His for Christmas

by Cara Colter/Michelle Douglas/Janice Lynn

  In a Santa costume, for goodness’ sake.

  How could she possibly be turned on by a man dressed in her deceased father’s treasured Santa suit? Although she loved Christmas, she wasn’t prone to Christmas fetishes. Then again, it wasn’t the suit but the man inside it lighting up her world like the most overdecorated house in the neighborhood.

  He was playing Santa as a favor to her—she had no choice but to get her feelings under control and not attack the man’s lips with hers in front of all these children.

  She gave a calm nod and told the waiting crowd, “Sorry, kids, but Santa needs to check in with his elves to make sure all the toys are being made just right.” She smiled brilliantly at the children and their parents. “We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  As expected, moans and groans greeted them from the families in the long line. Despite Dirk’s obvious need for a reprieve, she sensed his hesitation, liked him all the more for it. Still, he’d said he needed a break and she’d seen in his eyes that he really did.

  “Come on, Santa.” Smiling brightly, Abby looped her arm in a red-velvet-covered one and spoke loudly. “Follow me, and I’ll take you to where you can use your special Santa phone to call the North Pole and put in the requests for presents you’ve heard so far. There’s only two more weeks until Christmas, so they need to get started filling the orders right away.”

  Gratitude shining in his eyes, Dirk nodded, pasted on a fake smile, and waved at the crowd.

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” he mumbled under his breath while allowing her to lead him away from the masses gathered at the community center just to meet him. “This is madness. Pure commercialized madness.”

  She still couldn’t believe he’d said yes, either. Sure, he was the one man capable of delivering her Christmas wish, but long and lean Dr. Dirk Kelley playing the role of Santa to dozens of children was another matter altogether. They’d worked together long enough for her to realize kids made him uncomfortable, that he was quiet and kept to himself. Her friend and fellow nurse Danielle called him Dr. Dreamboat. Abby called him what she most wanted for Christmas, but had never said the words out loud, not even to her tabby cat, Mistletoe.

  Regardless, Dirk was doing her a huge favor and she was grateful. Smiling, she quirked a brow in his direction. “Ah, Santa, where’s your Christmas spirit?”

  He snorted. “I lost it somewhere between demands for a new computer and the kid who wanted a Mercedes-Benz.” He shook his red and white hat and white wig topped head in dismay. “What happened to kids wanting Tinkertoys and tricycles?”

  Although he pretty much echoed her earlier thoughts, Abby just shrugged. “Now, Santa, stay with the times. It’s high tech and electronics these days. You’ll have to get your elves with the program.”

  “Apparently,” he said wryly. The moment they stepped out of the main walkway of the community center and into the privacy of the employee break room where they’d left their things earlier, his broad shoulders sagged. “I’m not sure I’m going to last another hour. Christmas just isn’t my thing, Abs.”

  “Bah, humbug, Mr. Scrooge.” While trying to decide if he was serious about the Christmas comment, she gave an internal sigh at his use of his pet name for her. Did he have any idea how that sent shivers through her? That every time she heard it she was instantly taken back to being in his arms, to the first time he’d whispered the name when they’d been tangled together beneath her bedsheets? “Surely you can make it another hour.” She sighed theatrically. “Guess men of endurance are a thing of the past, too.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” he warned, grinning for real for the first time in over an hour, his eyes taking on a dangerous gleam despite his costume and obvious dislike of his role. “My endurance is just fine. Better than fine.”

  She raked her gaze over his red fur-covered body. The padding beneath the suit didn’t begin to hide the wide shoulders and abundant male charisma. Not really. Abby had caught more than one mom in line eyeing Santa as if they’d like to sit on his knee and ask for him in their Christmas stockings…If they knew Santa was none other than scrumptious Dr. Dirk Kelley, Santa would have had to beat the women off with a giant candy cane.

  Besides, thanks to the particularly rough night they’d first worked together, Abby did know all about Dirk’s endurance. If only she could forget what amazing stamina the man wielded at the tips of those magical fingers. What stamina the rest of him had delivered. Twice.

