Once Upon a Christmas (3 page)

The grunt he received in response could have meant anything.
Optimistically decoding the sound as, “You, too,” Sam turned toward
the door and all but ran into one of his students, Jillian Hall.

Affectionately known to the student body as Jiggly Jillie,
Jillie lived up to her nickname and then some. Even when standing still, Jillie’s
blond froth of permed curls, combined with the twirl of her short skirt and the
sway of her breasts beneath her T-shirt, somehow gave the impression of
perpetual motion. It was quite a phenomenon.

“Professor McKenzie, I’m so glad you’re still here,”
she said breathlessly. “I wanted to talk to you about my research paper.”

She watched him so earnestly, it looked as if her wide blue
eyes might cross at any second. Sam shoved all jiggly thoughts aside and
assumed a more professorial demeanor.

“Sure, Jillie. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, there must have been some kinda mistake on my
research paper. I can’t have gotten a D,” she wailed, holding up a stack
of typed pages for him to see. “If I don’t do better than that in this
class, my financial aid is history!”

Sam took the papers she waved at him. He recognized them all
right—it had taken him four aspirin and several cups of coffee to finish
reading and grading those few pages of freshman composition.

“What happened to your paper on the use of lab animals
in cosmetics testing—the one you outlined for me?” he asked gently. “You
had some very good ideas for that. It could have been a good position paper,
like we discussed in class.”

Jillie ducked her head and thrust her lower lip forward. The
gesture would have looked more at home on a four-year-old than the
twenty-four-year-old single mother of two toddlers Sam knew her to be.

“I thought you’d like this better.” She fiddled
uncomfortably with her pink-polished fingernails. “It’s more serious. I
thought you’d be impressed.”

“Hearing your own ideas would impress me the most. The
best papers come when you really care about your subject, Jillie. Maybe I’m
wrong, but I’m not sure global warming is something near and dear to your
heart.”

Sam glanced meaningfully at her paper. Touching her
shoulder, he added, “Environmentalism is a worthy subject, but I don’t
think you had time to research this properly, and—”

Her eyes filled with tears. “You’re just like Mr.
Jeffries!” she accused, darting a narrow-eyed glance at Sam’s officemate. “He
doesn’t think I belong in college. Him and all those tests he does say I was
meant to be a cosmetologist and that’s what I ought to stay.” Her tearful
gaze swung around to Sam again. “You’re no better, are you? You two don’t
want people like me here at all.”

Temporarily setting down his box, Sam shook his head. Hell,
he
was ‘people like Jillie,’ a guy who’d spent high school screwing around and the
years afterward getting in one scrape after another. He was twenty-three before
he finally worked up the guts to walk into the college admissions office. Even
then he’d half expected to get laughed out of the place. He remembered what it
was like to sweat over the placement tests, the first few papers, the exams.

Besides, he’d rather die than be lumped in the same
tight-assed category as Malcolm Jeffries.

“Tell you what.” Sam nodded toward his box of
books and files. “My grade sheets are still in there. I’ve got to drop
them off to Professor Alvarez by five o’clock, but I think I could see my way
clear to writing in a C for your research paper—”

“Really?” Jillie interrupted, sniffling.

Sam nodded.

“Oh, professor—you don’t know what this means to me!”
She hugged herself, bobbing in a happy jig.

“Hold on,” he said sternly, one hand upraised. “There’s
a catch. I want you to rewrite your paper. You can redo global warming—and put
some hard research into it this time—but it would be a shame to waste all the
work you’ve already put into your cosmetics testing idea.”

Jillie stopped jiggling. She glanced sideways, biting her
lower lip. “Oh, I guess you’re right. Okay.”

“I know I’m right.” Shuffling through his files,
Sam tore off a slip of paper and wrote his address on it. “You’ve got my
phone number. Call me if you get stuck.” He handed Jillie the paper. “Otherwise,
you can drop off your paper to me no later than Friday. I’m leaving town after
that.”

She clutched the scrap of paper like a lifeline. “Thanks,
thank you so much. You’ll have it by Friday, I promise.”

Her smile widened as she turned to go. Sam picked up his box
again, watching her. Halfway down the hall, Jillie paused.

“You won’t regret this, professor! Thanks!”

Sam wanted to believe she was right. Something warned him
otherwise. Some niggling doubt in the back of his mind told him he might regret
his decision very much. Then he realized it wasn’t intuition at all. It was the
sight of Malcolm Jeffries’ gloating face peering at him through his open office
door.

“I’ll have your butt in a sling for this, McKenzie,”
his officemate said with a sneer. “I always knew you were a lousy teacher,
and now I’ve got proof. You just wait. Your little arrangement with Jiggly is
going to blow up in your face like your worst nightmare.”

