A Fairytale Christmas

by Susan Wiggs

  “You’re not.” The smile still lingered in his voice. “Then what’s so different about tonight?”

  “You,” she said without hesitating. “You make it different. You make me want …” Her voice trailed off as she slid her hand down the length of him.

  “Want what?” Now his tone sounded strangled, with no trace of a smile.

  “More than just one night,” she whispered. “Lots more.”

  He muttered something that sounded like a curse and surged up. With one swift movement, he turned her on her back and plunged into her, and the rapid rise of his passion took her breath away.

  He loved her into a dazed state of drowsiness, until she was replete with exhaustion, and when she finally pillowed her head against his shoulder and drifted happily toward sleep, she made a discovery she had never dared to contemplate before.

  Sometimes dreams really did come true.

  * * *

  The electronic burble of a high-tech phone plowed through Jack’s consciousness, rousing him from the best sleep he’d had in months.

  Between the first and second rings, he remembered exactly where he was.

  In the bedroom of Madeleine Langston. With Miz Maddy herself, naked and tousled in his arms.

  Holy shit.

  Between the second and third rings, he managed to extract himself from the bed. She moaned and sighed, pulling a fluffy pillow over her head.

  Perfect, he thought, plunging his legs into his trousers, his arms into shirt and jacket sleeves. Sleep on, babe, he silently pleaded with her. Give your dream lover a chance to go poof.

  By the fourth ring, he was dressed and on his hands and knees, groping for his second cowboy boot. Where the hell had it gone—?

  “Hi, this is Madeleine….”

  The sound of her voice nearly brought Jack out of his skin. Then he realized it was an answering machine.

  “Oh, Maddy,” said William Wornich’s tattling voice, “I’m positively chartreuse with curiosity. Who was he, Maddy? John Wayne, for goodness’ sake?”

  She muttered something from beneath the pillow.

  Oh, shit. She was waking up.

  Jack faced an agonizing choice. He could make a run for it and leave her with fond memories of her mystery man or he could do the honorable thing—confess what he had done and suffer the consequences.

  It took him exactly half a second to agonize over his choice between hero and coward.

  Leaving a size-twelve cowboy boot somewhere in the boudoir, John Patrick Riley raced out of Madeleine’s designer apartment—and out of her fairy-tale life.

  Chapter Six

  “You call that a Santa Claus?” Jack asked, looking Derek up and down. They were at the Santiago Youth Center in Brooklyn. Teenage boys loitered outside on the snow-bordered basketball court. From the room next door to Jack’s cramped and cluttered office came the low murmur of female voices speaking Spanish. A workshop for girls was in session.

  Derek plucked at the moth-eaten red jacket. “I didn’t realize you were expecting a miracle on Thirty-fourth Street,” he grumbled. “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this, Riley.”

  “Maybe,” said Jack, adjusting his thick glasses, “it’s your innate sense of human decency, Derek. Your firm conviction that helping underprivileged kids is the right thing to do.” Jack rolled up a stick of Juicy Fruit and stuffed it into his mouth. “Not to mention the Knicks tickets you extorted from me.”

  “Or maybe it’s because you keep threatening to break my kneecaps. Why do you waste time in this dump, anyway?”

  Because of Annie. The thought awakened a six-year-old ache in Jack. He had loved her with all his heart, but love wasn’t enough to save her. In a way, this center was a monument to his first love. Every kid who stayed out of trouble embodied the promise that had been wasted when Annie had died.

  “Well?” Derek prompted.

  Jack rubbed his hand along his jaw. “I once lost a good friend to drugs and gang wars.”

  “Man, I’m sorry—”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  Derek picked up the Santa hat, and the pom-pom fell off. “I won’t fool anyone in this getup.”

  “Sure, you will.” Jack felt a perverse shiver course over his skin. He took off his cap and ran a hand through his hair. “People see what they want to see.”

  Derek propped one elbow on a file cabinet and fingered a macramé plant hanger. The macramé had been done by Maria, one of the center’s borderline cases. Jack wondered where Maria had gotten to lately.

