by Ann Major
When the dough was hard, she cleared away the Christmas cards and took out the rolling pin and cookie cutters. Andrew heard the preparations and came in begging to help, as he always did. But Karen took one look at his paint-stained hands and sent him outside to play, promising that he could help with the frosting and decorating, which was his favorite part, anyway.
The time passed quickly, while Karen rolled dough and cut out Christmas shapes the way her grandmother had taught her when she was no older than Andrew. "It's the lemon flavoring that makes the difference," she could almost hear her grandmother say. "Put more flour on your rolling pin, Kary, dear…"
Christmas trees and bells and wreaths, stars and angels, Santas and snowmen. "Not too thick, now…and take them out of the oven when the first tinge of brown shows on the edges!"
Karen was just taking the last pan full of cookies out of the oven when she heard Tony's knock. She carefully slid the cookies onto a dish towel, dropped both the pan and pot holder into the sink, and wiped her hands on her jeans while she took one last look around. Then she went to answer the door.
"Hi," Tony said, breaking into a grin when he saw her. He sounded out of breath, whether from the cold or because he'd sprinted up the stairs Karen couldn't guess. It didn't matter; she was too winded herself to answer his greeting, or to even gasp when he suddenly reached out and brushed at something on her cheek. "Flour," he explained, the smile warming his eyes. "Been baking something?"
"Just some cookies," Karen said, sheepishly rubbing her cheeks. "Oh dear, do I have it all over me? That always happens, I don't know why."
"It's okay. It looks cute on you." As casual and easy as if last night had never happened, as if he'd never even thought of kissing her, as if he'd been walking in and out of her house all his life, Tony moved past her and headed for the kitchen, sniffing the air like a hunting dog hot on the scent. "Hmm… smells good. Can I have one?"
Karen hurried after him, dithering like an overprotective mother. "Well, they're not finished yet. I don't know…"
"Christmas cookies!" Tony's hand hovered over the cookies cooling on the dish towel. He selected a reindeer and gave Karen a look that would have melted a Scrooge's heart. "Please?"
Karen managed a laugh and a grudging, "Oh, all right, if you must. But just wait until you see them all decorated. We make the prettiest Christmas cookies in the world. And the best tasting, too."
"Hmm," Tony muttered with his eyes twinkling and his mouth full. "And she's modest, too."
"Oh, it's true," Karen said simply. "Everyone always says so. My grandmother and I always made them when I was a child." She smiled, remembering. "All my cousins would come to help with the decorating-nobody wanted to be left out-but I was her special helper, because I lived with her."
"How come?"
She glanced at him and shrugged, keeping it light and offhand, because she didn't want him to think she considered herself unfortunate to have been raised by warm, loving grandparents. "My mother died when I was a baby, and… I never knew my father."
Tony's eyes were dark and intent. "No brothers and sisters?"
"No," Karen said, "just me." She smiled and added softly, "Now it's just Andrew and me."
"Hmm." Frowning, Tony popped the last of the cookie into his mouth and brushed crumbs from his fingers. "Speaking of the kid, where is he?"
"I sent him outside for some fresh air. He should be… " Karen leaned over the sink to look out the window. "Yes, there he is… Oh, look, there's Mr. Clausen. I wonder what they're doing?"
"Mr. Clausen?"
"My neighbor," Karen said, and caught her breath as Tony brushed against her, reaching past her to twitch the curtain out of the way. "He lives upstairs."
Tony's laugh gusted warmly past her ear and teased the wisps of hair on her temple. "Looks just like Santa Claus, doesn't he?"
Karen snorted. "That's what Andrew says." But when she turned to give Tony an exasperated look, she found that his face was closer to hers than she'd expected. And suddenly it was hard to be exasperated about anything… or even to think clearly. She frowned in concentration and whispered, "I'm… a little concerned about him."
"Why?" It was a soft, warm sound that barely altered the shape of his mouth.
"Because… " His mouth… so close to hers. "He still believes in Santa Claus."
A smile hovered, just a breath away. "Don't you?"
