Buch lesen: «A Kiss, A Kid And A Mistletoe Bride»

Chapter One

“You can’t have that Christmas tree. It’s mine.”

The voice came at Gabrielle from between two low-slung branches. A foot stomped down, hard, on her instep. Startled, she tightened her grip on the scratchy bark.

Chin jutting out, a pint-size male face scowled at Gabrielle. “So put it back, you hear?” He wrapped stubby fingers around the branch nearest him and jiggled impatiently.

Needles sputtered onto the soggy ground. “Me and my dad already chose this tree. It’s ours. You gotta find another tree.”

Not wanting to encourage the scamp, Gabrielle bit back her laughter and surveyed the small bundle of determination.

His shirt was carefully tucked into new blue jeans, his face was clean, and his eyes, dark brown and anxious, glared back at her. Someone had made a valiant attempt to slick down the cowlick at the crown of his head. The shoelaces on pricey new athletic shoes were double-tied.

Someone had taken pains to spiffy the boy up. Clearly, he didn’t need her pity, but some thin edge of desperation or loneliness underneath his tenacity called to her.

Maybe it was only Christmas, the lights and smells of hope reaching out to her, making her vulnerable to this belligerent, wide-eyed waif. Or maybe it was her own loneliness and need for a perfect Christmas that shone back at her from this boy’s eyes.

“So, lady, you understand? Right? You gotta find yourself another tree, okay?”

She heard the aggression, heard the rudeness. And in the soft darkness of a Florida night sweet-scented with pine and cinnamon and broken only by the glow of twinkling lights strung high from utility poles, she saw the bone-deep anxiety deepen in those eyes frowning up at her.

It was that anxiety and his dogged insistence that got to her. Bam. Like a hand reaching right into her chest, his need squeezed her heart.

But it was her damnable curiosity, which had been a besetting sin all her life, and maybe amusement that kept her interest as she watched him stiffen his shoulders and glower at her, waiting for her answer.

He was a pistol, he was, this tough little guy who wasn’t about to give an inch just because she was bigger than he was. She took a deep breath. Somewhere in happy song land, elves were shrieking in glee because Santa had asked Rudolph to lead his sleigh. But here in Tibo’s tree lot, as she stared at the pugnacious urchin, Gabrielle felt like the Grinch who was about to steal Christmas.

Wanting to erase that dread from his face, she dropped her hand. The tree wobbled, and she reached out to steady it. The boy’s face scrunched in alarm as she grasped the tree again, and she released it as soon as she saw he was able to keep it upright. “How do you know I didn’t see it first?” she asked, curious to see what he’d say.

“‘Cause I was standing here guarding it. That’s why.” His not-Southern voice dripped with disbelief that she could be so dumb. He let part of the tree’s weight rest against him. “My daddy’s over there.” Keeping his grip on the tree, the child jerked his chin toward the front of the lot “He went to get Tibo. Tibo’s gonna saw off the bottom so the tree can get enough water and last a-a-all Christmas,” he said, finishing on a drawn-out hiss of excitement. “And in case you got any ideas, lady, you better not mess with my tree or with me ’cause my daddy’s real tough. You’ll be sorry,” the boy said, never blinking. “You don’t want to tangle with me and my daddy ’cause we’re a team and we’re tougher ’n a piece of old dried shoe leather.”

“I see.” Hearing the adult’s voice in the childish treble, Gabrielle bit her lip to keep from smiling. “That’s tough, all right”

“Da-darned straight.” The square chin bobbed once, hard. “Nobody tangles with us. Not with me and my daddy, they don’t, not if they know what’s good for ’em.” Sticking out his chest, he pulled his shoulders so far back that Gabrielle was afraid he’d pop a tendon.

This boy was definitely used to taking care of himself. His sturdy, small body fairly quivered with don’t-mess-with-me attitude. Still, in spite of his conviction that he could handle anything, Gabrielle wasn’t comfortable leaving him by himself. He couldn’t be more than five, if that. Well, perhaps older, she thought, reconsidering the look in his eyes, but innocent for all his streetwise sass. And it was a scary world out there, even in Bayou Bend.

