by Leslie Kelly
“Just a kiss?” She stepped closer as anger made her suck in a deep breath.
He took one step closer, too. “Yeah. A kiss. And I’d say you were every bit as involved as I was.”
She inched even closer, wanting to smack the man for being so dense. Wanting to kiss his lips right off his face for being so hot. Wanting to cry because now, knowing his name and occupation, he couldn’t be the seductive, nameless stranger she wanted to have wild, hungry sex with. “I wasn’t talking about you and me. I was talking about the woman you were doing it with in the next dressing room.”
The detective’s eyes widened in shock and his mouth dropped open. He lurched back as if struck, an expression of utter dismay appearing on his face. “She was my sister!”
“Oh, my God, that’s disgusting,” Noelle said before she even thought about it.
“Jesus, lady, I was helping her button her damn dress. The salesclerks were all busy and she harassed me until I came in to do it for her.” Shaking his head, he added, “You’re really twisted, you know that?” The handsome man was staring at her in genuine shock.
Hmm. She guessed he had a point. “Uh…sorry.”
“You should be.”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“Maybe because I kissed you? You really think I would have done that if I’d just been with some other woman in the next room?” She opened her mouth to answer, but he threw his hand in the air to stop her. “Wait. I don’t want to know. Because if you really thought that, you must have some pretty bad opinions of men.”
She couldn’t deny it. After all, her most recent man—the man she’d dated since her senior year of college—had dumped her last year, two days before Christmas Eve. Two days before Noelle’s birthday.
Two days before they were supposed to get married.
He wasn’t the first man to have disappointed her, or the first one to break her heart. But he had been the most recent. So, no, she hadn’t been feeling too kindly toward the hairier half of humanity. Which was why she absolutely was not going to get involved with one beyond getting naked and sweaty.
Emotions, commitments, promises and lies were right out of the picture. As were names. And she had the man standing in front of her to thank for her plan. It was just such a shame he’d gone and introduced himself, because now that she knew his name and occupation, that took him out of the running to be her sexual-healing stranger. Didn’t it?
Clearing her throat and glancing down at the tip of her sneaker, Noelle mumbled, “I’m really sorry. I, uh…I guess I jumped to conclusions.”
He didn’t answer for a long, charged moment. Finally working up the nerve to look him in the face, Noelle found him eyeing her speculatively. A slight smile played about those fine lips of his.
“What?” she asked, almost afraid to know what was causing that sparkle of amusement.
“You must have wanted me pretty badly,” the man said. “If you thought I’d been doing…that…and you kissed me, anyway.”
“Let’s get this straight—you kissed me.”
He stepped close again, this time close enough so she could feel the warmth of his big body, like she had last Friday. “You want to put it to the test?” he murmured. “Because I think it would be pretty easy to prove you were a willing participant.”
Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, she wanted to put it to a test. Wanted to jump on him again and kiss him and take him the way she’d been dreaming of doing for the past seven nights.
Only, she couldn’t. Because she was chicken. Because she was at work. Because she was wearing white cotton panties. Because he was no longer a nameless stranger. And because he was here to do a job…to help find the fat Santa who’d stolen the kids’ toy money.
“Maybe we should just forget about it,” she mumbled. “I assume you want to know about the robbery.”
He didn’t move away, continuing to watch her, those dark green eyes searching and assessing as he studied her face, her tense body, the way she had her hands clenched in front of her. Finally, he gave a brief nod. “Yes. The robbery. We’ll talk about that.”
Good. Because right at that moment, the door opened and Casey returned with Alice, the blonde-haired, middle-aged woman who helped run the shelter. Noelle immediately stepped back, praying they wouldn’t see the color in her cheeks or notice the way her hands were shaking.
Before moving out of earshot altogether, though, the detective said one more thing. Softly. For her ears alone. “But after we talk about that, we’ll talk about whether you’re wearing that incredibly sexy black bra.”
