by Gina Wilkins
“Yes,” she admitted coolly.
“You must have really hated that.”
Ryan frowned. “This isn’t funny, Lynn. There’s obviously a malfunction with the elevator.”
Lynn smoothed her expression, though her eyes were still suspiciously bright. “Who were you stuck with last time?”
Ryan sighed. “Santa Claus,” she muttered.
Her assistant burst out laughing, abandoning her efforts to look sympathetic.
Ryan threw up her hands. “Just call the office, will you?” She stalked away, trying to look friendly as she approached a bewildered-looking customer.
“May I help you?” she asked, putting the recalcitrant elevator, her annoying assistant, Santa Claus and Max Monroe firmly out of her mind.
RYAN WAS BUSY with a customer when the children slipped in that afternoon. She didn’t realize they were there until Lynn approached her, looking harried and wringing her hands. “It’s little Kelsey,” she said. “She’s crying and we can’t get her to stop. Something about a missing doll…?”
In sudden dread, Ryan glanced toward the shelf at the front of the store. She winced when she saw the noticeably empty space there.
She put a hand on Lynn’s arm. “The dark-haired collector doll in the blue dress—do you know what happened to it?”
“I sold it late yesterday, after you’d left to take the children home,” Lynn replied, looking concerned. “A nice older man bought it—for his granddaughter, I think he said. Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” Ryan said slowly, shaking her head and trying to look reassuring. She was kicking herself mentally; she’d honestly meant to set the doll aside for Kelsey as soon as she’d returned, but there’d been several customers before closing hour and she’d forgotten. It hadn’t even crossed her mind again until now. “Take over here for a minute, will you, Lynn? I’ll go see about Kelsey.”
Lynn nodded, giving Ryan a look of sympathy.
She found Pip and Kelsey in one corner of the shop, the six-year-old weeping pitifully.
“C’mon, Kelsey, stop crying, okay? You knew somebody would buy the doll sometime,” Pip was saying as Ryan approached. “There’s lots of other dolls here to look at.”
“But I want A-Annie,” Kelsey sobbed. “She was my most fav’rite doll in the whole world.”
“We’ll find you another Annie,” Pip promised rashly, looking desperate. “Surely there’s another doll somewhere with dark hair.”
“Not like Annie,” the little girl mourned.
Ryan knelt by Kelsey’s side. “Sweetie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know the doll you liked had been sold.”
Kelsey threw herself into her arms, sniffling. She seemed to be making an effort to stop crying. Distressed by the child’s obvious heartbreak, Ryan held the little girl closely, smoothing her baby-fine hair.
“Sorry, Ryan,” Pip murmured, his cheeks flushed. “We didn’t mean to make trouble for you in your shop.”
“You aren’t a bit of trouble,” she assured him.
She turned her attention back to Kelsey. “Why don’t you pick out another doll? Any doll you want,” she said heartily. “It will be my gift to you.”
At the moment, she didn’t care if Kelsey picked the most expensive, one-of-a-kind, artist-signed doll in the place. It would be worth the cost just to put the light back into those huge, despondent blue eyes.
Kelsey sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “Thank you, Ryan,” she said politely. “But that’s okay. I don’t need a doll right now. Annie was s-special,” she added in a broken whisper.
The knife twisted a bit deeper in Ryan’s heart. She was ridiculously near tears herself.
“Then I’ll do everything I can to find you another Annie,” she said. “I’ll call the manufacturer and order another one. An identical one. You won’t be able to tell the difference. If they have another like her, of course,” she had to add, unwilling to make a promise she might not be able to keep.
“Thank you,” Kelsey said with a wan little smile. “But I don’t think there is another Annie.”
“Of course there is,” Pip said, sounding a bit impatient now. “It’s just a doll, Kelsey. Look around. There’s zillions of ’em.”
“Not like Annie,” Kelsey repeated, her lower lip protruding stubbornly.
