Cara Colter - Their Christmas Wish Come True

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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