Mr. December

by Macallister, Heather

  Lexi glanced up at him before doing so. “You realize that I want more than just a warm body to show up for dinner.”

  Nodding to the paper, Spencer said, “The more enthusiastic you make your letter, the more enthusiastic I’ll be.”

  “It might take more than enthusiasm,” she warned, wondering how much of the actual dinner situation she should reveal.

  He gave her a heavy-lidded look that shouldn’t be seen outside the bedroom, and spoke in a low, husky voice. “I’ll be ready for whatever you need.”

  Nodding, she said, “That’s a good expression, and the fact that you can fake it on command might come in handy. Yeah. This could work.” She smiled at him.

  Spencer looked like he’d caught a surprise punch in the stomach. What? He didn’t expect her to take him seriously, did he?

  “By the way, does the name Emily DeSalvo mean anything to you?”

  He shook his head. “Should it?”

  “Only if you like opera.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Great. Okay, let’s see. ‘Dear Texas Men’” she said as she wrote. “‘I decided to give myself an early Christmas present by calling one of the men in your magazine. I chose Mr. December, Spencer Price, because he looked like he could use some Christmas cheer.’”

  “Hey!”

  “Well, look at your picture,” Lexi countered. “You’re glaring.”

  “Not on purpose,” he said with an appealing defensiveness. “The photographer was being a jerk. All this ‘pump up and give me sexy’ talk. And I was not going to put on that stupid suit.”

  Lexi studied the picture. “Oh, I agree. You were right not to put on the suit.”

  Spencer cleared his throat. “The letter?”

  She looked at what she’d written. “‘But when he called me, he was as nice as—’”

  “Not nice,” Spencer interrupted. “You don’t call a guy nice unless he’s somebody’s brother or cousin or something.”

  Lexi crossed out nice. “I’m assuming this is a rough draft?”

  “It is now.”

  “‘—he was as charming—’”

  “No. Say something like ‘a stud beyond my wildest dreams.”’

  He looked serious. When she didn’t write, he glanced up at her. “What?”

  “I can have some pretty wild dreams. I think I’ll change that sentence to ‘we clicked right away.”’ She raised her eyebrows for confirmation.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “‘He took me to...’”

  “Shoot pool at Busters.”

  “‘A faculty concert at Littletree.”’ She looked up at him. He rolled his eyes. “The concerts are usually free,” she told him.

  “Oh, well, then. By all means. And afterwards I sprang for coffee cake at KK’s.”

  “‘Afterward, we had white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake at the Wainright Inn.”’

  His disgusted expression made her laugh.

  “What is with you and that place?”

  “The faculty concert was free, so quit complaining. ‘We talked for hours.”’

  “I told you all about the project here, right? We’re in beta development for a robotic hand that has tactile—”

  “‘He wanted to know all about me. At some point, I must have told him my favorite flower, because the next morning, he knocked on my door and brought me coffee, a croissant and a single peach rose—’”

  “Peach? No, babe. You were made for red roses.”

  “But they’re such a cliché.”

  Spencer eyed her. “Black hair, white skin, red lips...nah. You’re a red rose girl. The deep, bloodred kind.”

  They stared at each other. These offhand comments stirred Lexi in a way his fake sensuality never could. “Roses are okay, but I actually like bright wildflowers. I thought the peach rose would sound better for the letter.”

  “Good thinking. Can you put in there that we came here for a tour of the lab and you met the other guys and thought they were real studs, too?”

  Lexi winced. The men were probably right outside the door, listening. Yes, that last sneeze sounded close by. “‘We spent that day together, too—’”

  “Come on, I’ve got to work sometime.”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Oh.”

  “‘Spencer took me on a tour of his lab. I met the other men who appeared in your magazine and they were very friendly.”’ She looked at the window behind Spencer. There wasn’t anything reflected there, but she could sense that the men weren’t far away. “‘It was overwhelming to see them all at once. Their work is fascinating.’”

  “Cutting edge.” .

