Return to Christmas

by Anne Stuart

  “Naaah.” Rosa shook her head, moving toward the workshop alongside her. “They’d already pulled the curtains, and the inside access is behind a Habo counter where Ratchett likes to lurk. We’ll just have to ask Johnny.”

  “Ask me what?” Johnny looked up from the workbench as they came into the cavernous space. “What makes you think I’m in the mood to give answers?”

  “You’re never in the mood to give answers, big guy,” Rosa said cheerfully, moving past him to grab one of the rickety folding chairs. They were made of wood, something that fascinated Madison, but not as much as the elaborate work stool Johnny had put his admittedly fine ass on. That was made of a light-colored wood, and it looked more sculpted than built, but it fit him perfectly.

  “So don’t bother asking.”

  Madison needed to stop thinking about his fine ass, so of course she pushed it. “What do you want to put in the window that has Ratchett the Floorwalker so incensed?”

  He cast her an amused glance. “Ratchett the Floorwalker gets incensed over everything. You need to keep away from him.”

  “I already figured that out, brainiac. What are you putting in the window? Pole dancers in elf costumes? Strippers in tinsel?”

  “Mollie!” Rosa laughed, shocked.

  Most people wouldn’t have seen the hint of a smile that tugged at Johnny’s mouth. “No, but that’s a great idea for next year.”

  “And the gentlemen in masks and the black socks could wear a Christmas tie.”

  He swiveled around to stare at her. “You’ve been watching dirty movies, Mollie?”

  No, but she’d seen some vintage porn at a frat party when she was in college. “Let’s just say I have a good imagination,” she said.

  Any trace of that burgeoning smile was gone, replaced by an odd expression that she couldn’t begin to define, and she wanted to kick herself. Her entire life she’d tended to push things too far. If she’d just stopped at the strippers, he would have been amused and gone on to other things.

  But he said nothing, turning his back to them to concentrate on the project in his large, beautiful hands.

  Damn it, she snapped at her errant imagination. She needed to stop fixating on his gorgeousness and concentrate on getting out of there. Of course he was gorgeous—he was most likely a figment of her imagination and she wasn’t stupid enough to dream up an ugly hero for her endless nightmare. He wasn’t real, this wasn’t possible, so it was perfectly safe to allow her occasional fantasies some freedom. His shoulders were broad, his back long and elegant, and there was that magnificent ass.

  “What are you looking at?” he said grumpily, not bothering to turn around. “I can feel your eyes spearing into me.”

  Rosa laughed. “He caught you there,” she said, thereby ruining any chance of Madison’s denial.

  “I was trying to figure out the best places to slip a knife,” she purred.

  “For maximum damage?” Johnny said. “You put your arm around the man’s throat, yank his head back, and he’ll reach up both hands to try to break free, leaving you with easy access. Go up through the ribs into the heart, though that will take a lot of strength.”

  “I didn’t mean...”

  “But given that you’re shorter than your intended target,” he went on ruthlessly, “you’re better off aiming for a kidney just under the ribs. He’ll bleed out fast that way, though he may have time to break your neck before he does so, unless you’ve managed to incapacitate him. I think in your case, the simplest is the best—it works with all kinds of height discrepancies. Come up behind him, yank his head back by his hair and slice across his throat. It’s the messiest, but there’s a smaller margin for error.”

  There was absolute silence in the room. He hadn’t turned to face them, he simply gave her instructions in an impassive tone of voice, but she wasn’t fooled. He must have done that, who knew how many times, and she wanted to kick herself.

  “Sorry, Johnny,” Rosa said quietly. “I forgot.”

  He turned and gave her his rueful smile, ignoring Madison. “It’s okay, kiddo. It’s in the past.” He went back to the piece of wood he was carving, his long fingers moving. “You gonna help Mollie find a dress among the discards? It’ll be her night to be Cinderella.”

  Rosa started bubbling with enthusiasm until Madison reluctantly broke through. “Joan Crawford insists she’s going to take care of it.”

