Heart vs. Humbug

by MJ Rodgers

  “Did Mab Osborne say that on the air?”

  “She didn’t have to. She described it, right down to my checkered suspenders. And when she squeezed the doll it said, ‘Read it and weep, I’m raising your rent.’”

  “Where are they selling these dolls?”

  “At the Silver Power League’s community center. They’ll be open until ten tonight, selling the dolls and Christmas refreshments. You have to stop them, Merlin.”

  “I’ll swing by and take a look.”

  “I’ll meet you there.”

  “No, you stay put. Keep away from Mab Osborne.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. If she has any more falls, I don’t want you around.”

  “You heard Sergeant Patterson. He said one of the other seniors probably just bumped her as they jockeyed for position around that pit.”

  “He also said that Mab Osborne was certain it was you who had pushed her. Dole, use some sense here. Don’t set yourself up as a handy scapegoat. I’ll take care of this.”

  Dole cursed in Brett’s ear and hung up.

  Brett dropped the receiver on the hook, thankful not to have to hear the man’s whiny voice anymore. He checked his watch. It was already six. It had been a long, frustrating day arranging for all the important players to be at the site of the stone carving in the morning.

  He’d been looking forward to washing up and going out to an early dinner to make up for the lunch he missed. Now it seemed he would have to postpone even that. He picked up his car keys and retraced his steps to the door.

  Would Octavia be at the community center with her grandmother? The thought of seeing his flame-haired adversary immediately replaced some of the hungry growling in his stomach with a hungry growling of an entirely different sort.

  Brett frowned in irritation.

  Thoughts of her and his unwanted reactions to her kept sneaking into his mind. Just more evidence of what a dangerous female she was. When he remembered her laughter and flagrant disregard of his warning that morning, he could barely control his anger.

  She was brazenly beautiful and unconscionably unethical. He couldn’t think of a worse combination in a woman.

  He had underestimated her once. He would not do that again. He had no doubt that Dole’s fears about this damn doll were right. Before he stopped at the community center, he was going to swing by the home of his longtime friend, Les Gatton, who also just happened to be a judge of the Kitsap County Superior Court.

  Octavia Osborne had succeeded in handing him a few unwanted surprises. It was time for him to return the favor.

  * * *

  OCTAVIA INSTANTLY FELT Brett’s eyes. She turned to see him standing near the beautiful twenty-foot Christmas tree gracing the entrance to the the community center. The seniors had transformed it into a magnificent work of art—decorating it with glorious globes and bows of every shape and size and hue and row after row of multicolored twinkling lights and tinsel.

  Merlin wasn’t looking at the tree, however. He was looking at her.

  And that bright silver sparkle in his eyes even eclipsed the lights on the spectacular tree.

  He was an unbending, formidable presence, no doubt about it. Octavia wondered fleetingly if perhaps that was the biggest part of his appeal—her inability to bend him.

  She dismissed the mental query as soon as it arose. She was a woman of action, not reflection.

  And it was time to act.

  She had no reasonable explanation for why she did what she did next. It was purely intuitive. Octavia had always been comfortable letting her intuition guide her.

  She walked over to Brett Merlin, stopped directly in front of him, rested her hands lightly on his lapels, rose on her tiptoes and then kissed him full on the mouth. Softly. Coolly.

  Or at least that was what she had intended. But there was nothing soft about his mouth as his lips came alive beneath hers—or cool about the feel of his hot hands that immediately found their way to the back of her waist and pressed her hungrily to him.

  He was returning her kiss. And then some.

  His scent was a sophisticated smoky incense, his taste a leaping liquid fire.

  Her heart hammered against her rib cage as a delicious wave of sweet heat took over her body. For several brainless, blinding, breathless seconds, she just went with it, melting into the hard body holding hers.

  Then she was pulling back, removing her hands from his chest, rocking onto her heels, as the incredible surprise of it all registered.