  Dirk Kelley didn’t need a sleigh and flying reindeer to take a woman to soaring heights.

  Maybe somebody should thwack her with a giant candy cane for even letting memories of that morning creep into her thoughts. Hadn’t they agreed they’d made a mistake? Memories like those could only cause her to want to sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what she’d like to find under her tree on Christmas morning.

  And that was a family.

  Kids anxiously waiting to rip into brightly colored packages.

  Aunts, uncles, cousins, parents and grandparents to fuss and carry on about everything from setting the table for Christmas morning breakfast to who was the most surprised by their gift.

  A man to share her life with, to love her, and surprise her with something special just for her. Not necessarily something expensive, just something with meaning, something from his heart.

  Like the beloved Christmas village pieces her father used to give to her mother before they’d been killed in a house fire when Abby had been seven. She wanted to experience what her parents had shared, to open a package and glance up with excitement, not at the physical gift but with the love with which it had been chosen. She wanted to see that love reflected back at her in the glow of twinkling Christmas morning lights.

  But on top of all that, she wanted Dirk.

  Abby sighed.

  Other than her very busy volunteer schedule and long work hours, Abby led a lonely life. Oh, she had friends, lots of friends, amazing friends like Danielle, but she didn’t have someone to come home to, someone to whom she was the most important person in their life, someone to love and be loved by. Only her tabby cat Mistletoe cared whether or not she came home in the mornings after working the emergency department night shift.

  Oblivious to her onset of melancholy, Dirk adjusted his belly padding, scratched at his glued-on beard. “I’ll never complain about a monkey suit again. After this getup, wearing a tuxedo will feel like a real treat.”

  Pulling herself from her unwanted self-pitying thoughts and trying not to think about how handsome Dirk would look in a tux, out of a tux, Abby focused on the here and now. She had a great life, a great job and great friends. She was a needed, productive member of society. At the moment she was needed to give downtown Philadelphia children a magical visit with Santa.

  Abby wasn’t the kind of woman to disappoint. Not when she had any say in the matter and never when it came to children and Christmas.

  “Better let me adjust your beard there, Santa.” She tugged on Dirk’s fake white beard, soothing down the coarse lifelike hair he’d ruffled with his scratching.

  Just touching him prickled her skin with goose bumps.

  Glancing everywhere but at her, he fanned his face. “Man, this thing is hot.”

  He was what was hot. Hot as a roaring fire she’d like to warm herself next to. Oh, my! Abby turned away before she had to fan her face, too.

  “You think that’s why Santa’s cheeks stay red?” She reached into the break room’s refrigerator and pulled out a cold bottle of water.

  “I thought it was from kissing all the mommies under the mistletoe,” he surprised her by saying.

  Abby blinked at him, at how the corners of his mouth hitched upward ever so slightly. Was he flirting with her?

  Laughing a bit nervously, she handed him the water. “Well, there is that.”

  Twisting off the top and taking a long swig, Dirk sagged into a chair, his blue gaze lifting to hers. “Tell me I don’t really have to go back ou
t there.”

  “You don’t have to, but you will, anyway.”

  He would, too. In the short time since he’d arrived in Philadelphia, just a couple of weeks prior to Halloween, Dirk had proved himself the type of man who didn’t shirk a commitment. Even one he so obviously regretted having made. Why had he? Guilt at what had happened between them? At his hasty retreat into “This never should have happened” immediately afterward? She’d hid her hurt. She knew she had. And she’d told herself she should be relieved—workplace romances never seemed to end well.

  “You’re right.” Even for a guy dressed like Santa Claus his sigh was a bit too melodramatic. “I will, but you owe me, Abs. Big-time. Any time. Any place. Any thing. You owe me. Take note.”

  Despite how her heart tattooed a funky beat at his unexpected words, wondering if maybe that morning haunted him, too, Abby placed her hands on her hips. Or maybe it was because of his words she felt the need to stand her ground. “I think ‘any’ is a bit too general.”

