Marry-Me Christmas

by Shirley Jump

  And even more, have Santa actually deliver what he and Liam really desired?

  The one thing neither of them had ever had. The only gift ripped away, time after time.

  A home. A family. A place he could depend on, knowing it would be there this December 25th and the next, and that there would be someone there who would hang the lights and string garland on the tree.

  Flynn shook his head. Damn. He hadn’t intended to think about those days. Ever.

  He felt a soft hand on his back. “Flynn? Are you all right?”

  Sam. Her voice so gentle it called to him like a salve.

  Maybe it was the timing. The darkness, punctuated by the sparkling holiday lights. Or maybe it was something more. Flynn didn’t pause long enough to question why, he just turned toward Samantha Barnett and gave in to the desire that wrapped between them as tight as a bow on a present, and kissed her again.

  When Flynn’s lips met hers, Sam nearly stumbled backward in surprise. Then a wave of desire rocked her, and she leaned into him, her mouth parting against his. Their tongues danced, their bodies pressed together, heat building in crashing waves, even through the thick fabric of her winter coat.

  His fingers tangled in her hair and her hood fell down, but she didn’t feel the bite of winter, only the whoosh of desire as Flynn gently tugged her even closer.

  Had she ever felt this treasured? Like she was the only woman in the world? The most special gift he had ever held? When he released her, disappointment slid all the way to her toes.

  “We keep doing that,” he said. “And we probably shouldn’t.”

  “Yeah.” Though right now, Sam couldn’t think of a single reason why. “Not that I’m complaining,” she added.

  “I’m not complaining, either,” he said. “And even though I know I shouldn’t, because it shoots my reporter’s objectivity all to hell, I couldn’t resist.” He caught a tendril of her hair and let it slip slowly through his grasp. “You are a very desirable woman.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m a totally hot beauty right now.” Sam ran a hand down her puffy jacket and let out a laugh. “I mean, I’m a walking marshmallow in this coat and even without it, I’m no skinny-minny, not to mention I—”

  He put a finger to her lips. “You’re beautiful, just the way you are. Skinny doesn’t automatically mean gorgeous. Nor was it your jacket that attracted me to you.”

  A shiver of pleasure ran down her spine. She hadn’t been fishing for a compliment, but the words sent her heart singing. “Good, because if you were turned on by this thing, I’d be worried about you.” She let out a laugh, but still it shook at the end. Flynn MacGregor had unnerved her, without a doubt.

  “Do you find it that hard to believe that I’d be attracted to you?”

  Sam broke away from Flynn and crossed to one of the displays, silent and immobile, but still lit, giving the town an all-night Christmas picture. She ran a hand down the lighted gingerbread mother, then up and over the circular heads of the little gingerbread children, all of them plump and happy in their wooden splendor.

  “No…” But her voice trailed off, into the cold. Because she did. Flynn, the charming city man, who had surely dated women miles away from Sam, finding her attractive, seemed so unbelievable, yet very, very heady.

  Silence held them in its uncomfortable grip for a long time, then Flynn came up behind her. “Who broke your heart, Samantha?”

  “Is this on the record?” she asked, without turning around.

  “Do you think that little of me, that I’d actually put your personal life into the story?”

  She pivoted. “Would you, if you thought it would add more depth? Get you on the cover?”

  He hesitated for only a fraction of a second, but it was enough to give her the answer she needed. Had any of this been real? Had he wanted her for her? Or for the story?

  She needed to remember the truth. Behind every move Flynn MacGregor made, was an ulterior motive.

  Sam’s heart shattered in that instant. And even as Flynn said “no,” Sam was already heading out of the park and back home.

  Alone in the cold.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE MAN WAS LIKE A VIRUS.

  Okay, maybe not a virus, but Flynn MacGregor had a tendency to be everywhere. Just when Sam thought she’d have a moment to breathe without him, he showed up, and disconcerted her all over again.

