The Spirit of Christmas

by Liz Talley

  “Yes,” he said staring at the gaudy socks in her hand. “What I meant was the Spirit of Christmas.”

  “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.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  BRENNAN HENRY STUDIED the huge Christmas tree towering in front of the glass elevator of his office building. The thing was nearly thirty feet tall and took up so much space on the marble floor everyone had to walk several feet out of the natural path to the elevators. And the lights blinked in time with loud holiday music that spilled from overhead speakers.

  Ridiculous.

  He would have his secretary pen a strongly worded letter to the owner of the building—who happened to be his grandfather. Didn’t matter. A letter would be official. After all, Brennan didn’t mind people enjoying the upcoming holiday season, but not at the expense of others.

  The elevator shot up to the top floor and swooshed open, revealing the tasteful lobby of MBH Industries, the company bearing his great-grandfather’s initials. An attractive receptionist gave an automatic smile, which deepened when she saw him stride out. “Good morning, Mr. Henry.”

  Brennan gave her little more than his normal clipped smile. “Mr. Henry is my grandfather, Cheryl.”

  She laughed because it was a game they played every day. A small flirty little game he allowed himself, like an extra shot of cream in his coffee. He pushed on toward his office in a far corner, and entered his assistant’s area.

  “Good morning, Brennan,” Sophie Caruso said, looking up from her keyboard and spinning toward the antique sideboard housing the coffee. The office smelled like cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven and his stomach growled.

  “Good morning, Sophie. You have those quarterly sales reports from Mark yet?”

  She pressed the button on the one-cup coffee machine before sifting through the folders on the corner of her desk. “Right here. They were waiting for you this morning.”

  She pulled a folder covered with lime-green and red paisleys from the stack of plain manila and held it toward him.

  He looked at it as though she’d handed him a writhing rattlesnake.

  “What?” she asked. “He’s trying to get into the spirit and swears paisleys are all the rage this year.”

  “This is a place of business,” Brennan muttered, downing some coffee and heading toward his office, holding the ridiculous folder with the reports Mark had promised. Next time, Brennan would request his director of marketing send them as an email attachment. Mark was adamant about using a highlighter and doing things old-school. He swore it kept him from missing important trends, but if the man kept decorating his folders like a schoolgirl on crack, Brennan would insist on electronic versions.

  He pushed the intercom button on his desk. “Hey, Mrs. Caruso, could you bring me a plain—”

  The door opened and his assistant entered with a manila folder and his second cup of coffee.

  “You’re wonderful,” he said, accepting the mug and placing it next to the nearly empty one, before sliding the stapled reports he’d already pulled from the colored folder into the much more businesslike one she handed him.

  “I know,” she said, turning toward the door. She spun around and snapped her fingers, the motion making her silver-strewn brown hair stand out like a flying saucer. “Your grandfather called and said he was bringing by the centerpiece for the new ad campaign. Said you needed to call Ellen and have her sit in on the meeting. Boardroom B at ten.”

  She shut the door before he could mutter a really dirty word under his breath.

  Oh, sure. He had nothing better to do than to be at the beck and call of his grandfather’s shenanigans. What had happened to the hard-nosed captain of industry who had brought their company into
the twenty-first century? Where had the iron-fisted, no-nonsense head of the most successful chain of small department stores in the South gone?

  Because the man who’d flown a kite from the top of the building last week wasn’t him. If the past few months were any indicator, Malcolm Henry, Jr.’s cheese had slid off his cracker.

  Hell, the man sat up front with his driver holding a wiener dog he’d named Izzy in his lap. If that wasn’t damning evidence, Brennan didn’t know what was.

  He couldn’t wrap his mind around the change in the man who had skipped most of his grandson’s birthday parties because there had been work to attend to. His grandfather had even arrived late at Brennan’s graduation because of an emergency board-of-directors meeting about an acquisition of a small chain of stores on the East Coast. Malcolm Henry had been the sharpest businessman in the Crescent City…and now he called bingo at the local homeless shelter on Friday nights.

  Brennan picked up the phone. “Get me Ellen. Please.”

