For This Christmas Only Read online

  “Your family shouts?”

  “Yours doesn’t?”

  She’d meant it flippantly, but curiosity made her pause for an answer.

  “No.”

  She made a rolling motion with her hand. Keep going, that’s not a complete sentence.

  His lips quirked. “I haven’t tried to hold a business meeting with them. My younger sister can be dramatic, if memory serves.”

  “My brother always shouts. People hate the noise and leave the room, so he wins that way. It’s not a fair way to play the game, but I knew he’d do it. When he threw my paperwork back at me, I wasn’t surprised. I’d presented actual contracts from a couple of caregiving services, and he picked out the fact that the professional caregivers were allowed to eat one meal a day away from their patient, but they had to pay for that meal. He acted like that invalidated every other point.” Mallory imitated her brother’s most patronizing tone. “‘Haven’t you noticed? You never have to pay for your lunch.’”

  Eli made a rolling motion with his hand. And? Keep going.

  “I told him this meeting wasn’t about a sandwich. It was about a salary.”

  Eli actually made a sound of amusement—and approval. Pop went another champagne bubble.

  “So, long story short, my dad took over. Instead of shouting, he got all weepy, saying he’d always wanted his little baby girl to be a happy homemaker, not the ungrateful woman before him. I kept pretending I was cool and confident. Once they realized the shouting and tears didn’t work, they dropped that and started talking. From that point on, it was simple math. My salary request was so much less expensive than hiring someone to take care of Grandpa, it was an easy decision for them once they realized I meant business.”

  Eli looked serious in the starlight.

  “No pun intended,” she added.

  He still looked serious. “Why do you describe yourself as pretending?”

  “‘Fake it ’til you make it,’ that’s my mantra.”

  “But why have you chosen it? I haven’t seen any evidence that it applies to you.”

  “You’re saying this after witnessing my crying episode, up close and personal?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “You weren’t pretending to cry.”

  “I know that.” She crossed her arms over her chest, too, and leaned her back against the side of the pickup truck behind her. The trucks were parked so that a door could be opened for a driver to get in, but no farther apart than that. They spoke across the width of a truck door like they were speaking across the width of an executive desk. Mallory wanted that type of success, that financial security. Yet here she was, leaning against someone else’s pickup truck, breaking rule after rule of her business plan, discarding everything that had worked for the past two years.

  This was for one night only. They hadn’t exchanged phone numbers or addresses, or even offered their last names. She might have mentioned hers in passing just now, but it wasn’t like he was going to memorize every detail about her. He wanted a one-night, fake date, too.

  She wasn’t abandoning a good plan; she was pausing it. She looked at Eli in the soft, gray night and stopped pretending that she was any future version of herself.

  “It’s exhausting to keep up this big façade of being an energetic, goal-oriented person. You should see me at work. I’ve got a part-time campus job where I sit in a cubicle with an outdated desktop computer, and I type up things I’m told to type up. That’s all there is to it, but I dress like I’m going to call a team into the conference room for a meeting. I’m faking it because I wish I had a job where I needed to wear business attire instead of rain boots and hand-me-downs.” She tugged on the collar of her coat and sheepishly squinted at him through one eye. “I’m vain enough that I only kept the good hand-me-downs. It makes it easier to pretend I’m successful.”

  Eli remained serious, as if even that information wasn’t trivial. “If you have a job that you perform in business attire, then you aren’t pretending you have a job where you wear business attire. If your family shouted and cried, and you remained both unemotional and on topic, then you didn’t pretend that you were cool and confident. You were.”

  “On the outside. My heart was pounding in my chest because I was so scared I’d fail. My heart was breaking a little, too. My grandpa was the person who could have ended up in a stranger’s care if I’d failed. He was the last relative I took care of, and I enjoyed living with him the most. The irony was that he was the only person in the family who thought I was doing the right thing by threatening to find a job that paid something.”

  “Is this the grandpa who told you about men and marriage?”

  “Yes. He taught me so much about life. I really miss him.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.” Eli said.

  “Oh, he’s not dead. He’s ninety-three and kicking. He moved into an assisted-living apartment complex in August, just before I came down here to start the fall semester. He did that for me, so I wouldn’t feel guilty about leaving him.”

  She had to pause for another breath. She couldn’t cry on Eli again.

  “He gave up his house for me. I still can’t believe it. Before we moved out, he overheard me making calls to find a ride share to get from Ohio to Texas. He gave me his car. He signed the title over to me, so it wasn’t a loaner car I’d feel obliged to return. He said he didn’t need it anymore, because the assisted-living center provides shuttles to doctors and grocery stores and everything.

  “I pretended it all made me as joyful as my grandpa wanted it to make me, but it tore me up inside. I didn’t cry, though. I can usually hold my tears. There’s just something about tonight that’s been getting to me.” She exhaled heavily. “I’m sorry you got stuck with all this crying.”

  Eli shrugged away her apology. “You don’t make a very good Cinderella.”

