“Francine loves me.”
He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. His eyes captured hers in a long, hot stare. “Not the way I love you.”
She pulled her hand away. It was her turn to slide her eyes from his. “You’re making this harder, Patrick.”
“I’m trying to make it harder.” All the lightness was gone from his voice and from his manner. “I don’t want to break up, Merry. I want to work things out.”
She stood. The food court was bustling with activity, but her eyes focused on nothing. “We have issues that can’t be worked out.”
“What kind of issues? And don’t be starting in on the doves again. Or the symphony. Because those things don’t matter to me. You matter.”
She swung her gaze back to him as he rose and stepped toward her. He came into startling focus: the black of his hair, the blue of his eyes, the determination on his face. It almost hurt to look at him.
“You don’t even know who I am.”
“Then tell me.”
“Let’s just say that you and I are too different and leave it at that.”
Reasoning with her was out. He’d tried that and it hadn’t worked. Combing the mall for the perfect gift was an excellent idea, but that was taking time. Besides, that would prove that he loved her. But he needed something to show that she loved him back.
She’d raised her cute, little chin at a stubborn angle, her posture was unbending and her eyes stared straight ahead as she walked.
He recognized the signs of a woman who had set her mind on something. In this case, it was dumping him.
He looked heavenward, hoping for inspiration, and spied his answer dangling from the mall’s high ceiling. He grabbed her hand and tugged, reminding himself that desperate situations called for desperate actions.
“Could you give me back my hand, Patrick?” she asked.
“No,” he said and led her to the magic spot.
When he had her positioned where he wanted her, he shielded her with his body so that the shoppers behind them ran into him rather than her.
“Sorry, buddy,” a man who plowed into him through no fault of his own said, patting Patrick amiably on the shoulder.
“What are you doing, Patrick?” Merry asked as he held fast to her hand. “We can’t stop in the middle of the mall. People will get angry.”
But the shoppers behind the apologist parted, moving around Patrick and Merry without complaint.
“I’m doing something drastic,” Patrick said.
“Something silly, you mean. I don’t see—”
“If you looked up at the mistletoe, you would.” Tugging on her hand to pull her even closer, he bent his head and kissed her.
Her lips were already parted, so he took full advantage, deepening the kiss before she had a chance to pull away. He’d kissed her a thousand times, thought about kissing her a thousand more, but every time the same thing happened.
He lost himself in her.
The world around them faded to black. Logically he knew they were standing in the middle of a shopping mall corridor, with last-minute shoppers crowding them on all sides, but it felt as though they were alone.
He laced his fingers with hers and brought his other hand up to brush the soft tendrils of her hair. His hand lingered on her cheek, stroking the utter smoothness of her skin as he kept kissing her.
But he wasn’t only kissing Merry. She was kissing him back.
She flattened her palm over his wildly beating heart, left it there for a few seconds, then slowly and sensuously traced a pattern up his chest and over his shoulder. Her hand snaked around to cup the back of his neck, holding his head in place as though she actually believed he might pull away.
The passion that had always been between them flared, mixing with the heat and the love so that all he could think about was Merry…and why he heard applause instead of bells.
Merry must have heard it, too, because she looked confused when he lifted his head. Turned-on and dazed, but definitely confused.
“Do you hear clapping?” she asked him, sounding so breathless and looking so sexy with her lips red and swollen and her hair mussed he had to squash a desire to kiss her again.
He nodded. He heard not only clapping but a catcall or two. Slowly, without releasing her from the circle of his arms, he turned his head.
Only a few people had actually stopped to watch the kiss. The others applauded enthusiastically as they walked by. A redheaded, freckle-faced boy of about thirteen or fourteen provided the wolf whistles.
“Thank you,” Patrick said, nodding in acknowledgement. “Thank you very much.”
“I wish my man kissed me like that,” a grinning woman remarked as she passed.
Merry found her voice. “He’s my ex-man.”
The woman, who hadn’t broken stride, didn’t hear her. Neither had anyone else besides Patrick. He grinned at the terminology she’d used. “I’m still very much a man, love. And if that kiss was anything to go by, we won’t be ex-anythings for much longer.”
Her kissable lips flat-lined and she wrenched out of his arms. The people who had stopped to watch the kiss didn’t show any sign of moving.
“What are you staring at?” Merry asked them. “Get shopping. There’s not even six shopping hours left before Christmas.”
“Hey, aren’t you that TV newswoman?” someone asked.
“Maybe,” she said.
She grabbed Patrick’s hand, propelling him back into the stream of shoppers and anonymity. He stifled a smile. She probably didn’t even realize that she had ordered their audience to do what she’d spent the day railing against.
“That was an underhanded thing to do,” she hissed at him.
“I don’t see anything underhanded about kissing under a mistletoe.”
“You dragged me under that mistletoe.”
“I’m not admitting to underhanded, but I will admit to desperate. I had to do something to prove you still love me.”
He was so attuned to her that he knew she expelled air through her nostrils even if the mall was too crowded for him to hear.