  Rosa’s face fell. “Trust Bette to ruin everything. At least you’ll get an even nicer dress out of it.”

  “I doubt it,” Madison said.

  Johnny had set down the wood and turned completely around, and she realized belatedly that the stool had some kind of hidden mechanism that made it move. “Who the hell are Bette and Joan Crawford? Assuming we’re not being invaded by Hollywood for some idiotic reason?”

  “That’s what we call Irene,” Rosa confessed.

  “Why don’t you call her the Dragon Lady and have done with it?” Johnny said.

  “That would be mean,” Rosa said.

  He shrugged. “Hell, it might be a compliment.”

  “That reminds me,” Madison broke in, happy to change the subject. “I don’t precisely remember you asking me to go to some party with you. You don’t even like me. Why?”

  His bright blue gaze flitted over her face and away a little too quickly. He didn’t deny it. “I was in a jam, and you owe me. The less I have to deal with that woman the better. You gonna back out?”

  Yes, she thought. “No,” she said.

  “Besides, you keep saying you want to get out of here, and yet every damned morning I find you here. This way, I can personally escort you out of this building and you won’t have any more excuses. I don’t need lost waifs clinging to my coattails. You need to get out and find a way to take care of yourself and leave me the hell alone.”

  It should never have hurt. It was ridiculous—he’d always made it clear he found her a pain in the butt, and the man was obviously still dealing with a substantial case of PTSD. He didn’t need a lost soul from another time complicating his stripped-down life. And why should she want him to like her? She didn’t like him, with his bad temper and sexist attitudes and...and...his long legs, and his beautiful hands, and that mouth...

  Shit! She was forgetting this wasn’t a dream; it was a nightmare, and she was trapped inside. Her subconscious must have put together everything she found beautiful in a man and then made him despicable, just to amp up her misery.

  Except that he wasn’t despicable...

  “Ah, he doesn’t mean it, Mollie,” Rosa said, rising and giving Madison a quick hug. “He only talks like that when he gets moody. Just ignore him.”

  His gaze jerked toward hers, when he’d been trying really hard to ignore her, and she wanted to curse again. Damn her too-expressive face. The last thing she wanted him to know was that he’d hurt her, but for some goddamned reason those far too frequent tears burned her eyes, both at Rosa’s caring and her own bereft life.

  “I only talk like this when I’m tired of being responsible for little girls who’d rather run away than face their responsibilities.” His voice was icy cold. “Girls with no business interfering with men trying to make a living. Go back to where you came from, Madison. You aren’t wanted here.”

  It felt like a stab to the heart. She jumped up, plastering a totally fake grin on her face, but if someone looked there instead of at her eyes they’d never know she was stricken. “I’ve got some more work to do on the window we were working on,” she announced cheerily, the huskiness in her voice almost imperceptible, and she breezed out of the workroom so damned fast that Rosa didn’t have time to catch up with her. Not that she’d been planning to. As Madison dashed the tears from her eyes and hurried toward the elevator, she could hear Rosa tear into her boss.

  “You are one real son of a bitch, aren’t you?” Her voice carried, but Madison didn’t want to hear his response, so she ran.

  “You are one real son of a bitch, aren’t
you?” Rosa demanded of him, looking like a fierce warrior in defense of her people. “You may be my boss, but I’m not going to stand around and let you be mean to someone like Mollie. She may act tough as nails but she’s not; she’s fragile, and you’re too stupid to realize it. I thought better of you!”

  Shit, Johnny thought. Trust Rosa to find the exact words to make him feel like the worm he was already resembling. “I know she’s fragile,” he said lamely.

  “Then why were you so mean? You were asking a favor of her, you big lug, and instead, you tell her she’s a burden and in your way.”

  “She is,” he protested, only his soul squirming at the memory.

  “And that’s how you treat people in trouble?”

  “I’ve let her stay here, haven’t I? I’ve made sure she’s had food and clothing, I’ve given her a job. I think I’ve gone above and beyond the call of duty. It’s time for her to go home.”

