A Bride For Saint Nick

by Carole Buck

  Leigh caught a faint shimmer of mischief in her son’s wide eyes as he uttered the final word of this inquiry. She said a swift prayer of thanks for the resilience of his innocent spirit.

  “No, wiseguy,” she retorted, reaching over and tweaking his lightly freckled nose. “It’s not because they’re girls.”

  “Ladies, then.”

  “It’s not because of that, either. Daddies get—” She broke off abruptly, wishing desperately that she could recall her last two words. Raising the subject of fathers with her son was not something she wanted to do.

  “Daddies get in blue moods, too?” Andy sounded intrigued by the idea. “You mean, like, when Bryan’s daddy makes his eyes go all buggy and yells dammit, dammit, dammit at the TV news?”

  “Something like that,” Leigh agreed with an awkward laugh. “Although going bug-eyed and yelling ‘dammit’ at the TV news sounds more like a bad mood than a blue one.”

  Andy mulled this over as he fiddled with the buckle on his seat belt. “Do you think John gets in moods?”

  She caught her breath, trying not to remember the remarkable panoply of emotions that John Gulliver had revealed to her Friday night and Saturday morning. He’d been so open. While she—Lord! She could scarcely bear to contemplate what she’d been.

  What she still was.

  What she might be for the rest of her life unless she did something about it.

  “You telled me to always tell the truth.”

  “And you always should, Andy. But you have to be careful how you tell it…and to whom.”

  “I think everybody gets in moods, honey.”

  “He’s not a daddy, you know.”

  “H-he…told you that?”

  “Uh-huh.” Andy gave an emphatic nod. “At the doctor’s office after I got my head owwie fixed. I asked him if he was and he said no. He’s not married, either.” The seat-belt buckle clicked open. “Do you think John likes me?”

  Don’t cry, Leigh ordered herself fiercely, blinking against the sudden sting of incipient tears. “Yes, Andy,” she said. “I think he likes you very much.”

  Andy beamed at her. “I think so, too. And I like him back. A whole lot. And you know somethin’? I think maybe John wants to—”

  A rapid knock-knock-knock on the driver’s-side window interrupted his line of speculation. Leigh turned, her heart beating double time. Thalia Jenkins was standing outside the car.

  “Time for class!” the older woman said, pointing toward the small brick building that housed the preschool.

  “Yipes!” Andy exclaimed, shifting out of the reflective “gear” without missing a beat. Shrugging off his safety harness, he reached for the door handle. He was obviously eager to be off to join his classmates.

  “Kiss?” Leigh’s need for the comfort of their morning ritual seemed more acute than it had ever been.

  To her everlasting surprise, her little boy flung himself into her arms and pressed his mouth against her cheek with a noisy smack. “I almost forgetted to tell you, Mommy,” he confided, a giggle fizzing out of him. “I counted on the ‘frigerator calendar again. And guess what? Only ten more days—”

  “‘Til Christmas. You mean you’re planning to stay in Vermont indefinitely?”

  “I don’t know that ‘indefinitely’ is the correct word, Ms. Falco,” the owner of Gulliver’s Travels returned, massaging the nape of his neck. His temples throbbed with the residual effects of the headache that had erupted inside his skull following his departure from Leigh’s home on Saturday morning. There was a part of him that thought he’d deserved the pain. Or worse. “And if I’m following a plan, I’m not aware of it. But to answer your question—no. I won’t be back in Georgia for Christmas.”

  A dramatic pseudosigh greeted this statement. “There goes my brilliant scheme for persuading you to come to the agency’s fabulously famous holiday party.”

  “I didn’t realize Gulliver’s Travels had a holiday party.” If truth be told, he’d never thought to inquire about the possibility. It had been a long time since holidays had held any special significance for him.

  He had nurtured a small, secret hope that he and Leigh and their son would celebrate the coming Christmas season as a family. But now—

  It will happen, he told himself. It has to. Just give Leigh the time she needs.

