by Jule McBride
“The only jogging I’d like to see you do is in sweatpants. And of course—” She shot him an innocent smile. “You’d be running far away from me.”
“Still convinced I’m a bad guy?”
“More than ever.”
“If I’m already condemned, then I’ve got nothing to lose.” He swiftly pulled her against him and delivered a fast, wet kiss. Then he tilted his head and looked into her eyes again. “How was that for bad?”
Her glistening lips almost curled into a smile. “Pretty bad,” she conceded softly.
She’s giving in as surely as if she’d cried uncle. He chuckled. “I can get worse.”
“I’m well aware of that,” she said throatily, a deep flush now spreading over her features.
“Not as aware as you could be.”
Her jaw clenched and her eyes turned cold. She all but leapt back a pace. “I don’t want you taking off with my daughter again.”
“She’s my daughter, too.”
“Not yet.”
Santa leaned against the water fountain. “She always has been my daughter, and she always will be my daughter,” he said, wishing he didn’t think of taking Cyn to bed every time he looked at her. “She doesn’t become my daughter simply because you say so.”
But when would it all come true? Would there really be a day when Amanda would fly into his arms, calling him Daddy? He could easily open a business in the city and find an apartment. He’d decorate a room for Amanda that would be every bit as enticingly little girlish as her room at Cyn’s.
Finally Cyn sighed. “Now that your case is solved, I assume you’ll be moving out of my apartment.”
Didn’t Cyn—in some small part of herself—want him to stay? Wasn’t she having occasional fantasies about the two of them getting together and parenting Amanda? He guessed not.
“Well, are you?”
“You seem to have forgotten something.” He drew an envelope from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and held it up for her to see.
“I—I thought,” she stammered. Was it his imagination or did her gaze really flit to his as if she wanted his support again? “I thought Clayton was the one who—”
“Clayton didn’t leave the typewritten note,” Santa said.
Her eyes darted down the hallway as if seeking the culprit. “Who left it?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned closer to her. “But you can count on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That I’ll be staying at your apartment until I find out.”
* * *
CYN MANAGED TO AVOID Santa through the afternoon promotion and dinner. When they’d finally gotten home, she’d gone to the one place where Santa wouldn’t follow—at least not in the early evening—her bedroom. Now she felt trapped.
Why should I be stuck here while he and Amanda watch movies? she fumed, momentarily forgetting that she was in self-exile. It was nearly Amanda’s bedtime, which meant she’d been cooped up for hours. The longer she’d sat on the edge of her bed, the more she thought of things she needed to do.
If it weren’t for Santa, she would be cleaning, baking, wrapping presents and planning a menu for Christmas morning brunch. She could read her magazines, which were on an end table in the den. She, not Santa, would be cuddling with Amanda on the sofa, watching videotapes.
“I can’t live like this,” she muttered. She got up, opened her door, then headed down the hall. I’m not going to vanish simply because he insists on being here. I’ll just sit down, pretty as you please, and watch television with my daughter! Unfortunately, when she reached the den, a tape was rewinding.
“Beauty and the Beast is over, Mommy,” Amanda said.
Cyn’s gaze drifted from her daughter to Santa. “Oh,” she said wryly, “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
Cyn did a double take, just as Santa drawled, “I take it I’m the beast and Amanda’s the beauty?”
“Boy, aren’t you quick.” She had to fight to keep her voice light, since she couldn’t take her eyes from him. He was wearing a white hooded sweatshirt and jeans. She’d never seen him in casual clothes, at least not since he’d been Jake Jackson. Throughout the day, she’d tried to remind herself that Santa had rights with regards to Amanda, but she could barely force herself to be civil, no matter how good he looked.
“Beauty and the Beast is over, Mommy,” Amanda piped in, sounding confused.
“Yes, it is, honey,” Cyn said, just as the tape stopped whirring. She crossed the room and returned it to its box, glad for the excuse to turn away from Santa. He looked as elegant as he did masculine in his suits, but his jeans left less to her imagination.
