Once Upon a Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  “Yes, dammit!”

  She paused, staring at him, then flipped back to the page she’d been writing on. “Fine. Oh, darling,” she started reading. “I just can’t go on with—”

  “Hold it.”

  Something niggled at the back of his mind. Some…hint, some clue, some…thing hovered just on the edge of his memory. Damn. What was it?

  “Read that again.”

  “Oh, come on, Nick. A line-by-line critique? This isn’t meant to be read aloud, you know.”

  “Humor me.”

  Chloe put the pencil in her mouth, gazing up at him thoughtfully while she ran the eraser back and forth over her bottom lip. Her eyebrows dipped, as though she were trying to remember something.

  “The professor of love always gets his way,” Nick said. “It’s one of the perks of the position.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, okay.” Clearing her throat, she raised the notepad like a Shakespearean preparing for a soliloquy. “Oh, darling!” Chloe intoned, flinging one arm wide. “I just can’t go on without—”

  Moe yowled and fled from beneath the coffee table. The drama of the moment vanished along with Nick’s tip-of-the-tongue sensation. Whatever he’d almost remembered, it was gone now.

  “Never mind. Let’s start over.”

  “Good idea.” Chloe ripped the letter they’d drafted out of her notepad. She crumpled the paper with a flash of her yellow-painted fingernails and added it to the wadded-up pyramid on the coffee table. “I never call anyone darling, anyway. Except maybe you, darling,” she added with a wink.

  There it was again. That niggling sense there was something he ought to have remembered, something…awww, the hell with it, Nick decided, setting his glasses straighter. It was probably just the strain of six months’ worth of celibacy, finally getting to him. Ever since his heartbreak over what’shername—dammit, what was her name, anyway?—he’d been spending too much time taking care of Chloe to date.

  And not enough time working on his inventions. He had to get Chloe’s love life squared away, so he could quit worrying about her and get down to business.

  “Okay,” he said in his most dog-determined voice. “Here goes. Dear Bruno—”

  “Original opening.”

  He made a face at her. “As you so succinctly put it—har, har.”

  She laughed in earnest and threw a pink-fringed pillow at him. Nick ducked. In Chloe’s house, they weren’t called “throw pillows” for nothing.

  “Pick up your pencil,” he commanded, “and get busy.”

  Dutifully, she picked up her pencil again. And balanced it on the bridge of her nose. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was trying to distract him from finishing the Bruno letter.

  “Very nice,” he deadpanned. “For a trained seal. Come on, Chloe. It’s just a simple letter.”

  The pencil rolled off. She caught it. “Yeah. With a not-so-simple message.”

  So that was it. “Well, we’ll make it simple then.”

  Nick paced to the window, thinking. Outside, Danny and Larry the Wonder Beagle played in the yard, tugging a battered blue Frisbee between them. For the past few Saturdays, Chloe had invited Danny to her place for half the day—ostensibly so his Uncle Nick could get some inventing done. Nick suspected their time together was more of a “life with kids” preview than anything else. Which was actually kind of endearing, when it came right down to it.

  Danny glanced up and waved. Nick waved back, then turned his attention to the problem at hand. “A simple letter. Simple. Okay.” Tapping his finger against his bottom lip, he said, “Dear Bruno. I’m writing to tell you that you’re going to be a father. The baby is due around Christmastime, and—”

  “Maybe I ought to tell him to sit first? That might come as kind of a shock.”

  Her voice came from the wrong direction. He looked for Chloe and found her, not on the sofa writing, but at the other end of the room, bent over Curly’s hamster cage as she refilled his water container. She leaned a little closer, and her short stretchy sky blue skirt rode up her thighs. Her toned, shapely enough-to-drive-a-guy-crazy, half-naked thighs. Thank God for power walking, Nick thought.

  I mean, get a hold of yourself, his conscience replied. So what if Chloe had on a miniskirt that left her legs almost completely bare? So what if he could just glimpse a peachy scrap of undoubtedly lacy underwear underneath it? So what if she was also wearing an oversize yellow and blue necktie-print silk shirt that was almost an exact duplicate of the one she’d worn…the one he’d unbuttoned…that night. So what?