  The VP of communications and community relations, who was also his second cousin, answered on the third ring. “Bivens.”

  “Ellen, tell me my grandfather isn’t going through with this crazy promo idea.”

  “Your grandfather isn’t going through with this crazy promo.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Of course I am. You told me to.”

  Okay, so he had.

  “We can’t throw money away like this. Giving a random stranger millions of dollars is irresponsible in this economy. We have investors who will flip when they find out MBH is handing out money capriciously.”

  “Wait a sec, it’s not the company’s money.”

  “You mean he’s using our money for this?” Something hot slid into his gut. It wasn’t as though his grandfather couldn’t do what he wished with his own money. But over the past six months, the man had shelled out huge chunks of money to pet nonprofit agencies. Giving money away to a perfect stranger, declaring him or her the Spirit of Christmas and mapping out some crazy publicity stunt sounded dangerously negligent.

  Worry started eating away at Brennan. What if the heart attack his grandfather had suffered six months ago had done other damage—like to Malcolm’s head? Maybe a mild stroke that had gone misdiagnosed? His grandfather had always been extremely careful in spending money, both in business and his personal life.

  Brennan wasn’t ready to watch his grandfather turn senile, ineffective and dotty in his advanced age. He wasn’t ready to let go of the one solid presence in his life.

  “That’s what he indicated,” Ellen said, clearing her throat uncomfortably. “I assumed you had spoken with him about this. We’ve been working on this for three months.”

  His grandfather had spoken to him. Brennan had just failed to “hear” the plan. “I have, but I was unaware of the particulars, and, honestly, I had hoped this crazy idea would fall by the wayside. After all, we have the Magic in the Lights gala coming up benefiting Malcolm’s Kids. Grandfather has plenty of charitable causes to pursue, all of which demonstrate the Spirit of the Season.”

  “Actually, this idea of his is brilliant from a marketing perspective. All I have to do is splash this story on the front of the Times-Picayune, and we’re golden. You can’t buy this sort of goodwill.”

  Brennan frowned. “Story?”

  “He didn’t tell you how he found the person he wants to use as the center point?”

  “No.”

  An awkward pause hung on the line, and he could tell Ellen didn’t know if she should be the bearer of the news or not.

  He saved her the trouble. “No problem. I’ll get to the bottom of it when we meet in Boardroom B at ten. I’ll see you then.”

  “Meeting? I can’t attend—I have a report I have to submit to Don before the end of the day.”

  “Grandfather called it regarding this foolishness.”

  “Oh, well, then I guess I can’t refuse Malcolm.”

  Of course you can’t. He still writes the checks around here.

  Brennan set the phone in the cradle and looked at his desk. He had too much to deal with to worry over his grandfather’s stunt. He had a conference call at 9:00 a.m. about a new cosmetics line by some Hollywood starlet the company was considering for the stores, and he still needed to look at the reports Mark had sent so he could talk to the CFO, Don Angelle, about procuring extra commercial spots to be aired over Mardi Gras.

  No time for crazy Spirit of Christmas ideas. Not when a healthy bottom line demanded more than mistletoe and Yule logs.

  Bah, humbug.

  He snorted at that thought. Man, he really was like Scrooge. Next thing, he’d be shuffling only one small lump of coal onto the fire to save a measly buck.

  And with his grandfather pissing away all their money, he might be forced to play the Dickens character.

  * * *

  MARY PAIGE TAPPED HER FOOT in time with the Christmas music spilling out of the speakers, mouthing words about sleigh rides and walking in winter wonderlands. A huge Christmas tree sat on a platform in front of the lobby fountain, blinking in time with the music. She loved it and wished she knew how to sync music with her own small tree that she’d put up last weekend.

  The doors slid open and she stepped inside the glass elevator with a well-dressed woman and pressed the button that would take her to the twentieth floor. As the doors closed, her stomach flipped over.

