A Bride For Saint Nick

by Carole Buck

  The scars, he thought instantly, mentally cursing the carelessness bred by years of living alone. He’d forgotten about the scars on his shoulders and right arm.

  “Andy—” he began, his voice thickening with concern. What if his son was repulsed by what he was seeing?

  “Do your hairs itch you, John?” the little boy asked, cocking his head to one side and wrinkling his nose.

  It took John a moment to realize what the boy was referring to. He glanced down at his chest. “Uh, no,” he replied with a hint of awkwardness. “Not particularly.”

  “I think Bryan’s daddy’s hairs itch him. He scratches a lot. He has more than you on his chest, though. And whole bunches on his back and arms. Last summer he taked off his shirt when he was mowin’ their lawn and it was like he had on a sweater underneath.”

  “Different men have different amounts of hair, Andy.”

  The little boy nodded knowingly. “Like on their heads. Bryan’s daddy doesn’t have many hairs on his. It’s kind of bald. He scratches it, too, sometimes. The bald part, I mean.”

  “I…see.”

  Andy got to his bunny-slippered feet, tomahawk still in hand. He frowned down at himself and sighed. “My chest is bald.”

  John controlled a smile. “It won’t always be, buddy.”

  “It won’t?”

  The uncertain tone of the question made John hesitate. Adults he could handle, he reflected. Manipulate. Control. But an innocent little kid? Man, oh, man. He was working without a net here, psychologically speaking. What if he inadvertently said something that screwed up his son for life?

  “Probably not, buddy,” he responded after a moment, retrieving his shirt and putting it on. “Little boys get hair on their chests as they grow up.”

  “Really?” Andy lifted his eyes, his expression intrigued. And trusting. Oh, God. So trusting. As though he believed that anything John Gulliver told him had to be true.

  “Yes, really.” John debated whether he should detail any of the other physiological changes that went with maturity. He decided that discretion might be the better part of valor in this instance. While he didn’t want to be accused of holding anything back, he also felt that there were some facts of life a preschooler might not be prepared to hear.

  “Hairs like you have?” his young companion pressed.

  “More or less.”

  “When?”

  “When you’re fourteen. Or fifteen. Sixteen, maybe. It depends.”

  Andy took a few seconds to mull this over, then asked in a tentative voice, “Will it hurt?”

  “Growing hairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not at all. It’s a very natural thing. It happens to all us guys.”

  Andy’s eyes brightened. He puffed up a bit, clearly thrilled to be considered a guy. “But not to girls.”

  “Definitely not to girls,” John concurred, releasing the smile he’d previously suppressed. He felt pretty smug. Invoking male solidarity had been a smart thing to do, he told himself.

  “How come?”

  The smile faded. So did the inclination toward selfcongratulation. John swallowed. “How come…girls don’t get hairs on their, uh, chests?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well—”

  “Is it cuz they get other stuff there?”

  “That’s—ahem—part of the reason, Andy.” John felt himself start to flush like a hormonally-challenged schoolboy. He braced himself for a request for a description of the “other stuff” in question. Or worse, the offer of one.

  “It’s private stuff,” Andy asserted confidently. “What girls get on their chests, I mean.”

  “Very private.” John shifted his stance uneasily, suddenly remembering the ploy Leigh had used to divert their son from the subject of her handgun ownership. The food feint had worked once. Maybe it would work again. It was certainly worth a try.

  “Mommy says girls have—”

  “Are you hungry, buddy?”

  Andy blinked, plainly startled by the interruption but not visibly offended by it. After a moment he asked, “You mean, like, for breakfast?”

  “Exactly.” The boy could have declared himself starving for pickled pigs feet or a hot fudge sundae, for all John cared at this moment. He just wanted to put an end to this discussion of gender differences. “Are you?”

  “Well…yeah. Sure.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You’re hungry for breakfast?”

  “Very.”

  Andy cocked his head and twiddled with the beads on his tomahawk, a mischievous gleam of calculation entering his blue-gray eyes. An uh-oh prickle of apprehension skittered up John’s spine. He quickly assured himself that whatever was on his son’s clever mind, it had to be less unnerving than a discussion of the physiological differences between male and female.

