Once Upon a Christmas (43 page)

She was losing it.

Get a grip
, she commanded herself. Then her front
door swooshed open, Nick called to her from the living room, and Chloe nearly
jumped out of her skin. The pregnancy test box clunked hollowly to the
linoleum, punctuating the sound of the other shoe dropping in her life. Could
she face Nick and still not tell him the truth?

She’d have to.

If necessary, she could always tell him the truth later.
If
the test was positive. No point worrying him for no reason, right?

“Chloe?”

His voice grew louder, echoing down the hallway. Coming
closer. She leaped out of the bathroom and slammed the door shut behind her,
just in time to collide with Nick.

“Ooof!”

“Hi!” She gave him an overly chipper smile, taking
in his rumpled khaki shorts and Cardinals T-shirt with an appreciative glance
born of knowing exactly what kind of fine-tuned body he kept beneath them. “You
surprised me.”

“Your front door was open.” He straightened his
glasses and gave her a quick once-over. “Oversleep again? Come on, Chloe.
You’re never going to convince that old coot Griggs to give you your loan if
you can’t even make it to your appointment on time. You know that. You—”

His gaze stopped on her purple-dotted boxers. “You,
you, you’ve been in business long en….” He stopped. “Do you always
sleep in those?”

His eyebrows furrowed beneath his glasses rims. His
fingertip raised to his lips, tapping in the way that always showed he was deep
in thought about an experiment, or a new invention…or the night he thought
they’d never spent together.

Chloe slapped her hands over her boxers and neon green
T-shirt like an old-maid aunt. “These?” She tried to look horrified
at being caught undressed. “Just got ‘em yesterday. Big sale down at Bevick’s
department store. You know, the one down on Main Street with the, um, wedding
dresses in the window and the cute little slingback crocodile shoes with the
bows on the toes?”

Her monologue ran out of breath and she ran out of lies, but
that was okay—Nick’s eyes had already glazed over at the mention of shopping.
Thank God he never paid attention to everyday details like clothes.

“I’d better go change,” she muttered and made her
escape.

At her entrance into her bedroom, Moe meowed, then tried
slipping through the open door. It gave her an idea. She scooped him up, grazed
her chin across his soft furred head, then leaned into the hallway.

“Moe’s really missed you.” Rapidly, she slipped
her armful of orange tabby in Nick’s hands before he could object. “He hates
it when you work so much. We can’t wait until your growth-accelerator proposal
is done.”

That ought to hold him for a while.
Chloe snicked the
door shut again, trying not to hear Nick’s grumbling on the other side. It was
beyond her why he didn’t want pets of his own. All of hers obviously loved him.

Maybe he’d like something simple. Something small. A hamster
like Curly, or a goldfish, or…no. The poor thing would probably keel over
from neglect the next time Nick’s inventing bug struck. A commitment-phobe like
him was strictly the
faux
pet type. Maybe this Christmas she’d buy him
one of those videotapes that made it look as if your television housed a whole
aquarium of exotic fish. That was just about Nick’s speed.

No commitment. No obligations.

No risk.

No change in plans.

Sighing, Chloe made herself quit mentally matchmaking Nick.
She had an appointment to get ready for, and it didn’t involve the wild
kingdom—not unless Effram Griggs’ toupee counted as a life form of its own.
Whipping off her T-shirt, she whirled to fling it in the hamper, then slid open
her mirrored closet doors.

Moe yowled outside. Her bedroom door opened. Nick’s head
emerged around the edge of it.

“Something’s buzzing in your bathroom. Are you cooking
up another batch of punk rock hair color, or what?”

Chloe flung her arms across her naked chest. Nick didn’t
even blink. She might as well have waved her arms in the air and tap danced,
for as much attention as he paid to her appearance. Keeping her arms tight over
her chest, she slowly turned to face him. His expression didn’t change one
iota.

Not even half an iota.

Her body felt as heated as a toaster glowing red, just
before it turned the toast to a slab of coal. That would be her heart if she
wasn’t careful. Ruined and crumbly.

“Fun-ny. It was only that one time I tried those red
stripes, and that was years ago. Now I’m sticking with my natural hair color.”

