Once Upon a Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  Dylan waved his hand. “Nah. I’ll just take a walk—”

  “Ruff!” barked Ginger from inside the bathroom.

  “—down there after breakfast if I need to,” he finished, his eyes widening. His gaze met Stacey’s, and she had the feeling they were thinking the same thing. The ‘W’ word. Walk—walk—walk.

  Whoops.

  The hotel employee’s attention veered from Dylan’s face to the closed bathroom door. His frown made his face look a little like an unhappy mustachioed fist. “Is that a—”

  “Hack, hack!” Loudly—very loudly—Dylan started coughing. A lion with a hairball caught in its throat couldn’t have been louder. Finally, the hotel employee whacked Dylan on the back, and his coughing fit subsided.

  “Thank you,” Dylan croaked. “Terrible, being hit with this rotten cold on our honeymoon and all.”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” With one parting glance at the bathroom door, the man shrugged his shoulders. He clattered the silver-covered dishes on his room service cart. “I hope you’re not under the weather, too, Mrs. Parker.”

  Stacey stared at the bathroom door, wishing it were possible to mind-meld with a dog. Be quiet, she tried anyway. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  “Mrs. Parker?”

  “Honey?”

  “Mrs. Parker!”

  “Sugarcakes?” Dylan kicked discreetly on the bedpost, jolting Stacey back from her mind-meld attempts. She looked up to see the room service guy stroking his mustache with narrowed eyes—eyes aimed suspiciously at her.

  “She’s a little hazy before the caffeine kicks in,” Dylan explained.

  “Oh! Ha, ha,” Stacey managed. She glared at Dylan for the kick—couldn’t he have found a less jarring way to get her attention?—and clutched the covers to her chest. Hazy, huh?

  “I guess you’re right, Dumpling,” she purred. “A girl’s gotta have something to get her motor running in the mornings.”

  Behind the room service guy’s back, Dylan pantomimed a dagger to his chest. With a silent howl of pretend anguish, he staggered backward, then grinned. Stacey stifled an answering smile and turned her gaze toward their visitor.

  “So sorry we kept you waiting in the hallway earlier,” she said sweetly.

  “Oh, that’s all right.” He winked at Dylan.

  Dylan whipped the imaginary dagger behind his back and gave him a leering sort of man-to-man grin. Stacey could’ve kicked him, never mind the bed post.

  “The honeymooners are always that way. Sometimes we just give ‘em a few minutes, then leave the food at the door if they don’t answer.” The hotel employee picked up a delicate white china cup and saucer, then poured coffee into it from a silver pot. “Of course, with a special order like this one, we didn’t want to do that.” He carried the steaming coffee to Stacey. “Here you go, ma’am.”

  She took the saucer in her hands and inhaled the rich brewed scent appreciatively. “Thank you,” she said, and realized it was really Dylan she thanked most.

  Even after spending the night with his six-foot frame cramped on the loveseat, even after being walloped, evaded, out-raced, and told to leave more times than she could count, he was still dedicated to pulling off the pretend-honeymooners thing for Richard and Janie.

  In his own overbearing, take-charge way, of course.

  Still, Dylan was trying to help. Unfortunately, the fact that he was being nice about things only made it twice as hard to resist him, which made it twice as hard for Stacey to keep her mind where it belonged—on the honeymoon ruse. If she couldn’t handle the honeymoon deception better than she’d handled Dylan so far, her family’s peaceful coexistence was doomed.

  They were almost all she had left now. Four stifling years spent married to Charlie meant she’d socialized more with his business colleagues and their wives than with her own friends. Since her divorce, Stacey had started rebuilding her old friendships, but they were still a long way from the solid, just-us-gals relationships she used to enjoy. The last thing she wanted was to wreck things with her family, too.

  She wouldn’t. Not if there was any way to prevent it.

  Grimacing, Stacey sipped her coffee just as Dylan emerged from the bathroom and shut the door behind him, looking clean and better than he had a right to after all he’d been through since showing up yesterday. The moment the door shut, Ginger started scratching. Dylan coughed to cover the sound. Stacey, trying to be helpful, did too. The hotel employee only raised his eyebrows and went on working.

