Apparently it was true. She felt her feet leave the ground, as though she were floating, while Mike’s arms grasped her shoulders, then her waist with a fervent intensity. The world spun around in a dizzying whirl, and the stars arched overhead.
“Aaaaaaabbey!” His voice echoed in her ears as they ascended quickly and just as rapidly descended.
Whomp!
With a very definite thump, she landed on the ground in an inelegant sprawl, with Mike nearby. Her long skirt was tangled in the heel of her boots, and her hat had slipped over one eye. Her bright yellow mittens were now smudged with black where she’d tried to stop her fall. The contents of her purse had escaped, and a lipstick was still skittering across the pavement.
“Are you okay, Abbey?” Mike said. “Wow, this parking lot is icy.”
Her hip ached, and her arm, she knew, was going to sport a livid bruise in the morning. But it was nothing compared to her crushed ego.
This was why she had never been a ballerina, why she had never been chosen as a cheerleader. She had all the grace of a lumbering orangutan. She looked as if she should be a dancer, with her slender build, but somewhere between her brain and her feet, the message got scrambled. She was such a klutz. Mike undoubtedly thought she was clumsy, to the point of being dangerous to those standing near her, but what worried her most was something else.
Had she really wanted Mike to kiss her? What on earth had she been thinking of? And worse, what if she hadn’t slipped? What if she had actually leaned in too far and kissed him?
He probably would have pulled away, and that would have been the end of their rapidly developing friendship.
Did he know she had been leaning in for his kiss? And if he did, did he think that she was forward, that she did this with anybody who took her to dinner? Being a recluse floating on an iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean was looking better by the minute.
❧
Mike cradled his head in his hands. He’d never been the most graceful gazelle in the herd, that was a given, but tonight he’d really blown it. He’d been about to kiss her and had lost his bearings completely
He had wanted to kiss her so badly that he’d lost whatever moral compass he had. He wasn’t the kind of fellow to just kiss a woman because she was pretty, or because he’d had a good time being with her, or anything like that. No, for him a kiss was serious business.
That is, it was until his fancy footwork took them both down in a mall parking lot. The memory made him cringe. She must think he was a total idiot, or at least a complete clumsy Charlie. The next time he was going to get carried away by the moonlight, he’d make sure he wasn’t standing on a patch of ice.
six
Abbey woke up the next morning feeling a mixture of contentment and annoyance. She had enjoyed dinner far beyond what she’d expected. It was the kind of thing she could get used to. . .as long as she had someone to eat with.
Someone like Mike? a little voice nagged.
She’d known Mike since they were children. All through their teen years, when everybody of the opposite gender was a potential love interest, she had never thought of him in that sense, and she was sure the thought of going out with her had never crossed his mind either.
Not that it mattered. Even if she were attracted to him—which she wasn’t—last night certainly made it clear that he saw her as a friend. A klutzy friend.
She mulled it over as she waited for her curling iron to heat. Although Mike had been ever-the-gentleman and helped her up, even retrieved her wayward lipstick from under a car where it had rolled and at last come to rest, he had to be wondering about her. What kind of woman would try to kiss somebody in a parking lot, then lose her balance in the process?
Could she be any more out of practice?
She hastily dismissed the thought. For one thing, she was perfectly capable of doing anything she wanted to do. If she’d wanted to make their dinner date an evening to remember, she certainly could have done so. She stood straighter and glared at her mirrored reflection. Yes, she could have knocked his proverbial socks right off.
The truth was, she had come really close. She’d knocked his hat off.
The image in the mirror glared back at her and reminded her of one important element that she was overlooking in this conversation with herself: this developing romance that she sometimes felt and sometimes didn’t was completely one-sided. Mike was only trying to be her friend.
That brought her back to the second part of her morning thoughts. It hadn’t been a date. Not even close. It had simply been two friends having dinner together.
Friends. The conversation at Golden Meadows sprang back into her mind, and for a moment Abbey felt uneasy. Maybe she—
She shook her head. No. She was fine. Just fine. All she had to do was quit mooning at the mirror like a lunatic and get going, or she was going to be an unemployed lunatic.
A light snow had fallen during the night, and while it made the main road to the mall a pleasant seasonal white, it also made it a crazy ride. The slicked roads forced her to drive slowly, because the fairly simple act of braking to a stop took at least half a block.
A blue four-wheel drive vehicle passed her, able to go faster because it had greater traction than her small car had. She glanced at it, then did a double take.
It was Mike’s car, and by the way he was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel and moving his lips, she figured he must be singing along with the radio.
She didn’t have time to react emotionally. She’d taken her eyes off the road just long enough to lose control. With a sick sensation in the base of her stomach, she tried futilely to bring her car out of its slide and back into the line of traffic.
“Don’t let me hit someone,” she said, and she didn’t worry about who she was talking to. The message was more important.
