Sheila pats me on the shoulder. “Please try. And tell her we’re all sorry for laughing. If Webster hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have known what they were, anyway.”
I nod and take off down the hallway, stopping and tapping my fingers on Phoebe’s door.
“Go away,” she mumbles pitifully.
I smile sadly. I hate that I caused this. We could have avoided this if I’d told her it surprised me she was interested in the set. If I wasn’t thinking with my dick when she said she wanted to set them up and take pictures, I would have realized something was up.
“Phoebe. It’s Archer. Can I come in for a minute?”
“No,” comes her immediate reply.
“Please, Phoebe.”
“Leave me alone. Christmas is canceled. Tell everyone to go home.”
I chuckle at that. There’s no way she would cancel Christmas. Not with it being Lincoln’s first. But for her to say it without hesitation, well, that means she’s still incredibly upset. My stomach is burning with a need to fix it, but I don’t want to talk to her through the door. I’m sure she’d be even more embarrassed if I did that.
“I know you don’t mean that, Phoebe.”
“Oh, I do.”
“But you were so excited about Lincoln’s first Christmas. Christmas Eve dinner is part of that experience, isn’t it?”
I hear her muttering to herself. “No. Today will forever be known as the day we celebrate stuffing butts instead of stockings. It’s too dirty for Lincoln now.”
I stifle a laugh. Stuff butts, not stockings would make a decent holiday slogan. Or maybe stuff butts and stockings would be better. I shake my head. That doesn’t matter now. I need to get to Phoebe and explain that it’s not as bad as she’s imagining.
And I have just the thing.
“Okay, fine. You don’t have to come out. But can I at least come in and get my clothes? I changed in there earlier and but now that we’re done with the Santa photo shoot, I’d like to get out of this suit. You’d be shocked at how warm velvet is, even without a shirt on.”
I hear more grumbling through the closed door before she answers. “Fine. Come in.”
I grin when I turn the knob. She didn’t even lock the door.
“Hey,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Mind if I sit for a second?”
She shrugs. She’s sitting on the floor beside the bed, elbows resting on her knees, and she won’t even look at me. I lower myself to the floor beside her, close, but not touching.
“So, about what happened earlier…”
She turns further away from me, but not before I see her face redden. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I’m not talking about it, not really. I owe you an apology. I wasn’t clear when I told you what I did for a living, and I think that contributed to the misunderstanding.” She angles her body marginally in my direction, but she’s still not looking at me. “And I always forget that there’s nothing about my factory that really says what we make there. Amanda putting out the Christmas Cheer Training Bundle as a Christmas decoration probably didn’t help, either.”
Phoebe huffs a laugh. “Making them that pretty wasn’t such a good idea, either.”
“No, I suppose maybe it wasn’t.”
She turns to face me and I see her face is still red, but at least she’s smiling now. “They really are pretty, though. All that glitter swirled through them looks really magical.”
“Yeah, it does.”
She heaves an enormous sigh and flops back against the side of the bed.
“So…how did the photoshoot go?”
I chuckle. “Quick, and mostly painless.”