  That sounded insulting. Cinderella was iconic, the perfect example of how a woman should be endlessly patient, never unkind. Cinderella was beautiful, too, the center of attention as she gracefully entered the palace in her sparkly blue—yikes. Maybe the glamour was a bigger factor than Mallory wanted to admit.

  Eli looked stern, like a principal about to lecture a student who was wasting their potential, or a police chief about to dress down the rookie. “Cinderella only went to her ball because of someone else’s magic. You’re here, in the middle of your ball, because you earned it yourself with your own hard work.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t give her the unnecessary question look. Instead, he pushed himself off the truck and placed his hands on her crossed arms, cupping her elbows, pulling her up to stand in front of him.

  “It wasn’t Cinderella’s type of hard work, doing whatever chores others dictated she would do. You are the one who determined what needed to be done, not your family. You worked hard on the right things to hit your goals.”

  That praise sounded excessive. “I wouldn’t have managed it on my own, if I hadn’t gotten good advice from my friend.”

  “People get excellent advice all the time, but that doesn’t make them successful. You were smart enough to recognize which advice could work for you, and you were dedicated enough to implement it.”

  He spoke with authority, but there was something in his expression that said she wasn’t his underling. She was important. She mattered. It didn’t remind her of anyone else in any movie at all. This was just him. Talking to just her.

  “Don’t cry over Cinderella again. You aren’t anything like her. It’s very clear that she doesn’t measure up to you.”

  Mallory looked at her leading man under the starlight, and she felt one last tear slip from the corner of her eye to roll elegantly down her cheek like a bit of movie magic.

  Eli ran his finger up her cheek, stopping it in its tracks and whisking it away.

  “I’m sorry I agre
ed to this fake date,” she whispered.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I would kiss you right now, if we were real.”

  Chapter Seven

  Never be afraid to speak the truth.

  —How to Taylor Your Business Plan

  by E.L. Taylor

  “Nobody wants a fake kiss,” said Mallory.

  Eli looked at the woman he wanted to kiss more than he could remember wanting to kiss a woman in a long, long time. Far longer than since September.

  Mallory bit her lip.

  “I’ll take a fake kiss,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t feel like a real one.” There was a breathless note in her voice that affected him as much as that lip-bite.

  Nevertheless, Eli let go of her arms. She’d had an emotional evening, too much of it his fault. He shouldn’t push.

  But E.L. Taylor had habits that were hard to break. He could be ruthless when he knew what he wanted. He could also charm when he needed to charm, and he could balance those two things, because E.L. Taylor was a very good negotiator.

  So, he let go, but he didn’t step back. “In the pavilion, you said I couldn’t know that heroes ought to be avoided, unless I’d met a hero in the past. The same logic applies here. You can’t know if a fake kiss will or won’t feel right unless you try it.”

  She lowered her gaze to his mouth, so with the taste of victory on the tip of his tongue, he moved a little closer, ready for that kiss. She had only to sway toward him.

  Abruptly, she lifted her gaze—and her chin, too. “Who said I’ve never tried it before, Eli?”

  You really think you’re God’s gift to women. Same tone of voice. No one else spoke to him like that, ever.

  His smile wasn’t intentional. “Fearless.”

  “I’ve got standards,” she said.

  “So do I. You exceed them all.”

  “Eli.” She shook her head ever so slowly, a dimple appearing as she fought not to smile. “Eli.”

  It’s Taylor.

  If Mallory kissed him, she would be kissing an imposter named Eli. He wasn’t playing fair. He was withholding information that would surely change the game.

  But he was Eli. He had been more than half his life, until he’d come here, to this town. Until, at age eighteen, he’d entered Masterson University and seized the opportunity to be someone else, a man of his own design: E.L. Taylor, the multi-millionaire entrepreneur, the hotshot with the model du jour on his arm, the man who had it all.

  This September, he’d seen that for the lie it was. He couldn’t defy gravity, and when he’d fallen from the sky, he’d known that his life, like everyone else’s, could be lost on a dime. If Mallory kissed the real Taylor, she’d be kissing a man who’d nearly died without leaving behind anything that anyone would mourn. His stocks and homes and cars would not have ceased to exist. They would have been divided among his family by a law firm that would’ve charged an outrageous bill rate. Only Taylor himself would have ceased to exist, and nobody would have missed having him in their lives—not his terse conversation, not his cold companionship, not even his business acumen.

  Mallory would be better off kissing the fake boyfriend. The real E.L. Taylor wasn’t worth a dime.

  “I only give real kisses.” Mallory placed her hand on the side of his face, tentatively. He could feel the gentle hold, but not more, not through the bristles that he hadn’t shaved in too many days. Then her thumb stroked a little higher, over his cheekbone, and he felt her cool skin touching his. She pushed a few of her fingers through his hair, smoothing back a piece that must have fallen forward, and his eyes closed in reaction, as if she’d stroked him somewhere much lower, much harder, someplace where the touch would have a purpose.