Her pulse jumped as her heart skipped a beat. It took a few seconds for it to return to its regular rhythm as Noelle watched the detective greet her co-workers. And for a moment—just a naughty little moment—Noelle wished she hadn’t gone for the white cotton today.
2
MARK SANTORI still couldn’t get over his unexpected good fortune. Somehow, against the odds, he’d found a silver lining in this rotten Santa crime spree. And she was staring at him from a few feet away, looking just as sexy and uncertain—as interested and nervous—as she had the day he’d kissed her in a women’s dressing room.
Her name was Noelle Bradenton. And she was the woman he’d wanted with instant heat and relentless lust since the moment he’d laid eyes on her.
“I think that’s all I’ll need from you two,” he told the other shelter workers, who’d given him statements about this morning’s robbery. Though he’d been focusing all his attention on his newly identified mystery woman, rather than her two co-workers, he had paid attention to their comments about the crime. As he’d suspected when he’d first heard about it, it was similar to a number of other cases that had plagued the city for the past two weeks.
Trying to kick off a nice holiday season for the needy families in their care, the shelter workers had contacted a party business in town. The place offered visits from costumed characters for private events. Noelle and her colleagues had hired a Santa Claus to bring in a little cheer early in the month—before rates for visits from the fat guy skyrocketed, as they would in another week or two.
The perp—who’d been so perfectly disguised as to leave no real description behind—had shown up, done his jolly job, then left with as much cash as he could stuff down his pants. If this case followed the pattern, when he visited the party company who’d employed the thief, Mark would learn the employee had quit, and that he’d given a fake name and references on his job application. It was become an all-too-standard scenario this holiday season.
Today was, however, the first time the thieves had targeted a shelter for women and kids. Somehow that made it a whole lot worse.
“You know,” the young, red-haired one said, making no move to leave the cramped office, “maybe you should ask Noelle about her hometown. Seems to me if there really have been other similar robberies, someone ought to be investigating the place where Santas are trained.”
Mark had no idea what the girl was talking about. Glancing at Noelle—the beautiful woman he would have pegged as an exotic dancer before he figured her for a social worker—he saw her glaring at the redhead. His curiosity was piqued. “Just where are you from?”
“That doesn’t matter,” she muttered.
“Maybe it does,” he replied, meaning it. At this point, he’d consider any tip.
Sighing, the woman admitted, “I’m from Christmas.”
Ahh, things suddenly made sense. Because Christmas, a small Illinois town about eighty miles from Chicago, was supposedly the Mecca for all things related to December 25. Their ads ran on the local TV stations, urging people to take a day trip out to enjoy some old-fashioned holiday fun. For only twenty dollars, people could have their greeting cards personalized by the big guy and postmarked from a town called Christmas.
Ugh. Sometimes it seemed as if old Ebenezer Scrooge had had the right idea.
One thing he recalled, though, that could be connected. The town did boast of a Santa training
school the way Quantico might brag about the FBI academy. “Interesting,” he murmured as Noelle’s two co-workers stood to leave. “I think that may be important, Miss Bradenton.” He wondered if she could sense the same anticipatory tension he was feeling about being alone with her again. “Maybe you and I should talk a little more.”
She cast a glance toward her co-workers, who were already at the door. A flick of her tongue to moisten her lips told him she was nervous about being alone with him. That was amusing, considering a week ago, when she hadn’t even known his name, she’d been kissing him like she wanted to taste his tonsils.
His breathing slowed, deepened, at the memory of it. There’d been such surprising intensity, not to mention a complete lack of inhibition or regret. Absolutely the only thing he’d regretted about last Friday was not handcuffing her to his side to prevent her from getting away.
Mark had feared he’d never see her again that morning and had scrambled to try to find her in the store. He’d even considered asking the sales clerk if she remembered whether the sexy woman with the long dark hair, the pale, angelic face, and the body of a Victoria’s Secret angel had purchased anything. It’d been a long shot, but he had thought he might be able to track his delightful stranger down from a credit card slip.
