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The ticket book was snapped shut and replaced in its upper pocket home, beside a name tag, Adams.
“You were delivering them?”
It seemed hopelessly complicated to say he had been delivering them, then decided not to deliver them, at least not personally, so Michael only nodded.
The policeman looked at the clogged road. “Washington’s always like this at this time of day. Were you going to try Wilmore instead?”
Michael decided for honesty. “Actually I was thinking maybe I’d just go home, make the delivery a different day.”
Adams frowned at the traffic, then brightened. “Emergency delivery to the Secret Santa Society. Follow me,” he ordered. His whole face and body language changed. He was thrilled to be part of something good.
So, that’s what happened, Michael thought, when you fooled with something as powerful as Santa. He was now headed, under police escort, directly toward a place that moments ago he had decided he was not going. He pondered, uneasily, how much of his life was now going to be out of his control.
Then he reminded himself that thinking life was in your control was the largest of illusions anyway.
Sirens were nothing unusual for this neighborhood, in fact they played in the background, a noise Kirsten blocked out as easily as elevator music. There had been a rush of volunteers earlier, but they had all left at suppertime and now she was alone. Happily she pulled her catalog closer. Love in a Little House on the Prairie, was a wonderful piece, too. Not as good as Knight in Shining Armor, but—
The siren wailed, demanding attention, and suddenly the inside of her office was strobed in red and blue. Curious, she set aside the catalog and went to the front window. She peeled back a corner of the paper they used to keep curious kiddies from speculating what Santa might be up to this year.
A car, low slung, black and sexy—she thought it might be a Honda—was pulled over right in front of her office. To her practiced eye the car did not look like the more souped-up models the drug dealers favored.
And then the siren and lights were cut. The cop got out of his car and the driver got out of the sports car.
Him!
What was he doing back here? Uncharitably, Kirsten found herself hoping he was getting a ticket.
For being too good-looking and too sure of himself and for driving a car like that—a car that said he was sexy and sleek and way out of the league of a girl whose idea of excitement was poring over a catalog of porcelain figurines!
“You have to want to play to be in a league,” she informed herself sternly. And she didn’t. Okay, so she had moments of weakness, like this afternoon. That was only human. But generally she was extremely disciplined at keeping the larger picture in mind: love was fragile and easily breakable and not to be trusted.
She told herself to go back to her catalog—the only kind of love she planned to invest in. Instead, she found herself watching, unwittingly fascinated, as he walked back to the policeman with utter confidence. Even she, who had never been pulled over in her entire life, knew you were supposed to stay in your car. That rule surely applied doubly in this neighborhood. Having a gun pulled on him and being yelled at should take a bit of that masculine swagger out of his step!
But he didn’t get a gun pulled on him, or get yelled at. No, he and the policeman seemed to be best of buddies. She sighed and realized even with his hands up and a gun pointed at him, he would have been the same. He was one of those most annoying men who carried something—some certainty—deep inside himself. It showed in the ease with which he was engaged in conversation with the policeman. Not intimidated. On firm footing, knowing himself to be equals with anyone.
The cop did appear to be writing him a ticket, which he took without glancing at, and put in the pocket of that same leather jacket. He didn’t appear cold, though night was now falling and the temperature was dipping. The cop was shifting from foot to foot, and had his shoulders hunched against the cold.
The radio in the police car went off and the cop jogged back to his car. Moments later the siren was wailing and he was gone.
And he was leaning in the door of his car, filling his arms with…coats.
He staggered toward her door, and she had to run out in the snow and grab one of the jackets before it fell off the huge heap in his arms. The coat was pink, with fake fur trim, absolutely adorable, a coat a man like him could not possibly have chosen!
She raced back in ahead of him to clear a spot on a table.
“Set them here,” she said breathlessly.
He set the coats down—at least twenty of them—and for a moment she simply stared. He had not brought her old secondhand junk, but brand-new winter jackets. From West Coats, no less, and in every shape and size and color. The price tags were still on them.
“I’ll get the rest of them,” he said.
“The rest of them?”
“You said fifty.”
Some emotion clawed at her throat so big she thought it would choke her. Thankfully a flash to halibut worked on all kinds of feelings!
By the time he came back, and dumped another armload on the table, Kirsten was feeling quite composed, as if people delivered fifty brand-new West Coats jackets to her all the time. Unfortunately, on the very top was another pink jacket, trimmed at the collar and cuffs with fake fur, and she had to think of the sockeye salmon to get her feelings under control.
“Okay,” she said, finally, folding her arms against the emotion she was still wrestling with, “who are you?”
He stuck out his hand. “Michael Brewster.”
She took it and felt a shiver of awareness so strong it nearly took what was left of her breath away. She saved this one for moments just like this: the live lobster tank.
“Kirsten Morrison,” she managed to stammer, visualizing like crazy.
“Kirsten,” he repeated slowly. Was that surprise in his voice?
