Father Christmas

by Judith Arnold

  “You think Burt might be grouchy because he’s bothered by Ernie’s silliness? And maybe Ernie’s silly because he wants to make Burt loosen up.”

  Burt and Ernie could use a visit to the foam pit, John thought.

  When they were done eating, John told Molly to leave the dishes, but she said she wouldn’t mind putting them in the dishwasher as long as she had company. Mike volunteered to keep her company, and no way was John going to leave her alone in his kitchen to do the chores he ought to be doing.

  He felt a twinge of guilt when she demanded that he sit. “If you want to watch, fine,” she said. “But stay away from the sink. You shouldn’t get your bandage wet.”

  “I can do things left-handed,” he argued. “I can put a plastic bag around my right hand. How do you think I’ve been showering?”

  “I’m glad to hear you have been showering,” she teased, and then her cheeks blossomed pink again, as if talking about John’s showering caused her to think about his body. He realized it wouldn’t be wise to pursue that particular subject, especially with Mike in the room. So he sat and watched while she instructed Mike in the proper way to stack the plates in the dishwasher rack, the safe way to handle silverware, the importance of scraping food off the plates before he handed them to her.

  John had never let Mike help him with the dishes before—not even his own unbreakable-plastic plates and cups. The kid was only two and a half years old. Could he really be mature enough for this?

  Evidently he was. “I do it,” he announced each time Molly gave him a new instruction. She asked him to bring the salad bowl over to the sink, and he said, “I do it,” cradled the bowl in his arms and carried it across the room to her.

  She had pushed the sleeves of her shirt up to her elbows to keep the cuffs from getting wet. John observed the slender lines of her forearms, her delicate wrists, her small, star-shaped hands glistening with water as she rinsed each plate. He wanted to dry her hands, to straighten out her disheveled hair, to cup her face in his hands and pull her mouth to his. He wanted to thank her for teaching his son how to clear a table, and he wanted to get naked with her. He wanted to drag her into the shower with him, even if it meant getting his damned bandage wet.

  She shook the moisture from her fingers, reached for a paper towel, and sent him a shimmering smile. His temperature shot up ten degrees. He wanted to kiss her smile, feel it against his cheek, turn that smile into a gasp of pleasure when he touched her.

  Right. As if a man who’d lost his better hand to an acre of gauze bandaging could touch a woman with any sort of skill. As if a man whose arm was held together with surgical thread could hold a woman as tightly as he wanted to hold Molly. As if a man with a row of bruised ribs could make love with any sort of finesse.

  As if he should be thinking about Molly in the context of making love.

  “It’s really getting late,” she said, eyeing the wall clock and wincing. “If you don’t feel up to driving me home, John, I can call a cab.”

  “Don’t call a cab,” he said, aware of a desperate edge in his voice.

  Mike began to skip in a circle around the table, chanting, “I do it! I do the dishwasher! I do it!”

  Molly glanced at him, and then lifted her gaze back to John. His left hand fisted with tension; he rested it against a chair and tried to will it to relax. He didn’t want her to leave. Whether or not it was right, whether or not he had any rights when it came to her...

  If she left, he would go crazy.

  “Do you think you’ll need help getting him ready for bed?” she asked, gesturing toward Mike.

  “No.” Damn. He could have kept her at the house for as long as it took to get Mike through his nightly routine if he’d pretended he couldn’t handle it alone. But he didn’t want to lie to Molly. And he didn’t want her to stay for Mike’s sake. He wanted her to stay for him.

  Her gaze locked with his, direct and brave, even as her mouth wavered between a smile and a frown. “John?” she murmured hesitantly.

  “Don’t leave.”

  She searched his face. He hoped she saw the truth in his eyes. He hoped she knew what he really wanted to say, what he couldn’t bring himself to come right out and ask.

