“It was ignorant,” Dash chimed in, blunt as always. Why use five words when three would do?
“I can’t afford to let her out of my sight,” Ethan improvised, thankful that his reasoning sounded believable.
The truth was it had never occurred to him to bring her anywhere but here. It had never entered his head to arrange for a suite at the Inn, or one of the gingerbread house replica cottages on the lake. The image of her like this—spread out on his bed, that gorgeous hair spilling over one of his pillows—had haunted him for so long that he hadn’t considered an alternative at all.
Which in retrospect was—as Dash had so succinctly put it—ignorant.
Cocoa or not, it was a risk he shouldn’t have taken. He could have just as easily taken a room alongside her at the Inn—the cottage scenario would have been more difficult—or assigned an elf to follow her. His gaze slid to Lark, who’d snuggled deeper into his mattress, and something shifted in his suddenly too-tight chest.
“Of course he couldn’t have taken her anywhere but here,” his mother said briskly, shooting Dash a scolding look. “And I don’t appreciate any of you questioning his judgment on this matter. You should be ashamed of yourselves. While I’m sure the rest of us have things we don’t like about our roles within the company—”
“Here, here,” Dash grunted, shoving his hair out of his face. “Nothing sexy about shoveling reindeer shit.”
“If I have to deal with one more disgruntled elf, I’m moving to Holland,” Belle announced with grim determination.
“The eyestrain I deal with on a day-to-day basis is hardly a cakewalk,” Cole muttered.
Taryn glanced at Belle and lifted an intrigued brow. “Why Holland?”
Belle smiled. “Because that’s where the tallest people in the world live.”
Taryn returned her grin.
“Be all of that as it may,” their mother went on determinedly. “Do any of you want to trade positions with Ethan? Be the official always-smiling-even-when-he-doesn’t-want-to face of the company? Make sure the Christmas cheer stays high enough to maintain the magick? Without it Christmas isn’t the only thing that disappears, you know. So does our way of life. Our very purpose. Can you imagine the responsibility? The pressure he’s under every year to make sure our family doesn’t fail?”
Belle’s expression had turned thoughtful and Dash’s easy grin had flatlined, leaving him unnaturally somber. Both Taryn and Cole were looking at him as though seeing him for the first time, as if he were some sort of science project under a microscope.
His father merely smiled, indicating this was a conversation he and Ethan’s mother had had before.
“And this year, in particular,” his mother went on with a significant eye roll. “Merry and Kris are in the throes of a marital crisis. Have you seen her lately?” she asked Ethan’s father as an aside. “She’s wearing hot pink lipstick and enough eyeliner to make a drag queen jealous. It’s unseemly.”
“That’s nothing,” Cole interjected. “Kris has dyed his hair black and shaved his beard.”
“And bought a new Harley,” Dash added. “I saw him on Yuletide Drive this morning. No helmet, by the way.”
His mother inhaled sharply. “Santa is breaking the law?” She shook her head. “This is much worse than I thought,” she said. She glanced at her husband. “You’re going to have to talk to him.”
His father shrugged helplessly. “I’ve tried.”
“You’ll have to try again. We can’t have a...a rogue Santa,” she finished.
Cole stroked his jaw. “Strictly speaking, it’s Belle’s job, correct?”
Belle glared at him. “Way to throw me under the bus, big brother. Appreciate it.”
“Back to the issue at hand,” his mother continued doggedly, her patience clearly wearing thin. “Ethan has this under control. I am confident in his ability and his judgment in this matter.” She leveled a look at his brothers and sister. “Be grateful that the weight of this responsibility is on his shoulders and not your own and offer assistance as needed.” She swept forward and kissed him on the cheek. “If I can do anything to help, just let me know.”
“Me, too, son,” his father added, and then the pair of them exited the room.
“You’ve always been her favorite,” Belle grumbled. She looked up. “But she’s right. I wouldn’t want your job. Give me an unhappy elf any day over the continuing survival of Christmas and our legacy.”
Dash grinned. “I’ll keep my shovel, thanks. Least I can bitch and moan when the mood strikes.”
Cole slung an arm over Taryn’s shoulder and shrugged. “I like my job. We’re here if you need us.”
He knew, but he appreciated the sentiment. “Thanks.”
“Me, too,” Dash said. “Not sure what I could do, but if you need to keep her occupied, then a tour of the farm would probably be nice. Tourists love it, and Rudolph has really been putting on a show.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Getting a bit of an ego, actually. I think having a fan club might have gone to his head.” He slapped Ethan on the shoulder, and then with one last look at Lark, he shook his head and walked away, leaving just Belle.
“So...what’s your plan?” she asked. “Aside from cocoa? I mean, I’m assuming since you hit her with a Sleeping Beauty charm she’s not here of her own volition.”
“No, she’s not.”
Belle frowned. “Eek.”
“In my defense I asked her to visit first, but she said no. Had she been cooperative I wouldn’t have had to...” He struggled to find the right word.
“Abduct her,” Belle supplied.
