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www.millsandboon.co.uk
To my children, whose wide-eyed wonder makes every
Christmas absolutely magical. And, yes, I do have a lot
of fun making you two wait to open your presents—but
even more fun watching the joy on your faces. I love you
guys. You’re the only Christmas present I ever need.
And to Bill and Janice Roe, a real-life Mr. and
Mrs. Claus, who provided the inspiration for this story.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
JESSICA PATTERSON was done with Christmas.
No buying of a pine tree that would shed all over her wall-to-wall carpet. No hanging of a festive red-bowed wreath on her front door. And no candy cane cookies on a gaily decorated platter with dancing snowmen who sported goofy stone-created smiles under their little carrot noses.
She’d done enough Christmases. No more, not for her.
“Where’s your red suit?” Mindy Newcomb, her best friend for ten years, leaned against the counter of Jessica’s toy shop, arms crossed over her chest. “It’s December nineteenth and you haven’t even taken it out of the attic yet. The town Winterfest is in three days. And you don’t have so much as a paper snowflake in the window. What’s wrong with you?”
Jessica straightened a display of white teddy bears set up in the center of Santa’s Workshop Toys. The pale color was all the rage this year in stuffed pals, so Jessica had made sure to stock up. “I told you, I’m not staying here for Christmas this year. I have a round-trip ticket to Miami Beach, a mega bottle of SPF 45 and a brand-new Speedo. I am not putting on the Mrs. Claus suit because I will not be here.”
“I really thought you’d get over this by now.”
“What do you mean, over this?”
“This…mood you’ve been in.” Mindy waved a vague hand. “Come on, Jessica, you love Christmas.”
“I used to love Christmas. I don’t anymore.” The clock chimed ten. Jessica crossed to the door, flipped the sign to Open then headed to the register and checked for the right ratio of quarters and nickels. She knew to start the day with a lot of small change, particularly now that school had let out for Winter Break. The children of Riverbend would be in soon, spending their allowances on the myriad of small items laid out on the dime and quarter table, biding their time until the ho-ho-holiday with super bouncy balls and new sets of jacks.
Mindy slid onto the stool behind the counter. When Jessica joined her, she laid a hand on her friend’s, her eyes welling with sympathy. “I know the holidays have been pretty hard on you since Dennis died.”
Jessica nodded and swallowed the lump in her throat. Two years and yet there were days when it felt like yesterday. “Christmas just isn’t the same without him.” She glanced at the pictures on the wall, a collection of images featuring happier days with Mr. and Mrs. Claus—Jessica and Dennis Patterson.
They’d started soon after they’d married fifteen years ago, donning the suits with padding, then as the pounds crept up on Dennis, he hadn’t needed the extra pillows. He’d looked good as he rounded, like a teddy bear she could curl into.
But those very pounds had been his undoing, putting a strain on his heart that it couldn’t handle. Yet he’d kept the doctor’s warnings from her, ignoring the ticking time bomb in his chest because he loved being Santa. Loved his life. And hated anything that would put a crimp in it. He’d been all about being jolly—and never about anything serious.
She’d loved that about Dennis, until she realized that was the very thing that had cost her the man she loved.
Every year, they’d played the Mr. and Mrs. Santa roles, delighting in the smiles on the children’s faces as they’d handed out toys and candy canes, putting on a real show at the annual Riverbend Town Winterfest. They’d posed for pictures, even built a sleigh and set up a little decorated house—a glorified shed, really—in the town park, where children could come and spend a few minutes visiting with Old St. Nick, telling him what they wished to see most under their Christmas tree.
After Dennis had died too soon at forty-eight, leaving Jessica a young widow at thirty-seven, she’d carried on the show for one more year, for the memory of her husband, for the kids they’d loved. But those kids had grown up. And the ones she’d seen in the past couple years hadn’t exactly been the Norman Rockwell version of Christmas spirit.
Jessica turned away from the pictures. “The whole thing stopped being fun a long time ago. Besides, I lost my Christmas spirit after Andrew Weston defaced my Frosty.”
“He was just a kid, pulling a prank.”