"Don't I… believe in Santa-" She blinked, straightened and turned blindly back to the window, her heart beating in a crazy, uneven rhythm. "He doesn't get outside enough, that's the problem. He reads too much. He needs to play with other children more. I wish-"
"Careful… " His hands turned her; his finger touched her lips, lightly, as it had the night before. "Don't forget, it's the season for wishes." The smile on his lips faltered, then tilted wryly. "Hey, don't wish for something unless you know what you're getting into. Believe me, having a bunch of kids around all the time isn't all it's cracked up to be."
Karen whispered, "You sound as if you know." His hands were on her shoulders; she could feel the energy in them, like a force field that shut out the rest of the world and pulled her into his orbit.
"I know," he said harshly. "I'm one of seven kids, remember? Four sisters, two brothers. Hey, if your son likes to read, maybe it's because he was born that way. Maybe he's glad he's got space to call his own, and peace and quiet when he wants it, and privacy. Some kids need those things, you know?"
His eyes were dark, intent… and filled with a certain wistfulness. Karen's heart filled up and turned right over; understanding and insight made a lovely star burst inside her. "Some kids," she said softly, touching his face with her fingertips. "Like… you?"
Of course… A shy, private child in a noisy, gregarious household-was that why he'd taken to Andrew? Did he see himself in her quiet, reserved, bookish little boy?
All through her, in every part of her, emotions were burgeoning. She held very still, feeling the smooth, hard edge of Tony's jaw in her hand, the moist warmth of his breath on her thumb… and smiled as she listened to the chaos inside herself, the tinkling, shimmering sound of a miracle-in-progress.
Tony's lips formed a kiss on the sensitive pad of her thumb; his hands moved inward to the base of her neck, his thumbs describing tender circles on her throat, stroking upward toward the soft underside of her chin. She held her breath and watched his eyes come closer…
"Mom!" The front door crashed back on its hinges. "Mom," Andrew shouted, "guess what-it's snowing!"
Chapter Five
Tony's hands shifted back to her shoulders, then lifted. She let her hand drop away from his face, touched the center of his chest briefly, then took a step away from him, and in a carefully neutral voice called, "In here, sweetheart." She felt shaky, as if she'd been too abruptly awakened from a deep sleep. She felt cold and isolated, as if she were a lost traveler and Tony's arms were a safe warm haven, just beyond reach.
Though he didn't say anything, the look Tony gave her as he widened the space between them must have mirrored her own-one brief glance, searing as a whiplash, full of irony and longing.
Andrew burst into the kitchen, as excited as Karen had ever seen him. "Mom! Hi, Tony! Hey, look out the window. It's starting to snow!"
"Sure is," Tony confirmed, and turned to Andrew with a grin of masculine communion. "Looks like it's coming in early. Well, kid, we'd better get that tree while we still can. You ready to go?"
"Andrew," Karen interjected, "what in the world have you got there?"
Andrew said, "Yeah… just a minute," to Tony and went on with what he was doing, which was taking small, fuzzy brown balls out of his pockets and placing them on the kitchen table. When he'd emptied every pocket, he unzipped his jacket and let an ava-lanche of the things tumble out onto the table, a chair and the floor. He was beaming, bright-eyed and rosy with pride and cold.
"Look-sycamore balls! Mr. Clausen said I could paint them, to make decorations for our tree.
We have the paint, right, Tony? Isn't that cool, Mom? And there's hundreds of them out there-except some of them are already coming apart, and they're really itchy. Mr. Clausen says not to get 'em on your skin, or they'll give you a rash. What do you think, Mom? See, we don't have to buy any more decorations, we can just make a whole bunch of these!"
"Sycamore balls," Karen said faintly. "Where on earth do you suppose Mr. Clausen got such an idea?"
"Mr. Clausen-" Andrew began, then paused and, with a curiously wary and secretive look, shrugged and said neutrally, "Mr. Clausen knows a lot of things. Maybe because he's old."
"Huh, we used to do these when I was a kid." Tony picked up a ball by its stem, and dangled it between his thumb and forefinger. "Must have been just about every year from kindergarten to third grade. There was a great big old sycamore in the schoolyard, and every fall we'd gather these things and paint 'em for Christmas. We used to dip them in glitter, too."