  Before long, Ginger apparently got tired of the game and quieted. Stacey imagined the dog chewing up the plush pink bathmat and grinned. Maybe Dylan’s dog went everyplace with him, but she’d bet Ginger got him into his share of trouble, too.

  Just like her, unfortunately.

  Dylan ambled to the room service cart and lifted lids from its covered dishes, releasing the delicious aromas of toast, scrambled eggs, maple syrup, coffee, and the sharp tang of citrus.

  “Smells good.” His gaze shifted to her, and an appetite wholly unrelated to food rose in his expression. “Hungry?”

  Her pulse leaped. How in the world did he keep doing that to her, with only a glance and a handful of words?

  She ought to be nice to him, Stacey knew. She ought to make their honeymoon façade look good. But the way Dylan looked at her made her heart perform a sudden, unsettling mamba in her chest, and the only thing she really wanted to do was run.

  “Actually,” she wound up saying, “I’d hoped to go out to eat, rather than have overpriced room service food.”

  Dylan appeared crestfallen.

  So did the room service guy. Banging the silver dishes, he poured a cup of coffee for Dylan and sloshed it in his hand. “Everything else will be along in a minute, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Dylan held his cup in one hand and shook spilled coffee from the other. He sucked the outer edge of his thumb, looking over his wrist at Stacey. “This won’t just be overpriced room service food,” he promised. “This will be something special. You’ll see.”

  Setting his cup on the room service cart, Dylan picked up a plate and spooned what looked like scrambled eggs on it. He added two strips of bacon, stabbed a pancake with a fork and plopped it on the plate’s edge, then poured maple syrup over the whole thing.

  “Sit up.” He nodded toward the headboard. “You’re about to be served breakfast in bed.”

  Before she could protest being served breakfast while she was still half-dressed, four more hotel employees came in through the opened honeymoon suite doorway. Uniformed and carrying instruments, they gathered beside the room service cart. All four of them stared at Stacey, then turned expectantly to Dylan. “Are you ready for us, sir?”

  “You bet!” Looking boyish and pleased with his surprise, Dylan stuck the plate of food in Stacey’s hand. “That is, breakfast in bed with music. I’ll bet you’ve never tried this before.”

  She hadn’t. Balancing her filled plate in one hand, Stacey hauled the covers higher and watched the musicians. They quickly tuned up, then launched into a twangy-sounding Christmas carol. Grinning, they drifted toward her and surrounded the bed. The music got louder. So did the sound of someone banging on the wall of the neighboring hotel room.

  Dylan ducked beneath the upraised arm of the violinist, carrying a filled breakfast plate of his own. Climbing on the silk comforter, he settled against the headboard beside Stacey with perfect assurance, despite the fact that he still wasn’t fully dressed.

  “Do you like it?” he asked. “Are you surprised?”

  “I’m surprised, all right.” What she wasn’t was hungry. Not with a T-shirt and panties wardrobe and four strange men grinning down at her as they played the southwestern version of “Merry Christmas, Baby.” For Dylan’s sake, and for the sake of the honeymoon charade, Stacey picked up a strip of bacon and nibbled it.

  The music picked up tempo. Dylan smiled at her, bobbing his head along with the music as he packed away forkfuls of pancakes dripping with bu
tter and maple syrup. Trying to get into the swing of things, Stacey forked up some scrambled eggs.

  They shook off her fork and landed in her lap. She tried another bite. It wiggled off the tines, too. That’s when she realized the bed was vibrating. The musicians’ knees bumped rhythmically against the mattress as they played their hearts out for the “honeymooners.” Somebody pounded again on the other side of the neighboring hotel room wall, but everyone else seemed too engrossed in the music to notice.

  This was way too much activity for a Saturday morning.

  And Dylan was doing far too much to take over the honeymoon suite charade. This was her problem. She’d be the one to solve it. Her way.

