Christmas Cover-up

“Not like the North Pole, huh?”

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Cody Berringer.” Peering over his fluffy white beard, he stared at her chest and read the embroidery. “You must be Ruth Ann’s Cakes.”

“That’s me,” she said as she shook his hand. “I’m Rue Harris, and I make custom cakes for any occasion.”

“Weddings?”

“Are you getting married?”

“Not me,” he said with the shudder of a confirmed bachelor. “The cake would be for my little sister.”

He peeled off the Santa jacket. Underneath he wore a sleeveless T-shirt and a giant pillow stuck into fuzzy red trousers that were held up by suspenders. She noticed a suit and shirt tossed over the back of the sofa. Surely, he didn’t intend to change clothes right in front of her.

He asked, “What else should I know about you, Rue Harris? Have you been naughty or nice?”

In usual circumstances, she would have made a hasty retreat before the Santa Claus striptease went any farther, but she was here to mingle and he’d already mentioned a wedding cake. Cody Berringer was a potential customer.

“Naughty or nice,” she mused. “Shouldn’t I be sitting on your lap when you ask that question?”

“That sounds a little bit naughty.”

“You’re kind of a bad Santa, aren’t you?”

“I try.”

When he pulled out the pillow, his costume deflated. He had muscular shoulders and long, lean arms. His height was impressive, well over six feet. He towered over her. A dominating presence.

Mesmerized, she watched as he yanked off his fur-trimmed red hat and ran his fingers through his thick black hair.

Then he removed the beard.

Rue felt her eyes widen. She pressed her lips together to keep from gaping like the village idiot. Cody Berringer was gorgeous. Square jaw. Full lips. And the sexiest blue eyes she’d ever seen.

He sat on a white leather sofa and started digging through his Santa bag. “I’m not much of a Santa. Wasn’t giving anything away. I was collecting donations for Hathaway House, a homeless shelter.”

“You’re an idealist.” Gorgeous and sensitive?

“Not a chance.” He chuckled—not with a ho-ho-ho but a real laugh. “I’m a lawyer.”

“Which doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a shark. Lots of lawyers are idealistic.”

“Good for them,” he said as he stacked the checks and pledge cards from his Santa bag.

She really hoped he wasn’t a sleaze. “Do you work for Bob Lindahl?”

“I’m not one of Bob’s boys,” he said with a sneer. “My expertise is corporate law—take-overs and mergers. Using your shark analogy, I think of myself as a great white. Not a bottom feeder.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” She gave him a smile.

He didn’t smile back. “You like to think the best of people, don’t you?”

His cynical tone made optimism sound like a negative trait. “I’m not naive.”

“Sure, you are. Sweet and sunny.”

She adjusted her opinion of him, adding arrogant to the list. “For your information, I can be very bitter. Like dark chocolate.”

His intensely blue eyes focused sharply. “Have we met before, Rue?”

“I don’t think so.” With her snub nose and muddy gray eyes, she had the kind of face that reminded people of someone else. Her only remarkable feature was her long, thick, chestnut hair which she usually kept pulled up in a ponytail. “But I’ve lived in Denver most of my life so we might have run into each other somewhere along the line.”

“There’s something familiar about you.” When he stood and came toward her, her senses prickled. He was dangerously sexy, radiating masculine energy. It took all her willpower not to step back as he approached. He leaned closer, inches away from her cheek. “You smell great. Like butter and vanilla.”

“A cake-baker’s perfume.”

“How are you connected to the campaign?” His tone was confrontational, as if she were a witness on the stand. “What’s your opinion of our new mayor?”

“He’s my former stepfather.” Explaining her family history was always complicated. “He was my mother’s second husband.”

“Then, you’re not such an innocent. You grew up in a family of sharks.”

“Danny’s a good guy,” she said defensively. He filled the fatherhood role far better than the man who was named on her birth certificate. “He coached my Little League team and taught me to swim.”

“Is that when he was a police officer?”

“One of Denver’s finest.”

“My dad knew him back then.”

She sensed an undercurrent of tension—something in the way he said “my dad.” This casual conversation had taken on an air of importance.

“My father’s name,” he said, “was Ted Berringer. He was an assistant district attorney. They called him Lucky Ted. Did you know him?”

Her mind flashed back twenty years to when she was six years old. Lucky Ted Berringer? She remembered Danny and her mother talking about him in one of those grown-up dinner-table discussions that got her banished from the room. The name—Lucky Ted—stuck in her mind because he didn’t sound lucky at all. “Your father was killed.”

The glow from his eyes sharpened to blue laser pinpoints, boring into her skull with such intensity that he must be reading her mind. Not that he’d find anything terribly interesting. Her life was simple, and she worked hard to keep it that way. Calm. Stable. Steady.

She suspected that Cody was the one with secrets. There was something dark and troubled about him. Something that warned her to keep her distance.

“My father’s murder,” he said, “was never solved.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You would have approved of him. He was an idealist.”

Ending his scrutiny, Cody stepped away from her and went to the sofa where he picked up a white tailored shirt and shook the wrinkles from it. “I’d like to see you again, Rue.”

From the pocket of her apron, she produced a business card which she placed on the coffee table beside the pile of checks and pledges. “About the cake for your sister’s wedding?”