  Heck, she’d been disconcerted ever since that kiss last night, not to mention the one before that, and all the times she’d thought about kissing him in between. She’d gone home, gone to bed, then tossed and turned for an hour, alternately berating herself for getting swept up in the moment and reliving the way his lips had moved against hers. The way he had awakened something inside of her that she’d thought didn’t even exist.

  The way he’d made her feel not just pretty, but beautiful. And then undone it all with the way he’d hesitated in his answer to her question.

  He’d been at Joyful Creations first thing in the morning, which had surprised her, considering the way they’d ended things last night—or rather the way she had ended the evening. She half expected him to get out his notepad and start asking questions, but instead he’d come into the kitchen and simply kept her company for the last few minutes.

  Which had set her off-kilter, made her lose her concentration more than once.

  What did he want?

  “Uh, Sam, I’m not here to tell you how to do your job, but aren’t you supposed to crack the eggs before you add them to the batter?” Flynn asked.

  Sam looked down at the bowl, where three eggs sat, mocking her distractedness with their white oval shells. “Oh. Yeah.” Her face flushed.

  She fished the eggs out and cracked the shells against the edge, then turned on the professional-sized mixer, several times larger than one used in a regular kitchen. Instead of watching Flynn, she watched the dough turn and consume the yellow yolks.

  “Why are you working today?” he asked. “It’s Christmas Eve. How busy could you possibly be the day before Christmas?”

  She turned off the mixer and reached for the sugar, measuring it into a large cup and pouring the crystals into the wide metal bowl. “You’d be surprised how many people have parties and need last-minute desserts. Or want Danishes for Christmas morning breakfast. It’ll be busy in here. Though I do close early.” She turned on the mixer and began incorporating the ingredients. “Technically, today’s supposed to be my day off, but—” She shrugged, as if what he thought didn’t matter. Sam turned away, feigning the study of a recipe in a book, before she started measuring her dry ingredients into a second bowl. She already knew the recipe by heart, but used the book as a way to avoid Flynn.

  She’d do well to remember their roles. She was the story. He was the reporter. Getting any more personal with him than she already had would be a mistake.

  If she did, she might end up spilling her personal beans, and he’d use her grandmother’s story to throw in some human interest angle for his story about the bakery, making it national news, which would spread Grandma Joy’s personal info all over Riverbend. She’d seen it happen too many times to other people—they became news charity cases. Sam refused to become another headline on Flynn’s wall.

  Flynn MacGregor would be gone in a day, two at most. She could keep her secrets safe that long. Protect her grandmother’s privacy. She didn’t want people knowing what had happened, realizing that Joy had lost the very memories that had once made her such a treasured part of this town.

  That wouldn’t do Joy or the people who loved her any good. All it would end up doing was creating a stirring of sympathy and a rush to “do something,” when really, nothing could be done.

  Flynn leaned against the doorjamb, his arms crossed over his chest. “Bet you haven’t taken a Christmas Eve off, in…”

  Sam began dropping teaspoonfuls of cookie dough onto cookie sheets. “About as long as you haven’t.”

  “Touché.” He moved closer to her. “
Then why not take the day off?”

  She paused in making cookies and studied him. “Are you suggesting we play hooky?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But that would be…crazy. I never do that.”

  “Me neither.”

  She stared at him, stunned by the thought. All these years, heck, most of her life, she’d been working here full-time—more than full-time—and she couldn’t even imagine the thought of leaving here for no good reason other than because she felt like it, and here she was thinking of doing exactly that for the second time in two days. “What would we do all day?”

  Flynn cleared his throat. “Well, seeing as I have two choices—hanging out at Betsy’s and listening to her struggle through Christmas carols or go to Earl’s garage and hear his long-winded stories—both options painful in their own aural way,” he said, wincing, “I thought I’d see if you…”

  “What?” she asked when he didn’t finish.

  “Nothing. It’s a crazy idea.”

