“What was that?” she asked.
He grinned. “That’s the stone’s snicker. It didn’t scare you, did it?”
“Of course not,” she denied.
“Then why are you squeezing my hand so tight?”
She instantly let go of him, and he laughed. He gestured to the stone, which was on display alongside a stack of garish red boxes. A blurb promised that the stone would provide “the most fun you’ll have this holiday season.”
“It’s great, isn’t it?” Patrick asked.
She rolled her eyes. “How can you think there’s anything great about a cackling stone?”
“It’s funny.”
He waved his hand. The stone cackled again, the sound so ridiculous that she couldn’t help but smile. It was funny. It was also one of the most useless toys she’d ever come across.
“There’s quite a few of them left,” she said. “I wonder if the creators of the stone paid that magazine to say the toy was hot. You know, to create demand?”
“Now isn’t that a cynical way to look at a Christmas toy?” He shook his head, but his expression was indulgent. “I’m thinking a kid would want the stone even if he didn’t know it was popular.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Look, Mom. There it is.” A sandy-haired boy of about seven or eight years old dressed in an unzipped ski jacket was leading his mother their way. When the boy moved in front of the stone, it let loose with its maniacal cackle.
“I waaaant it,” the boy said, his voice a plaintive whine. “I neeeeed it.”
“Okay, Ronald. I told you we could get it.”
Bingo. Merry smiled at Patrick. He was right. The Snickering Stone could provide exactly the ammunition she needed for her story.
“Excuse me.” Merry raised her voice to be heard above the general commotion inside the store. “I’m Merry Deluca of WZLM-13 news. Could I talk to your son on camera about the Snickering Stone?”
The boy already had one of the boxes clutched to his chest in the spirit of true greed. Merry’s heartbeat quickened.
“What do you say, Ronald?” The mother patted the little boy indulgently on the head. “Do you want to be on TV?”
“I like TV,” the boy announced. No surprise there.
Before the mother and son could change their minds, Merry excused herself to find a store manager. She needed permission to get the stone out of the box and the boy out of the store. Five minutes later, Patrick had the shot set up.
“All I need you to do,” she told the boy before Patrick turned on the camera, “is talk about why you wanted the Snickering Stone for Christmas.”
“Oh, but Ronald’s not the one who wants the stone,” his mother interjected. “The stone’s for Benjy.”
Merry frowned. “Who’s Benjy?”
“My little brother.” Ronald held up the stone. “This is the only thing he put on his Christmas list.”
“Ronald’s going to pay for the stone with his own money,” the mother said proudly.
Ronald reached in his back pocket and pulled out a wad of what appeared to be one-dollar bills. “I’ve been saving up my allowance.”
“Are you going to buy a Snickering Stone for yourself, too, Ronald?” Merry asked, desperately trying to salvage her story.
“Heck, no,” Ronald said. “I think they’re dumb. All they do is laugh.”
* * *
PATRICK LIGHTLY RUBBED Merry’s upper arm as they exited the toy store. He preferred to believe she didn’t protest because she was softening toward him, but she was probably still upset about what had happened in the store.
“I’m sorry those interviews didn’t work out the way you wanted them to, love,” he said.
After striking out with the boy, she’d convinced one of the store’s cashiers to appear on camera. That hadn’t gone her way, either.
“I can’t believe I was so off track,” Merry said. “Of all the employees in the toy store, that cashier looked the most unhappy. I was sure she’d tell stories about overindulgent parents and bratty kids and credit-card charges that would break a bank.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” He gently squeezed her shoulder in support. “You couldn’t have known she was just tired because she’d worked a double shift yesterday.”
“But why did she perk up the instant she was on camera?” Merry asked as they blended into the crowd and walked past one festive window display after another. “Why did she have to talk about that single mother she works with who needed to get her wrapping done?”
“You did ask why she’d volunteered to do a double shift,” Patrick reminded, then quickly added. “Not that you’re at fault. It was a question that had to be asked.”
She gazed at him with narrowed eyes. “I don’t get it. Why are you being so nice to me?”
“I’m trying to win you back. That’s hardly going to happen if I’m nasty.”
“So this is like the symphony orchestra thing?”
“I’m not following you.”
“When my mother suggested hiring the twelve-piece orchestra to play at the wedding, you sided with me against it even though you didn’t see anything wrong with it. Just like you did with the doves.”
He couldn’t prevent a sigh from escaping. “Do we have to talk about the doves again?”
She stopped walking so abruptly three people almost crashed into her. Two of them apologized.
“But don’t you see?” she asked. “This is just like the doves and the symphony. You don’t agree with the angle of my story but you’re going along with it.”
“I’m being supportive.” He threw up his hands. “What’s wrong with that?”
She stared at him mutely for a few seconds while he tried to figure out what was going on inside her head. He had no luck. “This, in a nutshell, is why it won’t work out for us.”
He released a frustrated breath. “Because I’m perfectly okay with letting you have your way?”
“Because you don’t agree with what you’re agreeing with!”