  His hands immediately shifted to grab her shoulders. She could feel the iron strength of his grasp, the heat of his palms. She tried to catch the runaway breath escaping so rapidly from her lungs.

  She didn’t know whether he had grabbed her shoulders to steady her, prevent her from kissing him again, or pull her into his arms and treat her to some more of that totally unexpected response from those firm lips and that even firmer body.

  She stared up into his face, waiting breathlessly. The silver whirled in his eyes, as though it were being spun in a centrifuge. He looked as unsettled and unsure of his motives as she was.

  “Why in the hell did you do that?” he demanded after a very long moment in a voice that didn’t sound cool or distant at all.

  Her unsteady breath still refused to completely fill her lungs in the aftermath of her body’s very interesting reaction to his unexpected returning of her kiss. She had a bit of a problem gathering enough air for an answer.

  “It’s my way of thanking you for going to my grandmother’s aid this morning,” she managed to say finally.

  “A few words would have sufficed.”

  She smiled, rather tickled at the annoyance in his tone.

  “If my kiss bothered you that much, why did you return it?”

  He held her in place before him, staring at her as if she were some unfathomable new species he had never encountered before. She was beginning to think he was one, too.

  Behind those icy black-and-silver lawyer’s eyes was a passion that burned both steel hard and molten hot. She had felt it. She had tasted it. And every female cell in her body was still happily standing at full attention saluting it.

  “Good evening, Mr. Merlin. And what are you doing here?” Mab’s voice asked from behind Octavia.

  Brett’s hands released Octavia’s shoulders as his eyes switched to her grandmother’s face. His voice immediately regained its normally deep, emphatically polite and distant tone.

  “Good evening, Ms. Osborne. I hope you are fully recovered from your unfortunate experience this morning?”

  “I am, Mr. Merlin. No thanks to your client, of course. But Octavia tells me that you were quick to come to my aid and for that you have my sincere thanks. But inquiring about my health isn’t what brought you here tonight, is it?”

  “I understand that you are selling a very unusual Christmas doll this season. I wonder if I might take a look at it.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Octavia said.

  Brett turned back to her, his base-drum voice resounding with an indignant note. “I beg your pardon?”

  Octavia smiled. “You can beg all you want, but no one gets a look at the Silver Power League’s Scrooge doll until after he’s bought it.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because each one is already Christmas wrapped.”

  “People are buying this doll not knowing what it looks like?”

  “Oh, I gave a description of it during my broadcast early this afternoon,” Mab said.

  Brett turned back to her. “I missed your broadcast.”

  Mab smiled. “Looks like you should have continued to tape my show, Mr. Merlin.”

  “You won’t describe the doll to me now?”

  “That’s right, she won’t,” Octavia answered.

  Brett looked from Octavia to her grandmother and back again. “Are you telling me I’m going to be forced to buy one of these Scrooge dolls in order to see it?”

  “Only if you hur
ry,” Mab said. “We’re almost sold out of our stock on hand. Even we didn’t anticipate how very popular it was going to be. This way.”

  Octavia tagged along as Brett followed Mab to the table where the last two of the boxed dolls remained. As Brett handed over his money to John Winslow, Octavia moved beside Brett to pat his shoulder. Her body reacted with a distinctly pleasant little jolt when she discovered solid muscle and absolutely no padding on that stalwart shoulder.

  “You’ll be happy to know your money is going to a good cause,” she said.

  Brett scowled. “I know where it’s going.”

  “Cheer up. You can always give the doll to your cousin as a Christmas present.”

  He turned to face her. “You know.”

  “That Dole Scroogen is your uncle? Yes. How embarrassing that must be for you.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I hired a good detective.”

  “So did I. Mine has promised me a full report on you tomorrow, Octavia.”

  She deliberately smiled into his stern countenance and slipped her arm through his.

  “Do you think we know each other well enough to be on a first-name basis?”

