A Ring For Christmas: A Bride by Christmas / Christmas Lullaby / Mistletoe Manoeuvres

Luke made an imaginary gun out of his thumb and forefinger and shot his brother, who laughed so hard he got the hiccups.

Roses and Wishes took up the first floor of an older Victorian house that Maggie rented in an area of Phoenix that had been rezoned for businesses. Maggie lived upstairs, having furnished one of the bedrooms as a small living room.

The kitchen was on the main floor, as well as a powder room. The original living room was the reception area where albums with pictures of weddings were displayed and comfortable chairs grouped for discussing forthcoming ceremonies. The dining room was Maggie’s office.

Maggie’s favorite feature of the entire place was the enormous old-fashioned claw-foot bathtub in the upstairs bathroom that allowed her to indulge in long, leisurely soaks with soothing warm water up to her chin.

An hour after leaving the restaurant, having battled the traffic to get home, Maggie sank gratefully into the beckoning bubbles in the tub, rested her head on a spongy pillow on the rim and closed her eyes.

Good grief, she thought, what a night this had been. It had been awful, just awful. Luke St. John was a menace. Yes, that was a great word. A menace. A very dangerous, sensuous member of the male species who was a…a menace to her state of mind and did funny little weird things to her body. Her libido or some such thing. Her womanliness in general. He had nudged awake desire within her that she had worked very hard to put to sleep, to tuck away and ignore. Definitely a menace.

No wonder he had women crawling out of the wood-work trying to get his attention. He had an unexplainable something that pushed sexual buttons in women that they didn’t even know they possessed.

Well, she was wise to him now. Granted, part of her overreaction to Luke St. John was due to her exhaustion, but she had a sneaky feeling that even well-rested she might be susceptible to his whatever-it-was.

So. Tomorrow night at the wedding and the reception following she was going to make very certain that she kept her distance from Mr. St. John.

There would be no more gazing into his incredible eyes. No more strong, hot arms encircling her. And heaven forbid, no more kisses shared that caused her to have naughty images of tearing his clothes off and ravishing his body right there in front of Reverend Mason.

There. It was settled. She had her plan. She’d stay away from Luke tomorrow night, the wedding would take place without a hitch and she’d never see him again.

Maggie opened her eyes and frowned.

Never see Luke again? Never? Ever? No, of course she wouldn’t. He was a member of the jet-set money crowd, and she was among those who hoped they could make next month’s rent. There was simply no way that their paths would cross again.

Why was that depressing?

“Oh, stop it,” she said aloud, then closed her eyes again.

That was a thought from the tired part of her brain that the coffee hadn’t reached. She was now blanking her mind, relaxing in her wonderful bathtub, preparing to sleep away the hours of the night and awake rejuvenated and back to normal with no lingering images or wanton thoughts of Luke St. John.

“Mmm,” Maggie said, feeling the misty fog of sleep begin to dim her senses. “Mmm.”

Maggie began to slide slowly lower in the tub. Then lower and lower…until she disappeared beneath the frothy bubbles.

She shot upward, sputtering as she swallowed a mouthful of suds, the wild motions causing water to splash out of the tub and onto the floor.

Her hair was covered in bubbles, which made her look like a frosted cake and, she knew, would result in a sticky mess that would have to be properly shampooed. The floor would have to be mopped, her towel that she’d placed next to the tub was soaked and…

And Maggie burst into tears.

She cried because she’d scared herself to death by sinking under the water and because the bubbles tasted terrible and now her stomach was upset. She cried because she was too tired to shampoo her hair and mop the floor and deal with a soggy towel and…

She cried because no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t forget what it had been like to be kissed by Luke St. John and she didn’t know how to deal with all the new and foreign feelings she’d experienced.

She cried because after tomorrow night she’d never see Luke again, which she knew, she knew, was for the best, but sometimes the best was really stinky and just so sad.

She cried because…because, darn it anyway, she felt like it.

So Maggie cried until she had no more tears to shed and the water in the tub was cold and her hair had dried and was a gummy disaster sticking up in weird spiky things and her sinuses were clogged, causing a roaring headache.

