Dear Santa..., page 7
They were wide and strong and capable of carrying heavy burdens. Just like the small-town sheriff in the story she’d stayed up all night writing. There was no point in denying that Gabriel had been her inspiration for that gentle, but tough, defender of women and children.
“Of you. And me. Together.”
It had been after she’d pictured the sheriff shooting the psycho husband dead. Oh, she hadn’t gotten to that scene yet, but she could see it as clearly as if it was running on her HDTV. She’d had it in her head when she’d fallen into bed, thinking of the abusive bad guy’s scarlet blood staining the pristine moonlight snow.
Once again, justice had prevailed. As it always did in a Holly Berry mystery.
But her muses, and her unconscious mind, had a different ending. As she’d discovered when she’d dreamed of the hero making slow, amazing love to the heroine, in front of a fire blazing in a stone hearth, while the little girl slept the safe, protected sleep of innocents in her pink canopied bed upstairs.
She could feel his lips quirk against hers. “Was it a good dream?”
Holly tilted her head back. “What do you think?”
“I think”—his lips plucked at hers, punctuating his words as he made her blood sing—“that there’s no way you and I couldn’t be spectacular together.”
And then, as if to prove his point, his mouth swept down and took hers. Hard and fast, the sudden punch of heat literally rocking her back on her heels, warming all the cold, empty places inside her.
It was the strangest thing, she thought, as the amazing kiss went on and on and on. His mouth was still on hers, but somehow she could feel it in every cell of her body. Shooting out her fingertips, her toes, curling in her stomach, making her nipples tingle and that hot, needy place between her thighs ache.
“If we were alone,” he groaned into her mouth, one large hand holding her intimately against his lower belly, where he was rock hard and swollen, “we’d finish this.”
“Yes.”
Somehow, as he’d dragged her into the heat, both arms and one leg had wrapped around him. Reality had receded as he’d made love to her with only his wickedly clever lips, teeth, and tongue. At this moment, Holly would have said yes, yes, yes! to anything, everything, Gabriel had in mind.
As he’d done last night, he backed away. His hands on her shoulders, his eyes on her face, which, she feared, was not only bruised, but flushed the crimson color of her jacket.
“Unfortunately, right now, we have a tree to hunt down.” He bent down and kissed her nose. Then her lips again, the brief flare of heat ending too soon. “So, hopefully you’ll be issuing me a snow check.”
“I think you mean a rain check.” Although she’d never been the type of woman to go to bed with a man she’d just met, Holly was definitely issuing one to this man.
“Maybe that’s what you call them in Seattle.” He grinned, took away the leather gloves she was about to put on, and replaced them with a pair of insulated blue gloves covered with white snowflakes.
“My sister Rachel is a serious skier,” he explained. “She was on the Olympic team that went to Japan in ’98 and her closets look like an REI warehouse. Since your own gloves didn’t look that warm, I stopped by her house this morning before coming over here.”
“That’s very thoughtful.” They might not go with her coat, but they definitely looked warmer.
“We do our best to keep our guests comfortable here at the Ho Ho Ho Inn. And, getting back to my plan of nibbling every fragrant inch of your sugar-cookie-sweet body, here in Santa’s Village, it’s a snow check.” He picked up the conversational thread. “We’re a little different from the rest of the planet.”
As she walked out into the bite of an icy winter’s morning and saw the huge sleigh pulled by—count them!—eight reindeer, there was no way Holly was about to argue that claim.
“Blitzen, I presume?” she asked with an arched brow.
“Back left, right in front of the sleigh,” Gabe said without a touch of irony in his tone.
She narrowed her eyes at the brown, antlered reindeer who’d caused her accident. In turn, he returned a blank, brown-eyed stare.
“So, what happened to Rudolph?” Holly asked.