  Lexi sighed. “Crossing out ‘fascinating,’ inserting ‘cutting-edge.’ ‘Anyway, I just wanted you to know how happy I am that I was able to meet Spencer through your magazine. He’ll be coming to Christmas dinner at my house—’”

  Spencer laughed.

  ‘“...so I know I’ll have a Merry Christmas. I hope you have one, too.’ How’s that?”

  “Not bad,” Spencer said. “You could say that you’re gaga over me, or I’m everything you expected and more.”

  “I’ve only known you two days.”

  “But I brought you a rose. I fed you cheesecake.”

  “You took me to shoot pool and fed me stale chips out of the vending machine in the lab.”

  “The chips aren’t in the machine long enough to get stale.”

  She thought of the wrappings littering the snack bar area and silently agreed with him. “But is the letter to your specifications?”

  “You tell me. Is it the kind of letter that would make women want to contact us?”

  Lexi looked pointedly at the mail sack. “You want more letters?”

  “No! To tell you the truth, I didn’t want any letters.” He rubbed his forehead. “I...haven’t answered any of them, and, well, now that I’ve got your report on our date, I won’t have to.”

  “Do you already have a girlfriend?” Wouldn’t that put a crimp in her plans.

  “No.”

  “But if you didn’t want to date anyone, then why were you in Texas Men?”

  He waved his arm. “The others wanted to, and I was part of the calendar.”

  The best part, Lexi thought. “Okay. Let me recopy this and—ohmigosh, I’ve got a class in less than ten minutes!”

  She scooped up the letter, shoved it inside the magazine and looped her purse over her shoulder. “I’ve got to run.”

  This close to finals, she couldn’t afford to let a class walk. She started for the door.

  “Wait!” Spencer came after her.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll call the magazine.” Lexi ran out the door, her purse swinging wide and catching one of the listening men in the stomach. “Sorry.”

  “The letter—”

  “I’ll recopy it.” She grabbed her purse.

  “But I want to read it before you mail it.”

  Lexi jerked open the lab door. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “But—”

  She didn’t wait to hear the rest as the door closed behind her.

  “But I don’t know your phone number,” Spencer yelled at the closing door.

  He expected her to stick her head back in the door and tell him her number. His mind was ready to receive and process the information. Women gave him phone numbers all the time and he had a good memory for them.

  He waited, but all he heard were her footsteps running down the hallway.

  And the agitated murmur growing behind him.

  “Well, I’m impressed,” Rip said.

  The only thing worse than knowing Lexi Jordan had left holding the upper hand was knowing that he had to turn around, face his team and pretend that things were exactly the way he wanted them.

  He turned and hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “She has a class.”

  “We heard.” Murray wheeled a chair in front of his computer.

  “Then you also heard that she’s going
to write a letter to Texas Men.” Spence smiled his best pep-talk smile. “That’ll get us off the hook for now, but for insurance, you should still try to impress your dates.” He headed for his office.

  “The way you impressed her?” Gordon asked, stopping Spence in his tracks.

  He swung his arm and spun on his heel. “There was a lot going on, body language-wise, that you couldn’t see.”

  “And aren’t you glad?” Dan’s snickers were echoed by the others.

  “What is this?” Spence asked. “Goals were met here. We needed a letter. We’ve got a letter. This was a successful encounter.”

  Rip gave him a dark look and dug in his pocket for quarters. On his way to the soft drink machine, he asked, “And where is this letter?”

  “With her, so she can recopy it.”

  Everybody exchanged looks.

  “Hey, guys, knock it off,” Murray said from his computer. “This is Lexi Jordan we’re talking about here. Her old man is loaded. He runs a foundation or something. I’ll have the specs pulled up in a minute. But Doc knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t want to scare her off. She probably has guys hitting on her all the time, but Doc’s too smart for that. So he’s acting like Mr. I-Don’t-Care. Puts her off balance, you know?”

  “Is that right?” Bob asked.