In the end, though, Mark hadn’t asked the clerk in the dress department. The gray-haired saleswoman had been scandalized enough at finding him almost on top of a nearly naked brunette in the dressing room. If she’d realized Mark didn’t even know the name of the woman who’d given him a hard-on that had to be visible to families waiting in line to see Santa, she might have fainted dead away.
Santa. That quickly pushed erotic memories out of his mind and reminded him of the job at hand. Investigating a crime…not the body of the woman standing just a few feet away.
“So,” he said once they were indeed alone in her small, cramped office, which was crowded with boxes of secondhand clothes, blankets, toys and books, “You’re really from the infamous town of Christmas?”
She sat on the arm of a worn-looking sofa that stood under the front window. “I am,” she murmured, appearing deep in thought as she glanced outside.
The view wasn’t much to get excited about—just a rundown neighborhood of small, brick-front tract homes from the sixties, all looking much like this one. The front yard had a few leftover patches of brown grass protruding from clumps of rock and dirt. The winter sky—icy-gray and too bitter cold for any snow-bloated clouds—wasn’t anything to smile about either.
The grayness seemed to match the atmosphere in this place this morning. According to the workers, the shelter currently housed three formerly abused wives and seven of their kids, ranging in age from three months to twelve years. They were all cramped into a row house that was virtually indistinguishable from every other one on the block. That, he figured, was the point. Hiding out in a small, slightly worn and nondescript house added a level of security for the women who’d fled from dangerous situations at home.
The thought of those dangerous situations—and of angry husbands trying to track down their wives—suddenly made him stiffen. He barely knew Noelle Bradenton, but the thought of her sitting in this place every day, exposing herself to a bunch of whacked-out, raging husbands, made him very, very uneasy. “Tell me about your hometown.”
She spoke again, still staring outside. “I prefer not to even think about that place, or the miserable holiday for which its named. Besides, I seriously doubt Christmas is a hotbed of criminal activity.”
Ahh, another Christmas hater, just like him. Wanting to lighten her mood, he asked, “No mischievous elves painting graffiti on the side of Santa’s workshop?”
Rolling her eyes, she glanced over. “You think you’re kidding…but in Christmas, believe me, that would be possible. There is a Santa’s workshop and there are some slightly deranged residents who dress in green-and-red tights and little feathered caps throughout the entire winter.”
She had to be joking. Which was good—perhaps he’d get a smile out of her before he left today. And a phone number.
“Still, the last crime I remember in Christmas,” she continued, “was when old Mr. Hennessey was charged with indecent exposure because he forgot to zip his fly.”
He grinned, getting an instantaneous picture of Noelle’s childhood in a small hometown where everybody knew everybody. Whether she’d believe it or not, his upbringing had been pretty similar, even though he’d been raised here in Chicago. But his largely-Italian neighborhood had had all the rumors, gossip and idiosyncrasies of any small slice of Americana.
The Christmas angle was most likely a dead end, but he made a note to make a few calls, anyway. “So you have no other description of the thief?” he asked, managing not to smile. “He was just a fat guy with a white beard?”
He already knew the answer—her co-workers had given the full details—but he wasn’t ready to leave. Funny that he was having such a good time questioning her when a few hours ago he’d been in such a foul mood after getting a call about yet another Santa robbery. It could be because every time he looked into her dark brown eyes, he pictured the way they’d grown even darker when she’d been in his arms, dressed only in some utterly sinful black underwear. Even now, the memory of her curvy body—so thoroughly hidden in the chunky sweater and long skirt she wore today—made his mouth go dry.
She crossed her arms, a frown tugging at her brow. “I wish I could tell you he had his real name tattooed just above the fluffy white trim of his red velvet suit, but he didn’t. He was Santa. Top to bottom, just, Santa Claus.”
Mark didn’t let his amusement show on his face as he stepped closer and lowered his voice to a loud whisper. “I hate to tell you this, ma’am, but to my knowledge, Santa Claus doesn’t really exist.”
