Any Given Christmas

by Candis Terry

  Their gazes met and for once Emma didn’t feel like she needed to jump on the defensive. His green eyes were warm. His smile friendly. His posture relaxed and unassuming.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m not sure this is the right place for Brenden, but I plan to do everything I can for him while he’s here.”

  Dean stuck the last bite of his cupcake in his mouth, scrunched up the paper cup, and scored a perfect basket in the trash can. “Then he’s a lucky little kid.”

  Something inside Emma began to melt like ice cream covered with hot fudge and before she knew it he was walking toward the door. As he grabbed up his coat he gave her a wink, waved to the kids, and like a tropical storm blew through the place, leaving a whole lot of what the heck just happened in his wake.

  On Saturday morning, Emma found herself in the heart of chaos at Cindi Rella’s Attic, helping teen girls from Deer Lick and nearby towns try on and choose formals for their high school Christmas dances. Her friend Kate had been a genius when she’d convinced some of her previous celebrity clients to donate the red-carpet gowns they’d worn once or twice. The end result made dreams come true for young girls who’d longed to play Cinderella for a night. All for a nominal charge of ten dollars plus a dry cleaning fee.

  Though the shop had never intended to make a profit, it did create a bright spot in the town. Today it buzzed with giggling girls and a few grateful moms. Emma herself had even borrowed a dress for her one and only date with Matt Ryan. But even a fool could have seen, once Kate came back home, that she and Matt were meant for each other. It was hard to be jealous of true love. And besides, Emma had gained a lifelong friend in the process.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind helping me out this morning?” Kate asked, while she slid a gold chiffon Taylor Swift baby-doll dress back on the hanger. “I know you’ve got finals for your online class and your kindergartners have a float in the parade this afternoon.”

  And Emma had yet to find time to decorate her tree, hang her stocking, and make her frosted sugar cookies. “Are you serious?” She laughed as she placed a rhinestone tiara on top of Chelsea Winkle’s all-American-girl ponytail. “This is like playing dress up. What girl gets too old for that?”

  “Not me,” Chelsea said with a grin that brought out some very deep dimples.

  “One of these nights, when my sister comes home,” Kate said, “we are all going to play dress up until we can’t possibly stand to look at another rhinestone. I’ve been dying to try on the Elie Saab that Katy Perry wore to a movie premiere last month.”

  “What do you think of this dress, Kate?” Chelsea spun in a slow circle to display the red chiffon A-Line V-neck Selena Gomez had worn to the Oscars.

  “It’s perfect on you. But dump the tiara and wear that gorgeous natural blond hair in a loose updo,” Kate instructed. “And I have a sweet little pair of black satin heels in the back. What size are you?”

  “Six and a half.” Chelsea handed the tiara back to Emma.

  “Close enough. They’re sevens. We’ll stuff cotton balls in the toes.”

  Emma had a hard time keeping up with the energy that zipped through the shop. As a more or less safe dresser, she’d had just a taste of dress-up, and found she rather liked slipping into something sexy. Which was only one reason she’d just spent half of her fun money on thongs, boy-short undies, and push-up bras from Victoria’s Secret. And she hoped one day soon she’d find someone to actually wear them for. “Who are you going to the dance with, Chelsea?” she asked, keeping her mind out of the flustered zone.

  “Bobby Davenport.” The teen sighed. “But I really, really, really want to go with Alex Harley.”

  “Whoa, honey,” Kate said, “I know James is trying hard to be a good big brother and steer Alex in the right direction, but that boy is all kinds of bad attitude.”

  Chelsea wrinkled her nose. “I think he’s just misunderstood.”

  Kate laughed. “That’s like saying Colin Farrell is misunderstood.”

  “I know, but Alex is soooo cute,” Chelsea said with stars in her blue eyes.

  Emma wanted to warn the girl about falling hard for cute boys with egomaniacal attitudes. She’d been in that same situation and look what had happened to her. “Cute is overrated,” she said. “And Bobby Davenport is not the kind of boy who will break your heart.”

  Chelsea’s smile drooped along with her shoulders. “I know.” She turned to Kate. “Can I go get the shoes now?”

