Cara Colter Read online

  It obviously had not been her.

  She had not been beautiful, not even pretty, really, unless he counted her eyes. He thought of them again—luminescent, brimming with a light that could almost make a man forget she was wearing a sweater just like the ones his granny used to knit. Her hair had struck him as hopelessly old-fashioned, but for some reason he’d liked it. It was just plain light brown, falling in a wave past her shoulder, no particular style.

  She was one of those kind of girls he remembered only vaguely from high school—bookwormish, smart, capable…and invisible. She was not the kind who pretended fear of spiders or dropped her books coquettishly when a male of interest was in the vicinity. She did not color her hair blond or paint her lips red or have fingernails that left marks on a man’s back, her lashes would not melt when she cried.

  In other words, she was not the kind of woman he knew the first thing about.

  Nor did he want to, though that fleeting thought of her fingernails and his back made him shiver, which was startling. He had not reacted to a woman in a very long time. He had probably never reacted to a woman who was anything like her: understated, intelligent, pure .

  Women, he reminded himself, took energy. He had none. It was that simple.

  And a woman like that one manning the Secret Santa Society office would take more energy than most because despite her plainness, those multifaceted eyes made him suspect a very complicated nature. Deep. Sensitive. Intelligent. Funny.

  It annoyed him that he was even thinking of her. His assignment, if he could call it that, was to find someone in worse pain than himself.

  Not Ms. Secret Santa, obviously, hunting for elves and brimming with faith that her good deeds alone could protect her from this neighborhood.

  But there were kids out there who needed jackets, and the first true cold snap of the year had arrived. He wondered what kind of pain it caused a parent who was not to be able to buy a jacket for a child who was cold.

  Not worse pain than his own, different pain than his own.

  Maybe that was why Mr. Theodore had sent him, knowing there would be something here to keep him distracted as Christmas approached. Christmas, a time of family. A time of pain for families who had nothing.

  And for a guy who had nothing instead of a family.

  He drew his breath in sharply, forced himself to focus. It was one day at a time, one step at a time, one task at a time. Right now, his task was fifty jackets and an elf. Michael shook his head like a boxer who had been sucker punched.

  It seemed like the most unlikely lifeline, but it was the only one he was being offered, and if he didn’t find something to give a damn about, and soon, that question was going to burn a little deeper into him.

  How will I survive?

  His world gone. Nothing left of it. The snow swirled around him, and he realized he should be cold, but he didn’t get cold anymore. Twice a year, he’d given up carpentry. The whole family put their lives on hold and headed to Alaska for the crab fishery.

  After surviving six hours in the icy, gray waters of the Bering Sea, Michael did not get cold anymore. Or really ever warm, either. He was stuck in a place where it was neither hot nor cold. Purely a place of survival.

  He focused on the task at hand, just as at Mr. Theodore’s house he focused only on what was in front of him: broken stairs, a rotten window casing, a leaky faucet. There were many ways to shut off the human mind. He stopped at the nearest phone booth. Most of the telephone book was gone, but his righteousness was being rewarded today. The clothing section of the yellow pages was intact.

  But then he realized he wasn’t quite sure what he wanted. Big coats or small coats? Boys or girls? What about babies? Styles? Sizes?

  He glanced back down the street. He could go ask her exactly what she wanted, but he didn’t want to. He found himself wanting to surprise her, because it had been clear from the look on her face she had no expectations of him at all. She didn’t even think he’d be back. Maybe didn’t even want him to come back, which was not the normal reaction he got from women.

  And he still had that option, of not going back, of leaving that strangely engaging encounter one hundred percent behind him. Looking at coats some little kids needed might make him feel something, in fact he felt jumpy thinking about it. How could he do an assignment like this and not be touched in some way? It was a fact the crafty Mr. Theodore had probably already considered!

  Didn’t Mr. Theodore know that if the dam inside of Michael ever broke open, the torrent would be dangerous and destructive, wrecking everything in its path?

  No. He could not go shopping for coats. But, on the other hand, fifty kids without coats? He swore under his breath, and the word came out in a frosty puff that reminded him how cold it was getting. Michael realized he could not not go shopping for coats.

