Once Upon a Christmas (29 page)

The officer shook his head. “I’m sorry, miss—”

“Sugarlumps!” yelled Dylan, smiling broadly. He
reached them in two quick steps, then thrust the bouquet in Stacey’s arms.

“Hey, that’s him!” the driver cried. “The
loser with the flowers!”

“He’s not a loser,” Stacey said. “He’s, he’s…”

Dylan could almost see the wheels turning in her mind.
Suddenly her eyes brightened. She gave him a smile even more syrupy than the
one he’d tried out on her at the Renaissance show.

Of course,
his
smile had been sappy and genuine.
Stacey’s probably wasn’t, especially in this instance. But if Dylan had his
way, she’d look at him like that and mean it by the time the weekend was up. It
was something to look forward to.

“He’s my husband.” Her voice emanated false cheer
as her gaze met Dylan’s. “Isn’t that right, honey?” she added through
her smile, turning to face him so the others couldn’t read her desperate
please-stick-to-our-story expression.

She clamped both hands on his shoulders.
Help me!
she
mouthed.

“Trust me,” Dylan said.

He covered his whispered words with a loud smacking kiss on
her lips. She nodded, looking scared but willing to bluster her way through
whatever they had to do.

“It’s going to cost you, though,” he warned.

Grinning at the thought of the friendly repayment he’d
exact, Dylan hauled her up against his side. He put on his best sitcom husband
face. “I’ll take care of this, Sweetcakes.”

He offered his hand to the closest policemen. “Richard
Parker!” he boomed, shaking hands with each of them in turn. “What
seems to be the trouble, officers? Don’t tell me it’s my little lady, Janie,
here.”

Stacey raised the flowers. “Richard’s going to kill
you,” she muttered from behind them. “You’re making him sound like
Fred Flintstone.”

“I guess that makes me Barney Rubble, then. You know,
Fred’s buddy,” he whispered. “I’m kinda tall for the part, though.
Don’t you think so?”

Her smiling, up-and-down perusal made him feel tall enough
to touch the top of the Atmosphere. This hero business had potential.

“It seems your wife can’t pay the taxi driver,”
one of the officers said. “And he won’t move his taxi out of the drive
until she does.”

The driver waved a strip of paper at Dylan. “She’s
paying this ticket, too! You’re lucky I don’t charge you for lost wages. What
kind of bubble brain tries to pay for a taxi with a check?”

“Bubble brain?” Dylan repeated.

The driver looked uncertain.

“This is my wife you’re talking about, pal.” Dylan
stepped closer, then reached in his pocket.

Both officers straightened, instantly alert.

“Sorry, lady.” The driver darted a glance at
Stacey.

Dylan bared his teeth at him. “I don’t think she heard
you.”

“I’m sorry about that, ma’am!” He shoved the
ticket in his pants pocket, then wiped his palms on the wide bottom of his
sweatshirt. “I’ll, uh, take care of the ticket myself.”

“Good idea.” Pulling out his wallet, Dylan
withdrew two ten dollar bills and gave them to the driver. “That ought to
about cover it from the Renaissance to here, right?”

“Uh, yeah,” mumbled the driver, counting the
money. He pocketed it, started to walk back to his taxi, then stopped and
looked over his shoulder. “What about the extra fifty bucks?”

Dylan’s hand stilled midway through folding his wallet. “Extra
fifty bucks?”

Beside him, Stacey seemed to shrink a couple inches. “I,
umm, promised him a little extra money.”

“Fifty bucks?”

She bit her lower lip, twisting her purse strap tight enough
to cut off circulation to her wrist. She nodded.

“Big tip.”

“It wasn’t…exactly…a tip.”

“Nah, it wasn’t a tip,” agreed the driver. “Well?”

Sighing, Dylan opened his wallet again. “What’s it for?”
he asked Stacey as he counted out fifty dollars.

“Ummm…” She shifted her weight from foot to
foot, looking like a kid caught red-handed with her hand in the cookie jar. “I
paid him extra to get rid of you back there. When you were chasing the taxi.”

Dylan raised his eyebrows and handed over the money. No,
he
was paying extra to get rid of
himself.