  “What’d you do to yourself, Riley?” Derek asked, pulling Jack from his thoughts. “Something’s different.”

  Jack’s ears caught fire with a guilty flush. He put his cap back on and tugged down the brim. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Something …” Derek peered closer. “Hey, you shaved for a change. Wonders never cease.”

  Jack held his breath while trying to look casual. “A latent sense of decency.”

  “Uh-huh. So how’d it go last night? How’d you make out?”

  Jack felt the blood drain from his face. Damn. Derek knew.

  “Well?” Derek prompted, unbuttoning the disreputable Santa suit. “Spill.”

  “Spill?” Jack almost choked on his gum.

  “What was she like? Wild and sweet? Cruel to be kind?”

  “Jesus, Derek, quit with the third degree.”

  “I always wanted to make it with an Urban Animal,” Derek said wistfully.

  Jack barely managed to conceal his sigh of relief. “Yeah, well, it won’t happen if you don’t take a chance every now and then.”

  “I guess.” Derek shrugged out of the bright red jacket. He held it up and peered at a hole that looked as if it had been made by a bullet. “This is hopeless. Looks like Santa’s been living in Tompkins Square Park instead of the North Pole.”

  “Maybe it’s you,” Jack said. “Maybe you’re hungover.”

  “Me?” Derek snorted. “You don’t get hungover after a Madeleine Langston party. No one drinks too much at those things. Too dangerous, what with all the society gossips sniffing around.” He paused and frowned. “Well, that’s almost right.”

  Jack looked at him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Funniest thing.” Derek shed the rest of the Santa suit and put it in a battered Macy’s bag. “One person overdid it last night. Last person you’d expect.”

  “Yeah?” Jack pretended benign interest.

  “Madeleine Langston. Not too many people noticed, but Brad and I did. You didn’t see the paper this morning? Wornich’s column?”

  “I never read Wornich. What’s to read?” Jack suppressed a shudder at the memory of the knowing, teasing voice on Madeleine’s answering machine.

  Derek grabbed the folded newspaper from a table where a battered coffee urn stood. He shook it open to the society pages. “Check it out,” he said, shoving the paper under Jack’s nose.

  Jack stared. He felt a slow red burn creep up his face. There they were, Madeleine Langston and her Prince Charming, spit-polished and posed as if for the cover of a romance novel. She gazed up at him, her Grace Kelly profile limned by candlelight. The man, his face in shadow, bent slightly to whisper in her ear. His GQ-style tux and valet grooming screamed wealth and breeding.

  Yet despite the posed look of the picture, he sensed a strange warmth in the shot. The way her slim hand rested in the crook of his arm, the way his entire attention was riveted on her … The overall impression was that the man and woman were fascinated by each other. Somehow it was all there—the yearning, the hesitation, the part-bashful, part-eager sense of inevitability that these people were going to fall in love.

  “A picture’s worth a thousand words, eh?” Derek asked.

  “Yeah, right.” Jack dropped the paper negligently on the desk and picked up the Macy’s bag. “I know just the guy to fix this.” He left the room with Derek in tow. “Best tailor in Manhattan. A gentleman’s clo
thier, as a matter of fact. He’ll make you look like a million bucks.”

  “Sure, Riley.”

  “I mean it.” Jack thought ruefully of the photo in the Courier. “The guy makes magic.”

  Before going into the city, Jack showed Derek around the youth center. It wasn’t much to look at, but it had a heart as big as the Dakota. A rambling converted tenement, it had housed the Santiago Center for the past five years.

  Five years of triumph and failure. Jack supposed it would always be that way. For every kid they kept out of trouble and in school, another slipped through the cracks.

  “I just don’t get enough time to spend with them,” he said to Derek, opening the metal door to the courtyard.

  “I can’t figure you out, Riley,” Derek declared, trotting out onto the basketball court.

  Jack went out, too, smoothly stealing the ball from a lanky boy called André, then passing it to Derek, who made a decent layup and scored. They fooled around for another few minutes, their laughter chasing away the cold.