“Hey, what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Ryan looked over Kelsey’s head to find that Max had joined them.
Just what she needed, she thought with a mental sigh. Already her pulse had started pounding again at the sight of him. Her mind filled with heated memories. She gulped.
He looked at her questioningly, motioning toward Kelsey’s tear-streaked cheeks. “Is there anything I can do?” he asked.
Pip’s face lit up. “Max! Hi!”
“Hi, Pip,” he answered, smiling and ruffling the boy’s hair. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good,” the boy replied. “Kelsey’s crying ‘cause someone bought her favorite doll.”
Max glanced toward the empty shelf. “The one with the dark hair?”
Ryan wasn’t sure how he’d known, but she nodded, still feeling guilty about the child’s bitter disappointment. “Lynn sold it while I was gone yesterday. I should have put it away.”
Pip shook his head. “It’s not your fault, Ryan. Kelsey knew the doll was for sale.”
Kelsey nodded woefully and patted Ryan’s cheek with a damp, chubby hand. “It’s okay, Ryan. I’m not mad at you,” she assured her.
That, of course, made Ryan feel even worse. She made a private vow to get on the phone immediately and try to find another doll.
“You two just get here from school?” Max asked.
Pip nodded. “We wanted to say hit to Ryan.”
“I’m sure she likes seeing you,” Max agreed. “Are you hungry? I was always hungry when I got home from school.”
“I’m sort of hungry,” Pip admitted.
Kelsey sniffed. “Me, too,” she said. “A little.”
“I’m hungry, too,” Max assured them. “Why don’t we go down to the food court and get something to eat? Then maybe we can go to the arcade and you two can teach me some new games.”
“What about homework?” Ryan asked quickly. “Do you have any, Pip?”
The boy shook his head, obviously eager to go with Max. “I don’t have any today,” he said. “I did all my work at school.”
“I don’t have any, either,” Kelsey seconded. “We don’t get much homework in first grade.”
“Let’s go, then,” Max said.
Ryan nodded. “I’ll call Mrs. Culpepper and let her know you’re here. You can leave your school things in my office. Your coats, too. You won’t need them in the arcade.”
“Those are nice coats,” Max commented, looking from the children to Ryan. “Are they new?”
“Ryan bought them for us yesterday.” Kelsey couldn’t seem to resist preening a bit in her new purple coat, her cheeks still damp from her tears.
“That was nice of her.”
“We told her she didn’t have to, but she wanted to,” Pip said.
Max glanced at Ryan before speaking to the children again. “Go put your things away and we’ll let Ryan get back to work.”
Pip and Kelsey hurried toward the office. Ryan noticed with a pang that Kelsey looked wistfully over her shoulder at the bare shelf on which “Annie” had been displayed.
She groaned. “I can’t believe I let that doll get away. I knew how much she loved it. I should have set it aside for her.”
“Ryan, stop blaming yourself. You’ve already done a great deal for those kids. More than anyone could expect from you. You can’t give her every doll in your shop, too.”
“She didn’t want every doll in the shop,” Ryan murmured, thinking of Kelsey’s polite rejection of her offer to choose any other doll she liked. “She just wanted that one.”
Max touched her shoulder. “You’re getting too involved,” he said, loo
king worried now. “I’m afraid you’re going to be hurt.”
She looked at him and thought again of the shattering kiss they’d shared in the elevator. And she wondered if he knew it wasn’t only the children with whom she was becoming too involved.
BUSINESS WAS RATHER brisk that evening, so Max took the children to their apartment, leaving Ryan to close up shop. Kelsey clung to Ryan’s waist a bit longer than usual before leaving.
Holding the little girl tightly, Ryan felt the last of her objectivity slip away. She could no longer keep any emotional distance between herself and these children. In only a few short days, they’d firmly captured her heart.
Meeting Max’s eyes over Kelsey’s head, Ryan swallowed hard, knowing that there were dangerous cracks in her defenses where he was concerned, as well.