It seemed so unfair. How dare he be this good-looking, this self-assured, and kind, too? For a girl who worked with Santa, she was realistic to a fault about what life was really like. What men were really like. Treacherous, like James, or worse, like her brother-in-law, who had seemed like the boy next door. The man least likely to have an affair with his secretary.
Thankfully, when she looked in Michael’s eyes, she was not sure it was kindness she saw. In fact, she was almost certain it was not. Sadness?
No, bigger than that. Something had happened to his soul.
“So, what did you get the ticket for?” she asked abruptly, trying to think of anything except his soul, and his lips and his hands and the way snow was melting in his thick dark hair.
“Ticket?” he looked puzzled. “Oh. It wasn’t a ticket.” He reached into his pocket. “A check. For the pink jacket. Or another one like it. Officer Adams insisted. I had him make it out to the Society.”
Kirsten stared at him, took the check that he proffered.
“There’s a phone number written on the back. His union or something. He said if you called, they’d probably make a donation.”
It wasn’t bad enough that he was so good-looking it hurt? He had to be a miracle worker, too? He could conjure jackets and checks out of thin air? If he really found an elf, then what? There wouldn’t be enough lobster tanks in the world to protect her! Her resolve was being tested, that’s what.
No matter how many jackets he could find, this man in front of her was not a prince. Life was not a fairy tale. There was no happily-ever-after. Her parents had not made it, Becky and Kent had not made it, there were toads disguised as princes, like James Moriarty, everywhere.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked, aware she sounded far from grateful.
“You asked me to. Fifty coats. I haven’t been able to locate an elf yet.”
“Did they give them to you?”
“Give them to me? The coats?” he sounded genuinely baffled. “No.”
“That’s the why,” she said tenaciously. “Why would you buy coats for a complete stranger?”
“Well, I didn’t buy them for you,” he said, which put her in her place, a warning that it was only a matter of time before a guy like this put a girl like her in her place. “I bought them for kids who need them.”
She could see he simply didn’t intend to tell her the why that she wanted to know, which was what had motivated this astonishing show of generosity.
“You’re telling me you bought a coat that looked like this?” She glanced at the table, unfolded an arm to point at the princess jacket. “Three coats that look like this?”
He ducked his head, scratched the toe of his boot against the floor. “I was scraping the bottom of the barrel,” he said gruffly. “That’s all they had left when I reached forty-seven.”
How could she know he was lying? She barely knew him! She didn’t know him at all! She had no gift for telling when men were lying! She had believed in her brother-in-law long after her sister had given up. Didn’t she still sometimes wish Kent would come through? Be the man she knew he was? Chase down her sister, beg her forgiveness? Hadn’t she hoped, long after her parents’ breakup, that it was all a mistake and they would be reunited?
She shook off the thought roughly, recognizing her weakness for fantasy. A man like the one in front of her did that. Made a woman long for tradition, stability, and for men who did not lie.
And yet she knew that was a lie about the coats. How could there be such a thing as a nice lie? And how could she fight the monster of tenderness that threatened to swamp her as she thought about this big, self-assured intensely masculine man buying such adorable coats for three little girls he had never met and probably never would meet?
She turned back to the jackets to hide the tears that stung at her eyes at the total collapse of her defenses. That was the problem when you pulled out the lobster tank too early in the game.
“Brand-new,” she whispered. “Do you know how often these kids receive a brand-new jacket?” She caught sight of one of the price tags. The jacket was down-filled. That price times fifty?
So, she could add rich to his growing list of attractions. Except when she looked at him, she did not get the impression money gave him any joy. She did not get the impression anything gave him joy anymore.
A joyless liar. How could that possibly be so attractive?
“I don’t know what to say,” she stammered.
“How about that you’ll go have dinner with me.”
She shot him a look, looked away. It was obvious the invitation had taken him almost as much by surprise as it had her.
And she knew she couldn’t go have dinner with him.
Because he was the kind of man a girl like her could fall for, and fall hard, and it was all downhill from there. She would build a fairy tale around him, he would wreck the ending.
There is no happily-ever-after, she told herself angrily. Still, saying no was about the hardest thing she’d ever done, because a little voice inside her was saying, well, what about happy until?
“Oh,” she said, and each syllable was a torture. “I can’t. Sorry. Not possibly.” She waved vaguely at her stacks of toys. “Tricycles that need to be assembled.” Just this morning that had been on the bottom of her priority list! How a man like him could change things!
She thought of the catalog in her office, how she should be longing to get back to Harriet and Smedley, and wasn’t.
She glanced at him again and saw that she had astonished him. He was not accustomed to being on the receiving end of a no from anyone of the female persuasion obviously! It made her slightly glad she’d been able to spit out the rejection! So, she said it again, just to see his astonishment deepen.
“No,” she said. “I can’t. Santa does not date. Not until after Christmas.”
Shoot. Was she leaving a door open?