  She tapped her lips, suddenly feeling game. It took her a second, but she put together the elements before her—guy, day of the year—and came up with what he’d been about to say. “Let me guess. You haven’t bought a single Christmas present yet and wondered if I’d go shopping with you.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah.”

  Spending the day alone with Flynn would be a bad idea. She had enough work to do to keep her busy for a week, and he—

  Well, he had this way of disrupting her equilibrium every time he entered a room. Sam prided herself on never letting those kinds of things happen. She was a levelheaded, practical businesswoman who made smart, well-thought-out decisions. Who put the right decision ahead of her personal temptations.

  And Flynn could be dangerous if she let him get too close, a threat to everything she had worked so hard to build.

  Yet, as she looked at his face, she saw a flicker—so brief it could have been a trick of the light—of vulnerability and her heart went out to him. Then the look was gone, and he was back to his stalwart, standoffish self.

  Was it just because they had shared a kiss? Or was it because she thought, just for a moment, that she had seen a kindred spirit in him? The man who’d left the Winterfest, unable to stay around the Christmas celebration, the man who she’d noticed appreciating the lights last night even if he wouldn’t admit enjoying the twinkles, the same man who could barely talk about his own family?

  Could it be that there was far more to Flynn MacGregor than met the eye? And maybe she had misjudged him?

  She thought of the few hints of his life that he had given her, the way he seemed to avoid Christmas like most people avoided friends with the flu, and wondered whether he, like her, had reasons behind it all.

  “You need a day off, more than anybody I know,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. “And I need to shop. Since you’re not very good at taking time off, and I really stink at shopping, the only solution is to work together. I don’t know about you, but I could use a break.” He took a step closer. “What do you say, Sam?”

  “I have cookies to—”

  “There will always be cookies to bake.” Flynn took another step closer. “Come on, take the day off. For no reason, other than you just want to.”

  “And help you shop.”

  Flynn moved a little closer still, his hand inches from hers, triggering the memory of his kiss. “Something like that.”

  She knew she should say no. Knew she should stay right here, running the shop, baking cookies, filling orders. Except she didn’t want to.

  The craving for normalcy rose inside Sam, fast and fierce, tempered by guilt that she should stay. But the yearning for a life outside this bakery, doing ordinary things like shopping and dating, overpowered her, and she found herself tugging the apron off and tossing it onto the counter.

  “Well, to be honest,” Sam said, as everything inside her rebelled against the idea of working one more minute, “I haven’t finished all my shopping yet, either.”

  “Let me guess. Too busy working to get to the store?”

  “Something like that,” she said, repeating his words. She didn’t tell him that Christmas had lost its sparkle a long time ago. When her grandmother started forgetting holidays, when every day at the Heritage Nursing Home ran in Joy’s head one after another, like an endless stream of Tuesdays. Without a husband, or a family, Sam just didn’t have the desire to shop and celebrate like she used to. She still put up the tree, and made the attempt, but it wasn’t the same.

  “Yeah, me, too,” Flynn said.

  But as the two of them cleaned up the kitchen, then left the little shop, while Aunt Ginny offered—with a knowing wink—to stay behind with the temporary workers and cover the day’s customers, Sam began to worry that she’d just made a huge mistake.

  What had he been thinking?

  Flynn could name on one hand the number of people he needed to shop for. Mimi. Liam. Who probably wouldn’t even open the gift anyway. Maybe his editor. Most years, Flynn just dropped off a fruit basket for the office, if he even thought of that.

  Hey, he was a guy. Gift-giving wasn’t exactly his forte.

  He knew why he’d proposed the shopping trip. It hadn’t been about escaping Betsy’s piano playing. Or Earl’s stories. He’d been looking for something to fill the day, the hours until his car was fixed, and spending that time with Sam had seemed like a good idea when he’d been standing in the back of her little shop, wrapped in the scent of cookies. The deep green of her eyes.

  He could tell himself it was because he still wanted to get to the heart of his story, to find out about her grandmother. To finish those final pieces of his article.

