“Not in this lifetime,” he said. “Definitely not until I know how it happened.”
“I’d rather not talk about this anymore.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late for that option. You can’t drop something like that into the conversation and then say you don’t want to talk about it. Come on, Kate. Tell me what happened.”
She could not believe she’d opened herself up for this. If she’d just kept her mouth shut... “It was Christmas Eve. You closed the building early for a private party. I worked until late afternoon, and when I went to leave, I was locked in and the security guard wasn’t at his desk in the lobby, so I went to your office looking for him. The lights went out. We bumped into each other in the dark. You said something about the mistletoe, and you kissed me. There, see? I told you it was nothing.”
“Wait a minute. I do remember the party and that somebody turned out the lights.” He paused, obviously searching his memory for further details. “Are you positive it was me?”
It wasn’t enough that he couldn’t remember, he wanted to make absolutely certain she knew he couldn’t remember. “Yes,” she said, thinking that if her blush got any brighter, Santa would be trying to hire her to help Rudolph light the way. “It was you. It was me. Now, could we please change the subject?”
“You kissed me,” Gabe said. “Well that’s...alluring.”
“Please, sir, lower your voice.” An elf—the stern-faced senior male elf, whose name tag boasted that he was Macy’s main elf—tapped him on the arm with a large candy cane. “There are children present.”
“Sorry,” Gabe said and turned again to Katherine. “Had I been drinking?” he asked, adding insult to injury. “There was some killer eggnog at that party, as I recall.”
The elf scolded Gabe with a click of his tongue. “You shouldn’t talk that way in front of the children. If you’re not careful, I’ll have to write in ‘naughty’ beside your name.”
“He’s not naughty.” Abby stopped trying to see around the rather large derriere of the woman in front of her and came to Gabe’s defense. “And you’d better be nice to him, cuz he’s a real Bo Zo.”
The man’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my! Now, that kind of language just won’t do. What if Santa had heard you say that?”
“He’s not the real Santa Claus,” Abby informed everyone within earshot...much to the elf’s dismay. “He’s just a man who was hired to dress up like Santa and listen to kids tell him what they want for Christmas.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “Besides, there’s nothin’ wrong with sayin’ Bo Zo. Our mom says it all the time.”
The elf’s stern expression swung to Katherine, and in the interest of getting out of Santa’s House alive, Katherine clapped a hand each over Abby’s and Andy’s mouths and warned all of elfdom with a rush of tightly spoken threats. “We’ve been waiting over three hours to see Santa and no one, not even Macy’s main elf, is going to kick us out of line now. Understand?”
The elf eyed her, then rather ungraciously ushered them into the gingerbread house. Katherine had to duck to get under the candy-cane doorway, and Gabe had to practically double over to get inside. The room was small, stuffy, and sparsely furnished...which wouldn’t have been all that bad if the furnishings hadn’t been a large thronelike chair and if the person occupying the chair hadn’t filled it to capacity. It could have been padding that rolled over his big black belt and pooched through the space between the chair arm and the chair seat. It could have been the costume that gave the area its musty mothball smell. But whatever the cause, the man at the center of the room—the Santa Claus they had been waiting such a long time to see—looked about as jovial as Katherine did.
She hoped, for the sake of the hundreds of kids still waiting in line, that this was just a temporary Claus, that the real Macy’s Santa was on break and would be back in a few minutes. Because this man was so obviously a fake. From the top of his fusty red velvet hat to the visible string of elastic that held his false beard in place to the scuffed toes of his black boots—lace-ups!—he was a sorry excuse for the jolly old elf.
“Ho, ho, ho!” His monotone filled the room with uncomfortable, resonating vibrations. “What’s your name, honey?” He motioned halfheartedly to Abby. “Come on over and talk to old Santa.”
“I don’t feel too good.” Andy backed up, bumping into Katherine’s knees. “I must’ve had too much hot chocolate. I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Abby was pale, but she stood her ground, staring at the shabby, red-faced Santa with wide eyes.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he repeated.
That was when Abby started screaming.
CHAPTER FIVE
THERE WERE THREE french fries left on the plate.