“Next time, just make sure you can fork over the dough
before making a promise like that. Okay, Lovey?”

Stacey mumbled her assent—and something that sounded like “Tigerlips,”
if he wasn’t mistaken—then buried her face in the roses.

With everything apparently in the clear, the police helped
escort the driver and his taxi onto the street again, leaving Dylan and Stacey
alone.

“Now that that’s taken care of,” he said,
grinning, “it’s payback time.”

Stacey ducked into the crowd and bolted down The Strip.

“You’re fast,” Dylan told her an hour later,
inside the conservatory at the Bellagio. He braced his hand on one of the low
marble walls and gazed at the winter wonderland all around them, trying not to
show he was winded.

He’d chased her down The Strip, past several casinos, into
an array of shops, and finally to the Bellagio. An Olympic runner would be
breathing hard after all that. “I almost caught up to you when you stopped
to check out that shoe sale.”

Stacey grinned, but she was panting, too. “I had a
pretty big head start on you by then.” She strolled beside him along the
conservatory’s pathway, still holding her bedraggled bouquet of roses. “I
figured I could always use a new pair of shoes. It was worth the risk. Besides,
you
didn’t
catch me.”

Her eyes were shining, her face rosy with the aftereffects
of their chase. Damp tendrils of chestnut-colored hair clung to the back of her
neck. Still smiling, she turned her face to the conservatory’s display of
thousands of poinsettias.

All around them, Christmas cheer abounded. Above the
poinsettias, enormous ornaments—each one bigger than a Humvee— hung suspended
from the ceiling on invisible wires, gleaming in shades of metallic red and
green and gold. Lights twinkled everywhere. Magnificent fir trees sheltered an
indoor ice pond, and around them stood caribou-shaped topiaries and a
25-foot-long topiary train—complete with a smoking stack. Apparently, in Las Vegas, no holiday spectacle was too over-the-top.

Stacey gazed at the lights and ornaments and flowers, her
face aglow with wonder. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Beautiful,” Dylan agreed. But the view was
ordinary compared with the way she looked to him now, relaxed beside him. She
might have been a different woman than the one who’d greeted him warily at the
door to the honeymoon suite earlier. No less beautiful but twice as
appealing…because now she was beginning to feel comfortable with him. “So
are you.”

Stacey laughed. She raised her hand to wipe away a streak of
smudged mascara.

“Come on, Dylan. There’s nobody around to hear us.”
She nodded her head to indicate the sparsely populated conservatory. She
hunched her shoulders, fiddling with a rose petal. “You don’t have to be
Mr. Honeymoon when it’s just us.”

“I’m not. I—”

“It’s okay. After all, you did your best to act like a
honeymooner back at the Renaissance, and I kind of put the kibosh on that, didn’t
I?” With a short laugh, Stacey twisted a rose petal from its place and
smoothed it between her fingers. She stared up at the conservatory’s fully
decorated Christmas tree. “I’m sorry about that, Dylan. I shouldn’t have
run out on you the way I did.”

He couldn’t believe she was taking the blame for…for what?
Dylan still wasn’t sure exactly what had gotten her all riled up during dinner,
and at this rate he wasn’t likely to find out.

“I think you skipped a step.” He put his hand to
her shoulder and smiled at her. She didn’t glance sideways to see it, though,
so his good faith gesture was wasted. “I never—”

I never figured out what all the trouble was
, he
started to say, but before he could get the words out, Stacey twisted off
another rose petal and interrupted.

“Please. I don’t want to keep fighting with you.”
She looked into his face at last. “I can’t stand it.” More rose
petals followed the first, twisted, scrubbed between her fingertips, then
dropped on the growing pile beside her. “You were doing your best to pull
off the honeymoon charade, and I…I overreacted. I’m sorry. Let’s just leave
it at that, okay?”

Her gaze, brown-eyed and imploring, met his. Stacey might
not want him there at all, but if they were going to be forced into cooperating
on the honeymoon charade, Dylan realized, it was obviously important to her
that they do it peacefully.

“It means a lot to you that people get along, doesn’t
it?”

He placed his hand over hers to keep her from shredding the
other two and a half dozen red roses he’d given her. She looked at his hand,
startled, then at the pile of petals she’d made. Her cheeks pinked.