  “Since you were kind enough to hold me while I cried real tears, here is a real kiss.” She rose on her toes as she tilted his head down, and she placed warm lips just above his left eyebrow, on the spot she’d just bared with her fingertips. “Thank you for being so patient and kind.”

  She stepped back.

  Eli Taylor stayed as he was, head bowed, humbled by a kiss that had no other purpose.

  * * *

  Mallory bumped into the pickup truck behind herself.

  She’d done it. She’d touched him, she’d kissed him, and now she’d backed herself into a corner where the only gracious thing left to do was leave with whatever dignity she still had after crying her heart out with a stranger. She gave her cheeks one final wipe with the hand that had just touched Eli’s face—his beard, his hair, all real, all warm.

  Bodies... She’d spent so many years caring for bodies in distress, she’d forgotten that a touch could be warm and sexy, a touch between two people who were attracted to one another, equally vulnerable—but that wasn’t the case here. Mallory hadn’t seen any vulnerability in him at all. He was just this alpha male who said the perfect thing now and then.

  This birthday party is a fantasy, remember? Time to go back to the dorm, Mallory.

  She took her ski cap out of her pocket. The mitten came out, too, and fell to the ground. She bent to pick it up, although, really, what was the point?

  Eli bent to get it, too, so they ended up with an awkward moment, an attempt not to butt heads. His arms were longer, and he snagged the mitten before she did.

  She’d been holding his gloves in her fist this whole time. “Here. I’ll trade you.”

  She took her single mitten and slapped it on her jeans a time or two. The reason she’d stuffed it in her pocket when she’d first stood next to Eli was so she wouldn’t look like a beggar with only one. She pretended she still had two, but just didn’t want to wear them. “This is just too sandy to wear. I’ll wash it later.”

  “You wore only one mitten when you first walked up to me.”

  So much for that little attempt at fakery.

  “That peripheral vision of yours is really something, because you sure as heck didn’t even glance at me while I was brushing the sand off my boot. I know, because I was looking at you the whole time, ready to give you a nice, fake smile. Yet somehow you noticed I was wearing only one mitten?”

  He was back to the unnecessary question mode, apparently. The expression on his face wasn’t as supercilious as before, though. It was awfully close to concern.

  “Yes, I only have one.” She tried to make it sound funny. “You know what they call a single mitten?”

  “No.”

  She smacked it one more time, a mess of blue wool and sand. “A rag.”

  She’d thought it would sound clever in the context of their Cinderella conversation, but it fell flat. It was too true. One mitten was useless.

  “Where’s the other one?”

  “At a fraternity party, apparently.” She stuffed the mitten back in her pocket. “Better it than me.”

  “Frat boys?” He looked upward, picturing something in his mind. “Three of them, to the left of us. Kappa Lambda on one jacket.”

  “Is peripheral vision your superpower? I would swear you didn’t look away from that bonfire for a second. I thought you were having a staring contest with it. You were winning, by the way.”

  His frown was so sudden, she thought she’d angered him.

  “Is that a bad thing?” she asked.

  He shook his head, a single, sharp no. “I assumed you were trying to make one of them jealous. They were frat boys. You looked like a coed. It made sense. But when I picked you up—”

  “When you threw me on a hay bale.”

  “When I saw that you weren’t that young, I assumed they couldn’t be who you were avoiding. I stopped paying attention to them.”

  “You didn’t see them flip me the bird?”

  “Obviously not. I wouldn’t have let that stand.” He scrubbed his beard in an angry sort of way. Mallory imagined the rasp of those whiskers on his
palm was stimulating—or punishing. “It’s not an excuse, but I was distracted by...” He fell silent.

  “By me? The femme fatale in the sandy rubber boots?” She laughed, mostly so he’d stop being so serious about it. He shouldn’t feel badly for not challenging three guys who hadn’t done anything in his sight.

  “By having a large bird making herself at home on my head. If I’d seen them flipping—”

  “This is excellent news. Maybe not as good as the other excellent news I clued you into tonight, but if you were that distracted, then you don’t know how I responded. Please assume that I was far too mature to flip them off in return.”

  “Did you?”

  “Oh, yes. I was quite brave, hiding behind you. If they’d gotten angrier, though, you could have found yourself in the middle of something you didn’t know I was instigating over the top of your head. It wasn’t fair of me to risk that happening to you.”

  He waved off her concern. “It’s all part of the fake boyfriend duties. Anytime, Mallory.”

  And then, he winked.

  That wink hit every note that made her body sing. Fun, sexy, confident, intimate, a wink meant for no one except her.

  She looked away, down the row of pickups, for a breath or two. “You know, you can be really charming when you want to be.”

  “That’s also excellent news. I feel pretty damned rusty.”

  “Nothing an oilcan can’t fix. Practicing could help, too.”

  Pull me close again. Touch my hair again.

  He didn’t. She was rusty at the dating game herself, an understatement if there ever was one, but he sure seemed like a man who was into her. Then again, he kept his hands clasped behind his back, a soldier standing at ease, content to look at her and talk, no need to touch.