A Magical Christmas Read Online Free PDF

great.”
    Jack laughed. “Not the coffee. The trip. Are you going?”
    “Eavesdropper!” she accused him.
    “Not on your life. I just know that you’ve been wrestling with this.”
    “So what’d ya decide, honey?” Millie asked, ducking beneath Jack’s arm to enter Julie’s office with a cup of fresh-brewed coffee herself, taking one of the handsome office chairs in front of Julie’s desk. “Jack, take five, have a seat,” Millie invited, patting the spousal or significant other seat next to her own.
    Jack obliged. The two of them stared at her.“If the two of you are in here, who’s going to be answering the telephones?” she asked politely.
    “Casey Edwards is in—she doesn’t mind,” Millie said. Her eyes were as gray as her hair, very stern at the moment. “Now, you should go on a Christmas holiday.”
    Julie wasn’t certain whether she should be resentful of her employer’s busybody and dictatorial attitude, or grateful that she did have such a warm and personable place to work.
    She decided on the latter.
    “Selling to the Pearsons is really, really important to me,” she said. “Quite frankly, I’m afraid to leave.”
    “Jack, comment, please,” Millie commanded. “God, I wish I still smoked.”
    “You don’t wish you still smoked,” Jack corrected her.
    “The hell I don’t. I could really use a cigarette now.”
    “Maybe you could really use a cigarette, but you’re getting up there in years now, and you don’t want ugly, disgusting black lungs to do you in early.”
    “Why did I hire you?”
    “Because I’m cheap and brilliant.”
    “You need this holiday,” Millie said to Julie.
    “I need the Pearson sale,” Julie said quietly.Jack leaned forward. “You’re a good realtor. You work a fairly light schedule, but you keep your family going. You’re married to an attorney, Julie. You don’t actually
need
the Pearson sale.”
    “Especially if you’re planning a divorce. Community property state, you know,” Millie said.
    “Millie!” Jack admonished, appalled.
    “The writing is on the wall,” Millie said. “Take him for all he’s worth!” she exclaimed.
    “I thought you liked Jon,” Julie said.
    “She does. She’s just a nasty old witch in the middle of menopause,” Jack advised sagely.
    “That’s right, men-o-pause,” Millie snapped. “And it’s no fancy Latin name or the like; it means what it says—men make me pause. I hate them, and they give me lots and lots of desire to pause—before shooting the suckers all off the face of the earth and letting God sort them out.”
    Even Julie lifted a brow.
    “Well, I didn’t exactly mean that, but I am having a bad day,” Millie acknowledged. “Now as to Jon—trust me, honey, men do come much worse. Not that he’s perfect; who is? I don’t even claim that for myself. But you go on that trip, honey. It could be really important for you right now. Go—and I mean it.”
    “But the Pearsons—”
    “You can sell to the Pearsons today,” Millieadvised. “You’ve got the perfect property for Dan and Rita; I can feel it in my bones.”
    “And I can do your follow-up work until you get back,” Jack said.
    “Jack, that’s not fair. You won’t take a percentage—”
    “Julie, my wife died in ’91, my son is an architect, and my daughter is a plastic surgeon. We’ve done all right. I’ve got grown-up kids—decent enough as kids go, but they’ve got their own lives. My financial status is just fine. I enjoy picking up some of the work—I like feeling alive and useful. Old and used up is no good, and with my wife gone, well, time hangs heavy. This sounds like a fun trip. Like a good time to take a damned good look at things before you take drastic steps, or set things into motion that you can never stop once started.”
    “He’s right, honey. If you’re going to take him for all he’s worth, you’ve got to let him go down fighting first,” Millie said.
    Julie stared down at the