Once Upon a Christmas (18 page)

He must have been talking to her in his underwear. “Good.“He
struggled into his white dress shirt. “I meant what I said. You look
great. The only way you could possibly look better is if you were wearing that
white dress at our wedding.”

He ducked behind the partition again, swore, and re-emerged
a minute later with his bow tie draped loosely around his open shirt collar. He
waggled one end of it.

“Can you help me with this thing? I think it’s
possessed.”

Holly gaped at him. Sam took one look at what had to be her
stupefied expression and said, “Never mind. I guess the saleslady can tie
it for me. I just won’t take off the monkey suit until after the party.”

“Did you just say, ‘our wedding’?”

His expression turned serious. “Yeah. What did you
think I had in mind? Seducing you and skipping town the next day?”

He waited for her answer, but somehow Holly’s brain had
turned to Jell-O. That was exactly what she’d thought, she realized. She’d
thought that if she let herself fall for Sam it would only mean heartache when
he left.

She nodded slowly. “Umm, yes.”

This was getting way too serious. She turned to the mirror
again. She fiddled with her dress strap, trying to disguise her confusion.

“Aren’t all men commitment-phobic, anyway?” she
asked lightly. “What makes you so different?”

The curtain slid away. Suddenly, Sam was there. He closed
the curtain behind him, secluding them both in the tiny cubicle.

He looked good in a tuxedo, even with it only half on. No,
make that
especially
with it only half on. Holly experienced a brief,
ridiculous impulse to duck beneath his outstretched arms and run as far away as
she could. It didn’t happen, because she couldn’t move.

“I’m different,” he said, “because I’m the
man who loves you.”

“You shouldn’t be in here,” Holly babbled. “You
shouldn’t say things like that, and not so loudly, either. Somebody might hear
you.”

“I don’t care who hears me.” He pulled her against
his chest, wrapping his arms around her. “I’ll take out a billboard if it
means you’ll listen. I’ll put an ad in the paper.” He grinned. “I’ll
wear one of those signs you strap on and walk around with. I’m in love with
you.”

“You only think that,” Holly said with certainty.

She stared at the walls, at the curtain, at her
feet—anyplace but at him. Why had they started talking about this in the first
place? Hadn’t she had enough cold reality for one day?

He splayed his fingers along her shoulder blades, lightly
teasing her bare skin. Halfheartedly, she tried to shrug away his touch.

“It’s only that love at first sight thing,” she
said.

“Not anymore.”

Sam drew her closer, his fingertips pressing harder. When
his mouth lowered to hers, Holly stopped thinking altogether. His kiss was slow
and deliberate, filled with passion and sweetened by longing. It hinted at
promise and possessiveness alike. When it was over, she felt limp in Sam’s
arms.

“Is that proof enough for you?” he asked.

Rational thought returned.

“No. It only proves there’s a…a sexual attraction
between us.” She put a good eight inches between them by retreating to the
tiny triangular bench in the changing room corner. She felt damp and
disheveled, and fiercely aroused. “Nothing more. You’ve got that love at
first sight thing in your head and you’re too stubborn to give it up.”

“I’m not the only stubborn one,” Sam pointed out. “Are
you saying all this to convince me? Or to convince yourself?”

With a sigh, Holly pressed her thighs together to stop the
ache he’d aroused—just a natural reaction, she assured herself.

She glanced up at him. Sam leaned a shoulder against the
partition and stuffed both hands in his pockets. He didn’t say anything else.

“You have a life in another city. A life I know almost
nothing about, aside from the bare facts,” she said. “And I—”

“What do you want to know?”

“Oh, Sam, that’s not the point. Don’t you see?”
She wanted to cry, caught between hope and fear and a bunch of feelings she’d
never experienced before. At least there was logical thought to cling to. “You
have your life and I have mine, and they’re happening in different places. When
the new year gets here, you’ll be gone.”

Sam shook his head, but she couldn’t stop until he
understood.

“You drop the idea of marriage on me as if it’s as easy
a decision to make as picking what brand of toothpaste to buy. I’ll bet you
haven’t thought, really
thought
, about any of this.”