“He’s make-believe,” Emma volunteered from the backseat of the huge red, gold, and black sleigh. Dog sat beside her, long tongue gathering in snowflakes that continued to fall like feathers from a patchy blue and gray sky. “From the song. ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’”
“Of course. I’d forgotten that.”
“I can sing it for you.” Without hesitation, she began to do exactly that.
“There’s still time to change your mind,” Gabe murmured.
“No.” Between the coffee and the mind-blinding kiss, she was already too awake to go back to sleep anyway. “Besides, I’m looking forward to seeing an actual Christmas tree farm.”
The weirdest thing was, it was true.
Five minutes later, Holly was snuggled beneath a pile of blankets next to Gabe, who was actually driving the sleigh.
“You’re very good at this,” she said. Even Blitzen seemed to be obeying the light flick of the reins.
“I’ve had a lot of practice. Sam Fraiser, that’d be—”
“The village’s very own Santa Claus,” Holly said.
Although she couldn’t quite keep the wry tone from her voice, there was no way she was going to question the reality of the man the little girl singing in the backseat had gotten in a fistfight over.
“Yeah. That’s him. Well, he’s been loaning the rig out to the inn for a long time. It sorta adds to the appeal, and bringing the tree back on that rack at the back of the sleigh is more colorful than strapping it to the roof of the Expedition. Also, back when I was in high school, I picked up some extra Christmas bucks driving tourists around during the holidays.”
Picturing the teenage boy he must have been, Holly had no problem at all imagining long lines of high school girls waiting for rides.
“How does this tree hunting thing you’ve got going work during really bad weather?” she asked.
“I don’t know, since this is my first winter running the place and we haven’t had any so far this season. This storm might have closed the roads because of the snowpack and ice, but it’s still nowhere near the blizzards the place can get. I suppose, if the weather got really nasty, most guests would prefer to stay inside by the fire and let me bring their trees to them.”
That was probably the case, Holly thought. But as the harness bells jingled merrily, the metal runners crunched against the snow, and Emma segued into “Frosty the Snowman,” she decided they’d be missing something special.
“Oh, they really do look just like Christmas trees,” she said on a little appreciative intake of breath as they approached the acres of fir and spruce trees lined up like little blue-green conical soldiers.
“That’s the point,” Gabe said. “And I don’t want to burst any bubbles, especially since you’re not a real fan of the holiday in the first place, but although they’re trained to grow into a more pyramid shape than, say, pine trees, they still need to be trimmed and shaped at least once a year.”
“They’re still lovely.” Again, she meant it. “The only thing missing are lights, glass balls, and angels for the tops.”
He bent his head toward her, lowering his voice for her ears only. “The angel’s sitting right here.”
“Flatterer,” she said. When she turned her head, their lips brushed.
“It’s not flattery if it’s true.”
He pulled up on the reins, clucked lightly, and the reindeer came to a stop next to a big gray barn. A huge fresh wreath made up of spruce boughs hung above the closed double wooden doors of the barn, and trees, wearing red bows fashioned from outdoor velvet ribbon, flanked either side. A hand-painted sign offered sleigh rides, cocoa, hot apple cider, free disposal bags, and the loan of saws and axes for the do-it-yourselfers.
“We closed down this past weekend because the previous owner always gave his employees the last week of December and all of January off to spend with their families,” Gabe said. “But if anyone in town wants a tree, they know they’re free to come cut one.”
“Doesn’t that invite tree theft?”
“I suppose it could, though there’s not as much profit in second-or third-growth trees,” he said as Dog jumped down from the backseat and set off across the field, snow flying, chasing after a squirrel.
“Poor guy never catches them,” Gabe said with another of what she was beginning to think of as his trademark grins, “but that never stops him from trying.”
“Maybe the fun is in the chase,” she suggested.
“There is that.”
Taking Holly’s word that she could certainly climb out of a simple sleigh herself, he lifted Emma down.
“How can anyone ever decide?” Holly asked.
