The Grump Who Stole Christmas: Kringle Family Christmas Book One
Page 15
And she’d done something with her tongue?
The alarm on my phone split the quiet and nearly split my skull.
Crap. My flight!
Carefully, so my brain didn’t run out of my ears and I didn’t throw up, I got out of the bed. I wasn’t in my hotel room at the Bellagio. It must be her apartment. She had one of those tables in her bedroom like women used to have in old movies. A place with a mirror and lights and trays full of creams and lotions and makeup. There was a dressing screen in the corner of the room with silky robes of all kinds and colors tossed over it. Under my feet there was a pink rug.
It was feminine and decadent and as far away from my life as I’d ever been.
I pulled on my clothes. My pants were damp from the knee down. What the hell?
And my tie had been cut in half. It was my best tie. Tom Ford in French silk, a small pattern of arrows printed on it. I loved that tie. Why would I cut it? I shoved it in my pocket.
My fist brushed against the sharp edge of a paper-type thing.
I pulled out a strip of four photos from a photo booth.
It was us, mystery girl and me. She wore a silver dress and her long blond hair up in a smooth sleek twist. In the first picture we were smiling. Real smiles. Not that I wasn’t a smiler; I walked around with my face sore from smiling all the damn time. But it was not what my mother called a Duchenne smile. She’d been big on those. Smiles that reached the eyes.
You smile all the time but none of them are real smiles, she used to say.
Whatever, stop thinking about Mom.
In the second picture we were kissing. Third really kissing and the fourth…well, that was indecent. But hot. I put the pictures back in my pocket and called an Uber. It took a second for the app to find my location.
I’m in Henderson? I didn’t even know where Henderson was.
Interesting. I needed to go get my stuff from the hotel and get to the airport for my 6 a.m. flight back to Denver. And time was getting tighter. I crept over to her side of the bed.
Dixie? That seemed better than Pixie but still wasn’t right.
She had a sleep mask over her eyes that had big eyelashes embroidered on it. God, she was…silly. And that wasn’t a word I even liked using. But it fit her so well and not in a bad way. She was effervescent. I remembered that. Even without remembering her name. The kind of woman you couldn’t look away from.
I didn’t want to wake her because she had to be feeling rough, too, and I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t remember her name. And…I looked down at my phone. My Uber was almost here and I didn’t have time for a big goodbye scene.
I could cancel my flight. Take off these wet pants and crawl back into bed with her, wake her up slowly, and relive the night I’d forgotten.
I had my belt undone before my better sense kicked in.
My town was in trouble and I’d secured the solution to the problems. I needed to go home and get to work. But still I didn’t do my belt back up.
She doesn’t want her one-night stand lingering around. We’d had fun. It was over. And I had a flight to catch.
I did my belt up but I didn’t feel good about it.
Asshole, I heard my sister’s voice in my head. And as usual she wasn’t wrong.
I pulled the cream duvet up higher on her shoulder and pushed a blond curl off her forehead. God, she was beautiful. Something in the chest pocket of my shirt poked me and I fished out a red plastic ring. The kind that was left after you ate the candy diamond on top of it.
No memory of candy remained in the desert of my hungover brain. I tucked that back in my pocket too.
On the makeup table I found a pen and a pad of paper—pink, of course. I pulled off a piece of paper and wrote her a note.
Hey, I’m doing the extremely rude and ungentlemanly thing and sneaking out without waking you up but I have an early morning flight home and you’re sleeping so peacefully. I had a great time with you—thank you for showing me your side of Vegas. If you’re ever in my neck of the wood—call me. I’d love to return the favor.
I tried to imagine her in my life. In Salt Springs with its work boots and thick winter sweaters. Its soft suburban comforts and down-home sensibility. Salt Springs was the Hallmark Channel and this girl was HBO.
Call me, I wrote at the bottom of the note and scrawled my number.
I wonder if she’ll remember my name?
I opened the door to the bedroom and walked down a hallway to a living room with blue velvet couches and a glass-and-gold coffee table. There was a fake silver Christmas tree hung with red and green ornaments. Sitting in front of the sliding glass door that lead out to a balcony with views of the desert was a gigantic turquoise dog bed. A dog bed for a Great Dane or two.
From deep in its cushion popped a fluffy white head and a bright pink ribbon. And teeth. Lots of teeth. My arm tingled in recognition.
The little dog growled at me, the pink ribbon trembling.
“Hey,” I said to the dog in a voice that worked on small children and obstructive city council members. “No reason to get upset. We can work this out.”
The dog did not think so. It got up on tiny legs and produced a growl much bigger than its body.
“All right,” I said. I set the paper down on the coffee table, the dog eyeing my every movement. “Don’t get excited. I’m leaving.”
I stepped out the door just as my car pulled up to the curb outside. We were in the middle of a neighborhood filled with stucco bungalows. And I looked back over my shoulder at the house and thought about the woman inside.
I was not a one-night-stand kind of guy. I’d dated my high school sweetheart into college and my college sweetheart into law school. And I wished I could remember more about last night because I had the feeling it might have been the best night of my life.
The driver honked once and I turned away from the house and headed for the Uber and my real life.
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Also by S. Doyle
The Bride Series
My Secret Boyfriend Series
The Boss Series
Kane Company Christmas Series
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