It was after ten when she got home. She was tired and emotionally battered, but too restless to attempt sleep. She wandered about her apartment, doing a bit of unnecessary housework, her thoughts torn between her concern for the children and her memories of a stolen moment in an elevator….
The doorbell chimed through the empty rooms, startling her into dropping the dust cloth she’d held.
She glanced instinctively at her watch. Ten-thirty. No one ever called on her this late without notice. She pressed a hand to her chest, imagining all sorts of grim possibilities. Bad news about her father or her brother. Something terrible happening to Pip and Kelsey while they’d been so vulnerably alone in their apartment.
She barely remembered to ask who was there instead of jerking open the door immediately.
“It’s Max,” he called softly in answer.
She opened the door slowly. “Max?”
Had something happened to the children? He looked so grave.
His eyebrows lifted in question when she didn’t move or say anything. “May I come in?”
She stepped out of the way. “Is something wrong? Is there a problem with the children?” she couldn’t help blurting out as she closed the door behind him.
He turned to face her, shaking his head. “I’m not here about the children, Ryan. This had nothing to do with them.”
“Then why—?”
He moved a step closer to her, and she took a step back. “It’s about what happened between us earlier. In the elevator. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Her cheeks flamed. The huskiness in his voice took her back, made her remember the heat, the hunger, the ache….
“That—that was a mistake,” she said, her own voice notably unsteady.
“Was it?” He was standing close enough to touch her now. He reached out to brush her warm cheek with the knuckles of his right hand. “It didn’t feel like a mistake.”
“Max, we hardly know each other.” It was a weak point, but valid.
“What do you need to know about me before I can kiss you again?” he asked, his lips curving into a faint smile.
She frowned. “Don’t laugh at me. I’m not trying to play games with you. I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I’m not looking for an affair, or a fling, or a heavy flirtation, or anything else along those lines. I’m beyond that stage in my life.”
“Ah, yes. Your Great Plan,” he said, with just a hint of mockery underlying the words.
“I do have plans,” she insisted, holding her chin up proudly. “I explained all this the other night. Life is too short to waste time—”
“Is having fun a waste of time, Ryan?” he interrupted gently. “Is it a waste of time to be with someone who makes you smile and gives you pleasure?”
She moistened her lips. “Well…”
He did make it sound awfully tempting.
He brushed his lips across her nose. He was standing very close, pressing lightly against her. His closeness wasn’t threatening; she sensed that he would move back if she asked him to. Problem was, he felt so good against her that she didn’t want to ask.
It had been a very long time since she’d felt this way, she mused. Her eyelids became heavy as she studied Max’s handsome, smiling face. Maybe he and Lynn and Cathy were right. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have a little fun while she waited for her long-term plans to fall into place.
She placed her hands tentatively on his shoulders. “I knew you were a heartbreaker the first time I saw you,” she said rather sternly.
The corners of his eyes crinkled in that delectable manner. “Did you?”
She nodded. “I meant to keep my distance.”
He moved an inch closer, just enough to make her shiver in response. “That would have been a shame,” he murmured.
Little-boy mischief and grown-male temptation glinted in the depths of his gray-blue eyes. His lips curved into the devil’s own smile.
She was going to regret this. She just knew she would. But tonight, she simply wasn’t strong enough to resist him.
She rose on tiptoe and gave in to the almost overwhelming urge to brush her lips across that wicked smile. “Don’t break my heart, Max,” she whispered, the words escaping of their own volition.
“Don’t let me,” he advised her. Then his mouth settled firmly on hers, and whatever caution was left in her evaporated.
She wasn’t changing her plans, she told herself. She was only making a slight detour along the way. A pleasure trip, of sorts.
Something she hadn’t done in a very long time.
8
OH, MAX WAS GOOD. Much too good.
When Ryan gave an inch, he took a mile—so slickly, so smoothly that she didn’t realize what he was doing until it was too late to protest. Until she’d gone too far with him to even want to protest.
