For This Christmas Only Read online

  She had a need to touch, so she reached up to skim her fingertips across the forehead she’d kissed. “You don’t have laugh lines, but you don’t have permanent frown lines, either. You know how they wonder if a zebra is black with white stripes or white with black stripes? I’m wondering if Eli is an angry man who can be sweet sometimes, or if he’s a very nice man who has something in particular to glower about tonight.”

  “I’m thirty-two,” he said. “It’s a little soon to have acquired either.”

  “But which are you on your way to getting?”

  “I’ve smiled more tonight than I have in a year.”

  “Must be the hot chocolate.”

  “It’s you.”

  The silence should have been electric, a prelude to more. Ask me for my number. Kiss me in the starlight.

  Eli remained content to simply look at her. He’d stated a fact. Nothing more.

  It was up to her, then. “If you’d like to practice smiling and being conversational, maybe you could come back another night. Or a lot of nights. I live here—I mean, near here, obviously—so I come here a lot of nights. I’ll be coming here. I did, the other Decembers that I lived in Masterson. I like the Yule log.” Mallory cringed inside. She sounded breathless and awkward, Baby announcing she’d carried a watermelon.

  Eli practiced his rusty smile on her, the remote, polite one that gave her that déjà vu feeling. “This is my first and last night in the fake boyfriend business.”

  Mallory translated that too easily: I won’t be seeing you again.

  “But it’s been a memorable night,” he said. “Thank you for sharing your twenty-ninth birthday with me.”

  Goodbye.

  Of course. She should have known, she had known, that she couldn’t stay with a handsome man under a night sky forever. It was time to get back to the real world, back to campus, back to her dorm and its fluorescent ceiling light.

  To get there, she’d have to walk down the row of booths where she’d stopped and cried in a stranger’s arms. Some people would remember the girl who’d publicly bawled in a hard-to-miss Paris-Hilton-pink coat. They’d be curious as she walked by in the other direction, trying to guess how that had turned out.

  She must still look like a mess. She nodded toward the light that came through the space between the booths. “I’m going to sneak over there and take one of their napkins. I need to wipe my face off and get my act together a little bit. You never know if you’ll run into a professor or a coworker. I’d like to be able to fake like I haven’t spent the evening on an emotional roller coaster.”

  Eli pulled a crisp white napkin from his back pocket. “Courtesy of the nuns. It came with the hot chocolate.”

  “Thanks.” Mallory wiped her nose and face and tried not to compare the coarse napkin to the soothing way Eli had smoothed her hair off her cheek. The napkin went into her pocket with the mitten and the wish and the mini pine cone. No sense in making both of her pockets bulge out unattractively.

  She pulled on her ski cap and did a little hasty hair-tucking, leaving it long down her back. “Okay, how do I look?”

  “You look perfect.”

  She waved away his pat answer. “I mean, is it obvious I’ve been crying? Are my eyes bloodshot? It’s probably too dark for you to tell here, but it will be light over there.”

  “You look perfect.” There was just a touch of that unnecessary question tone in his voice. He’d declared her perfect. End of discussion.

  She put her hands on her hips. “Seriously? My nose isn’t even red?”

  “It’s cold outside.”

  “So, yes, it’s red.”

  “You look perfect, Mallory.”

  “Then you’re not a very tough critic.”

  “I’m a very harsh critic, and I choose my words deliberately. If something is perfect, then no part of it needs to change. You’re perfect.”

  She sighed. “It’s just as well this is only for one night. I couldn’t keep up this pretense much longer.”

  “What are you still pretending to be?”

  “Perfect on top of fearless, apparently. If you spent more than a few hours with me, you’d realize I was nowhere close to either one. The advice to act like I’m already the person I want to be sounds good, but it has a lot of pitfalls. That might be one thing to discuss with my friend next semester. He’ll be here, at MU.”