  “Says who?”

  He winced. “All right, I’m an absolute bastard, pardon my language. I’m not running a charity here.”

  “Yes, you are. If you hadn’t insisted on hiring me, I’d be waiting tables and getting my butt pinched, at the very least. Not that there’s anything wrong with waiting tables—my cousin Valeria does it and makes good tips—but I want to create something, to make something beautiful, and you give me that chance, and if someone tries to pinch my butt, you break his arm.”

  “He did more than pinch your butt, Rosa,” he pointed out.

  “Nevertheless,” she overrode him. “If you hear of anyone being harassed or intimidated or picked on, you go after the bad guy—half the salesmen are terrified of you, and this is one of the few stores where the women salesclerks don’t have to pay for their job in favors. You’re such a damned hero you’d probably even make them pay women the same amount as men if you could do it, which we all know is crazy.”

  “Crazy,” he echoed.

  “So why are you such a...a shit when it comes to Mollie?”

  He’d never heard that word out of her mouth, and it sounded a lot odder than all the sailor’s curses that had come from Mollie.

  “I...” he started to say, but Rosa wasn’t done.

  “You don’t need to answer that. I know why, and you know why, and it’s not her fault that you look at her like she’s a warm fire in a snowstorm. You’re stuck on her, and you don’t like it, and she’s stuck on you, and the two of you are making a mess of things, and you know I try to stay out of things that aren’t my business...”

  He controlled his snort of derision.

  “...but when it comes to making someone cry, then I’ve had enough!” Her eyes were sparkling with fury, a tiny little spitfire of justice, and she was right, he was an absolute shit.

  “She was crying?” he said, subdued.

  “Trying not to show it. I don’t know what’s going on with Mollie, but the girl’s clearly in big trouble, and she needs help, not you piling on her with all your garbage.”

  She was crying. He’d made her cry. He rose from the stool. “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly. “I’ll fix it.”

  “No, you won’t!” she snapped. “You’ll only make things worse. You leave her alone, Johnny Larsen, until she can pull herself together, and then you apologize and tell her you like her and that you’ll help her with whatever is bothering her.”

  “Rosa, I’m no hero. I can’t go around fixing everyone’s problems, even if I wanted to.”

  “She doesn’t want you to, you big lug! Women don’t need men to fix everything for them. They just need a bit of help, sometimes. To know they’ve got someone in their corner when things are tough. Are you going to help her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell her you’re sorry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell her you like her?”

  That was a harder one. He was no fool—he knew what he wanted, even when he did his best to push it away. He wanted Mollie in his arms, in his bed, in his life. He was impossibly broken from the things he’d done in the war, and he wanted another broken soul to join him in the desert. He wanted to hold her when she cried and kiss away her tears, not be the cause of them. He wanted to argue with her and feed her and be with her, and goddamn, he wanted to fuck her so badly it made his hands shake, and he’d never wanted a woman that much. Never really thought of them in those terms. At his most basic, overseas, it had been simple, animal coupling, but there’d been no hint of his almost obsessive longing for her. Obsessions shouldn’t be fed, they should be ignored.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not going to tell her I like her. Not like that, anyway. Her life is too complicated, my life is too complicated. I’ll help her find her way home, I’ll apologize for being an ass, and I won’t say another mean word to her again.”

  “Hah!” Rosa said. “You’re going to keep being like a bear with a sore paw until you face it and her. I’m just warning you—you be mean to her again and you’ll have me to answer to.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said humbly, not allowing the absurdity of the situation to show on his face. It was like a mouse threatening a lion.

  “All right, then.” She nodded. And then looked around her. “Where was I supposed to be?”

  “You want to keep Mollie company?”

  “Good idea. You think about what we talked about, you hear?”

  They hadn’t talked, he’d been lectured, and he’d deserved it and more. “Yes, ma’am,” he said again, and Rosa’s wonderful grin lit her face once more.