Gabe draped his arms across the back of the vinyl-covered booth and watched the stockpile dwindle to two as Abby captured the biggest fry between her thumb and forefinger. Fascinated, he counted to himself as she dipped her prize in the huge glob of ketchup on her plate—one, two, three dips, then a bite. One, two, three dips, and another bite. Always three dips...no more, no less...then the grand finish—a rhythmic lick of all fingers that had come into contact with either french fry or ketchup. It was the way she’d eaten every single bite of potato in her portion of the Monster Fries Plate, which was a specialty of the diner where he’d shepherded Katherine and the twins after their ignominious retreat from Santa’s House.
His observation moved to Andy, who claimed the next fry, drowned it thoroughly in the lake of ketchup that had once been his plate, then inserted the fry into his mouth and pulled it slowly out again, removing the tomato coating in one efficient collaboration of mouth and vegetable. He then repeated the process until—as best Gabe could figure—the potato was finally so mushy it disintegrated in his mouth.
By default, the last french fry belonged to Katherine, but she took so long in reaching for it that the twins began eyeing it, and her, speculatively. One false move on her part, Gabe thought, and that fry was history. But just as Andy’s hand inched forward, Katherine speared the fry with her fork, causing first Andy, then Abby, to sigh and kick back in the booth.
“I want a milk shake,” Abby said.
“Me too.” Andy smiled all around. “Strawberry.”
“You cannot still be hungry. Not after the hamburgers you just put away.” Katherine waved the fork and fry over the remains of the meal. Two pairs of blue eyes followed that french fry wherever it went.
“I am,” Andy stated for a fact. “I’m still hungry.”
“We are,” Abby agreed. “We’re hungry.”
Katherine’s eyes met Gabe’s briefly, and he tried to hold her glance with a smile, but she quickly picked up the ketchup bottle and pointed it at Andy. “Are you sure you’re feeling okay?” she asked.
Andy’s gaze fell to the table, then swept back to his mother’s with a glint of hope. “A milk shake would make my stomach feel a lot better.”
“I don’t think so. Not on top of everything else you’ve had to eat.”
“But a milk shake would glue it all together, Mom,” Abby explained solemnly. “Then he couldn’t throw up any more.”
“Yeah.” Andy nodded a vigorous agreement. “I can’t throw up if all the food’s glued together. Ain’t that right, Gabe?”
“Isn’t that right,” Katherine corrected.
“Makes perfect sense to me.” Gabe smiled winsomely, ready for the annoyed glance he was sure was headed his way.
“No milk shakes,” Katherine said, ignoring him in favor of the French fry, which she bit in two. “If you’re thirsty, drink your water.”
Andy’s lower lip protruded, while Abby crawled up onto her knees and peered over the back of the booth behind them. “Hi,” she said to the elderly couple who was sitting there. “Have you seen Santa Claus?” she asked. “I’m lookin’ for him.”
“We’ve already been to Macy’s,” Abby was continuing her one-sided conversation. “But don’t take your kids there, because he’s not the real Santa. The real Santa wouldn’t have let that elf kick us out just cuz I screamed and my brother threw up.”
Andy scrambled to his knees and joined her in conversing over the divider. “I’m the one that threw up,” he announced proudly. “I drank too much hot chocolate. What are you drinkin’? Is that a milk shake? Is it strawberry?”
“Turn around,” Katherine said, giving a tug to Abby’s sleeve and tucking in one side of Andy’s shirttail. “You’re bothering those people.”
“We’re just talkin’, Mom,” Abby protested.
“You always tell us to be nice to old people.” Andy wiggled his shoulders, pulling the shirttail free again. “We’re just havin’ good manners.”
“It’s rude to interrupt someone else’s dinner. Now turn around.” Katherine smiled apologetically at their nearest neighbors in the diner. “It’s Christmas,” she said, by way of explaining their behavior. Then she breathed a tight-lipped command to the twins. “Sit down!”
“Can we get a milk shake?”
“No. Sit. Now.”
Abby dropped her fanny onto the bench seat with a plop. “I’m thirsty,” she said on a long and very bored sigh.