“Contain her,” Ethan improvised. “I can’t let her go on that show, Belle. I can’t do a rebuttal and with the success of the book, I’m already working twice as hard as I did last year. If Ophelia takes up her cause...” He shrugged. “I don’t know that I can do enough damage control to save Christmas.”
She nudged him admonishingly. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“It’s my job.”
“You make it look easy.”
He chuckled darkly and passed a hand over his face. “It’s not.”
Belle’s gaze slid to Lark. “And it’s her fault? This book she’s written?”
“It’s called The Christmas Lie, and she believes it, Belle. She’s not a nut or a fanatic. Other than her penchant for trying to ruin Christmas and by default my life, she’s actually quite nice.”
His sister’s gaze sharpened and then lit with an uncomfortable amount of understanding. “Oh, she is, is she?”
“Save it,” he told her, annoyed with himself. “I’ve been arguing with her for years and I’ve done my homework here.” He explained her history, her insistence as a child that Santa was real, that she could see ornaments move. He added that she’d even met an elf, that her family had placed her in therapy and stripped the house of any reminders of Christmas.
Belle swallowed. “Wow.”
“I know.”
“Yes, but how do you know? Did she tell you?”
Ethan hesitated. “Not exactly, but she alluded to enough of it in interviews and in her book that I was able to put the pieces together. I slipped her former therapist a little cocoa and reviewed her case history.”
His sister was thoughtful for a moment. “Do you think she was telling the truth as a child? That she could really see the magick? I mean, lots of children can see Santa, but elves? Animation? Like us?”
“It’s rare, but it happens,” he told her. “I’ve got to do some more research.”
“What do you hope to accomplish by bringing her here?”
The question startled him. “I want to keep her off the Ophelia Show, obviously.”
His sister merely smiled, stared at him for a long moment. “That’s your objective, E, but it�
�s not your end goal.”
Ethan’s heart had inexplicably started to pound and his mouth had gone bone-dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” she said with an infuriating little smile. “But I’m sure it will come to you.” She leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “And, oh, to be a fly on the wall when it does. I’ll have Cook bring up some cocoa,” she said as she turned to leave. “And Ethan?”
Still unaccountably shaken by his sister’s cryptic little comment, he started. “Yes?”
“Did you bring her any clothes? Toiletries? Even a toothbrush?”
He blinked, and then he swore.
Belle grinned and shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. I’ll call Baubles and have him put some things together for her. You’ll need to tell her that they’re hers and pack it into some luggage.”
He nodded. “Right. Yes. I’ll do that.”
“How long before the charm wears off?”
He winced as he thought about it. “Two, maybe three hours.”
She smiled. “Then you’d better get busy.”
Yes, he’d better, Ethan thought. He had to get his story straight—and the props to go along with it—if he was going to pull this off. Because cocoa or no, convincing Lark DeWynter that she was there by choice was going to be a hard sell.
And he had a lot riding on her buying it.
Chapter 6
Like a flower blossoming in the morning light, Lark awoke slowly, a feeling of contentment, of warmth and happiness, clinging to the instant smile that shaped her lips. The taste of chocolate haunted her tongue as she stretched and blinked sleepily awake...
...in a bed that wasn’t hers, in a room she didn’t recognize.
The carved mahogany canopied bed, draped in heavy royal-blue velvet, was something straight out of a fairy tale, and the room was equally opulent. A barreled ceiling gave way to watered silk, and heavy wooden paneling covered the walls. An enormous oriental rug—probably Aubusson—lay spread invitingly over the floor. Candlelight danced in sconces and firelight flickered from the massive marble fireplace against the opposite wall. The room was furnished with lots of beautiful antiques and comfortable, squashy chairs. It was gorgeous and masculine, and it had a lived-in feel. There were books and reading glasses on the table next to the window, a green silk tie slung over the arm of a chair. Wait a minute. She recognized that tie. It belonged to a man with eyes of the same color, and...
Lark sucked in a breath as she scrambled into a sitting position.
“Ah, you’re awake,” a familiar voice drawled.
Her gaze swung to the foot of the canopied bed. Ethan sat in one of the chairs flanking the massive carved fireplace—how in the hell had she missed him?—his feet propped up on a footstool, a cut-crystal tumbler of golden liquid in his hand. He wore a pair of jeans, a dark gray cable-knit sweater and an equally thick pair of gray socks on his feet. There was something about seeing him without shoes—or hell, even in jeans—that made her feel acutely off-balance.
He was formidable enough in a Tom Ford suit, but in casual wear? In what was obviously his room, in his house—which meant this had to be his bed—he was positively lethal.
And if this was indeed all of those things—his room, his house, his bed—then that meant she was in Colorado...and she had absolutely no recollection of getting there.
Lark frowned and gave her head a little shake. She had so many questions she didn’t know which one to ask first. Her memory was muddled and fuzzy, and what should have been obvious answers hovered just out of reach.
“Um... How did I get here?”
