The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe

by Marie Ferrarella

  And felt the world explode.

  Chapter Ten

  No doubt about it, her eyelashes were definitely singed. Maybe even the roots of her hair. Feeling dazed, disoriented and equal parts contented and aroused, Mikky drew her mouth slowly away from his. For a man who was trying to keep his emotional distance, he certainly leaped over the chasm he’d created every time he kissed her.

  A woman could easily get hooked on this. Mikky took a deep breath before she attempted to say anything coherent. “I don’t know about you, but that’s one tradition I think the world should really keep.”

  What was wrong with him? Tony wondered. Why did his willpower turn to dust every time he was close to her? This wasn’t fair to either one of them and he didn’t want to lead her on.

  He didn’t want to lead himself on.

  “Mikky.”

  “Shh.” She placed her fingertips to his lips to still them. “Don’t spoil it with any disclaimers.” Mikky tried very hard to ignore the affection that was flooding through her veins. She couldn’t allow it to distract her and color the way things were. “I’m not asking you for anything, just to enjoy the moment. Nothing else, just that.” She slid her fingers from his lips, gently feathering them along his mouth as she withdrew. “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  But was it? Was it okay? Tony didn’t know.

  He’d never expected to feel anything for anyone at all. Teri coming into his life had been an exciting surprise, one that, once he’d gotten his bearings, he’d embraced with enthusiasm. But after her sudden death, he’d sworn that he would never invest any of himself like that again.

  He would have sworn he would never be able to.

  Yet here he was, taking in a child, feeling things for a woman...setting himself up all over again. But this time he knew about the fall. Knew about it and, more than anything in the world, didn’t want to experience it again. Because this time he wouldn’t recover.

  And yet...

  He drew away from her, wishing that his uncle had built the cellar just a little larger.

  Had it been St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it still wouldn’t have been big enough, he realized. “C’mon, we’d better find those hooks before they send a search party looking for us.”

  “I have a sneaking suspicion that won’t be for a very long time.” Her eyes indicated the small, suspended sprig above their heads. “Unless, of course, they usually hang mistletoe in the storage cellar.”

  He tried to shrug it off philosophically. Their intent had been good, he supposed. “My family thinks I should cheer up.”

  And he minded them butting in, Mikky thought. Nothing unusual about that.

  “Families have a way of worrying and wanting what they think is best for someone.” Studying him, she ran the tip of her tongue along her lips. “Did it cheer you up? The kiss,” she specified.

  No two ways about it, Tony had no idea how to handle this woman. Or what to expect next. “You’re not supposed to ask questions like that.”

  Her eyes were innocent. “Why not?”

  He needed something to do with his hands other than hold her again, so he began rummaging through the stacked plastic storage drawers. Knowing he wouldn’t have been able to focus in on the hooks unless they stuck him in the thumb.

  “Because questions like that are too blunt.”

  “They’re to the point,” she corrected. “Because I’d like to know.”

  He wasn’t accustomed to that kind of directness. It caught him off guard. “Why?”

  “It would be nice to know if you were as affected by it as I was.” She smiled at the stunned expression on his face. “Something else I’m not supposed to admit to, right?” Mimicking him, she began opening various drawers and looking through them. All she found were more decorations. “Sorry, I was too busy raising my brothers and sisters and trying to get grades good enough for a scholarship, to learn the fine art of male-female relationships.”

  “Is that why you come on like gangbusters?”

  It was her turn to stop and stare at him. She wrapped her tongue around the word he’d used. “Gangbusters. Haven’t heard that one since the last time I watched a Jimmy Cagney movie.”

  “You watch Jimmy Cagney movies?” He scrutinized her face to see if she was putting him on. One of his cousins might have mentioned something to her.

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Her expression was inscrutable. Why didn’t that surprise him? He went back to rummaging, this time actually focusing on the contents of the drawers. “No.”

  “Well, I do.” Kneeling, she began working her way through the bottom drawers. “Apparently you do, too, or you wouldn’t have used the term as if you expected me to know what it meant.” She glanced up and saw that the suspicion had deepened in his eyes. “I watch detective movies, too.”

  “And science fiction.”

  She nodded. “And science fiction.”

  “I hate to say it, but we seem to have some things in common.” Yet they were as different as night and day, he thought.

  Shutting the bottom drawer, she began to rise to her feet. He took her hand and helped her up. Chivalry was making a silent comeback, she thought.

  “Why do you hate to say it, Tony? Because you don’t want to get close to anyone? You’re close to your family.”

  That had been a given from the very beginning. “Not the same thing.”

  “No, I don’t suppose it is.” But it meant he had feelings, and that they could rise to the surface. It was a hopeful sign. Glancing past his shoulder, she saw the elusive box of hooks. Reaching around him, Mikky closed her hand around the so-called missing box. “Found them.”

  Pivoting on her heel, Mikky began to leave. Maybe she was crowding him. Maybe she was wrong in thinking she could bring him around for his own sake and for hers. If the horse didn’t want to drink, you couldn’t drown him in the trough.

  He caught her wrist just before she started going up the stairs.