The sensation of having her car skid, the steering wheel useless in her hands, was horrible. Then she saw a child walking on the sidewalk, completely absorbed in sliding on the slick pavement, gliding along as if he were ice-skating. The scream that rose in her throat died as her car slid sideways and launched itself, neatly and totally, into a snow bank, a few yards from the little boy.
She popped open the door of her car. As completely wedged in as she was, she could get it ajar just a few inches. “Are you okay?” she called to the boy, but he continued to skate on, the muffler and hat that covered his ears apparently preventing him from hearing her.
“Thank God,” she breathed. That had been entirely too close.
The boy was all right. Now she had to get to the business of getting her car out of the snow. She drove into the snowdrift, she told herself, so logically she should be able to drive out again.
After futilely switching gears between reverse and drive, she gave up. She had two options. One, she could call the neighboring gas station to come and get her out. But who knew when they’d get there, and she could guess at how much that call would cost her. Or she could go directly to the second option. It was free. It was the shovel in her trunk.
The first challenge was getting the door open. It would only open about six inches before the snowdrift stopped it. She was thin, but not that thin.
How could she dig herself out when she was trapped inside the car?
Finally she settled on a successful combination of digging with her hand for awhile, then slamming the door open, and repeating the motion. Dig, slam. Dig, slam. Dig, slam. At last it worked, and she was able to escape from her car.
Her success was limited, however. She was still in the snow bank.
Abbey clambered across the snowdrift, wincing as a soft patch of it gave way, and her foot slid up to her knee in the icy crystals. The sharp pain from her hip as her leg turned reminded her of her elegant fall in the parking lot the night before. She opened the trunk, taking care not to drop her keys in the snow, and got the shovel.
She began digging the compressed snow from under her car. Her long scarf, which she’d purcha
sed for its color rather than its utility, was much too short and slid down from the bottom of her face and hung loosely. After the fourth time that it got caught in the shovel and nearly decapitated her, she yanked it off and threw it aside in disgust.
Her nose was running, and she was sure that her hair looked like elves lived in it. Somehow, she knew, Mike Tucker was to blame for this.
❧
Mike whistled as he raised the grating that covered the entrance to Tuck’s. He ducked under it, and as he turned the key to lower it again, he smiled to himself.
You’ve given me a good year, Lord, he prayed silently as he always did while he went about the opening process. He was in the store by himself, and it was a good time to visit with God. It wasn’t his only time of prayer, but even though it was informal, he found it to be valuable preparation for the day—and he was able to focus more clearly for evening prayers.
He continued to talk to God as he restocked the displays, started up the tills, and dusted off the countertop. The store is doing well, Grandma is settling in just fine at Golden Meadows, and my mother is adjusting to living without Dad in Arizona. Thank You for the blessings You’ve given me.
Two thoughts popped into his prayers simultaneously. The first was simple: How can I repay You? The second was complex: Watch over Abbey Jensen and touch her heart to open it for You. She needs You so much.
Even as he prayed the words, he knew what was being asked of him. The second thought was the answer to the first.
Aw, God. I meant for You to watch over her. Not me. I’m not good at that. He paused and straightened an already straight display. Here’s a suggestion: How about if I serve on another committee at church instead?
Silence. Not that he had expected God to answer him aloud. He could always feel the response in his soul. God wasn’t a bargainer, he knew that, but maybe he just hadn’t offered the right bait.
No, huh? Okay, I’ll increase my giving at church. Surely You can’t argue with that.
God didn’t argue, but that resounding emptiness stayed hollow, and Mike had to accept the truth: God wanted him to do what he could to point Abbey toward God.
He thought about it as he went through his workday. He didn’t want to get involved romantically with Abbey. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her—he did. Oh, as a friend, he hastily told himself. And he’d enjoyed their time together. But he certainly didn’t want to get involved with her as deeply as he thought God was asking him to.
Besides, he could imagine what Abbey would say if he started hanging around her, watching over her both physically and spiritually. He laughed. Are you sure about this, God?
Well, he’d give it a try. The warm, loving glow that came over him told him that this was the right thing to do.
Caring for Abbey. . . He had to admit, the thought had its appeal.
❧
Thanks to having stuck her car in the snow pile, Abbey had pulled into the parking lot with only moments to spare before Trends opened.
Usually, her lateness would have made her tense—even more so after her unfortunate experience with her car—but today she welcomed the diversion. The morning scurry to have the tills ready by the time the front gate came up was intensified, and she was glad to see an early morning crowd already window-shopping in preparation for the stores to open.
“Honey, you look like you’ve been at hard labor,” Selma said as Abbey rushed to have the store in perfect condition by opening time.
“That’s not far from the truth,” Abbey said. “A snow bank and I had a disagreement.”
Selma clucked sympathetically. “’Tis the season, that’s for sure. The roads were in pitiful shape this morning, weren’t they? I almost got to meet the fella down the street. You know I’ve been wanting to run into him sometime to introduce myself. Well, this morning I almost got my chance. In fact, I nearly ran him down when my car went out of control on an ice patch.”