How could the father have walked off and left this child alone in the dark tree lot—in this day and age? It was none of her business, she knew, but she wouldn’t be able to keep from telling the father that little guys shouldn’t be left alone, not even in Tibo’s tree lot.

“I’m sorry, but I really think I saw the tree first,” she said, not caring about the tree, only trying to keep his attention while she scanned the empty aisles, looking for one tough daddy.

“Nope.” He tipped his head consideringly but didn’t move a hairbreadth from where he was standing.

“What, exactly, would your daddy do?” she asked, prolonging the moment and hoping the urchin’s daddy would appear. “If I’d messed with—your tree?”

“Somethin’,” her argumentative angel assured her. “Anyways, I know we seen it first. You was nowhere around.”

“I saw this tree right away. I liked the shape of it.” She fluffed a branch but made sure she didn’t let her grasp linger as the boy’s gaze followed her movement. “And it’s big. I wanted a big tree this year.” Her gaze lingered on the truly awful ugliness and bigness of the tree, and her voice caught. “I wanted a special tree.”

He shifted, frowned and finally looked away from her, sighing as he glanced up at the tree. “Yeah. Me, too.”

Again Gabrielle imagined she heard an underlying note of wistfulness in his froggy voice.

This stray had his reasons for choosing Tibo’s sucker tree. She had hers.

The singing elves gave way to a jazzed-up “Jingle Bells,” which boomed over her, and Gabrielle sighed. She and her dad had always made a point of dragging home the neediest tree they could find just to hear her mama rip loose with one of her musical giggles.

Last year, dazed and in a stupor, they had let Christmas become spring before either one of them climbed out of the pit they’d fallen into with her mama’s death.

Christmas had always been Mary Kathleen O’Shea’s favorite day.

Gabrielle and her dad hadn’t been able to wrap their minds around the vision of that empty chair at the foot of the big dining room table. No way for either of them to fake a celebration, not with that image burned into their brains.

And so, in spite of a sixty-degree, bright blue Florida day that enticed Yankee tourists to dip a toe into the flat blue Gulf of Mexico, Christmas last year had been a cold, dark day in the O’Shea house.

This year, the giggles might once again be only a memory, but everything else was going to be the way it used to be. They’d have the right tree, the brightest lights strung on all the bushes around the old house, the flakiest mincemeat pie. Everything would be perfect. They’d find a way to deal with the empty chair, with all that it meant. In hindsight, she wondered if they shouldn’t have forced themselves to face that emptiness last year, get past it. They hadn’t, though, and the ache was as fresh as it had been barely a year ago.

But this Christmas, one way or another, was going to be perfect. Whatever perfect was, under the circumstances.

She sighed again and saw the boy’s gaze flash to her face.

He shifted uneasily. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, so softy she almost missed it. “But this is my special tree for me and my daddy.”

She wanted to hug him, to wrap him in her arms and comfort him. Instead, knowing little boys, she tried for matter-of fact.

“Well, that’s life.” Gabrielle thought she’d never heard a kid invoke daddy powers so often in so short a space of time. “Win some. Lose some, she said, hoping to erase the frown that still remained.

“Yeah. That’s life,” he repeated glumly before brightening. “Except at Christmas.”

She heard the hope in his gruff treble. Well, why shouldn’t it be there? All these Christmas lights strung up created a longing even in adults for magic, for something in this season when the world, even in Florida, seemed forever suspended in cold and darkness.

Her throat tightened, but she plunged ahead, desperate to change the direction of her thoughts. All this sighing and reminiscing weren’t going to help her create her perfect Christmas. “You didn’t see me over by the fence? I was there, scoping out this very tree.”

With his too-wise eyes, the boy examined her face, then shook his head with certainty. “Nah. You’re trying to pull a fast one on me.”

“Really?” The kid was too smart by half. “I might be telling the truth,” she said thoughtfully, watching as he continued to study her face.

“Nope.” He grinned, a flash of teeth showing in the twilight of the tree lot. “You’re funning with me now.”

Intrigued, she kneeled, going nose to nose with him. “How do you know?”

“I can tell.” He shifted from one foot to the next, his attention wandering anxiously now from her to the front of the lot. “Grown-ups don’t tell kids the truth. Not a lot, anyways.”

