volunteer.
“So, no available elf position,” she said. She fully intended for it to sound like a breezy dismissal, but even she could hear the renegade regret in her voice as if she truly would like to give him a position even though a man like him would never really volunteer at an organization like this, and even though she had decided she didn’t like him. Or at least didn’t like what he was doing to her. Then she blushed.
It came without the warning heat in her chest first, no time to ward it off with visual images of fresh fillets. When she blushed, her whole face went crimson, from jawline to forehead, like a red Christmas light blinking to life.
And then he did smile, finally, just a tease of one, a slight curl of lip, as if smiling might hurt him. The smile didn’t have a hope of touching what was in those eyes.
“I can do other things,” he said. “Besides be an elf.”
“Like what?” she gasped. Ridiculous to ask. He had said it reluctantly and she had already decided she wanted him out of here. He was the kind of man who could hurt a woman—especially one like her—very badly. He could do it without half trying, and he could do it without looking back.
The smile was gone completely. He regarded her thoughtfully for a long moment. The moment stretched.
She realized, wildly, that she had left herself wide-open. Of course there were other things he could do and do well. The shape of his lips, for instance, suggested he would be an amazing kisser. All kinds of men would have jumped on the opportunity to let her know that, and all the other skills that she was missing out on, too.
But this man did not take the opportunity, thankfully, to flirt with her, even though he looked like a man who would be very comfortable flirting with women. Gorgeous women, who streaked their hair and managed to get some lipstick on every day, and wore hip-hugging tight jeans instead of frumpy brown skirts.
Kirsten’s flirting days, if they could be called that, were far, far behind her. And somehow, maybe because of that secret his eyes were trying to tell her, she suspected his were, too.
She thought he was not going to answer at all, And then he said, gruffly, reluctantly, “I guess that depends. Is there anything else you need done?”
Her thoughts were renegade. What woman could be in a room with a man like this and not think of all the things a woman alone would like done?
That little knot rubbed out of the tender place where her shoulder joined her neck, for starters.
She was stunned at herself.
Four years. Virtually a nun. Wanting it that way. The breakup of her sister Becky’s marriage—a love Kirsten had unabashedly idolized—had broken something in Kirsten, too. Becky and Kent had begun dating just after the James fiasco, and just as Kirsten’s own parents were ending their twenty-year union. Still a teenager, impressionable, hopeful, naive, Kirsten had transferred her need to believe in love—in forever—to Becky and Kent. Instead, in the end, they had reinforced her deepest fear: things that seemed strong could be so, so heartbreakingly fragile.
“Is that why you’re here?” she said, not trying to hide her incredulity. “To volunteer?”
He hesitated, nodded. Sort of nodded, the slightest inclination of his head. “I’m a carpenter by trade. Anything you need built?”
She sighed. Even if she took his offer more practically, there was so much she needed done. Sixteen tricycles to begin with. Of course he wasn’t really here to help her, though there was nothing she could use right now like a strong, healthy man to unload trucks, to put heavy items up on high shelves. And a carpenter? Every year they built a sleigh to deliver gifts. It was built on top of the rickety flat-deck trailer in the warehouse. Every year she was amazed someone didn’t get hurt, and that it didn’t rattle apart.
But to invite a temptation like him into her space? This was her world. It was where everything was in her control—and she wasn’t surrendering that for a better sleigh!
Besides, she found it hard to believe he’d come here to volunteer. He just wasn’t the type. No, he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, and decided to amuse himself at her expense for a few moments.
In a fairy-tale world, he would be the answer to unassembled trikes and a safe sleigh for Santa. In a fairy-tale world he would be the answer to everything including the fact that sometimes in the night she awoke and felt almost weak with loneliness.
But she had learned the brutally hard way there were no fairy tales, and a woman was wise to be totally independent, to rely only on herself.
She folded her arms firmly over her chest.
What was it, lingering just beneath that ice in his eyes, that made her think something else was there? Something that you could trust with your secret burdens?
Something that would break your heart in two more likely, she warned herself.
As if her heart wasn’t already broken in two. Hers. Her sister’s. Her brother-in-law’s. Her nephew’s. A world that had seemed so strong, a vow that had seemed unbreakable, gone in one second.
She turned back toward her office, remembering the relative safety of all her pressures, not wanting to dwell on things broken, a category this man seemed like he might fit in. She had no time for an encounter like this one, nor was she brave enough to find out exactly what his offhanded offer might mean.
“I have to find an elf,” she said, dismissing him, yet again. “And fifty kids’ winter jackets would be nice. That’s what I need done.”
There. That should be enough to scare him off.
Then again, he did not have the look of a man easily scared. Silence. She glanced back at him. He had not moved, there was a little puddle on the floor where the snow was melting off of him. He was wearing a black leather jacket, worn, and not warm enough for today, and jeans with a hole clear through the knee, not a day to be showing bare skin, either.
Rather than making him look poor, the old jacket and the worn jeans had a certain cachet.
She realized she was looking at a man who didn’t care—not about what he looked like, not about the cold, maybe not about anything at all.
He was exactly the kind of man her mother had always warned her about. But then that was one of the illusions she’d had to leave behind. That her mother knew best.
Her mother, who couldn’t glue her own marriage back together, her mother who had approved of Kent for Becky…Kirsten shook her head, looked away from him, troubled, looked back in time to see him nod, once, curtly. He turned and disappeared back out the door, leaving another frosty wave in his wake.
She was aware of craning her neck to see where he went, but the snow was still coming down hard, and he disappeared into it with a phantomlike quality, as if maybe he had never been in the first place.
She frowned. She wasn’t quite sure what had happened there.
“Strange encounter of the weird kind,” she said, shrugging it off and moving back to her office. She looked at her calendar. Thirty-nine days!
Way, way too much to be done, and not nearly enough time left to do it. She had not one second to spare on thinking about green eyes like those ones. What was
