Together for Christmas (12 page)

“Just like we try to do every night. I hear you, Brain.”

Her eyes widened. Walden wasn’t sure why.

“But the pregnancy kit is for . . . what, exactly?” he asked patiently. “If you don’t want volunteers to get you pregnant—”

“That’s not what I came here for, Pinky.”

“Then what’s it for?” And why am I perfect for it?

Talia wasn’t ready to tell him. Instead, she went on gazing at him inquisitively. “Wait. You really got that reference?”

“To
Pinky and the Brain
? The cartoon?” Walden nodded. “I’m a grown man who makes a living frosting cupcakes. So . . . yeah.”

Her admiring gaze swept over him. Of all the things to have finally impressed her with, his connoisseurship of a 1990s animated TV show about a genius laboratory mouse and his feebleminded sidekick mouse had to be the most unlikely.

“Really?” Cagily, Talia asked, “What did you think of Wang Film Productions’ work on
A Pinky and the Brain Christmas
?”

Walden scoffed. “I think Tokyo Movie Shinsha did the animation on that one. What are you, some kind of amateur?”

Talia laughed. “An amateur who owns all twelve discs from the DVD box sets.
And
the graphic novels.
And
the Game Boy game.”

“Wow.” This time, it was Walden’s turn to give her an admiring look. “I think you’re my dream girl.”
I know you are
.

She nodded. Probably, Talia was used to being someone’s dream girl by now and was totally unfazed by the concept.

“We should get together and watch it sometime,” she said.

Walden wanted to say yes. Gazing into her shining, cobalt-colored eyes, standing close enough to touch her, he wanted nothing more. A
Pinky and the Brain
-a-thon with Talia? Hell, yeah! But something kept niggling at him. Something like . . .

Like maybe Talia was already pregnant. With someone else.

Oh yeah. Forcibly, he dragged his attention to that damn box in her hand. “Do I have to overthrow your baby’s daddy first? Or is he cool with you having guys over? Because I’m a pretty wicked arm wrestler, so—” He offered her a comical tough-guy look, then shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him.”

“You’re not ‘a guy.’ You’re my friend! It’s fine.”

Ugh. The Friend Zone. The Chinese handcuffs of man-woman relationships. Didn’t she know how crushing that statement was?

“Look,” Walden said. “Do you have a boyfriend or not?”

“Oh.” Talia looked surprised. She glanced down at her pregnancy test, then looked up at him again . . . lingering on his midsection. “Is
that
what you’re asking? Because I thought—”

“That I was seriously looking for an arm-wrestling match?”

She bit her lip. He wanted to do the same. To her. Gently.

“Well,” she prevaricated, “you
are
the new guy in town. It’s anybody’s guess what kind of kinky stuff you’re into.”

That was the Talia he knew and loved. “If there’s anything you want to know about me,” Walden said stoutly, “just ask.”

Her forehead wrinkled adorably. Not surprisingly, she did ask him something. “Okay. Do you like popcorn and cranberries?”

“Together? No. I’m not one of those molecular gastronomy guys. I mean, I learned how to do all that crazy stuff in culinary school”—technically, he’d aced all his classes and gotten A-pluses across the board—“but I’m not interested in subverting culinary expectations and deconstructing what it means to dine. I don’t serve ‘tasting’ menus printed on edible paper with fruit inks. I don’t want to juggle liquid nitrogen or offer ‘meat foam’ as an entrée. I
really
don’t think it’s satisfying to serve ‘essence of’ anything just to smell. You can’t eat a smell! Give me a good piece of pie instead.”

Talia look amused by his rant. “Oh. I see. Well, I’m only asking because I’m having a popcorn-and-cranberry stringing party tonight at my place, and I want to know if you’ll come.”

Walden was still confused. He didn’t want to step on any toes here. Was Talia asking him out on a date? Or was she just trying to leverage him into popcorn-and-cranberry slave labor?

He never would have pegged her for an old-school type who made popcorn-and-cranberry garlands for her Christmas tree in the first place. He would have guessed she was more of a retro-fake-silver-tree type.

Well, he liked a woman who surprised him, Walden decided.

But not if that surprise involved another man’s baby.

“But what about your pregnancy test?” he asked.

Gareth chose that moment to come along and pluck the box from her hands. Gleefully, he said, “
That’s
for me!”

“Huh?”

