The Christmas Husband

by Mary Anne Wilson

  The Christmas Husband

  Mary Anne Wilson

  For Velma Birtley—

  One of my first and best friends.

  Thanks for the memories.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  San Francisco, December 14

  The First Day of Christmas

  “If we get caught, we’re dead meat. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Come on. Your dad won’t be home till midnight. That’s why I get to stay over again.”

  Wyatt York clicked on the flashlight under the tent he and his best friend, Jared, had made in his bed by using a hockey stick as a pole to keep the covers up. The two boys sat Indian-style facing each other, a pocket radio with earphones lying by a phone that looked like a football. Wyatt flashed the light at Jared.

  Both boys were gangly at ten years of age and both were wearing camouflage pajamas. But Wyatt had hair the color of straw that was straight and fine with a stubborn cowlick. Jared had hair the color of a new penny and cut very short to control tight curls.

  “Just remember—” Wyatt paused dramatically before finishing with, “The Terminator never sleeps.”

  “Oh, man, Bishop’s down in the kitchen, probably baking another pie.” Jared pointed to the phone. “Now’s your chance to call.”

  “Shh, keep your voice down. He’s got superhearing, too. He’s not like Mrs. O’Neal, our regular housekeeper. She went to bed at nine every night and couldn’t hear very good. Boy, I wish her sister in Florida hadn’t gotten sick again, then she’d be here now, and maybe my dad—”

  “You’re scared to do it, aren’t you?” Jared said, cutting off Wyatt’s words.

  Wyatt glared at his friend, the flashlight playing eerily over Jared’s face. “You wouldn’t do this at your place, ‘cause you’d get killed if your mom or dad caught you, and you know it.”

  “So, you don’t have a mom and your dad’s never here.”

  “But the Terminator—”

  “You can tell your dad to fire Bishop.” Jared rolled his eyes. “Man, you’ve got it made.”

  Wyatt knew what Jared thought. That Wyatt had this room all to himself, along with his collection of radio-controlled cars, video games, a large-screen television, new sneakers and a three-story town house with a view of the bridge. There were marble floors, fancy furniture, four bathrooms...and no mother to make him do his homework or clean his room.

  Jared had three brothers he fought with all the time. His sneakers were hand-me-downs. His house was in an aging neighborhood, a rambling one that always had something wrong with it. And he had to take the trash out every Tuesday morning or he didn’t get any allowance.

  But Wyatt knew that Jared got to go to his grandma’s for Thanksgiving every year. And his dad was taking him and his brothers to cut their Christmas tree in the mountains while his mother stayed home to get ready for the family’s big holiday feast.

  Boy, Wyatt envied Jared...a lot.

  “Come on, I double dare you to do it,” Jared taunted Wyatt.

  No self-respecting ten-year-old would ignore a double dare, especially from his best friend. Besides, Wyatt had to figure out what to do about his problem, and Dr. Love was his last hope. “Do you think she’d know what to do?”

  “Can’t hurt, and you’d get on the radio. That’s neat, isn’t it? Except you can’t listen when you’re on the air or it gets all strange echoing and stuff. They always tell you to turn off your radio when you’re on the air.”

  “What if someone hears it and knows who I am?”

  “Use a fake name.”

  “Like what?”

  He thought, then said, “I’ve got it. How about John, like John Doe. You know how they call someone that when they don’t know their name?”

  Wyatt shrugged. “I suppose I could. But calling—”

  “Wyatt, if you were a little kid and still believed in Santa, you’d sure ask Santa for it for Christmas, wouldn’t you?”

  He’d never tell Jared that he couldn’t remember believing in Santa Claus. He’d always known that Mrs. O’Neal had bought all of his presents, but even if she were here, there was no way she could get him the present he wanted this year.

  “Yeah, but—”

  Jared reached for the phone and grabbed the receiver to thrust it out at Wyatt. “Then call. If anyone can help, she can tell you how to get your dad to do it. She knows all about people and how to do stuff like this. And she sounds real nice and smart, too.”

  Wyatt took the phone and held it while Jared put on the headphones and fiddled with the radio dial. “Is she on?” Wyatt whispered, and when Jared didn’t answer, Wyatt jabbed him in the knee to get his attention.

  Jared pulled one of the earpieces back and frowned at his friend. “What?”

  “Is she on?”

  “Hold on.” He put the earpiece back in place, then nodded. “Yeah, they’re just doing a commercial for some place called the Tickle Pink Inn. Now she’s talking again about it being her last hour, that it’s ten past eleven and—”

  “Just tell me the number to call.”

  Jared frowned intently for a long moment as he listened, then he said, “She’s getting to it,” and finally repeated the phone number out loud.

  Wyatt punched it into the football phone, and as it rang, he motioned to Jared with his free hand. “Turn the radio off. You’ve got to listen for Bishop in case he’s still up.”

  “Okay, okay,” Jared muttered as he took off the headset.

  The phone rang three times, then was finally answered by a woman, but it wasn’t the doctor. The woman’s voice was sharp and precise, not soft and nice like the doctor’s. “Good evening, and welcome to the hot line for the Ask Dr. Love Show. Please hold.”