She had a vague memory of going to a neighborhood lot with her father, and him carrying a tree back to their apartment, but there couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty to choose among. Here the forest of conifers seemed to stretch on for miles.
“You have to look and look and look,” Emma informed her. “But all Daddy’s trees are the best. You can’t pick a bad one. Do you know Nordstrom?”
“Of course.” Part of the appeal of Seattle, when she’d been looking for a new place to live, had been the fabulous downtown flagship store.
“Well, one of Daddy’s trees is on the front of their catalog this year.”
“I’m impressed.”
Gabe shrugged broad shoulders. “We’re local. It only made sense.”
Holly knew men, both in L.A. and Seattle, who’d be broadcasting such a coup through a bullhorn.
“Good try,” she said. “But I’m still impressed.”
As perfect as every tree appeared to Holly, Emma seemed determined to find the “most bestest” tree. This one was too skinny. Another too tall. A third’s branches were too close together. A fourth’s were too far apart.
“How about this one?” Holly asked finally, after the search had stretched on for an hour.
Emma’s lips drew together into a thoughtful line as she looked a long, long way upward.
Holly, who was holding her breath, realized that Gabe, standing next to her, was doing the same thing.
Emma let out a long, happy breath of her own.
“It’s perfect,” she pronounced. “Better even than the one that lady from Nordstrom picked.”
Not bothering to hide his relief, Gabe took the hatchet and saw he’d retrieved from the barn, and, after making sure Emma and Holly were standing out of the way, lay down on the ground and began to saw.
Less than three minutes later, the tree toppled to the snow. While he was wrapping the snowy branches in netting, Emma gathered up a handful of snow and, giggling, stuffed it down the back of Gabe’s jacket. Which had him, in turn, expertly packing a snowball that he then threw at his daughter.
“Holly!” the little girl shouted as she ran a zigzag retreat through the trees. “You have to help! It’s girls against boys.”
Holly had never, in her memory, taken part in a snowball fight. But as Gabe chased after his daughter, Holly chased after him, throwing herself at his legs, causing him to crash to the ground, with her sprawled on top of him.
“Damn, you’re pretty good. For a city girl.” Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled over, so she was lying beneath him. “But guess what, sweetheart, you and half-pint over there just happen to be outmanned.”
Laughing, and a little out of breath, Holly shoved against him. “Let me up, you big bully.”
“In a minute.” His body was warm against hers, his eyes hot. Holly wouldn’t have been surprised if all the snow on the mountain melted from the way he was looking at her. “Your nose is red.”
“So’s yours.” Reaching out, she grabbed a handful of snow and washed his face with it.
“You realize, of course,” he said, using his superior strength to press her deeper into the snowdrift, “that you’re daring to take on a United States Marine.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she responded breathlessly, as she wrestled beneath him. “The few.” She scissored her legs around his. “The proud.” Using the instructions the Seattle cops had taught her during that class, she managed to flip their positions so she was now lying on top of him. “The oversexed.”
“Got that right.” When he cupped her butt with his gloved hands and pressed her against him, she realized that he’d allowed her to overpower him. “As I intend to prove to you tonight.”
Before she could respond, Emma had returned and was standing over them. “The girls won,” she decided.
“They always do,” Gabe agreed. “At least in this family.”
“Why don’t you kiss Holly?” Emma suggested. “To show you surrendered.”
“From the mouths of babes,” he murmured. “I hereby surrender to the superior super power of females.” Lifting his head, he brushed his lips against hers. While still cold, they managed to send a burst of heat through her veins.
“Okay.” Before she got into more trouble, Holly stood up. “On behalf of the female forces, I accept your surrender.”
“Consider this lone, lowly male your prisoner. Do with me as you please,” Gabe said.
“Funny you should mention that,” Holly shot back just as Dog, looking like the abominable snow beast, came loping up to him and swiped a huge tongue down Gabe’s face.