“Mindy, he painted him green and hung him from the oak tree in the center of the town lawn. Said he was releasing Frosty into the wild or something. Then that Sarah Hamilton…” Jessica shook her head. “I try never to think badly of a child, but that girl knows exactly how to get on my nerves.”
“She is a bit of a—”
“Brat,” Jessica finished, then immediately felt bad because Sarah was really only a product of her unconventional upbringing. “And that’s not a word I use lightly.”
“She’s been through a rough time, Jess. She only lost her mom, what, two months ago?”
Jessica sighed and sank onto the second stool. “I know. I don’t think she has any family left. She’s been living with her babysitter, which has to be hard on her.” Sarah had taken to hanging around the store after school a lot lately, asking questions, always wanting Jessica’s attention at the busiest possible times. Driving Jessica nuts—and pitching a fit if she didn’t get Jessica’s undivided attention when she wanted it.
“If she had a dad, he’s not around.” Mindy’s lips pursed in annoyance with the missing father who would leave his child stranded like that. “And Kiki never even said who he was.”
“She was an odd duck, wasn’t she?” Jessica thought of Sarah’s mother, who’d waitressed at the downtown diner and had died her hair a different color to suit her different moods. Rough and out-spoken, Kiki had stuck out in Riverbend like a hammerhead shark in a tank full of angel fish.
Having Kiki for a mother explained a lot about Sarah’s behavior. Jessica knew enough about the woman to know the words schedule and discipline weren’t in her vocabulary. For a woman like Jessica, who’d lived by a schedule for more than three decades, Kiki’s life wasn’t just unusual—it was crazy.
“Sarah’s had a difficult life,” Mindy said, “between living with Kiki and now being practically orphaned.”
“And normally I’d be all sympathy and cookies.” Guilt once again knocked on Jessica, and she vowed not to say another bad word about anyone, and especially a child. “But this year, it’s like I’ve run out of patience. Every time a kid comes in here, I’m tense and annoyed.”
“That’s not like you.”
“I know. Plus, the kids aren’t the same, Mindy. They don’t believe like they used to. Kids today are…” Jessica threw up her hands.
“Jaded. Angry. Pierced and tattooed.”
Jessica laughed, but the laughter wasn’t filled with humor, it was dry and bittersweet, touched by longing for the old days. For Dennis’s patient touch, his understanding of kids, his year-round love of the holiday season. He was the one who had embodied Christmas, not her. She’d gone on last year, for his sake, his memory, but she hadn’t had his ability to create the same magical spell. To pull something out of nothing. “Yeah. Dennis and I always said that when this stopped being fun, that was when it was time to hang up the red suit and white wig.”
She slipped her hand into the space beside the register and withdrew the pamphlet she’d picked up at Olive’s Outlandish Travel that morning. Even Olive had given her a look of disappointment as she’d handed over the round-trip ticket and the brochure, but Jessica remained resolute.
“This is where I need to be for Christmas,” Jessica said, further cementing her resolve to leave town. “Pristine white sand. Gentle, lapping waves. Hot sun baking on my skin. Cabana boys bringing me drinks with little umbrellas.” She pointed at the picture of a Caribbean paradise, then ran a finger along the words printed at the bottom of the resort’s advertisement. “And especially this. ‘No small children allowed.’”
“But you love kids. You love Christmas.”
Jessica shook her head, refusing to be dissuaded from her plan. Next thing she knew, she’d be handing out candy canes and posing for pictures. The adults in Riverbend might miss the extra entertainment at the Winterfest, but Jessica wasn’t fooling herself into thinking the children would notice one way or the other. The town seemed to have lost its sparkle—or maybe she had. Either way, playing Mrs. Claus wasn’t on her agenda, not this year. Maybe not ever again, especially without a Santa by her side to add that extra spark of magic. “My mind is made up and my bag is packed. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Mindy rolled her eyes. “There’s nothing I can do to talk you into staying? To being Mrs. Claus one more time?”
Jessica laid a hand on Mindy’s and looked her best friend straight in the eye. “Honey, I wouldn’t be Mrs. Claus again if the big guy himself came all the way down from the North Pole and got down on his knees to ask me.”