  “Okay,” Wyatt muttered as a canned version of “Jingle Bells” came over the line.

  “What’s going on?” Jared whispered, leaning toward Wyatt. “What’s she saying?”

  “I’m on hold,” he said.

  “Oh, man.” The other boy sighed.

  The music was cut off abruptly, then a man came on the line. “Hi. I’m Harry.” He didn’t pause to take a breath as he kept talking. “Please state your name, first only, your location, no address, and your question for the doctor.”

  Wyatt tried to make his voice go lower. “My name...is John. And I live on Saratoga Drive in—”

  “Just the city name, please,” the man said briskly.

  “San Francisco.”

  “And your question for the doctor?”

  “I...I’m calling about a friend of mine. His mother died when he was two, and his father, he’s like this big businessman and he just works all the time, like at night and everything, and he’s never at home, and—”

  “He’s a workaholic?” the man asked.

  Wyatt was almost relieved to have a word to label it. His dad was a workaholic. “But he’s real nice, like he’s a good father and all, but—”

  “What’s your question?”

  Jared grabbed at Wyatt’s arm. “I think I heard something,” he whispered and scrambled out from under the tent, knocking the hockey stick out of place in the process.

  As the covers collapsed over Wyatt, he said quickly into the phone, “Sorry,
I gotta go,” and hung up. He scooted back until he was free of the blankets and could see Jared by the door with his ear pressed to the wood.

  Then the red-haired boy spun around and ran for the bed as he gasped, “He’s coming!”

  Wyatt quickly put the phone back on the nightstand, and as Jared scrambled into the bed by him, Wyatt pushed the hockey stick toward the bottom of the bed with his foot where it was hidden under the blankets.

  When he heard a soft knock on the door, he flipped onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillows. As the door clicked open, he could feel Jared right by him. He didn’t even breathe when he heard footsteps click on the hardwood floor and come across to the bed.

  He knew Bishop was over him. He could sense the big man hovering, and he didn’t move a muscle when he heard the sidelight snap off. Then the footsteps clicked on the floor and the door closed with a soft thud.

  Neither boy moved until there was total silence in the room, then Wyatt rolled onto his back and released a breath. He opened his eyes to deep shadows barely touched by the tiny night-light near the phone. “Oh, man, that was close,” he whispered. “I told you, the Terminator hears everything. He’s like a machine, like some bionic man or something.”

  Jared flopped onto his back by Wyatt. “What would he do if he’d caught us?”

  “I don’t know.” Wyatt had been very careful not to test the big man before. “But I think it would be really bad.”

  “Yeah, really bad,” Jared echoed. “All right, tell me. What did the doctor say?”

  “Nothing,” he said as he looked at Jared beside him. “Some guy just asked me questions, then I had to hang up.”

  “Want to try again?”

  “No way. Not now.”

  “Then what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to talk to my dad when I see him tomorrow. I’ll just get up early before he can go to work, and I’ll tell him that I want him to take me away for Christmas where there’s no phones or faxes or anything.”

  “Where to?”

  He didn’t care where they went, as long as they went. “Skiing.”

  “And what if he won’t do it?”

  Wyatt turned onto his side away from his friend and stared at the shelves of remote cars across the shadowy room. “Then I’ll call Dr. Love again and ask her how to make my dad spend time with me.”

  Chapter One

  The Second Day of Christmas

  “Tell the man that Dr. Love does not do television appearances or give interviews.” Madison Smythe sat back in her chair as she spoke to Cathy, a secretary from the publicity department for radio station KZZZ. “Never has. Never will.”

  Cathy stood in the open door of Madison’s office on the third floor of the building that housed the station, a tiny woman done all in red and wearing jingle bell earrings. “I know we aren’t suppose to give out anything on Dr. Love except what’s in the release Ron made up, but this guy’s really difficult. He’s not taking no for an answer.”

  Madison pushed away the notepad in front of her on the massive wooden desk and sat back in the swivel chair. “Then tell him Dr. Love is not a celebrity, but a doctor trying to help people. Mutter something about the show’s policy is not to focus on personalities, but on helping, then wish him a very Merry Christmas and hang up.”

  “He wants some pictures.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She knew that even if they could give out pictures, they wouldn’t do the man any good. She didn’t fit the description of what a doctor of psychology looked like, even though she’d graduated at the top of her class. She didn’t wear tailored suits, or sensible, sturdy pumps. She didn’t wear her long hair in a severe knot or twist. And she wasn’t in any way what someone would have considered chic.

  She was medium height, slender, with straight, pale blond hair usually caught back in a ponytail where wisps of hair stubbornly escaped in tendrils at the temples and the nape of her neck. Blue eyes dominated a face with a full-lipped mouth, naturally dark lashes and eyebrows and no makeup to cover a sprinkling of freckles on her straight nose.