  “I know,” the little boy announced triumphantly, flashing his dimples. “Let’s make pancakes!”

  Leigh surfaced from slumber with a drowsy yawn and a long, luxurious stretch. She felt strangely at peace with herself. As though she’d made some sort of critically important decision as she’d slept.

  The storm must have blown itself out, she decided, noting the lambent sunshine filtering through the cracks in the window shades. At the very least, the wind had died away.

  She rolled over, focusing dreamily on the face of her bedside clock. A quarter past nine, it told her. What a nice time of—

  A quarter past nine!

  Leigh stiffened, staring at the digital readout in disbelief. It had to be wrong. She never slept this late! Even if she’d been inclined to laze around, Andy was always up and—

  Oh, no.

  Andy.

  She sat up, swiping a handful of hair back from her face. Her gaze slewed toward her bedroom door. It had been closed when she’d gone to sleep. She was positive of that. Now it was partially open. Which could only mean that someone must haveOh. Oh, God.

  The floodgates of memory gave way. The events of the previous evening sluiced through Leigh’s brain and stimulated her body into action.

  She flung aside the bedclothes and practically hurtled off the mattress. The room’s hardwood floor was freezing against the soles of her bare feet but she didn’t care.

  Grabbing her robe from the foot of the bed, Leigh dashed out into the hall. A quick glance told her that the door to her son’s room was wide open. Heart pounding, she hurried to the stairs.

  “Andy?” she called urgently as she descended. “Sweetie, are you down here?”

  A crash of cutlery from the kitchen arrested her headlong flight. She froze midway down the staircase, one hand spasming on the banister, the other rising to the base of her throat. What in the name of—

  And then she smelled it. The slightly acrid scent teased her nostrils for a second or two before her emotion-roiled brain recognized what it signified.

  Someone was cooking—or perhaps that should be overcooking—one of her son’s “most favoritest” foods in the world.

  The door to the kitchen swung open. A moment later Andy materialized at the foot of the stairs. He was clutching a spatula as though it were his treasured tomahawk. There was a purple smear on his chin. His pajama top was dusted with flour and dotted with—Lord! Were those shreds of potato? A piece of eggshell ornamented the toe of his right bunny slipper. What the brown gunky stuff dribbled on the ears of the left one was, Leigh didn’t dare speculate.

  “Hi, Mommy,” her son said, beaming up at her. “Guess what me and John are makin’?”

  “We got a little carried away,” John conceded with an awkward gesture when he finally found his voice.

  The unwitting intimacy of Leigh’s appearance—the tousled hair, the sleep-flushed cheeks, the bare feet—had knocked him for a loop. And the robe she was wearing! Never mind that its fuzzy, powder-blue bulk covered her primly from ankle to throat. The garment made her look so sexily cuddlesome that it was all he could do not to cross to where she was standing and gather h
er into his arms.

  “So I noticed.” The response was as dry as unbuttered toast.

  He’d never seen Suzanne Whitney in a morning-after situation, John realized with a jolt, trying not to stare. She’d been too shy to spend an entire night in Saint Nick’s apartment. And he—Well, he’d felt too guilty about too many aspects of their illicit affair to sleep over at hers.

  He’d seen her in a nightgown only once. It had been an exquisite piece of lingerie, a shimmering sluice of ivory silk that had clung to the curves of her beautiful breasts and teased against the provocative cleft between her thighs. He’d given it to her three nights before Nicholas Marchand had been killed. While she’d been enchanted by the garment’s fragile beauty from the moment she opened the tissue-lined box in which it had been packed, he’d had to pressure her into accepting it. Getting her to try it on once that had been accomplished had required a more delicately seductive form of persuasion. Likewise, the process of getting her to take it off.

  Which wasn’t to suggest that he’d regretted the effort. Quite the contrary. And if truth be told, part of the pleasure he’d experienced had stemmed from his belief that Suzanne had very much enjoyed his method of coaxing her into acquiesence.