  Maybe she should have told Mr. Henry she wasn’t interested. No one in her right mind would give up two million dollars, but Mr. Henry wanted her to basically take a break from her job to be his poster girl for bringing the true meaning of Christmas to the Crescent City. Her boss, Ivan, hadn’t been happy about her taking the morning off, and she still had half a study book to get through in preparation for her certified public accountant exam, which loomed in a couple of months. It felt like she’d be sacrificing all she’d been working so hard for.

  Still, it was two million dollars.

  And she was in her right mind. Mostly.

  Late last night she’d considered all the things she could do with the money—pay off student loans, buy a car that didn’t have rust spots around the wheel well and make donations to all her favorite charities. And she could help her mom pay off the loans taken to modify their old farmhouse to accommodate her brother’s wheelchair. Yeah, two million could do a lot of good in her life…and in the lives of others.

  So she should probably sign the agreement, cash the check and count herself a lucky duck…even if it meant tugging on a Santa hat and making merry with the entire city of New Orleans for the holiday season.

  Besides, if during the meeting with Mr. Henry the whole crazy proposal felt like too much for her to handle, she’d refuse. She wasn’t locked in to anything and had done nothing more with the check than hide it in the bottom of the ballerina jewelry box her granny Wyatt had giving her for her twelfth birthday.

  “Are you with MBH?” the woman standing next to her asked with a polite smile.

  “Uh, no,” Mary Paige said, smoothing her skirt over her thighs, hoping the bottom of her Spanx wasn’t showing. The skirt had fit her four years ago, and even though she’d lost weight, it was still a little too tight. She hadn’t had time to go by the cleaners to pick up her more professional clothes, so she’d held her breath that morning and zipped. It worked but she had to keep tugging the hem into place because it inched up as she walked.

  The other woman was dressed in a fine wool suit that fit her to perfection. A patterned raspberry-colored scarf was knotted at her neck, and her dark, heeled boots were absolutely gorgeous. She looked like an ad out of Vanity Fair.

  “I’m just going to a meeting.” Mary Paige swallowed her nervousness and pasted on a smile. She was glad she’d used the flatiron on her hair this morning. At the very least her short blond pageboy cut flattered her elfish chin and helped her feel more together than she was.

  The woman tossed her wavy brown mane over her shoulders and nodded at Ma
ry Paige as she stepped out into the lobby of MBH Industries.

  A pretty receptionist looked up as the brunette walked by her desk. “Oh, Ms. Thornhill, Mr. Henry has a meeting soon.”

  “Really?” the brunette said, not bothering to even slow her steps. Instead, she pushed through the frosted glass doors to the inner sanctum, letting them swing shut after her.

  The receptionist frowned and muttered something under her breath before donning a bright smile. “Welcome to MBH. Can I assist you?”

  “Uh, hi. I’m Mary Paige Gentry, and I have an appointment with Mr. Malcolm Henry?”

  Darn it. Why had she phrased it like a question? Like she was uncertain?

  “Oh, of course,” the receptionist, whose nameplate read Cheryl Reeves, said with a genuine smile. “Have a seat and I’ll let Mr. Henry know you’ve arrived.”

  Mary Paige pointed her sensible heels toward the seating area housing several glossy magazines and a beautiful orchid on a glass table and sat on the leather Barcelona chair.

  Just as she perched on the edge of the chair—tugging the tight skirt over the edge of her Spanx—the frosted glass doors swung open.

  But Mr. Malcolm Henry didn’t emerge.

  Instead it was a Roman god wearing an expensive-looking suit and a scowl. He zeroed in on Cheryl as Ms. Thornhill lollygagged behind him with annoyance evident in her brown eyes. “Cheryl, will you see that Creighton gets a cup of tea while she waits for me.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Of course, Mr. Henry,” Cheryl said, rising from behind her desk. “I—” She snapped her mouth closed when Creighton shot her a warning.

  “Don’t bother with tea, Brennan,” Creighton said, laying a hand on his forearm as if she could soothe the fiercest of beasts. “I have other things to attend to this morning. I thought you might be free for a little chat this morning. Nothing important.”

  Innocuous words, but not the way she said them. Creighton—the well-dressed, gorgeous brunette—had purred them, with a sort of raspy innuendo that made poor Cheryl pinken like a…a…shrimp.