  Kate laughed and tapped her on the nose. “You bet.”

  As soon as the teen skipped out of earshot, Emma felt the heat of Kate’s eyes. She looked up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Sounds like you have some personal knowledge of bad boys and broken hearts,” Kate said.

  Emma exhaled. “You can say that.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  Not anyone Kate would remember. “No. Just a jerk I met a long time ago. I consider him a lesson well-learned.”

  “And now you stay away from bad boys?”

  “I want to be married some day,” Emma told her and added a laugh. “With any luck while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. Bad boys don’t make very good husbands or fathers. I’m sure you saw plenty of that when you were in Hollywood.”

  “Seriously. You know what’s really sad is that there are some men who deep-down inside want to be good husbands and fathers. But they get so caught up in the BS of celebrity they end up not knowing who they are anymore. First the media treats them like a god, then it convinces them that there’s somebody better just around the corner. As in, there’s a better actor or there’s a better fashion designer or record producer or there’s a better endorsement or, heaven forbid, the next A-Rod or Joe Montana.”

  “Are we still talking about Hollywood?” Emma asked, as her friend tensed up. “You sound pretty passionate.”

  Kate shrugged. “I’m just glad to be home and away from that. You know? I never thought I could be this happy.” Kate hugged her. “I want you to be this happy, too.”

  Amen, sister. “Hopefully I will someday.”

  “Hopefully sooner rather than later.” Kate gave her another little squeeze. “So . . . I hear my dopey brother delivered a box of cupcakes to your class by mistake.”

  In a drizzle of snow, the Deer Lick Christmas parade began to line up at Reindeer and Main. The first float belonged to the Boy Scouts and included several artificial trees with a teddy-bear-driven snowmobile atop a bed of real snow.

  Dean had never known another parade to go up the street, then turn around and come back. But that’s exactly how parades in Deer Lick went down. Otherwise they’d be over before anyone had a chance to buy a cup of hot chocolate from the 4-H kids or a bag of cotton candy from the Destroyer’s pep squad. The folks in his hometown had become professionals at putting the hokey into the holidays. And as he stood there watching a little girl no more than ten years old and dressed as a candy cane wrangle a wreath of bells around the neck of a St. Bernard, Dean realized he kind of admired hokey.

  In search of his sister, he walked past the “D” street dancers all bundled up in their parkas and leotards. The Deer Lick Rodeo queen looked warm on her white horse in her white hat, white coat, and white leather chaps. But he didn’t think the horse had much of an appreciation of the gold pipe-cleaner halo dangling over his ears. Or the gold fabric cuffs on his legs. And probably not the huge white and gold floral arrangement perched on top of his butt.

  The parade committee members were making their way down the line of entries when they stopped to ask him to be a secret judge.

  “I don’t think I’d be much help,” he told Mayor Remington, “unless I could put them all in first place.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve turned PC on us,” Edna Price quipped, with a poke of her moosehead cane.

  “Keeps me out of trouble.” Dean shrugged. “Have you seen Kate?”

  “Oh yeah, she’s back there in the non-judging area with Matt. He’s drivin’ Old Man Carter’s
John Deere. Gotta get a handle on that upcoming sheriff election, so he’s throwing out salt water taffy to the kids.”

  Dean laughed. “If you can’t get to the voters’ hearts, get to the voters’ kids stomachs?”

  “Exactly. Now get on back there and give your sister a hand. She’s tryin’ to make sure that husband of hers gets elected but I don’t think puttin’ tinsel on his gun belt is going to make it happen.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Price.”

  “Nice to see you around, young man.”

  That was one thing Dean loved about being home: people were genuinely happy to see him. Unlike those he’d left in Texas. Once he’d been slam-dunked at the forty-seven-yard line, many treated him like a nasty cold they didn’t want to catch. A lot of players were superstitious and believed going near an injured teammate would open some kind of bad luck voodoo portal, and they’d be injured as well. And the media? With them you were either Alice in Wonderland or the pathetic Dormouse.

  As if in accordance with his thoughts, the ache in his shoulder cranked up a notch as though he’d been skewered like a shish kebab. He rotated it slightly.

