Page 62 of Not Home Alone

“Well, she needed a place to stay, and I can be thoughtful, occasionally.”

“Great,” he says. “It would be mighty thoughtful of you if you’d get out of my office so I can get ready for my next meeting. I’ll see you at the winery.”

“See you tonight. You bringing a date?”

“Yes. But she might be crazy, so my assistant will be interrupting us with a big work emergency.”

“You really need to give that woman a raise.”

“Shhh! Don’t give her any ideas.” He shoos me out.

When I open the door, his assistant, Joy, is taking a seat at her desk, like she was in a hurry. Like she was possibly just listening in at the door. Which is fine. I have nothing to hide.

“See you tonight,” I say to her with a nod. Because we all know Wyatt’s going to find something wrong with his date. Why he makes his assistant actually show up to pull him away instead of just sending a text is beyond me.

“You will?” she asks, pretending to be in the middle of typing something. Then she realizes what I’m talking about. “Oh. Right. Well, fingers crossed he’ll actually like this one.”

When I step out onto Main Street, I look around, wondering why The Moody Group doesn’t have some kind of office here. I get why Merrily was asking about that. The optics would be better if we actually showed that we consider ourselves a part of the community.

She has good ideas, that Merrily Tucker. I can’t believe it’s only nine-thirty. That means it’ll be almost eight hours before I see this town’s beautiful brown eyes again. I hate that.

When I get to my car, I pull out my phone to check my notifications. There’s one from my sister. I know what it’s about before I open the group chat because she only texts me about one thing anymore.

AVA: Quinn wants to know if you’re bringing a date to the party tonight. What should I tell her?

GRANT: You should tell her that I’m bringing my girlfriend as my date. Merrily Tucker.

AVA: Okay, but her cousin just posted snaps of her vacation with her new fiancé so Quinn’s feeling very vulnerable RN.

GRANT: Perhaps Quinn should find a nice single man to keep her company, then. Speaking of the party—please don’t mention the possible HQ move to NYC at the party. Around Merrily or anyone else for that matter.

TODD: You aren’t the boss of me, punk.

AVA: Me neither.

GRANT: I will literally be the boss of both of you if I decide to take over as CEO.

TODD: Have you decided to?

GRANT: Not yet. Until I do, NYC is a moot point and privileged information.

TODD:

AVA:

I can’t believe I share DNA with these people.

I send my dad an email asking him not to mention NYC at the party either, pre-emptively telling him that no, I have not made a decision yet.

Just as I’m about to put my phone away, I get a notification that Merrily has sent me a text. The way my mood has shifted before I’ve even read it—I don’t hate anything anymore. I don’t even think my half-siblings are idiots. They’re just ignorant.

MERRILY: You bastard.

GRANT: Speaking!

She sends me a picture of the Christmas-gram guy I sent to her rehearsal. He’s wearing his candy cane costume, as instructed, and looks annoyed, which makes me happy. I had forgotten all about it. I hired that same guy Merrily sent to my office yesterday while she was at her Notcracker meeting. I wanted him to go yesterday, but the song I requested was not part of his repertoire, so I paid extra for him to learn it. And yet more money for him to wear his candy cane costume, because he said it pinched him in places he doesn’t like to be pinched.

The song is called “Peppermint Stick Parade” by Bobby Vinton. I had to dig deep to find a Christmas song about peppermint, but I found it, and it’s terrible, and I refused to let him talk me into switching out words of more popular songs for “peppermint.” Have a Peppermint Christmas? No thank you. Feliz Peppermint? Absolutely not.