“I spend most of my time thinking of you.”

But that wasn’t the same as planning a future together. Holly
shook her head. He didn’t understand, and she didn’t know how else to explain
it.

But she couldn’t resist when Sam dropped to his knees in
front of her. He wrapped his arms around her, resting his head on her thighs.
His hair felt silky against her bare skin. He breathed deeply, then hugged her
tighter.

“It’ll work out.” Sam’s voice sounded muffled. “We
can make all those details work.”

Her throat tightened. She wanted to believe it, wanted to
believe
him.
She wanted to be as sure as Sam was. But she couldn’t be.

“How? What about my job—and yours? Where would we live?
Oh, Sam—how can it work out?”

He remained silent. Tentatively, she raised a hand to his
head and buried her fingers in his hair, stroking. It felt good.
He
felt
good—and so did Holly, when she was with him. But was it enough?

“Ms. Aldridge, are you all right?” The voice came
from outside the dressing room, but it was grew louder every instant. “Mr.
McKenzie? Where are you?”

The salesperson pulled open the curtain. It took just one
look at Sam’s head buried in Holly’s lap to get them both kicked out of the
formal wear shop. For life.

Chapter Nine

The Cheshire hotel was the finest in all of Saguaro Vista.
It catered as much to the local golfing crowd that spilled over from the city
course as it did to the temporarily resident senior citizens who liked to spend
their winters someplace warmer than North Dakota.

Tonight, in honor of the holidays, the Cheshire’s elegant
lobby had been decorated in shades of ivory and gold. An enormous Christmas
tree filled one corner, and orchestral Christmas carols drifted through the
cinnamon-spiced space.

“Thanks for bringing me tonight,” Holly told Sam
as they stepped inside together. “Big formal parties aren’t really my
thing. I’d hate to face this alone.”

He smiled at her. “You’re not alone anymore.”

His words sounded
so
wonderful. Holly couldn’t help
but savor them. Even when she’d planned her life with Brad, she hadn’t thought
of them as being truly
together
, two halves of one whole. Their lives
had already been more separate than that. If Brad’s decision was to move their
relationship forward, she realized, she’d have to find a way to deal with that.

But that was for later. For now, she and Sam had a party to
get to. Leading the way, Holly headed for the ballroom where her mother’s gala
was in progress.

“If word’s gotten around about what happened in the
formal wear shop,” she said as they passed through the lobby, “I’ll
probably
never
be alone. The owner is one of the biggest gossips in
Saguaro Vista. People probably think I’m the town hussy by now.”

For some reason, though, the idea of being on the receiving
end of the townspeople’s censure didn’t bother her as much as it used to.
Despite all appearances to the contrary, Holly knew she’d done nothing wrong.
That seemed more important.

“You’ll see.” She grinned up at Sam. “They’ll
be lining up to date me.”

He tightened his arm around her waist. “Not if I have
anything to say about it, they won’t.”

At the party, Holly’s mother was the first to greet them. She
floated over, doubtless fueled by several glasses of Christmas wassail punch,
and linked arms with her daughter.

“I’m so glad you both could come,” she said.

Amazingly, her smile seemed genuine. Even Holly, who’d
expected disapproval instead, was convinced. It was a relief to know her mother
wouldn’t disown her for appearing in public without Brad.

“Thanks, Mom.” Holly nudged Sam. “Doesn’t my
date look handsome?”

Linda examined him from the top of his head to the soles of
his dress shoes. “Yes, he does. You clean up nicely, Steve.”

“Sam.”

“Oh, of course. I’m sorry.” She turned to Holly
with a frown. “But
you’re
another story. You didn’t try that
hairdresser I told you about, did you?” Licking a fingertip, she swept her
daughter’s hair away from her face. “No, I can see you didn’t. Your hair
still has that
rumpled
look.”

“I like it this way, Mom,” Holly said, but she
gritted her teeth and dutifully endured her mother’s fussing.

Wearing a satisfied smile, Linda stepped back to survey her
handiwork. “There. That’s better.”

Holly stifled an urge to rearrange her hair into the style
she’d arrived with. Hey, it was the holiday season—the season of goodwill. She
could afford to let this one go.