“Drink your water.”
Andy slid from a kneeling position into a slump. “I don’t drink water,” he said. “Fish barf in it.”
“That’s why it’s so good for you.” Katherine made a production out of scooting the glass in front of her son. “Lots of vitamins and minerals.”
“That’s gross, Mom.” Abby scooted the glass back to the middle of the table, presumably so that her brother wouldn’t be tempted to drink fish barf. “Why can’t we have a milk shake? Gabe doesn’t mind, do ya, Gabe?”
“I mind,” Katherine answered, before he could. “And I’m your mother.”
“But he’s payin’ for it,” Abby said stubbornly. “He said he would, didn’t ya, Gabe?”
Gabe opened his mouth, only to hear Katherine say, “But he isn’t the one who’s going to have to get up with you in the middle of the night when your stomach is upset and you’re having nightmares, is he?”
Abby frowned, the wheels in her head spinning with the effort to get around that bit of mother logic.
Andy coated his finger in ketchup and popped it into his mouth. Then his eyes brightened and he pulled the finger out with a soft schlupp sound. “I got a great idea! Gabe can spend the night with us, and he can sleep in my room! Then if I get sick in the middle of the night, he’ll be there to take care of me.” He grinned across the table, as if there could be no fault found in that plan. “I sleep in the top bunk, but if you really want it, I’ll let you sleep up there tonight. It’s pretty high, though.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Gabe wondered when, exactly, that gap-toothed smile was going to lose its charm. So far, he was finding it nearly impossible to resist. “I’ve never slept in a bunk bed.”
“You wouldn’t like it,” Katherine informed him briskly. “Trust me.”
“He would too like it, wouldn’t ya, Gabe?”
“He wouldn’t like it,” Katherine said through lips drawn tight with desperation, lips that Gabe couldn’t decide if he found intriguing because he knew he’d once kissed them or because he wanted to kiss them again. “Your mother’s probably right,” he said. “I’m used to sleeping in a big bed.”
“That’s okay,” Abby said. “Mom has a big bed, don’t ya, Mom?”
“Yeah,” Andy agreed. “We can all sleep in it. That’d be cool!”
The fork, with half a french fry still attached, clanked against the table. Katherine looked at Gabe, a plea for help in her stormy gray eyes and—he wanted to believe—a few lightning flashes of awareness, as well. He would have liked to say something to distract the twins from their energetic planning and maybe win a smile of gratitude from their mother. But suddenly he couldn’t think of a single thing to say...
With a sigh, she jerked her gaze away from his. “Put on your coats,” she said to the twins. “It’s time we went home.”
“Okay, Mom.” Abby grabbed up her Toss-and-Comb Tresses Tina, the toy Gabe had bought for her in Macy’s after the incident in Santa’s House. Scrambling to her feet, she leaned over the divider into the next booth. “Gabe’s goin’ home with us tonight,” she told the couple, clearly warming to any agenda that included Gabe. “We’re all gonna sleep in the same bed!”
“Abby!” Katherine, her cheeks tinged pink, all but jumped from the booth. “Into your coat,” she said crisply, shaking out Abby’s pink parka. “Now, please.”
Gabe was on his feet an instant later, holding Andy’s purple parka as if he and Katherine had rehearsed this same drill a dozen times. “Come on, buddy,” he said. “Put your coat on.”
Grabbing his Jet Jupiter rocket ship, Andy leaped to his feet and stomped his way across the bench seat, stopping only long enough to inform the neighbors, “I gotta go. We’re in a big hurry to go to bed!”
Gabe captured Andy’s arms with the coat sleeves and pulled him out of the booth before some other guileless indiscretion could get them booted out of the restaurant. By the time he had Andy in his parka, Abby was zipped, mittened and hooded, as well, and Katherine was struggling to hold on to her daughter while putting on her own long black wool coat. “Let me help,” Gabe said, eager to have an excuse to touch the dark blond strands of hair that were about to be captured beneath her coat collar.
“Thank you,” she said, thrusting Abby’s mittened fingers into his outstretched hand. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of her.”