  “Oh, yes,” Lucy affirmed breezily. “Everybody in the office is chipping in. It’s going to be an annual thing.”

  “Going to be?”

  “This is the first year we’re having it.”

  “But the party’s already—ah—’fabulously famous’?”

  “It could have been if you’d agreed to show up. It would’ve been the equivalent of, mmm, Charlie paying a personal visit to the Angels.”

  “Excuse…me?”

  “‘Charlie’s Angels.’ You know. The old TV show with Farrah Fawcett, Kate Jackson and Jacqueline Smith? They played policewomen turned bikini-wearing private detectives who worked for this mysterious millionaire playboy named—”

  “Charlie.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Falco.” And John genuinely was, which knocked him even more off-balance than he already was. Because as unpleasant as it was to contemplate, he recognized that it had been years since he’d cared about other people’s judgments of him.

  Except Leigh’s.

  And Andy’s.

  She’d said that she trusted him, he thought, clinging to the memory like a talisman. She’d admitted as much to Drake Nordling. She’d also said that she didn’t believe he would hurt her or their son. At least…not intentionally.

  What Leigh hadn’t said was that she loved him. Although he’d confessed his own feelings repeatedly, she hadn’t given him the words he wanted more than anything to hear.

  She had given him her body. Overcoming a fear he still didn’t understand the source of, she’d yielded to him at the most intimate level. If she’d held anything back at the crest of their mutual ecstasy, he hadn’t been able to sense it.

  But that had been before, he acknowledged grimly, his gut knotting. Before he’d told her the truth about who he was and what he’d once been. Before he’d peeled back the layers of deception that had shaped their relationship. Would Leigh McKay have surrendered herself to him with such heart-stopping generosity if she’d known—

  “Not to worry,” Lucy responded to his previous remark, her tone hinting that she’d had a fair amount of experience with disappointment. “Maybe next year.”

  John expelled a sigh. “Maybe.”

  There was a long pause. Then, in a voice shorn of its usual sassiness, the officer manager of Gulliver’s Travels asked, “Did you find the woman in the photograph?”

  He didn’t bother to deny Lucy’s assumption or to question how she’d come to make it. There wasn’t much point. “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Problems?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Mmm.”

  There was another pause. Although John Gulliver knew himself to be an expert at manipulating the pressures inherent in certain kinds of silences, he found this particular conversational break extremely difficult to bear.

  “Ms. Falco—” he finally began, intending to plead the press of other business and hang up.

  “Look,” the woman on the other end of the line interrupted simultaneously. “I realize I’m hardly qualified to give personal advice in this situation. My one and only marriage broke up after less than a year, for heaven’s sake! But…well, if there are problems between you and this Leigh woman Marcy-Anne Gregg says is so wonderful, I admire you for sticking around and trying to solve them. It’s a lot better than turning your back and running away.”

  “Is that what you did?” The question slipped out of its own accord.

  A shaky little laugh jittered through the line. “That’s a long story, too.”

  “I…see.”

  There was a third pause. Then, carefully, Lucy a
sked, “Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Gulliver?”

  The man who had once lived under the name Nicholas Marchand glanced at his wristwatch, calculating how long it had been since he’d left the woman he loved. Fifty hours and counting. It seemed longer. Much, much longer.

  “Call me John, Lucy,” he responded. “And forget about having the agency staff chip in to pay for the first annual ‘fabulously famous’ Gulliver’s Travels holiday party. Send the bill to me.”

  * * *

  “It’s time to reorder that self-help book for people who are addicted to self-help books.”

  Leigh straightened with a jerk, nearly spilling a mug of longgone-cold tea across the invoices she’d been pretending to review for the last half-hour. The documents could have been printed in hieroglyphics, for all the sense she’d made of them.

  “Wh-what?” she stammered, looking up at her assistant.

  “Too Much Help Can Hurt You. We need to reorder it as soon as possible. I just sold another copy. And I sold five on Saturday. I think the author went on ‘Oprah Winfrey’ last week and told people it would be the perfect Christmas present for people whose problem is thinking they have problems.”