  He said the word again, and realized it was not an appropriate word for an emissary of the Secret Santa Society, not even an unofficial one.

  Michael looked again at the pretty much demolished phone book and guiltily tore out one of the few remaining pages, the one that listed coats on it. And then he tore out the preceding one, as well, the one that listed clowns. Clowns were related to elves, weren’t they?

  Guilt, he thought with surprise. That was a feeling of sorts, the first one he’d had in a long time.

  Unless he could count what he felt talking to Ms. Santa back there.

  Not actual warmth, but a remembrance of warmth. A remembrance of what it was to want something. What had he wanted? He frowned. To connect with her. To share a little normal, everyday banter with another human being. He’d liked making her blush. It had been amusing.

  It had been a long, long time since he had felt even the smallest shiver of interest in anything or anyone. So here he was less than an hour into his mysterious assignment, and having feelings sneak up on him.

  But was it going to be enough to save him? Or would it destroy what was left of him? He decided to have a little tiny bit of faith, and realized with a sigh that was another concept that had been foreign to his world for a long, long time.

  Well, he thought, if a man starts messing with the spirit of Santa, some surprising things were going to happen. That was a given.

  He found the address he had ripped out of the phone book. It was in a different world than the office of the Secret Santa Society, part of a brightly lit strip mall that housed upscale factory outlets on the edge of a neighborhood where the houses started in the half-million-dollar range. The Christmas displays were up in the windows, and lights blinked cheer against the colorlessness of the day.

  He entered a store called West Coats. More Christmas: a tree decorated totally in white, updated versions of carols blaring from a public address system. He hated this.

  Then he was nearly bowled over by a salesclerk who was exactly his type. Blond, tall, willowy, her lipstick a perfect match for her fingernails, a red Santa hat at a jaunty angle on her head. Her tag said her name was Calypso.

  The woman at the Secret Santa Society had not been wearing a name tag. He realized he had not asked her name. He bet it would be a good, sturdy, practical name like Helen or Susan or Gwen.

  “I need fifty kids’ coats,” he told Calypso, who leaned way toward him and gave him a look at the top of her lacy bra. Red, to match her hat. The surprising thing happened: not one vision of her fingernails and his back, no matter how hard he tried to conjure it.

  “Fifty coats!” She giggled and blinked her heavily madeup lashes. Considering how he was freshly aware of wanting to connect , he was now aware of not wanting to connect with her in more than a businesslike way.

  Somehow, painfully, he managed to pick out fifty children’s coats. He wanted practical coats that would keep them warm and survive snowball fights and the making of forts and snow angels. He picked out coats in as many different sizes and colors as he could find. He tossed onto his growing stack a few little sleeping bags with hoods, which Calypso cooed over and cal
led bunting bags.

  And at the last minute, hesitating, he chose three little pink princess jackets with fur collars and cuffs on them. They felt in his hands the same way those dolls had—foreign, fragile, too delicate. He knew they were totally impractical. And yet he could not put them back.

  “There,” he said, “Done.”

  “What do you want all these coats for?” Calypso asked.

  He was afraid if he explained his mission it would just bring more cooing, so he only shrugged.

  “I can get you a discount if it’s for a charity,” she said.

  “No, it’s okay.” He was aware as he passed her his credit card that this was the first time he had enjoyed one single cent of all that money, huge state-of-the-art plasma television set included.

  She insisted on helping him carry the coats out to his car, even though he tried to discourage her.

  “Oh,” she breathed when she saw the car. “A Jaguar.”

  He saw his appeal to her had just intensified. Once upon a time, he would have played that for all it was worth. He had a sharp memory of all the times he and Brian had cruised in this car…

  “It’s my brother’s car,” he said abruptly.

  With his car so stuffed with coats he could no longer see out his back window, he was aware Calypso was still standing there, hugging herself against the cold. All those coats and she hadn’t put one on?

  She was waiting for something, so he said, “I don’t suppose you’d know where I can find an elf?”