His mouth twitched. “I’m not sure I would have called it a date,” he said drily.
And her moment of pleasure at having surprised him disappeared. Of course he wouldn’t call it a date! Anyone looking at him could tell he didn’t need to go and buy fifty coats to get a date. Anyone looking at him could tell he didn’t date girls like her.
He dated girls who had pierced belly buttons and tiny diamond studs in their noses. He dated girls who were unselfconscious about rips in the derriere of their jeans. He dated girls who had gotten implants as their high school grad presents. He dated girls who were gorgeous, and self-assured, and who most definitely did not blush!
Even knowing she was the kind of girl he never dated, she felt the pull of the fantasy. What if she did say yes? What if over candlelight dinner she made him laugh and surprised him, and he found her so deep and rich in spirit that it made her totally irresistible despite the brown dress, worn sweater, lack of streaks?
What if he saw the princess under the Cinderella dressing?
As if.
Insane thoughts, a flare-up of the child she had been at nineteen, before her nephew had been injured, the first broken link in a chain of events that led to the breakup of her sister’s marriage. That breakup had left her stunned, confirming what her parents and James had already taught her, the lesson she had chosen to ignore. The very thing she had longed for most in the world—love—could turn back on you like a sharpened sword and pierce your heart.
Before that, despite evidence it was foolish, Kirsten had clung to the belief that she was a Cinderella of sorts, and that someday a prince would come who would see straight through the lack of breast implants and derriere-exposing jeans to who she really was.
“Well,” she said brusquely, “Thanks. It was an amazing thing for you to do. I’m not sure why you did it, but I appreciate it. Now, I have a ton of work to do, so goodbye, Mr. Brewster.”
He looked as if he hadn’t even heard her. He moved by her and took one of the trike boxes down from the stack. He studied the drawing on the side of the box.
“You’re telling me you know how to assemble this?” he asked.
She bristled! He was obviously used to a different kind of woman! One who worried about her fingernails and had never touched an Allen wrench or a crescent wrench in her life.
Of course, Kirsten had never actually assembled one of the trikes, though she had put together lots of other toys.
Still, honesty prevented her from claiming she knew how to assemble the trike.
“I can read directions,” she said regally.
He yanked open the box, rifled through it, handed her the directions.
There were two pages of incomprehensible drawings, all clearly explained…in Japanese.
Her lips twitched, then she snorted, and then she laughed. She looked up to see the faintest smile toying at the edges of his lips, probably because of the snort!
“How about if we order a pizza?” he said, “and work together on the trikes?”
“Mr. Brewster—”
“Michael.”
“I don’t even know you.”
He pondered that for a moment. “Are you scared of me?”
Terrified!
“Do you want me to fill out an application? You can do a security check. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
It was the coming back part that terrified her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said stiffly. She meant about him coming back tomorrow.
“It’s not ridiculous. You should be checking out people who come to work here, even volunteers.”
“I’ve been doing this for a long time without your help, thanks!”
“Hey, no need to get prickly! I was just trying to look out for you.”
Which was her weakest point. She had grown up believing someday someone would look after her, forever, the way her father had looked after her mother. When her parents had divorced, she had been able to cling still to her dreams—though now they had been slightly tattered. Becky had found the most special man in the world, the baby had come and their love seemed to do nothing but become stronger and better.
And then it had all fallen apart. One second. A little boy in front of a car. A world shattered. A psychiatrist would have a field day with the fact Kirsten’s interest in the fragile porcelain figurines had coincided with the breakup of something that had seemed stronger than steel.
“Hey,” he said softly, “I’m offering to put together tricycles, not a peace agreement for the Middle East. Don’t look so worried. You want a reference? You can phone my neighbor. That’s who told me you might need help. Mr. Theodore.”
“Mr. Theodore’s your neighbor?” she said. “He sent you?”
“Suggested maybe I drop by. How do you know him?”
“We belong to the same book club.”
“Book club. Whoo boy, I should have seen that one coming.”
“Is there something wrong with girls who belong to book clubs?”
He actually grinned. “Yeah, they generally aren’t dancing on the pool table at closing time with a rose between their teeth.”
She should have been insulted, but it was a moment she had waited for without realizing she waited. That grin lit something in his eyes. For a moment she saw that there was fire trapped in all that ice. It glittered, wicked and warming.
She forgot to be insulted. His face, unhampered by grimness, was youthful and boyish and hinted at someone he had once been—full of mischief and laughter, easygoing charm.
“So, why exactly did Mr. Theodore send you looking for me?”
Something shuttered in his eyes, the moment was gone much too quickly. He shoved his hands in his pockets, shrugged. “I happen to have some time on my hands.”
Yikes! How much time? And why would a healthy-looking young man have time on his hands to give to an organization like hers? Why wasn’t he working? Involved with his own family at this busy time of year? But something told her, anxious as she was to find a flaw in him, not to ask. Not to press him. Not right now.
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