by Sandra Hill
“I’m sorry,” he said, scootching her over and sitting beside her. “Let me see that.”
He forced her palm from her face and looked it over carefully, then dragged her hand to his own mouth, and placed the pad of her finger between his lips.
Her breath screeched to a halt and her nerves jangled like Christmas chimes. She’d protest, but her vocal chords decided to take a coffee break. She’d pull her hand away and slap his gorgeous face, but her mind wasn’t sending the right signals. She couldn’t even conjure up a scowl.
“Your hair is so beautiful,” he said softly, around her finger.
“Uh . . . uh . . . ” She regrouped in a few seconds, after enjoying the sensation for just a while longer. Tugging her hand back, she shot him a scorching look. “And yours looks like beavers had at it. A few years ago.”
He ran a hand through his hair and shot her a rueful grin. “I’ve been kind of busy.”
“Really?” She gave his head a once over, and tried to keep any sign of admiration out of her eyes. “Too busy terrorizing innocent citizens, hmm?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Occasionally I get lucky and catch a live one.” He had the most gorgeous chocolate-colored eyes she’d ever seen. Especially when they were crinkled in amusement.
She would have sat and stared at those eyes, that smile, if it didn’t suddenly occur to her that he was actually laughing at her. She’d tried to zap him one, and he’d found it amusing.
Annoyed because she wasn’t annoyed and she should definitely be really annoyed, she dragged her gaze from his, and attacked the cloth with a vengeance.
“You’re pretty good at that, you know.”
“At what?” she asked, not looking up.
“That fashion stuff. I don’t know much about doll things, but the ones you cleaned up are really pretty.”
The compliment zapped right at her, so much so, that she looked up. “You think so?” Then she almost bit out her tongue. She was a world-renowned fashion artist. Her dresses had graced the bodies of stars and royalty and . . . Maudeen—which was a sort of scary thought. So why his opinion—which probably meant zippo, and might even be BS—mattered, she couldn’t figure.
He nodded, smiling. “I think you’re going to make quite a few little girls happy today.”
She wiped her itchy nose on her sleeve. “Too bad I won’t be getting to see that, as I’ll probably be locked in a . . . a jail cell by then.”
Kevin had the grace to look pained at the thought. He glanced away, out the window, where snowflakes the size of small boats were falling. “Well, the thing is…,” he started, then cleared his throat. “The thing is, Betty and Maudeen and the rest of the gang seem hellbent on keeping you out of jail. So it’s a good bet you’ll get to see the results of your efforts.”
Oh, she hoped so. And not just because she’d give just about anything to avoid being forced back to a New York courtroom. She chanced a glance at Kevin, and sucked in a breath at the heat in his eyes. “That would be nice,” she choked out. “I’d like that.”
He coughed and mumbled something.
“What?” she asked.
“I said,” he replied, looking away again. “Then count on it.”
Callie stifled a smile and bent to her task again, and something that felt like a companionable silence fell between them, even as chaos reigned all around them.
“Maudeen!” Colonel Morgan barked from the front of the bus. He was busy organizing the Dear Santa Brigade letters piled in front of him, and checking off items on a clipboard.
“What?” Maudeen answered without looking up from her laptop.
“How many Raggedy Anns left in inventory?”
After a bit more clacking at keys, Maudeen answered, “Five.”
“That’s enough for our next stop,” the commander said. Then he held up his clipboard and pointed at it. “But we’ll need at least three more for the shelter in Fulton.”
As was becoming routine, Callie watched as Maudeen went to work, scouring the internet sites for stores with Raggedy Ann inventories the Brigade could raid.
It was awesome, really, this philanthropic venture. And it warmed Callie’s heart. As much as she hated the circumstances of her being forced to board this bus, she’d never forget these people, or their hard work, trying to bring as much joy as possible to people who for the most part didn’t know the meaning of the word. Callie vowed right there and then to step up her efforts in the future to try to spread joy and cheer to the down and out.