  Just the cold getting to him. No need to worry.

  Since he’d traded in his cowboy boots for a more logical pair of insulated hunt boots, he continued down the line of entries. He dodged a sheep-drawn Radio Flyer and wondered how those tiny wheels would make it through all the snow on the street, let alone how those sheep would be smart enough to know to walk forward and not go look for some hay. In the distance he saw his brother-in-law up on top of a big green tractor. Dean gave him a nod and made his way through the crowd. At the end of the judging area was a flatbed trailer being pulled by a Chevy half-ton with a Christmas wreath on the front grill and a blow-up Santa on the hood. Even better than the truck itself were the participants who sat on that flatbed trailer.

  Emma Hart’s kindergarten class was on-board, garbed in red sweaters, red foam noses, and reindeer antlers cut from brown construction paper. Brenden Jones sat at the end, fascinated by the gold garland looped around the trailer. The rest of the kids rehearsed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer while their teacher handed out kazoos and jingle bells. The fact that she also wore brown construction paper antlers did not surprise him. The big brown fuzzy reindeer suit . . . now that was another matter. And almost sexy.

  He stood back a moment and watched her in action while she continued to hand out the musical gadgets. She straightened crooked antlers, cupped her furry reindeer paws on little faces with cold cheeks, and offered smiles to anyone who looked her way. Anybody within a mile could see that Emma Hart was a kindergarten teacher kids would remember all their lives.

  “Come here, Bobby,” she called to a little boy who looked like he’d only used up half his quota of energy for the day. “You’ve got a serious waterfall going on.” The boy bounced over to her with an eye roll while she pulled a tissue from her sleeve and wiped his runny nose.

  “Tough day?” Dean came up behind her and her fluffy reindeer tail.

  She jumped as though she’d been stuck in the butt with a pin. “What are you doing here?”

  “Seeing if Olive could come out and play.”

  “Olive?”

  “The other reindeer?” Her eyes grinned but her mouth didn’t follow. Damn, and he’d looked forward to that killer smile tilting those soft, plump lips.

  “I can’t believe I fell for that.”

  “Nice to know I haven’t lost my touch. Hey, kids,” he said to the squirming, wiggling bunch of five-year-olds.

  “Hi, Mr. Cupcake Man.”

  “Thath not hith name,” a chubby little redhead said. “My mommy thaid hith name ith Mither Purfeck.”

  Ah, a football fan. “Who’s her mommy?” he asked Emma.

  “Fawn Derick. Know her?”

  Up close and personal. “Nope. Can’t say I do.”

  While the kids tooted away on their kazoos, Emma slid her gloved hands down to her knees, bent at the waist, and whispered, “That’s odd. She’s been bragging about you for years.”

  “She has?”

  “Of course she also said . . . hmmm, how do I put this?” She finally flashed him that killer smile and the blood in his veins started to hum. “Actually, Fawn mentioned that you had a bit of a quick release.”

  “I was in junior high.”

  She straightened. “Then maybe you’ve improved.”

  That brought a grin to his face. “I’d be happy to show you.”

  “Mmmmm.” The tip of her cold pink nose wrinkled as though she was actually giving the offer some thought. “No thanks.”

  Dean shook his head. Small, smart, and sassy. He’d never met anyone like Emma Hart before. And he couldn’t quite figure her out.

  He slid his gaze past her luscious mouth and down her fuzzy reindeer suit. He leaned in and was pleased when she leaned forward as well. He breathed in a lungful of her sweet scent. “Nice tail.”

  Arms filled with kazoos, Emma watched Dean’s long stride take him to the back of the trailer, where Brenden Jones kept busy organizing individual strands of shiny gold tinsel. Brenden’s mother stood close by, immersed in a deep discussion with a group of other moms. All conversation stopped and heads snapped up when the football god stepped within their little circle. The moms were young and pretty and one had even succumbed to doing a hair flip.

  Nothing like a hot body and gorgeous face to put a little silly in a girl’s step.

  Surrounded by adoring women, Dean Silverthorne was totally in his element. Ah, if only they knew. Then again, it wasn’t her job to educate them—just their children. Emma shook her head and returned to wrangling her little deer, who all seemed to be operating on a candy cane overload. She handed out the last kazoo to Jeffy Barnett, Maggie and Oliver’s youngest.

