Christmas from the Heart Page 2

  Yes, that would do it. Sometimes you had to be a little patient, give people a second chance.

  2

  Trying a more personal touch with Guy Hightower was the way to go, Olivia was sure of that, but getting past his secretary was proving to be a challenge. Maybe giving her name hadn’t been such a good idea. The first time she called, Mr. Hightower was in a meeting. The second time she called, he was out. He was in another meeting on her third call, then unavailable on her fourth.

  Finally, she asked, “Is there a good time to reach him?”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Hightower is very busy,” his secretary said evasively.

  Livi suspected that Mr. Hightower was very busy avoiding her. “Tell him I’ll only take a minute of his time,” she pleaded.

  “Can you hold please?”

  “For as long as it takes,” Olivia said sweetly.

  * * *

  Olivia Berg was never going to go away. She was going to keep on calling and calling, driving his secretary nuts, and Guy was beginning to suspect if he didn’t talk to her she’d come to Seattle and camp out in the lobby of the Hightower Building until he would.

  “Fine,” he said irritably. “Put her through.” Get it over with.

  “Mr. Hightower, thank you so much for taking a moment to talk to me,” she gushed as soon as he’d taken the call.

  “I’m not sure we have much to talk about at this point, Ms. Berg,” he said. “As I told you in my email—”

  She cut him off, rushing on like a vacation time-share salesman. “I’m realizing that email isn’t always the most effective way to communicate. I’d love to meet with you in person. I think if you could visit Pine River and see what Christmas from the Heart does—”

  Like he had time to go charging up to her little town and get hassled in person. Now it was his turn to snip her off midsentence. “I’m sure you do a lot of good, but we can’t help you this year.”

  “Mr. Hightower, we have such a history together.”

  He knew all about their history, probably more than she did.

  “Surely you can manage something.”

  One thing Guy couldn’t manage at this point was his temper. He’d just come from a very unpleasant meeting with his idiot brothers and he wanted to punch a wall. “Look—”

  “Any amount would be helpful. People have so many needs during the holidays.”

  “I know they do but I can’t help you.”

  “A big corporation like yours,” she began.

  Oh yeah. Play that card. You’re a big company so we’ll hit you up and you should be proud that we are. “I don’t know how many ways to say this politely but the answer is no.”

  “You can’t mean that,” she coaxed. “Your company’s been so good to us all these years.”

  And here came the guilt card. Wrong card to play. “I’m afraid I can.”

  “Again, please consider the history we have together,” she pleaded.

  “I’m sorry, but things change.”

  “Change isn’t always good,” she snapped. “You have no idea how many people depend on Christmas from the Heart.”

  “I’ve got people depending on me, too. Okay?”

  “Well, of course. But surely...”

  “I can’t give you anything.” His voice was rising, right along with his blood pressure.

  “There’s no need to yell,” she said stiffly. “I’d just hoped you’d reconsider. We’re not asking a lot.”

  “It’s a lot if you don’t have it.”

  “Hightower Enterprises is a big company. Really, Mr. Hightower—”

  Now she was going to lecture him on what his company could and couldn’t afford to give? Okay, that was it. “What don’t you understand about the word no? Look, lady, I’ve been as polite as I can, but I’m not getting through, so we’re done here. We can’t give to every leech that latches onto us and that’s that.”

  “Leech!” she repeated, her voice vibrating with shock. “Well, of all the rude...”

  “Hey, if you want to talk about rude, I’m not the one bugging people so they can’t get their work done. I’m not the one who can’t take no for an answer. But believe it or not, that’s what it is. So cut it out with the high-pressure crap ’cause I’m not giving you squat. Got that?” He didn’t give her time to say whether she got it or not. He ended the call.

  And then he suffered a major guilt attack. That had been cold. Ebenezer Scrooge couldn’t have said it better.

  He rubbed his aching forehead. What was the matter with him, anyway? People had needs. They lost jobs and not always because they’d done anything wrong. Sometimes you worked your butt off and things didn’t work out.

  For all he knew, things might not work out for his company in spite of his long hours. But that was no excuse for being a jerk. Bad PR for the company, too.

  He heaved a sigh and pulled his checkbook out of his desk drawer, then wrote a check for a couple hundred. There. Maybe that would make Olivia Christmas from the Heart happy.

  * * *

  Livi’s heart soared when she went to the post office to collect the mail and saw the official Hightower Enterprises envelope. Yes! Guy Hightower had a heart after all. Or maybe he simply felt bad for the way he’d behaved over the phone. Either way, she’d happily take his company’s contribution.

  Of course, she thought as she slit open the envelope, it probably would be less this year. But, okay, they could make do with...

  Two hundred dollars? She stared at the check. It wasn’t a company check. It was a personal one, and this was it.

  If any other person had donated a couple hundred bucks, she’d have been delighted. Many of their donors gave small amounts of twenty-five or fifty dollars. But those were people on modest incomes, struggling to make ends meet, not well-heeled CFOs.