“That’s why you’re doing this,” he went on. “The
honeymoon charade, I mean. To keep the peace.”

“Yeah. I’m a real peacenik.” Stacey offered him a
rueful smile. “That’s why I bashed you with a blow dryer and almost got
you run over tonight. If I were you, I’d get the heck out of Dodge before the
real shooting starts. You might get
really
hurt.”

He was already hurt. Hurting without her. Only it had taken
him too long to get it through his bone-headed brain. “I’m not going
anyplace.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot. You gave your word to
Richard and Janie, didn’t you?” She frowned sympathetically. “You’re
honor-bound for the whole weekend.”

That wasn’t what he’d meant about staying, but he couldn’t
pass up an opportunity to solidify his alibi.

“You’ve got it. The whole weekend. Especially now, with
all those honeymoon surprises still to get through,” Dylan said, trying to
fake a little resistance to having to go through with the charade for two more
days. “We’ve got a full lineup tomorrow.”

“Let’s keep a low profile this time, okay?”

He raised two fingers. “Scout’s honor, remember? I’ll
try to impersonate Richard a little more, umm, quietly, if you’ll agree not to
get Janie arrested.”

He stuck out his hand for a deal-making handshake.

Stacey blushed at his mention of her run-in with the police
but slipped her hand in his anyway. “It’s a deal. I never did thank you
for rescuing me from the taxi driver, you know.”

She squeezed his hand gently. Dylan used it to pull her
closer. She had no choice but to come, since her other hand was filled with the
tissue-wrapped flowers.

“You can thank me now. You still owe me, remember?”

He raised his hand to her cheek. Beneath his fingertips her
skin felt softer than the roses. The feel of it lured him closer.

“Thank you,” she said hastily, ducking her head.
She tried to turn her face away, but Dylan tipped her chin up with his knuckles
and gently shook his head.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, cradling her
cheek in his hand. He stroked her again, and the roses Stacey held between them
started to tremble, filling the air with their perfume. “My payback demand
is a thank-you kiss.”

“A thank-you kiss?” She squinted at the few people
standing near them. “But there’s hardly anybody here to impress. You know,
with our just-married honeymoon bliss. We should wait until—”

“The charade isn’t why I asked. Kiss me.”

The faint rustling of the roses underscored his words. Was
she afraid or excited? Her trembling could mean either one, and he didn’t want
to scare her. He
did
want to kiss her…kiss her long and hard and make
the past melt away so they could start again.

“Kiss me,” Dylan said, “and I’ll call it
even.”

That
reasoning she could accept, he saw. The roses
stilled, and the hunted expression left her face. Stacey raised slightly, her
hand still linked with his, and quickly pressed her lips to his. She started to
lean back…and Dylan stopped her with a hand to the back of her neck. His
fingers kneaded in her hair, and its softness sifted through his fingers like
silk.

“You’re welcome,” he said.
More
, he
thought.

Her eyes closed briefly, then opened again to focus on his
mouth. “I…you’re welcome, too.”

The roses dropped to the floor. Heat passed between them,
and Dylan hardly dared move for fear of scaring her away. An instant later
Stacey’s mouth found his again, and it was as though nothing had ever come
between them. She was Stacey, his Stacey, warm and tempting as he remembered.
She brought both hands to his shoulders and kissed him harder. He was lost,
falling for her all over again, and he wanted to tell her, tell her how he felt
and how much he’d missed her, except just as he thought it he literally
was
falling. Backward.

She’d unbalanced him by leaning forward. Dylan tightened his
hold on her and tried to keep them upright without breaking their kiss. Hell,
he’d be nuts to end a kiss like this one. He slipped his arm around her middle
and held her close.

“Mmm-mmm,” Stacey moaned, deepening the kiss. “Mmm-mmm…”

Briefly, Dylan wondered if she’d mistaken his maneuverings
for increasing passion. He leaned forward, preventing them from toppling over.
But then her kiss made him wild, made him forget where they were and who was
around…and what was happening.

Teetering, he grabbed for leverage and caught an armful of
woman instead. They both toppled backward into the bed of poinsettias.