  “This isn’t very inconspicuous,” Stacey remarked. Doing her best not to flash the six hotel employees gathered around their bed, she eased her plate onto the bedside table then snuggled the comforter up to her chin again. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “What?” Dylan cupped his ear and leaned closer.

  “Inconspicuous, remember?”

  The musicians charged into the final chorus of the song. Their hotel room neighbor banged away at the wall, suddenly sounding strangely as though he was keeping time with the music. It was like breakfasting amidst a full-blown holiday fiesta.

  Dylan frowned. “What? I can’t hear you.”

  “Please make them leave.”

  “What?”

  “Make them leave!” Stacey yelled as the music stopped.

  Shocked silence filled the honeymoon suite. The musicians froze in place, their instruments lowered halfway. The guitar player shook his head. Five pairs of sad eyes—Dylan’s included—stared back at her.

  “Sorry,” she peeped.

  “My wife gets terrible migraine headaches,” Dylan explained rapidly, rising from the bed with more quick thinking than Stacey would have credited him with. “I’m sorry. The music was wonderful, but I’m afraid that’ll have to be all for now.“Guilt-stricken, Stacey pulled the black silk comforter over her head and listened to Dylan explain away their abbreviated morning serenade. Their neighbor had quit banging on the wall, she noticed. Dylan would be disappointed—he might not have called the hotel management to complain yet. You couldn’t get much more conspicuous than having yourself reprimanded by the management for unruly behavior.

  Probably that had been Dylan’s plan all along. Why not? It wasn’t his family at stake. He’d decided on a course of action for the honeymoon suite charade, and by God, he meant to follow through with it. No matter what she wanted.

  Money rustled in his wallet, many pairs of feet shuffled toward the doorway…then, silence. Stacey poked her head out.

  “What did you think you were doing?” she yelled, scrambling for her pajama bottoms. She found them and managed to pin Dylan with her most scathing look as she yanked them on beneath the covers. “All I wanted was a nice, peaceful breakfast in a little café someplace, away from all the craziness of this hotel—and especially away from this honeymoon suite. So what did you do? Invite in four people to join us!”

  “Aunt Geraldine—”

  “Don’t even give me that.” Shaking, Stacey threw back the covers and, finally dressed, leaped out of bed. She stomped over to where Dylan stood and put her hands on her hips. “This might have been another one of Aunt Geraldine’s honeymoon surprises, but you took every possible advantage of it.”

  “I thought you were enjoying it.”

  She had been. A little.

  But that was beside the point.

  “You’re just, just, just”—she cranked her arm in the air, trying to summon up an explanation—“just taking over everything! You bulldozed in here, made me take you on as a partner in this stupid charade—”

  “Wait a minute. You agreed that I—”

  “No, you agreed.” Stacey shook her head. “You agreed you should be here. You agreed you weren’t leaving until the weekend was over. You agreed I needed help.”

  Dylan gazed over her shoulder, probably hoping she’d wrap up her tirade soon so he could go back to his pancakes. His indifference only infuriated her more. Even now he wasn’t listening to her.

  Just like Charlie.

  “As usual,” she said as she folded her arms to hide her trembling hands, “you didn’t stop to consider what I wanted.”

  His gaze slipped to her face. His expression sobered. “That’s not true,” Dylan said quietly. “All I thought of this morning was what you wanted. What you’d like.”

  She unfolded her arms and paced across the suite. Why couldn’t he see how everything he’d done made it impossible for her to even find out what she wanted? He hadn’t so much as asked what she wanted for breakfast or where she wanted to go—or what kind of musical accompaniment she’d like, Stacey fumed. Dylan was a man who intended to be in charge, and he’d put himself squarely there.

  “But what about our deal, our deal to be inconspicuous?” She hated the wail in her voice but was unable to squash it in time. “You’re breaking our deal right and left.”

  “I only thought of what would please you.” Crossing the suite’s plush carpet, Dylan stopped beside her and rubbed his hands gently along her shoulders. “I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “That’s what they always say.”

  He dropped his hands from her shoulders. Obviously, Dylan had no defense. “No. But I’ll bet that’s what your ex-husband used to say. The difference here is, I mean it.”

