Once Upon a Christmas (12 page)

Sam drove back to the clubhouse at a reasonable speed, now
that he’d found Holly and gotten her safely ensconced on the golf cart seat
beside him. As they reached the edge of the fairway, he glanced at her.

“You look great,” he said, admiring her short,
flowery dress again. It ended a few inches above her knees and was held up by
thin straps at the shoulders, the kind of thing that made him think of hot
summer days at the beach. He liked it. He liked the looks of Holly wearing it.

It was a funny choice to wear golfing, though. Even given
the sunny Arizona weather. He’d bet she’d meant to improve more than her golf
scores with it.

“New dress?”

“Mmm–hmm,” she murmured absently, digging around
in her golf bag. She pulled out her fat day planner and rifled through it,
flipping past what looked like a Christmas greeting card list. “When my office
called, did they tell you what the emergency was?”

He stopped the cart at the clubhouse. “Well, I didn’t
actually say it was an emergency at your office, now did I?”

Sam felt her suspicious stare on his back while he returned
the golf cart keys to the attendant.

“What do you mean?” she asked when they were alone
again, walking across the parking lot toward his truck.

“Don’t get mad.”

Holly stopped and stuck both hands on her hips.

“You look mad.”

“You
look like you’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Okay.” Sam swung her golf bag into the bed of his
pickup, raising a cloud of dust as he did. He pulled out his keys. “Clarissa
told me where you were when I ran into her at your office earlier today.”

“What were you doing at my office?”

Why was she looking at him like that? “I was going to
take you out to lunch, but you weren’t there. So I took a chance you’d say yes
and came out here to get you.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’ve just been bamboozled out
of my golf game?”

“Maybe because you were.” Sam smiled, went around
to the passenger–side truck door, and opened it for her. “Come on. I’ll
take you anyplace you want to go.”

Holly crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ve got my
car. I can drive myself.”

“All right.”

She didn’t move.

Stepping back to make room for her to get in the truck, Sam
raised his eyebrows. “Would you rather go back to your golf game instead?”

She glanced back toward the fairway. “No…it wasn’t
exactly going the way I’d planned,” she said cryptically.

Did that have something to do with the “plan”
Clarissa had mentioned? Sam made a mental note to get more information about it
from his cousin—the matchmaker.

Holly looked indecisive, as though torn between going with
him and bolting for the security of her car. “Will you bring me back for
my car later?”

Sam nodded, waiting.

Grumbling something about “masculine ego,” Holly
uncrossed her arms and came to meet him beside the open passenger–side door.

“Does this mean you’re not mad at me?”

“It means my feet are freezing,” she grumbled,
waggling one sandal–clad foot in demonstration.

He grinned and gave her a hand up into the truck cab. She
hovered above the bench seat, swiping away the dust, papers, and CDs so she
could sit down. Her voice, complaining about the messy state of his truck, came
through the open window as he got in the other side.

“So what’s the big emergency?” she asked once he
was settled.

“Persistent, aren’t you?”

She just looked at him.

“There’s no emergency,” he confessed, pulling the
truck slowly into traffic. He shot a glance at her. “I just wanted to
spend some time with you. How else am I going to convince you this love at
first sight thing is real?”

Her eyes widened.

“Put your seat belt on,” he added.

He felt her gaze on him the whole time she was pulling the
belt across her body and buckling it. Everything in her body language screamed
wariness. Sam felt like smacking himself on the forehead. Idiot. Holly probably
thought he was a love–crazed lunatic. He couldn’t exactly blame her for it,
either. He felt like one.

“You know, you can’t just go around kidnapping people
from golf courses. Does this ploy actually work for you?”

“Not all the time.” Sam wasn’t sure, having never
tried it before.

She gave a little harrumph sound. “I’ll just bet. Where
are we going?”

She gripped her day planner tight in both hands, probably
ready to whack him with it if he got out of line. It looked heavy enough to
give him a real shiner if her aim was good. Clearly Holly was a woman unused to
spontaneous fun.

“We can go right back to the golf course, if you want.
Or I’ll take you to get your car and you can go home, to the office, wherever.
It’s up to you.”

She loosened her death grip on her day planner. Sam relaxed,
too, feeling he was making some progress.