“I’m going to plant this pregnancy test in Heather Miller’s Dumpster.” Gareth shifted a satisfied look in Talia’s direction. “You know, the trash collection unit that the tabloid people are always digging through looking for gossip fodder?”

“If they think Heather’s pregnant,” Talia explained, “the resulting ‘baby bump watch’ will occupy a
lot
of time.”

“Time they
won’t
spend pestering Kristen?” Walden guessed.

“Exactly.” Gareth ripped open the box, crumpled up the instruction sheet, stuffed it back inside, then opened one of the testers, too. “Once I make sure this thing looks good and used, we’ll be all set. You’ve got to make it believable,” he added as he caught Walden’s aghast look. “I’m not going to pee on a stick
myself
, but if I toss a pristine, unopened pregnancy-test kit in Heather’s trash, it’s going to look like a setup.”

“It
is
a setup,” Walden reminded them.

“Yep. It sure is!” Gareth said, his bearded face alight.

He and Talia exchanged cheerfully devious looks.

“ ‘Baby bump watches’ are a fixture in tabloids,” Talia said. “If a starlet eats a big lunch, suddenly she’s gestating.”

Walden nodded. “And when Heather denies being pregnant—as she inevitably will—it will only create more ‘news’ about her.”

“Which is exactly what we need right now,” Talia agreed.

“So the press will be too busy going ape shit about this”—Gareth held up the freshly mangled pregnancy-test kit—“to harass Kristen.”

“I hope so.” Remembering all his friend had gone through recently, Walden sobered. “I thought Kristen was actually going to cry when her mom canceled their Christmas shopping trip.”

“That just about broke my heart,” Talia agreed, making him love her even more for her compassion. “The day before that, Kristen told me the press invaded the traditional Miller family holiday ice-skating-and-cocoa trip. They wrecked
everything
. Poor Grandma Miller couldn’t even slap on a skate without some fuckwit screaming her name. When they wouldn’t ‘play along,’ the paparazzi assaulted them all with flash photography anyway.”

Walden shuddered. He’d been on duty when the paparazzi had first overrun the Galaxy Diner, looking for any scoop they could get on Kristen’s famous sister. Among the pack of them, the cheap bastards hadn’t even ponied up a tip for their harassed waitress. He and Talia and Gareth had sneaked a tip for Avery onto the table themselves so she wouldn’t be stiffed.

“Not to mention how those jackals have affected business here at the diner,” Gareth said, practically reading Walden’s mind. He shuddered too. “Some of the regulars can’t even get in anymore—and that’s
with
Heather’s supposed ban in place.”

They all knew that Heather’s unexpected and over-the-top arrival in Kismet—and her “down-home” holiday TV special—had thrown a monkey wrench into Kristen’s holiday this year. Kristen was way too nice to say so, but she’d been struggling. So together, Talia, Gareth, and Walden had decided to help her out.

Their first step had been to try getting the press officially banned from the Galaxy Diner. That hadn’t worked. Next, they’d approached Heather and asked her, up front, to do something about the situation. That strategy had resulted in the cease-fire/safety-zone deal that was supposed to keep the media away from Kristen’s business and her apartment. None of them (except Kristen) was naïve enough to expect it to last long.

Sometimes, Kristen had way too much faith in her sister.

Sometimes, friends had to step in to help friends, too. Even if that meant going a little above and beyond. But Kristen was worth it. They all loved her. They wanted her to be happy.

“There’s only one problem,” Walden mused, considering how best to accomplish that goal. He pointed at the soon-to-be-planted “evidence” of the pregnancy test. “How’s Heather supposed to be believably pregnant when she hasn’t been seen publicly dating anyone since her split from that hockey player?”

Gareth frowned. “You have a point.”

“I already thought of that! The only solution is for
our
Heather to have a new boyfriend.” Talia looked pointedly at Walden. Again. Excitedly. Just the way she had earlier. Maybe even more so. “A really hot-and-heavy boyfriend. You know, the kind of guy who can practically knock up a girl just by giving her a sexy look? A man’s man. A macho man. A studly stud.”

Walden and Gareth gazed at her in perplexity. “You can’t tell any of that by just looking at a guy,” Gareth protested.

Walden was too busy fighting an urge to bump and grind his way into Talia’s heart to join his friend in manly concord.