They chuckled. Selma’s romantic life was a constant trial to her. She had more boyfriends than Abbey had been able to keep track of, but none of them seemed to materialize into husband material.
Selma got a sly look in her eye and asked with clearly faked casualness, “So how did it go last night?”
Abbey diverted her eyes and attentively arranged the Christmas jewelry display. “Last night? Oh, that’s right. It was fine.”
“Fine? That’s all you have to say? Fine?”
“Okay, ‘fine’ may not be the best word to describe it. It was great.”
Selma smiled happily and settled back onto the chair behind the cash register. “Now we’re talking! Did anything exciting happen?”
“As a matter of fact, it did. Something totally unexpected, and I was soooo glad.” Abbey couldn’t resist baiting Selma.
Selma’s eyes got huge. “What? What?”
Abbey took a deep breath, then said melodramatically, “We went to Ginger’s. I’d never been there before. They have good soup.”
For a moment, she thought Selma might explode. “Never mind the soup. I want details. Give me details.”
“You want details? What kind of details?”
“Boy details. Girl details.”
“There are no details,” Abbey said, bringing the conversation to an end. “The best part of the evening was the soup.”
As she walked to the front of the store, she was sure she heard Selma mutter something under her breath that sounded not very nice.
Abbey raised the gate to the store, and a handful of customers wandered in. Those early customers got her total attention, and soon the conversation with Selma was ancient history in her mind. After all, the last thing she wanted to think about today was dinner last night with Mike.
❧
“Want me to get the mail?” Selma asked awhile later. “It’s almost noon. It should be here by now.”
“Why don’t I do it, then you can take the first lunch shift,” Abbey suggested. “I could use a break, and so could you.”
“I’d argue,” Selma said, “but I wonder if part of the reason for your decision is the chance that you might meet a certain toy store owner at the mailboxes.”
Abbey didn’t answer, partially because she knew Selma was teasing, but also because her assistant was right on the mark.
The mall mailboxes were clustered at the end of a service entrance on the opposite side of the mall, and all shop owners and managers watched for the mail arrival carefully, especially this time of year, when the pace of sales picked up in the afternoon. If she didn’t get the mail now, it would be early evening before she’d have a chance to do so.
It was something all the managers knew, so between eleven-thirty and noon, they tended to cluster down there and spend a few minutes sharing quick updates—and extensive gossip.
She could hear them laughing even before turning the corner to the service entrance. From the words that floated free of the general chaotic noise, she realized that the topic of conversation had something to do with a recent decision of mall management.
She slipped through the cluster of kiosks that broke the traffic pattern—when had that fireplace mini-store gone in?—and made her way to the mailboxes. The trip usually took her under five minutes, but now, thanks to the displays the mall management had put up, she had to run an obstacle course.
The managers motioned her into their group, and one of the women handed her a flyer. “Get this,” she said to Abbey. “Honestly, what this new executive outfit won’t do!”
“I’ve heard of stupid ideas, but this takes the cake!” added another.
“What’s going on?” Abbey asked the woman who had handed her the flyer. “What have they done now?”
The woman just shook her head and threw her copy of the flyer into the nearby recycling bin. “You don’t want to know. Oh, you’ve got one of their notices. Read it for yourself. I, for one, don’t have time for this kind of nonsense. If they want to help the retailers, they could hire some extra help. But not this. The last th
ing I need is to be taken off the floor at Christmas!”
“Those people who come up with these ideas must have fruitcake for brains,” another woman chimed in.
“Or reindeer tap-dancing on their heads,” someone else agreed. “This idea is downright idiotic.”
“Careful what you say,” a man in a three-piece suit added. “Or you might end up in the slammer, er, calaboose.”
The entire group burst into raucous laughter.
Abbey looked at the flyer to see what was causing this wild reaction on the part of the other store managers.
The flyer was the traditional mall office notice, with a candy-cane striped border around the edge, and on it red letters proclaimed: “The Candy Cane Calaboose is on its way!”
Candy Cane Calaboose? What on earth was that? She remembered seeing the construction going on down the mall corridor from her store, but she hadn’t bothered to investigate further. She certainly didn’t have the time to keep up with all the little “enhancements” the mall management had added this season.
Abbey shrugged, and her flyer joined the others in the recycling bin by the mailboxes. The Candy Cane Calaboose sounded like another one of the half thought-out ideas of the mall management, and certainly nothing she had the time or energy to deal with.
It was just silly, and it certainly had nothing to do with her.
seven
The pace of Christmas sales had picked up tremendously, and Abbey felt her spirits rising to meet the challenge of the increased traffic. The weather had been cooperative—except for the snowfall that had resulted in the brief skirmish she’d had with that snow bank—and the crowds in the mall had increased as Christmas approached.
The nice part about it was that she had a reason to stay at the mall from early in the morning until late at night, and when she went home she dropped into bed, ex-hausted, and slept. For others, that might be a nightmare, but for her, it was great. She was in her element at the store. She knew the rules, she knew the way things went, and she felt good about her abilities.
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