  “You’re with the pros now, me lads,” Derek declared only seconds before a boy knocked him on his butt and stole a rebound. Laughing, Jack left them playing and squabbling. He sobered instantly when he crossed the yard and entered the director’s office.

  A girl sat alone there on a metal chair, a crumpled handkerchief crushed in her hand and her unseeing gaze fixed on a wall map of the boroughs. A livid bruise stood out on her right cheekbone, and her lower lip was swollen.

  She was so pregnant she looked as if she would give birth any minute.

  “Uh,” Jack said, clearing his throat, “is someone helping you?”

  The girl turned her gaze up to him and blinked slowly, twice. “Hi, Mr. Riley.”

  His heart flopped over in his chest. They were the biggest, brownest eyes he had ever seen—and he hadn’t seen them in months. “Maria,” he said. He knelt beside her and took her hands in his. “Where’ve you been, girl?”

  “I never should have stopped coming here.” Her swollen lip trembled. “I’m in trouble, Mr. Riley.”

  “Ah, Maria.” He squeezed her hand. “It’ll be okay. Promise. Everything will be fine. Tell me what happened.”

  “Nothing will ever be fine again,” she said softly, with the sense of drama Jack had noticed about her right from the start. “But I thought it would be. José said he’d get a steady job and a place to live, but he went off and never came back.”

  Jack knew the boy; liked him, even. José had been a decent student, a hard worker, more down-to-earth than most. He’d finished school the summer before. Jack touched Maria’s bruised cheek, very lightly. “What about your family?”

  The girl’s eyes flashed with anger. “I’m not going home again,” she said simply. “That’s not my home anymore.”

  Jack didn’t pry. He knew Maria’s mother had remarried. “So when’s the last time you saw José?”

  Her eyes teared at the mention of his name. “A few weeks ago.”

  “Tell you what. You go to the kitchen and make yourself a cup of tea, and I’ll see about tracking down José for you.”

  “Okay.” She sniffled, then levered herself up and lumbered toward the kitchen. “Thanks, Mr. Riley.”

  “We’ll work things out, Maria.” He watched her go, feeling an odd yearning in his gut. Barely a woman herself, she was going to have a baby. A baby. Jack Riley’s secret vice was an unadulterated love of babies. “It’s going to be all right,” he said, even though Maria was already gone.

  “We can always hope,” said a female voice behind him.

  He turned to see Sister Doyle, the director, looking uncharacteristically grave as she stood in the doorway of her office. Broad-shouldered and open-faced, she wore jeans and a denim work-shirt; a pair of reading glasses balanced precariously on her nose. Her red hair was cropped short. The only indication of her vocation was the large silver crucifix she always wore on a chain around her neck.

  She held a letter in her hand. “Our funding’s been cut, Jack. We’re fifty grand in the hole. The Langston Trust cut off funds, effective immediately. We’re history, Jack. The center will have to close the day after Christmas.”

  * * *

  On Monday morning, Madeleine sat at her desk and surreptitiously put her right hand over her heart. Funny. It didn’t feel any different. But it was. Broken, possibly beyond repair.

  Her heart had ached when she had lost her father, but at least there had been a sense of closure about the loss. She missed him, but the grief had mellowed with the passing of time. She had loved him, he had loved her, and she had gathered the cherished memories into her heart, a treasure and a comfort.

  John’s abandonment, on the other hand, had shattered the very foundations of her beliefs. In retrospect, she realized it had been stupid to pin all her hopes and dreams on one night with a man she had just met; stupid of her to give a man that sort of power over her.

  For the ten-thousandth time since Saturday morning, she looked at the color photo of herself and John that had run in the society pages. Ah, but what a man. No one would blame her for falling head over heels for the guy.

  “Mystery Cowboy Lassoes Publishing Heiress,” the caption read.

  Yes, he had lassoed her, all right. Heart and soul. And body. Even now, in spite of everything, she felt a hot twinge of desire. She had dared to touch him in ways she had never touched a man. With him, she had felt true passion for the first time, and it was like being reborn, like Dorothy walking out of her black-and-white existence into the Technicolor world of Oz.

