“What?” Mary Paige said biting her lip and scrunching each sock so she could jab them onto his almost-blue feet. “You mean the ghosts, like the ghosts of Christmas past?”
“They were all part of the Spirit of Christmas, right?” His voice was low, intense and raspy…and also quite refined. Odd for a street person. She slid the first sock on his right foot.
“Mmm-hmm.” She shifted her weight so she wouldn’t fall on her butt onto the slick concrete. She wasn’t the most graceful of gals.
“Well, you’re the Spirit of Christmas,” he said, jabbing a finger at her.
“Maybe so,” she said, hoping to pacify the old man, as she put the other sock on his deathly cold foot. She prayed she had hand sanitizer in her purse. No telling where the man’s feet had been even if he had trimmed his toenails.
“There. Nice and toasty. Let’s get you out of this weather.” She prepared to rise, but the man clasped her wrist. She pulled away but he held firm.
“I’m sorry I was rude to you earlier.”
“That’s okay. You’re enduring a hard time right now,” Mary Paige said, trying to wrench her arm from his grip, growing uncomfortable with his familiarity. “Living out on the streets makes a man defensive. I understand. If you will let go of me, I will see that the cab driver pulls around so we can find you a nearby shelter.”
The man ignored her. “What’s your name, my child?”
Mary Paige stared into his hypnotic blue eyes and responded without thinking. “Mary Paige.”
“Well, Mary Paige, can I offer you a gift in return for the one you have given me?”
She shook her head. Jeez. There was no telling what the bum would give her. Visions of grimy bottle caps or shiny pieces of glass danced in her head. What valuable object would soon be hers? “You owe me nothing. Now let’s get—”
Her words died as the man released her hand and fished around inside the pocket of his worn flannel shirt. Dear Lord, please don’t let it be his old socks. Or something dead.
She should get out of here. The old man could be nuts, rooting around for something more sinister than a piece of old junk. He could have a gun. Or a knife. Or…a piece of paper.
The man held a paper that had been folded several times and smiled at her, his teeth remarkably straight and white. A gold crown winked at her from the back of his mouth, sparkling as much as his blue eyes. “I needed to know your name, my child, so I know what to write on this.”
He unfolded the paper and extended it to her. She took it as if she were in a trance before finally glancing down.
It was a check.
She blinked.
It was a check for two million dollars.
Signed by Malcolm Henry, Jr.
The Malcolm Henry, Jr., of Henry Department Stores.
She blinked. “I don’t understand. Where did you get this?”
He grinned. “My child, you are the Spirit of Christmas.”
A flash of light blinded her, forcing her to squinch her eyes together. When she opened them, she found another man emerging from behind the Dumpster. The light was so blinding and her feet were now so numbed by the cold, she stumbled back, tilted and fell, landing hard on the icy pavement.
She tried to get up, but her legs failed to comply, so she sat there feeling water seep through the seat of her newest skirt, no doubt ruining the charcoal tweed and her favorite silk panties.
The elderly man stood and shrugged into a long cashmere coat the cameraman handed him while shoving feet still clad in the garish Christmas socks into a pair of lined hunting boots stored within one of the cardboard boxes. Then he extended one hand to her. She took it, bobbing her glance nervously toward the man filming the oddest thing that had ever happened to her—and she’d had plenty of oddness in her life…she’d once been bitten by a llama, for heaven’s sake. She still held the check, so she shoved it toward the older man, who didn’t look so much like a bum anymore. His coat probably cost a week’s salary. Maybe a month’s.
He waved the check away. “No, no. That’s all yours. I feared we wouldn’t find a kind soul at all. Been doing this for four straight days.”
She didn’t say anything. Merely stood there. Shocked.
“By the way, I’d like to introduce myself. I’m Malcolm Henry, and I must tell you I love these socks.”
ISBN: 9781460307205
Copyright © 2013 by Colleen Collins
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The Next Right Thing (Harlequin Superromance) Page 31