  “You...cheapskate,” she growled. “I hope you get what’s coming to you this Christmas—poison in your eggnog and a lump of coal where the sun don’t shine.”

  She stormed down the street back to her office, which was nothing more than a small suite in the second story of an old Victorian that housed Tillie’s Teapot, a tearoom that was a draw for both locals and people from neighboring towns. Tillie Henderson owned both the tearoom and the house. She was pushing ninety, and her two daughters, Jean and Annette, did most of the work now—cooking and managing the place, serving high tea, offering elegant lunches and Sunday brunches you had to make a reservation for a month in advance. Tillie herself still acted as hostess on the weekdays, though, and had the final say in the business decisions. She’d not only contributed to Christmas from the Heart over the years but had offered them office space at a bargain price. They shared the upper floor with an interior decorator and a writer who preferred to get out of the house to work. The interior decorator was rarely around, usually out staging houses for the local real estate companies, but the writer, Jillian George, was always in her office, and Livi could usually hear her in there toward the end of the day, reading aloud what she’d written earlier. Jillian wrote gory murder mysteries. If she was looking for someone to bump off, Livi had just the man.

  She marched upstairs to Christmas from the Heart headquarters, sat down at her little desk and glared at her computer screen. Of course, she needed to acknowledge Guy Hightower’s contribution. And she should be grateful. People gave to charities out of the goodness of their hearts and every gift helped the cause. But, in light of how much his company normally gave, this sure came off as stingy.

  She opened her trusty refurbished laptop and began to type.

  Dear Mr. Hightower. Thank you for your contribution.

  No way was she going to call it generous.

  We cheerfully accept all contributions, even small ones.

  Heehee.

  I do hope this Christmas you are blessed as generously as you’ve g
iven.

  Double heehee.

  She hit Send with a smile.

  “What are you looking so happy about?”

  Livi looked up to see Kate Greer, her best friend and right-hand woman, leaning against the doorjamb. Kate was a genius with money, and when she wasn’t doing accounting for local businesses like Tillie’s, she could be found giving her time to Christmas from the Heart, watching over their finances.

  Like Livi, she had hit the big 3-0, but she had more to show for it—a fat diamond on her left hand and a wedding planned for the next spring. She even had money in savings. Built like a Barbie doll, she did Pilates three times a week and had recently splurged for a Botox touch-up.

  Livi didn’t make enough to have extra money for savings, much less face fix-ups. New shoes were a splurge. Anyway, even if she had the money, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to spend it on such luxuries when Christmas from the Heart needed life support.

  “I’m not happy,” Livi informed her friend. “I’m just indulging in a moment of petty, evil glee.” She went on to explain about the latest development with Guy Hightower and her tongue-in-cheek response to his token contribution.

  Kate frowned disapprovingly and shook her head. “Was that one of your smarter moves?”

  The evil glee disappeared faster than cookies for Santa. “Well.”

  “You don’t want to burn bridges. I get that you’re frustrated, but it’s not like you to be so undiplomatic. That’s my job,” she added with a smile, softening the scold.

  “I know. It’s just that this jerk has got me so mad. And talk about undiplomatic. Leeches? Really?”

  “He might feel like that. Maybe they get hit up a lot. They don’t have to give you anything,” Kate reminded her.

  “But they gave to other nonprofits,” Livi protested. “After supporting us for generations. It’s like...breaking a treaty. And a lot of people are going to suffer because of it. And to put us off for so long and then unceremoniously dump us.” She shook her head. “That was sick and wrong.”

  “Corporate finances are complicated. The company may be struggling to meet their payroll.”

  “We’re all struggling,” Livi said irritably. She held up the check. “A personal check. He’s probably trying to ease his conscience.”

  “So, let him. What do you care?”

  Of course, her friend was right. A donation was a donation. But Guy Hightower’s words still stung. “A leech,” she muttered.

  “Yeah, that’s you. Some leech. That pittance you take can hardly be called a salary.”

  “I don’t need much,” Olivia said. “I get by.” To supplement her income, she cleaned house for one of the town’s more well-off women and picked up an occasional pet-sitting job when someone got the itch to travel. So what if she didn’t have a lot of money in savings? So what if she was still living at home? That was helping her make ends meet and helping her father, as well.

  “You’re running around in consignment clothes and at some point you’re going to have to replace that beater of yours. Plus you’ve put nothing into your retirement fund in the last six months, Miss Live-on-fumes-so-you-can-help-the-whole-world.” This was the downside of having her friend for her accountant.

  “I’m not going to be helping very many people this year,” Livi said miserably.

  “Things will work out somehow,” Kate assured her.

  “Yeah, well, it’s finding the somehow that I’m worried about.”

  “Come on. Let’s go downstairs and have lunch. We can drown your sorrows in some Earl Grey and we’ll brainstorm ways to make up the difference.”

  Livi currently had a whopping thirty-two dollars in her checking account and three dollars and some change in her wallet. Much as she liked Tillie and her daughters and loved to support their business, she’d as soon go home and make herself a PB&J sandwich and save the money.

  “I’m paying,” Kate added, “so don’t give me any excuses.”