Nick looked at her expensively streaked layered cut. “Uh-huh.
That’s you, nature girl,” he deadpanned. “Do you want me to turn off
the timer for you?”

He was utterly, completely, oblivious, Chloe realized with a
sinking feeling. Even half-naked she couldn’t dredge up any non-platonic
interest from him.

Any child they might have created together deserved more
than a lovestruck mama and an indifferent daddy. She’d already been around that
block, wearing diapers herself. She couldn’t let history repeat itself.

Knowing Nick, he’d feel obligated to “do the right
thing,” no matter what his feelings were for her. She really
couldn’t
tell him the truth.

“The timer?” he asked again.

“Timer?” She fought an insane urge to drop her
arms and flash him, just to get some sort of reaction. “Oh! The timer! No,
thanks. It’ll turn off by itself in a minute.”

He shrugged. “Okay. You’d better hurry up, or Mr.
Griggs will reschedule you again. I don’t know why you don’t just go to one of
the bigger banks in Phoenix or—”

“I’ll be ready,” Chloe interrupted, hoping to
forestall the inevitable, familiar avalanche of financial advice. Turning, she
concentrated on pulling one of the few suits she owned from her closet without
giving Nick a thirty-four B-size eyeful in the process.

“Tucson for your loan.” His gaze flicked over the
red suit and matching pumps she threw on the bed. “You know, Red and Jerry
would probably let you make payments directly to them for a while if that’s
what it takes. I’ll bet—”

“No favors.” She added a halter-cut, pale-colored
bodysuit to the pile. Arizona in April—even early April—demanded the coolest
clothes possible.

“Chloe—”

“And no help, either.” She turned her back to Nick
while she sorted through the beads and bangles and multihued earrings jumbled
together in her jewelry box. “I can do this on my own. There’s no point
involving Red and Jerry before I know I’ve got the bank behind me. I don’t want
to get their hopes up—”

“Then disappoint them,” Nick finished. “I
know, I know.”

Holding a gold hoop to one ear and a
faux
ruby-and-pearl stud to the other, Chloe turned. “Which do you think looks
best?”

His mouth dropped open.

Wowsers, that was some kind of reaction to a pair of
earrings.
Note to myself: Ask Nick for jewelry opinions more often
.

Wait a minute…his gaze was focused a whole lot lower than
her ears. In fact, now that she looked closer, she realized he wasn’t even in
the above-the-neck neighborhood. His dark-eyed gaze was aimed lower than that,
closer to her…
omigod, her
naked
breasts
! Shrieking, Chloe
hugged her arms over her chest, barely registering the cold kiss of the
earrings still in her hands.

Nick whipped sideways, hiding his face by propping his arm
on the door jamb. “Uh, they both look great to me.”

Both what? Both breasts or both earrings?

Scratch that. She probably didn’t really want to know the
answer to that one.

“I meant the earrings,” Nick added.

“I figured.”

Sheesh! What had she been thinking? This pregnancy thing was
turning her mind to mush. Her face burning, Chloe threw the earrings in her
jewelry box and slammed the lid shut. She snatched her suit and clutched it,
hanger and all, in front of her.

“But, uh, that’s really a nice pair of umm, umm…”
His arm churned, trying to crank something smart to his brain. “I mean,
the rest of you is really—dammit, Chloe! Put some clothes on, will you?”

“You’re blushing, Nick.”

“Like hell.”

“Your face is redder than my suit.”

“Nothing’s redder than that suit.”

He ducked his head and chanced a look from beneath his
elbow. She could almost pinpoint the exact moment he realized she’d safely
covered her “nice pair” from view, because his grin returned.

“You might get faster action on your loan if you tried
the earring trick on Mr. Griggs.”

“Har, har.”

He came closer. She must have imagined that blush on his
face, because now Nick looked as composed as ever. Not to mention as miserably
unaffected by her—as a woman—as he ever had.

“Anyway,” she continued with a teasing smile, “I
already tried that.”

“And?”

“And the man has no taste when it comes to earrings. He
actually picked a rhinestone pair.”

She laughed at the look on his face, then met him halfway
around the side of the bed, tucking her chin to her chest to secure the suit
and hanger while she moved. “I’m kidding, you Neanderthal! What kind of
woman do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a big old softie, worrying over Red and
Jerry the way you do.”