“Now,” her mother announced, “I have to speak
with Mayor Anderson about his new house. If you’ll both excuse me?”

They said their good-byes, and Linda disappeared into the
crowd of brightly dressed women and tuxedo-clad men.

Holly watched her go with a clear sense of relief. After
having all but refused to go to the party unless Sam escorted her, she’d been
worried about how her mother would react. It looked as if the only problem her
mother had with Sam, though, was remembering his name.

“You know,” Sam said, “your mother has an
overdeveloped mothering instinct. But I think she means well.”

Surprised, Holly looked up at him. “You do?”

“Sure. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t spend all that
energy trying to tell you what was best for you.”

Grinning, he accepted two cranberry margaritas from a
passing waiter. He handed one to Holly, then raised his glass. “To true
love.”

“To relentless men,” she said, raising hers also.

“Touché.”

They both drank. Sam set his glass on a damask-skirted
table, then looked around. “Now that we’ve greeted, made an appearance,
and toasted each other, can we slip out of this shindig?”

“You don’t like parties either?”

Tugging at his bowtie, he made a face. “Not this kind.
I’ve had enough of these press-the-flesh, networking things to last a lifetime.
But I’ll stay if you want to.”

Holly thought about it. “Now that my mother has already
talked to us and restyled my hair, I don’t think she’ll miss us if we make an
early getaway. There are just a few people I want to say hello to.”

Her “few people” took nearly an hour to say hello
to, especially since she had to introduce Sam to each one. Surprisingly, no one
asked her about Brad—and for that Holly was grateful. She didn’t want to make
any explanations, at least until everything was settled between them.

Outside the hotel, the Christmas ambiance continued. Lush
evergreen wreaths decorated the stucco exterior walls, along with red velvet
bows and trailing lengths of ribbon. A row of paper luminarias, filled with
clean sand and lighted candles, lined each side of the saltillo-tile path
around the landscaped grounds. There wasn’t any snow, and the jingle bells were
strictly of the recorded variety, but Holly loved it.

Sam caught hold of her hand and squeezed gently. After that,
she loved it that much more.

“Why do you have to go to so many parties if you don’t
like them?” she asked him, reaching up to brush her fingertips along the
canopy of feathery mesquite trees. Within their branches, tiny Christmas lights
twinkled.

“Goes with the job.” He shrugged. “I guess
there’s a certain amount of glad-handing that goes with any kind of work.”

“But construction?”

“No, my other job. My far-away life in Tucson. Remember? The road to tenure is paved with hard work, publication, and about a
million faculty parties.”

At that, Sam looked so aggrieved that Holly had to laugh.

“See? That’s exactly what I was talking about earlier.
I’ve spent so much time seeing you rip my house apart—”

“Hey! I think the remodeling is going well.”

“—that I forget about your alter ego. What’s it like to
be a college professor?”

They passed an open archway. The sounds of conversation and
holiday music drifted outside.

“It’s probably not the way you imagine it,” Sam
replied. “Less ivy-covered halls of academia and more
Animal House
.
I teach night classes—Composition, Literature, and some remedial English—mostly
to returning students.”

“Dropouts?”

His expression was indecipherable. “Sometimes. Or
sometimes my students are just people who’ve had life interfere once too often
with their plans. They’re the ones old enough”—he frowned—“no,
determined
enough
—to really value what they’re learning.”

Stopping abruptly, Sam pulled her close. “And that’s
probably more than you ever wanted to know about any of it.”

With no warning at all, he danced her the rest of the way
down the luminaria-lit path.

By the time they stopped, Holly was breathless. So was Sam,
but he didn’t seem to mind. She decided she should have been taking spontaneity
lessons from him all along. He made it all seem so effortless.

Wondering why they’d stopped dancing, she looked around.
They’d arrived at a landscaped border of fuchsia bougainvilleas. In the
darkness beyond it, the hotel pool shimmered turquoise, surrounded by a
deserted deck and more candle-filled luminarias.

“Mmmm. The water looks good.” Sam gave her a
reckless wink. “Let’s take a swim.”

“It’s December!”