“I almost forgot. There’s something for you in the
cooler.” He nodded at the Styrofoam cooler near her feet.

“No, thanks. I had a lot of iced tea back at the—”

“It’s not a drink.”

“What is it?”

He’d never met a woman harder to give a gift to. “It’s
nothing sinister, if that’s what you’re wondering. Just open it, okay?”

It was worth every bit of trouble just to see the look on
Holly’s face when she opened the cooler and pulled out the miniature container
of potted poinsettias from inside.

“If you’re trying to soften me up with flowers, Sam
McKenzie, I’m afraid you’re succeeding.” She smiled. “I love these!
They’re so Christmassy.”

“It’s a little early, I know. But they’ll last through
the holidays, I think.” He grinned back at her. “The florist kept
aiming me toward other kinds of flowers, but you look like a poinsettia girl to
me.”

“I can’t imagine
why
you’d think that.”

Her teasing tone didn’t fool him. Holly
loved
Christmas, and everything that went with it. He’d learned that much about her
after helping decorate her house—her
whole
house—for the holidays. Not
that he’d minded. There hadn’t been anything tough about stringing fake garland
and spraying artificial snow on the windows next to someone like Holly.

Sam glanced at her again. She was still smiling, looking
flushed and surprised. A sudden image occurred to him of Holly as a little
girl, her red hair in two pigtails instead of the businesslike layered haircut
she had now, a sprinkling of freckles over her nose. If they had a little girl
someday, she’d probably have freckles, too.

Whoa.
Sam slapped the brakes on that idea, shaking
his head to clear it.

Returning to the matter at hand, he said, “Now that you’ve
been kidnapped from the golf course and duly softened up, what do you want to
do? Go to the zoo, to the mountains? I hear there’s a winter carnival down at
the fairgrounds. We could even”—he paused for dramatic effect—“go
bowling.”

“Bowling?”

They both laughed.

“Fun is all in how you look at it,” he protested. “With
the right attitude, anything can be fun. I’m going to see that you have a whole
day of nothing but fun.”

At the stoplight, Holly bit her lower lip. “I really
ought to go back in to work…”

Her objection sounded halfhearted at best.

“Come on,” he said. “It’ll be fun. And you
look as if you could use some cheering up. Weren’t things going very well with
Brad back there?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Just a feeling.” And the way she’d looked so
miserable standing next to the guy. “What do you say?”

She took a deep breath. “First there’s something I’ve
got to know.”

That sounded ominous. “What is it?”

Holly lifted her flowers. “Did you really mean to put
these on ice?”

Sam laughed. “Yeah. I was afraid they’d get wilted.”

“Good. In that case, maybe you’re not as crazy as you
seem after all. Let’s go.”

Chapter Six

They went to the winter carnival. Standing beside Sam as she
had her hand ink–stamped by the attendant, Holly could see why he’d suggested
it. Given all the rides, the flashing lights, and the junk food, it was the
perfect place for a boy in a grown man’s body like Sam McKenzie.

He took her hand and they walked beneath the fairground’s
holiday-light-bedecked archway, their shoulders nearly touching. It felt
surprisingly natural to be so close to him. As long as she was being
spontaneous again, Holly decided, she might as well throw herself into the
experience. She gave his hand a squeeze.

He smiled down at her. “Better than golfing?”

A nod. “What should we do first?”

“Eat,” he said decisively.

“Eat? It’s not even dinner time.”

“You do everything by the clock?”

“No, but…quit shaking your head at me. What’s wrong
with having a regular schedule?”

“Nothing.” Sam gave her a goofy, smiling look she
couldn’t quite decipher. “There’s nothing wrong with it. But I don’t think
my stomach’s on your schedule yet. Come on.”

He made a beeline for the hot dog vendor’s umbrella–topped
wagon, where the hot dogs spun endlessly on a revolving rotisserie. Every time
he opened the rotisserie door, the scent of roasted meat wafted in the air.
Holly’s stomach growled.

Sam pulled some money from his wallet. “It’s on me.
What would you like?”