Ethan grinned. “We flew,” he said. “Honestly, Lark, I knew you’d had a little too much to drink, but I didn’t think you’d had enough to forget a cross-country flight.” He lifted a brow. “Do you want to shower before dinner? We’ve got reservations at eight.”
Too much to drink? At the bar? But she remembered leaving the bar and heading to the airport. And after? She wracked her brain as she struggled to remember.
He stood and made his way over to her, lifted a pretty silver cup from the bedside table and handed it to her. “Here,” he said. “My mother is a firm believer in cocoa and says there’s nothing a little of it can’t fix.”
Lark unthinkingly accepted the drink and took a sip, still desperately trying to make sense of things. Oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid or even terribly alarmed, but she felt like she should have been. It was weird...and, oh sweet heavens, this was the best cocoa she’d ever had in her life. It was creamy and rich—positively decadent. An immediate warmth spread through her limbs when it hit her belly.
“Mmm,” she said. “This is good.”
“I’m so glad you agreed to come out here with me,” Ethan told her. “It was the honorable thing to do, all things considered.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but the words instantly died in her throat. Truthfully, she didn’t remember agreeing to come out here with him, but since she was here and she never did anything she didn’t want to do, it only stood to reason that she had. Right? Right.
“Honorable?” She took another sip of cocoa.
“You know. Since I’m not going to get a rebuttal on the Ophelia Winslow Show, you thought it would be good for you to at least see my world and my town before launching your agenda from a platform that doesn’t offer a quid pro quo.” He smiled sincerely. “That was very fair of you. I appreciate it.”
Once again the instinct to argue arose, but it died a swift death and she nodded. It was good of her. And it was fair. But...it didn’t exactly feel right and, more importantly, it didn’t explain how she’d gotten into his bed.
“Erm...”
Seemingly anticipating her question, he smiled again, this time a little sheepishly. “You passed out,” he said. “I’ve never seen you drink that much. You were ‘celebrating,’” he added with a significant look. “I had to carry you from the plane to the car, and then carry you into the house. I suppose I could have gone a few extra steps into the next room—” he jerked his head toward a door across the room “—but it was just easier to put you here.”
Lark’s cheeks burned. He’d had to carry her? Really? Rather than being alarmed that she’d ingested enough alcohol to incapacitate and give her memory loss, irrationally, she was more irritated over not being able to remember that part. Being carried. By him. In those mouthwateringly powerful arms. Her mouth close to his neck.
Need licked through her veins, making her aware of the mattress beneath her and Ethan’s exceedingly close proximity.
His eyes suddenly darkened and dropped to her mouth. “Unless you intend to stay in here, you need to stop looking at me like that, Chickadee.”
She blinked, feeling her face warm even more. With effort, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood, forcing him to retreat a step. “My room is through there, you say?” she asked, pointing toward the closed door.
“It is. Because it was a spur-of-the-moment trip, my sister, Belle, arranged to have some clothes and toiletries delivered. If there’s anything else you need, or if something doesn’t fit correctly, let me know and I’ll take care of it.”
She blinked again, startled that she’d done something so out of character, something that had required someone else to think of her clothes and toiletries. Lark was an obsessive planner. She lived by her calendar. In fact, she’d gotten pretty anal about it, actually keeping track of her time to the point last year that she could graph it out and look at exactly how much time she’d spent working, sleeping, socializing—the woefully smallest sliver of the pie chart—and everything that fell in between. She couldn’t decide if that was efficient or pathetic. Probably both.
“Thank you,” she said, feeling even more at sea. “And thank your sister for
me, too.”
Another grin dimpled his cheek. “Oh, you’ll be able to tell her yourself. I’m sure you’ll see her around.”
“Around where?”
“Here,” he said, as though it should be obvious. “She lives here. Like I do. Like my whole family does.”
Surprise rippled through her. “You live with your family?”
“Yes. We’ve each got our own set of rooms, of course—” he gestured to his “—but we’re a tight-knit family, and the house is big enough to accommodate us all, so...” He shrugged. “It’s nice.”
Wow. She never saw her family. Her older brother had been resentful of her for ruining Christmas, and her parents had decided to homestead in Alaska right after she left for college. So much for going home for the summer. Though she’d occasionally gone to visit them over the years, they seemed entirely too nervous with her around for her to ever feel at ease. It saddened her to think about it, and she envied Ethan his close-knit family.
“You should wear the dress,” he said, startling her.
“What?”
“To dinner. We’re going to the Crystal Snowflake. It’s nice. I think you’ll like it.”
She was sure she would, but she’d pick out her own clothes out of the clothes she hadn’t picked out, thank you. She lifted her chin. “I think I know how to dress myself, Ethan.”
His smile widened and those gorgeous bright green eyes twinkled with humor. “I’m sure you do.”
Lark nodded and took another sip of her cocoa. She was strangely at peace, completely unconcerned about everything, including the fact that she’d journeyed to Colorado to stay with Ethan out of the goodness of her heart and in fairness to her upcoming visit on the Ophelia Winslow Show.
Jingle Spells Page 11