The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans Page A

just glared at him.
    “Whatever. The Nick-man. So where’d you meet him?”
    “In the food court.”
    “Oh, that’s cool.”
    “ We met in a Laundromat,” I said. “What does that make us?”
    “Divorced,” Dan said. “So what, he’s like your boyfriend now?”
    “Something like that. What’s it to you?”
    “Kayla’s gone.”
    “Gone where?”
    “She cheated on me. With some old rich guy.”
    “Am I supposed to feel bad for you?”
    “Would it kill you to show a little sympathy?”
    “She’s a cheater, what did you expect?”
    “I expected she would be loyal.”
    “Like you?”
    “I was loyal to her .”
    For a change, I thought. I breathed out in exasperation. “What do you want, Dan?”
    “I want you. I want us to be like we were.”
    “That ship has sailed,” I said.
    “You didn’t give me a chance. I stuck by you when you screwed up, but I slip up and you’re gone.”
    “ You didn’t stick by me. You divorced me .”
    “Only because you were going to divorce me.”
    “I never said I was going to divorce you. I should have, but I never did.”
    “But you were going to.”
    “You don’t know that. I don’t even know that, which is pathetic, since you were cheating on me with my best friend while I was in the ICU clinging to life.”
    He looked at me for a moment and his voice softened. “Elise, it’s always been us. We understand each other. We’ve been through the storms together. We should be together. You know it.”
    “I believed that once,” I said. “I don’t anymore.”
    “Why, because some rich lawyer comes knocking at your door? He’s probably married.”
    “No, he’s not married. Not everyone cheats like you, Dan.”
    “A lot more than you think. How long have you known him?”
    “A few weeks.”
    “I don’t trust him.”
    “You don’t know him well enough to not trust him.”
    “Neither do you.”
    I groaned with exasperation. “I’m not having this conversation. You need to leave.”
    “Come on, ‘Lise. We match. Just admit it. If we didn’t, then why did you marry me?”
    “I was desperate.”
    “No, you believed in us. And you were right. Drop the lawyer and I’ll move in with you.”
    “It’s not going to happen, Dan. Now you need to go. I have to go grocery shopping.”
    He grabbed his coat and smiled. “You’ll come around,” he said. “Like a boomerang. You’ll think about it, then you’ll see the light. Who else knows everything about you? You know how people are when they learn about . . .”
    “About what?”
    “You know. Hannah.”
    “Get out,” I said.
    He remained undaunted. “See you later, ‘Lise.” He stepped across the threshold, then said, “Boomerang.”
    I shut the door after him. As much as I hated hearing it from him, Dan was right. Whenever people made the connection between me and the woman in the newspaper who killed her daughter, they just mysteriously disappeared. I leaned against the door and cried.

CHAPTER
    Seventeen
    The annual ICE Christmas affair is about as classy as a truck pull, but without the dress code.
    Elise Dutton’s Diary

The ICE Christmas party was a perennial redux—a potluck affair that was always held at my boss’s home in Olympus Cove. He lived in a Tudor-style house decorated with plastic reindeer in the front yard and a fake plastic chimney on the roof with Santa’s boots extending straight up as if he were stuck.
    Nicholas had picked me up along with my pomegranate-and-poppy-seed-dressed salad. I brought the same salad every year, and took it home every year barely eaten, since most of the office avoided salad like a toxin. Still, Mark insisted that I bring it because his wife, Shelley, once remarked that she liked it. I had since concluded that she was only being polite since she hadn’t eaten any of it for the last two years.
    Nicholas parked his BMW across the street from the house, and I carried my bowl up to the door.
    “Shall I ring the bell?” Nicholas