Somebody's Santa

“So your mother made her choice,” she said. “Most women do. We tell ourselves we can have it all, and maybe we can but most of us know we can’t have it all and give our all, all the time. So we all make choices. That is something I can relate to.”

There was an eagerness in Dora’s eyes, an intensity. Did he dare call it hope? Or merely an openness to hope? It was so slim, so faint. He doubted she even knew she was revealing it. It embarrassed him a little and humbled him that he should have this advantage, no, this blessing. That he should get this tiny glimpse into something so personal, the best part of this woman he admired so much.

Not until this moment did he realize that while Dora Hoag might be living the life his mother had never realized, it was not by her own choosing.

That changed everything—save for the fact that he still couldn’t pull off any of this without someone’s help. Dora’s help. But now instead of wheeling and dealing to get it, he knew he had to win her over, make her want to do it as much as he wanted her to do it.

Without giving her any warning, he stood and held his open hand toward her. “Let’s get out of here.”

She looked at his outstretched palm then at the door. “You go first.”

“Stop playing games, Dora.”

“At the risk of sounding repetitive—you first.”

“I don’t play games.” He dropped his hand.

“I know.” She folded her arms again. “And you don’t make a trip to tell someone something face-to-face that could easily be said on the phone or by e-mail.”

He acknowledged that with a dip of his head.

“So just say what you came here to say and then kindly get out,” she said quite unkindly.

“You’re right. I did come to tell you something. And ask you something. But first I have to show you.” He reached into his inside coat pocket.

Her arms loosened slightly. Her shoulders lifted. “If you were any other man, I’d expect you to pull out a small velvet box after a statement like that.”

“Small? Velvet?” His fingers curled shut inside his coat. “Oh!”

She tilted her head and gave him a smile that was light but a bit sad. “I don’t play games, either.”

“I’ll say you don’t.” He shook his head. She’d gotten him. He’d come here thinking he knew what he was walking into and how to maintain control of it and she’d gotten him. To his surprise, he didn’t mind. In fact, he kind of liked it. He liked this feisty side of her. “But you sure do a have an overactive imagination, lady.”

“Overactive? Because I once thought of you as a man of his word?”

Suddenly he liked that feistiness a little less. “Hey, let’s not go there, Dora.”

“Where else would you like to go, Burke? You seem to be up for a lot of travel all of a sudden. Coming here. Wanting me to go someplace with you. Maybe we should add a little trip down memory lane to your itinerary.”

“Memory lane?” He smirked.

“What?” Lines formed in her usually smooth forehead. She pursed her lips and waited for him to say more.

“Just a pretty old-fashioned term, don’t you think? I’d have gone for a play on time travel.” He was trying to lighten the mood.

She wasn’t having any part of it. “I was raised in a pretty old-fashioned home by my great-aunt and uncle. It’s the way they talked, I guess. It’s not so unusual. You knew the meaning.”

The meaning he knew. The tidbit about her upbringing he hadn’t known. Did it make any difference? Probably not to his plan, but it did explain a few things about her outlook on the world and the world’s outlook on her. Nobody got her, not really. Nobody knew her.

Try as he could to stop it, Burke found that she was bringing out the protective nature of his Top Dawg personality again. To keep from caving into that or allowing her to rehash how badly he had handled things between them last summer, he stepped forward. He pulled the business card he had gone to retrieve from the Crumble out of his pocket. He gazed at the off-white rectangle with raised black lettering atop brightly colored shapes for only a moment before he handed it to her.

“What’s that?”

“That’s where I want to take you.”

“To a doctor’s office?”

“A pediatrician’s office.”

“Why?”

He moved to the doorway. “Come with me and I’ll explain everything.”

She did not budge. “So far, you haven’t explained anything. You haven’t answered a single one of my questions. Why should I let you show me this place?”

“Showing is simple.” He held out his hand again. “Answers are complicated.”

She ignored his gesture and raised one arched, dark eyebrow. “Then uncomplicate them.”

Uncomplicate a lifetime of mischief, hope, happiness, tough choices and intricate clandestine arrangements? Couldn’t be done.

Rattle. Squeak. Rattle.

Zach and his cleaning cart went wobbling by the open door.

Burke grinned. Maybe he couldn’t just hand her the whys and wherefores of his situation, but if Dora wanted answers he could at least give her one. “You asked me who comes all the way from South Carolina to Atlanta to ask someone what they want for Christmas. It’s not so hard to figure out, really, if you think about it.”

Zach’s raspy voice rang out in a Christmas carol about Santa Claus.

Dora frowned.

Burke jerked his head toward the open door. “Go ahead. Say it. You know you want to. Who makes a trip to ask someone what they want for Christmas?”

“S-Santa Claus?” she whispered, as Zach rounded the corner and his song faded.

Burke gave a small nod of his head, then looked up to catch her eye and winked. “That’s me. And if there is going to be Christmas in Mt. Knott this year, I am going to need your help.”

Chapter Four

“Okay, we’ve been driving for fifteen minutes.” Dora glanced out the window of his shiny silver truck. Her, tooling around Atlanta in a pick up with a South Carolina snack cake cowboy Santa-wannabe at the wheel—listening to country music’s finest, crooning Christmas carols on the radio. What happened to her policy of not trusting anyone, especially anyone named Burdett, again? What happened to her plan of ditching Christmas again this year by making herself scarce before sundown? What happened to this place that Burke had promised to show her, the one that would give her a reason to forgo the not trusting and the ditching and make her want to…

The lyrics to a song she’d heard moments before—“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”—popped into her head. Burke Burdett? Santa? Difficult to imagine. Kissing him? Hardly the kind of thing a serious businesswoman, an angry almost-girlfriend or a woman of good Christian character ought to be dwelling on! She stole a peek at his rugged profile and noted the way he seemed to fill up the cab of the truck and yet still leave a place for her to sit comfortably beside him.

“Burke?”

“Hmm?” He didn’t look at her and yet the casualness of his reply gave her a sense of familiarity no quick cast-off glance in a truck cab ever could.

She flexed her fingers on the padded car door handle and forced herself to study their surroundings as she counted off their recent itinerary. “I’ve seen the art gallery where some lady from Mt. Knott had her first show. The jeweler’s where your mother used to have special ornaments engraved. And the building of the accounting firm that employs the valedictorian of your graduating class.”