“I was a beast—” Santa’s soft voice filled the room and seemed to take the very air from it. For a second, Cyn couldn’t breathe. “But then Amanda kissed me and turned me into a prince.”
Amanda giggled. “We gotta do Aladdin now.”
“It’s nearly bedtime,” Cyn said quickly, wishing she didn’t get so nervous and anxious when she was in the same room with Santa.
“Bedtime’s not for another hour,” Santa said. He seemed well aware that she’d been hiding to avoid him. Sure she couldn’t take another second of this pins-and-needles feeling, she strode to the window and drew the curtain cords. The floor-to-ceiling curtains rattled on their rods and swept open.
“Snow!” Amanda shrieked. “It’s snow, Mommy! Snow!”
In an instant, Amanda was at her side and hugging her leg. It was coming down hard and had been for some time. At least three inches had accumulated on the ground below. Just looking at it, and touching her daughter’s shoulder, Cyn’s anxiety vanished. She felt nearly as excited as Amanda. The first real snow! “C’mon—” She lifted Amanda into her arms. “Let’s bundle up and make a snowman.”
“On our roof?” Amanda asked breathlessly. “Can we?”
“Yep.” Cyn breezed past Santa, with Amanda on her hip.
“I’ll get a carrot for the nose,” Santa called softly behind them.
Sure enough, he was waiting for them at the door. He’d put on soft-looking gloves and pulled a leather jacket over his sweatshirt. A carrot peeked from one coat pocket, and a hat and scarf from the other.
They headed to the roof and he flung open the door. The three of them stopped on the threshold and huddled together against the sudden rush of wind, as if some silent communication had passed between them.
“You just don’t wanna mess it up,” Amanda nearly whispered.
Cyn double-checked the high safety fence that enclosed the perimeter of the roof, then her gaze followed her daughter’s over the blanket of glistening, untouched snow. There were no footprints or dirt smears or slushy tracks. The old tar roof had been transformed into a winter wonderland.
“I always love the first snow,” Cyn found herself saying.
“Snow’s a magic trick,” Amanda said.
“It’s like you’ve just discovered a whole new world,” Santa said.
To hear such sweet words spoken so gruffly almost made Cyn smile. She was sure Santa was thinking of their new world. The one that was glimmering and beckoning at the edges of her consciousness...calling to her to give him another chance, and to let him be a father.
“You first, Amanda.” Cyn gave her daughter a tap on the behind.
Amanda bolted from the threshold and zigzagged through the snow with her arms outstretched, leaving a trail of pint-size footprints. When she’d nearly reached the fence, she whirled around, collapsed in the snow and waved. Cyn chuckled. Amanda looked so adorable—sitting in the snow in her ski pants and parka, with her knit hat pulled nearly all the way down to her eyes.
She glanced at Santa. He was leaning against the door frame and gazing into her face as if he’d been doing so for some time. He pushed himself off with his shoulder, stepped onto the roof, then turned and extended his hand with a flourish. “Ready?”
She smiled at his mock courtly gesture. Why couldn’t the man always be t
his charming? she wondered as she placed her mittened hand in his gloved one. Even though he’d come to take her little girl, it was difficult to stay angry. “Lead the way,” she said grandly.
He moved back a pace and she stepped over the threshold.
For a moment he merely grinned. “Bet you can’t catch me,” he whispered, leaning close.
He suddenly dropped her hand. Then he—like Amanda—flew across the roof, leaving Cyn to contemplate how his large footprints left a winding path right next to her daughter’s.
“You better watch out!” Santa yelled just as the season’s first snowball left his glove. It smashed against the door frame next to Cyn’s head.
“You better not shout!” Amanda called. She started singing the well-known Christmas carol.
Cyn wondered whether or not Santa Claus had come to town. “Well, Mr. Santa sure has,” Cyn murmured. She sucked in a breath of the harsh wintry air, wondering how things would work out.
When the next snowball broke against the door frame, Cyn took off, too. She bolted toward Santa and her daughter, flying alongside the trail of footprints they’d left in the snow, her own heels kicking up great sprays of powdery dust.