“Oh.” Gabrielle wrapped her arms around her knees to steady herself as she absorbed this truth from a kid who shouldn’t have had time to learn it. “That’s what you think I’m doing?”

“Sure.” His mouth formed an upside-down U. “You’re teasing me now, that’s all.”

This child had learned that his survival depended on knowing when the adults in his life were lying to him. She sensed he’d learned this truth in a hard school, that survival had depended on it. “You can tell when grown-ups are—funning with you?” She made her tone teasing.

“Funning’s different from not telling the truth,” he said matter-of-factly, his gaze drifting once more to the front of the lot. He, like her, was seeking the tough-but-absent daddy. “Funning’s okay. No harm in funning. Most of the time.”

“I see.” Again that squeeze of her heart, that sharp pinch that made her catch her breath. “Want to draw straws for the tree?”

“No way,” he scoffed. “You’re still funning with me.” Suddenly delight washed over his face. “I remember! My daddy took the sticker off the tree, so we got proof.”

“Ah. My loss, then.” She smiled at him easily, letting him know their game was over.

In back of her, a foot scraped against one of the boards that formed narrow pathways between the aisles of trees. An elongated shadow slanted across her, and, still kneeling, still smiling back at the boy who’d shot her a quick grin, she pivoted, looking up at the silhouette looming above her.

“Daddy!” The boy wriggled from head to toe and launched himself at the silhouette, dragging the tree with him. “Daddy!”

Relieved, Gabrielle lifted her chin toward the tough daddy who’d finally shown up. Words formed on her lips—pleasant, instructive words designed to let this man know he should keep a closer eye on his son.

And then she saw the man’s face.

Her heart lurched in her chest. Her throat closed, and her face flushed, with a heat so sudden and fierce she wondered she didn’t burst into flames.

In front of her, Joe Carpenter, a lean, rangy male who’d been born with attitude to spare, attitude he’d apparently passed on to his son, rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled gently down at the child who’d wrapped himself around his leg. “So, Oliver, reckon you’re still determined to have this tree, huh?”

“Yeah.” Clutching tree and man, the boy fastened one arm around Joe’s waist and leaned against him. “This is the biggest tree. The best A humdinger. Our tree. Right, huh?” He slanted a quick look at Gabrielle and before smiling blissfully at his father.

Gabrielle wondered if she could simply walk away, invisible, into the darkness, disappear behind tree branches, vanish. Anything so he wouldn’t see her.

And then Joe Carpenter looked right at her, wicked amusement gleaming in weary brown eyes. “We’ve got to quit meeting like this, Gabby.” He didn’t smile, but the bayou brown of his eyes flashed with light and mischief.

As memory spun spiderwebs between them, she wished she were anywhere but kneeling at the feet of Joe Carpenter.

Knuckling his son’s brown hair, hair only a few shades lighter than his own, Joe wrinkled his forehead. “Let me see. It’s been what...?” One corner of his mouth gave a teeny-tiny twitch she almost missed in her embarrassment.

In spite of the past, a past embodied in Joe’s son, a past made up of eleven years of creating her own life, she knew to the day and the month how long it had been. And he remembered, too, she decided as she watched his face and willed her own to fade from Christmas red to boring beige.

May 17. Saturday. Prom night Out of place and miserable, she was fifteen years old and younger than her date’s senior friends.

“Hey, pretty Gabby,” he’d said that night, edging his motorcycle right up to the break wall behind the country club.

Water slapped against the dock while he surveyed her, the rumble of his cycle throbbing between them in the humid spring night.

“What are you doing out here? The dance is inside.”

He motioned to the club behind them, with its faint bass beat and blaze of lights.

“I know.” She turned her head and swiped away angry tears.

“So, you going to tell me why the prettiest girl is out here all by her lonesome? Or you going to make me guess?”

Gabrielle knew she wasn’t the prettiest girl. She knew exactly who and what she was. She was the good girl, the one who chaired school committees, worked on the homecoming floats, went to church every Sunday. The girl everybody could count on. The girl who took everything too seriously.

Oh, she knew what she was. She wasn’t the prettiest girl, not by anybody’s definition, but she liked being precisely who she was, and now Joe Carpenter was teasing her, or making fun of her, or flirting with her. Whatever he was doing, she didn’t know how to respond, and she wanted him to stop.