  “We’ve already discussed it,” Eli said, and in her fantasy, he sounded slightly jealous that she’d be continuing their conversation with someone else. “You aren’t faking anything important.”

  “Just the business attire, huh? I must look pretentious in my cubicle, dressed more formally than everyone else.”

  “Only if ‘formal’ means a ball gown.”

  She was very sorry the evening had to end. “You’re pretty perfect at lifting my spirits, Eli. Thank you for being my fake boyfriend on my birthday.”

  That seemed so inadequate for an evening that had been full of self-discovery, spent with a man who knew just how to comfort her, whether with a hug or a stern lecture.

  Never be afraid to speak the truth.

  She looked into his eyes one last time, wanting to see herself the way he saw her. “I hope we run into each other again.”

  Those eyes narrowed. “You’re leaving?”

  “I thought... We said this was for one night only.”

  After an eternal second, he didn’t contradict her, but his answer made her heart take a hopeful hop. “It doesn’t have to be a short night.”

  She should leave. Her brain might continue to remember this was only a fantasy, but her heart just wasn’t listening.

  No, thank you. I must go. It was firm, decisive, final, and it would protect her vulnerable heart.

  Instead, she waffled, gesturing vaguely toward the back of the stage and the booths. “We’ve done everything there is to do, really.”

  “The night is still young. What else do people do in Masterson to celebrate a birthday?”

  “It’s a college town. They hit twenty-one and drink themselves into oblivion.”

  “I was here for my twenty-first. I know that much. But you’re an ancient twenty-nine. This is my first time back since I graduated. Where do the old folks go?”

  “Very funny.” She tried to be tart, but her heart was feeling bubbly—The night is young!—and Eli was jarringly adorable when he tried to be funny, a brooding James Dean breaking character, laughing in an outtake on a blooper reel.

  “We could go to the Tipsy Musketeer. They’re still the most strict about checking IDs, and they don’t sell dirt-cheap booze, so there won’t be a lot of college students there. Their live musicians are really good, too.”

  “I remember the place.” But Eli was looking regretful or hesitant or something. “It will be crowded on a Saturday night.”

  So that was it. She should have put two and two together sooner. He’d chosen to be all alone out by the hay bales. He’d spent their first fifteen minutes on the pavilion bench looking at every passerby as if they were his personal enemy—and he’d hidden his face with his cup more than once. As bold and confident as Eli seemed to be, he wasn’t comfortable in crowds.

  “Or, if you don’t want to walk all the way to Athos Avenue, we could stay here,” she offered, giving him distance as an easy excuse rather than whatever his issue was with crowds. “I’m up for another cup of hot chocolate—oh. Never mind. I’m not trying to get you to spend more of your real money on your fake girlfriend.”

  “The nuns aren’t charging enough to break the bank. Besides, we both could use another chance to hold a hot cup to warm our hands.”

  “You could just put on your gloves.”

  He began pulling one on. Unlike her, his larger hand needed to ease its way into the tight leather. “You could put on your mitten.”

 
“It’s too sandy. I’m not going to look dorky in one mitten and have sand itching me in between my fingers, too.”

  He fastened his right glove with the snap at his wrist, looking so damned James Bond cool that Mallory barely registered that his gloves must have been custom-made to fit him so perfectly.

  “In that case, here.” He picked up her left hand and put his left glove on her, like he was dressing a child.

  “What are you doing? Are you going to make us both look dorky?”

  He held out his bare left hand. She placed her bare right hand in his, and he laced his fingers between hers. They stood together in between the trucks, holding hands. “There. Now we’ll both have two warm hands.”

  “My hand must feel like an icicle in yours.”

  “Not for long.”

  That unconscious arrogance, that certainty that he could handle anything physical, like warming up her hand quickly with his own, made Mallory’s heart hop and flutter every which way.

  Eli started walking toward the booths, holding her hand. She fell into step beside him and savored the sensation of being in sync.