What was it about running through a first snow that made her feel so free and happy and alive? She only knew that it did. Because as she ran toward Amanda and Santa, all kinds of images flashed through her head. She thought of Eskimo kisses, and the hot chocolates they might share when they were good and cold, and of wrapping paper crinkling on Christmas morning. She thought of something else, too. Of the warmth that existed nowhere on earth—except in Anton Santa’s embrace.
Chapter Ten
Thursday, December 22, 1994
The typewriter could be anywhere.
Santa’s breath fogged the air as he took in the Rockefeller Center tree, the ice rink, then the life-size, decorative gold angels that were grouped around Rockefeller Plaza. He crossed Fifth Avenue, where adults—who were parents, just like he was now—waited in long lines in front of the windows at Saks. Their bundled-up kids clung to the red velvet queue ropes with little gloved fists; they looked inside with such wide-eyed wonder that Santa imagined their eyes might be attached by springs.
In the windows, elves busily hammered toys, a little red choo-choo train chugged along its track, and Santa Claus squeezed down a chimney. The other Santa decided to take a walk, since he had plenty of time before Too Sweet’s evening promotion, which was a caroling trip to a home for children. He ambled on down Fifth, as if he might actually find the missing typewriter on the sidewalk or on display inside the Godiva chocolate shop.
Where was it?
And who would send such a note? Santa could only hope the culprit didn’t intend to kidnap Amanda on Christmas. He’d spent all morning rifling through the employees’ drawers at Too Sweet again, analyzing the personnel files and rechecking the typewriters. The perp had to be someone who worked for the company, someone who was intimately acquainted with both the promotion schedule and Cyn and Amanda’s habits. But who?
And what am I going to get Cyn for Christmas? He paused in front of the Warner Brothers Studio Store. As a crowded, glassed-in elevator rose, he realized that a larger-than-life Superman was pushing it upward. He smiled and kept walking. Choosing an appropriate gift for Cyn was plaguing him nearly as much as finding that fool typewriter. Somewhere—in this city that had everything, including Superman to push the elevators—the appropriate gift had to exist.
It couldn’t be something too big. After all, he didn’t know whether she’d gotten him anything or not. Besides which, he hadn’t even kissed her for what felt like eternity, at least not so that she was kissing him back, which was the only kind of kiss that counted. Although they’d played in the snow like schoolkids the previous night, they sure weren’t lovers.
And yet the gift couldn’t be too small, either. Perfumes and scarves and gloves didn’t seem right. Neither did chocolates. A new blouse might be nice, but Cyn had closetsful. Her toaster oven was embarrassingly ancient, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to buy the mother of his child an appliance.
If he only knew where he and Cyn stood, then he’d automatically know what to buy. All he knew was that he had to touch her again, to kiss her and to make love to her. He could still hear her cries of pleasure as surely as if she were standing next to him on Fifth Avenue.
But could he really love her again? It was hard to tell. His feelings about her were getting all mixed up with his fantasies about having Christmas with a family. Maybe those sappy commercials they showed on television this time of year were getting to him. Every program he watched was interrupted countless times by moms, dads and kids who called relatives, opened packages and hung stockings.
It made him feel as if everyone but him was having the picture-postcard family Christmas that he’d always wanted. He’d been so far from attaining it for so long that he’d never even admitted he wanted it—until Amanda. Still, could Cyn be the right woman? He hardly believed that a child could keep an adult relationship together.
He was so lost in thought that he nearly stopped in the street, while a crush of shoppers bustled around him. When a bag swung against him, he sidled closer to the storefronts.
Great. I would come to a dead halt right in front of Tiffany’s. He stared in the window. A tiny gold pen for her appointment book? he suddenly wondered. He could have it engraved, which would make it more personal. But with what message? To Cyn. Christmas 1994. Hardly.
The door swung open. “Coming in, sir?” the doorman asked.
