I shake my head. “Salt and vinegar on my fries.”
“Vinegar?” I expect her nose to wrinkle, but she considers it for a second. “Interesting. What kind of vinegar? Apple cider? Balsamic?”
“Just plain white vinegar. We’ll have to hit the diner while you’re in town.”
“It’s a…” She pauses for a noticeable second. “Good idea. We can eat and plan at the same time. Very efficient.”
Date. That was the word she didn’t say, which strikes me as odd because it’s a common enough phrase.
She holds the binder out to me before I can think of a response, and I’m not surprised there are no longer papers sticking out of it every which way.
“I scanned the contents,” she says, “so I won’t need to handle the originals again.”
“Did you use that monstrosity of a printer at the inn? I tried it once, and every page has to be scanned one at a time.”
“I have a scanner app on my phone that compiles the documents and saves them as a PDF, which I then saved to my tablet so I can work from that copy instead of handling the binder.”
Even with a fancy phone app, it must have taken her hours—first sorting and protecting the originals, and then the scanning of each individual page. “Tell me you didn’t stay up all night doing this.”
“I didn’t stay up all night doing that.”
I can’t tell if she’s trying to be funny or not. “Are you just saying that because I told you to say it?”
“No, it actually didn’t take me all night, though I won’t deny it was a lengthy process.” She quirks an eyebrow at me. “Also, it’s funny you think I’d do something just because you told me to.”
If it’s so funny, she shouldsmile, dammit. Not her business lady smile, but a real one that makes her eyes sparkle.
“I’ll also send you a copy of the PDF so you can archive it in the event something happens to the binder,” she continues. “I know it’s not quite the same, but at least it wouldn’t be totally lost.”
“That means a lot to me. Thank you.” It means so much, actually, that I’m tempted to pull her into my arms and hug her, but I don’t need a seminar to tell me that’s crossing a boundary. “We can head upstairs and start triaging the list, I guess. Figure out what’s a priority and what should have already been done days ago—if not weeks.”
“Upstairs? In your office with one desk chair, one very uncomfortable looking wooden chair, and a bed?”
I’m confused for a few seconds—my brain cells scrambled by Whitney bringing the wordbedinto the conversation—and then I remember I didn’t exactly give her a tour yesterday.
“We have a very small living area, too, which includes a table and chairs. I thought we could work there.”
“Do you usually wait until two weeks before the event to start planning?”
“No. I usually get less than two weeks because I just do what I’m told and do the heavy lifting. And it’s not as if Christmas is a surprise party. But Susan was running behind this year because of some health issues and she left her decision to retire and hand it off to me a bit late.”
She lifts her hand, looking at the smartwatch on her wrist. Then she pulls out her phone and, after a moment of reading something, starts typing. I wait while she has what appears to be a text conversation with somebody.
“I’m sorry,” she says, without glancing up. “With Mr. Wilson traveling tomorrow, I have a lot of balls in the air. Your Christmas Fair is ontopof my duties to him as CEO, not in place of them. Even though everything’s slowed down because we’re in this whole holiday season thing now and everybody’s distracted, doing it remotely from Charming Lake isn’t easy.”
“If the fair is too much, I can tell him I don’t need your help.”
She looks up from her phone, her eyes wide. “Please don’t. It was an explanation, not a complaint.”
Her voice is even, but there’s a pleading look in her eyes. I only half-pay attention to my brother-in-law when he’s talking about business, but I know Donovan’s assistant is out on maternity leave because he grumbled about her and his wife being pregnant at the same time. Whitney’s role in her boss’s life is temporary, and she probably wants to leave as good an impression as possible.
“I’d tell him it’s me and not you,” I say, still wanting to give her an out if it’s too stressful. “He’d believe that. Some people think I’m grumpy and prefer to be alone.”
“You?” Shealmostsmiles. “The man who put a bed in his office so he can hide behind the fire trucks?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Hide? There’s a giant glass window.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I can handle this. It’s not as if I’m actually doing all the admin work from Charming Lake. I’m more of a liaison between Mr. Wilson and an entire department of people making sure he doesn’t drop any balls.”
