The Spirit of Christmas

by Liz Talley

  “Why did your brother take medication? Is he sick?”

  “Oh, no. Not really. He has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, which sometimes lends itself to other problems. But mostly he’s healthy.”

  Brennan studied her as the choir hit a stirring chorus, soft and plaintive in the bustle of the sunny afternoon, almost intentionally juxtaposed. She could tell he didn’t know what to say to her declaration, so she beat him to it. “Caleb’s normal in his mental capacity, and my mother has involved herself in creating a charter school for challenged students like Caleb. My brother has a nice future laid before him.”

  “And you?”

  What about her? She leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, stroking the supple leather of the boots she was embarrassed to have bought. “I’m taking my CPA exam in a few months and will hopefully have an offer from Ivan to become part of his firm, maybe even his partner one day.”

  “So you want to stay in the city?”

  “I never liked living on a farm much. My mother took comfort in it, probably because she’d had an adventurous life in California, living on the road with various musicians.”

  He arched an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “Okay, she was a groupie, but life had harder corners than she expected. After a bad breakup with a boyfriend she refuses to talk about, she came back to Louisiana to lick her wounds and heal from the skinned knees she’d gained playing fast and loose with men who played faster and looser. She loves living in the middle of nowhere, milking cows and goats, making cheese and growing zucchinis, and I’m happy she’s good with where she is. But I never wanted that life for myself.”

  “You wanted…?”

  “To live in a city full of interesting people, to have a job that supported me and that I could take pride in, to have something more to contemplate than the grass and sky, as nice as they are at times. I wanted to do things, you know?”

  He nodded. “Idealistic.”

  “Yeah, a little. Mushy and easily persuaded to rescue people, but rooted in enough reality to know not all dreams are realized or achieved. But there is something worthwhile in the trying.”

  For a moment, they were silent.

  Brennan placed a hand on the back of her head then slid it down to her neck, gripping it in the manner of a coach to a player, but his touch was soft. When she turned his eyes were admiring. “I’ve never met someone like you before.”

  “I’ve never met anyone like you, either. Not many guys in Crosshatch who drive Maseratis and live in town houses above daiquiri shops. More like John Deere and small farmhouses. Even the guys I dated in college were more ramen noodle than filet mignon.”

  Brennan sighed, releasing her. “It’s an Aston Martin, by the way, and I don’t see myself the way you do. I guess I grew up accustomed to a certain way of life without thinking too much about it, though I suppose I like some luxuries well enough—especially the car.” He smiled and the devil appeared in his eyes. She decided she liked that little devil. Liked seeing the pleasure he took in all things from the bread pudding he’d eaten at brunch to the machine he drove.

  “I noticed you like that car.”

  “Anyone would like that car,” he said, clapping politely as the choir finished the song. After the choir started a new song, he tugged her into the curve of his arm. “You know money isn’t the most important thing to me, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Control is.”

  He stiffened. “I was actually thinking more along the lines of personal achievement or security.”

  Mary Paige idly stroked his thigh, enjoying that she could take the intimacy without waiting for him to make a similar gesture, reveling in his body tightening, this time not in indignation. “Most people want control of their lives. Even me. A job, a title and a nest egg in the bank make me feel as if I’m in the driver’s seat, as if I can handle the fall better when it happens. Opening up to others, trusting them though they might deceive, hurt or disappoint takes a good deal of courage.”

  “So you’re braver than me?”

  Was she? She trusted people easily. Maybe too easily. But she was also afraid of loving Brennan. Simon seemed a veritable pussycat compared to the heir to the Henry throne, and she’d eaten a lot of Ben & Jerry’s after Simon and she had split. What would loving and losing Brennan do to her? She wasn’t sure there was enough Zumba offered to cover that. “In some ways, but in others, I’m just as scared.”

  He stilled her hand. “I don’t like being painted as scared.”

  “Who does?” she asked, not looking at him, not wanting to show him she was as fearful as he. She didn’t want to love a man who, while he may not kick a homeless person, dismissed them all the same. She didn’t want to love a man who hated Christmas because it reminded him of pain. She didn’t want to love a man who thought so much about the bottom line, he forgot about the people who contributed to that bottom line. But she knew she was already halfway there.

  She could stop now and go home, tucking her tail and hiding in the shadows because it was safe there, but that would make her less than who she needed to be.

  Mary Paige Gentry hadn’t been raised to duck her chin and feel unworthy of any man…and she hadn’t spent the past few years of her life reinventing herself merely to run away at the thought of getting hurt.

  “I’m not as strong as I’d like to be,” she said, turning her hand over so that she clasped his. “But I don’t want to shut the door on you.”

  The words of “Silent Night” washed over them. She looked at him, at those gray eyes no longer immeasurable, but clear with intent.

  “Good, because I’m really trying to be a man worthy of you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I am exactly what you said last night. Just a girl. Not a do-gooder or Merry Sunshine or the Spirit of Christmas any more than you’re just a billionaire playboy who sneers at Santa Claus. We’re both people.”

  A man with a box holding small white candles approached and offered them each one. At first she thought Brennan might wave him off, but he surprised her by taking the candle and saying, “Merry Christmas.”