  All eyes were on Spencer. He smiled and clapped his hands. “Murray, I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

  4

  “WHITE COTTON RULES!” Lexi yelled as soon as she opened the front door. Belatedly, she wondered if all Francesca’s students had left for the day. If they hadn’t, Francesca would have to explain Lexi’s comment, and her underwear preferences would become common knowledge among the Littletree music students.

  “What happened?” Francesca was in the kitchen, apparently alone with the cheesecake.

  Francesca was not to be trusted with cheesecake.

  “I have a date for Christmas dinner!”

  She heard a scream. “With one of the calendar cuties? No way!”

  Lexi quickly hung up Francesca’s coat and arrived in the kitchen in time to catch her roommate shoving a plastic container back into the refrigerator.

  “Aw, Frankie, you’ve been eating the cheesecake. You know we hardly ever get cheesecake leftovers.”

  Francesca swallowed. “And we wouldn’t have this time, but the flaming brandied mincemeat cheesecake wasn’t a popular flavor. I don’t know why not. It’s great after you scrape off the mincemeat.”

  “Will I get a chance to taste it for myself?”

  “If you’re fast.” Licking the fork, Francesca tossed it into the sink. “Now what happened? Did you have trouble finding the men? Are they gorgeous? Who’s your date with? Tell me everything.”

  Lexi grinned. “I showed my faculty ID to the guard and he waved me through. Then I went into the building, looked them up in the directory—they all work together—and just walked into the lab.”

  “Just like that?”

  Lexi nodded.

  “No—no hordes of women clawing at their clothes?”

  Laughing, Lexi shook her head. “They should be glad I’m not a terrorist.”

  Francesca could hardly contain herself. “I may pay a visit to the lab, myself. So...who is it?”

  Lexi hesitated, then blurted out, “Mr. December!”

  There was silence as Francesca stared at her in stunned disbelief.

  Lexi knew just how she felt.

  “Not Mr. December.”

  “Mr. December.”

  “My Mr. December?”

  “Well, Francesca...”

  “I need more cheesecake.” She jerked open the refrigerator door. “Did you ask him if he got my picture?”

  Lexi thought of the naked leg. “No, I didn’t ask.”

  Carrying the cheesecake, Francesca walked past her. She parked herself next to the silverware drawer and got out a fork. “Let me get this straight.... You just walked into the lab and asked this guy to come to Christmas dinner. And he agreed?”

  It would be hugely gratifying to pretend that she’d instantly captivated the most gorgeous man in Rocky Falls, if not the entire state of Texas, but she had to live with Francesca—and she wanted some of that cheesecake. “He agreed because he wants to meet my father.”

  Frankie paused, the fork halfway to her mouth. “He told you that?”

  Lexi remembered seeing the signs reflected behind her. “He didn’t have to. It was obvious.”

  “That stinks.” Francesca offered her a fork.

  “But I can work with it.” Lexi took the fork and managed three bites of okay-tasting cheesecake. She surrendered the rest to her roommate. “I mean, Francesca, this guy is incredible.”

  “Well, I knew that.”

  “So does he. But I didn’t mind, because if he didn’t know it, then he’d be stupid and not worth the trouble.” She looked off into space. “He’s got this shallow dimple on one side....” Lexi pressed her own cheek. “It only shows when he gets this look in his eyes and smiles a certain way.”

  “All right, don’t rub it in,” Francesca grumbled. “Oh, I forgot. Gwen called and wants to know if we can fill in for her at the Wainright tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Lexi didn’t want to go out tonight. She wanted to stay in and memorize Spencer Price’s write-up in Texas Men. “Did she get a better-paying gig?”

  “Yeah. She’s been booked for Britten’s ’A Ceremony of Carols’ and the choir rehearsal is tonight.”

  Lexi wasn’t surprised. “Harpists can really pull in major cash this time of year.”

  Francesca finished the last of the cheesecake. “If we take her place tonight we can, too. Plus, think of the leftovers. And by the way, you can have the prime rib. I like mine rare, and microwaving overcooks it.”