She hesitated, watching in appalled fascination as the
vendor plopped a hot dog on a split bun and began piling on ketchup, mustard,
relish—every condiment in the array before him. She wouldn’t have thought so
much could fit on a single hot dog.

“I’m not sure. Why don’t you go ahead and order while I
decide?”

Five seconds later, Sam—not nearly as indecisive as she
was—had ordered two hot dogs with everything and a root beer.

The vendor started on his order, then paused, spoon in
midair. “Chili?”

“On both, thanks.” Sam glanced at Holly. “Anything
look good to you?”

She examined the hot dogs again. “Well…yes, but—”

Waving, she caught the vendor’s attention. “Excuse me,
but can you tell me what those are made of, please?”

He stared at her as though she’d just started speaking
Japanese.

“I mean, are they all–beef hot dogs? Or turkey?
Or…what?”

Holly let her voice trail off. Now Sam was looking at her
funny, too.

“They’re just hot dogs, lady,” the vendor said. “You
want one or not?”

“Ummm….” She couldn’t decide. She was starving,
but did she really want to eat something she couldn’t identify—or worse,
something that was almost pure saturated fat? It wouldn’t be smart. If she got
fat, she wouldn’t stand a chance of winning Brad back with her plan. Brad
disliked women who let themselves go.

“Is this another MSG reaction thing?” Sam asked. “Or
is it something else? We can go to another vendor if you want.”

“Is this kind of stuff all you ever eat?” Holly
asked him, wondering how he’d managed to get so big on what seemed to be an
exclusively take–out diet of pizza, Chinese food, Christmas cookies,
coffee…and hot dogs.

He shrugged. “Never thought about it much.”

She’d have to show Sam how to cook himself a decent meal. At
the rate he was going, he’d keel over from a cholesterol overdose by the time
he was thirty–five. He needed somebody to watch out for him. He need taking
care of.

Whoa.
Maybe he did, but she wouldn’t be the one who
did it. Had she time–warped into the fifties or something? Holly Aldridge had
bigger goals than taking care of a husband.

Double whoa
. Husband? She didn’t know where
that
had come from. Determinedly, Holly steered her attention back to the hot dogs
and tried to think spontaneously.

“Well, lady?” The hot dog vendor stared
impatiently at her. Behind her, the line of people waiting was growing.

“Would you rather go someplace else?” Sam asked.

“No. Never mind what’s in it. I’ll take one…with
everything, please. And a root beer, too.”

Being spontaneous was starting to feel awfully good.

So was indulging her appetite, Holly decided as she licked
the last of the chili from her fingertips twenty minutes later. She sipped the
foamy remnants of her root beer through her straw and glanced at Sam.

He was watching her. “Good?”

“Mmm-hmm. I can’t remember the last time I ate a hot
dog. Brad prefers sushi.”

Sam made a face.

She couldn’t help but grin. As a prelude to changing the
subject, she patted the picnic bench the two of them sat on. “This is
nice. You really know how to treat a girl, Sam.”

He gave her a wary look.

Laughing, she waved her arm at their surroundings—a prime
spot near the Christmas-crafts exhibition hall. Here, multicolored holiday
lights twinkled. The air was scented with the fragrance of the fir trees
stacked for sale nearby. And Christmas carols burst from the speakers at the
nearest booth.

Despite the lack of snow, reindeer, and naturally occurring
Scotch pines, Holly found the whole effect very Christmassy.

“No, really! I mean it,” she said. “It’s
cheerful here. And peaceful. Plus, it’s nice not to have to worry about
impressing anybody for a change.”

“Thanks. I think.”

Sam ducked his head and finished the last bite of his hot
dog. When he looked up again, one corner of his lips was decorated with a
little smear of chili.

“Umm, you’ve got a little bit of chili.” Holly
tapped her fingertip at the corner of her lips. “Right here.”

“Here?” He probed one corner with the tip of his
tongue.

“Other side.”

He tried again.

“No, lower. Here, wait a minute.” Grabbing a clean
napkin from the pile on Sam’s lap, she moved closer to him and wiped away the
spot. Beneath her fingertip, the corner of his mouth raised in a smile.

“There. I got it.” She dabbed the other side for
good measure. “I guess nobody could eat with as much gusto as you do and
not make a mess occasionally.”