  The man responded in kind and moved on to a clump of older women holding oversize shopping bags.

  “Wow,” Mary Paige breathed. “You are trying to be good.”

  His response was to stand and offer a hand, which she accepted. He hauled her to her feet, winding an arm around her as if he’d done it many times before.

  And at that moment, they didn’t need any more words.

  Being in the moment and listening to the sacred strains offered by the choir was enough.

  * * *

  AFTER SPENDING THE AFTERNOON doing touristy stuff he’d absolutely never done before in all his time of living in New Orleans, Brennan could only desire two things—a good meal and Mary Paige in his arms.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to go to Commander’s?” he asked as Mary Paige poked through the offerings on one of the tables in the French Market. She held up a bracelet and the woman across the table immediately barked, “Twenty dollars.”

  Mary Paige shook her head and set down the bracelet.

  “Fifteen?” the woman asked, crossing her arms as if she were insulted to have to come down in price.

  “I’ll give you ten,” Mary Paige said, looking the woman in the eye.

  The vendor, who wore a full-length trench coat and had hair dyed the color of coal, sighed. “Deal.”

  Money exchanged hands and Mary Paige tucked the treasure in her bag. “This will be perfect for Lars’s wife, Pris.”

  “Who’s Lars?”

  “The man who helps my mom with the farm. He’s nearly seventy years old, but doesn’t act it. He refuses to slow down, though Pris fusses constantly about old men acting like wet-eared pups.”

  Lars and Pris. Tractors and goat cheese. Wheelchair-bound brothers and former groupie mothers. The life Mary Paige had led certainly didn’t sound as boring as she’d made it out.

  “Reminds me of my
grandfather chasing after Judy. Thinks he’s in his twenties the way he’s been acting.”

  Mary Paige passed a booth filled with leather bags and coin purses and stopped at one selling cashmere wool scarves. “She seems to make him truly happy. I don’t know him well, but you can’t miss that gleam in his eye.”

  Her hand stilled a moment as she lifted her gaze, focusing on something beyond the edge of the marketplace. For several seconds she was silent, and he wondered why the spark in Malcolm’s eye demanded contemplation.

  “What?” he asked.

  She blinked and jerked her gaze back to him, her brown eyes soft like chocolate chips in the cookies his mother used to make. “Nothing.”

  “So about dinner?”

  Mary Paige tilted her head. “You know what sounds good?”

  “What?”

  “Takeout and a tour of your town house.”

  And with that decree, Brennan knew the night would likely be better than the afternoon he’d spent with Mary Paige.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MARY PAIGE LOOKED around the gorgeous subway-tiled modern kitchen and sighed. “This is truly beautiful.”

  “Thanks. I actually did some of it myself,” Brennan said, pouring pinot noir into a wineglass and handing it to her.

  She wasn’t much for red wine, but her nerves were humming so she took a sip. “Really? What parts?”

  He smoothed a hand across the wood of the center island. “This wood was reclaimed from an old ship that went down in the Mississippi River. I got it at a salvage yard and worked with a carpenter to get the right patina.”

  “It’s beautiful.” Cripes. She couldn’t stand there like mud on a fence post saying everything was “beautiful,” but her tongue felt stuck to the bottom of her mouth. She took another sip of wine, hoping it would help her relax.

  After all, she didn’t have to have sex with him.

  “And when the tile guy came, he showed me how to set the tiles in here, so I did a little home improvement myself and installed the mosaic tiles in my bathroom before the stucco guy came and put in the plaster.”

  “I’m impressed. You like to get your hands dirty.”

  “Surprised?”

  “What?”

  “It’s just you have this image of me you won’t let go. Rich playboy waited on hand and foot.”

  “I don’t think you’re waited on hand and foot. I can see how much your job means to you, how hard you work at your office.” She stopped because she really hadn’t seen him working—he’d only accompanied her to all the events lined up for the Spirit of Christmas promotion, so she was making a logical assumption based on the files he had stacked on the coffee table and the way he’d conducted himself thus far. Here was a man who put elbow grease into what he tackled.

  He took a sip of wine. “I do work hard…and I always liked hands-on projects even as a small child.”

  She smiled. “I built boxes for the wood ducks on the river, and I volunteer every fall for a local church who build wheelchair ramps. We always need good carpenters.”

  “And I can weld. Took a welding class when I was in high school. I told grandfather I was out studying.”

  “Really?”

  “I thought I wanted to be a sculpture artist for a while. It was a phase.” He set the glass down and gestured toward the living area. “Want to see the rest of the place?”

  She took another gulp. “Sure.”

  They walked slowly through the town house, Brennan pointing out the heart-of-pine floors original to the building and the clever way he’d hidden his state-of-the-art TV and components in a console. Everything was tastefully decorated and screamed expensive, sophisticated and put-me-in-a-magazine.

  Brennan stopped in front of the open door of the master bedroom. “We don’t have to have sex.”

  “What?” she squeaked, nearly sloshing wine onto the pale gray carpet.

  “You’re just making me feel creepy,” he said, taking the glass from her hand, making sure the wine steadied, before handing it back to her.

