Once Upon a Christmas (25 page)

Her robe billowing behind her, she flounced toward the door.
She swung it open and stuck out her head. “Excuse me! Bellma—”

Dylan yanked her inside. “Look. Do you want to get us
both kicked out of this place?”

“No. Just you.”

Stacey shook her arm from his grasp. The movement made her
robe twist crookedly around her middle. Jerking it straight again, she tied the
belt tight enough to make him wince.

“I’m serious, Dylan. Nothing you can say will make me
give you another chance. Your timing stinks, and I’ve got a honeymoon charade
to worry about. You’re not invited. Get it?”

“Are you sure?”

“Aaarrgh!” Stomping past him to the bathroom, she
picked up the phone from the vanity. “Either quit manhandling me and get
out of here,” she said, waggling the receiver toward him, “or I’m
calling security.”

Dylan folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb.
Nice
tub,
he noticed, peering inside the pink marble room.
Big enough for two
.
“Do you really want to do that?”

She blew out an exasperated breath. “What is it with
you? Learn to take no for an answer.” Ducking her head, Stacey punched
zero on the phone and raised it to her ear.

Damn. He was blowing it again.

He lurched forward to pluck the receiver from her hand and
felt himself skidding across the marble instead. Sudsy water squeaked beneath
his shoes. Arms pinwheeling, he tried to keep his balance. Stacey’s surprised
face flashed in front of him. A second later, he landed in a heap at her feet.

This was some kind of stellar impression he was making.

“Be—because,” he stammered, trying to look
comfortable on the floor with water seeping into his jeans, “if you really
want to carry off this honeymoon pretense for Janie, I can help you.”

She clicked off the phone. “How?”

Ice cold
. Because he’d hurt her, Dylan knew, and
regretted every moment since they’d split. He’d played his cards wrong, ducked
out of the game just as it heated up—and all because of Janie’s cockamamie
theory that Stacey wanted to keep things light after her divorce. No serious
relationships.

Naturally, what had he done? Fallen in love with her. Their
timing couldn’t have been worse. Dylan had figured he’d get over her if they
spent some time apart. Instead, the distance had only made him realize he’d
been an idiot to let her go.

He looked up at her. “I’ll be your husband.”

“My husband?” She couldn’t have heard him right.
Stacey stared down at Dylan, tapping the phone against her shoulder. “What
do you mean?”

It was
so
hard not to crouch down beside him and make
sure he was okay. If anyone knew exactly how hard that marble floor was, it was
Stacey. Her backside was intimately acquainted with it. Dylan’s descent had
looked
funny, but it must have hurt.

He shifted his weight and got to his feet, wincing at the
effort. She doubted he realized it, though. Dylan was a classic tough guy. Too
brawny to show any weakness to a mere woman.

The big baby.

“I mean,
you’re
supposed to be Janie. In the
honeymoon suite, right?” He leaned on one foot as though favoring an
injury and propped his hand on the vanity. Deftly, he slipped the phone from
her grasp and replaced it in its stand.

Stacey frowned. “Are you…?”

Okay?
she’d been about to ask.

No. He was the one who’d barged in, totally uninvited, and
started bossing her around. She refused to feel sorry for him.

“—serious?” she finished instead. “I suppose
you
want to be Richard?”

“Yeah. I talked to Richard and Janie before they left.
I volunteered to help.”

I’ll bet
. Breaking her heart once hadn’t been enough
for him, apparently. What kind of weird ego trip was that?

He wasn’t getting a second crack at her. First she was
getting him out of this room, then she was getting on with the honeymoon
charade. By herself. Period.

Stuffing her hands in her pockets to keep from reaching out
to steady Dylan, Stacey skirted past him. “I don’t need help. I was
handling things just fine until you got here.”

She reached the suite’s sitting area, chose one of the
austere white-upholstered chairs, and flopped on it. Ginger followed her.
Naturally, so did Dylan.

He settled on opposite her and rested his forearms loosely
on his thighs. The motion made her gaze wander over those hard-muscled legs,
those lightly tanned arms….
Whoa
. Forcing her gaze upward, Stacey met
his eyes.

He grinned. The rat. He must have caught her gawking at him.