  “Nope.” He shook his Santafied head. “Any it is.”

  She sighed. How bad could owing him be? They’d both agreed falling into bed together had been a mistake, the result of a particularly bad night in the E.R. where three people had died due to trauma received in a multicar accident. Although they’d done everything medically possible, the internal injuries had been too extensive. An elderly man had suffered a heart attack and hit another car head-on. He’d died instantly, but a two-year-old girl and her mother had been alive, barely, when paramedics had rushed them into the emergency room. The mother had died within minutes, the child soon thereafter. Abby’s heart had felt ripped out by shift change. Surprisingly, Dirk had been just as devastated. It had been the only time she’d seen his E.R. physician armor crack.

  They’d ended up at her house, clinging to each other for comfort. That’s all that morning had been. Comfort sex between two normal, healthy adults who found each other attractive.

  Not that comfort sex with Dirk had been a bad thing. She supposed sex with any man of his probable experience would be fabulous. Definitely, Dirk had been fabulous. Practice made perfect, right?

  Which meant there was no way his any thing, any time, any place would have anything to do with a repeat performance. He might have been well on his way to the perfect lover, but she’d been sorely lacking in practice.

  As in a couple of not-so-perfect boyfriends.

  So why had she asked Dirk in when he’d dropped her by her house when he’d caught her crying in the elevator and insisted on driving her home? How had him walking her to her front door ended with him carrying her to her bedroom, stripping her naked, and initiating her to the joys shared between a man and a woman that up to that point she’d only believed happened in romance novels?

  “Abs?” He pulled her back to the present.

  She blinked again, hoping more fervently than every kid on Christmas Eve that he couldn’t read her thoughts.

  He pushed the gold-rimmed glasses back against the straight slant of his nose. “Do we have a deal?”

  She may as well agree. It wasn’t as if Dirk would ever really need anything from her. He was gorgeous, and despite his grumblings about having to play the role of Santa, Dirk was good-hearted, an honorable man and an excellent doctor. The physical chemistry between them kept her from being a hundred percent comfortable in his presence—how could she be comfortable when she looked at him and remembered how delicious his kisses tasted, how his naked body felt gliding against hers?

  Just thinking about him made her feel a little giddy. There was always a little extra bounce to her step on the nights her shift overlapped his emergency room duties.

  “Fine.” She met his gaze and wondered what he was up to. The man was brilliant. He was also the only Santa she had. She needed him. “For the kids. I owe you.”

  “Good,” he said, standing. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Dirk’s smile scared her. Which felt wrong. How could a smiling Santa be intimidating? Yet, as his gloved hand clasped hers, her nervous system lit up like a twinkling Christmas tree.

  Chapter Two

  FROM the moment his precious two-year-old daughter and his wife had been killed in a car accident on their way to an early-morning Christmas bargain sale, Dirk Kelley had hated Christmas.

  He’d avoided anything to do with the holiday year after year. To the point that his family had held a well-intended but unnecessary intervention at last year’s not-so-joyous festivities.

  After their unwelcome confrontation, telling him he needed to deal with Sandra and Shelby’s deaths, they’d continued to hound him, to try to set him up on dates, to beg him to live life. By early summer, he’d known he had to move away from Oak Park, where his family resided, before the next holiday season. Much to their disappointment, he’d accepted the job in Philadelphia, knowing he was far enough away to avoid holiday get-togethers and their piteous look, but not so far away that he couldn’t make it home if there was an emergency. He loved them, just couldn’t deal with the pity in their eyes, their interference in what was left of his life.

  They were wrong. He hadn’t needed the intervention. What he’d needed was for his wife and daughter to be alive, but that was impossible. He’d accepted that inevitability years ago, accepted that he had to move on with his life, and he had. But that didn’t mean he’d ever want to be involved with another woman or would welcome the month of December and all the holiday hoopla that arrived with it.

