by Sandra Hill
“Is this a new routine for the Santa Brigade program?” Jane wanted to know.
“You could say that.”
Just then, a new song burst out over the PA system. That old Righteous Brothers song, “She’s Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” which became immortalized in the bar scene from Top Gun. And Reba knew just what “treatment” this newest and unexpected segment of the entertainment program was going to take.
Sam leaned in close to her and crooned, along with the sound track, something about her never closing her eyes anymore when he kissed her lips.
And JD sang out to Callie in his off-key baritone complaining that she tried hard to hide it, but baaabbbyy, baby, he knew it.
Stan completed the set of stanzas by singing to Dana that she’d lost that lovin’ feelin’, and now it was gone, gone, gone.
They all joined in with a loud, “Whoo ooh ooh! Whoo ooh ooh!”
The guys danced around them. They shimmied. They strutted. They shook their fat Santa behinds. They sang their little hearts out.
Everyone in the crowd was laughing and clapping, especially when Sam got down on one knee at the end, put both hands over his heart, and avowed, musically that baby, baby, he’d get down on his knees for her.
It was a wonderful grand finale to what seemed like the best Christmas show the Santa Brigade had ever put on.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KEVIN
Wednesday Afternoon, Two Days ’til Christmas Eve
Colonel Morgan shook himself like a dog as he climbed the bus steps. “The store’s closed due to weather,” he announced in a commanding military voice that brooked no argument.
Of course, he got plenty of argument.
Straight from Callie, Kevin noted. The woman would fight a dog over a bone. She was a pain in the ass that way. A cute pain, but a pain nonetheless.
“Let’s break in,” she offered. “We’ll leave money. Who’d convict us?”
Kevin was quickly learning that the woman with the bed-me wild hair owned a larcenous little heart. First she jumped on a subpoena, then she’d pick-pocketed him, now she wanted to break and enter.
Funny enough, she got a rousing answer to that. All of these philanthropist Santas considered this a good idea.
Kevin made his way to the front of the bus and turned to the crew. “This isn’t a smart idea. Really. We need a better plan.”
“We need to make those kids happy,” Meg and Maggie said simultaneously.
“We’ll pay them back,” Mrs. Smith—who’d faint if she ever got a parking ticket—agreed.
“Let’s storm the store!” Morey cried, pounding his fist on the seat in front of him. “We’ll get toys and more!”
It became a battle cry. “Let’s storm the store! We’ll get toys and more! Let’s storm the store! We’ll get toys and more!”
Kevin stalked to the back of the bus, and confronted his supposed friends, who were standing oh-so-casually and smirking too much for his liking.
“Are we going to stop these fanatics from breaking the law, or what?” he asked, crossing his arms.
Stan lifted his hands helplessly. “I learned a long time ago not to mess with the Snowdon seniors.”
Sam nodded toward the front. “Don’t look now, but your little hellion is raiding your backpack.”
Kevin whirled in time to catch Callie lifting out handcuffs with a snort, and tossing them down. She then continued digging in his pack.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Get out of there!”
“The man fancies himself some kind of James Bond,” Callie informed the group. “He’s gotta have some lock picks in here somewhere.”
Kevin stormed up the aisle. “Give me that.”
Callie ignored him. “How many pairs of handcuffs does one private investigator need?” she asked, her tone dripping with disgust.
“He’s got more than one pair in there?” Slick asked, coming up behind him.
“I have to take in more than one perp, occasionally,” Kevin tried to explain to the suddenly interested crowd. “Give me my backpack, woman.”
“Oh, and look here!” Callie said, pulling out a box of condoms. A chorus of “ooohs” reverberated throughout the bus.
“Give me those,” Kevin demanded, trying to grab for the box. Callie evaded him. “What, hotshot, planning on scoring big in Maine?”
“It’s a gag gift for George’s bachelor party,” Kevin said, indignant.
“And look,” Callie said. “Glow in the dark! That should be fun.”
