“Paul’s still at work,” Christine said, serious again. “I’ll call him and make sure that he’s going to leave in time to beat the weather.”
“I know. Alex is there with him.” Jamie looked at the clock again. No time had really passed. “I’m hoping they’ll both be done dealing with whatever dragged them out there soon, so they can get back safely.”
“I’m sure they will be.”
Jamie wasn’t so sure, given how long she had seen work emergencies take at Reid Enterprises, but surely Alex and Paul could check the report the same as Jamie and Christine had, and see that they needed to make it home before the storm.
“I have to make some other calls, Christine. But let me know if you hear from Paul, and I’ll tell you if Alex calls.”
“Sounds good. See you before six?”
“Before six,” Jamie agreed.
She hung up, and called her father to make sure he and his girlfriend could come early. Then Mark and Erica. Both answered that they’d be happy to show up early, and that they were bringing food. Jamie wasn’t sure a whole army would be able to eat the amount of food that was going to be at the party, but having leftovers for Christmas morning would probably be helpful if everyone was going to stay the night.
Now she just had to wait for Alex.