He reached to help her hold up the curved metal hanger top,
and his knuckle brushed warm against her chin. At the feel of his skin touching
hers, Chloe’s knees went weak. The hanger wobbled in her hand, making her suit
flutter in front of her.

“I think you’re going to get that loan of yours, or die
trying.” Nick smiled and fingered her suit jacket. “And I think you’re
going to be late if you don’t hurry up and shimmy into this thing.”

“Shimmy?”

He headed for the door, tapping a beat along the footboard
of her sleigh bed.

“You think I ‘shimmy’?”

Nick shrugged and stepped into the hallway.

He thought she shimmied!

Officially, of course, she was incredibly offended. But—he
thought she shimmied! Chloe grinned, just as Nick stuck his head around the
doorjamb again.

“And one more thing.”

She put on a straight face.

“If things don’t work out with the bank today, you can
always count on me.”

Awww.
“I can’t ask you for help, Nick.”

“Sure, you can. The rest of us deserve a chance to play
hero sometimes, too, you know.”

Sure. Chloe sighed and sank on her bed as he closed the
door, leaving her alone. Would Nick really see instant unplanned fatherhood as
an opportunity to be heroic? Or were those just so many words, words that were
easy to say but hard to live up to?

There was only one way to find out.

She got dressed and ducked in the bathroom for one quick
look at her destiny before leaving.

The blonde emerged from Saguaro Vista Cattleman’s Bank just
as Nick glanced up from his hydroponics research notes. Her long legs flashed
beneath her thigh-high red skirt as she clicked toward him with the kind of
hip-swaying, high-heeled strides that destroyed brain cells in men everywhere.
Halfway across the city center’s
saltillo
-tiled courtyard, she shrugged
off her matching suit jacket and flipped it over her shoulder, trailing it by
her fingertips over her back.

Her naked back
. Her pert, perfect breasts bounced in
the sunlight as she strolled through the mist given off by the tinkling
courtyard fountain.
Whaaa…?
his brain asked, but his body already had
the upper hand.
Come on down
, it said.

He blinked. The vision in red transformed itself into Chloe.
Fully clothed,
jacket-wearing
, non-bouncing, just-pals Chloe.

This had to stop. Chloe was his friend, his
best
friend, not a potential between-inventions playmate. The women he dated weren’t
like Chloe. She was e.e. cummings; they were Thoreau. She was mercury; they
were iron. Chloe was bare feet and Ring Dings and touch football; they were
designer shoes and
haute cuisine
and PTSO fundraisers. She was the
sizzle; they were the steak.

And Nick was the overworked inventor who obviously needed to
get out more.

No wonder Chloe’s dual-earring nudist impression had
affected him so strongly this morning. The sight of her standing there with
jewels in her hands and nothing but bare, silky skin below had brought every
part of him to attention. It didn’t take a genius to realize he needed a break.
His brain had obviously been forced to take drastic measures to shove the
message through.

Cool it,
he commanded himself.
Chloe is your
friend, not your fantasy woman.

His non-fantasy woman stopped in front of him, grabbed his
sleeve, and thunked her forehead on his shoulder.

“Let’s go,” she mumbled into his chest.

Nick’s other concerns vanished. When Chloe did the shoulder clunk,
it meant she needed him. “Awww, Chloe. What happened?”

She mumbled something into his T-shirt. He got as far as, “Effram
Griggs is a shirt-tidied, misery grist beanie outback,” before
interrupting.

“What was that part about his beanie?”

She beat her fist softly against his shoulder and made a
frustrated sound. “I said,” Chloe told him, turning her head just
enough to make her words heard, “that Effram Griggs is a short-sighted,
misogynist weenie-throwback with delusions of grandeur and cigar stubs for
brains.”

“He turned down your loan application again?”

“Again.” Miserably, Chloe nodded against his
shoulder, giving him a mouthful of jaggedly cut blond hair.

He blew it away and hugged her one-handed, careful to keep
his notebook wedged between his chest and her…curvy parts. Not even three
inches of his chicken-scratched notes could block the alluring tropical scents
of her shampoo and perfume, though. Too bad.