But she wanted even more for him to keep talking to her in that deliciously husky voice that raised the hairs on her arms.

That deep voice vibrated inside her, creating a hunger so unfamiliar that she felt like someone else, not a bit like Gabrielle O’Shea.

Joe Carpenter made her feel—wild.

And curious.

So she drew up her knees under the pale chiffon of her slim skirt, tried not to sniff too loudly and stared out at the shimmer of moonlight on the water. Better to watch the glisten of the water than to think about what Joe Carpenter might mean, because good girls knew better than to be alone with Joe. Even if they wanted to.

Even when their bodies hummed to the tuning fork of Joe Carpenter’s voice.

Especially then, she decided, and wrapped herself tighter in her own arms.

He waited for a moment, but when she stayed silent, he kicked down the motorcycle stand, turned off the engine and walked over to her, his boots squeaking against the wet grass. “The prettiest girl should be inside, dancing the last dance. The one where they finally turn down the lights real low and everybody snuggles up and pretends all that touchin’ is accidental.”

Thinking about the kind of touching he meant, she shivered, and her barely there breasts tingled interestingly.

His voice burred with a kind of teasing she wasn’t able to return, and he stepped nearer. “You know what I mean, Gabby. The kissing dance. That’s what you’re missing. I bet Johnny Ray’s looking all over for you. He’d want to dance real slow, real close, and see if your hair smells as pretty as it looks.”

He flicked his half-smoked cigarette into the bay and took one more step closer, his thighs bumping her stockinged toes. “Because I’ve been wondering. Does it, Gabby? Does it smell like rain shine and night jasmine?” With the tip of his finger, he brushed the top of her head, and her toes curled hard against the cement break wall.

She didn’t say a word. Couldn’t. Not even when he ran one callused finger down her shoulder, slipping under the cap sleeve of her dress and tracing the veins of her inner arm. She didn’t speak even when he touched her wrist, gently, lightly, a butterfly touch that made her pulse skip and stutter. With a half smile she would wonder about for years, he lifted her arm, holding it up. Moonlight glinted on the thin band of her bracelet, on her skin, turning everything silver.

“Aw, what the hell,” he muttered. “Johnny Ray’s not here, but I am. Too bad for ol’ Johnny Ray,” he said, and tucked her arm around his neck. “Damned if I’m not going to find out for myself what rain shine smells and tastes like.” His gaze never leaving hers, he lifted one of the curls that had cost her thirty-five dollars at Sally Lynn’s salon and, shutting his eyes, stroked the curl against his mouth. “Delicious, that’s what,” he whispered, his dark eyes filling her sight. “Who could have guessed?”

And then the baddest of the bad boys kissed her, and she kissed him right back, a great big smooch of a kiss, tongues and lips and bodies touching in that silvery light Oh, Lord, the touching. All down the stretch of his tough, hard body, her fifteen-year-old self melted, and there had been touching.

She liked feeling wild and wicked and out of control. She liked the hum of her body against his, liked the powerful drumming of his heart against her hand.

But just when she felt like soda pop fizzing out of control, his breath buzzing into her ear and making her insides quiver, he’d murmured, “You may be jailbait, sweet pea, but I swear to God it would be worthwhile. Except—”

He pushed her away from him, leaving her skin cold and hot and aching all at the same time. Stepping away with a grin that promised heaven or hell—she’d never been able to decide—he straddled his cycle and left her in a squeal of tires against pavement while she tried to decide if she wanted to call her daddy to come and pick her up or steal the car keys from her football-hero, drunk-as-a-skunk prom date.

For the rest of that night, her mouth, her body, her skin—everything—had ached and burned with that cold heat, and for the next two years she’d dreamed about Joe Carpenter.

Of course, she hadn’t seen him again after that night.

He’d vanished, leaving Bayou Bend with its own kind of buzz as rumors floated, eddied and finally died away, leaving unexplained the mystery of nineteen-year-old Joe Carpenter’s disappearance one month shy of graduation.

Now, staring up the length of his legs and thighs, Gabrielle swallowed. Even in the darkness of this Christmas tree lot, eleven years later, her entire body flushed with that memory.

No wonder he’d been the town’s bad boy.