"Cool! Can we get some glitter, Mom?"
"If we don't get a tree, there won't be anything to hang 'em on," Tony pointed out, dropping the sycamore ball and dusting his hands. "Come on, Andy, let's get this show on the road!"
Karen stifled a gulp of protest as he picked up a star-shaped cookie on the way out the door. Andrew looked at her, grinned, selected a Christmas tree for himself and followed.
"The old guy's right about the itching," she heard Tony confide to her son as they crossed the living room together. "I used to chase the girls with 'em and put 'em down their necks. Especially my sisters-boy, did they hate that."
"Cool," said Andrew, with his mouth full of cookie.
Tony couldn't remember when he'd had more fun in a snowstorm. To accommodate the tree, and because he'd been expecting snow, he'd brought his little four-wheel-drive pickup truck instead of his car, even though it didn't have a very good heater and was going to be a tight squeeze for three. They all piled into the front, Andrew in the middle, laughing, puffing out vapor with every breath and shaking snowflakes all over everything. Tony didn't think he'd ever seen anything prettier than Karen's blond hair with snow melting in it, like tiny glittering stars.
When "Jingle Bell Rock" came on the radio, Karen surprised the heck out of him by starting to sing along. Andrew pretended to be embarrassed at first, but after a while, when Tony started to sing "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer," he laughed so hard he almost fell off the seat. And by the time they got to the tree lot they were all singing along with Elvis's "Blue Christmas" at the top of their lungs.
The biggest tree they could find was a ten-footer, which disappointed Andrew a little bit, until Tony pointed out that once they got it on a stand and put a star on top of it, it was going to be another foot taller, at least. As it was, it took all three of them to get it into the truck and lashed down, and it hung out the back so far they had to tie a red ribbon to the tip of it.
Tony had promised hamburgers, so they went into the Hamburger Chalet, which was a new, touristy kind of place that had just opened up in the shopping center next door to the tree lot. Andrew insisted on sitting where they could keep an eye on the truck, in case anybody tried to steal the tree, which Tony figured was what came of living too long in a place like L. A. They all agreed that the Chalet had pretty good hamburgers, though Tony didn't think they were as good as the ones at Dan's Drive-in out on the highway, where the crowd used to hang out back in his high school days.
For some reason he got to thinking about all the girls he'd dated then and in the years since, all the girls who'd sat across the table from him as Karen was right now, dipping French fries in ketchup and throwing him tentative smiles. He wondered how it was that he hadn't wound up married to one or another of them, all settled down by this time, as most of his friends were-and his brothers and sisters, too-with a couple of kids apiece. Not for want of effort on the part of his family, that was for sure! Especially his sisters, who never let a month go by without trying to set him up with somebody, and his mother, who was always lamenting that he was over thirty now, and time was passing him by. Why, he wondered, had he resisted the invitation in those smiles, and all of his sisters' schemings and his mother's pleadings?
Then he looked at the woman sitting across from him, blond hair falling across her cheek and dipping into the collar of her threadbare coat… blue eyes seeking his from time to time, sometimes shy and puzzled, and other times shining with a strange and contagious excitement. And he thought he knew why. Somehow, when he looked at this woman, things happened inside him. He felt things he'd never felt before… thought about things he'd never thought about before. When he looked at Karen, he thought about going to bed with her, which wasn't unusual. But he also thought about sleeping all night long with her cuddled up beside him, and having her there when he woke up in the morning. And he found himself thinking about babies and private jokes, and the way his mother and father still looked at each other, and held hands in church.
"What?" Karen asked suddenly, smiling but uncertain. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Nothing," he said, grinning at her.
"Just… looking, I guess."
"Oh God-don't tell me, do I have ketchup on my face?"
"No," he assured her tenderly, "you don't have ketchup on your face. Maybe just a little flour on your nose, though."
"Andrew, tell me the truth. Do I have ketchup on my face?"
"No, Mom. Honest."
