Santa's Playbook

Yes, Claire could smell the coffee, singing to her like it was auditioning for The Voice. But again, getting overly chummy with a student... Not a good idea under the best of circumstances. Getting chummy with one whose father practically gave Claire the evil eye whenever they ran into each other...

“That’s lovely of you to offer, but—”

“Pleeease?” Juliette said, and the coffee crooned a little more sweetly, and Claire’s stomach growled, and she thought, Oh, what the hell?

“You really make good omelets?” she said, and the girl squealed and clapped her hands, yeesh, and the dog did a little dance on its hind legs, and then an absolutely adorable little squirt wearing half her closet barreled down the stairs and right into Juliette’s thighs, prattling on about stupid Harry and dumb Finn and how much she hated, hated, hated boys, and Claire got a little dizzy.

Juliette, however, calmly set her box on a nearby table and crouched in front of her baby sister, brushing back a tangle of pale blond hair from a very pissed-looking little face. “So what’d they do this time?” she asked, and the child rattled off a litany of offenses, which were then interrupted by a very masculine but somewhat weary “Bella. Enough.”

Followed by a silence thick enough to slice.

“Hey, Dad,” Juliette said, standing, then twisting her baby sister around in front of her like a shield. “Look who I ran into at the estate sale! And she gave me a ride home. So I invited her to breakfast. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

Oh, dear. Was that adolescent defiance rearing its pretty little head? Only, before Claire could process that little tidbit, a certain steely blue gaze rammed into hers—speaking of pissed—and a thousand ancient insecurities tried to rear their heads, and she thought no.

Or, more exactly, Hell, no.

Hey, she’d survived an ever-changing cast of roommates in more New York apartments than she cared to count, not to mention pointless cattle call auditions and insane directors and leering weirdos on the subway, capped off by caring for her dying mother back here in Maple River for nearly a year. A weenie, she was not. Not now, anyway. So no way was a pair of hot blue eyes slinging her back to that hellacious era when she hated her hair/body/clothes and a cute boy’s smile would render her a blithering, klutzy idiot.

Not that she’d actually ever seen Ethan smile. Although he was cute. In a brooding, Brontë-dude sort of way. Even if she hadn’t known he was ex-military, his posture and close-cropped hair—a dirty blond, maybe?—would have given him away. He was maybe a hair over six feet tall, but his bearing was...fierce. She imagined he was hell in football practice. Even though she’d never heard any of his players bad-mouth him. Ever.

“Your home is...” Claire glanced around, taking in the clutter of toys and sports equipment smothering what had probably at one time been nice furniture in mostly tans and reds and dark greens...the charred-brick fireplace...the mantel choked with family photos. From some unidentifiable part of the house, an obviously ticked-off male child bellowed, immediately followed by an even louder bellow in response. Claire turned back, smiling. “Lovely. Thank you for having me.”

“You’re welcome,” Ethan mumbled, then yelled up the stairs. “Guys! Come pick up your crap! We’ve got company!”

“Aw, Dad...”

“Jeez, Dad!” Juliette chirped.

Ethan stabbed a dark look in her direction before turning again, shouting, “Now!”

Sneakered feet thundered down the wooden treads, attached to a pair of gangly, shaggy-haired tweens—one blond, one red-haired—who threw Claire a mildly curious glance before attacking the mess. And she had to admit she felt a pang of sympathy for Ethan, raising four kids by himself. There had only been one of her, and both of her parents, and as a kid she’d been way too much of a scaredy-pants to rock the boat. But this—the boys vroomed around the room like a multilimbed dust devil, snatching up equipment and tossing it more at than in what Claire assumed was a mudroom off the kitchen—was Crazyville. You hear that, ovaries—?

Ah. The glare was once more aimed in her direction. Over, she realized, Bella’s head, who’d somewhere along the way ended up in her daddy’s arms. Strong, muscled arms underneath a gray fleece pullover that emphasized the equally muscled, broad shoulders carrying the weight, if not of the entire world, at least the world that was his.