Santa nodded. A great whoosh of wind from the avenue propelled him inside. Pressed on by the crowd, he ambled past the gleaming glass countertops. Every dazzling jewel imaginable stared back at him, making him think briefly of The Grinch Gang. Then one particular ring captured his attention.
It was perfect. Santa didn’t know much about diamonds, but it was rectangular, set in a no-nonsense thick gold band. It looked bold. Classic. It was so simple that it made all the other rings seem overly flashy.
If Santa was going to ask Cyn to marry him someday, it was the ring he’d buy. After a moment a hand appeared beneath the glass and withdrew it. Santa felt a little piqued, as if someone had just snatched away his own personal prize.
“I do believe this is what caught your eye, sir?”
Santa glanced up.
A clerk smiled back. “She must be a very special lady, if you’re considering this one,” the man said, holding out the ring.
Santa didn’t know what to do, so he pinched the band between his thumb and finger and smiled down critically, as if “diamond buyer” were his middle name.
“Lovely suit,” the clerk continued conversationally. “Christian Dior?”
I’ve come a long way from my past and childhood, Santa suddenly thought, looking into the clerk’s eyes, which held an unmasked appreciation for the well-dressed, cosmopolitan man and potential client in front of him. Santa glanced at the ring again.
“It’s part of our Imperial collection,” the man continued. “It’s known as the Giancarlo gem because it was cut last year in Amsterdam by Giancarlo, of whom I’m sure you’ve heard.”
Santa nodded as if Giancarlo from Amsterdam were his best friend.
“It’s an absolutely flawless diamond....”
“What it would be is presumptuous of me,” Santa said flatly. But then he thoughtfully turned it one way and another, and slowly raised it to the light.
* * *
“DOES EVERYONE HAVE their music?” Analise asked as she hurried down the hall of the Harrison House, clutching a stack of song booklets.
“I’ve got mine,” Cyn called. “We’ll do ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ first.”
“Mr. Santa Claus and me gotta share,” Amanda piped in.
“Paxton?” Analise’s voice rose. “We’ve got to find Paxton because he has the sack of gifts.”
A man leaned in a recessed window at the home for children, watching and listenin
g. Santa, who was carrying Amanda, looped an arm casually around Cyn’s shoulders and headed toward him. What a happy little family they’d make, the man thought, feeling annoyed. But not for long, he assured himself. One thing had led to another, and now he had no choice but to kidnap Amanda. After all, the notes hadn’t garnered any negative press.
Still, kidnapping Amanda tonight would be impossible. There was a time when taking her would have been as simple as stealing candy from a baby. In fact, whenever the child was bored at Too Sweet, she’d often come to his office to round up stray toys. Now Anton Santa and Cynthia were sticking to her like glue.
There was definitely no way he’d get to her tonight. The many volunteers from the marketing and promotion departments filed past him. Unwittingly, most of them had sold their Too Sweet stocks to him. And who could blame them for wanting to sell? he wondered. The company wasn’t worth nearly what it had been the previous year. He’d make it a fortune, though, once it was his.
His jaw suddenly clenched when he saw Paxton kiss Analise’s cheek. The two were more intimate than usual, which was striking sheer terror into him. If they had a good heart-to-heart, his cover would blow sky-high.
Yes, time was running out, but all he needed was to strike one final blow at the company. With any luck the bad news of Amanda’s disappearance would give the papers every reason to republish the particulars of Cyn’s past, too.
Someone tugged his sleeve, and he turned.
“Hiding?” Cyn lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Playing the Grinch and trying to escape your caroling duties?”
“Me?” he joked. “Never.”
“Well, c’mon,” she said, pulling him forward. “Amanda’s waiting for you.”
“Oh, is she?” he returned, fighting to keep the irony from his voice. He only wished it were true.
* * *
“YOU CAN SING, SANTA,” Cyn said. It was almost as amazing as the fact that she’d accidentally spied him in Tiffany’s that morning. She just wished she’d been close enough to see what he’d bought. Paxton and Analise were ahead of them, heading down a long hallway and toward the stairwell. Amanda was snugly tucked between her grandparents, clutching their hands.