The Mistletoe Promise by Richard Paul Evans Page B

asked.
    “No. They won’t answer; just walk in.”
    He opened the door. As I anticipated, there was no one to greet us, and the only sounds came from the television in the family room.
    “I’ll take your coat,” Nicholas said.
    I set my salad on the floor, then took off my coat and handed it to him. “They put them in the living room,” I said.
    Nicholas added our coats to a pile of outerwear already covering the crushed-velvet sofa. Then we walked into the kitchen. No one noticed (or cared) as I lay my salad on the counter.
    My boss, Mark Engeman, was notoriously tightfisted, and the party’s food was grocery store platters of meat and cheese laid out next to plates of Ritz and saltine crackers dressed with cheese from a can. There were also jalapeño poppers, store-bought rolls to make sandwiches, and a large bowl of carrot-raisin salad, which was always Cathy’s contribution.
    The one place Mark splurged was on beer. His refrigerator was stocked with all the Budweiser it could hold. There was also a plastic cooler filled with beer. I think he caught on that his guests rated the party by the level of intoxication they achieved, which was just one of many reasons that I was always the first to leave.
    Everyone else was already there. Mark and his wife, Shelley; Cathy, who brought Maureen, her snarky sister. And Brent and Margaret, our two group escorts, whom we rarely saw because they were on the road more than two hundred days out of the year, with their spouses.
    Closest to the kitchen were Zoey and her date. As usual, Zoey had brought someone none of us had ever seen and would likely never see again, which made introductory conversation pointless. Her boy du jour was tall and muscular,handsome but not especially bright-looking. He wore a sleeveless Utah Jazz jersey, which emphasized his biceps and myriad tattoos but seemed out of place considering the abundance of snow outside.
    With the exception of Shelley and Margaret, everyone was sitting around the living room eating nachos and watching the Jazz play the Portland Trail Blazers. They had all gotten an early start on drinking, and empty beer cans littered the coffee table that three of them had their feet on. Cathy was the first to notice us. “Elise. Nicholas,” she said. “You made it.”
    Everyone looked over.
    “Hi, everyone,” I said.
    Nicholas looked as unsure of himself as he had when he first approached me in the food court.
    “Hey,” Mark said. “Help yourself to a beer. Got Bud in the fridge.”
    “Thank you,” Nicholas said, making no movement to act on the offer.
    “Come watch the game,” Zoey said.
    “Go ahead, sit,” I said to Nicholas. “I’ll get us some food.”
    Nicholas sat down on a chair next to the others. Zoey was holding an open beer. She already looked a little buzzed. She almost immediately leaned toward Nicholas, drawn like steel to a magnet. I walked to the kitchen table and began making ham and cheese sandwiches.
    “Thanks for all the gifts you’ve been sending,” Zoey said to him. “Especially the cheesecake. It was dreamy .”
    “I’m glad you liked it,” Nicholas said casually, politelyglancing at her before looking back at the television. “What quarter are we in?” he asked.
    “Just started the third,” Mark said. “You ever watch the Jazz play?”
    “Sometimes. We’ve got box seats,” he said. “At the firm.”
    “And you’re a partner, right?” Zoey asked rhetorically.
    “Yes.”
    Zoey’s date just stared ahead at the screen, sucking on a beer, completely oblivious to her obvious interest in my date.
    I walked back over with our food. “Here you go,” I said, handing Nicholas a plate with some of my salad and a sandwich. I sat down between Nicholas and Zoey.
    “Thank you,” Nicholas said, turning all his attention to me. For the next hour we just watched the game, which the Jazz ended up losing by four points.
    “They never lose when I wear this shirt,” Zoey’s date said