  Although trauma had blunted his ability to recall many specifics, John had the vague impression that on the evening of his supposed death, Saint Nick had been heading to his lover’s apartment expecting to find her wearing nothing but his blatantly sensual gift and a spritz of the delicately floral perfume she favored. He harbored an equally nebulous notion that this expectation had been based on something Suzanne had said in a telephone call.

  “We been ‘sperry-menting, Mommy,” Andy volunteered in a cheery tone.

  “Experimenting?” Leigh repeated, arching an eyebrow. John winced as he watched her glance around. Her cream-andyellow kitchen had been tidy enough for a photo shoot when he and Andy had set out to make themselves breakfast. It was now…Well, the phrase “disaster area” suggested itself rather strongly. He hadn’t really noticed how messy he’d allowed things to get. He’d been too busy enjoying himself.

  “We had to,” his partner in culinary misadventure blithely explained. “You forgetted to buy maple syrup the last time you goed grocery shoppin’.”

  “This is my fault?” Although the query was ostensibly directed at her son, Leigh’s eyes were focused on John.

  “We, uh, needed something to put on our pancakes,” he offered after a fractional pause, trying not to let his gaze drift downward. He also tried not to speculate about what—if anything—Leigh had on beneath her robe. The thought of that fuzzy blue fabric rubbing against bare skin had a decidedly unsettling effect on his pulse rate. “So we…improvised.”

  “We did tests.” Andy waved the greasy spatula he was holding, indicating the motley collection of jars, boxes, bags, bowls and plates that was spread out on the kitchen counters. “To see what tasted the goodest.”

  “You put grape jelly, canned corn and pickle relish on pancakes?”

  “Not all together, Mommy.” A giggle dismissed the suggestion as silly. “The pickle relish was yucky, but that was like a joke. Nonna P.’s s’ghetti sauce, too. ‘Specially since it was cold. And the corn we put in, not on. We dumped some in the batter stuff before we cooked it. That was John’s idea.”

  “I…see.”

  “So was the crispy pancake with shredded-up potato John’s idea, I mean. I didn’t want to eat it at first, but he said I should hold my nose and take a bite and I did. It was pretty good. Then I let go of my nose and taked another bite and it was very good. Sort of like smooshed-up Tater Tots. I ate it all.” Andy waved the spatula again. “We can cook you one if you want.”

  “Well—”

  “Oh! Oh! Wait!” Andy did an excited little jig, evidently recalling something he had to share right then or burst. “Did you know there’s a kind of pancake you can set on fire?”

  John groaned inwardly. He’d forgotten that he’d made a passing reference to crepes Suzette early on in the proceedings. He’d been so damned eager to hold his son’s interest—so desperate to impress him—that he’d yammered on like MarcyAnne Gregg. He wanted to kick himself. What kind of idiot talked about flambéed desserts in front of not-yet-five-yearold?

  Accusing blue eyes slammed into defensive brown ones.

  “You didn’t—”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Nothing!” Leigh and John blurted out simultaneously.

  Andy’s artless gaze ping-ponged back and forth between the two adults for several seconds. “Oh,” he eventually said, shrugging his small shoulders. “Okay. What about pancakes with teeny chocolate chips, extra-crunchy peanut butter and melted marshmallows, Mommy? I ‘vented them all by myself.”

  John watched Leigh turn back to his—their—son, her mouth curving into a slightly strained but still-lovely smile. “Pancakes with teeny chocolate chips, extra-crunchy peanut butter and melted marshmallows?” she repeated. “Why, honey, that sounds…delicious.”

  The hours that followed were full of light and laughter and, it seemed to John, the promise of a loving future.

  To the casual observer, nothing much happened. To John, everything that occurred was freighted with tender significance.

  The kitchen was eventually cleaned up. Andy got around to trading his food-stained pajamas for a spanking-fresh sweatshirt and a pair of jeans. Leigh shed her absurdly alluring bathrobe for a loose-fitting sweater and trim corduroy slacks.