  His face showed nothing, but she could feel the muscles tensing immediately in his arm. Obviously, his use of her first name had been a slip. Just like his kissing her? A warm wave of feminine power rode through Octavia. Maybe, just maybe, she might be able to move this man, after all. It certainly would be interesting trying.

  Actually, quite a bit more than interesting.

  “We’ll never know each other well,” he said, recovering quickly again. “You’ll be in jail before that can happen.”

  She chuckled as she urged him toward the refreshment table.

  “I admire a man who’s not afraid to get egg all over his face. Let me buy you some eggnog so you can have some on the inside, as well. The seniors make potent stuff. Each cupful contains enough cholesterol to clog several arteries.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’re doing me a favor.”

  “You expect me to do you a favor?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Well, suppose again. I’ll also buy you one of Mab’s cookies, and they are, without a doubt, the best-tasting cookies anywhere. Her specialty at this time of the year is Santa Claus and Scrooge. Normally, her Santa cookie is everyone’s favorite, but this year her Scrooge has proven even more popular.”

  As they approached the table with the refreshments, Octavia smiled as she saw Brett’s reaction to the three-inch-round, scowling Scrooge cookie sitting next to the happy countenance of the Santa cookie.

  Whereas the Santa cookie was a smiling combination of chocolate and white fudge with a bright red cherry for a nose, the Scrooge cookie was an unhealthy light green with a dull green cherry for a nose.

  “So which one would you like to try?” Octavia asked.

  “Your grandmother deliberately made that Scrooge cookie’s face resemble my uncle’s.”

  “No, you have it all wrong, Brett. Your uncle has deliberately made his face resemble that of a Scrooge. No doubt the result of a lifetime of sour-pussed pettiness.”

  “You’re enjoying this game of mocking my uncle, aren’t you?”

  “Are you enjoying your game of trying to make my grandmother appear a fool?”

  He glared at her long and hard then. Very long and hard. He had a devastating glare—so damn icy, so damn sexy. Octavia’s heart bounced around so much, her stomach had to keep volleying it back into her chest.

  But she didn’t look away. She knew intuitively she must never look away from Brett Merlin. As a lawyer, or as a woman.

  He was a man who challenged her too strongly on both levels.

  She’d read all about his devastating legal conquests. She could only guess at his personal ones, but she suspected he was just as devastating in them. Maybe A.J. could provide some background there, too. Or maybe that was something she should just find out for herself, firsthand.

  He was a formidable adversary. Getting personally involved would be extremely risky. Of course, a healthy risk was why the idea held so much appeal for Octavia.

  “What are you doing here, Merlin?”

  When she heard the whiny voice behind Brett, at first she thought it was Scroogen’s. But as Brett turned and the sour-pussed face belonging to the voice came into view, Octavia realized that she was looking at a much younger version of Dole.

  Brett turned around to face the man. “I might ask the same question of you, Ronald.”

  “I came with my father to see this Scrooge doll they’re selling, only they’d just sold the last one. Boy, is he pissed.”

  Octavia wondered why Ronald sounded so pleased that his father was upset.

  “Dole is here?” Brett said, clearly unhappy with the news. “I told him specifically to stay away.”

  Ronald Scroogen’s upper lip curled. His dark eyes squinted. “My father doesn’t take orders from you, Merlin,” he said. “Nor from anyone else. None of us Scroogens do.”

  “Give it to me!”

  Octavia swung in the direction of the raised voice, just in time to see Dole Scroogen trying to grab a Christmas-wrapped Scrooge doll out of Keneth George’s hands.

  “Give it to me, I tell you!”

  “Take your hands off it, Scroogen,” George warned. “It’s the last one and I just bought it. You’re not the boss here.”

  Brett moved past her so quickly that Octavia felt the rush of air left in his wake.

  “Give it to me or you’re fired!” Dole was screaming as Brett reached his side.