  He led her past the boxes and around the propane tanks. They walked into the light, and not one person at the festival looked at Mallory with concern or pity. Only envy followed her on their way to the St. Margaret’s booth.

  Eli paid for their drinks with a folded bill, which he handed to the nun with a murmured, “Keep the change.” As they walked away, Mallory carried her cup in her gloved hand. So did Eli—such a coincidence. He took her bare hand in his once more, and her heart hopped and bubbles popped—not a coincidence at all.

  Behind them, the nuns burst into excited twitters, sounding just like her heart.

  “Either they’re very excited to see us holding hands,” Mallory said, “or you gave them a really big tip.”

  “I wanted us to be set for refills the rest of the night. We can trade gloves and hold a hot cup with our other hands next.” Eli gave her hand a squeeze, a move as casually intimate as that wink.

  Hop. Pop.

  “Let’s get out of this crowd,” Eli said. “We’re going to get bumped and spill our drinks any second now. We’re flirting with danger.”

  I know I am.

  Eli was being so charming, it was going to be hard for a real guy to live up to it on a real date. She had a feeling a fake kiss with Eli would set a new standard that any real kiss wouldn’t be able to match. It was a good thing she didn’t do fake kisses.

  On the other hand, she’d broken half of E.L. Taylor’s rules tonight.

  Before she returned to reality, why not break one of her own?

  Chapter Eight

  Never allow yourself to be rushed into a decision.

  —How to Taylor Your Business Plan

  by E.L. Taylor

  They were moving into the adult portion of the evening.

  Alcoholic beverages were being drunk. Adult dancers had taken the stage. Eli glanced around the mostly child-free, late-night crowd, shaking his head. The adult portion of anything in Masterson was still shockingly wholesome.

  The dancers on the stage were performing German folk dances, a lingering bit of culture from the German settlers who had established towns throughout Central Texas in the 1800s. The stage had been set with a tall maypole, made slightly less anachronous in the month of December by sporting red-and-white ribbons. It was slowly turning into a woven candy cane as men in lederhosen circled in one direction and women in dirndl dresses circled in the opposite direction. The men and women never touched. Wholesome.

  Because a large number of Spanish and Mexican people had settled Texas, too, the hungry members of the audience were using their German beers to wash down burritos. And because Texas had been and still was cattle country, those burritos were stuffed with a cowboy standard, barbecued beef brisket. All the facets of Texas blended in a wholesome harmony.

  There wasn’t much seating available, so the fat branch of a live oak, sprawling low along the ground, was being used by Eli and a dozen other people as a place to sit. He sat closest to the massive trunk, using it as a shield from curious eyes. Eli had the surprising, astonishing Mallory Ames sharing his seat, sitting between his thighs. He’d bought her one-dollar hot chocolate with a one-hundred-dollar bill. He’d hugged her when she’d cried. He’d held her hand as they’d looked for the best spot to sit and talk, because talking was what she did on dates. Nothing that came close to public indecency.

  Because they didn’t have the tree to themselves, whenever Mallory had something to say, she’d turn her head and murmur it to him. He’d tilt his head to hear her better, and the closeness of her lips to his cheek made him acutely conscious of the possibility that this time, this comment might be the one where the words on her lips became a kiss on his cheek.

  Shockingly wholesome.

  The bonfire was at his back, so he benefitted from its light, but he didn’t have to visually fight the flames. Distance made all the difference, in fire and everything else. Taylor’s money was in a bank far away, but Eli had a few hundred-dollar bills in his pocket. Taylor’s residences were in Dallas and New York and Monterrey, but Eli was renting a single-family home here in Masterson for the coming semester, a house which had a tree with a rope swing in the front and a porch that overlooked a lake in the back. His superyacht was berthed somewhere along the coast of Greece, but a rowboat lay at the ready by the rented home’s dock.