“Oh,” Morey said. “Can I borrow a couple of those?”
“To use on what, Morey?” Mrs. Smith asked. “Your breakfast banana?”
“I’ll have you know—”
“Stop!” Kevin said, finally managing to wrestle the condoms and his backpack away from the woman who he was going to turn over to the police at his next possible opportunity. To hell with the lust he was beginning to feel just looking at her. She was trouble, and she deserved to be locked up.
In fur-lined cuffs. And chain-encrusted teddies. Were there such things? He didn’t know, but if there were, he’d love to have her wearing them so he could tie her up and—
He stuffed the condoms back into his pack. “We are not going to break into anything.”
“What?” the little felon wannabe snapped at him. “You have a better idea?”
He shook his head to banish the images shimmying from one side of his brain to the other. “Oh, I don’t know. How about, say, something legal?” he suggested.
“That doesn’t sound very exciting,” Morey commented.
“Legal’s not going to get us supplies,” Callie retorted.
“Leave everything to me,” Betty boomed from the driver’s seat.
“I’ve got a favor or two I can call in.”
Kevin could swear the majority of the senior Santas looked utterly disappointed.
Everyone watched as Betty punched a number into her cell phone. An almost eerie silence filled the bus. Between the constant chatter among the busy elves and the barked orders from the Colonel and Betty’s whoops of joy as she defied driving logic and the ever-present, concocted-to-drive-any-person-insane Christmas music, noise was a given on this bus.
The sudden silence, along with the blinding snow, gave Kevin a strange sense of being stuck in a cocoon. In a cocoon with over a dozen crazy people.
“Farley! How’s it hanging, sweet stuff?” Betty practically whispered into the stillness.
Betty? Whispering?
“Yep, it’s me.” She paused for a second, then laughed, a low throaty sound that spelled “intimate past.” Stan, Slick and JD exchanged glances. The image of Betty Bad-ass in any kind of intimate situation was close to incomprehensible. In fact, downright spooky.
“She’s done more than the Texas two-step with that one,” Maudeen decided.
“We’ll talk about that later,” Betty said into the phone.
“I bet they will,” Morey opined. “I could use a little talking like that myself.” He glanced at Maudeen who didn’t even bother to take her eyes off her computer.
“I need your help, sugar,” Betty continued. “Who’s the manager of the Big-Mart these days?”
Kevin was having trouble concentrating on the events going on around him, seeing as Callie took that moment to shake her come-and-get-me hair right in damn front of him.
Okay, so she wasn’t doing it on purpose just to lay a hard-on that wouldn’t quit between his thighs, but she was having that effect on him regardless. And it made him kind of mad because she was supposed to be his prisoner and a really rotten one at that, and instead he was starting to like her. Not to mention lust her. Even if she was willing at a moment’s notice to break the law.
He growled in self-disgust. This was crazy, all of it. Here he was stuck with a bunch of people he’d never wanted to see again in his life, and he was enjoying himself. He was watching his childhood delinquent pals, who’d somehow—against all odds—grown into successful me
n. Men only too happy to be reaching out to kids in the touchy-feeliest types of ways.
And worse yet, Kevin felt himself falling for a woman whose only goal in life was to clothe rich people.
And to clothe Barbies for poor kids. And to make dolls for kids who didn’t ask for much. And to embrace those kids and give them hope and laughter.
She was also a fugitive of sorts who’d robbed him, Kevin decided to remind himself. It helped in the scheme of things to control his raging lust. Well, actually it didn’t help a whole hell of a lot.
Even sporting the Maudeen fashion blasphemy, the woman was hot. And beautiful. And in need of all the Christmas spirit a man could dish out.
Too bad she was as receptive as the Grinch.
Ten minutes after Betty hung up the phone, the cavalry arrived in the form of a truck with a snow plow, followed by a Sheriff’s car. Callie swallowed hard, even as she continued to pass out lists of supplies she wanted each of the Santas to gather.