“God, I knew I should’ve left you back in the sandbox.” Laughingly pushing the ball of wet fur away, Gabe stood up and began brushing the snow off the front of Holly’s jacket.
She did not immediately brush his hand away.
Unable to remember the last time she’d felt so carefree, Holly laughed as they walked back toward the sleigh.
Memories danced through her mind. Of hot roasted chestnuts and gaily decorated store front windows, and holding the hand of a man she suspected she’d gazed up at in exactly the same way Emma was looking up at Gabe.
And, although it didn’t make any sense at all, Holly oddly felt as if having landed here in Santa’s Village, she was catching a glimpse of what her life might have been.
Chapter Thirteen
The excitement of the day had obviously gotten to Emma, who fell asleep in the back of the sleigh on the ride back to the inn.
“Blessed silence,” Gabe murmured.
“I think she’s darling,” Holly said.
“You’re not going to get any argument there,” he agreed. “Sometimes, like out of the blue, it’ll dawn on me that she’s actually my child, you know, the seed of my loins, all that sort of thing, and I’ll just feel knocked flat.”
“She’s fortunate to have you.”
He shrugged. “We’re both lucky.”
Gabe knew Holly was curious. Knew he was going to have to tell her what happened. But since his mother had already warned him about Emma thinking that this newcomer to Santa’s Village had been sent to be her new mother, he feared his daughter might just be pretending to sleep. She had, after all, proven herself to be a fairly good little actress.
He was going to have to talk with Emma about Holly. Explain that while Santa had many great qualities, and while maybe he might be able to fit a pony in this sleigh, which turned magical when he drove it, he wasn’t in the habit of delivering actual people to good little girls and boys. He wasn’t looking forward to the conversation. It seemed kids grew up way too fast these days, and his daughter was already five going on twenty.
“After I take her back to the inn and we drop off your tree, I’ll take you over to Olson’s, so you can talk to Ken about your Highlander,” he said to Holly.
“Thanks. I’d appreciate that. I also have some shopping to do.”
“If you want to make a list, I can pick some things up for you,” he offered. “Consider it part of the service.”
“That’s nice. But since I have a feeling I’m going to be here for a while, I might as well check out the town.”
“Your call,” he said agreeably.
Twenty minutes later, he’d carried his daughter—who actually did appear to be sound asleep—upstairs and tucked her into bed.
“An advantage of living above the store, so to speak,” he said as they drove the short distance to the center of town in the Expedition, “is that there are always a lot of people around willing to watch out for her. It makes it like a large extended family.”
“That’s lucky. Especially with your mother working there.”
“Not just my mother, but one of my sisters. Janice, who graduated from Washington State in Hospitality Business Management, is in charge of the rentals. From keeping housekeeping on their toes, to arranging for repairs, decorating, the whole nine yards. Even mostly the kitchen stuff, though Mom’s beginning to take that on more and more now that she’s retired. Which allows me to concentrate on the farm.
“I’d like to make it a year-round destination. Maybe have some classes on conservation, invite the school kids to have field trips during planting season, and since it’s located on the other side of the lake, maybe even get into boat rentals, bait and tackle, that sort of thing.”
“Sounds as if you’re really settling in.”
“Yeah.” Gabe was surprised about that. He hadn’t been sure the move from California to this small mountain town would work out. But at the time, not wanting to leave Emma with sitters while he worked some 9-to-5 job, or worse yet, become a cop like so many ex-military, and like his own dad had done, hadn’t been an option, either.
“Her mother left us,” he said, deciding the best way to handle those questions she’d been too polite to ask was the same way he’d done everything else in his life. Just straight out.
“I’m sorry.”
“I guess I was, too. For a while. But it was mostly wounded pride. And it wasn’t as if we’d had what anyone could consider a real marriage. I met Lila while I was stationed at Camp Pendleton. She was a civilian secretary working on base. I thought she was pretty, which she was. I also thought I was the hottest Marine ever to come down the pike.”