Talia gave them a pitying look. “That’s where you’re wrong! You can tell a lot about a guy just by looking at him—
if
you’re packing enough imagination, that is.” She tossed another heady, overtly suggestive glance at Walden. “Anyway, since
I’m
the best Heather impersonator of the three of us—”

“You’ve already proven that you’re the
only
plausible Heather impersonator of the three of us,” Gareth cut in, eyeing the leopard-print coat, huge sunglasses, and sexy blond wig still visible in Talia’s employee locker. “You’ve been doing a great job with that, too, by the way. Kudos.”

“Yeah. I thought Kristen almost caught on when she saw me earlier today,” Talia confessed in an aside. “But she was too engrossed in that troubleshooter guy showing up.” She glanced approvingly at Gareth, then added, “Way to think on your feet with that ‘matchmaking’ plan of yours. Now if Kristen notices anything suspicious about what we’re up to, she’ll just chalk it up to our supposedly secret ‘matchmaking’ activities.”

“Exactly my plan,” Gareth agreed, tapping his temple.

“You
do
make an excellent ‘Heather’ decoy,” Walden added, coming in late with his compliment but wanting in on the action all the same. “Even if I do prefer your real purple hair.”

Talia smiled at his compliment. His heart almost stopped.

Then, “Speaking of which . . . back to our scheme! I say
I
should get to decide who’s going to portray my superhot boy toy. Right? Right.” Wearing a mischievous look, Talia put her fingertips to her chin. She glanced at Gareth. Then at the break room. Finally her gaze fell on Walden . . . then roamed all over his body. “
Hmm
. . .”

Her contemplative, potentially naughty tone should have scared the bejeezus out of him. But it didn’t. Walden was an adventurer at heart. He wanted to do his adventuring with Talia.

“Pinky,” she said, “are you pondering what I’m pondering?”

There was no
way
he was missing his cue. “I think so, Brain,” Walden said in his best cartoon-mouse voice, “but . . .”

“
You
are going to be ‘Heather’s’ new baby daddy. It’s set!” Smugly, Talia crossed her arms. “Unless you don’t feel
potent
enough, of course.” She raised her eyebrow at him. “How about it, stud? Do you feel like impersonating a pop star with me?”

Walden still wasn’t sure if the popcorn-and-cranberry thing was a date or a ruse to force him into indentured Christmas-decorating servitude. He wasn’t sure if Talia saw
him
or a piece of biscuit-baking beefcake when she eyeballed him. And he wasn’t sure if Talia was ultra-determined to help Kristen because of their longtime friendship or if she just wanted an excuse to wear a leopard-print coat and make out with someone in public.

Just then, he didn’t care. He was willing to risk it.

“You don’t know me that well yet, or you’d already know that I never miss a chance to feel potent,” Walden told Talia with a grin. He rubbed his hands together. “That means you’re about to get all the hot and heavy action you can handle.”

Talia looked intrigued. “That sounds like a promise.”

“That’s because it is. Bring on the baby-making!”

At that, Talia balked. “Wait. You know I’m not interested in making this a real thing between us, right?” She touched her grape-Pixy-Stix-colored hair. “I mean, I’m not exactly prime motherhood material. I think that’s obvious to everyone.”

Walden didn’t think anything about Talia was obvious. Except that he really, really liked her. “It’s Christmas,” he said coolly. “Let’s just take things as they come.”

“Booya! That’s good enough for me!” Gareth crowed. He put on his army jacket and knit trapper cap, then brandished the pregnancy-test kit. “I’m off to plant this in the most devious, incriminating, tabloid-baiting way possible.” At the door, he paused. “Then I’m going to take my nieces to see Santa Claus at the mall. Later, all!”

Left alone with Talia, Walden smiled. He’d just struck holiday gold, and he hadn’t even been trying. How much more amazing could things get if he put in a little effort?

The only way to find out was to do it. He gave Talia a cocky look, held out his hand, then nodded. “Ready?”

Talia inhaled. She looked at his hand. She took it.

“Before we do this public Heather make-out thing,” she astonished Walden by saying, “we’d better practice.”

He blinked. “Practice making out?”

She gave a demure nod. “We want to be believable, right?”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “Let’s do this. For Kristen.”

They were actually going to do this. For Kristen.

And him.

It was possible, Walden thought dazedly, that he should have wished for even bigger things for Christmas this year. Because as long as a few of his dreams were coming true . . .