Christopher “C.J.” Hamilton had only one purpose for his visit to Riverbend, Indiana—to give his daughter, Sarah, the best damned Christmas ever.
Whether she wanted it or not.
To that end, he’d brought along a whole bunch of presents, and a determination to create a holiday she’d never forget.
Even if he had no idea what he was doing. Holidays weren’t his forte. He had about as much experience with Christmas as most people did with camel jockeying. But he had a little girl who needed a miracle and that was motivation enough.
The problem? He barely knew Sarah. She didn’t know him at all. The last time she’d seen him, Sarah had been three days old. And C.J. had thought walking away was the best decision.
Actually, the only possible decision. Kiki had sat in her hospital bed and told C.J. with a straight face that he wasn’t the father, breaking his heart even as he held Sarah’s precious, talc-scented body in his arms, then watched another man walk into Kiki’s hospital room and be pronounced Daddy.
He’d been stunned when the lawyer had tracked him down on location in Costa Rica last week, telling him Kiki had died in a car accident…and lied about her child’s DNA roots. He was the father, and he was expected to come get his daughter, create instafamily and take one more problem out of the lawyer’s hands.
C.J. had started by calling Sarah, thinking he’d ease into the dad thing. She’d refused to come to the phone. He’d tried to call her twice more on the trip from California to Indiana, and both times, she’d been as mute as a roll of gift wrap.
Then, he’d stopped by to see her at LuAnn’s apartment, and Sarah had run and hidden, refusing again to talk. “Maybe pick her up a little present,” LuAnn, the babysitter, who lived in the apartment next door to Kiki’s and who had taken Sarah in while the lawyers looked for a blood relative, had suggested. “Ease into it. She’s really a darling girl.”
A darling girl who’d already made it clear she wasn’t interested in having C.J. as a dad.
C.J. stopped the truck outside the small toy shop in downtown Riverbend. In the window of Santa’s Workshop Toys was a tiny, hand-lettered sign that read Home of Mrs. Claus.
Perfect.
This place, he’d been told, was where the heart of Christmas lay—and not to mention had become a favorite hangout of Sarah’s. “You talk to Jessica Patterson,” LuAnn, a lifelong resident of Riverbend, had told him, “and you’ll get your Christmas. She is Christmas in Riverbend.”
C.J. was counting on it. His experience with the holiday was about nil. He needed an expert.
C.J. got out of the Ford F-250, then went inside the shop. The bell overhead let out a soft peal announcing his arrival.
Once his eyes adjusted to the interior, he stopped and gaped. The toy shop had to be every child’s dream. Stocked floor to ceiling with bright, colorful dolls, trucks, blocks, games and every imaginable plaything, it sported a rainbow of decor, hanging mobiles of planes and animals, and had a Santa’s workshop theme running throughout, with little elves perched on the shelves and an entire North Pole village painted on the far wall. It looked…magical.
His Hollywood trained eye admired the care in the details, the imagination in the design. No wonder Sarah loved the place. If C.J. had been twenty years younger, he’d have spent all day here, too.
“I’m just about to close up,” said a voice in the back.
C.J. paused among a bunch of Slinkies and rubber dice. He toyed with a gyroscope, spinning the little wheel. “I’m not here to buy anything,” he called back. “I’m looking for Jessica Patterson.”
“You’ve found her.”
He looked up. Hoo-boy. If this was Mrs. Claus, then he definitely needed to revisit a few of those Christmas tales. Jessica Patterson was tall, with long blond hair and green eyes that seemed to dance with light. She had a lush, red mouth and a curvy figure that redefined the word hourglass.
She was, in other words, very hot for someone who was supposedly hailing from the most northern region of the world.
“You’re Mrs. Claus?”
“Only at Christmas,” she said, laughing, and putting out her hand to shake his. “And not anymore.”
He took her palm with his own, feeling her warm skin against his own and decided that there was nothing cold at all about this woman. “What do you mean, not anymore?”
“I am officially hanging up my Mrs. Claus suit this year. But if you need a stuffed bear or a jack-in-the-box or—”
“No. I need you.” C.J. looked around the shop and realized a toy—hell, a whole truckload of toys—wasn’t going to do it. To win Sarah over, he needed something big. Really big. And according to LuAnn, there was nothing bigger than Mrs. Claus, at least in Riverbend.