  “I hate when you pay for lunch,” Livi said.

  “I know. How many times have we had this conversation—about a million? I can afford lunch at Tillie’s and every time I buy lunch it saves you money, which means you have more to pour back into Christmas from the Heart. So, really, when I buy lunch I’m doing a good deed.”

  “You already do enough good deeds around here.”

  “So do you. Come on, let’s go. I’m starving.”

  Lunch at Tillie’s Teapot always made Livi feel better when she was having a bad day. So what was different about today? The smells were as wonderful, the herbed scones were delicious, the homemade quiche to die for and Tillie’s lemon pound cake was always incredible. But nothing tasted as good as it should have. Guilt made a poor seasoning. Kate was right. Livi shouldn’t have sent that email. Instead she should have sent a gushy, suck-up thank-you note. What was wrong with her, anyway?

  That could be summed up in two words: Guy Hightower. The man was not bringing out the best in her. The sun was shining, the flowers were in bloom, people were coming and going, all smiling, and she wanted to jump in the river. She’d blown it. And when you were dealing with big money and big egos you couldn’t afford to blow it. Who knew what damage her lack of graciousness had done?

  Probably none, she finally decided. Guy Hightower was a jerk.

  * * *

  Guy put in an extra two miles on the treadmill at the gym, but it didn’t help him run off his anger. Olivia Berg was a snotty ingrate. Christmas from the Heart. Yeah, right. She was all heart until you didn’t come through, then look out. They were well rid of her and her tacky little charity. It would be a cold day in the Caribbean before she ever saw another penny of Hightower money.

  Of course, he’d matched her sarcastic tone, firing back an email of his own:

  And I hope you’ll get just what you deserve. With your great people skills, you’ll have no problem finding more sponsors for your cause.

  As if he’d shown any great people skills in their encounter. He should have called her back and apologized, explained that he was under a lot of pressure. But then she’d have started in on him all over again.

  He finished up at the gym, then went to his condo, where he showered, pulled a microbrew from the fridge and plopped onto his couch to glare at the killer view from his tenth-floor window. He supposed Olivia Berg would be scandalized if she saw where he lived. So he had a nice place? So, sue him. He’d waited ten years to buy this place, living with slob roommates and hoarding his money. He worked his butt off, had rarely taken a vacation since he’d stepped in as CFO. This place and his Maserati GranTurismo were his only extravagances, and he refused to feel guilty about either of them. Well, okay, so he and his brothers still had the place in Vail. But that was family owned so it didn’t count. Not that anyone had any business to be counting.

  A text came in from one of his old college buddies wanting to shoot some pool at their favorite sports bar.

  “Oh yeah, now I remember. That’s what you look like,” teased Jackson when Guy walked up to him at the bar. “I was starting to forget.”

  Guy held up a hand. “I know, I know. Life’s been crazy.”

  “Your life’s been crazy ever since you put on the Hightower harness. Hale’s Red Menace for my man,” he said to the bartender, ordering Guy’s favorite local amber ale. “On me.” He gave Guy an assessing once-over. “You’re already starting to look old.”

  “And you’re starting to look like a loser,” Guy shot back. “Forty hours a week. What’s that gonna get you?”

  “A life.”

  The bartender gave Guy his beer, and he and his friend clinked bottles. “Here’s to having a life,” Guy said. “Which I’ve got.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably what Scrooge said,” his friend scoffed.

  Scrooge. Who’d invited him to this party? “He’s my hero,” Guy quip
ped, and then thought of Olivia Berg. She was convinced he was a Scrooge.

  She was also a judgmental little pest. “Come on. I see a pool table calling our name,” he said.

  “Fifty bucks for a race to seven?” suggested Jackson.

  “That all you can afford?” Guy taunted.

  “Okay, a hundred. It’ll be the easiest hundred I ever made. You’re probably out of practice.”

  Jackson broke and Guy went next and a little voice at the back of his mind hissed, You just wasted a hundred dollars betting on a pool game.

  I didn’t waste it ’cause I’m not gonna have to pay it, Guy hissed back, and missed his first shot.

  “Yep, out of practice,” teased Jackson.

  No, just distracted.

  And Guy remained distracted for the rest of the evening, missing shots he could normally make with his eyes closed. In the end he wound up forking over a hundred bucks to his pal.

  You just wasted...the voice began.

  Shut up!

  Guy paid for one last round of beers, then scrammed. He’d had enough of pool for one night and he’d definitely had enough of the voice.

  * * *

  On Saturday, he had a date with a woman he’d been seeing off and on. Partway through dinner she began hinting about a vacation cruise. Like he had time to take a cruise? Like they were that serious? His lack of enthusiasm disappointed her and her disappointment irked him, and before the night was over they were done. “This relationship is going nowhere,” she’d said.

  That had been fine with him. The last serious relationship he’d had was in college and that had definitely gone somewhere. Somewhere bad. Oh yeah, Miss Perfect had loved him until she found someone with more money, then she’d dumped him like so much junk stock.