Well, she didn’t want those disturbing dreams haunting her again. It had taken too many sleepless nights, too many confused days for her to erase Joe Carpenter from her dreams, her memories.

“So how long has it been?” he asked, his voice low and rumbly, goading, baiting her. “Let me think if I can remember the last time I saw you, Gabby. It must have been—”

“A while,” she said grimly, struggling to her feet and catching one flat-heeled shoe on slippery needles and mud. “That’s how long. A while.” Her foot skidded forward and her arms windmilled crazily. Flailing, she saw her purse sail into the darkness.

“Whoa, sweet pea.” Joe’s warm hand closed around her elbow and braced her, his still-callused fingers sliding down her wrist as she balanced.

Even through the silk of her blouse, Gabrielle felt that warm, rough slide. His hand had been warm that night, too, warm against her bare skin. She shivered.

“Cold?” Amusement glittered in his eyes. Heat was in the depths, too, as he watched her.

He knew what he was doing, as he had eleven years ago, eleven years that had vanished like smoke with his touch. He knew, but she was darned if she’d give him the satisfaction of going all giddy and girlish.

She was twenty-six years old, too old for girlish. Giddy and girlish had never been her style, not even at fifteen. “It’s the damp. That’s all,” she muttered. “I’m not used to it anymore.”

“Sure that’s all it is?” His question, below the raucous rendition of the chipmunks and their version of “Jingle Bells,” tickled the edge of her cheek where he bent over her, still supporting her.

“Absolutely.”

“You moved away from Bayou Bend?” He clamped a hand under her elbow and steadied her.

“I’ve been living in Arizona. Same rattlesnakes. Less humid.” She dusted off her red velour skirt, shot Oliver a smile and a “so long” and slung her shoulder strap over her arm. “Nice to see you again, Joe. Merry Christmas to you and your son.”

She was almost safe. One second more, and she would have been up the walkway and gone, out to her car, away from the slamming of her heart against her chest, away from memory and the sizzle of his touch. One second. That’s all she needed.

Out of the darkness of the next aisle, Moon Tibo lumbered, bumping into her and pitching her straight into Joe Carpenter’s arms. “Okay, folks, let’s haul this tree up front and get you on your way. I mean, you only got twenty-four days to the big event. Y’all gonna want time to hang up them ornaments before this year’s over, right?”

“Right.” Joe’s laugh gusted against her ear, and Gabrielle felt her toes curl in memory. “Give me a minute, Moon. Got a damsel in distress here.”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. How ya doin’, Gabrielle? Your dad feelin’ better?”

“Much.” She was all tied up with her purse strap and Joe’s arms, and she twisted, pushed, while Joe’s chest shook with laughter against her. Over its broad slope, she finally angled her face in Moon’s direction. “Dad’s cooking jambalaya tomorrow night, in fact. For after we decorate the tree. Come on over. He’d enjoy seeing you.”

Six foot five and built like a mountain, Moon gifted her with one of his rare smiles. “Might do that. Sure like your dad, I do.”

She tugged again at her strap, which had flicked over Joe’s head and bound them together. Mumbling under her breath to Joe, whose only help so far had been to keep her from landing face first in pine needles and mud, she said, “Give me a hand, will you? I can’t do this alone.”

“You got it, sweet pea. Lots of things aren’t any fun done alone. I like lending a helping hand.” His half smile could have lit up the town of Bayou Bend for a couple of blocks, and even Gabrielle’s forehead blazed with heat. Lifting the strap, he ducked under it, his thick hair brushing up against her mouth, and stepped back. “I’m ready to help out. When I can.” His palm was flat and firm against the hollow of her spine. “How’s that?”

“Peachy. Thanks.” Gabrielle untangled herself from Joe’s clasp and blushed back her hair. Joe Carpenter would flirt if he were wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy. “This has been—special.”

“Absolutely.” He plucked a pine needle twig from her hair and handed it to her. “A memento, Gabby. For old times’ sake.” His voice was light, amused, and his eyes teased her.

But behind the gleam, deep in their shadowy depths, she thought—no, imagined—she saw regret, a regret that made no sense, and so, surely, she must be imagining that rueful glint.

“We never had old times, Joe.” She mustered a smile and let the twig fall to the ground.