Abby’s smile was innocently delighted. “Hey, Gabe, do we hafta go home now? It’s barely even dark outside. Couldn’t we have some more fun?”
“More fun?” he repeated, unable to put his finger on the fun they’d apparently already had. “I think that’s a question you’ll have to ask your mom.”
“You ask her. If we ask her, she’ll say no.”
Andy tugged on Gabe’s shirtsleeve. “Can you tie this for me?” He held on to two long cords that had been pulled until the hood of his jacket puckered around his face. “But don’t tie it in a bow. Bows are for girls.”
Gabe bent to tie the requested strings and to unobtrusively loosen the hood before it cut off all circulation to the kid’s nose. “Men can be beaus,” he said.
“I don’t think so.” Andy held his chin high for easy access. “Mom, guys can’t be bows, can they?”
Katherine pulled on her gloves. “If it’s spelled b-o-w, no, a guy can’t be a bow. But it it’s spelled b-e-a-u, then yes, a guy can.”
“Well, I’m not a bow.” Andy snapped his chin downward in affirmation. “And neither is Gabe.”
“If Mom says he’s a bow, he’s a bow.” Abby tried to tuck her Tresses Tina doll into her pocket. “Mom? Is Gabe a bow?”
“I don’t know,” Katherine said, her eyes meeting his hesitantly, but with definite curiosity. “Are you someone’s beau?”
“Not at the moment.” He straightened to offer her a slow, I’m-available kind of grin. “But I’ve recently met someone who could tie me in knots without half trying.”
“Could her name be...Sheila?” Katherine asked sweetly, counteroffering what he considered to be an unreasonably self-righteous smile.
Abby tugged on his sleeve and gave him a blue-eyed gaze of the utmost gravity. “Gabe, Sheila was not a real elf. Her fingernails were blue.”
Andy looked solemnly at his rocket ship. “If I have to be a bow, can I be a bow weevil? That’s a beetle bug. And I’d rather be a beetle bug
than a bow tie.”
“It’s not that kind of bow, Andy.” Katherine bent to him, as if she were about to retie the knotted strings under his hood, but Gabe grabbed her gloved hand and drew it out of harm’s way. “And it’s a boll wee—”
“Let him be a bow weevil,” Gabe requested softly. “Because, frankly, I think trying to explain the difference between bow, beau, and a beetle bug could get very embarrassing.”
“I’ll just explain about homonyms and—”
“They already think we’re all going to sleep in the same bed together, Katherine. Let’s not introduce a whole new concept in male-female relationships just now.”
She looked straight at him, and he felt the impact of attraction all the way to his toes. He turned quickly to the kids. “Now, kiddos, what did you say you wanted to do? See the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center?”
“Yeah!” Abby jumped up and down and clapped her mittened hands. “The Christmas tree! The Christmas tree!”
Andy joined her in joyous bouncing. “The Christmas tree! We get to see the Christmas tree!”
Devious, but deadly, Gabe thought, as he anticipated Katherine’s frown and lifted his shoulder in a I’m-not-telling-them-they-can’t-see-the-tree, you-tell-them kind of shrug. Until she walked into his office yesterday, he hadn’t realized what a devious person he could be. But he was learning. Until yesterday, he’d actually believed children should be seen and not heard, but after the past few hours, he was all for letting them do his talking for him. So far, their ideas had been a lot better than his.
* * *
ABBY TIPPED HER HEAD BACK as far as it would go and looked straight up. “That’s the biggest, best Christmas tree in the whole world.”
“I could climb that thing in two seconds,” Andy decreed.
Katherine put her hand on the nylon hood to keep him from following through on that idea, and discovered Gabe’s hand there before her. He had on gloves and so did she, but still, the warmth, the unexpectedness, of the contact made her catch her breath, and she would have drawn back if he hadn’t done so first, leaving her in charge of her son...if not her pulse rate. “This is a tree, not a thing.” She kept her hand on his head, maintaining a firm control of his impulsive nature, and though her voice had half a mind to be breathless, she brought it under control, too. “And this tree is for looking at, not climbing.”
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