Once Upon a Christmas (16 page)

“You didn’t really invite me here to look at software,
did you, Brad?” she whispered.

“Holly! What’s gotten into you?” Trapped between
her and the rosewood executive desk at his back, Brad gaped at her. “This
isn’t like you at all.”

“It’s the new me,” she murmured, actually starting
to enjoy herself. It was like playing a role in a movie. It was like riding a
roller-coaster, drunk, at midnight. Not that she’d ever really done something
like that, but Holly was starting to believe the new,
spontaneous
her
just might try it.

Smiling, she finished undoing her coat sash and raised her
fingers to the lapels. “Come home, Brad. We can be so perfect together. I
know we can.”

Inch by inch, she slowly opened her coat. His eyes widened.
It was just the reaction she’d hoped for. Encouraged, Holly raised her knee to
the desk, high enough for Brad to see her garter and the top of her stocking.

The pressure of balancing on one foot snapped the spike heel
clean off her shoe. She went down like an anchor tossed overboard.

“Holly! Are you all right?” Brad crouched in front
of her and caught hold of her arms. Briefly his gaze dipped to the
groping-hands bra, then upward again.

“I’m fine,” she said, feeling ridiculous. “Help
me up?”

He helped her to her feet, then hot-footed it behind his
desk, putting some distance between them. While his back was turned, Holly
seated herself on the sofa and belted her coat closed again. Somehow, it didn’t
feel right anymore.

Brad sat, looking awkward and embarrassed for them both. He
stared at his desk blotter, patting the nape of his neck—a sure sign he was
mulling something over. She crossed her legs, waiting.

“I’m not sure what to make of this,” he finally
said. “Have you been reading one of those women’s magazines or something?”

As a matter of fact, she had. She’d gone to the library and
searched the periodicals index for appropriate articles, articles which might
spark some ideas for her plan. Holly wasn’t going to admit that to Brad,
though.

He straightened in his chair and glanced at her. “This
isn’t about…sex.” He cleared his throat, looking vaguely
prudish—something she hadn’t noticed in Brad before. “It’s about making a
decision that will affect my life for years to come. I won’t rush into a
greater commitment without considering all the factors. It’s part of the ‘space’
thing I’ve been talking about lately.”

Holly leaned back. Okay, so seduction hadn’t worked. She was
willing to speak practically with him.

“Exactly how long do you think this…consideration is
going to take?”

She slipped off her shoes and set them on her briefcase. The
motion made the Lover’s Potion and Aphrodisia Massage Oil clink together
inside. Maybe she could still return the unopened bottles for a full refund.
She wasn’t likely to find a use for them now.

Brad patted his neck again, then smoothed his open palms
over his desk blotter. “I don’t know, but I’m very close to making a
decision.”

Hallelujah. Brad was “very close” to deciding
their fate.

“I’m not sure how much longer I can wait,” Holly
said.

It was the end of the line. The end of the plan. She’d tried
everything she could think of, short of handcuffing them together. Even then,
Brad would probably resist making a commitment. It had to be up to him now.

“I understand.” His forehead wrinkled with
concern. “After all, you’ve probably got that biological ticking clock
thing going on. I’ve been thinking about it. You’re not getting any younger,
you know.”

Holly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “And you’re
not getting any smarter.”

She rose from the sofa with as much dignity as she could
muster. Gathering her shoes and briefcase, she headed for the office door.
There, she stopped.

“I need to know what your decision is—about us—by the
end of the week.”

Brad blinked up at her. After a minute, he asked, “Does
this mean you won’t evaluate my new accounting software for me?”

Had he always been this self-centered?

“I don’t know,” Holly said, throwing his words
back at him, “but I’m very close to making a decision. Bye, Brad.”

Chapter Eight

“I’ve gotta be crazy,” Sam said to David
mid-morning on Sunday. “Of all the women in this town—”

“And we both know there are so many in Saguaro Vista—”

“Of all the women in this town,” Sam continued,
scowling at Clarissa’s husband, “I’ve got to pick one that’s obsessed with
another man.”