“Tell me that kiss didn’t affect you,” he said.

“It didn’t affect me,” she lied. Truth was, it was
the greatest kiss she’d had all week. All month.

It was the greatest kiss, the
only
kiss, she’d had
since their breakup, but Stacey was hardly going to admit that to him. The last
thing she needed was to encourage a guy like Dylan, a guy who was even bossier
than Charlie had been—and who was twice as hard to resist.

She was only just beginning to crawl out from under the
dark, stifling blanket of her ex-marriage. Being married had sent her identity
so far underground, just getting her own credit card had been an ordeal. She
still didn’t own a car. After four years of gradually sliding deeper and deeper
into Charlie’s life, her own interests seemed alien to her. So did making her
own choices.

She didn’t need Dylan around mucking things up.

“It didn’t affect me.” This time, she dared to
meet his eyes. They sparkled back at her, green and intelligent and filled with
a good humor she longed to possess. “So you might as well leave.
Satisfied?”

“Not yet.”

He leaned forward, making his meaning plain.
Not
satisfied…but he meant to be
. And the thing was, she’d bet he’d satisfy
her
,
too. It had been a struggle not to sleep with him before, when they were
dating. She’d wanted to. But just when Stacey had decided to make her big move,
Dylan had called it quits.

Now, alone together in a hotel room with no divorcée date
protocol to put the brakes on things, who knew what could happen?

Why couldn’t she just be immune to him? It would make
everything so much easier. But her stupid thumping pulse rate made a lie of her
wish.

“I promised Richard and Janie I’d stay the whole
weekend,” he said. “So you might as well accept my help. I’m not
leaving.”

That’s what you think
. Stacey opened her mouth to
tell him so, but a strange scraping at the door made her pause. What if someone
was listening? She could hardly be caught arguing with her “husband”
on her honeymoon.

She peered around the gaily decorated cookies on the table.
A long white envelope slid beneath the honeymoon suite door and dropped on the
carpet.

Probably a room service menu or something, she decided. It
gave her an idea.

“Why don’t we go out to dinner and talk things over?”
That way, I can get you out of my room and out of my life
. “That
way, we can, ahh—”

“Don’t you want to see what that is?” Dylan
interrupted, nodding toward the envelope at the door.

She waved it away. “Later. So, what do you say? We
could, ummm, discuss strategy.”

He stared at the envelope. “It looks like a note. Are
you sure?”

Geez, he was like a dog with a bone. Why did he always
assume she didn’t know what she wanted?

“Positive.” Stacey fought an urge to glare at him.
“Because if we’re really going to do this, what we need is a strategy. A
honeymoon pretense strategy.”

Dylan raised his eyebrows. Stacey raised hers, too, trying
to seem as though she actually meant to leave the hotel room with him.

“It might be important,” he said.

“Aaarrgh!” He hadn’t come to help. He’d come to
drive her crazy. She stood, slapping her hands onto her thighs. Ginger bounded
over, tail wagging.

“If you’re so curious,
you
go look,” Stacey
said, glancing curiously at the dog.

At her feet, Ginger flopped both paws playfully onto the
carpet and buried her muzzle between them. She peeked up at Stacey, her tail
sweeping with impressive speed from her upraised waggling rump.

She looked from Ginger to Dylan. “What’s with her?”

“She thinks you want to play.” Silently, he
mimicked her thigh slap. “I think she likes you more than me,” he
added forlornly.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You—”
No
. She
wasn’t going to be nice to him. She had to stay on course. “Umm, what
about dinner?”

As an answer, he went to the door and scooped up the
envelope. It didn’t do much to tell her his plans, but it did give her an
excellent opportunity to watch him unobserved. So she crouched down to pet
Ginger and did.

He caught her at it just as she reached hip level. “See
anything you like?”

What wasn’t to like
? Rather than let him see the
truth in her eyes—she did have some pride left—Stacey shrugged and flopped back
into her chair. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Ouch!” Dylan shuddered, grinning as he handed the
envelope in her direction. “You really know how to hurt a guy.”

“Comes from dating guys who stand you up and leave you
with four pounds of steak from the romantic dinner that wasn’t.” She
turned the envelope.
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Parker
, it read in flowery
script on the front. “My next-door-neighbor’s dog was overjoyed, though.”