  He could handle it.

  They were maternity clothes, he reminded himself as she put down the water and crossed the room. How sexy could they possibly be?

  Except they were. Chloe picked up Moe and cuddled the mangy orange fur ball to her chest, and suddenly Nick felt almost…jealous.

  Of a cat.

  Ridiculous.

  He had to get out of here before he lost it completely.

  She frowned and nuzzled Moe’s ears. “That’s putting it a little too simply, don’t you think so, Nick? I mean, what if poor Bruno reads it and drops dead with shock? What then, huh? I’m not trying to kill the guy, just inform him.”

  “You’ve got a point,” Nick conceded. If someone was about to tell him he was going to be a father, he’d probably want it softened up a little, too. “All right, then. How about this—dear Bruno. I hope you remember me, because—”

  “Nick!”

  “What?”

  “‘I hope you remember me’?” she mimicked, raising her eyebrows. “I’ll have you know, mister melodrama, that I am not that forgettable. Sheesh, what kind of girl do you take me for?”

  The kind of girl I could love.

  What the hell? There was something seriously wrong with him today. Nick wasn’t sure what it was, but he was pretty sure Chloe was causing it somehow. Scowling, he removed Moe from her arms, dumped the hissing armful of cat on the cushy chair beside the sofa, then grabbed Chloe’s arms.

  “Look.” He frog-marched her backward to the sofa again. “This is important. You’ve got to tell Bruno. Send him a letter. A fax, a postcard, a telegram, an e-mail. Rent a billboard or hire a blimp to broadcast it. I don’t care how you do it.” He sat her down and put the pencil in her hand and the paper on her lap. “Just do it!”

  “You forgot skywriting.”

  “Arrgh!”

  Chloe sighed. “You’re right. It is important. Important to you! Why is that, Nick? You wanna tell me that?”

  “Children should have two parents.”

  “Two loving parents,” she specified, hugging her paper and pencil to her chest. “Not just two people brought together by …by…by biology!” She flung her arm sideways, and the pencil went flying again.

  Nick ducked. “Is this your white picket fence thing again? Get over it, Chloe. Maybe this isn’t happening in a picture perfect way, but you’re having a baby. Bruno has a responsibility to you. A responsibility he can’t fulfill if he doesn’t know about it.”

  He retrieved the pencil from the leaves of a potted philodendron near the window and handed it to her.

  She tossed it aside along with her paper. “What about my responsibility?” She got up and stalked toward him. “What about my duty to provide a good home for this baby?”

  “That’s my whole point!”

  With a muttered exclamation, Chloe shoved her fingers through her hair. She turned away from him. “No. Your whole point is doing the right thing, no matter what the cost.”

  “What cost?”

  She wasn’t making any sense, and he wasn’t any closer to getting the damned letter written, either. He wasn’t going to, not if she kept pacing around the living room instead of writing. Crossing his arms, Nick gave serious consideration to super-gluing Chloe’s adorable miniskirted butt to the chair and the pencil to her hand until she got the job done.

  Again, he asked, “What cost?”

  She paused in front of the
battered antique cupboard she used for a TV stand and ran her fingertips over the framed photographs arranged on its hundred-year-old wood. It was the only area in Chloe’s house that got dusted regularly, which was saying something for a woman who considered vacuuming hand-to-dust bunny combat.

  “Nothing Nick ‘Steady’ Steadman would understand, I guess,” she said without looking at him.

  “Try me.”

  He saw her shoulders rise with the deep breath she took, then her fingers fluttered over the photograph frames again. “Duty at the cost of love. Partnership.” She picked up an old photo of her father, a young man in John F. Kennedy clothes beside a Buick. Carefully, she rubbed away a spot on the glass. “A sense of being wanted.”

  He frowned. Before he could reply, though, she put down the picture down and whirled into motion.

  “Never mind, Nick.” She breezed past him on her way to the kitchen. “I can’t explain it, and you can’t understand it, so let’s just drop it, okay?”