  Her mouth settled on an ambiguous smile, and she lowered her gaze to her hands, dabbing a stray bead of water from her wrist with the paper towel. “I guess I could stay a little while longer,” she conceded. “I don’t mind giving Mike a bath.”

  She was staying for Mike, then. She was staying to help out the floundering father. And she was staying only a little while longer.

  She had understood exactly what John was asking of her, and she’d given him her answer. He couldn’t blame her. She’d made the smart, sensible choice. He ought to count his blessings that she didn’t demand, right then and there, that he call her a cab.

  He didn’t want to count his blessings. Given the way he felt, he doubled he would be able to count much past zero.

  He opened his mouth to offer her a lift home. No sense delaying the inevitable. If he drove her home now, while Mike was still awake, the kid could come along for the ride. Molly would love that. Mike was the only reason she’d sacrificed this day for John.

  But before he could speak, Mike had grabbed her hand and was dragging her down the hall toward the bathroom. “Molly gives me a bath,” he declared. “Make the fish, okay? Molly, you make the fish and I don’t splash.”

  “Okay, Michael,” she agreed, following him out of the kitchen. “I’ll make the fish.”

  John had no idea what the hell they were talking about. All he knew was that he was left in the kitchen, alone.

  And he wanted Molly even more. He wanted her because she was kind, and she was generous, and she was beautiful, and on a Saturday night when she could be doing a million other things, she was going to make the fish for his son.

  Chapter Twelve

  MICHAEL WAS ASLEEP.

  After his bath, he swore he wasn’t the least bit sleepy. He jogged several laps up and down the hall, screeching and giggling, until John snagged him and hauled him off to his room with the promise that they would read a book together only if Michael got into bed.

  Smart move. Two pages into Curious George, Michael was out cold.

  Molly watched from the doorway as John turned off the bedside lamp, kissed his son’s forehead, and picked his way across the toy-strewn floor to her side. Without speaking, they tiptoed down the hallway. His face remained hidden in shadow, his gaze straight ahead as they arrived at the entry to the living room.

  What now? she wondered. She’d done everything she could do to help John with his son and his errands today. Surely he must have run out of favors to ask of her.

  Not that she felt as if he had taken advantage of her. Everything she’d done for him she’d done willingly, and she’d enjoyed it. In all honestly, she didn’t think John had needed her for anything other than her expertise in choosing appropriate Christmas gifts for his son. He could have done everything else himself.

  The irony, she realized, was that she’d been the one who couldn’t have accomplished any of the afternoon’s pleasures without him. Without John, she couldn’t have decorated a tree. She couldn’t have shopped for tinsel and lights, and spent hours draping them across the boughs of a fresh, fragrant pine. She couldn’t have twisted pipe-cleaners into colorful Christmas shapes and perched them on the branches.

  Standing now at the entry to the living room, she admired the tree, which occupied the corner between the window and the fireplace, its small white lights twinkling like stars and causing the garlands of tinsel to sparkle. Once she went home she wouldn’t have this. She wouldn’t have a tree, or someone who loved her enough to leave presents beneath it the way John would leave presents for Michael. She wouldn’t have a family to celebrate with her.

  She’d stayed with the Russos all afternoon and evening because she’d needed this—the family, the tree, the joy of sharing the holiday with someone. But John and
Michael weren’t about to include her in their family. She shouldn’t even want such a thing. She ought to leave before the wanting started to hurt.

  “I’d better go,” she muttered, risking a glance at John.

  The tree’s silvery lights danced along the lines and angles of his face, catching on the corner of his lip when he turned to her. His eyes were achingly dark as they searched her face. His gaze probed, questioned, pleaded—but she wasn’t sure what he was asking, what he was pleading for.

  “Will you call me a cab?” she asked.

  “No.”