  “I don’t— What I mean is, I didn’t realize I was acting nervous.”

  “But you are.” Brennan pointed toward the huge bed centered in the room. “I’m not going to pounce on you as soon as we get in there, you know. I respect the decision to take this slowly, to find our footing before jumping into bed.”

  “Well, what if I want to jump into bed?” Her heart felt like it was galloping in the Kentucky Derby and her palms were sweaty.

  Brennan smiled. “I’m not unopposed.”

  She laughed. “Know what I’m tired of?”

  “No.”

  She set her wineglass on a built-in shelf in the small hallway. “I’m tired of talking.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She lifted herself slightly and placed her lips right on the cleft in his chin.

  “You missed,” he breathed.

  She tilted her head back and shook her head. “Guess I need practice.”

  This time she kissed him—full-on, sexy, wet kissing. It didn’t last long, but it got her point across. This wasn’t about a tour of his house. This was about a tour of…other things.

  “I’m willing to be your dummy. For, you know, practicing the whole kissing thing.”

  Mary Paige couldn’t believe how bold she was being, but Brennan seemed to appreciate it. And something about the way he looked at her with those lips tilted up and pleasure pooling in his eyes emboldened her further.

  “Well, should we get it on now or wait until after dinner?”

  He opened his mouth to respond but the doorbell sounded. “Dinner.”

  “Okay, so dinner first?”

  “No, I meant that’s dinner at the door,” he said, pulling away from her and walking toward the living room. “By the way, I like cold Chinese food.”

  She grabbed her liquid courage and followed him into the living room, standing on the jute rug as she admired the backside he presented on the way to the door. “I’m good with cold Chinese food, too.”

  When he opened the door, a frazzled-looking delivery girl stood there, balancing two white bags from someplace called Moon Wok. “Really?”

  “No,” she said, sinking onto the leather sofa and contemplating the huge cypress stump that had been converted into a coffee table. Clever idea…for the furniture and the name of the Chinese place.

  She could hear the laughter in Brennan’s voice as he paid the delivery person and something in his tone made her feel nearly content in the midst of anxiety over having sex.

  Brennan dumped the take-out boxes on the coffee table, disappeared and came back holding the glass he’d left in the kitchen. “I’m guessing you want your hot food right now.”

  “Maybe.”

  He sank onto the couch and grabbed a control. After he pushed a gazillion buttons the sound of the clarinet filled the room. “Coltrane,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “You like jazz?”

  “Not really, but it sounds nice.”

  “Coltrane’s my seduction music,” he said with a grin, before opening the first steaming tak-out carton. “Like on Jerry Maguire.”

  “It does sound sort of sexy,” she said, eyeing the offerings. “So food first?”

  Brennan turned to her. “You’re acting like having sex is akin to a doctor’s appointment. So why don’t we enjoy the wine, the music and the lo mein then see what happens?”

  “Because then I’ll have major garlic breath,” she said.

  “But we both will, so who cares?”

  He was right. She was treating this like some have-to thing and she didn’t have to do anything. Brennan may have been the stereotypical alpha male with a reported Don Juan reputation, but he was also a gentleman. He knew she wanted him. And she was certain the feeling was mutual if that bike ride earlier had been any indicator. So why sweat it?

  “Lo mein?” he said, holding out a container.

  She looked at it. “My stomach feels too
nervous.”

  Brennan sat the carton on the coffee table before turning to her. “Okay, let’s do this already.”

  Her eyes widened. “Sex? Right here?”

  He started unbuttoning his shirt. “You’re not eating until we get it on, so no sense in waiting, right?”

  Laughing, she grabbed his hands. “Stop. Wait.”

  He tugged her hands, hauling her neatly into his lap. “I like cold Chinese food, remember?”

  His hands moved to her waist, slipping beneath her sweater to her naked back, stroking up and down as his mouth found the pulse in her neck. She sighed. “Okay, I guess.”

  “Mmm,” he said, doing some spectacular kissing of the sensitive flesh of her throat as his hands traveled up farther, unhooking her bra with one flick.

  “Wow, you’re good,” she said, angling her neck so he had better access.

  Brennan jerked his head up and finished unbuttoning his shirt. “Okay, your turn.”

  She laughed. “Really?”

  “I’m not seducing you. You’re seducing me.”

  “No, I’m not,” she said, wondering what his game was, but chuckling because she really didn’t care. Brennan the Scrooge was fun in the sack…ahem, the couch.

  “Standing outside my bedroom you took charge, and I’ve decided I like a bossy Mary Paige.”

  “I was?” She played along, touching the skin he revealed. His belly was flat, but not bodybuilder, six-pack flat, just nice-and-yummy flat. “Yeah, I was, but I don’t have to be.”

  He pulled her on top of him and suddenly it was no longer light, flirty and fun. It was hot. Really hot.

  “Oh, wow,” she breathed as his hands caught her bottom, moving her against him as his erection found a home right where it belonged. Her mouth found his and she did her best to seduce him with her mouth, with the hands she slid into his hair, even as she enjoyed the warm, bare chest beneath her, sprinkled with dark hair, so masculine, so hard.