  Understand it? What the hell was he supposed to understand? That Chloe needed a stable family life for her child—soon—and all she could do was throw around pie-in-the-sky concepts like love and partnership and living happily ever-after?

  I want the whole fairytale ending, she’d said. White picket fence, a ring on my finger…and a man who loves me.

  Maybe she was in denial. Maybe she was hormonally impaired. Or maybe she really wasn’t crazy in love with Bruno, and that was what was behind her reluctance to contact him again. The idea perked Nick up. Fortunately, his conscience was there to keep him on the straight and narrow.

  He followed Chloe to the kitchen and stood next to her beside the open refrigerator door. She rummaged inside—probably looking for her secret stash of diet cola, Nick figured. The one he kept taking out and hiding behind Chloe’s unused ironing board. He leaned beside her, too, meaning to say something that might put them back on track to finding a solution.

  Instead, what emerged from his mouth was, “I’ve known you, what…three years now? And I never, in all that time we spent together, knew you were this naïve.”

  “It’s just orange juice!”

  He took the carton from her hand and slammed it on the countertop. “Not the juice. You. This fairytale attitude you have about the way things should be.”

  Her mouth dropped open. But only for a nanosecond.

  “Not ‘things,’ Nick.” She shut the refrigerator and leaned on it with her arms crossed. “My life. My baby’s life. But I guess you wouldn’t understand that, with your Father Knows Best upbringing and all your big plans for inventing fame and fortune.”

  “It’s not about me!”

  Chloe’s lips twisted, quivered faintly in the moment before she turned her face to the refrigerator and rested her forehead on its shiny surface. A muffled little sniff came from within the halo her arms made around her head.

  “Awww, hell.” Scrambling sideways, Nick opened a cupboard and took out a plastic Snoopy cup. He filled it with orange juice, racking his brain to figure out what he’d said to make her cry. Chloe never cried. Never.

  Except when he was around lately, it seemed.

  He took hold of her wrist, eased her arm downward, and shoved the juice in her hand. “How about if you just call up Bruno instead?” he suggested, straightening his glasses. “Maybe the letter isn’t such a good idea.”

  It sure wasn’t doing them any favors today.

  She sniffed. “You’re avoiding the issue.”

  Nick’s head started to throb.

  “No,” he said with an excess of patience, “you’re avoiding the—”

  “Being pregnant,” Chloe interrupted, turning toward him at last, “is not just some fairytale attitude of mine.”

  Though her cheeks looked blotchy and her eyes looked a little red-rimmed, her gaze met his steadily. She put down her juice and touched his clenched fist. She lifted it toward her, easing her fingers inside to open his hand.

  “Neither is this baby.” She smoothed his palm over her rounded belly. “This baby’s real, Nick.”

  He felt her shirt’s cool silk beneath his fingers, sensed the warmth of her skin penetrating the fabric. Chloe pressed his hand closer and closed her eyes. Her belly suddenly…bumped at him.

  He jerked in surprise. She held his hand in place, smiling faintly.

  “Real enough to kick.” He felt ridiculously like laughing as he realized what that funny little bulge in her belly had been. A tiny head or foot. Hell, for all he knew, it was a miniature fist waving at the big bully who’d been pestering his mama. Nick grinned.

  “Real enough to love,” Chloe murmured.

  By the time the next kick came, he knew she was right. All of a sudden, her baby was real to him, real enough to love, and there’d be no going back now.

  Nick was a goner.

  Chapter Nine

  Power walking, Chloe discovered on Thanksgiving when her eighth month of pregnancy rolled around, was pretty near impossible when your belly preceded the rest of you by a good step or two.

  Still, she and Larry kept it up—minus poor Curly, whose overexuberance kept rolling him into mud puddles, various cacti, and the occasional “doggie surprise.” With Shemp perched on her shoulder and Moe slinking along beside her, she and Larry walked, rain or shine, every day that passed between the writing of the Bruno-gram and her eighth-month obstetrician appointment. If nothing else, it helped burn off her frustration from that nitwit Griggs’ continued refusals to grant her the pet shop loan she needed.