  He couldn’t drive her home himself, not without first hiring a baby-sitter to stay with Michael. And finding an available baby-sitter on such short notice on a Saturday night would be impossible. A cab was the only sensible solution. “John, I think—”

  “Don’t go.” He lifted his good hand to her cheek, his fingers digging into her hair. Sliding his hand around to the nape of her neck, he pulled her toward him and touched his lips to her brow. “Stay, Molly,” he whispered. “For me.”

  For me. Not for Michael. Not for running errands, not for lending her assistance to a shopping expedition or helping out with the evening routines. For John. Just for John.

  The heat of his kiss seeped slowly down through her, caressing her mind, halting her breath, making her breasts tingle and her heart surge and her belly grow tight. She understood now what his gaze had been asking her. He wanted her to stay for the night, for sex.

  But if she stayed, it would be for something more, something he hadn’t offered: that sense of belonging, finding her place in John’s world, in a house with a Christmas tree, a home and a family that stood firm in the face of abandonment and loss.

  That wasn’t any part of his kiss. Molly shouldn’t want it. She had a fine family of her own, and perhaps someday she would have a husband and children and a nice, cozy house. Ideally, she would have a husband whose line of work was safe and didn’t launch her sister into paroxysms of rage. With luck, Molly would find a man who didn’t carry the baggage of a failed marriage and an emotionally fragile son.

  But she didn’t want to think so far into the future. She wanted to think only about tonight, this minute, with John.

  “Yes,” she murmured, tilting her face up to him as he leaned down to her. His mouth found hers, and her kiss answered yes as well.

  He kissed her gently. Deeply. Slowly. Thoroughly. His arms enveloped her, warming her, making her want to arch against him. She no longer could think of the holiday atmosphere she’d helped to create in his home, or the special closeness between him and his son. All that mattered was John, a man so reserved in most things, but not now. When he kissed her he held nothing back.

  His tongue swept her mouth, slid along her teeth, teased her lips. His fingers twined through her hair, massaged the nape of her neck, dipped beneath the collar of her shirt while his other hand, constricted by gauze and tape, came to rest at the small of her back, urging her against him. The heat he’d ignited with his first kiss grew brighter and fiercer, exerting a pressure so unbearably sweet she wanted to sigh and weep and beg for more. More kisses. More heat. More.

  “Come,” he said.

  Stunned that he could command her response—and even more stunned that she could be so close to meeting that demand—she pulled back and blinked up at him. He slid his hand down her arm to weave his fingers through hers, and motioned with his head toward the hallway.

  Oh. He meant he wanted her to come down the hall with him. Abashed by her X-rated interpretation of his statement, she accompanied him to the door across from Michael’s bedroom. He opened it, led her inside, and closed it firmly behind him.

  She considered briefly the room across the hall, and the child asleep inside it. Did John expect her to spend the whole night with him? If so, what would Michael think if he found her there in the morning?

  Probably not much, she decided. At two and a half years old, he wouldn’t understand what a woman might do with his father overnight. He would simply think Molly didn’t feel like going home—which was true. After the way John had just kissed her, the last thing she wanted was to go home.

  Once she had assured herself that Michael wouldn’t have a problem with her staying, she surveyed her surroundings. John’s room was relatively neat, the closet shut, the bed made, the dresser devoid of clutter until John emptied the pockets of his jeans, removing his wallet, his keys and a handful of coins and tossing them onto the polished maple surface.

  Watching a man empty his pockets like that seemed so domestic. So personal. So...intimate.

  Turning from the dresser, he removed his sweater, easing the right sleeve past his bandages and withdrawing his arm, then whipping the sweater over his head and off his left arm. Molly’s gaze lingered for a moment on wide strip of gauze wrapped around his forearm It stirred memories of the night she’d brought Michael to the emergency room in search of John, the gut-wrenching fear she’d suffered at the thought of him hurt. But just as that fear had mingled with an awareness of the man apart from his wounds then, so she felt that awareness now, much more keenly. Beneath his T-shirt, she discerned the contours of his torso. Her gaze journeyed from his broad shoulders down his lean, sleek chest to the waistband of his jeans. Below the buckle of his belt, the denim was slightly faded along his fly.