  Although his hostess protested that it really wasn’t necessary, John kept his pledge and dug out her driveway. That he ruined a very good pair of leather shoes doing so bothered him very little. That the task took twice as long as it needed to because Andy insisted on helping troubled him even less.

  He and his son were just heading in for a late lunch when Wesley Warren pulled up behind his moribund rental car in a tow truck.

  “Why don’t you go along without me, buddy,” John said quietly, thrusting his hands into his pockets.

  “Naw,” Andy replied, waving enthusiastically at the man in the truck. “That’s okay.”

  “Your mom’s got the food ready.”

  “She won’t mind. She likes Mr. Warren. Me, too. Last time we were at his garage, he let me hold a wrench for him. And squirt some oil on this squeaky thing. Mommy said he fixed our station wagon good as new, even though it’s sort of old.”

  “That’s terrific,” John declared evenly, lying through his teeth. “I still think you should go inside.”

  “But, John-”

  “Go.”

  Although clearly disgruntled, Andy did.

  John walked toward Wesley Warren slowly, taking his measure, preparing himself for…whatever.

  “Busy day?” he asked, his breath condensing in the chilly air.

  “Don’t usually work Sundays,” the other man replied, easing back the hood of his parka. “Folks started callin’ me at home ‘bout six this morning, though, ‘cause of the storm. Couldn’t very well say no. Told Ms. McKay when she phoned it’d be a while ‘fore I got out here. First come, first served.”

  John nodded, wondering about the formality of the reference to Leigh. He remembered that Warren had called Deirdre Bleeker “Dee.”

  “Had car trouble last night, did you?” The mechanic looked from John to John’s rental vehicle and back again.

  “Yeah.”

  “Convenient.”

  You son of a—

  “No,” he said. “Not very.”

  “See you stayed over.”

  John stiffened, torn between a desire to stake a public claim on Leigh and the recognition that doing so would likely damage her reputation. Small-town gossip could be a very nasty thing. “Downstairs. On the sofa,” he finally clarified, holding the other man’s gaze, biting off the words. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  An emotion he couldn’t put a name to flickered through the depths of Wesley Warren�
��s hazel eyes. It might have been jealousy. “Lot of people ‘round here are fond of Ms. McKay,” the former military man observed after a moment. “Her little boy, too. Wouldn’t like ‘em to get…hurt.”

  Nicholas Marchand’s instincts—predatory, possessive-stirred within the man who’d lived by them for eighteen pressure-filled months. “Neither would I, friend,” he responded, his voice carrying a mix of razor and rasp. “Neither…would…I.”

  Chapter 8

  Monday turned out to be an unusually slow day in Leigh’s bookstore. Although the lack of business boded ill for her bottom line, she was grateful for the respite. She knew that she was too preoccupied with thoughts of John Gulliver and the time they’d spent together to deal effectively with customers.

  What she didn’t realize until late in the afternoon was that her distracted mental state had kept her from noticing that her assistant was very upset about something. She experienced a rush of guilt. Although Dee could be prickly to the point of unpleasantness at times, Leigh genuinely cared about her.

  Her admiration for Deirdre Bleeker’s fight to break with a sordid past and begin a clean new life ran deeper than she could ever fully express. She saw a number of parallels in their situations. She also recognized that while her fresh start had been organized and underwritten by the government, her assistant had been forced to scrabble for a second chance unaided.

  Which wasn’t to imply that Deirdre Bleeker would have found it easy to operate on any other than solitary and suspicious terms. Based on everything she’d gleaned about Dee, Leigh suspected that she would have rejected any and all offers of help.

  “Why did you give me this job?” the redhead had stormed into Leigh’s office and demanded about a month after she’d begun working at the bookstore.

  “I didn’t ‘give’ you anything,” Leigh had replied quietly. She’d had a feeling this kind of confrontation was brewing and she’d tried to prepare herself for it. “You earned it. You were the best applicant.”

  “Oh, right.” A sneer. “A junkie-whore convict.”