Several minutes later, Maudeen stopped typing. “We’re in trouble. There’s not a store between here and Fulton with Raggedy Anns in stock. Most are so back-ordered, they’ll be lucky to have them in by next year.”
Callie set aside the cloth in her hands and stood abruptly. “Maudeen?”
“Yes, dear?” Maudeen said distractedly, chewing on her lower lip.
“I can make them.”
“Excuse me?”
“If you get me to a K-Mart type of store, I can get the supplies and make them.” She glanced down at Kevin, then back at Maudeen. “That is, if I’m not in jail by then.”
Kevin made a choking sound.
“Oh, dear, that would be utterly lovely of you!” Maudeen responded, beaming underneath a mop of orange hair that would rival any Raggedy Ann doll.
A chorus of approving murmurs went up among the Brigade that had Callie’s heart warming with pleasure.
“You will not be in jail by then,” Emma Smith said, coming up the aisle. “Will she, Kevin?”
“No, ma’am,” Kevin said, shaking his head rapidly. “She won’t be.”
“Good boy,” Emma said, patting his cheek.
“I’ll help too,” Callie heard, and turned to see Dana standing. “I’ve got a little bit of experience with that sort of thing.”
“A little bit?” Stan said, standing also. “The woman’s awesome.” Callie felt a sudden, real kinship with all of these people. “That would be wonderful, thank you,” she said. “I’d welcome the help.”
“It’s settled then,” Maudeen chimed in. “After the next stop, we go shopping.”
Callie sat back down, unable to wipe the smile from her face as she picked up her sewing and dug back in. But she felt Kevin’s eyes boring into her, so she glanced up. “What?”
“Lady, you are something else.”
CHAPTER SIX
STAN
Wednesday morning, two days ’til Christmas Eve.
“So . . . you do this sort of thing often?” Morey Goldstein asked, leaning—leering—over the back of the seat in front of Dana, who was industriously mending doll clothes.
From his seat across the aisle, Stan glared daggers. Not five minutes ago the Brigade’s resident Lothario had been putting the moves on Callie. Now here he was, patting his thick, white locks and making fish eyes at Dana.
It wasn’t bad enough that he, Stan “The Man” Kijewski, millionaire football star and tax-paying adult, had Mrs. Smith correcting his grammar and the colonel ordering him around like one of the troops and over-sexed septuagenarian twins offering him advice on his love life. Now he had to put up with this?
Dana didn’t seem to mind. She smiled up at the old goat just as if she were glad to see him. There wasn’t even a touch of the Ice Maiden frost she used to drive him away.
“First time for me,” she said in that husky, wet-dream inducing voice of hers. “Do you do this often?”
Stan squeezed his eyes closed against the disturbing visions her words conjured. He could think of lots of things he’d like to do to her and with her, but she hadn’t invited him to try.
Not even twenty-four hours since he’d fallen on his ass in her front yard, yet already she’d taken up what threatened to be permanent residence among his most erotic fantasies. He wouldn’t have worried so much if the first one hadn’t hit him right there in her kitchen over ham and cheese sandwiches with milk.
Morey beamed and propped an elbow on the seat in front of h
er like a man settling in for a long flirtation.
“Every year,” he boasted, proudly hooking a thumb in his suspenders. “The girls and me, we’ve been doing this for a long time. Years and years!”
“Six!” yelled Emma from the front of the bus.
Morey sighed, then brightened as a new thought hit. “Mind if I join you?” He gestured to the doll clothes and sewing supplies she’d heaped on the seat beside her.
“Please do.” Dana smiled and shifted the stuff into a basket in her lap.
Morey slipped into the seat with the alacrity of a teenager. The movement of the bus didn’t seem to bother him at all, which Stan resented since he had a hell of a time getting up and down the aisle with his cane and his bad leg.