Her jaw dropped and she sputtered a bit. Then she began to chuckle, shaking her head in rueful amusement. “Aww, gee, you mean my folks have been lying to me all these years?”
Soaking up the warmth of her good humor, Mark leaned against the desk, watching her, trying to come up with more questions to ask. More reasons to stay. Frankly, he had all the information he needed and could have left ten minutes ago. But something wouldn’t let him go…her smile, most likely. Not to mention the memory of those sexy black panties.
Forcing himself to shake off the image, he re-directed his heated thoughts. “I shouldn’t have told you that. My mama’s never gonna forgive me,” Mark murmured.
“Why?”
“Well, when I was nine, she threatened me that if I ever told any little girls there wasn’t any Santa Claus, I’d never get another G.I. Joe or Transformer in my life.”
Noelle quirked a brow. “Wow, I’ve cost you a G.I. Joe?”
He shrugged. “Nah, my baby sister cost me a G.I. Joe.”
“You told your baby sister there was no Santa?” She tsked and shook her head. “Very naughty, indeed.”
“No, I didn’t tell her, she told me the day she got suspended from kindergarten for beating up a third-grader on the playground. He was the one who spilled the beans about Santa and she came to me and my brothers to ask if it was true.”
Noelle was grinning, looking amused and interested, even while Mark wondered why the hell he was talking about his family and his childhood. Maybe to keep his brain distracted and his mouth occupied so he wouldn’t ask her what she was wearing under that boxy green sweater. Black lace? Green silk? Nothing?
He swallowed the thought—and the accompanying hunger—away.
“I’m still not clear on how G.I. Joe entered the picture.”
Back to kid talk. Safe ground. “We all figured that if Mama found out none of us believed anymore, our piles of presents would get smaller and Christmas wouldn’t be as special, so we covered for Lottie about why she’d gotten into the fight at school.”
“Is this the sister whose dress you were buttoning up?”
Oh, man, she’d gone back to the dressing room. To their stolen embra
ce. The woman was killing him here. He still somehow managed a nod, saying, “She’s the one and only Santori girl. The baby of the family.”
“I think I’d like her,” Noelle said. “But I still don’t get why you lost your G.I. Joes if you didn’t tell your mother that the Santa secret was out of the big fat sack upon his back.”
Chuckling, Mark explained. “We drew straws, and I got the short one. I told our parents Lottie was fighting because she’d seen me fighting the same boy in my class. My mother decided I was being exposed to too much violence.”
“Ahh, so long G.I. Joe. Did you get a Ken doll instead?”
“Worse,” he muttered, remembering the disgust only a nine-year-old boy who’d been cheated of G.I. Joes could feel on Christmas morning. “I got stuffed Wembley and Boober Fraggles.”
Noelle’s smile widened into a burst of laughter. “Oh, no, you got Fraggle Rock dolls?”
God, the woman had a great laugh. It went perfectly with her beautiful smile and her lovely face. Not to mention the sinfully sexy body. All throaty and warm…a woman’s laugh. A sultry woman’s laugh. It rolled through him like potent whiskey and was thoroughly intoxicating. He wanted to drink that laugh down, to taste her. To savor her.
“Please tell me the bully your sister beat up didn’t find out what you got for Christmas.”
Forcing himself to focus on the light and amusing past instead of the hot and sexy present, Mark gave an exaggerated shudder. “Yow…I wouldn’t have made it out of elementary school alive, even with four brothers, if that had ever gotten out.”
Her jaw dropped. “Five boys, and one girl? Good grief, no wonder your sister was beating up kids on the playground.”
That pretty well summed up his family dynamic, which was all the conversation he wanted to have about the Santoris. Frankly, he was much more interested in talking about her. Where she lived, whether she was single, and oh, that sexy black bra…“So are you finished your shopping? Got any more little black dresses to try on?”