Frowning, Stacey slit the envelope. Out fell a glossy
brochure, two pairs of tickets, something that looked like a detailed itinerary—and
a note written on a piece of embossed stationery.

“Oh, no.” She turned over the brochure. The words
Romantic
Escapades
leaped from the page in inch-high letters, above a picture of a
carefree couple strolling hand in hand along the beach. Dropping it like the
time bomb it was, Stacey picked up the letter instead.

Surprise
! it began.
Dear Janie and Richard…

“Oh, no. It’s another honeymoon surprise.”

Dylan leaned over her shoulder. His arm came partway around
her to rest on her chair’s arm for balance. Even worse, his lips brushed past
her ear. At the feel of their soft heat, a shiver raced through her.

Oh, boy.

“Aunt Geraldine’s got some bag of tricks.” He read
along with her. “Show tickets, golf passes, his-and-hers massages…and
what’s this?” He picked up a foil-inlaid invitation card. “Free
psychic readings for couples. Wow.”

“Aunt Geraldine’s into that stuff,” Stacey
muttered.

What was she going to do now? The “couples weekend”
her aunt had arranged for Janie and Richard could only work with—let’s face
it—a couple.

“I wonder what she’ll say about us,” Dylan mused.

“Who?”

“The psychic.” He bent his head lower, ostensibly
to examine the card. His jaw smoothed warmly past her cheek. “I’ll bet she
says we belong together.”

“We’re already together. We’re the honeymoon couple.”
Whoops. Had she already accepted his plan? Having him so near only scrambled
her thoughts. “I mean—”

“I know what you mean.” He leaned to the side and
grinned at her. “After this, you’ve got no choice but to draft somebody to
be the happy groom.”

Stacey tapped the brochure against her lips and gave him a
suspicious look. “Did you arrange this?”

“Me?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you. You probably rented
Ginger, too, just to make a good impression.”

“Rented?”

“Well, why not?” She gestured toward the dog,
improvising madly. “Why bring her, when you know they don’t allow dogs in
the hotel?”

Hey, that wasn’t bad. She was holding her own with Dylan.
Maybe she
could
handle a whole weekend alone with him. Stacey crossed
her arms and legs, wishing she had on something more substantial than bathrobe
and bare skin.

“Hmmm?” she prompted.

He slipped to the front of the chair and bent to gently cup
her shoulders in his hands. Shaking his head as though she couldn’t be farther
off-base if she tried, Dylan said, “Let’s be realistic, okay? I don’t
think—”

“Hmmm?” She cocked her head, considering tapping
her foot for good measure.
Patronize me, will ya
? Charlie had tried that
tactic, too. Every time she was right about something.

Dylan made a face. “How about that dinner?”

“Delaying won’t work,” Stacey warned. His gaze
dipped to the neckline of her robe, and she added, “Neither will that.”

He grinned. “Can’t fault a guy for trying.”

What was he hiding? “Well?”

“Ginger goes just about everyplace with me,” he
finally said, lowering his hands from her shoulders and looking embarrassed. “If
I leave her home, she goes into some kind of doggie tantrum.”

“Hmmm. Must be spoiled.”

She might have said “worthless” or “stupid,”
given the aggrieved look he gave her. Stacey bit her lower lip and glanced at
Ginger. “Sorry.”

Dylan gazed at the dog fondly. “She’s not spoiled, but
I think she had a rough upbringing.” As though sensing his attention,
Ginger got up and trotted to him. She nudged his hand with her nose, and he
patted her between the ears. “She’s a stray. Turned up in the office
parking lot a month or so ago, skinny as a stick, matted with dirt. No collar.”

He puckered his lips at the dog, blowing her a kiss as he
petted her. It was an unconscious motion, Stacey felt sure. Something inside
her softened because of it.

Dylan straightened, blinking like somebody walking into the
summer sunlight. “Nobody claimed her, so I kept her.”

“You rescued her, you big softie.” Stacey couldn’t
keep a silly grin from her face. “I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“I’ll rescue you, too, if you’ll let me. You need help
with this honeymoon thing, especially now with Aunt Geraldine’s latest
surprise.”