“Now wait just a minute,” he said. “Plenty of couples don’t agree, Merry. Not everybody thinks alike.”
“We think less alike than most of them. That’s why we shouldn’t get married. We’re incompatible.”
“I disagree.”
“Of course you do,” she retorted. “See what I mean about us not agreeing?”
“That’s not fair,” he said. “The differences between couples are—”
The peal of her cell phone interrupted the reasoned argument he was about to make. She held up a finger and took the phone from the clip at the waistband of her skirt, which was concealed under her sweater.
“Merry Deluca,” she said into the receiver while he mentally completed his thought.
A couple’s differences helped keep a relationship fresh and interesting. So what if he didn’t understand why Merry objected to the extravagant touches her mother kept trying to add to their wedding?
He personally thought Merry should have the best of everything, which was the major reason he’d gone to work for The Goulden Group. His salary was substantially higher than the television station paid, which would enable him to support Merry in style even if she chose one day to quit her job.
He liked the idea of a lavish wedding, the perfect backdrop for the beautiful bride she’d make. But he was willing to give on that. He had given, supporting her every step of the way. For whatever reason, Merry didn’t want a fuss. Even though she deserved one.
She nodded a few times, then finished the phone call.
“That was Francine letting us know the truck is here,” she said. Francine was not only the broadcast technician who’d been assigned to work with them but also a close friend of Merry’s from her college days. “She’s setting up in front of the mall. I’m going to meet her.”
“Then we can finish our discussion later.”
“I’ve said what I had to say. And it’s already eleven o’clock. I need the time bef
ore we go live to work on my write-up.”
She had quite a writing job in front of her to get the material they’d gathered to fit into a story about commercialism, but she probably already knew that.
“Are you coming?” she asked.
Making a snap decision, he popped the tape out of his camera. He preferred editing tape himself, but Betsy had told him he could delegate the task. It seemed prudent to take her up on it, because what he had to do was more important.
“Would you give this tape to Francine to edit?” he asked. “I’ll be there in time to set up for the broadcast, but I have some errands to run.”
“What kind of errands?”
His brain raced while he tried to think of something that would throw her off track, but she shook her head and said, “Never mind. I don’t think I want to know.”
She waited for a break in the crowd, then joined the throng of people rushing through the mall. Patrick watched her go, taking it as a positive sign that she glanced back at him.
If he could buy her the perfect gift, that might be all he needed to push him over the edge and back into her life.
His gaze ricocheted from a jewelry store to a candy store, but he dismissed them both. He’d been there, bought that.
He was about to enter Harrington & Vine’s, one of the mall’s popular anchor stores, when he noticed a bunch of shoppers gathered around a kiosk selling products that changed colors in the sun.
Intrigued, he moved closer and watched the salesman point an ultraviolet light at a canvas tote bag with a black-and-white ocean scene. The scene gradually came alive with vivid color: deep blue water, vibrant red beach umbrellas, rainbow-colored masts on the sailboats.
Merry enjoyed the unexpected and loved the beach. They’d spent a long weekend at Nags Head this past summer and took pleasure in every sunny second. Ten minutes later, he was finally at the front of the line.
“That bag’s really cool,” the salesman told Patrick while he rang it up. “I got my mom one. And my sister. And my aunt, too. Everybody loves them.”
Some of Patrick’s joy at finding what he’d thought was the ideal gift faded. If the color-changing tote had universal appeal, it wasn’t personal enough.
While walking away from the kiosk, he overheard a teenage girl telling her friend about a store called Get Clocked. “They have this supercool alarm clock you can program with your favorite music. You can’t go wrong with a present like that.”
Patrick added one of the programmable alarm clocks and a CD by Sheryl Crow, her favorite singer, to his growing stash of presents for Merry. While he was headed for the mall exit, he spied a bobblehead doll of Walter Cronkite, the former CBS Evening News anchorman who was an icon of television news. He bought that, too.
All of the choices were inspired, but he feared that none were perfect.
While he made his way out of the mall and toward the ENG truck, he vowed to find time later to continue the hunt. The woman he loved deserved nothing less than the very best.
* * *
“SO DID PATRICK TELL YOU exactly how he planned to change your mind about breaking off the engagement?”
Francine Collins pulled a chair up to where Merry sat at the computer in the ENG truck. Francine’s curly brown hair was unruly, her color high, her Kewpie doll face animated. And her six-month pregnancy noticeably visible.
“Of course he didn’t tell you,” Francine said, answering her own question. “He wouldn’t tip his hand and ruin his chances of sweeping you off your feet. But he must be planning something radical if he said you’d be back together by the time the mall closes. I bet it’s something romantic.”
Francine covered her heart with one hand. She was married, had two-year-old twins with a third child on the way and still managed to act as though life was a soap opera. Merry should have remembered that before confiding in her.
“Do you think you’ll be able to resist him?” Francine asked. “You never have before. Didn’t you tell me you would have slept with him way before you did if he hadn’t been such a gentleman?”