  Once again she felt embarrassed. She wasn’t in the habit of staring men’s flies, any more than she was in the habit of imagining orgasms at the mere mention of the word “come.” She might have agreed to spend the night with John for more than one reason, but right now the most important reason seemed to be that John Russo turned her on in a crazy way.

  He took a step toward her, his left arm outstretched, and she approached him. Compared to his virile, beautifully proportioned height she felt short and dumpy. She had always wanted to be tall like her best friend Allison—and never more than now, facing such a tall man.

  But then his hand closed around hers, pulling her into his arms for another ravenous kiss, and she forgot about her physical imperfections. John obviously didn’t think she was too short. His kiss indicated that he approved of her appearance quite heartily.

  He loosened his hold on her and fingered the top button of her shirt. Fumbling with his left hand, he lifted his right to the button. But his thumb and index finger couldn’t meet over the thick bandage.

  She covered her hands with his and drew them away. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  He inched back from her, saying nothing, only gazing at her. His eyes glowed.

  She felt a blush rise to her cheeks, and for a moment she fumbled with the top button as badly as he had. But then it came undone, and when she glanced up at him his smile shook her to her soul. It was both amused and aroused, daring her to continue.

  She pushed aside her nervousness. Let him dare her; she’d never been one to back away from a challenge. Taking a deep breath, she unfastened the next button and the next, and the next, until she reached the belt of her jeans. She unbuckled it and heard him sigh. Peering up again, she found his smile gone and his eyes dark with hunger.

  She was not a particularly bold woman, and her experience with men couldn’t fill more than a few pages of a dime-store diary. But John made her feel reckless. She wasn’t sure why—he was a cop, for heaven’s sake, and a responsible father, two of the most un-reckless things a man could be. But the way he looked at her, the way he’d kissed her, the way he was standing before her, his hair rumpled and his head cocked slightly, and his thumbs hooked on the pockets of his jeans...

  Well, damn it, if he was going to dare her, she would be daring. “I guess I’ll have to undress you, too,” she said, her voice quivering only a little bit.

  He sighed again, although there was a hint of a groan in the sound. “I guess you’ll have to,” he agreed, still watching her, his chest moving in slow, deep breaths as she closed the distance between them.

  She gathered the fabric of his T-shirt in her hands and tugged it free
of his jeans. Her knees felt shaky, but she kept going, lifting the shirt up, baring his stomach, his rib cage, the smooth, golden-hued skin of his chest, the subtle curves of his muscles. He obediently lifted his hands over his head, but she couldn’t reach high enough to pull the shirt over his head. He bent his knees, enabling her to yank off the shirt. As soon as his hands were through the sleeves, he lowered them to her waist, shoving back the unbuttoned edges of her blouse, and pressing his lips to the skin below her collarbone.

  She felt faint, as if all the blood rushed from her head downward to where his mouth touched her. Her hips grew heavy, her body trembled, and she choked back a gasp as he traced a line downward with his tongue, refusing to stop when he reached the edge of her bra. He kissed her through the lace, gliding over the curve of one breast until he could close his mouth over the swollen nipple. In her heart she heard the echo of his husky voice, speaking the one word he’d uttered in the living room: Come.

  They were both still half-dressed. And he was a Daddy School student with only one fully functioning hand. How could he have aroused her so intensely, so quickly?

  “John...” His name emerged on a broken sigh.

  He straightened up, capturing her gaze with his. “Take it off,” he whispered.

  Oh, God. She really wasn’t that daring, was she? She really wasn’t prepared to continue stripping for him.

  Except that she wanted him. Her passion was greater than her panic.

  Biting her lip, she slid her shirt from her shoulders, then reached behind her and unhooked her bra. It slid down her arms and joined her shirt on the floor. Anxious, she glanced at him.