Or that was what the Medical Insider magazine had declared when they’d discussed his taking over the reins of the family business from his father, Vincent.
Distribution.
That was what the Roosevelts specialized in.
That was why she was here. Attending the fucking Christmas party.
With gifts for the children in the back seat of her rental.
The Roosevelts handled the second most important job of Hjerte—meaning heart in Danish and referencing how her late mother had been her father’s heart. It was a sickeningly sweet and yet somehow still touching show of affection from a man who loved deeply enough to name his company after a woman and to highlight her family’s ancestral roots. But she digressed. Because names aside, the Roosevelt operations handled the most critical operation of Hjerte after the creation of the actual product: distribution.
Otherwise, their valves would be languishing in warehouses instead of helping hearts pump better in tens of thousands of patients’ chests.
She pulled onto the road, navigated the curving street that was grossly pot-holed and surrounded by high muddy embankments. On either side, there were large ditches filled with puddles that were ringed with dirty-looking snow.
A recent rain, or perhaps a spat of warmer weather that had prevented much snow from sticking.
Either way, it was ugly and fit her mood perfectly.
“Just call me, Scrooge,” she muttered.
Her cell rang again as she turned left on a road that seemed to be leading her even farther from civilization. And perhaps it was, considering that Justin Roosevelt’s ranch was on the outskirts of the town called Darlington.
“Darling to whom?” she asked, navigating carefully and feeling no little amount of resentment at being here.
But that resentment didn’t stop her from doing her job.
She shoved her earpiece into her ear and answered the call, taking the next few minutes to speak with her head of operations. The conversation enlightened her to the issue at hand, mainly discovering the problem with production was a software glitch rather than with their actual equipment malfunctioning.
“Rest assured,” he said, “we have the entire technical arm on alert and tasked with fixing the error. We’ll be back up as soon as humanly—”
“Bypass the new machines,” she interrupted.
A beat then, “What?”
“The old production equipment is still in those spaces, correct?” she asked, knowing the area with the issue was one that had been upgraded a bare week before.
“Um . . . yes.”
“And how long have we been down?”
“Three hours.”
She maneuvered the car around a bend in the road. “And when do the techs have the fix coming?”
“Well, um, they’re not sure how—”
“Right,” she said. “So set up our old equipment, sterilize it, and we’ll be back up within an hour. If the techs get a fix, we can update during shift change or in the night, but we can’t miss an entire day of production and still make our orders for the western seaboard.”
“I—”
“Can you do it?” she asked in a tone that told him he’d better be capable.
Thankfully, he didn’t disappoint her. “We’ll get the old equipment up and running within the hour,” he assured her.
“Good.”
Her earpiece beeped with an incoming call. “I’ll leave you to it. Touch base with me in one hour.”
Elizabeth hung up without hearing his reply, or rather, switched to the other call. As planned, it was from her finance chief, and she spent the next few minutes untangling an issue with the board and an upcoming share split.
When she hung up, her head was spinning, her brain telling her it was much later in the UK, where she had her flat.
But Hjerte was a worldwide operation.
They had production and storage facilities in more than thirty countries. So, she’d dealt with her fair share of operational issues in various time zones. Lack of sleep did not dissuade her, neither did it have her shirking her duties, especially when she was finally getting the company to function like a . . . well, functional company.
Pretty soon, she wouldn’t need to do all the handholding she was doing now.
Pretty soon, she might actually be able to have an actual life.
“Yeah, well, what are you going to do with that?” she whispered, spotting a heavy metal gate with intertwined R’s in the distance.
It was decorated with garland and flashing Christmas lights, even though it was barely noon, and seeing that jaunty gate, that bright blip of season’s tidings made her think of her own flat—white and stark and empty of all things garland and Christmas related.
Of course, it was empty of holiday décor.
First, she wasn’t ever home for Christmas.
And second, she hated the holiday.
Always had, always would.
So, it was absolutely fitting that she was here for a Christmas party.
“No, not a party,” she whispered, after announcing herself at the tiny speaker by the gate and waiting for the large iron barrier to open. She pulled into the driveway and forced herself to focus on the real reason she was here.
“Business,” she said stoutly. “I am only here for business.”
If only she’d known then how wrong she would be.
Three
Dale
“Whoever decided that Christmas lights should come on strands should be hung, drawn, and quartered,” Dale muttered, tossing the tangled mess of lights down on the grass.
“That’s the Christmas spirit,” Kelly told him, pressing a kiss to his cheek and scooping up the ball of knotted green strands.
“It’s too early for Christmas.”
“It is after the first of December so, no, it is not, in fact, too early for Christmas.” She plunked down onto the grass and began untangling. “Additionally, I would make the assertion that any time after the first of November is acceptable for Christmas festivities.”
“Wrong,” he said, snatching the ball back and methodically freeing the strand from itself. “Tell me again why your fancy, rich husband can’t hire someone to put up these lights?”
“I second this question,” Henry, another of their longtime friends and owner of the best restaurant in town, said. From atop a ladder. Where he was stringing another strand of the Devil’s illumination—Dale’s contribution to the festivities included naming all of the too perky, too happy, too festive items names that would make Kelly sigh and roll her eyes.
Which she did.
Again.
Heh.
“My quote ‘fancy, rich husband’ offered to have someone come out and decorate the house, but I prefer to do it myself,” she said, grabbing the end of the strand he’d managed to unknot and handing it up to Henry.
“And by yourself, you mean the free manual labor of Dale and myself,” Henry grumbled, plugging the end in and continuing hanging the lights.
“Precisely,” she chirped. “Well, except you two aren’t doing it out of the kindness of your squishy little hearts. You’re doing it because Melissa offered you her French silk pie as payment.”
“For filming our hilarious efforts, you mean,” Dale pointed out, nodding to the television crew that was recording a few wide shots that would be used in Kelly’s sister’s cooking show. “She offered us pie so we’d agree to be on camera.” She’d come out mid-decoration, asking if they could tape for a few minutes, and it wasn’t like any of them would say no.