  Madeleine’s single foray into casual flings had left her vulnerable, shaken to the foundations of her well-ordered life. She wasn’t cut out for this, she decided.

  She just cared too damned much.

  Against her will, she closed her eyes and remembered the gallant way he’d cloaked her in his tux jacket. The delicious Irish coffee. The foot massage. Decorating the Christmas tree and being held while she wept. Making love until she wept for a totally different reason.

  In that one night she’d lived and felt more deeply than she had in a whole lifetime.

  Now she had nothing to show for it but a broken heart and a size-twelve Lucchese cowboy boot made, according to the inside label, of European goat. Goat. She shuddered.

  She shook her head. It was too ironic. Not quite as dainty as a glass slipper but every bit as ridiculous, the boot had been the only clue he had left. The housekeeper had found it under the bed on Saturday and was still giggling about it when Madeleine had left for work this morning.

  She glanced down at the photo again and in spite of herself couldn’t suppress a smile. It was funny, thinking of him dashing down to the parking garage wearing only one shoe in the middle of winter.

  She hoped he froze to death.

  She prayed he would come back to her.

  “Working hard, Miz Langston?” asked a sarcastic voice.

  That voice. In it, she heard an echo of— Then she looked up and the bubble burst. Agitated, she regarded Jack Riley in all his disreputable splendor. Battered Yankees cap. Five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning. Eyes piercing from behind thick lenses. A sweatshirt with the slogan I Put the FUN in DysFUNctional.

  For no apparent reason, she felt her face flush scarlet. “I didn’t hear you knock, Mr. Riley.”

  “I didn’t knock.” One side of his mouth lifted in a taunting smile as his attention wandered to the desk. “Didn’t know there was anything to interrupt.”

  Mortified, she moved to snatch the society-page photo from her desk. He slapped his hand down on the paper.

  He stood close to the desk, his weather-beaten blue jeans snaring her unwilling attention for a moment before she forced herself to glare up at him. Against her will, she felt a primal pulse of excitement. He did, she conceded, exude a certain caveman charm.

  “Madeleine,” he said in a voice as rich and suggestive as a proposition.

  “Yes?” She was flustered. He had teased her
on Friday, but this felt more like a come-on. He had never called her Madeleine before.

  He leaned forward, his posture aggressive and suggestive all at once. She braced herself. “What is it, Mr. Riley?”

  “I want you—” he moistened his lips, and she gasped “—to take me off the sewage bribery story and give it to Derek or Brad.”

  “No,” she said, plummeting to earth, hating him for his manner. “You’re the best reporter for that story.” You’re the best I have, damn you.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, putting his other hand on the surface of the desk and leaning closer still. “I guess I didn’t make myself clear. I’m not doing the sewage story.”

  “And perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, either,” she snapped. “You’re doing the story. It’s not optional.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  “You’d lose.”

  “Oh, I’m shaking,” he said. “What, you’re going to fire me?”

  She hesitated. She knew the Trib or the Times would snap him up in a minute. She wondered why he hadn’t defected to a larger paper long before.

  Hating herself for playing his game, she said, “Suppose you tell me exactly why you’re refusing that story.”

  “I don’t have time. I’ve got another story to write.” He straightened, folding his arms across his chest. His eyes seemed to grow harder and colder behind the lenses. “It’s about the Santiago Youth Center in Brooklyn. The place is being closed down because its funding got yanked.”

  He watched her so closely that she wondered if the revelation was supposed to mean something to her. “We’re a Manhattan paper,” she said simply. Idiotically.

  “You,” he said with quiet conviction, “are one hell of a piece of work, Miz Langston.” He glanced down at the paper on the desk. “But what can I expect from a woman who turns to mush over a guy in a tux and cowboy boots?”

  She shot to her feet. “Maybe you could learn a few things about personal grooming and manners, Mr. Riley.”

  He threw back his head and guffawed so loudly that people in the outer offices craned their necks to stare. And then he simply left.