Realizing Juliette had disappeared—to the kitchen, Claire presumed—she said in a low voice, “I don’t mean to intrude—”

“It’s okay,” he muttered through a jaw that redefined tight. “Jules likes to cook, but it’s mostly lost on her brothers and sister.” His eyes dropped to the little girl clinging to him like a baby monkey, his expression softening. Sort of. “Can’t get this one to eat eggs for anything.”

“Because eggs are gross,” Bella said, making a face exactly like her father’s, and it was everything Claire could do not to laugh. Then the little one leaned back, frowning into her father’s eyes. “And could you please tell Harry an’ Finn to stop calling me a baby. It hurts my feelings.”

Ethan frowned back. “Then you have to promise to stay out of their room. You know it bugs them when you go in there.”

“But I want to see Spot!”

“You can see Spot when he’s out in his ball.”

“But they never take him out anymore!”

“Okay. I’ll talk to them, see if we can arrange visitation. Deal?”

After a second, the little girl pushed out a long sigh. “Deal.”

“Good.” Ethan set her down, cupping her head for a moment before she took off to another part of the house, sparkly sneakers flashing as she ran. He watched her for a moment, then turned back to Claire, muttering, “I’ll take eighty hormone-crazed teenage boys over one six-year-old girl, any day.”

Wait. Were her ears deceiving her, or was that Ethan Noble making a funny? Well, hell.

“So who’s Spot?” she asked when she found her voice again.

“A hamster. The boys named him. So...you ran into Jules?”

“At that estate sale, yeah. I bought a lamp. She bought...a lot more.”

One side of his mouth lifted. More chagrin than grin, though. “Sounds about right.”

“She’s really good at the eBay thing?”

“She really is.” He paused, the faint glow in his blue eyes dimming. “Exactly like her mother. I gave Jules fifty bucks seed money. I’ve lost count of how many times she’s multiplied it since them. Kid has a real head for business.” Pride glowed through his words, if not on his face, and Claire felt a slight...ping. Of what, she wasn’t sure.

“Then she has choices about what to do with her life,” Claire said, and Ethan’s brow furrowed. “If she’s serious about an acting career—”

“Not happening,” he said, effectively ending the discussion. But although something in Claire prickled at the dismissal, this was not her battle to fight. Especially since Juliette could easily change her mind a dozen times between now and graduation.

So she smiled and changed the subject. “Mmm...breakfast smells great, doesn’t it—?”

“Just so you know,” Ethan said, his eyes locked on her face, “my daughter’s on a mission.”

Now Claire frowned. “What kind of mission?”

“To get herself a stepmother.”

An idea with which, judging from his expression, Ethan was not even remotely on board.

Which was fine with Claire, since that was one role she wasn’t even inclined to audition for.

* * *

Ethan’s brows dipped when Claire clamped a hand over her mouth to, apparently, stifle a laugh.

“And you seriously think,” she whispered after she lowered her hand, “that’s why she invited me to breakfast?”

“Odds are,” Ethan said, not sharing Claire’s merriment. “You’d be the—let’s see—third woman in the past six months she’s tried to throw in my path.”

This time, a piece of that laugh broke loose to float in his direction, and Ethan felt his shoulders tense. That laugh... It’d been his introduction to the woman before he’d even seen her, during prep week back in late August. A sound far too low and gutsy to come out of someone so small, he remembered thinking when they’d finally met, and her smile had arrowed into him hard enough to make him flinch, her handshake as firm as any man’s. Now he literally stepped aside in a lame attempt to dodge that laugh. Not to mention the grin. Although there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to avoid the deep brown eyes. Except look away, he supposed. But that would be rude.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s not funny for you,” she said, but not as if she really meant it. Then she shook her head, making all those curls quiver.

Those curls drove him nuts. Shiny. Soft. Bouncy—