They were sitting on Holly’s kitchen floor, trying to pry up
the remaining few feet of old yellow linoleum so they could lay a new wood
floor. It was the last big renovation project to be tackled, but given their
progress so far, Sam almost wished they’d chosen something easier—like rewiring
the whole house.

The linoleum seemed to have been welded on somehow. Either
that, or the original concrete slab was really an eight-inch-thick slab of
linoleum. With a heavy metal spatula, Sam pried at the one corner he’d managed
to loosen. As usual, it barely moved.

“She’ll come around,” David said. “Holly’s a
smart girl.”

He rammed his spatula beneath the section of linoleum he was
working on and pulled. About an inch of flooring came up. David swore.

“Louder. Maybe you can cuss it out of there,” Sam
told him, grinning.

Of all the men who worked for his dad’s construction
company, David was the only one who’d agreed to help Sam with Holly’s
renovation project. As soon as the other workers had heard the job was
renovating Holly Aldridge’s house, they’d all found other things to do with
their nights and weekends than earn a few extra holiday-shopping bucks. Sam
didn’t understand it.

“I know Holly’s smart,” Sam said, returning to
their earlier conversation. “What I didn’t bargain on is how determined
she is, too. She doesn’t know the meaning of surrender.”

David stopped prying at the linoleum long enough to point
the spatula toward Sam. “And
you
do?”

Sam laughed. David had him there. “I’ll surrender just
as soon as Holly does. Until then, I’m going to do my damnedest to convince her
we belong together.”

The slam of the front door put an end to their conversation.
A few seconds later, Holly stomped past the archway to the living room. There
was a thud as something hit the floor, then the sound of Holly muttering to
herself.

“I don’t know, Holly. What’s gotten into you, Holly?
Might be bronchitis, Holly.”

Her voice sounded low-pitched—a pissed-off imitation of a
man’s voice. Brad’s voice, if Sam guessed correctly.

Still muttering, she came into the kitchen, clutching a pair
of red high-heeled shoes to her chest. She was dressed in a raincoat. She
dropped the shoes on the counter and frowned at them. A small red thing rolled
off the countertop and landed on the other side, almost in Sam’s lap. It was
one of her heels.

He held it up. “I can fix this for you, if you want.”

Holly screamed.

She lurched over the counter, staring at him. “Why didn’t
you say you were down there? You just about gave me a heart attack.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Sam said, looking
back at her. She’d done something to her hair. There was a pouffy spot on top
big enough to stash a pack of gum in, and it was all curly on the ends. It
looked good, in a wild kind of way.

Holly examined the ripped up floor, then the two of them
sitting amid their spatulas, the heat gun, assorted tools, and Sam’s open red
tool box. Her gaze rested for a second on the jumbo bag of red and green
Christmas tortilla chips he and David had shared for breakfast, then moved up
to Sam again.

“Are you sure you two are doing this right?” she
asked doubtfully. “You’ve been at this for days. The floor looks worse
than ever.”

“It’s supposed to look this way, at least until the new
floor is all the way in,” David interrupted, saving Sam from answering. “How
ya’ doing, Holly?”

“Fine, thanks.” From the sound of it, she’d rather
chew nails than talk civilly to anyone.

“Oookay… Sorry I asked.” David grinned and went
back to work again.

Holly took a deep breath, visibly trying to calm herself.
She gave David a wavery, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, David. You guys
want some help? I can change and be back in a couple of minutes.”

She touched her fingers to her coat lapels, started pulling
them apart, then stopped. Her face reddened. Surprisingly, so did her chest.
Sam hadn’t realized a woman could blush all the way down to…down to where her
shirt should be, if she was wearing one. Holly wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Probably, she wasn’t wearing much of anything else, either.

Holly shoved the raincoat closed again, holding it tight
against her throat. “I’ll be right back.”

Hastily, she turned toward the archway.

All at once, Sam understood. “How’s Brad these days?”

She stopped, holding onto the archway edges with both hands.
Her fingers tightened.

“None of your business.” She raised her head and,
with sudden decisiveness, marched all the way back to the middle of the kitchen
where he and David sat. “How did you know?”

“It didn’t take a genius to figure out all those
lingerie bags in the trash. But your raincoat was the dead giveaway.”