  Leigh smoothed her hair back from her face. Her hands were shaking. “All right. I’ll take care of it.”

  She looked around, trying to find a pen. Although her need for a writing implement was genuine, she recognized that her hunt was really prompted by a desire to evade Dee’s gaze. She knew that the redhead had picked up on her turbulent mood as soon as she’d walked into the shop. So far, nothing had been said. She suspected her assistant was waiting for an opening. She did not intend to give her one if she could avoid it.

  “Five copies on Saturday, you said?” she asked, continuing to shuffle papers.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Things must have been very busy.”

  “Not bad.”

  Leigh located a fine-point felt marker. She used it to scribble down the title Dee had mentioned, grimacing inwardly as she did so. She stalled for a few seconds more, then raised her eyes to her assistant’s once again.

  “I’m sorry I left you in the lurch,” Leigh apologized, referring to the fact that Dee had ended up running the store all by herself on Saturday. In the aftermath of what had happened with John, she’d felt incapable of coping with with customers.

  “That’s my job.” A shrug punctuated the demurral. “I’m glad I could help.”

  “You definitely did that.”

  There was an awkward pause in the conversation. Dee leaned against the edge of the desk and began fiddling with the hem of the moss-green sweater she had on. Although the garment was far too large for her, its richly verdant color complemented her pale complexion and flaming tresses. It was the most flattering thing Leigh had ever seen her wear.

  “You’re missing your program again,” the younger woman said suddenly.

  “My…program?”

  Dee nodded at the TV on the corner of Leigh’s paper-strewn desk. The flowers John had brought the previous week were arranged in a plain glass vase placed next to the set. Although the blossoms were a bit past their prime, they still exuded a luxuriously sweet perfume.

  “Your favorite soap opera,” Dee clarified. “It’s on, but you’re not watching it.”

  “Oh. That. I…guess I forgot.”

  “Or maybe you’re not in the mood for evil twins and amnesiac brides, huh?”

  Leigh manufactured a smile. It felt even phonier than the one she’d tried to use on Andy outside his preschool. “Not really, no.”

  The redhead studied her without speaking for several seconds, then quietly asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  The phony smile fizzled. Leigh struggled to replace it with something more persuasive. “About what? My loss of interest in daytime drama?”

  “Leigh.”

  The invocation of her name was a reproach. The expression that accompanied it revealed a great deal of hurt. Leigh bit her lower lip and averted her gaze.

  “It’s John Gulliver, isn’t it?”

  Leigh went rigid, her eyes slewing back to her assistant. She shifted onto the offensive before she fully realized what she was doing. “Look, I know you don’t like him—”

  “Actually,” Dee interrupted, flushing, “I’ve kind of rethought that.”

  “You…have?”

  “I still have the feeling he’s got ‘cop’ in his background someplace.” The redhead squirmed. “The funny thing is—well, not funny, ha-ha. Funny, kind of weird. Wes had just the opposite impression of him.”

  The opposite impression? What was that supposed to mean?

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The first time Wes saw him was here, in the bookstore. It was two weeks ago. I, uh, told you—”

  “I remember. It was the day Andy was hurt.”

  “Right. Well, he—Wes—took one look and figured John Gulliver for some kind of lowlife. He basically pegged him as a blast from my—” the redhead pulled a face “—nasty past.”

  Leigh said nothing. She wasn’t certain she could.

  “Wes knows about what I used to do,” Dee continued doggedly. “I haven’t exactly tried to keep it a secret. Not that I think I could have, given the way folks around this town talk.”

  “You’ve been…very honest.” Although the sentiment was sincere, it was a struggle to get the words out.

  The younger woman plucked at the bottom of her sweater again. “Self-defense,” she confessed. “At least at first. I mean, I basically decided to get in people’s faces with the bad stuff before they had the chance to stab me in the back with it.”

  “That doesn’t make what you did any less honest.”