  “Good man,” she said, giving him a peck on the cheek and heading out.

  He just wished he could agree with her.

  Chapter 12

  What the hell was she doing, crying over a man, Madison thought, sitting cross-legged in the curtained-off window. The ones on this side hadn’t been decorated in years, and yet for some reason Johnny Asshole Larsen had decided that now was the year to do it. It made sense, when she thought about it in a historical context. The war was well and truly over, most of the men were home and embarking on a new life, in three years the dreaded fifties would begin. Now would be a time for consumer confidence, for spending. She’d spent long enough on her marketing job to understand how to manipulate people into buying things they didn’t need—Johnny Jackass was just as crass and calculating as a secondhand car salesman. As crass and calculating as she was.

  She completed the delicate wiring of the star in her hand, then placed it with the growing pile before picking up another one. They were inventive and beautiful, but she was getting tired of twinkling stars. Johnny had managed to come up with more than a dozen different kinds, different materials, different wiring, including what had to be the first use of fairy lights that were omnipresent in the next century, and the results were undeniably beautiful, shedding a magical glow on the merchandise and mannequins beneath them.

  In her current mood, she’d rather be making bat wings, and the delicate star crumpled in her hand. The door behind her opened, and she kept her back to it, determined to ignore him. He could apologize all he wanted, she wasn’t going to pay any attention. He could damn well—

  “How are the stars coming?” Rosa asked, dropping down beside her.

  Madison couldn’t help it—she glanced past her, to the closed door, and she relaxed. “They’re a pain in the butt.” She saw Rosa’s surprised expression and her frustration spilled over. “For Christ’s sake, don’t people even say ‘butt’ around here?”

  Rosa was struck speechless, a rare occurrence, her mouth slightly agape. And then she closed it. “You’re going to hell,” she said amiably enough.

  Already there, Madison wanted to mutter, but she didn’t. Her own real world wasn’t a whole lot better than this one, given the political unrest that was tearing half the planet apart. “Sorry,” she muttered, suddenly remembering Rosa was a good Catholic girl. Woman. Damned Johnny! “Johnny really pisses me...that is, he really ticks me off.”

  “You�
�re mad, are you?” Rosa said, with one blink accepting Madison’s unladylike language. “I thought you were hurt.”

  Madison widened her eyes to stare at Rosa, hoping all trace of those damned tears had dried up. “Me, hurt? By that big oaf? Ha!” That sounded believable, she thought critically.

  Rosa nodded. “I told Johnny he’d hurt your feelings. Guess I was wrong, then.”

  “Dead wrong. I don’t care enough to let him get to me,” Madison said in a firm voice, twisting the last bit of wire in place. They really were beautiful. “Uh...what did he say when you said that? Which wasn’t true, of course.”

  There was a reason Rosa had avoided all of Irene’s attempts at dislodging her. She was much too bright, too tenacious, and she saw straight through bullshit. Unfortunately for Madison. “Doesn’t matter,” Rosa said cheerily enough, “since it wasn’t the truth.”

  “So he doesn’t need to apologize.”

  “I don’t think he was planning to.”

  “Motherfucker,” Madison muttered, unable to stop herself.

  “I’m washing your mouth out with soap!” Rosa said. “Where did you hear such language? My poppa would take his belt to me if I said even half the things you say.”

  “Lucky I’m the one saying them, then,” she grumbled.

  “I ran into Bette.” Rosa changed the subject, but if she thought that would put a stop to Madison’s bad-tempered cursing, then she’d made a major mistake.

  “What the h...“ Time to stop, Madison, she told herself. “What did she want?” she continued in a more reasonable tone.

  “She’s set up an appointment for you at the salon after hours on Christmas Eve. They’re going to get you all polished and ready for the evening. She said she’ll have the perfect gown and shoes as well.” There was no missing the tone of disappointment in Rosa’s voice.

  “Why don’t I blow her off?” Madison suggested suddenly. She didn’t trust Irene, and she certainly didn’t trust any kind gestures from her.