Merry rubbed her forehead, wishing she could erase the sudden memories of how right it felt to make love to Patrick. If she could, he would be easier to resist.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Francine, because you know I love you,” Merry said. “But don’t you have tape to edit?”
Francine shook her head so that her curls swung. “Not until you tell me what video you want to use in your report, I don’t.”
“I can’t tell you that until I figure out the angle of my story.” Merry checked her watch. “I only have fifteen minutes to do that before the noon news.”
“Thirty-five. Your report won’t air until twenty minutes past the hour. Besides, you’re a whiz at this. It won’t take you nearly that long.” Francine barely took a breath before continuing, “Patrick thinks you have the prewedding jitters, doesn’t he?”
Merry’s fingers paused on the computer keyboard. “How did you know that?”
“It’s the obvious conclusion. Things were going along fine until it sank in that the wedding’s almost here. Then, bam, your nerves went haywire.”
Merry stopped trying to work and leveled her friend with a penetrating stare. “It sounds like you think I have the jitters.”
Francine shrugged. “That’s not for me to say.”
“You just said it.”
“I was explaining the phenomenon. Most people experience the jitters to some degree before their wedding. Take me, for example. Two days before I got married, Doug went off to a bar with his best man. I nearly called everything off because I didn’t want to marry a drunk.”
“But Doug doesn’t drink,” Merry said.
“Exactly. I’m just saying that second-guessing yourself is perfectly normal. In your case, it’s even understandable. You said yourself you haven’t seen very much of Patrick since he took that new job. You’re alone too much.”
“We haven’t spent much time together lately,” Merry acknowledged. “But that’s only part of it.”
“What’s the other part?” Francine asked, all of her attention focused on Merry. When Merry hesitated, she prodded, “Talk to me, Mer. I’m here for you.”
Touched by her friend’s concern, Merry tried to put into words what she hadn’t yet been able to work out in her mind.
“I don’t know exactly. But since he took this job at The Goulden Group, he’s different. Less playful. More serious. He works all the time. And for what? A Lexus and a big-screen TV he doesn’t have time to watch?”
“How about a more solid future for his bride-tobe?”
“His bride-to-be didn’t need a two-carat engagement ring.” Merry sighed. “I’m not explaining it right. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that we’re incompatible.”
“Because you don’t want a Lexus or a big-screen TV?”
Merry tapped her chin. “I guess that has something to do with it. Did I tell you the latest about the wedding?”
Francine cringed. “You’re not going to start in on the doves again, are you?”
“No, this isn’t about the doves. It’s about the six bridesmaids my mother suggested I add to the six I already have. Patrick didn’t grasp why I wouldn’t go along with it.”
“Did he try to pressure you to agree to twelve bridesmaids?”
“No, but that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t understand him, and he surely doesn’t understand me. After we broke up, he sent me flowers and candy and cheese. Cheese! Can you believe it?”
“You like cheese.”
“Not enough to let myself get bribed. It was like he thought buying me those things would change my mind.”
“You broke his heart, then you wouldn’t accept his calls. He probably felt like he had to do something.”
Merry bit the inside of her lip, dismayed at the notion of Patrick with a broken heart. She’d be loath to cause anyone pain, but especially Patrick. “You’re only sticking up for Pat
rick because you like him,” she accused.
“What’s not to like?” Francine asked. “He’s charming, he’s smart, he’s handsome, he plays with my twins and he had the good taste to fall in love with my best friend.”
“Did he pay you to say that?”
“Certainly not. With that accent of his, all he had to do was ask.”
Silence ensued, rare whenever Francine was anywhere in the vicinity. Merry’s blood pressure rose, but then she noticed her friend clamping her upper teeth over her lower lip.
“You were kidding,” Merry said.
A bubbly laugh escaped from Francine. “Yes, I was. I haven’t talked to Patrick since you called off the wedding. Where is he, by the way?”
As if on cue, the door to the truck opened, revealing the man himself. His hair was windblown after the short walk from the mall, giving him a rakish air. Francine practically squealed. “Patrick! We were just talking about you.”
He folded his long length into the truck, and cocked a dark eyebrow in piratical fashion. “Then I hope you were putting in a good word for me, Francy.”
“Always,” she said and grinned at him. “You know how much Doug and I want to keep double-dating. I’m way more partial to you than any of the guys Merry dated in the past.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about Merry’s exes one of these days,” Patrick said.
“Who do you want to hear about first?” Francine asked. “The rotten singer who serenaded her outside the dorm? Or the guy who crashed into the back of her car because he wanted to meet her?”
“One of her exes really did that?” Patrick asked.
“You are one of my exes,” Merry reminded him without turning from her computer screen. Taking a hard line where he was concerned was easier when she wasn’t looking at him. “And could you two be quiet so I can concentrate?”
She heard Patrick come up behind her and sensed him peering over her shoulder. Eyes ahead, she told herself. Don’t look at him.
“Merry needs a few more minutes,” Francine explained. “As you can see, she hasn’t managed to write much yet.”
Dashing Through the Mall: Santa, BabyAssignment HumbugDeck the Halls Page 11