  Now, rounding the corner that led to her and Nick’s side-by-side houses, Chloe thought of the Bruno letter they’d collaborated on. She sighed. She’d never mailed it, of course. There was no one to mail it to. Even if there had been…well, she wanted Nick and that was all there was to it. No other man would do.

  She’d tried to give him space, to let him work on the inventions that were so important to him. But no matter what she did, there he was. At her doorstep with four “extra” cartons of milk that had somehow hopped in his shopping cart when he wasn’t looking. In the baby’s room assembling the new, brightly painted crib and hanging a fairytale wallpaper border to match. On her sofa with peppermint foot massage lotion at the ready and an open book of baby names to read while he massaged her poor pregnant feet at the end of the day.

  You’d think he was the father or something.

  Ha.

  The way she longed for all that affection and extra closeness to continue was scary. Especially considering that she’d done all she could to make sure it wouldn’t continue. Why, oh why, had she ever invented Bruno?

  “Hey!” Nick called from his front porch. “Hiya, Blondie.” Grinning, he came down the steps with a handful of mail and stopped in front of her, then leaned down to pat Larry’s head.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Chloe asked, watching him murmur something in Larry’s floppy beagle ears.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “You’re actually being affectionate with one of my pets.”

  He smiled wider and went on patting, looking good enough to eat in a pair of perfectly fitted jeans and a knit sweater the color of the autumn Arizona sky. In defiance of the cooler weather, he’d pushed up his sleeves. His forearms flexed as he put his hands on his thighs and pushed upright again.

  “They can’t be all bad. You love ‘em, right?”

  At the teasing warmth in Nick’s voice, Larry thumped his tail, then nosed his way beneath Nick’s palm. His big brown eyes closed in doggie ecstasy as he was rewarded with more petting. By the time Moe crept up and started winding himself between Nick’s legs and Shemp began to moonwalk on her shoulder, seeking an opening so he could join the fun, Chloe was feeling wildly left out.

  Jealous of her pets, of all things. Geez, she was pathetic with a capital “P.”

  “Sure.” She tugged at Larry’s leash. “I’d love to get them home and get myself into a shower about now, too.”

  Nick examined her red extra-ex
tra large Arizona Wildcats sweatshirt, blue yoga pants, and sneakers. “Nah. You look good sweaty. Must be that ‘glow’ thing you pregnant women are always going on about.”

  “Gee, thanks. Maybe I should skip showers altogether and really rack up the dates.”

  “Speaking of dates, have you heard from Bruno yet?”

  Ugh. She should have seen that one coming.

  “No.” Chloe tried to dredge up an expression of disappointment. “I, ummm, guess I should have heard something by now.”

  “Especially with the videotape message we made.” Nick ducked to peel Moe away from his legs, but the cat dug his claws in the denim and hung on. “And the—ouch! Let go, you big fur ball!—photos we put in the last letter.”

  He pulled a little harder. Moe didn’t budge, only arched outward like a bow.

  “Chloe, call off your cat, will ya’?”

  Gladly. Anything to avoid discussing their various Bruno contact methods. None of which she’d actually followed through with.

  All of which had only buried her deeper in the lie.

  Much to her regret.

  Stupid, stupid Kahlúa and coffee and sympathy.

  “Come on, Moe.” She slipped her hands under Moe’s silky belly and caught hold. The cat yowled and reluctantly came free. At the same moment, Larry abandoned the ecstasy of being petted in favor of trying to lick the indigo dye out of Nick’s jeans.

  “Hey!” Nick squirmed out of the way. Larry, licking his chops with a sort of “giant Milk-Bone” gleam in his eyes, pursued him.

  Shemp, apparently spotting the perfect moment to strike, flapped toward Nick’s head.

  “Shemp! Come back!” Chloe yelled.

  Nick backed up, holding his mail on top of his head. It formed sort of an envelope runway just as Shemp swooped in for a landing. Moe jumped gracefully from her arms and slipped between the tangled length of Larry’s new leash to rub against Nick’s legs again. The cat-hair coating he’d begun laying down earlier glommed on extra well, Chloe noticed, now that Larry had been at work on the jeans, too.