“All that kiss proved is I’m still attracted to you,” she said.
He didn’t believe her. He’d kissed enough women in his lifetime that he could distinguish between kisses that spoke of love and kisses that screamed sex. Hers had been an exciting blend of both.
But there was no point in arguing about it. Not when she was weakening and he had hours yet to get her to face the truth.
“I think you’re sexy, too,” he whispered in her ear. “Come home with me tonight and put us both out of our misery.”
She seemed about to say something. Her chest heaved and her mouth opened, but no sound escaped. Then she shook her head, spun on her heel and stalked away.
But not before he winked at her. And followed. After all, he had a job to do. And his involved spending the day at the mall with her.
CHAPTER FOUR
HER EX-FIANCÉ WAS absolutely infuriating. And so sexy that Merry’s toes still curled inside her shoes. It was a wonder she could walk after that infernal, intoxicating kiss.
She should run. But that wouldn’t do any good. It was still so crowded in the mall, she wouldn’t get far. And, besides, a part of her didn’t want to get away from him.
That was the part she worried about.
As she looked back on it, she realized her doubts about their relationship had mushroomed after he’d taken the job at The Goulden Group. He’d become caught up in making money, and she’d convinced herself she shouldn’t marry him.
She imagined them growing further apart with each passing month as he devoted an increasing share of his time and energy to his job, again, not in a good way. Very little time would be left over for their relationship. She could only envision a long lonely future for each of them if they carried on as is. By ending things before they married, she’d prevented them from making a monumental mistake and saved them both from serious hearta
che.
Yet the reasons she’d accepted his marriage proposal still applied. He was good and kind, sexy and charming and enjoyable to be around. Especially when he kissed her. She closed her eyes briefly, frustrated that she couldn’t shut out the memory of the kiss.
Determined to concentrate on work, she stopped the next shopper she saw and asked a few questions while Patrick stood patiently by.
“I purposely don’t buy anything until Christmas Eve, because shopping helps get me filled with the Christmas spirit,” the ponytailed young mother told her.
Merry’s on-the-spot interviews didn’t get much more productive after that. A trio of teenage girls without money had come to the mall to hang out because they liked the joyful atmosphere. A middle-aged father had brought his three sweet-faced little girls to see Santa. And just about everybody harbored the delusion that it would snow even though historically the Charlotte area had a less than five percent chance of having a white Christmas.
“Got any ideas about where we should head next?” Patrick asked, after a woman clutching a stuffed Santa talked about her white, frosty intuition.
“The mall’s even more crowded now.” She stated the obvious. “How about if we duck into Crystal’s and find the longest line. After that, we can let human nature take its course.”
“What do you mean by that, love?”
Love. There was that word again. She would have clamped her hands over her ears if it hadn’t been so childish.
“Come with me, and you’ll see.” She took a ninety-degree turn into Crystal’s Department Store and passed up lines that were four and five deep in favor of a long column of humanity in the housewares department.
“This one’s good,” she announced with satisfaction. “Let’s hang back before we approach anyone. With the length of this line, things are bound to get ugly soon.”
“You think people will become unpleasant when they get tired of waiting in line?”
She ignored the incredulity in his voice and answered. “Exactly. So could you get your camera ready? We can pretend to be looking at these wine-glasses. I don’t want people to see us and put on happy faces for the camera.”
She indicated a selection of different types of glasses in which to drink wine: tulip-shaped for white wine, rounded with a larger bowl for red, and tall, thin flutes for sparkling wine.
After a moment’s hesitation, in which she thought he might balk at her suggestion, Patrick went to the display of wineglasses and picked up a four pack. The glasses he chose were, of course, the priciest ones in the store.
“If I buy these flutes, we could drink to getting back together,” Patrick suggested.
She cut her eyes to him. “Could you keep your mind on business?”
He grinned at her. “You are my business.”
He behaved himself after that, although it was clear he didn’t approve of her strategy. Maybe he was on to something, because five minutes passed, then ten, without a single temper flaring. Except, possibly, Merry’s.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “I’ve been in lines way shorter than that and people always get impatient.”
He smiled bemusedly at her. “Would you like me to incite the line for you?”
“Of course not. But the music alone should have them climbing the walls. Listen to it. I’ve never heard such bad instrumental versions of holiday songs in my life.”
“I don’t think the music is so bad,” Patrick commented.
Merry smirked as an excessively homogenized version of the song about decking the halls began to play. “Come on, Patrick. Do you honestly think anybody could enjoy this?”
She’d no sooner finished her sentence when Patrick nudged her arm and nodded toward the line. “Look down.”
She picked out a boot-clad foot tapping in time to the music. It belonged to a middle-aged man with a paunch and a smile.
“One toe tapper doesn’t make a trend,” Merry said.
“How about two tappers?” Patrick asked as a high-heeled woman behind the booted man joined in the rhythmic tapping. “Or three? Or four?”
A teenager in running shoes lifted the toe of his shoe up and down as did a young woman in clogs. And then nearly everybody in line joined in the tapping. Oxfords and boots and high heels, all following the rhythm.