Would Kevin turn her in? She didn’t know, and was horrified to realize that her heart would be broken if he did. And not just because it would ruin her plans. It would also ruin any barely acknowledged hopes she’d been harboring that he was beginning to feel something for her besides exasperation.
Which was stupid. But back at the shelter she’d watched as he taught spell-bound children various card and magic tricks and she’d been fascinated by his hands, by his shaggy hair, by his patience and his smile. Hell, she’d even been mesmerized by his laughter. She’d never been mesmerized by a person’s laughter before.
And something weird had squeezed her insides as she’d surreptitiously followed his every movement, and she’d realized that as much of a pain as he was, she really, really liked him.
Incredibly stupid, considering she’d done nothing but give him a really hard time about almost everything. So he had not a single reason whatsoever to even tolerate her, much less learn to like her as well.
Which meant the moment he realized the heat had arrived, he’d gladly dump her on them.
And, unfortunately, the heat had landed right on their bus step. Callie swallowed back a small sob. Not only would her father’s Christmas be ruined, some of the kids on their next stops probably would be disappointed, too. Not that Dana and the rest of the gang weren’t doing a fabulous job of helping out—in fact Dana was about the most talented woman with a needle and thread Callie had ever met—but they needed so many toys and they needed them fast.
“What’s wrong, Ms. Brandt?” Mrs. Smith asked, as she took the shopping list with her name on it from Callie’s suddenly boneless fingers.
All Callie could manage was a shake of her head, while she blinked back tears. In the short time she’d come to be with these folks, she’d really grown to adore them, their eccentricities, and most especially their hearts. Hell, they’d been willing to break and enter with her, just to ensure that they didn’t leave a single child toy-less at this time of year.
She chanced a glance out the window, and through the thick snow watched as the cop car’s lights bounced all around it, coloring the snow, the store, and the people.
People. One of them was Kevin. He was probably, right this moment, discussing the logistics of handing her butt over to them, to be hauled back to New York and to hell.
Her lips and cheeks seemed to go numb, along with her brain. She didn’t know how she managed to keep working, to keep handing out assignments, to keep smiling as if she didn’t have a care in the world.
Would the cops let her hug these people one last time before they hauled her away in disgrace? Would they give her time to beg Reba and Dana to keep in touch, to write to her occasionally?
Although she’d only known the two women such a short time, she felt a bond with them as if they’d been friends all their lives. Reba, so compassionate and dedicated, Dana, so unaware of her beauty, inside and out.
It hurt like hell to think that she was about to tarnish the hard work and dedication this bus and its mission represented. These people, who’d accepted her unquestioningly, didn’t deserve to have their higher cause blemished by the tawdry arrest of a woman in their midst. When she got finished doing hard time, she vowed silently, she’d make it up to all of them.
“Put this on.”
Callie whirled to find Kevin, looking grim, shoving Morey’s monstrosity of a fur cap at her. “What?”
“I said,” he repeated slowly, as if to a dimwit, “put the hat on. And tuck that hair under it already.”
“I don’t think—”
“That’s true, you usually don’t,” he said, pretty rudely. “But if we’re getting you into that store without the sheriff recognizing you, you need to hide that hair.” He paused and his eyes raked over her face. “Why are you looking like someone just kicked your dog?”
“I thought—” She choked over the sob that had been threatening for minutes now. She felt moisture on her eyelashes.
Kevin looked at her in horror. “Don’t you start crying. I mean it. Don’t even think about it.”
Callie blinked, trying to cooperate. “You’re not . . . turning me in?”
His face took on the aura of a thundercloud. “Hell, no! What do you—”
Callie couldn’t help it. She threw herself at him, her arms around his neck in a death grip. “Oh, thank you! Thank you, thank you! I know you’re a big jerk and everything and that it’s your job and you have this really stupid sense of justice and that it probably kills you not to get your fee for finding me and everything and that I’ve been pretty much of a thorn, but this is the best Christmas gift you could give me!”