  Blowing out a breath, she half turned to look at him. At this height, she was just a shade taller than he was and had to look down. “What?”

  “If I could, it would be you.”

  The remark undid everything she’d just been trying to put into place. Maybe she wasn’t so wrong in her thinking at that.

  Mikky smiled down at him then. It was a soft smile rather than a brash, cocky one, and it managed to pry open a little farther the crack that was already steadily widening. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He could feel his temper fraying already, and they’d only been through the ordeal of trying to find a parking space. Why the hell had he let her talk him into this? Because he was growing soft in the head, that’s why. There must have been something in his aunt’s dinner last Sunday, something he ate that was in turn eating away his common sense.

  There was no other explanation why he’d allowed himself to be roped into this on a Saturday morning.

  “I don’t have time for this,” he growled at Mikky. There had to be more people jammed into this mall than there were in the entire state of Maryland.

  “As I said earlier, you’ll just have to make time.” She faced him squarely, not an easy feat with Justin in a carryall between them. “Christmas is less than a week away, and you don’t have a present to your name.”

  It still amazed him that, though he had every intention of standing firm against her, somehow he’d found himself driving over here. “None of my family is expecting anything from me.”

  It was a lousy excuse, and Mikky wasn’t even about to dignify its existence by discussing it. The man was going to take part in Christmas if it killed her. She wasn’t certain just when she had appointed herself his secret guardian angel, but she had, and getting him to take part in Christmas was now not just a goal but a mission.

  “All the more reason to do it. It’ll be a surprise.” She was trying very hard not to be judgmental. She had never approved of sitting on the sidelines and letting life move on without y
ou. “Don’t you at least want to give your Aunt Bridgette something for Christmas?”

  “Well, maybe,” he finally said before rallying again. “But I haven’t the slightest idea what to get for her. Or any of them.”

  Triumph entered her eyes. She’d finally gotten him to admit at least that much. “That’s why you’re bringing me along.”

  Tony looked at Mikky incredulously. The woman had appeared on his doorstep and all but thrown a net over him, dragging him to his car like a bagged possum with absolutely no control over his fate. “Who’s bringing whom?”

  With a careless wave of her hand, she dismissed his question. “Let’s not start quibbling over fine points. The main thing is that we’re both here.”

  And whose fault was that, Tony thought.

  Mikky began to lead the way to the first store on her mental list. Having no choice, Tony fell into place beside her. He looked at Justin, who was curled against her chest in the carryall. It crossed his mind that of the two of them, Justin and himself, Justin had the better arrangement. “I can carry him, you know.”

  She placed her hand over the baby’s back. “Yes, I know, but he’s fine right here. When he gets too much for me, I’ll let you take over.”

  That’s what she said, but that’s not what she meant. Heaven help him, but Tony was beginning to know how she operated. “You wouldn’t admit it even if something did get to be too much for you. You feel called upon to do it all.”

  Had he said that to her three weeks ago, Mikky would have taken offense at the criticism. But she’d mellowed a little and gotten to know him, as well. He used criticism like some people used sunblock. To protect himself from getting burned.

  Mikky inclined her head toward him. “I’ll let you in on a little secret, I’m not as independent as I want everyone to believe I am.”

  Tony didn’t buy into that for a minute. He’d watched her at the site, and while she might look like every man’s idea of a delectable cream puff, she took pride in being able to shoulder her own responsibilities. Took pride, too, in the fact that she was a hell of a lot stronger than she looked. “You’d bite off the first hand that was stretched out to help you.”

  “Maybe not.” Pausing, she looked at him, really looked at him, and saw things that her initial sparring matches with him had made her miss. Like the fact that he had a sensitive soul under all that barbwire. “Maybe I’d take it If it was the right hand.” She grinned. “Even superheroes have an off day.”

  Banishing the serious moment, Mikky looked around. She stopped walking and turned to get his input. “So, where do you want to go first?”

  “Home.”

  She laughed. The man never gave up. “Okay, where do you want to go second?”

  Tony couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to a mall. Even when he was married, shopping was strictly his wife’s domain. Simple in his tastes, he hadn’t bought new clothes of any kind in over a year.

  Even standing still, he was being jostled. “This is really a bad idea.”

  One hand against Justin’s back, Mikky threaded her other arm through his. “It’s a really good idea, once you get the hang of it.” Very subtly she began to steer him off toward Cairo’s Department Store located in the southernmost part of the mall.

  Tony couldn’t get over how many people there were, all rushing, struggling, looking exhausted. “Why do people do this?”

  “Because it’s fun.”

  He looked at Mikky as if she was crazy. “How can you tell?”

  “It’s a gift.” Laughing at the face he made, she dragged him off to the department store.

  Amazed that she’d actually managed to find a table for them to sit at, Tony lowered himself into the chair opposite hers. He shed the shopping bags that hung from his wrists like overweight paper bracelets on either side of his chair and barely had enough energy to raise the coffee cup to his lips. He could stand on his feet for sixteen hours straight on a site, but following Mikky around a mall for a few hours was a completely different matter. Every part of him was drained to the max.