  “Miss Hart?” Jeffy whispered, grabbing himself in the crotch and doing the little shuffle that was all too familiar. “I gotta whiz!”

  “Oh.” Darn, she couldn’t just walk off and leave her other kids unattended. She glanced over to the gaggle of women who surrounded Dean Silverthorne like he was the Pied Piper of Pedicures. “Ummm, Maggie?” Emma called out, but her friend was too engrossed in whatever it was the hunk in their midst was saying. He, however, turned and caught her eye.

  Emma pointed down to the little boy now performing a frantic pee-pee dance. Dean tapped Maggie on the shoulder and let her know her son was in dire need.

  “Oh!” Maggie giggled and swept her son off the back of the trailer bed. “I’m sorry, Em. I was just . . . umm . . .”

  “No problem. I just couldn’t leave the other kids.”

  Maggie gave her a wave while she hauled her son in the direction of the nearest potty room.

  Yeah, Emma knew exactly what Maggie meant. Men like Dean had a hypnotizing way that could send all kinds of crazy sexy images through a woman’s brain. Lucky for her, she was beyond that kind of cranial interference. She was as solid as an oak.

  She repositioned her reindeer nose and glanced across the back of the trailer bed. He may have been elbow-deep in discussion, but those sharp green eyes tracked her every move like she was a wide receiver in the red zone. When the corners of his mouth kicked upward, all the lessons she’d learned about love-‘em-and-leave-‘em bad boys were replaced by the urge to flip her hair.

  Yeah, she was an oak all right.

  That night boredom grabbed Dean by the throat and threatened to take him down to the mat. Cabin fever didn’t begin to describe the nervous energy that zipped through his veins. For a week he’d reveled in the mundane. He’d cooked dinner, done dishes, helped his sister with her overflow of holiday bakery orders. He’d tossed out salt water taffy along the parade route in support of Matt’s sheriff campaign. He’d woken up in the same bed he’d slept in from the time he’d been four years old until the day he’d left for college. These days his feet and arms hung over the edges, and every time he turned over to get comfortable the wooden slats beneath the box springs groaned in
protest. He missed the super-soft California king mattress he slept on at his high-rise. He missed his condo. The custom billiards table. His massage therapy shower.

  He leaned back on the sofa and tucked one of his mother’s hand-crocheted pillows onto his lap. On the positive side, his shoulder seemed to be on the mend. He now only needed a pain pill to sleep. But the motion and strength were nowhere near normal. And since he’d now been visited multiple times by his deceased mother, he could probably say he wasn’t quite normal either.

  Impatient for faster signs of improvement, he’d called the Stallions’ PT, who’d given him a few light motion exercises, but so far Dean had seen little return on his efforts. Failure whispered in his ear as each day he attempted to push the healing envelope just a tiny bit further without re-injury.

  “I don’t like this show as much as Man v. Food.” His father pushed his recliner back into the lounge position. “Never could understand why someone would purposely choose to eat sticks and bugs when there’s a good burger joint on almost every corner.”

  The show his father referenced was a new episode of Man vs. Wild. Before he’d landed back in Deer Lick, Dean hadn’t even known any man-vs.-whatever shows existed. His sixty-five-inch big screen at home remained locked on a sports channel. Whether home alone or playing Texas Hold ‘em with the guys, he kept it on as background noise.

  He wasn’t one who usually stayed in the same place for long periods of time. Even in the off-season he’d grab a plane to Cabo or to a celebrity golf tournament. Or when in town, he’d visit players and their families or hang out with his closest friends. He smiled. Or he’d be sweet-talking a supermodel out of her skinny jeans.

  Men like you are cowards. You only see the end game. Meaningless sex. A one-nighter, nooner, or whatever time of day you manage to find a willing body.

  Shit.

  He sat up.

  How had crazy reindeer-suit-wearing Emma popped into his conscience?

  “Nothing to do?” Kate asked him as he watched her hang a glittery snowman ornament on the tree in the corner of the living room.