  Leftovers from the Wainright Inn’s kitchen heavily supplemented Lexi and Francesca’s food budget. However... “My parents will be there tonight. There’s some fund-raiser in the wine cellar.”

  Lawrence and Catherine Jordan had made no secret of the fact that they felt Lexi was wasting her talent by playing dinner music at the Wainright Inn, even though it boasted a highly acclaimed regional theater and had been named one of the Southwest’s top ten undiscovered treasures. Lexi liked to think that meant she was a treasure, too.

  But Emily would never stoop to providing dinner music, they said.

  Well, bully for Emily. When the Met called Lexi, she’d quit playing dinner music.

  “Lexi, please?” Francesca had on her I’ve-found-new-underwear-I-want-to-buy look.

  “Oh, all right. But let’s leave our publicity poster in the storeroom.” There was a chance Lexi’s parents wouldn’t notice she was there unless they deliberately walked through the main dining room.

  “Sure.” Francesca eyed her. “You know, I ran across some Egyptian cotton underwear with lace cutwork panels. I didn’t order it, but now I’m thinking of giving cotton a try, since you’ve had such good luck with it.”

  Lexi laughed. “Just for that, tonight I’ll wear black undies.”

  AN HOUR AFTER Lexi had left, Spencer knew as much about her as it was possible to know from computer data bases. And since the lab was networked into the Littletree main computer, he knew a lot.

  For instance, he knew her class rosters, what she taught, the grades she’d given the previous semester, her schedule, her address and phone number, her driver’s license and social security numbers. He’d read her résumé, and knew that the campus clinic had given her Benadryl for a cold in November.

  Littletree ought to restrict access to those files, Spencer thought, as he ran a search on her father. But as long as they hadn’t, he felt no compunction about learning as much as he could.

  He gave a low whistle. Murray had been right. Lawrence Jordan’s foundation had given away hundreds of thousands of dollars, mostly to museums, schools and performing groups, both in Rocky Falls, Austin and other arts communities in the area. No scientific grants, but that
didn’t mean Spencer’s project couldn’t be the first. Money was money.

  He smiled. If there was one thing he knew how to do, it was go after money. “Hey, Murray,” he called from his office. “Thanks for the heads-up about Lexi’s father.”

  “No prob.” Murray and the others had gone back to work. Rip had disappeared into his cave.

  Spencer was torn. On one hand, he wanted his staff to work, but on the other, he wanted more than one glowing letter winging its way to Texas Men, for their morale, if nothing else.

  And his letter wasn’t a certainty. Lexi Jordan had run out of the lab before Spencer could close the deal the way he liked. Matters were unfinished between them. Yes, she said she’d call him. No, he didn’t like fitting himself to her timetable. He wanted to verify that she’d called Texas Men and recopied the letter.

  Staring at the printout of information he’d gleaned, he found her phone number and called her house.

  The voice on the answering machine wasn’t hers. He called again, got the same voice and hung up. Spencer Price didn’t do messages.

  Where was she? It was around dinnertime, so she could have gone out...except she played at the Wainright Inn several nights a week.

  Spencer called the Wainright Inn. “Who’s your musical entertainment tonight?” he asked the woman who answered the phone.

  “Tonight, Francesca Fontaine and Alexandra Jordan will be performing. Cello and piano.”

  Okay, her turf it was. Spencer made a reservation.

  He walked out of his office to find five pairs of eyes watching him. “I’m going to go hear her play,” he explained. “What’s the big deal?”

  A chorus of “Nothing” answered him. They all went back to what they’d been doing. Spencer hoped they were paying attention. He was taking immediate steps to pursue Lexi Jordan. He wasn’t waiting around; he was seizing the moment.

  The moment just happened to be at the Wainright Inn.

  “Gordon, will you lock up tonight?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “In that case, gentlemen, I’m off to put on my money suit.”

  “LET’S NOT PLAY Cats tonight,” Lexi said. She and Francesca had taken their places and she was sounding a series of “A’s” on the piano while Francesca tuned her cello.