Hitched For The Holidays: Hitched For The Holidays / A Groom In Her Stocking

He wanted to talk to her face, not the back of her head.

She looked at him over her shoulder, just long enough for him to see miniature bolts of green lightning in her intriguing hazel eyes.

“Enough fussing,” he said. “The food is fine.”

She turned and faced him squarely, then reached up and straightened the collar on his turtleneck. One minute she was willing to let him back away from their bargain, and the next she was fixing his shirt. The woman just couldn’t leave him alone. He took her hands in his and stared so intently she dropped her eyes.

“Sorry,” she said meekly.

“I’m going to go inside and talk to your dad,” he said gruffly.

“I meant what I said. You don’t have to do this….”

He went into the house without answering.

5

DAD WAS ONLINE AGAIN when Mindy got home from work late Friday afternoon. She’d moved the patio table into the living room and set up the computer there so she had access when her father was sleeping in the spare bedroom. Still, the arrangement wasn’t working well from her point of view. She did all her planning, organizing and accounting on her computer, usually in the evening. But after being home alone all day, her father was more chatty then he’d ever been before.

“How was your day?” he asked in a hearty voice from his spot on the couch.

“Fine, Dad.” Except for a crabby caterer, a carpenter whose wife had been in labor for twenty-one hours and counting and a client whose check bounced. “Did you find things to keep you busy today?”

“I found a list of e-mail addresses from my class at Penn State. I connected with a guy who lived next to me our freshman year. Now he’s right here in Phoenix. We had a good online chat.”

“Sounds like fun.”

Peaches did her welcoming dance while Mindy kicked off her sandals and enjoyed the cool tiles on the soles of her feet.

“Don’t leave your shoes where I can trip over them,” her father warned.

No, I certainly don’t want you to fall again she thought. “Did you get to your doctor’s appointment all right?”

She still felt guilty about not driving him there herself, but the day had been impossibly busy.

“The cab was twenty minutes late, but I allowed an extra forty-five for the trip.”

When had her father ever been late for anything, unlike Dr. Eric Kincaid who made a specialty of keeping people waiting? And not calling the woman he was supposed to adore.

“I do have good news,” he said.

“What?”

“The doctor says my ankle is coming along fine. Apparently the emergency room handled it okay. I’ll be back on both feet sooner than I thought.”

“That’s great news, Dad.” No more worrying about a phantom boyfriend, not that her father asked about him more than twenty or so times a day.

“That’s not the good news.”

Whoops.

“I’ve decided to stay through Christmas.”

“You mean stay another—”

“I haven’t had Christmas with you in a long time.” Interrupting was one of his little habits that was driving her up the wall.

Her father would be living in her house, micro-managing her life, giving her helpful advice. Until Christmas. She felt panicky. Maybe she could rent a temporary office—no, too expensive. She loved her father, but she desperately needed her space, especially during the busiest season of the year for her business.

“I don’t do much to celebrate Christmas,” she said.

Now there was an understatement. Last year she and Laurie had done each other’s nails and shared a frozen pizza. Her best friend was originally from Rhode Island and, like Laurie, Mindy preferred to make the annual pilgrimage home to see her family in the summer.

“This year we’ll do it up big. You and Eric can help me trim a tree—”

“Dad, Eric probably has other plans. His family will expect him to…”

“We’ll work it out. Christmas Eve, Christmas morning, I’m flexible about when we open presents.”

“Aren’t you forgetting Dwight and Carly and Sam and Kim? I can’t imagine you’d want to miss your grandchildren’s Christmas. You always spend holidays at their house.”

“No problem. I called Carly’s dad today. They’re going to take the family on a trip to Florida as their Christmas present. Renting a condo for a week. They’ll surprise them with the news on Thanksgiving. They can still celebrate a late Christmas with me when we all get home.”

“Sun, sea, beach, amusement parks. Doesn’t sound much like Christmas,” she mused aloud.

“Now don’t be envious, Mindy. Maybe you’ll go some place exotic for your honeymoon, maybe a Caribbean cruise. I might be persuaded to spring for the trip as a wedding present.”

“Dad, I have no plans whatsoever to get married in the near future.”

Peaches ambled away and went to her favorite hidey-hole at the far end of the couch where only the white tips of her paws revealed her location. Even the dog was cringing at her father’s premature offer of a honeymoon—or maybe it was his plan to intrude on her canine kingdom for more than a month.

“I have to level with you,” she went on, wishing she could tell him the whole truth without badly hurting his feelings. “Eric and I are only dating very casually. We have no plans for the future. He’s not interested in commitment, and I like things the way they are.”

“We’ll see,” he said smugly. “Meanwhile, I’ll have more time to get to know him better. He’s the first decent boyfriend you’ve had, so I hope it’s a sign your taste in men has improved.”

“You’re not being fair—”

The phone on the kitchen counter rang shrilly, which was probably a good thing. She grabbed for it, wondering if her father saw himself as an aging Cupid with thinning hair and a bum ankle.

“Yes, Mrs. Wilmer. How can I help you?” Mindy said after the Scottsdale social leader identified herself.

Mindy was setting up a database for Kitty Wilmer’s long Christmas card list, a tedious chore that involved reading an endless number of names and addresses written in the woman’s tiny, cramped handwriting, which included thirty years’ worth of additions, deletions and changes. She had to finish soon so the mailing labels were ready for the cards. It was the kind of picky job she hated, but Mrs. Wilmer could throw a lot of business her way if she was happy with her work.

“I have a pencil right here,” Mindy said as she started to jot down a few more additions to the list. The woman collected people as if they were coins.

At least her father got bored and thumped out to the back porch on his crutches for some early evening air.

Christmas! Her tenuous deal with Eric would never hold up that long.