Their mouths popped apart. Stacey sprawled atop his chest,
looking disheveled, disoriented—and sexy as hell. Also confused. But she wasn’t
jumping up off him right away, so Dylan decided to savor the experience.

He smiled, wanting to feel nothing except the curving
softness of her body pressed against him. Something sharp poking into the back
of his shirt changed his mind and sent his attention to less good-feeling parts
of his anatomy. It felt like dozens of tiny needles stabbing him in the back,
like cactus spines or midget shish kebab skewers or maybe even swizzle sticks,
which somehow seemed more suited to the glitz of Las Vegas than anything else.

It felt like rose thorns working their way into his shoulder
blades.

Because it was.

“
Youch
!” Rearing upright, Dylan rooted in
the poinsettias for the limp flowers Stacey had dropped behind him. He held
them out to her. “Let’s try that again. Without your instruments of
destruction behind me this time.”

But it was too late. She was already getting to her feet,
yanking down her dress as though it was supposed to come to her
ankles
instead of just above her knees, filled with apologies and the same damned
misplaced modesty she’d given him before.

Hell.

“Sorry.” She took the flowers from his hand. They
dropped in her grasp, several blossoms bending over the tissue paper with
broken stems and crushed petals. “I didn’t mean to attack you like that.”
Stacey tried to prop up one of the roses, then plucked a poinsettia petal from
her hair. “One minute I was thanking you, and the next…”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Guiltily,
she looked around the conservatory, as though expecting the kissing police to
come skulking by at any second.

“For Pete’s sake,” she blurted. “I had us
both sprawled all over the Christmas display! I just don’t know what happened.”

He did. They’d connected,
really connected
, for a
minute. And it scared her.

“Let’s try it again,” Dylan offered. “Maybe
we’ll be able to figure it out.”

As an attempt to lighten the mood between them…it didn’t.
Probably because yearning still sounded in the sandpapery rasp of his voice,
still showed in the shadows he felt in his eyes. He wanted her too much. No
amount of kidding around would change that.

She shook her head. “We’d better just go.”

As though punctuating her words, snowflakes began drifting
from the ceiling. Airy and magical, they floated over the conservatory’s fir
trees like figments of his imagination.

Stacey cracked a rueful smile. “Look out. Apparently, I’m
even capable of changing the weather now.”

“It’s okay.” Dylan stepped out of the poinsettia
bed, then did his best to fluff up the crushed flowers. “I’m pretty sure
that’s part of the attraction. It
is
supposed to be a winter wonderland,
right?”

So long as Stacey was beside him, it felt as if it was, too.
But apparently she didn’t feel the same way, because she fiddled with her purse
and then the strap on her sandals and then the straps on her dress, as if any
one of those things might have flopped down from the sheer force of their kiss.

Actually, as kisses went, that one might have been scorching
enough to accomplish it.

But that was beside the point. He and Stacey might be on
slightly more civil terms with each other now, Dylan realized, but as far as
she was concerned he was still a danger to be reckoned with. The wary glance
she sent his way told him that much. It looked as if he was back to square one.

The trouble with that was, their kiss had done nothing to
satisfy his yearnings for Stacey. If anything, it had only brought back
everything they’d ever shared and made him want that closeness more.

He put his hand to her waist to guide her toward the exit,
wondering how he’d ever been dumb enough to let her go in the first place. They
were right for each other. Dylan was sure of it. All that remained was
convincing Stacey of that fact before the honeymoon suite charade—and
especially his part in it—was discovered.

Chapter Five

Stacey sensed the morning sunlight on her face, screwed her
eyes more tightly shut, and rolled over in bed. Something big, warm and solid blocked
her path. Feeling muzzy-headed, she opened her eyes…and looked into Dylan’s
face, only inches from hers on the neighboring pillow.

“Aaack! What are
you
doing here?” she
shrieked, scooting madly backward. Her backside met empty air at the edge of the
bed. With two feet of empty silk sheet between her and Dylan, she was able to
relax long enough to stare back at him. “Well?”

He smiled. Actually
smiled,
first thing in the
morning. The only time her ex-husband had ever smiled first thing in the
morning was when they’d…no, never mind. The morning quickies Charlie had
insisted on every Sunday definitely did
not
bear remembering.