a hundred percent comfortable in his presence—how could she be comfortable when she looked at him and remembered how delicious his kisses tasted, how his naked body felt gliding against hers?
Just thinking about him made her feel a little giddy. There was always a little extra bounce to her step on the nights her shift overlapped his emergency room duties.
“Fine.” She met his gaze and wondered what he was up to. The man was brilliant. He was also the only Santa she had. She needed him. “For the kids. I owe you.”
“Good,” he said, standing. “Let’s get this over with.”
Dirk’s smile scared her. Which felt wrong. How could a smiling Santa be intimidating? Yet, as his gloved hand clasped hers, her nervous system lit up like a twinkling Christmas tree.
Chapter Two
FROM the moment his precious two-year-old daughter and his wife had been killed in a car accident on their way to an early-morning Christmas bargain sale, Dirk Kelley had hated Christmas.
He’d avoided anything to do with the holiday year after year. To the point that his family had held a well-intended but unnecessary intervention at last year’s not-so-joyous festivities.
After their unwelcome confrontation, telling him he needed to deal with Sandra and Shelby’s deaths, they’d continued to hound him, to try to set him up on dates, to beg him to live life. By early summer, he’d known he had to move away from Oak Park, where his family resided, before the next holiday season. Much to their disappointment, he’d accepted the job in Philadelphia, knowing he was far enough away to avoid holiday get-togethers and their piteous look, but not so far away that he couldn’t make it home if there was an emergency. He loved them, just couldn’t deal with the pity in their eyes, their interference in what was left of his life.
They were wrong. He hadn’t needed the intervention. What he’d needed was for his wife and daughter to be alive, but that was impossible. He’d accepted that inevitability years ago, accepted that he had to move on with his life, and he had. But that didn’t mean he’d ever want to be involved with another woman or would welcome the month of December and all the holiday hoopla that arrived with it.
If he could fast-forward December, he’d gladly do so. The lights, the smells, the sales, the noises, everything about the month ripped open his never-healing chest wound.
Abby’s initial shocked expression must have mirrored his own when he’d agreed to be her Santa.
Mortification and panic had struggled for top seat. Yet he hadn’t been able to take back his ill-fated yes. Not when the wariness she’d eyed him with since the morning after they’d met had finally disappeared, replaced with surprise and soft hazel-eyed gratitude. That look had done something to his insides. Something strange and foreign and despite knowing how difficult today was going to be, he hadn’t retracted his agreement.
Not when doing so would disappoint Abby.
Thank God the deed was behind him and he could put Christmas nonsense behind him, where it belonged.
Thankfully de-Santafied, he wandered around Abby’s living room. The room had been taken hostage by Christmas Past since the last time he’d been here, two months ago. He’d swear he’d stepped into a nostalgic Christmas movie scene from a couple of decades ago.
An ancient wreath hung over Abby’s fireplace, a slightly thinning silver garland was draped over a doorway with faded red ribbons marking each corner. A small Christmas village complete with fake glittery snow and dozens of tiny trees and villagers was set up on a white cloth-covered table, clearly set up in a place of honor beside the tree. The nine main pieces of the village looked old, expensive.
Her live Christmas tree towered almost to the ceiling, a ceramic-faced angel’s tinsel halo mere inches from it. What a crazy tradition. Trees indoors. The entire room smelt like the pine tree—like Christmas. Smells he didn’t like. Smells that haunted him and took him to hellish places he didn’t want to go.
There had been a Christmas tree in the waiting room of the emergency department the morning Sandra and Shelby had died. Amazing how the smell could take him back to sitting in that room, a broken man, a doctor who hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to save his baby girl and her mother.
He walked over to the fireplace, eyeing the giant painted toy soldiers to each side, picking up a slightly worn wooden nutcracker. He shook his head, waiting for the nausea to hit him, waiting for the cold sweat to cover his skin, the grief to bring him to his knees.
Christmas did that to him. Sure, he’d learned to bury his pain beneath what most labeled as cynicism, but that didn’t mean in private moments the past didn’t sneak up to take a stab through his armor, to chip away another piece of what was left of him.
And yet, for the first time since Sandra and Shelby’s deaths, he’d agreed to do something that fed into the whole commercialism of Christmas. All because pretty little nurse Abby Arnold had asked him. She’d lit up so brilliantly someone could stick a halo on her head and place her on top of a tree.
He’d definitely found a piece of heaven on earth in her arms. Had found solace he hadn’t expected in the heat of her kisses.
Solace? After the first sweep of his mouth over her lush lips, he hadn’t been seeking comfort but acting on the attraction he’d instantly felt for the pretty brunette nurse. He’d been on fire. With lust. With need. With the desire to be inside her curvy body.
He hadn’t been remembering or forgetting. He’d been in the moment. With Abby.
He’d wanted her the second he’d laid eyes on her, but never had he experienced such all-consuming sex as that morning. So all-consuming he’d known they couldn’t repeat it. Quite easily he could see himself getting obsessed with having her body wrapped around him, getting serious when he had no intention of ever having another serious relationship. Just look at how often he thought of Abby and they’d only had the one morning where they’d made love, twice, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.
Letting out a slow, controlled breath, Dirk placed the nutcracker back on her mantel. Any time, any place, any thing. Why had he teased her into making such an outlandish promise? Better yet, why had he asked for what he had?
He turned, planning to go and find Abby, to tell her he’d changed his mind and needed to go.
A fat tabby cat in a wicker basket at the end of the sofa caught his eye. They’d been formally introduced when the cat had jumped onto the bed, waking both Dirk and Abby in the middle of the afternoon that mid-October day. The cat had been observing his perusal of the room but other than watch him with boredom the cat never moved except to close its eyes.
Realizing another smell, one that was making his stomach grumble, was taking precedence over the pine and was coming through an open doorway, he followed his nose.
When he stepped into the kitchen, he stopped still at the sight that met him, wondering if he’d had one too many kids call him Santa. Because he certainly had the feeling that he’d stepped into an old Christmas movie again.
Singing to the soft Christmas music playing on the mounted under-the-counter player, Abby had on an apron that had Mr. and Mrs. Claus kissing under a sprig of mistletoe on the front. She’d pulled her thick hair back with a red ribbon and had kicked off her shoes for a pair of worn, fuzzy Rudolph slippers.
