Once Upon a Christmas (4 page)

Considering it, Sam jerked the truck to a stop in the
mesquite-shaded parking lot of the Downtown Grill. He still didn’t want a
roommate. “Nope.”

“What?”

Clearly, she couldn’t believe he was refusing her.

“Bah, humbug,” he said for emphasis. “You’ll
have to wait until Christmas morning for your presents, just like all the rest
of the kids.”

She snorted, not the least bit deterred by his Scrooge impression.
Snapping open her seat belt, Clarissa gave him a no-nonsense look. “Listen.
I just want the people I care about to be happy, that’s all. If your answer’s
still no after you meet Holly, then I’ll drop the whole thing, okay?”

Sam stared at her suspiciously. Maybe it was because she’d
worn him down, or maybe it was just because he was starving and wanted their
conversation to end. Whatever the reason, he found himself nodding.

“Fine. I’ll meet your damn friend.”

“Great!”

Clarissa hopped out of the truck. She came around to Sam’s
side to meet him. Apparently undaunted despite the fact he’d used his best,
most grumbly, feet-dragging tone, she grabbed his arm and swept him along
beside her toward the Downtown Grill.

“There’s Holly’s car right over there,” she said,
her wave indicating a white convertible parked a few feet away. “She must
be inside waiting for us right now.”

Sam stopped walking. “Did it never occur to you I might
say no?”

“Nah.” Clarissa stepped back to let him open the
door for her, offering him a self-satisfied smile. “I usually get what I
want.”

With an answering grin, Sam ushered her through the door. “Must
run in the family,” he said. “So do I.”

Chapter Two

All right. Maybe it was just a
teensy
bit juvenile to
try to make Brad jealous, Holly admitted to herself as she sat alone in a
cracked leather booth at the Downtown Grill waiting for Clarissa to meet her
for breakfast. Granted, she’d been provoked into her boast about a roommate she
didn’t have yet. And her decision had certainly been a spontaneous one, which
was some consolation to her bruised ego. Still, she was almost starting to
regret the way those words had just popped out of her mouth.

“Hey, Holly Berry!”

Clarissa’s voice, loud enough even to carry over the din of
the restaurant, yanked Holly out of her worries. Glancing up, she saw her
friend wending nearer between the rows of customer-filled booths.

She wasn’t alone. There was a man with her. Tall and
shaggy-haired, dressed in paint-splattered Levis and a white T-shirt, he
somehow managed to look both friendly and slightly disreputable at the same
time. He didn’t seem familiar, but then Holly had been working such long hours
she’d fallen out of touch with many of the people in town.

“I’ve solved your roommate problem!” Clarissa
announced gaily when she’d reached the table. She waved one arm in the general
direction of the man beside her. “Holly Aldridge, meet Samuel McKenzie.”

“Sam,” he corrected. “Clarissa’s told me all
about you.”

His smile was so inviting that, despite her better judgment,
Holly smiled back at him.

“I hope everything she said was good,” Holly said,
accepting the handshake he offered.

His palm was callused but clean, and big, like the rest of
him. She felt his gaze sweep over her, from the collar of her black suit jacket
downward and back again. His appreciative expression took her by surprise. How
long had it been since Brad had looked at her like that? Since any man had
looked at her like that?

Too long.

“Every bit of it was good,” he assured her. “It’s
nice to meet you.”

He actually sounded as if he meant it. Holly gave herself a
mental shake and withdrew her hand, watching as Sam and Clarissa settled
themselves in the opposite side of the booth.

He
was the answer to her roommate problem? Okay, so
Sam was pretty attractive in a relaxed, just-rolled-out-of-bed sort of way, but
by the looks of him Holly doubted he even had a job, much less the means to pay
half her mortgage payment each month.

She slid the hot water and tea she’d already ordered for
Clarissa over to her friend, along with a curious glance.

Clarissa ignored Holly’s questioning look.
Uncharacteristically, she remained absolutely silent as she fussed with her
tea. In fact, Holly noticed, her lips were pressed tightly together, like a
child zipping her lips to keep a secret. Something was definitely up.

“Clarissa says you’re looking for a roommate,” Sam
said, filling the silence at their table.

