Mistletoe Over Manhattan

“But I’d have to wash socks every night.” He seemed closer to her than he had been a second ago, and the words were puffs of breath against her cheek.

She had to force herself to maintain eye contact. “Yes, you would.”

“If I buy a dozen, when I get down to four pairs I’ll send out to the hotel laundry.”

His voice vibrated down her spine as he moved another half step closer. It wasn’t the direction she’d intended the conversation to take, but she didn’t want it to end. “Compare the cost,” she said after a deep, hard swallow, “of a dozen pairs of socks plus laundry fees against one pair you have to wash out.” She felt like a sock in the wash herself, agitating in the dark blue of his eyes.

“I change when I go out at night. That means I’d have to wash two pairs every night.”

“Well, yes.”

“What if they don’t get dry by morning?”

Now his face loomed directly over hers. A compelling face, a face she was afraid she would begin to see in her dreams, a face she’d like to simply reach up and kiss. Even as she felt her lips swell in anticipation, she heard herself say, “They will if you wring them out properly and pat most of the moisture out of them by wrapping them in a towel, but if you’re that worried about it, maybe you need three pairs.”

He stared at her for a long, long moment, his eyes melting her, his mouth an easily bridgeable inch from hers—then turned away. “Ring ’em up,” he said to the salesman.

The kiss-op had ended and might never come back again. Mallory’s spine felt like a single strand of angel-hair pasta. Carter’s salesman gave Mallory a triumphant sneer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her own salesman placing a burnt-orange sweater with blue diagonal stripes into a gift box. The sight of it stunned her. How had she managed to pick up that sweater? It looked like a University of Illinois pep squad uniform. Macon had been an undergraduate there, but he’d practically lived in the computer lab. He probably didn’t know what a pep squad was. Had he even been aware there was a football team? He’d think she’d lost her mind.