  One big advantage to being on the radio and not going into an office every day was you didn’t have to dress to impress. Tonight she was wearing a white sweatshirt someone in the office had given her with one of her favorite cartoons on the front—a green frog dancing in a top hat. She wore it with her usual jeans and suede, lug-soled boots.

  No one saw her except her technical staff and the people at the station. And she liked that. Helping people meant a lot more to her than being a celebrity.

  And her office couldn’t have been more unbusinesslike. It had a comfortable blue floral Hide-A-Bed couch and side chair, a well-worn wooden desk and plants everywhere. Soft peach walls were decorated with white-framed cartoon cells that she’d collected for years displayed side by side with her credentials.

  A doctor of psychology. Internship. Graduate studies completed at the university. But her last credential wasn’t there. The past two years she’d been working on the radio as Dr. Love, a relationships expert.

  “If he won’t leave you alone, have him talk to Ron directly.”

  Cathy nodded, making her earrings jingle softly. “All right. I’ll sic him on Ron.”

  When Cathy hesitated, Madison asked, “Was there something else?”

  “Well, I was just wondering if I could ask you something else? It’s not about that guy.”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  Cathy leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. “If you were dating someone and he was so stingy that he never took you anywhere, what would you do?”

  Madison studied the tiny woman. “Is it you?”

  “Oh, no, it’s my sister,” she said quickly as she stood straight. “She’s dating this guy and he’s so cheap. He insists on eating in or going to fast-food drive-throughs, and they never go anywhere.”

  “Has she met his family?”

  “No, he says he doesn’t want her to meet them until he’s sure they’re serious.”

  “Then I’d say he’s married.”

  Cathy’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “What?”

  “It sounds as if he’s married and having fun on the side.”

  “Married,” Cathy repeated softly.

  “If I were your sister, I’d face him down about it. If he’s just really cheap, she has to decide if she can live with that. If he’s married, my best advice is to get as far away from him as fast as she can. He’s bad news and a real liar. Tell her never to get involved with a man who lies.”

  Cathy’s face looked almost pinched. “I’ll tell her, and...and thanks a lot, Doctor.” She moved back. “I’ll get rid of that guy that wants the interview, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you,” Cathy said softly and left, closing the door behind her.

  Madison was so used to people calling in and saying they were asking about a friend’s problem when it was really their own mess. Admitting foolish mistakes was hard for a lot of people, and she had a hunch Cathy was no exception.

  She exhaled as she looked around the office and made a mental note to get her Christmas decorations up. She’d decided not to go home for the holidays this year, and she was already missing the snow and cold of Vermont where she’d grown up, the huge tree and the smell of gingerbread baking.

  More important, she missed her family, her brothers and her mother and father. But she’d decided to do a Christmas Eve show this year instead of putting on a rerun. There was a real need for it at a time that should be happy and fun, but when a lot of people seemed to be their loneliest. So she’d agreed to do it.

  She picked up her notebook, then stood and glanced out the windows behind the desk at the city at night. Lights were everywhere, as far as the eye could see, all blending in a picture softened by the haze of incoming fog off the bay.

  As she turned to head down to the studio to get ready for that night’s show, the door burst open and Ron Dial, producer
of Ask Dr. Love, ran into the room. When he saw her by the desk, he gasped, “Madison! Great. You’re here. Thank God.”

  Ron was a genius, no doubt about it, and the brains behind the original Dr. Love show, the number-one talk show in its slot for the past year. But he always looked harried. Now he looked practically apoplectic as he closed the door and crossed to the desk.

  With four gold hoop earrings in one ear, gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, sandals, a tie-dyed shirt, faded jeans setting off a slightly paunchy build, he looked about as much like a producer as Madison did a doctor. But he was one of the best.

  He gulped in air as he pressed his hands on the desk and made a pronouncement. “We’ve got big trouble.”

  She knew from experience that “big trouble” to Ron could have meant anything from one of the phone lines going down to the start of a worldwide nuclear holocaust. “What trouble?”

  “Fillmore Industries. Big bucks. Big accounts in advertising.”

  She came around the desk and sat on one corner as Ron moved back a bit. “What about them?”

  “Harvey Kincaid,” he said between deep breaths. “CEO, head man. Trouble, big trouble.”

  “Ron, for heaven’s sake, just spit it out. You’re driving me crazy. What’s the problem?”

  “His wife’s a big fan of yours, and she wants you for Christmas.”

  She knew her mouth must have dropped. “What?”

  “She doesn’t just want you, she wants you and your husband as her Christmas present.”

  She stared at him. He’d gone over the edge. What had been eccentricity and convoluted hyperactivity had finally led to complete madness. “You’re crazy.”

  “Maybe. That’s debatable. But it’s a fact that Kincaid called and asked me personally.”

  “And what did you tell him?” she demanded in a low voice.

  “You have to understand the position I was in. The biggest sponsor. The man with the bucks. The head of Fillmore Industries, dog food, hotels, electronics. For heaven’s sake, the man.”

  She stood straight and tossed her notebook onto the desk before she put her hands on her hips. “Just tell me what you did, Ron, and make it short and simple.”