  Distance mattered most of all with Mallory, because there was none. Mallory—this woman, this incredible person who laughed and cried and talked to him as she made herself at home on his lap—Mallory was the reason he didn’t want the night to end.

  From the first moment she’d walked up to him, she’d touched him almost constantly. She let him touch her in return, not a sexual carte blanche, but he could sit beside her with his arm across the back of the bench. He could hold her hand. He could loop his arms around her waist as she sat on his lap on the branch of a century-old tree. It was so wholesome, so innocent, yet so addictive, satisfying a craving he hadn’t known he had.

  Can you identify that emotion, Mr. Taylor?

  Mallory shifted in her sideways position. Her legs were over his left thigh and her backside was in the vee between his legs, pressing against his inner right thigh. He could feel her muscle flex as she moved, feel her softness against his inner thigh as she relaxed once more. Her denim jeans rubbed and rested against his denim, two thick layers of material that kept their bodies from actually touching. Being denied the feel of her skin, yet being able to feel the intimate motion of her body against his, created an unexpected level of eroticism, here in a small town’s park.

  She turned to murmur another little something to him. “I think the accordion player has a thing for one of the dancers. He checks her out every time she circles past him, and she’s giving her skirt an extra little swirl to show off.”

  Her upper lip grazed his cheek, a millimeter of her touching a millimeter of him for the space of a single syllable as she spoke. Would this be it? Would this comment end with a kiss?

  The distance between them held as she whispered her secret observation, no kiss, not yet—but a fraction of a second before she turned back around, she took a quick little breath. Had that been intentional? Had she snuck in a taste of his body heat, tempted herself with the warmth of his skin?

  He’d never in his life wanted to kiss a woman this badly. He’d never imagined it was possible to want to kiss someone this badly.

  She wanted to kiss him, too. She’d almost kissed him a half dozen times this evening, at the hot chocolate stand, between the parked pickups and, yes, over by the hay bales. He knew her expressions better now, enough to know he hadn’t been wrong then. She wanted to kiss him, but she wouldn’t let herself do it, because she’d told him she didn’t give fake kisses.

  It wasn’t possible for Eli t
o receive any other kind. Eli was a fake.

  No matter how far Taylor distanced himself from his real life, he was E.L. Taylor. He always would be, until the day he didn’t narrowly escape death, whether that happened in seventy years or tomorrow. He was withholding information from Mallory. He was playing the game unfairly.

  Mallory slipped her left arm around his waist, making herself comfortable. Tomorrow, she would still be Mallory, wearing business attire to her campus job and studying in her dorm. He would wake up alone in a six-bedroom lake house and be E.L. Taylor.

  Loneliness.

  Taylor had spent October and November naming the feelings he’d known in the years before the terror of the plane crash: anger, impatience, tension, disgust, triumph. But he’d overlooked loneliness. Even his expensive therapist had missed it, but it was easy to identify, now that Mallory had made it go away this evening. He’d been lonely as E.L. Taylor.

  Emotions didn’t last forever, not terror, not calm, not loneliness. But loneliness had been around the longest, so it was hard to imagine it as temporary. It wasn’t: all the warmth they were building between them would freeze when he admitted the truth—when he admitted he’d lied. He would be lonely again after this evening.

  “Do you see it?” Mallory said under her breath. “Watch.”

  Taylor—no, he was Eli, for tonight—Eli watched what Mallory wanted him to watch, glad to delay the inevitable. Onstage, the accordion player was looking right through the dancers in front of him for someone else. A female dancer caught his eye, and she gave her apron an extra swoosh, flipping it up a little higher and showing a little more stocking-clad leg as she sashayed past the oompah band, peeking over her shoulder to be sure that one particular musician had appreciated it.

  “I see it,” Eli said.

  Mallory made that rolling gesture. “Practicing, remember?”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “Why yes, Ms. Fearless, I do see it. It’s fascinating, like one of those bizarre mating dances between two birds. Two very large, very German birds.”