  But that wasn’t it at all.

  He wanted to be with her, craved her presence, in a way he’d never craved anything before. She represented all the things he hadn’t thought existed. Small towns, with families where parents raised their children, made a life based on love and commitment.

  The kind of life he’d dreamed of, and never imagined he could have. For just a little while longer, before he had to go back to real life, he’d hold on to that dream.

  Now, they wandered the aisles of a cramped antiques shop, looking at trinkets he had no use for and furniture he’d never bring to his apartment, not that he was home enough to even use the furniture he already had. He picked up a white dish that looked like it had beads imbedded in the edge, then set it down again. Fingered the fringe on the edge of a lamp so gaudy, he couldn’t even imagine what sight-challenged artist had designed it in the first place—or why.

  “Finding anything?” Sam asked. Her arms were laden with purchases. A wide painted bowl, a leather-bound book, a hand-cut glass vase and an intricate wrought-iron wine rack. Everything she’d picked out looked tasteful and perfect, the kinds of things he could imagine in his own home, if he ever bought a house.

  “Nope.”

  A smile curved across her face. “You’re totally out of your league, aren’t you?”

  “Well…” He looked around the shop. “Yeah.”

  “And I bet this isn’t exactly your kind of place, is it?”

  “Not quite. I was thinking something more…fancy. Maybe a jewelry shop?” A bracelet or some earrings, he knew would make Mimi happy. Other than that, he had no idea which way her tastes ran.

  It occurred to him that he had probably spent more time inside Sam’s bakery than he had inside Mimi’s apartment. He’d have an easier time buying Sam a home decoration than his own girlfriend, if that was even the label he could put on Mimi.

  Sam thought about that for a second. “I know where we can go. Let me just purchase these. Then we can head down to Indianapolis. There’s civilization there. Meaning a mall.” She gave him a grin.

  “Civilization.” Flynn drew in a deep breath, as if he could suck up the city from here. “That’s the one thing I’d pay about anything to have.”

  He should have been excited, but for some reason, the expected lilt of a
nticipation didn’t rise in his chest. Even the knowledge that his car would be ready tomorrow—meaning he could leave—didn’t excite him like it should.

  He attributed it to a lack of sleep, or too many renditions of “Jingle Bells” ringing in his ears from Betsy’s overactive piano fingers. Because he certainly hadn’t started to like this town. There was no way Riverbend was beginning to grow on him.

  He’d feel better when he got to the city. Away from this overdone home of all things Christmas. Back to the cold, impersonal world he knew.

  Flynn took several of the items from Sam’s arms, earning a surprised thank-you, and a few minutes later, she had paid and they were inside her Jeep, on their way out of town. The snow had started up again, falling in thick, heavy flakes. “Does it ever stop snowing around here?”

  “Welcome to the Midwest. Although this month, we are getting a record amount of snow, so you’re getting a treat.” She shot him a smile. “You’re from the East Coast. Don’t you get a lot of snow, too?”

  “I live in the city. I guess I don’t notice as much.”

  “This storm is supposed to stop tomorrow. And we should be fine. I have four-wheel drive on the Jeep. If not—” Sam looked over at him “—are you up for an adventure?”

  Flynn glanced down at his dress shoes and cashmere coat. “I’m not exactly prepared for much beyond a dinner party.”

  “Well, then, Flynn MacGregor,” she said with that laugh in her voice that rang as easily as church bells, “you better hope nothing goes wrong on our expedition.”

  Sam should have kept her mouth shut.

  Twenty miles outside of town, the Jeep suddenly got hard to steer. Sam attributed the stubborn wheel to the icy roads, until she saw steam coming from the hood. She pulled over, wrestling with the steering wheel to get the Jeep to come to a stop at the side of the road.

  “Overheated?” Flynn asked.

  “Maybe. I have no idea what’s wrong. Are you handy with cars?”

  “Are you kidding me? If I was, I would have fixed my own and been gone long before now.”