She dropped his hand and moved back. Wariness filled her features, dimmed the friendly light in her eyes. He might as well have stamped his forehead with Serial Killer. “You need me?”
“In a purely professional sense. As Mrs. Claus.”
“Sorry, but I can’t—”
“You have to. I’ve got a reindeer on order and everything.” Okay, now he really was sounding crazy. C.J. drew in a breath. “Let me start over. My name is Christopher Hamilton. Also known as C.J. the Set Construction Wizard.” He turned and pointed out the window at the bright-red script written across the door of his pickup truck, saying the same thing along with a California address.
“And what does a set construction wizard want with a Mrs. Claus? Because I don’t do movies, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No, I’m not here for work. I’m here for my daughter. I need to give her an incredible Christmas.”
“So take her to a mall, put her on Santa’s lap. Listen to her tell him what she wants, then put whatever that item is under the tree.” Jessica turned away and busied herself with straightening a shelf of board games.
C.J. didn’t have time for her to get the Scrabbles sorted out from the Monopolys. “I’ve heard you are the person to see for Christmas. And, lady, believe me, I need a Christmas.” Right now, because he had a short time frame, an impossible daughter to win over and a major life change to deal with. He didn’t want to wait on a board game.
“You can find that anywhere, Mr…. What did you say your name was?”
“Hamilton.”
She paused, a checkers game halfway to its proper place on the shelf. “You’re Sarah’s father? But I thought…”
She didn’t finish the sentence and he didn’t blame her. Most people he’d run into since arriving in town—from the gas station attendant who’d given him directions to the building super who had let him into Kiki’s apartment—had looked at him, added two and two and automatically labeled him as a bad paternal figure. “I’m here for Sarah now, and that’s what counts. Isn’t it?”
“Yes, yes. Of course.”
“The only thing she wants—and what she deserves this year more than anything—is a good Christmas.” He didn’t mention that he had zero parenting experience, had yet to get his daughter to talk to him, that LuAnn had told him the girl’s melancholy increased every day, or that he was counting on Christmas to help him build a bridge to a six-year-old stranger. A miracle on so many fronts, even he had lost count. “She never really had one. Will you help me give her one or not?”
The woman before him hesitated, smoothing a hand over the game’s black-and-red cover, avoiding his gaze. But most of all, the question.
Jessica Patterson was right. He could take Sarah to a mall. To another town. He could, indeed, find his Christmas anywhere. But he wanted to create those happy memories here, in the town where his daughter had had so many unhappy ones. He wanted to turn the tide for her, to show her that there was, indeed, a rainbow behind all those clouds.
And if he could pull off that miracle, then maybe, just maybe, there was hope that he could be the dad he needed to be for the years ahead.
Because he hadn’t been much of one up until now. And he had a lot of ground to cover between here and December twenty-fifth.
For that, C.J. suspected, he was going to need a lot more than a reluctant blonde in a red suit.
CHAPTER TWO
JESSICA TUCKED the striped one-piece bathing suit into her bag, did a final visual check, then shut the suitcase with a click. Her clothes were ready to go, albeit two days early. Mentally she’d been ready to leave for weeks.
In a little more than forty-eight hours, she’d be on a beach in Florida soaking up the sun. Far from the cold and snow, she could forget about Dennis, the town that had started to take her for granted and the time of year that had lost its meaning somewhere between the stocking stuffers and the bargain hunters.
Her doorbell rang, and Bandit, her German short-haired pointer, scrambled to his feet, bounding down the stairs at Greyhound speed, his tail a friendly whip against his hindquarters. To hedge his bets, he let out a few ferocious barks, but everyone in Riverbend knew Bandit had less guard dog in him than a stuffed frog.
She opened the door, expecting Mindy. “You can’t talk me out—” The sentence died in her throat when she saw the tall, lean figure of C. J. Hamilton on her front porch. “It’s you. Again.”
“I’m not a man who gives up easily.”
He had the kind of voice that sent a woman’s pulse racing. Deep and thorough, he seemed to coat every syllable with a smoky accent.