“You had me at the thank you’ part, but you kind of lost me after the big jerk’ bit.”
Callie let him go, even if she’d really enjoyed feeling his chest against her body. “Well, you have to admit, your head’s about as hard as—”
“Shut up and put on the hat,” the entire brigade said in unison. Callie shut up and put on the hat.
“Was it my imagination, or did the sheriff look at me funny?” Callie asked, as Kevin dragged her into the store behind a bunch of the Santas.
Kevin, still reeling from the feel of Callie’s breasts pressed against him, tried to gather his scattered thoughts. One of which was how scared he’d been that the sheriff would recognize her and rip her away from him.
He could easily argue to himself that he might lose the commission if it were learned that he’d had her in his custody for a long time without dragging her into authorities himself, but he saw no reason to start lying to himself at this point. He’d been utterly terrified to let her out of his sight.
The woman was a pain, but somewhere along the line she’d become his pain, and he reserved the right to decide when and where his sense of duty and justice kicked in.
Somehow he had the feeling that his marbles had completely tumbled from the bag in the last two days, but he wasn’t in the mood to think about it now. She was here and she was safe and he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
“Well,” he told her, at least half truthfully, “he was most likely fascinated by your overall fashion statement. He probably hasn’t seen anyone wearing a lime green biker babe number and beaver hat together before.”
Callie grabbed his arm and spun him toward her in an impressive show of ferocity. “Clothes!”
“Excuse me?”
She released him and spun around, her arms wide in a Sound Of Music, “The Hills Are Alive” exuberance. “This is a store! It has clothes! Normal clothes!”
“The manager said he’d donate the supplies for the dolls, honey, not clothing for the not-so-needy.”
She kept her arms outspread. “Do I, or do I not, look needy?”
Kevin couldn’t argue that. At the moment she looked like a bright green Smurf with an animal on her head. He’d never seen anything sexier in his life, which just went to prove that his life was sorely lacking and his hormones had hit the skids in the taste department.
“
What I’m saying,” he replied, employing tact by not answering that question directly,” is that the donation the manager so kindly offered was for truly needy people. I don’t think badly-dressed fugitives are what he had in mind.”
Callie plopped her hands on her luscious hips. “What do you take me for? Whether your Neanderthal brain can figure this out or not, I’m a normally law-abiding citizen. I’m going to pay for the clothes.”
“With what? You’re broke.”
She pulled his wallet out of a pocket in her coat and leafed through it. “Nope, I have plenty of cash.”
“I think we should talk about this penchant of yours to scarf other people’s wallets,” Kevin spoke to the curtain between him and his prisoner.
“I have never stolen a wallet in my life,” Callie retorted, “before yours. And it was completely out of desperation.”
“You weren’t desperate today.”
There was a pause. “No, that’s true. I was just mad over those condoms.”
If he hadn’t been leaning against the wall, he’d have fallen over. “You were mad over the condoms?” This was a really hopeful sign. “Well, they were just so tacky,” she said after a bit.
“I told you they were a gag gift.”
“Yeah, right.” The curtain swung open for a nanosecond, just long enough for her to fling jeans at him, and not nearly long enough for him to enjoy the view of her in her skivvies. “Can you find those in a six, please?” she asked.
Jake stalked back out to the women’s clothing section. It offended his righteous male sensibilities that he was having to do clothes shopping. But he couldn’t leave Callie alone. She wasn’t trustworthy.
Well, maybe that wasn’t exactly right. He’d watched her on the bus and at the shelters and he’d been wildly impressed with her passion and compassion. He’d witnessed her smiling radiantly as the little girls who’d received her re-vamped Barbies jumped up and down with excitement. He’d seen her slip dollar bills into the hands of little kids who’d already seemed ravaged by life.
Then again, those had probably been his dollar bills.