Maggie sniffled as she got out of the tub, picked up the soggy towel and threw it in the water. She marched into her bedroom and crawled beneath the sheets.

And during the night spent on damp linens and a gooey pillow, she dreamed of Luke St. John.

Chapter Three

Unable to sleep after the events of the unsettling evening, Luke gave up and left his bed, pulling on a lightweight robe. He wandered through his penthouse apartment, finally stopping by a wall of windows to look out over the city lights that shone into infinity.

Thoughts tumbled through his mind one after another, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his throbbing temples for a moment in a futile attempt to halt the onslaught.

Maggie, he thought, crossing his arms over his chest. She was all and everything he had ever hoped to find in a woman. He had only known her for a handful of hours, yet he knew she was the one, his life’s partner.

Half of him wanted to shout the fantastic news from the rooftops, tell the world that he was in love, had found the woman of his heart.

Another section of his being was terrified that Maggie would never come to feel the same way about him, that she would slip away from him like sand falling from the palm of his hand.

Maggie, for reasons she refused to share so far, never intended to marry. That was not good, not good at all. The mystifying question was why. Had she been terribly hurt by a man in the past? Oh, he’d take the guy apart. He’d…Whoa, he would just waste mental energy going off in that direction.

Maybe Maggie was so focused on her career she saw no room for a man in her life. No, that didn’t work for him. He’d dated a multitude of women with that mind-set and they were all popped out of the same mold. Maggie wasn’t like them, not even close. She didn’t have the brittle edginess, that step-over-the-bodies-to-get-to-the-top mentality he was so tired of dealing with.

Maggie was so down to earth, so…real. She’d started a business that made dreams come true for brides, made their weddings a special, memory-making event in their lives.

Ginger and Robert’s day was going to be perfect because Maggie had seen to every detail, including sorting through a mountain of yogurt-covered almonds to select Ginger’s choice of colors.

Yes, Maggie knew how to make dreams come true, yet she didn’t want any of those spectacular weddings to be hers, didn’t want to be the bride who would see her groom waiting eagerly for her at the altar as she made her way down the aisle.

Why?

It was as though Maggie had built tall, strong walls around her heart, and his greatest fear was that he wouldn’t be able to break through them, get a chance to capture her heart as she had his.

The flicker of hope he had, Luke mused as he continued to stare out the window, was that he’d felt Maggie respond to his kiss during the rehearsal, had seen the desire in her big brown eyes directed toward him. Him.

That kiss had been the beginning of the chipping away of that barrier surrounding Maggie. It was a start, a positive one, but he had a long, long way to go.

His first impulse was to ask Maggie out, wine and dine and court her, but a cold knot in his gut told him she’d turn him down flat if he invited her to join him for a night on the town. She’d been upset, really flustered by her reaction to the kiss they’d shared and had beat a hasty retreat from the rehearsal dinner as quickly as she could.

No, the traditional program of flowers, candy and romantic dinners wasn’t going to work because he just somehow knew he wasn’t going to get a chance to put those things in motion.

He needed a new and innovative plan, Luke thought, narrowing his eyes. And he’d better come up with it very quickly. He’d see Maggie at the wedding and reception, but beyond that he envisioned her being set on automatic “no” if he attempted to get her to go out with him.

Ah, Maggie, why? he thought dismally. What secret something held her in an iron fist that made her determined to never fall in love, never marry, never be the bride in one of her meticulously planned weddings?

He didn’t know the answer to that tormenting question. Nor did he know the answer to how he was going to see Maggie again after Robert and Ginger’s wedding. And he didn’t know the answer to how he would face a cold and empty future without her.

Well, the first order of business, he thought, heading back toward his bedroom, was to get some sleep. He was about to begin the greatest battle of his life and he intended to win. Somehow. He would be the victor. Somehow. He would crumble Maggie’s walls into dust and share her sunshine world with her for all time. Somehow.

Late the next morning Maggie entered the small house where her mother lived and presented her with a lumpy plastic bag.