Sam examined her broken heel, still in his hand. “What
I can’t figure out is how this happened.” He grinned. “You want to
tell us about it?”

David looked interested. Holly looked mad.

“No.” She turned, scooped up her shoes from the
counter, and headed for the living room.

Sam waved the heel of her shoe. “You want me to fix
this, or what?”

He couldn’t stop smiling. If Brad could turn down Holly—and
he must have—when she was wearing nothing but a raincoat and some sexy
lingerie…. Well, Sam’s chance of a future with her looked a whole lot
brighter, all of a sudden.

Holly belted her raincoat tighter, then came back and
snatched the heel from him. “No. I’ll fix it myself.”

She examined the little nails embedded in the broken heel,
then flipped over the shoe and centered the heel in place. Biting her lip
thoughtfully, she glanced around the kitchen, studiously ignoring him. An
instant later, her eyes lit up. Picking up her other shoe, Holly held it like a
hammer, high above her head. She took a deep breath and slammed it down hard on
the broken heel.

The heel flew like a red leather bullet, straight at Sam’s
head.

“Ow!”

Distantly, he heard the heel clatter to the floor. Holly
gasped and skidded across the linoleum to where he clutched his head with one
hand. It still stung where the heel had smacked into it.

“Oh, Sam—I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” Gently, she
lifted his hand away, then peered at his scalp. “I don’t think you’re
bleeding.”

Beside him, David picked up the broken heel and held it out
to Holly. “Here you—”

“Oh, no you don’t!” Sam grabbed it, glaring at
them both. “You want to arm her again? I thought you were my friend.”

He shook off Holly’s hand and got up. Taking the heel from
David, Sam picked up the broken shoe from the counter.

“
I’ll
fix this.” He gave them both a look
that dared them to disagree. He shouldn’t have been surprised when Holly did.
She grabbed for the broken shoe.

Sam held it just out of reach. She gave a little jump. He
lifted it higher.

“I can fix it. I’ve gotten along just fine until now
without your stupid he–man fix–it routine, you know. I’m not helpless.”

He–man?
“You’re a menace,” he shot back.

“Give me my shoe, please.” The words emerged
through clenched teeth, just before Holly jumped again.

She missed, probably because Sam stood six inches taller
than she did. It wasn’t difficult to keep the shoe away from her.

He had a devious thought.

“Show me what’s under your coat,” he offered, “and
I’ll give you your shoe back.”

“What? No.”

“Come on,” Sam coaxed, dangling her shoe—the
bait—just out of reach. He grinned.

She kicked him in the shin.

“Ow!” He dropped her shoe.

Holly picked it up with a smug little smile and flounced
off, muttering something about getting into some normal clothes so she could
help.

He stopped her. “Oh, no. You’re not helping.”

“Why not?”

“We’ve already covered this ground, haven’t we?”

She glared at him.

“You’re not going to kick me again, are you?”

Holly shook her head. “Come on, Sam. I’m having kind of
a hard day. Why don’t you quit trying to change the subject and just tell me
why you don’t want me to help?”

“Because you’re dangerous, that’s why.”

Looking offended, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Only
when provoked. I asked you nicely to give me my shoe, and you didn’t.” She
nodded at the broken heel. “Hitting you with that was an accident, and you
know it.”

“So was breaking my toe with that damned ten–pound
book,” Sam pointed out, waggling his bare foot in demonstration—and
remembrance. “Now you want me to let you wreak havoc on the floor? With
tools?” He shook his head. “I’d have to be crazy.”

David grinned at that. “What was that you were saying
earlier about being crazy?”

Sam cut him off with a look. He didn’t need to be reminded
that he’d called himself crazy, and crazy about Holly, just fifteen minutes
ago. David shrugged and dug into the bag of tortilla chips at his feet,
removing himself from the argument.

“It’s my floor,” Holly insisted. “I want to
help. All you have to do is show me how.” She studied the shards of yellow
linoleum scattered at their feet. “It doesn’t look too difficult to me.”

She gave him a shrewd look. “Maybe you don’t want me to
find out how easy this is. It would hurt your handyman’s ego.” Her gaze
darted over to David. “Is that why he won’t let me help?”