Christmas in Seattle: Christmas Letters / The Perfect Christmas

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“And some of us,” she went on, looking at Wynn, “make hasty judgments.”

He hesitated. “Yes. However in this case—”

“That’s why,” LaVonne said, interrupting him, “I took the liberty of making a dinner reservation for the two of you. Tonight—at seven-thirty. An hour from now.”

“A dinner reservation,” K.O. repeated. Much as she liked and respected her neighbor, there was a limit to what she was willing to do.

“It’s out of the question,” Wynn insisted.

“I appreciate what you’re doing, but…” K.O. turned to Wynn for assistance.

“I do, as well,” he chimed in. “It’s a lovely gesture on your part. Unfortunately, I have other plans for this evening.”

“So do I.” All right, K.O.’s plans included eating in front of the television and watching Jeopardy, and while those activities might not be anything out of the ordinary, they did happen to be her plans.

“Oh, dear.” LaVonne exhaled loudly. “Chef Jerome Ray will be so disappointed not to meet my friends.”

If Wynn didn’t recognize the name, K.O. certainly did. “You know Chef Jerome Ray?”

“Of Chez Jerome?” Wynn inserted.

“Oh, yes. I did his taxes for years and years. What most people don’t realize is that Jerome is no flash in the pan, if you’ll excuse the pun. In fact, it took him twenty years to become an overnight success.”

The Seattle chef had his own cooking show on the Food Network, which had become an immediate hit. His techniques with fresh seafood had taken the country by storm. The last K.O. had heard, it took months to get a reservation at Chez Jerome.

“I talked to Jerome this afternoon and he said that as a personal favor to me, he would personally see to your dinner.”

“Ah…” K.O. looked at Wynn and weighed her options.

“Dinner’s already paid for,” LaVonne said in an encouraging voice, “and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.”

A nuked frozen entrée and Jeopardy, versus one dinner with a slightly contentious man in a restaurant that would make her the envy of her friends. “I might be able to rearrange my plans,” K.O. said after clearing her throat. Normally she was a woman of conviction. But in these circumstances, for a fabulous free dinner, she was willing to compromise.

“I think I can do the same,” Wynn muttered.

LaVonne smiled brightly and clapped her hands. “Excellent. I was hoping you’d say that.”

“With certain stipulations,” Wynn added.

“Yes,” K.O. said. “There would need to be stipulations.”

Wynn scowled at her. “We will not discuss my book or my child-rearing philosophies.”

“All right,” she agreed. That sounded fair. “And we’ll…we’ll—” She couldn’t think of any restriction of her own, so she said, “We refuse to overeat.” At Wynn’s frown, she explained, “I’m sort of watching my weight.”

He nodded as though he understood, which she was sure he didn’t. What man really did?

“All I care about is that the two of you have a marvelous dinner, but I know you will.” LaVonne smiled at them both. “The raisins have already assured me of that.” She studied her watch, gently dislodged Phillip and stood. “You’ll need to leave right away. The reservation’s under my name,” she said and ushered them out the door.

Before she could protest or comment, K.O. found herself standing in the hallway with Wynn Jeffries, her dinner date.

Chapter 4

If nothing else, K.O. felt this dinner would afford her the opportunity to learn about Wynn. Well, that and an exceptional dining experience, of course. Something in his background must have prompted a child-rearing ideology that in her opinion was completely impractical and threatened to create a generation of spoiled, self-involved brats. Although she didn’t have children of her own, K.O. had seen the effect on her nieces ever since Zelda had read that darn book. She was astonished by how far her sister had been willing to go in following the book’s precepts, and wondered if Zach understood the full extent of Zelda’s devotion to The Free Child. Her brother-in-law was quite the workaholic. He was absorbed in his job and often stayed late into the evenings and worked weekends.

Chez Jerome was only a few blocks from Blossom Street, so K.O. and Wynn decided to walk. She retrieved a full-length red wool coat from her condo while Wynn waited outside the building. The moment she joined him, she was hit by a blast of cold air. A shiver went through her, and she hunched her shoulders against the wind. To her surprise, Wynn changed places with her, walking by the curb, outside the shelter of the buildings, taking the brunt of the wind. It was an old-fashioned gentlemanly action and one she hadn’t expected. To be fair, she didn’t know what to expect from him. With that realization came another. He didn’t know her, either.

They didn’t utter a single word for the first block.

“Perhaps we should start over,” she suggested.

Wynn stopped walking and regarded her suspiciously. “You want to go back? Did you forget something?”

“No, I meant you and me.”

“How so?” He kept his hands buried in the pockets of his long overcoat.

“Hello,” she began. “My name is Katherine O’Connor, but most people call me K.O. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

He frowned. “We did earlier,” he said.

“This is pretend.” Did the man have to be so literal? “I want you to erase this morning from your memory and pretend we’re meeting for the first time.”

“What about drinks at LaVonne’s? Should I forget that, too?”

“Well.” She needed to think this over. That hadn’t been such a positive experience, either. “Perhaps it would be best,” she told him.

“So you want me to act as if this is a blind date?” he asked.

“A blind date,” she repeated and immediately shook her head. “I’ve had so many of those, I need a Seeing Eye dog.”

He laughed, and the sound of it was rich and melodious. “Me, too.”

“You?” A man this attractive and successful required assistance meeting women?

“You wouldn’t believe how many friends have a compulsion to introduce me to the woman of my dreams.”

“My friends say the same thing. This is the man you’ve been waiting to meet your entire life. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s a disaster.”

“Really? Even you?” He seemed a little shocked that she’d had help from her matchmaking friends.

“What do you mean even you?”

“You’re blond and beautiful—I thought you were joking about those blind dates.”

She swallowed a gasp of surprise. However, if that was the way he saw her, she wasn’t going to argue.