  Wavering, Stacey stared at him, trying to gauge if what he said was true. Was she overreacting because of her past with Charlie?

  No. Dylan really was trying to take over the honeymoon charade. The breakfast had only been more proof of that. Still, she supposed it was possible he meant well.

  She bit her lip, then reached out to touch his shoulder. “Oh, Dylan, I don’t know. This whole thing has me going nuts. If I survive the weekend, it’ll be a miracle.” He couldn’t help wanting to be in charge. That was just the way he was. Who was she to hold it against him? “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  He held up his hand. His gaze swept the room service cart and their empty bed, then came to rest on her face. “No need to explain.” His mouth twisted into a half smile that somehow hurt her more than the anger she expected. “I understand. You’ve got me confused with someone else. We’ll have to change that, won’t we?”

  She gazed up at him without the slightest idea how to reply. She’d been so certain of his motives. But if Dylan really didn’t care what she wanted, then why did he look so disappointed?

  “Enjoy your breakfast,” he went on quietly. “I’ll be in the shower, getting ready for the rest of this charade. We’ve got a golf date in a little more than an hour.”

  Before she could answer, he disappeared into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Hugging herself, Stacey stared at the door as the shower spray turned on, punctuating the end of their discussion.

  The end of the easy playfulness between them.

  And the end of her certainty about anything.

  Chapter Six

  “Not quite what you expected?” Dylan smiled at Stacey, stretching his arms overhead with a golf putter in hand.

  If her expression was anything to go by, she’d expected to set foot on a course very different than the one they’d arrived at twenty minutes ago in fulfillment of Aunt Geraldine’s next honeymoon surprise.

  Of course, he could be totally off-base.

  It wouldn’t be the first time he was wrong about her.

  Dylan lowered his putter and leaned on it, watching the enticing sway of Stacey’s hips as she traveled the length of the path leading to their tee-off point.

  “No, not quite what I expected,” she called, propping her putter over her shoulder. She stepped toward him looking like some department store’s version of Sporty Femininity, wearing canvas sneakers, a flippy white skirt, and Dylan’s favorite bit of attire, a chest-hugging pale pink sweater. “But I like it. It’s cute.”

  So was she. Sh
e stopped next to him, beside the statue of a giant saucer and teacup emblazoned with the words Tee-Time, and looked around. The miniature golf course surrounding them was filled with meandering paths, statues, the requisite windmill, a pond with a waterfall, and huge plaster apple trees.

  Shading her eyes, Stacey gazed over it all. “Finally. We can just relax and be ourselves for a few hours.”

  As a dig about their breakfastin-bed plans gone awry, it was pretty mild. But the memory of her reaction to this morning’s surprise added enough bite to her remark to make it sting. Dylan still wasn’t sure how things had gone so wrong, so fast.

  Strike one, the Renaissance dinner.

  Strike two, the breakfast serenade.

  Strike three…and he’d be out of the action for good. If he was going to convince Stacey to give him another try, he’d have to be more careful the next time he planned a romantic surprise.

  Turning, Stacey flipped her putter from her shoulder. It swung through the air with a whoosh, forcing Dylan to duck or else be brained with the thing. He surfaced at eye level with her waist as she spun around.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  Not thinking about miniature golf, that was for sure. Her snug sweater had ridden up as she moved, revealing a smooth glimpse of belly and driving all golf-related thoughts straight out of his mind. Probably part of her strategy.

  “Warming up,” Dylan improvised, making good on his claim by touching his toes a couple of times. He straightened to a skeptical wrinkling of her nose and added several side-to-side windmills for good measure.

  Stacey raised her eyebrows. “The better to play competitive mini-golf, I suppose?”

  “Yeah. Aggressive game, if you play it right.” He bent his knee in a quadriceps stretch, grabbing his foot and raising it until it touched the back of his pants.

  He smiled. She’d never believe his cutthroat mini-golf story, but it was too late to turn back now. He’d just have to show Stacey he was serious. About this, about the honeymoon charade…about having a second chance with her.