  “I…guess.” She grimaced. “Wes and I—we’re not involved, Leigh. I don’t think I’m ready for that. But, like, we kind of started talking last Monday. Maybe you remember? Wes stuck around last Monday after he bought Doctor Zhivago and Anna Karenina. And, well…the bottom line for right now is that he knows. About me. About my…record. He doesn’t like it, but he told me he admires the way I’ve been trying to turn everything around.”

  “He should.”

  Dee’s face flamed anew. “I don’t—I mean, that’s not—Oh, never mind me and Wes, okay? To get back to my point about John Gulliver. I’m not going to say I’ve decided he’s Mr. Warm-and-Fuzzy or anything like that, because I haven’t. Frankly, the man intimidates the heck out of me. But I’ve seen how he is with you and Andy. And I’ve seen how you are with him. I’m not talking about that screwed up stuff I said to you last week. You and he…Well…you care about him, right?”

  Leigh swallowed hard. “Yes, Dee,” she admitted after a few moments, her heart beginning to thud. “I care about him. I care about him very much.”

  “You haven’t told him about that other guy, though, have you? The one who was the, uh, criminal.”

  She didn’t have to tell him, Leigh thought, choking back a wild little laugh. He’d been that other guy!

  “It’s a…complicated…situation, Dee,” she responded, the adjective snagging briefly in her throat.

  “Because of Andy?”

  Yes, because of Andy. But also because of her. Because of her fear. And her shame.

  Leigh closed her eyes for a moment. It was “funny,” she reflected with a wrenching pang. Dee Bleeker had looked at John Gulliver and seen a cop, which he’d once been. Wesley Warren had looked at him and seen a criminal, which he’d once pretended to be. And she’d looked at him and seen…

  What?

  What had she seen?

  The memory of the surge of connection she’d experienced two weeks ago in the examining room rushed back, filling her head and her heart. Hard on its heels came a kaleidoscopic series of images culled from the past fourteen days.

  She loved him, she thought. She loved him so much! Her feelings for John Gulliver were richer and deeper than the feelings Suzanne Whitney had had for Saint Nick Marchand.

&
nbsp; They were feelings on which to base a future.

  Feelings on which to build a family.

  I trust John with my life, she’d told Drake Nordling, meaning every word. I trust him with my son’s life, too.

  Could she find the courage to trust him with a piece of her past?

  “Leigh?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at her assistant—and friend. “Would you mind watching the store again?”

  Deirdre Bleeker smiled.

  Anthony Stone flicked on the turn signal of the pricey imported sedan he’d rented using the driver’s license and bank credit card his lawyer had arranged for him. His mood was foul and getting worse. He hated this lousy little town. He couldn’t believe that anyone would actually want to live in such a place. It reminded him of a postcard!

  He’d just wasted the better part of an hour parked outside his son’s preschool. He hadn’t been contemplating a snatch. Although he would have been completely within his rights to take his boy away, that hadn’t been his plan. He’d simply wanted to get a firsthand look at him.

  He would have known him if it hadn’t been for that damned snow gear, Stone told himself bitterly, mentally replaying the moment when the preschool’s front door had swung open and about two dozen little kids had come romping outside. Blood would have called to blood and he would have known. But the hats and mittens and down-filled jackets had made it just about impossible to tell male from female, much less identify a child he’d never seen.

  Still. His son had definitely been one of the bulkily dressed bunch. He was certain of that. He’d felt it in his gut. He would confirm it later, when they came face-to-face.

  “I saw you today,” he would say, letting the boy know that he’d been watching over him. God knows what kind of lies Suzanne had been filling his head with.

  “I saw you, too, Pop,” he could hear the kid answering. “I always knew you’d come for me.”

  He smiled a little, spinning out the entire reunion scene. His son would take to him instantly. That was the natural order of things. He hoped that Suzanne would be there to witness the initial bonding between him and his boy. He liked the idea of her dying with the realization that she’d been supplanted.