"All right." Pink and flustered, she turned that fierce blue glare back to Tony and demanded, "Then what were you thinking?"
"Nothing," he insisted, laughing as his chest expanded with all the things he couldn't say to her yet. "I was just… thinking. Nothing important."
Nothing important. For the first time in his life, Tony was thinking about forever.
By the time they started home with the tree, the snow was coming down in big, fat flakes and beginning to stick to the sidewalks and rooftops. The main streets glistened black and wet, reflecting headlights and Christmas lights in the midafternoon dusk, but on the quiet residential streets, car tracks left meandering ribbons on blankets of pristine white. It wasn't bad yet, but getting thick enough to make Tony glad he'd brought the four-wheel-drive.
He and Karen left Andrew making snowballs on the front walk while they carried the tree up the stairs. They made so much noise laughing and falling down and trying to shush each other that Mrs. Goldrich came out to see what was going on.
Karen immediately straightened her face and said solemnly, "Merry Christmas, Mrs. Goldrich."
With all the dignity he could muster, Tony echoed it. "Yeah, Merry Christmas, Mrs. Goldrich."
The landlady grunted and went back into her apartment, muttering something about paying for any damage to the woodwork. The instant the door closed after her, Karen and Tony collapsed, snorting and giggling, into each other's arms.
Eventually, pulling and tugging, swearing and laughing and getting in each other's way, they did manage to get the tree up the stairs, through the door and into Karen's living room. Tony stood it upright in front of the bay window, right in the center of the loop of train track, and they both stood back to admire it. Then they looked at each other-sweaty, dusty, cov-ered with pitch and pine needles-and the last fitful chuckles sighed away into silence.
A second later she was in his arms, and he was kissing her with a hunger he hadn't even known about until that moment, plundering her mouth as if he were a parched and weary wanderer and she the life-giving spring. Searching her mouth, holding her as if he knew that everything he'd ever needed, wanted, or dared hope for, was right there, in her.
When she pulled her mouth away from his, she was shaking like a leaf. He folded her close and held her while their hearts knocked in crazy, mixed rhythms, and finally said in a ragged whisper, "I've been wanting to do that all day."
"Really?" Her voice was weak and faint; he could feel her arms holding tightly to him, and her face pressing into the curve of his neck.
"Longer than tha
t, actually. A lot longer." He separated himself from her just far enough so he could slip his fingers under her chin. He wanted to see her face, her mouth still swollen and moist from his kiss, her eyes dazed and sultry. Even in the semidarkness of premature twilight he could see his own hunger reflected in her eyes. "Yeah," he said softly, "and I think I'm going to have to do it again…"
But he didn't, not right away. Because this time he wanted to take his time about it, think about it, imagine her lips coming to rest against his, opening under his, the warm, sweet taste of her on his tongue. He wanted to watch her eyes while he slipped his hand inside her coat and discovered the palm-fitting curve of her breast, and under it the trip-hammer beat of her heart.
She gave a sharp gasp when he touched her there, and closed her eyes, not wanting him to see the longing in them. It had been so long, and she'd almost forgotten the feeling. But had it ever felt so wonderful, or so terrible, this pleasure that was almost pain? Oh, how she wanted-but in the next moment, instead of leaning into his hand and inviting further explorations as she wanted to do so badly, she was wrenching herself away from him, trembling.
He called her name in a voice she hardly recognized. "Karen… " And then he said it once again on. a soft exhalation as he registered the sound she'd heard already: Andrew's footsteps, clomping up the stairs.
"Hey," Andrew said as he burst into the room, an avalanche of melting snow and childish enthusiasm, "it looks great, doesn't it? And you can see it from down there in the yard, just like I thought. Let's put the decorations on it right now. Can we, Mom?"
"Of course," Karen said faintly. "I'll get them… "
Tony, who'd been standing with his back to them, finally turned and said with gravel in his voice, "What we need to do is anchor this monster to the ceiling so it won't fall over. You wouldn't happen to have a stepladder, would you?"
Karen shook her head. Andrew said, "Mrs. Gold-rich has one. Out in the backyard, by the porch where the washing machine is."