  If he could fast-forward December, he’d gladly do so. The lights, the smells, the sales, the noises, everything about the month ripped open his never-healing chest wound.

  Abby’s initial shocked expression must have mirrored his own when he’d agreed to be her Santa.

  Mortification and panic had struggled for top seat. Yet he hadn’t been able to take back his ill-fated yes. Not when the wariness she’d eyed him with since the morning after they’d met had finally disappeared, replaced with surprise and soft hazel-eyed gratitude. That look had done something to his insides. Something strange and foreign and despite knowing how difficult today was going to be, he hadn’t retracted his agreement.

  Not when doing so would disappoint Abby.

  Thank God the deed was behind him and he could put Christmas nonsense behind him, where it belonged.

  Thankfully de-Santafied, he wandered around Abby’s living room. The room had been taken hostage by Christmas Past since the last time he’d been here, two months ago. He’d swear he’d stepped into a nostalgic Christmas movie scene from a couple of decades ago.

  An ancient wreath hung over Abby’s fireplace, a slightly thinning silver garland was draped over a doorway with faded red ribbons marking each corner. A small Christmas village complete with fake glittery snow and dozens of tiny trees and villagers was set up on a white cloth-covered table, clearly set up in a place of honor beside the tree. The nine main pieces of the village looked old, expensive.

  Her live Christmas tree towered almost to the ceiling, a ceramic-faced angel’s tinsel halo mere inches from it. What a crazy tradition. Trees indoors. The entire room smelt like the pine tree—like Christmas. Smells he didn’t like. Smells that haunted him and took him to hellish places he didn’t want to go.

  There had been a Christmas tree in the waiting room of the emergency department the morning Sandra and Shelby had died. Amazing how the smell could take him back to sitting in that room, a broken man, a doctor who hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to save his baby girl and her mother.

  He walked over to the fireplace, eyeing the giant painted toy soldiers to each side, picking up a slightly worn wooden nutcracker. He shook his head, waiting for the nausea to hit him, waiting for the cold sweat to cover his skin, the grief to bring him to his knees.

  Christmas did that to him. Sure, he’d learned to bury his pain beneath what most labeled as cynicism, but that didn’t mean in private moments the past didn’t sneak up to take a stab through his armor, to chip away a
nother piece of what was left of him.

  And yet, for the first time since Sandra and Shelby’s deaths, he’d agreed to do something that fed into the whole commercialism of Christmas. All because pretty little nurse Abby Arnold had asked him. She’d lit up so brilliantly someone could stick a halo on her head and place her on top of a tree.

  He’d definitely found a piece of heaven on earth in her arms. Had found solace he hadn’t expected in the heat of her kisses.

  Solace? After the first sweep of his mouth over her lush lips, he hadn’t been seeking comfort but acting on the attraction he’d instantly felt for the pretty brunette nurse. He’d been on fire. With lust. With need. With the desire to be inside her curvy body.

  He hadn’t been remembering or forgetting. He’d been in the moment. With Abby.

  He’d wanted her the second he’d laid eyes on her, but never had he experienced such all-consuming sex as that morning. So all-consuming he’d known they couldn’t repeat it. Quite easily he could see himself getting obsessed with having her body wrapped around him, getting serious when he had no intention of ever having another serious relationship. Just look at how often he thought of Abby and they’d only had the one morning where they’d made love, twice, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.

  Letting out a slow, controlled breath, Dirk placed the nutcracker back on her mantel. Any time, any place, any thing. Why had he teased her into making such an outlandish promise? Better yet, why had he asked for what he had?

  He turned, planning to go and find Abby, to tell her he’d changed his mind and needed to go.

  A fat tabby cat in a wicker basket at the end of the sofa caught his eye. They’d been formally introduced when the cat had jumped onto the bed, waking both Dirk and Abby in the middle of the afternoon that mid-October day. The cat had been observing his perusal of the room but other than watch him with boredom the cat never moved except to close its eyes.