He turned over the thick white porcelain cup in front of him
and settled it in its saucer. Like magic, a pink-skirted waitress appeared and
filled it with coffee. Holly wondered absently if Sam got service like that
every place he went. She decided he probably did.

“Yes, I am. My last roommate just moved out.” Why
had she called Brad her roommate? “And I’ve been looking for someone to,
um, replace him.”

Sam nodded. Clarissa snickered and dunked a teabag in her
cup with far more interest than the Earl Grey required. She looked like the cat
who ate the canary. Holly frowned.

“Is it a house or an apartment?” Sam asked.

As though pulled by his voice, she looked at him again. He
had nice eyes, too—clear blue beneath a pile of sandy-colored hair. Hair that
looked
way
too straightforward to have been gelled or moussed or fussed
with the way Brad’s always was.

“It’s a house. One of those old bungalows downtown,”
she replied. Why wasn’t Clarissa saying anything?

“Those Craftsman-style bungalows near Spring Street?”

She nodded, surprised he was familiar with the architectural
movement that had spawned row after row of houses downtown in the first decades
of the century. Hers was one of the few examples of the style that remained
unchanged. Many had been demolished to make way for shops and newer stucco
houses.

“Those are great houses,” he was saying. “Ahead
of their time, I think. It’s too bad there are so few left now.”

“Holly’s renovating hers,” Clarissa chimed in. “It’s
going to be beautiful.”

“Tell me about it.”

Sam handed her a leather-bound copy of the Downtown Grill’s
menu as though the motion was the most natural thing in the world. As though
they’d shared meals together forever.

Holly blinked.
Get real
, she ordered herself, pushing
that wild thought out of her mind. She couldn’t really be interested in him,
could she? Muscle-bound laborers had never been her type. She wanted a man with
a future, a man with intelligence and wit, a man who thought beyond his next
conquest…a man like Brad.

Besides, a guy like Sam probably favored leggy blondes in
spandex, not sensible redheads in Chanel-knockoff business suits. Holly put
down the menu without opening it.

“I’m still looking for a contractor to handle the bulk
of the renovation,” she told him. “There are parts I can do myself,
but I’d like to get an expert’s input, too.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Clarissa, giving her an odd look. “What
a coincidence,” he remarked. To Holly, he said, “I know a little
about whole-house renovation. I’d love to have a look at it sometime.”

“Sure.”

The waitress, pen and pad in hand, chose that moment to take
their order. Holly declined anything but her coffee, but Clarissa and Sam both
ordered plates of the Grill’s special pecan pancakes, his with a double side of
bacon. Scooping up their menus, the waitress went on her gum-snapping way
toward the restaurant’s kitchen.

“Sam’s doing some work for my uncle’s construction
company,” Clarissa explained. “He’s one of the ‘and sons’ in McKenzie
& Sons.”

At least this potential roommate Clarissa had found for her
was employed. “Do you like it?” Holly asked.

“I like the work. It’s absorbing, doing a job just
right, seeing a vision come to life. Done well, renovation is demanding, but
creative.” Sam’s eyes met hers. “Besides, I’m very good with my
hands.”

Very good
echoed in her head as her gaze flew to his
hands. Her mouth went dry. Had he meant to say those words that way, so…
loaded
with erotic meaning? Surely it was only her imagination.

“I could give you a demonstration.” He leaned
against the booth again, his shoulders nearly reaching the top of it. “How
about tonight? Say, 6:30?”

“Tonight?” For a few confused seconds, Holly
actually thought he was proposing some sort of illicit meeting, some personal
presentation of those hands’ promised abilities. One glance at Sam dispelled
that illusion, however. He was asking to see her house, nothing more.

Before she could reply, Clarissa said, “You sound just
like your dad, Sam. Straight down to business.” Turning to Holly, she
added, “My uncle Joe has got to be the most single-minded guy in town.”

How she was supposed to react to
that
statement,
Holly had no idea. Then the significance of Clarissa’s words dawned on her. Sam
McKenzie was Clarissa’s “little cousin Sam.” Funny how she’d never
mentioned that in this case, at least, “little” meant he was a couple
of years younger. Sam was most definitely not the Little League-sized relative
Holly had always assumed him to be. She glared at Clarissa and silently
mouthed, “I’ll get you for this.”