Stan scowled at the battered Barbie doll he was supposed to be cleaning. That seat by Dana had been empty an hour ago. When he’d asked if he could sit there, she’d pointedly dumped all her junk in it and said, very coolly, that she needed the room for her work. And now she offers it to that smarmy old goat?
Growling, he scrubbed at a smudge of black on the doll’s pointy bare breast. Skid Row Barbies, JD called ’em, but they were cleaning up amazingly well. Dana had shown him the first couple that Callie had dressed. The transformation was darned near unbelievable. JD’s little spitfire had worked miracles. It wasn’t hard to see why the woman was a world-famous dress designer. The little girls at the shelter would go ape-shit over them.
Not that he’d ever understood little girls or dolls, of course. Or grown-up women, for that matter.
Because he couldn’t help himself, he glanced across the aisle. Morey and Dana were schmoozing away like long lost pals.
Resentment stung him again, harder this time. Dana had scarcely said a dozen words to him since they’d climbed—well, in his case, staggered—off that snowmobile and onto the bus yesterday afternoon. The woman seemed determined to plague him.
The torment went far beyond the additional aches in his shoulder, hip, and leg from that damned wild cross-country run yesterday. Two hours with his crotch pressed against her delicious backside had been about one hour and fifty-nine minutes too long for his self-restraint. Never mind that they’d both been encased in boots, helmets, and snowsuits that made them look like Michelin men. His crotch had known exactly where it was, and it had been troubling him ever since with eager suggestions of what he ought to do about it.
If Dana had suffered similar pangs, she hadn’t given any sign of it. She’d climbed off that snowmobile as coolly as if she’d had no idea he was back there, then added insult to injury by offering to help him up.
He’d refused, of course, but not just to protect his masculine pride, as she’d assumed. No, the problem was he’d been darn near cross-eyed with mingled lust and pain. Who’d have guessed that two hours of being slammed around a Vermont mountain in weather cold enough to freeze rocks could leave you with a hard-on stiff enough to bore through wood?
Only Dana could have done it to him.
He wasn’t sure he liked that thought at all.
Frustrated, Stan scrubbed harder. The black mark on the breast was gone, but there was this smudge on its leg . . .
His fingers tightened around the doll. The thing was like Dana— slim, leggy, and busty. The difference was, he’d much rather be rubbing Dana’s leg. And her hip. And her back and belly and those incredible breasts . . .
Better not think about the breasts. He had enough problems as it was.
Thank God the doll was a brunette. But there was a blonde doll in the heap and—
It’s adoll, he told himself firmly. It’s just a doll.
But that didn’t keep him from thinking of what it would be like if it were Dana, instead.
Gritting his teeth, he poured more of the citrus cleaner on the rag and scrubbed harder.
He might shut out the erotic thoughts the doll aroused, but he couldn’t shut out Dana’s voice or the irritating good cheer of Morey’s.
“Been this way before, have you?” Morey was saying. Which was a polite, roundabout way of asking where she was from.
Dana nodded. Her hair—left free again, just the way Stan liked it—fell forward to hide her face behind a curtain of white-gold. She flipped it back, oblivious to the effect the movement had on his libido.
“I grew up near Snowdon,” she said.
“That so?” Morey might not be one to share what he knew, but he was more than happy to pry into others’ secrets Stan noted sourly. Gossipy old goose, that’s what the fellow was. When he wasn’t being a lech.
“Beerson Home for Girls, actually,” she admitted—rather reluctantly.
Dana had grown up at Beerson’s? He had to force himself to stop scrubbing the Barbie before he scrubbed the plastic right off. He tossed the brunette in the bag with the other dolls that were ready for new clothes and new hairdos, then grabbed another out of the pile. Not the blonde. A redhead this time.
“That so?” said Morey.
She nodded again. How could such pale blonde hair have so many shades of gold and yellow in it?
“George used to take some of us hiking and camping. He taught me to love the wilderness.”
“You’re a forester, Reba says?”
“Wildlife management, actually.”
Wildlife management. He could teach her a thing or two about wildlife, if she’d let him.