  She popped her gum and settled a hand on a cocked hip. “Ooh,” she said playfully, “I wouldn’t have figured you for kinky.”

  For some reason he thought of another woman. And her blush. A woman who probably wouldn’t use the word kinky with a man even if she’d known him for fifty years, never mind for a little over an hour. A woman who probably wouldn’t know the difference between a Jaguar and a Honda Civic.

  A red fingernailed hand—an exact match for the hat and bra—was laid on his jacket sleeve.

  “I’m available for dinner,” Calypso announced, her voice sultry and her made-up eyes inviting.

  She was exactly the kind of woman he’d always gone for. A girl who knew how to have a good time and who knew exactly how the game was played. If he was really going to start connecting again, if he was really ready, Calypso would be a safe way to do it.

  Again, he thought of another woman. One who wouldn’t have announced she was available for dinner if she’d gone four days without food.

  And suddenly he found himself wondering if she was.

  He wanted to find out if her name was Anne or Mary or Rose. Surely, for fifty jackets, she’d surrender her name. He couldn’t wait to see her face when she saw the pink ones with the silly collars.

  “Thanks for all your help. Sorry, no, I’m not available for dinner.”

  “How about your brother?” she said, running a covetous finger over the sleek blackness of the hood detail.

  He did not risk evoking her sympathy by telling her his brother was dead. He forced a smile, but he felt like a wolf, baring its teeth in warning. “He isn’t available, either.”

  She took it in stride, a woman who knew men were just like buses—another one would be along in a few minutes—winked at him and walked away putting lots of swish in it.

  Michael put the car in gear and started driving back across town. Rush hour had begun with a vengeance, the still thickly falling snow not helping. He found himself in a tangle of cars on West Washington, glaring at his watch, thinking, She’ll have gone home by the time I get there.

  The traffic finally started moving, inching along through the streets made treacherous with melting snow. He reached for the heater, turned it up a notch.

  And then his hand fell away, and he contemplated what he had just done. Why had he turned up the heat? The windshield was clearly defrosting adequately.

  When he focused, sure enough, there it was. The tiniest shiver along his spine. He realized he was feeling something. Cold. He felt just a tiny bit cold. He’d been getting warnings all afternoon that something was in movement. The guilt over tearing the pages from the telephone book. Enjoying spending the money on the coats. The desire to connect with her. Now this.

  The shiver was already gone, and he deliberately turned the heat back down. He wasn’t ready to feel anything. He certainly wasn’t ready to go invite some woman he barely knew—he didn’t even know her name, for God’s sake—to have dinner with him.

  He could send the coats to the Secret Santa Society by courier tomorrow. He could find her a damned elf without ever seeing her again, without immersing himself any further in this dangerous world that would make him feel .

  He slammed on the brakes, slid, used the power of the slide to yank on the wheel and do a complete U-turn, dramatic, worthy of Hollywood. Horns honked their outrage. He didn’t care. He was heading away from the Secret Santa Society as fast as he could!

  Because his side and rear windows were nearly completely blocked with children’s coats, he heard the siren before he saw the lights. Michael looked in his side mirror and sighed. The red and blue lights were flashing right behind him, and when he pulled over, the police car did, too.

  The cop was not in the Christmas spirit. “That turn back there was illegal—even if you could see, which you can’t.” Out came the ticket book. And then he looked more closely at Michael’s cargo.

  “What is this? You rob a store?”

  It would be so easy to say yes, and see where that led.

  “You got a receipt for this stuff?”

  Michael passed him the receipt.

  “Okay, so you bought fifty kids’ coats. What’s up with that?”

  The cop didn’t look like he was in the mood for the none-of-your-business that Michael wanted to give him. In fact, the man was trying very hard not to look as cold and miserable as he obviously was.

  Suddenly it seemed like it was the right thing to do to let him know good happened in the world, too. It wasn’t all drunks hitting their wives and kids, dope dealers on the corners, asses doing U-turns.

  “The coats are for the Secret Santa Society.” Michael offered it up reluctantly, the man who least wanted to be seen as a do-gooder.

  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 cu
rious 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.