Regardless of his voice or the way his dark hair swept one stubborn lock across his brow or how his jeans hugged his hips, she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Christmas and Jessica Patterson were no longer operating hand in hand. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hamilton, but I thought I made this clear earlier. I will not be participating in any Christmas activities this year. Maybe I could refer you to one of my colleagues. There’s even a network of Santa performers that are available for malls and private parties, if you—”
“It has to be here. And that means it has to be you.”
“I’m leaving in two days. I won’t even be here for Christmas, or even the Winterfest. I can’t help you.” She started to shut the door.
He was already digging in his back pocket, pulling out a leather billfold, flipping it open. His foot wedged in the door, preventing her from shutting him out. “I’ll pay you. Name your price, Mrs. Patterson.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Name a charity you want me to support. A home for retired Santas you want me to build. Anything.”
The laughter burst out of Jessica before she could stop it. “There’s no such thing.”
He answered her with a grin that took over his face, lighting his blue eyes, taking them from the color of a sluggish river to a sparkling ocean on a sunny day.
Oh, damn. She always had been a sucker for eyes like that. And especially a pair surrounded by deep lines of worry, shoulders hunched with the heaviness of sorrow and responsibility. Sarah Hamilton had, indeed, been through a lot, and so had her father, Jessica was sure.
She sighed. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of coffee? I won’t be your Mrs. Claus—” at that she felt her face color, and saw him arch a brow, reading the slight innuendo, too “—but maybe I can help you find a solution to your…problem.”
Some of the weight seemed to lift from him. “A cup of coffee would be great. Really great.”
She invited him in, all the while wondering what she was thinking. She wanted to get away from reminders of Christmas, not open up her house to the season—or to a man who made her pulse race and clearly came attached to a whole set of problems.
C.J. stepped inside and glanced around her house. “Guess you weren’t kidding about the no-Christmas thing. You don’t have so much as a pine branch on your mantel.”
“I didn’t see the point in decorating if I was going to be out of town.” Jessica chastised herself. The man could be a serial killer, a burglar or a Frosty thief. And she’d just broadcast that her house would be empty over the holidays.
Bandit had already warmed up to the newcomer, his wiry body pressed to C.J.’s jeans, tail wagging so hard it beat a pattern against Bandit’s rump, his head under C.J.’s palm for a little TLC. C.J. had apparently passed Bandit’s criminal background check.
“Bandit, leave him alone.”
“He’s fine,” C.J. said, stroking Bandit’s ears and sending the dog into hyper-puppy joy. “I work with a lot of animals on the set, too, and don’t mind a dog. In fact, I’d have a dog myself if—”
He cut off the sentence. Jessica was intrigued—but not enough to ask. Her sole purpose of inviting C.J. Hamilton into the house was to make it clear she had no intentions of being part of a Christmas celebration—not the town’s and not his.
The kitchen was right off the entryway, all in keeping with the small cottage-style house she had lived in since she’d married Dennis. Five rooms for two people. More than enough space.
Yet, somehow with C. J. Hamilton behind her as she led the way to the coffeepot, it seemed as if the house had shrunk, making her all too aware of the stranger in town.
“Cream or sugar?” she asked, crossing to the counter to pour coffee into a plain white mug. On any other year, she’d have the special Santa mugs out, with the dancing reindeer ringing the base. But not this year.
“Nothing, thanks.” He accepted the mug from her, then took a seat at the table. “I bet your kids really love the toy store.”
Jessica paused, took in a breath. A simple question, catching her off guard. She’d gone from pouring coffee to feeling as if she was going to cry.
It had to be the holiday that had her feeling so melancholy, so empty, so…
Alone.
“I don’t have any children,” she said, taking the opposite seat. She exhaled, erasing the subject from her memory, trying to refocus on C.J. and not on what might be lacking from her own life. The choices she had made. “Now, back to your Santa problem.”
“I don’t have a Santa problem, exactly. More a daughter problem. Sarah refuses to talk to me, and I’m sure she absolutely won’t go back to California with me. I’d rather not drag her kicking and screaming. Even I know that’s not the best way to build a new relationship.” He threw up his hands. “I’m at a loss as to what to do.”