She couldn’t have said how they made it from her front door to her bedroom. Couldn’t have explained what she’d been thinking to take him there.
Maybe she wasn’t thinking. Only feeling.
And, oh, did it feel good.
She didn’t know who removed the first item of clothing, who reached first for buttons and zippers and buckles. She only knew that Max’s chest was broad and tanned and felt delectable against her breasts. That his skin tasted warm and slightly salty and utterly delicious against her lips.
She didn’t know exactly which one of them made the first move toward the bed. By that time her mind was in a whirl and her body in such a state that it was a wonder she could remember his name. Or her own, for that matter.
Max didn’t seem to be any more coherent.
He retained enough common sense to make sure there would be no unwanted consequences from their lovemaking. Later, Ryan would hope that she’d have thought of it if he hadn’t.
Nothing had ever felt more right. More magical. She forgot her plans, forgot her worries, forgot that she’d known this man only a matter of days and that she’d never acted this way with anyone before him.
There was only one awkward moment. Max had just lifted his head from her breasts, leaving her moist and flushed and aching for total satisfaction. He crushed her mouth beneath his as he moved between her thighs. She shifted to welcome him, her arms wrapping around him hungrily.
Their eyes met as he surged inside her. And then they froze, their gazes locked. Ryan would have sworn she saw panic flare in his expression just as a wave of that same emotion crashed over her.
Maybe it all felt just a bit too right for comfort.
She bit her lip. He swallowed. And then he groaned and began to move again, whispering her name in a hoarse mixture of entreaty and warning.
Ryan let her mind go blank. She’d deliberately taken this path; now she was burning with impatience to see where it led.
It led to ecstasy.
IT WAS WELL after midnight when Ryan sat up in bed, the sheets drawn to her chin as she watched Max throw on his clothes. She was still dazed, and he seemed to be carefully avoiding her eyes.
Neither of them had said anything about what had passed between them.
Sliding his feet into his shoes, Max stood by the bed and ran a hand through
his disheveled hair. “There’s no need to get up,” he said. “I’ll see myself out.”
She hadn’t planned to get up. She wasn’t at all sure her knees would have supported her if she’d tried. She nodded.
A bit stiffly, he leaned over and brushed a kiss across her swollen mouth. “I’ll, er, call you, okay?”
She didn’t wince, though she had to make an effort not to. His words just sounded so…hollow.
She nodded again. “Good night, Max,” she managed to say, pleased that her voice seemed relatively normal.
“Good night, Ryan.” He moved toward the open door. For a moment, she thought he would leave without looking back. And then he paused in the doorway, his face inscrutable as he turned. “Ryan?”
She swallowed. “Yes?”
“I didn’t plan on you, either.”
She sighed. “I know.”
A moment later, he was gone.
Ryan buried her face in her hands as she heard her front door close behind him. She really should have stuck to the plan, she thought wearily. It would have been so much safer all around.
She didn’t have time to waste on an affair that would lead nowhere. She didn’t have time to nurse a broken heart after it ended.
So why did it now seem so inevitable that she would do both before the New Year dawned?
RYAN SPENT the morning avoiding her co-workers’ questioning eyes and trying to pretend that her entire life hadn’t changed in one reckless, impulsive, utterly magical evening.
She didn’t hear from Max, nor did she expect to. She’d seen the wariness in him when he’d left her. It only helped a little to know that what had passed between them had been so powerful, so shattering, that it had affected him as well as her. It had obviously scared him into running for safety.
Pip and Kelsey stopped by the shop after school. Ryan welcomed them with a bright smile, her throat tightening when she noticed that Kelsey looked automatically toward the shelf where the little dark-haired doll had once been. Kelsey’s answering smile wavered, but she didn’t mention Annie.
Ryan was busy with some paperwork, but Cathy was ready for a coffee break. She volunteered to take the children down to the food court for snacks. “I’m kind of hungry myself,” she told them.