  She, on the other hand, looked as if she could go another round or two equal to what they had just endured. How? She’d plowed her way from counter to counter like a heat-seeking missile on a mission. “I think you bring new meaning to the word pushy.”

  “Forceful, assertive,” she corrected, supplying adjectives for him. Taking Justin out of the carrier, she made him comfortable on her lap.

  “Pushy,” he insisted.

  She rummaged through the large bag Tony had brought with him until she found a bottle of juice for Justin. “But we got gifts for everyone, and we did it in under three hours. That’s pretty good, considering how close to Christmas it is.”

  Tony felt a little overwhelmed by all the festive decorations in the mall. Maybe because it made him remember. He looked at her thoughtfully as he held his cup between two hands.

  “You like this season, don’t you?”

  Mikky almost said, What wasn’t there to like, but caught herself. “It’s my favorite time of year.” She debated letting it go, but decided that she couldn’t. “I take it you have reservations.”

  It was none of her business, and Tony had no idea why he was telling her this. Maybe it was to shut her up, maybe it was because the feelings had been trapped too long inside of him.

  “The accident happened just before last Thanksgiving. I spent last Christmas at the cemetery.”

  She surprised him by reaching over and putting her hand on his in silent comfort. He didn’t take her hand, but he didn’t pull his away, either. “I don’t think Teri would have wanted you to spend the rest of your life in the cemetery.”

  He knew what she was saying. “No, she wouldn’t have. She had a good heart. She...” His voice trailed away and he looked at Mikky. “You’re nothing like her.” Frustrated at his own inarticulation, he shook his head. “That didn’t come out right. Teri was quiet, almost shy. She didn’t have an ‘assertive’—” he chose one of Mikky’s words “—bone in her body. And yet...”

  He left the word hanging. “Yet?”

  Tony shook his head. He’d said too much already. Done too much. Allowed her to get too far into his life. Look at how far she’d burrowed in such a short time. He couldn’t allow that to continue.

  He drained the cup and put it down before continuing. “Never mind, must be the lack of air.”

  He was going to say something to her, something nice, and they both knew that lack of air had nothing to do with it. Mikky felt a little cheated and a little gratified at the same time. At least she’d gotten him this far.

  “Drop in blood sugar,” she suggested. “Temporary insanity. Allergic reaction to paper shopping bags....”

  He began to laugh, partially surrendering, at least for the moment. “You really are something else, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’m something else.” Mikky looked at him significantly. “Not better, not worse, just something else.” It was up to him to realize just what that actually meant to him. For the time being, she would glory in her success at getting him to go Christmas shopping.

  Not to be outdone by the adults, Justin had drained his bottle. Mikky returned it to the bag. She was ready to go. “Okay, gents, let’s get this show on the road.”

  Tony looked at her hopefully, suddenly feeling energized. “We’re finished?”

  She tried not to laugh at his expression. “We’re finished.”

  But he was wary that she might try to trick him into complacency and then drag him off to yet another store. “We can go home?”

  Leaning over, she patted his cheek. “Yes, Toto, we can go home.” She rose to her feet, afraid that if she lingered over Tony, she might do something stupid like lean over and kiss him. A woman had to leave some moves to a man, or else they didn’t count.

  Tony had never felt so relieved at leaving a parking lot in his life. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he watched the mall f
ade into the background, like a bad dream that should have never been.

  And then he thought of all the things in his trunk. He slanted a glance toward Mikky. “I don’t suppose you like wrapping things.”

  “Things,” she repeated, stretching the moment. “As in presents?”

  His hands tightened on the wheel. She was going to make him spell this out, too, wasn’t she? “Yeah.”

  “Yes, I like wrapping.” Like every part of the holiday, wrapping presents gave her pleasure. She doubted if there was a thing about Christmas she didn’t like, except taking down the decorations after the holiday was over.

  “Good, then would you—”

  “No.”

  Easing down on the brake at the light, he looked at her. “No?”

  “No, I won’t wrap them for you.” The car behind them beeped its horn. The light had turned green again. Tony muttered something under his breath about the lack of patience in the world. Mikky thought it rather ironic, coming from him. “But I’ll help you wrap.”

  “And the difference being?”

  She glanced behind her to make sure Justin was still sleeping in his seat. The boy was out like a light. “That I won’t let you foist the job onto me. I’ll assist, supervise—”

  “Straw bossing. Your favorite pastime.”

  Mikky’s smile got to him. Tony found that happening a lot, lately, and wished he could find a way to prevent it. “You are getting to know me, aren’t you?”

  Yeah, he was. Against his will. He said nothing, not wanting to build on the thought her words suggested. He reminded himself that even if he did, there was no harm in it. This was just a temporary situation, and he knew it. They both did. By her own admission, Mikky was moving on. That meant right after Christmas there would be no more threat, no more source of irritation to him.

  No one to stir his blood or make him wonder...

  He couldn’t have it both ways. He was either happy she was leaving or he wasn’t. The impromptu selfimposed lecture bore no fruit. He couldn’t decide.

  Couldn’t admit—