  Brett grabbed his client’s arm and yanked him away from the foreman. The resulting tug-of-war with the box caused the wrapping to tear and the box to spring open. The doll got dumped onto the floor where Scroogen promptly tripped over it. Brett caught his arm and saved him from a fall.

  “Read it and weep, I’m raising your rent,” the doll whined beneath Scroogen’s shoe.

  Scroogen angrily shook Brett’s steadying hand off his arm and swooped down to scoop up the doll.

  “Look at it! It’s me!” Scroogen complained as he stared in horror at the doll in his hand. “I knew it! Close them down! Confiscate the dolls!”

  Octavia had moved closer to the commotion, as had most of the other people who had gathered in the community center. They formed a circle around Brett, Scroogen and George.

  It was Mab who stepped boldly out of that circle to stand face-to-face with Scroogen.

  “Your behavior as usual is reprehensible. You are not welcome here,” she said. “You had best leave before I’m forced to call the police and have you physically removed.”

  The greenish tinge to Scroogen’s complexion began to turn purple. “How dare you tell me to leave! This is my property, my building! You get out!”

  Octavia stepped beside her grandmother, circling an arm protectively around her shoulders. She did not like the color on Scroogen’s face, nor the look in his eyes.

  “You’d best explain the law to your client, Mr. Merlin. The members of the Silver Power League are in legal possession of this property. They have every right to ask this man to vacate the premises, and if he doesn’t, I will have formal trespassing charges filed against him.”

  Brett laid his hand on Scroogen’s arm. “Come on, Dole.”

  “Give me the doll,” George demanded.

  Dole threw the doll at his foreman before twisting angrily out of Brett’s hold and stomping toward the entrance. Ronald followed his father, a smile of amusement on his face.

  Brett did not immediately follow Dole and Ronald Scroogen. He drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Octavia.

  “I’ll be in touch,” his somber voice said. He pivoted on his highly polished shoes and followed his client out the door.

  “What is it?” Mab asked as Octavia unfolded the paper.

  Octavia quickly scanned the document, a small frown spreading onto her forehead.

 
“It’s a restraining order, prohibiting the Silver Power League from making and selling any more Scrooge dolls, Mab. Merlin’s claiming they’re both libelous and slanderous to Scroogen. He’s forcing the matter into court for resolution.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mab said. “How did Merlin get a court order so fast? The dolls only went on sale today, and he hadn’t even seen one until he got here.”

  Octavia refolded the paper. “Obviously one of the Magician’s tricks is pulling powerful people out of his hat.”

  “Can he prove this is libel or slander?”

  “I think he just wants this restraining order to halt your sale of the dolls until it’s too late.”

  “Octavia, we’re already in the process of making a new batch of Scrooge dolls for sale tomorrow. We have to have the money from those sales. There must be something you can do.”

  “I can try to get an early hearing.”

  “What is early?”

  “If I’m lucky, maybe next week.”

  “Next week? Octavia, we can’t lose even one day of sales if we hope to raise enough money by January 1.”

  Octavia nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  “You can’t suggest anything else?”

  Octavia’s mind had been busy considering the possibilities. Before she shared a promising one, she checked to be sure that no one else was close enough to overhear.

  “Mab, please understand that as an attorney it would be totally improper of me to suggest you continue to make and sell these dolls on the black market.”

  “The black market?”

  “Yes, if you keep selling these Scrooge dolls in violation of this court order, you would no longer be able to advertise them on radio,” Octavia said. “Instead, you would have to use a discreet word of mouth to let prospective buyers know that they are available. And like everything else that is labeled illegal, the demand for them quite naturally would become even greater.”

  Mab leaned closer, her interest obviously engaged. “How would production and distribution be handled in such a black market operation?”

  “Individual members would make and sell the dolls outside of your official facility and without the official sanction of the Silver Power League. These individual members would donate the money they collected on the dolls to go toward the rental demand Scroogen has made on you. Since the Silver Power League doesn’t officially know about the black market operation, it can accept the money as it would any other donation.”