“Sounds interesting,” said Morey.
“Hmmm,” said Dana, concentrating on her mending.
Undeterred, Morey changed tack. “What’re you going to do at our next performance. Reba asked you, right?”
Dana nodded. Stan gritted his teeth and forced his attention onto dirt, not gold.
“I’m going to tell stories to the little children. I do that sometimes at the schools around where I live. The children seem to like it.”
What’s not to like about an hour spent listening to that voice? She could read him the Manhattan phone directory and he’d get a hard-on.
The redhead joined the bag of clean, naked Barbies. The blonde was next on the pile. Yellow-head, actually, Stan decided, studying the thing. Not blonde at all, but definitely long, leggy, and busty.
He sighed and picked up a clean rag and set to work.
“. . . especially animal tales from the Indian legends and myths. They really like those.”
“Sounds good,” said Morey. He propped his elbow on the armrest between the two seats and leaned closer. “I was thinking maybe you might like to help me out, too.”
Stan’s hand froze over the Barbie’s right buttock.
“Oh?” said Dana, not looking up from her mending.
“I was thinking maybe you and me could put on a dance show. Of course,” he added, blithely ignoring her start of surprise, “I’m already dancing with Maudeen, but I figured you and me, we could cut a little more modern number.” He leaned closer still. “I’m a real good dancer.”
And a good four inches shorter than Dana, damn him.
Stan blindly groped for the next doll. Two to go. He’d have to make them last because he was damned if he was going to walk away so long as Morey was there.
Dana blinked, opened her mouth, then closed it without saying a word.
“Whaddaya say?” Morey insisted, smiling wide so she got a good look at his well-polished dentures.
“I’m not much of a dancer, I’m afraid,” Dana said apologetically, just as if she really were sorry.
I could teach you, Stan thought, then scowled when he remembered that he still had a hard time walking.
“Oh,” said Morey, clearly disappointed.
Stan’s annoyance changed to sympathy. He knew exactly how the old fart felt.
As if sensing Stan’s change in mood, Morey glanced his way, then leaned across the aisle. “So, what are you going to do for the show?”
Stan kept his attention on the doll. “Nothing.”
Morey frowned. “You gotta do something. Everyone does.”
“Not me.” Damned i
f he was going to admit that the only thing he’d ever done well was play football, and now he couldn’t even do that.
Morey’s frown deepened. “Reba won’t like that.” That in the tone of impending doom.
“Reba understood. I already explained it to her.” He knew he sounded surly and, maybe, just a bit childish, but Reba’s request had struck a raw nerve.
The question of what he was going to do with the rest of his life now that football was no longer an option had been troubling him for months. He’d had some offers to coach from a couple of NFL teams, but that route didn’t really appeal to him. He loved football, but it was the physical game itself that drew him, not the more intellectual side that coaching represented.
The only other thing he’d managed well was his stock investments, but somehow he didn’t think a homeless shelter was the place to be discussing tax-free annuities or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
“Why don’t you talk about football?” Dana leaned forward so she could see around Morey. “I’ll bet a lot of people would like to hear about some of your games.”
“Yeah, right,” Stan mumbled. That red smudge on the doll’s knee was never going to come out.
“No, seriously,” Dana urged. She put down her mending. “Tell them about the game with Dallas in ’97. You know, the one where you played with that cracked rib.”
“You played with a cracked rib?” Morey asked with a look that said he thought that was the craziest thing he’d ever heard.
Stan shrugged. “Happens a lot. Guys play with cracked bones, strapped shoulders, sore muscles. You don’t play football if you can’t stand pain. Not the way the pros play it, anyway.”
“But a cracked rib?” Morey insisted.
“Or how about that game with the Packers when the Typhoons were down twenty-two points in the fourth quarter and you had three long touchdown passes and a two-point conversion to force the game into overtime and a win? I know they’d like to hear about that!”
Stan and Morey both stared at her as though they weren’t sure they were hearing right.