Merry watched in disbelief as the last person in line, a heavyset man in his fifties who might have made a good Santa, belted out a surprisingly on-key, “Fa la la la la la la la la.”
The toe tappers in front of the singer turned around and smiled. The singer smiled back. Merry felt her own mouth start to curve. But then Patrick positioned his camera, rousing her out of her Muzak-induced trance.
“That’s not the tape I’m looking for,” Merry told him.
“Ah, but it’s too good to pass up,” he said while he positioned the camera and went to work. The song’s chorus rolled around again, and two others joined the singer in “fa la laing.” One by one, the people in line chimed in until the “fa la la’s” rang out louder than the music.
“There,” Patrick said when the song ended and the “fa la la’s” finally stopped. He couldn’t hide his pleasure. “I think the video will stand alone, but you might want to interview the fellow who started the singing.”
“I’m not interviewing him,” she said, trying not to let the touching incident sway her. “I already told you. This doesn’t fit with the story I’m planning.”
“Then maybe you’re planning the wrong story.” He leaned toward her so she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. “Where’s your Christmas spirit?”
“It’s not at the mall,” she said but couldn’t muster any real conviction behind the words. “So could you please help me keep looking for footage to back up my story?”
“Certainly,” he said, but she could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Truth be told, hers didn’t seem to be, either.
Now how in the heck had that happened?
* * *
WHY DID MERRY KEEP resisting both him and the spirit of Christmas? Patrick couldn’t make sense of it.
She couldn’t completely hide the way she felt about him, especially not when he kissed her. Neither could she fail to notice that the mall was teeming with goodwill.
They’d spent another hour or so interviewing unfailingly cheerful shoppers, none of whom had provided fodder for her story. Then Francine called to invite them to take a break and meet for orange smoothies.
Merry had readily agreed, but Patrick told her he’d catch up with them later. Just in case she still didn’t know how much he loved her, he needed to continue hunting for the perfect Christmas gift.
“You’re sure this tennis racket is the best on the market?” he asked the salesclerk at the sporting goods store as he bounced the strings of pure natural gut against the palm of his left hand.
The clerk held up a finger to an approaching young man tall enough to play in the NBA and told Patrick, “That racket’s top of the line. Made of titanium and graphite. At ball impact, the racket stiffens in the throat area, providing explosive power. They don’t make ’em any better.”
Sold by the sales pitch, Patrick purchased the pricey racket and slung it over his shoulder in the tennis bag he’d bought along with it.
He’d finally bought Merry the perfect present. He should have thought of it before. She played on a local adult tennis team and claimed there were very few activities that she enjoyed more.
A slender brunette with big eyes and a bigger smile fell into step alongside him while he was leaving the store. “I’m a tennis player, too.”
“I’m not the tennis player. The racket’s for my—” Patrick started to say fiancée, but reluctantly substituted another word “—girlfriend.”
“Your girlfriend?” She put such a wealth of disappointment into the question that Patrick nearly apologized for not being available. “Did she tell you what kind of racket she wanted?”
“No, she didn’t. It’s a surprise.”
/> The woman grimaced. “You’re really not a tennis player, huh? Anybody even a little bit serious about the game likes to choose her own equipment. One woman’s favorite racket is another woman’s lemon.”
He thanked her for the advice, which unfortunately made a lot of sense. Just as regrettably, that meant his quest for the perfect present wasn’t yet over. He took a quick left and ducked into Harrington & Vine’s. After a few minutes of wandering, he happened upon the electronics department.
Shoppers crammed the aisles. He noticed three teenage boys with gleams in their eyes clustered around the latest version of the Xbox. Patrick had a soft spot for video games himself, especially ones involving intergalactic battles, but shooting down aliens wasn’t for Merry.
Neither was a very cool seven-inch television— when would she watch it? Or the mobile navigation system, which he’d tried and failed at another time to convince Merry to install in her car.
But an iPod…now Merry could go for that. He finally decided upon a deluxe model that stored up to five thousand songs and approached the sales counter feeling good about his choice.
“You’re lucky we have any left,” the salesclerk told him. “These babies are our number one seller this Christmas. Everybody’s buying one.”
Patrick frowned at the information that he’d chosen yet another gift with universal appeal but bought the iPod just in case.
After returning the tennis racket and deciding against perfume, he took video of the line of children waiting to see Santa Claus from a vantage point a floor above the Christmas village.
Then he wandered into a novelty shop, where his head spun while he looked at lava lamps, shrunken-down totem poles and feather boas.
“Can I help you with something?” a clerk asked during what Patrick assumed was a rare lull.
Patrick felt his spirits lift. The store was full of unique items. “I’m looking for the perfect gift for my lady.”
“You and every other man at the mall,” the clerk said. He went on to suggest a bra made out of candy, furry handcuffs and Chippendale stripper playing cards, none of which seemed right to Patrick.
Dashing Through the Mall: Santa, BabyAssignment HumbugDeck the Halls Page 13