All She Wants for Christmas

“I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

It should have put her at an advantage, knowing who he was when he didn’t know her. Instead, Holly felt insignificant. “Holly Bainbridge. I work at the flower shop, and you stole my Santa.”

“Excuse me?”

She flushed. If only he weren’t so darn good-looking, maybe she could complete an intelligent sentence. “Charlie promised me he would make an appearance tonight.”

“He did mention another job, but—”

His words cut off as the elevator jerked to an abrupt halt. Holly gasped, losing her balance and falling against Clay. He caught her body with his as the elevator went dark. She couldn’t see a thing.

But she could feel. Oh, yes, she could feel. The imprint of each finger grasping her upper arms. The slight catch in his breath as her breasts grazed his chest, the quickening of his heartbeat. His rock-solid chest beneath her hands. And his belt buckle, hard and cold against her stomach, a sharp contrast to the rest of him, which was definitely hard and warm.

Awareness skittered along nerve endings, and her own heart beat double time, nearly drowning out the sound of their combined breathing.

“What happened?” she asked when she found her voice.

Holly felt the slight shaking of his chest a split second before laughter filled the small space. Jerking away, she demanded, “What’s so funny?”

“I’ve got the Three Stooges remodeling my office, and my guess is that Larry just blew a fuse.”

Adrift in the darkness, without his touch to anchor her, she reached back for the elevator wall. “The building’s lost power?”

“With the luck I’ve had recently,” he said wryly, “all Chicago’s probably lost power.”

A faint electronic hum punctuated his words, and after a tense moment hanging in space, the car resumed its ascent. Giving a sigh of relief, Holly closed her eyes and sank against the side of the car.

“Are you okay?”

Opening her eyes to find Clay standing inches away, Holly thought the elevator might have fallen after all. She certainly felt like she’d lost touch with solid ground, her heart hovering somewhere in her throat. She grasped hold of the handrail to keep from swaying closer. “I’m—I’m fine.”

He searched her expression as if looking for the truth, and Holly purposefully held his gaze instead of allowing her attention to slip to his lips, hovering above her own.

In a voice deeper than moments before, Clay said, “I’m sorry about the Santa thing.”

His words dimmed the rush of attraction as Holly imagined using that brush off with the disappointed children. Hey, kids, sorry about the Santa thing.

The casual crushing of hopes and dreams reminded her of her ex-boyfriend’s easy defection. Even after she’d trusted Mark enough to share the truth about her painful childhood, he’d let her down in the worst possible way. “Sorry, Holly, but I don’t even know if I want kids of my own, let alone raise someone else’s kid.”

Those words, spoken by the man she thought she loved, the man she thought she wanted to marry, had instantly dragged her into the past. Into her old insecurities about her self-worth.

She wasn’t like other people. She didn’t have biological ties to bind her to another living soul. She wasn’t Bob and Carol’s daughter or Jimmy’s little sister.

Holly had truly thought she’d escaped those stigmas, until Mark’s insensitive remark brought them all back. Now she couldn’t escape the fear that her rootless past might haunt her yet again. What if the system decided a nobody like her wasn’t good enough to be a foster mother?

“Look, maybe there’s something I can do,” Clay offered.

It took a second for Holly to refocus on the conversation and realize he was talking about the Santa-less Christmas party. “I don’t know what,” she said, not putting much hope in the offer as the elevator bell announced their arrival at the top floor.

“Let’s call Charlie.”

Slipping through the doors the moment they opened, Clay didn’t look back as his long strides carried him into the reception area. Completely focused on what he wanted, he didn’t wait to see if she followed. Holly gazed at the button for the lobby. It would be so easy to push the button and slip away from Clay Forrester, hopefully leaving her disconcerting attraction behind….

“I don’t have his number,” she said as she stepped off the elevator and into the plush office. Her heels sank into the patterned carpet, and she glanced at the leather chairs and a circular work-station. Double doors barred the way to Clay’s inner sanctum.

“Okay.” Her words barely slowed his stride. “I’ll call the hotel where my party’s being held and tell Charlie to go to yours instead.”

His determination knocked the legs out from under her earlier anger. After all, Charlie was the one who’d broken his promise, but Holly couldn’t forget that Clay’s money had been the deciding factor. As always, money talked, and Holly went through life unheard.

“What time does your party start?” she asked.

Clay twisted his wrist to check his watch, and Holly caught a glimpse of gold and the expensive wink of diamonds. “In an hour and a half.”

An hour and a half before they could reach Charlie—if he showed on time—then the ride from the hotel to Hopewell House…Holly shook her head. “That would be too late.”

The children at Hopewell House were no strangers to disappointment, a feeling Holly recalled all too well from her own childhood. But how she had wanted their last Christmas together to be one to remember!

“Too late?” Clay echoed. “Where are you supposed to be tonight?”

“At a party at Hopewell House.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a group home for foster children.”

He stared at her. “You mean to tell me that I stole Santa Claus from a bunch of foster kids?” Regret etched a line between his eyebrows as he sank back against the reception desk, and Holly had the odd desire to make him feel better.

“I’ll think of something.”

Maybe the two women who ran the group home had kept Santa’s arrival a secret. Perhaps she could arrange for a different Santa to entertain the kids. It would have to be soon, though, before the children were separated and placed in new homes. Before Hopewell House closed forever.

She was turning to leave when Clay called out, “Wait.”

He caught her hand for a brief second, and a tingle of warmth shot up her arm, even after she pulled her hand from his grasp. Holly longed to wipe her palm against her jeans to dull the sensation. But the sudden intensity in his blue eyes indicated he’d experienced the same flare of attraction. Her mouth suddenly went dry, and she couldn’t look away, the sexual connection far harder to break than the physical one.

“Miss Bain…Holly,” he hesitated. “If there’s anything I can do…”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how much it cost you to buy my Santa, but this isn’t a problem money can solve.”

Holly pulled her beat-up Volkswagen Bug to a stop in front of Hopewell House. Looking at the house, with its cheery Christmas lights and welcoming glow, she took a deep breath.

Normally, she loved volunteering at the group home. With the impending closure, she’d spent every spare moment inside its warm, loving walls. The children never failed to lift her spirits, but tonight she dreaded the thought of entering the two-story brownstone.

After leaving Clay in his office, Holly had gone back to the flower shop. She’d worked her way through the directory listings for costume shops. Most of her calls had gone straight through to voice mail; those that had been answered had ended in disappointment, with all the Santa suits already rented.

Her breath began to fog the windows, and Holly couldn’t put it off any longer. Bundled up against the chilly Chicago night, she climbed from the car, slammed the door, and ran up the walkway to the steps.

The second she set foot on the porch, the front door opened, and Eleanor Hopewell waved her plump hands, urging her inside. “Come in! Come in! You’ll catch your death.”