With feigned innocence, Clarissa raised her eyebrows.
Who,
me?
her expression asked.

“That’s why I thought Sam would make such a perfect
roommate for you, Holly,” she said. “He’s dependable”—Holly
couldn’t decipher the look that passed between the two cousins—“great with
old houses, and he’ll only be in town for the next couple of months.”

“Through the holidays?” Holly asked.

“Until next semester starts,” Sam explained, going
on to describe his work as an English professor at the university in Tucson.

Holly was surprised—they definitely hadn’t had professors
like Sam when
she
was a student at the University of Arizona. She’d bet his students loved him.

A few minutes later the waitress slid two enormous plates of
pecan pancakes on the table, followed by an aromatic pile of bacon she set in
front of Sam, along with the bill. Holly’s stomach rumbled as the sugary smell
of maple syrup reached her.

Sam swallowed a bite of pancake, speared another with his
fork, and held it out to her. “Want a bite?”

She couldn’t imagine doing anything so intimate as eating
from his fork, Sam guiding the bite of food into her mouth as Clarissa and the
whole world looked on. Brad would have been appalled by the very idea, had she
ever suggested it to him.

With Sam on the other end of the fork, though, the idea had
a new appeal. Some small, hidden part of her
wanted
to try it, urged her
to try it. Holly considered it as, spellbound, she watched an amber drop of
maple syrup gather on the tip of his fork tines, tremble, then drip slowly to
join the butter and syrup puddle on Sam’s plate.

Oh, boy. She was really losing it. This whole debacle with
Brad had clearly sent her around the bend.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “It’s delicious. Do you want
to try some?”

Holly shook her head. “Um, no, thanks. I already ate
breakfast,” she managed to say.

“Anyway, Holly Berry, wouldn’t it be perfect if Sam
moved in with you? I mean, as your roommate, of course,” Clarissa said
with a wicked grin. “Aren’t you expecting your, ah,
former
roommate
to move back in by the new year anyway?”

Naturally, she meant Brad. “Maybe even sooner,”
Holly felt compelled to say. “In fact, I’m starting to rethink this whole
idea of finding a temporary roommate altogether.”

Clarissa looked stricken. “But that’s not what you
planned
,”
she said. “I think Sam here would really help with your
plan
, don’t
you?”

Her emphasis on the word
plan
left little doubt what
she was referring to: Holly’s plan to win back Brad. A broad wink or two would
have made their resemblance to Lucy and Ethel complete.

Sam cleared his throat. They both looked at him. “Isn’t
that up to Holly?” he asked mildly.

Holly liked him better already. She smiled. “Sam’s
right,” she said, gathering up her day planner, purse, and car keys. “And
I’m going to be late for work if I don’t get out of here.”

“It’s Saturday! You’re not taking the day off?”
Clarissa asked, looking appalled.

“And leave my inbox full of work?” Holly shook her
head.

The office was always quietest on weekends. She’d get tons
of work done and be that much further ahead by Monday. Besides, Thursday was
Thanksgiving. She wanted to make up for the productivity she’d lose during the
holiday.

“Oh, right—what was I thinking?” Clarissa smacked
her forehead with the heel of her hand. “You probably only put in
sixty
hours last week, huh?”

Okay, so Holly would be the first to admit she was
ambitious. What was wrong with that?

There’d been a time when Clarissa had put in just as much
overtime as Holly did. They’d become friends over deli-delivered sandwiches,
eaten long past five o’clock in one of their adjoining office cubicles. Once
she’d married David, Clarissa had decided she was happy where she was, but
Holly still yearned for an office of her own and the title that went with it.

“You’ve got to stop and smell the roses sometime, you
know,” Clarissa warned. “Life’s passing you by.”

“There’s no need to be so dire,” Holly said,
feeling exasperated. “Once I make senior-level accountant, I’ll have
plenty of time to stop and smell the roses.”

Clarissa’s expression said she’d believe
that
when
she saw it. Holly sighed and let go of their old argument. She couldn’t explain
what drove her to work more and more hours, to achieve yet another of her
ever-multiplying goals. She only knew her efforts hadn’t quite measured up. Not
yet.