Sam glanced at him, making a little tsk-tsk sound. “Gotta
watch those mixed metaphors, Malcolm,” he said.

Then he was off to enjoy the next few months, academia-free—
and
,
more importantly, Malcolm-free.

Two days after the romantic dinner that wasn’t, Holly’s
conviction that she and Brad belonged together hadn’t wavered. This was despite
a minor setback that occurred when she came home to find Brad sneaking out of
the house, his arms laden with the cappuccino maker and both stereo speakers.

“Hey, those are mine!” She hurried up the front
walk as fast as her two-inch heels and double burden of briefcase and gym bag
would allow, meeting Brad just outside the front door.

“Huh?”

He craned his neck sideways and peered at her through his
glasses in that adorably owlish way he had. His eyes looked greener than ever,
Holly noticed before steeling her resolve.

However appealing Brad might look, she wasn’t about to let
him demolish their stereo system, even for the short time they were going to be
apart.

“Oh, it’s just you, Holly.” He looked surprised. “I,
uh…didn’t think you’d be home yet.”

She tapped the nearest speaker. Her new manicure—one of
Clarissa’s contributions to The Plan—gleamed richly in the sunlight. Brad hated
sloppy-looking women. “These are mine, remember?”

“The
stereo
is yours, Holly. These speakers
belong to me,” he reminded her as he headed down the sidewalk toward his
car.

Holly pivoted on the welcome mat and followed him, kicking
aside dried bougainvillea leaves with every step. She could always tell when
Thanksgiving was on its way, because the first serious cold snap wreaked havoc
on her yard. Soon, she’d camouflage the bougainvillea’s crispy vines with a few
cheerful strings of Christmas lights, but in the meantime she had a boyfriend
to reclaim.

Prompted by that reminder, Holly pursued Brad to his car.
She needed to move things along before she found herself stringing lights,
roasting chestnuts,
and
trimming the tree all alone.

“I’m pretty sure those
speakers
are mine, too,”
she said.

He sighed. “You blew your tinny little speakers the day
after we moved in together. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” Some passing spiteful impulse made her
lean against the door of his red BMW while she watched him load up his things.
He slammed the trunk shut, noticed she was still there, and yanked her away from
the car. He even looked cute when he scowled.

“Christ, Holly. I just waxed it.”

I’ll bet
. “Ooops,” she said. The damn car
got more stroking than she ever had, it occurred to her.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked
accusingly, glancing at his watch. “It’s only…oh. You’re right on time,
I guess. I didn’t realize it had gotten so late already.”

Holly propped her hands on her hips. She turned her body
toward him in a friendly way so the neighbors wouldn’t guess they were anything
less than blissfully happy together. Temporarily. “What are you talking
about?”

“Well, it’s 6:30, isn’t it?” Brad rummaged around
in his pants pocket and came up with his car keys a few seconds later.

Holly could tell from his expression this cryptic
explanation was supposed to mean something to her, but for the life of her she
couldn’t figure out what. “So what?”

To his credit, he looked almost sorry to have brought up the
whole subject. “So you’re a little predictable, that’s what. You leave
work at 5:15 every weekday. Afterward you go to the gym for an hour—if it’s
Monday, Wednesday, or Friday—then home. They could set clocks by you, you’re so
unspontaneous.”

“I am not!” Holly protested, but he was warming to
his subject now, she could tell.

He nodded at the neatly folded paper bag sticking out of her
gym bag. “Your lunch, right? I’ll bet it was a turkey sandwich on wheat—”

“This is dumb.”

“—with brown mustard and lettuce on the side. Tomato
juice to drink, with a bendy straw. And a green apple.”

“It was a red apple,” Holly shot back.

“I’m leaving.” He opened the car door, slid
inside, and revved the engine. She rapped on the window.

He pressed the button that rolled it down. “Let’s not
make this any harder than it has to be,” he said. “I’m not trying to
hurt you, you know. I just can’t deal with all this right now. I told you—I
need some space.”

Was it just her, or was his regretful expression a little at
odds with the way he kept impatiently revving the car’s engine?

“Sure.”
Predictable
, he’d said.
Unspontaneous.
“I understand.” When she got done with her plan, Brad wouldn’t know
what hit him. “I just wanted to tell you, I need your house keys back.”

He grinned. Then he laughed. She felt like kicking him.

“What for?” He twisted his key ring to release his
set of house keys. He dropped them, warm from his fingers, in her palm. “You’ve
found another roommate already?”

Predict this,
Holly thought. “As a matter of
fact, I have. And
he’s
moving in this weekend. See ya’.”

Nothing like a little competition to enliven the game, she
told herself. Didn’t every man want what he couldn’t have?

Tempting as it was, she didn’t even linger to savor the
sight of Brad’s mouth hanging open in surprise. She couldn’t—she had to get
busy finding that new roommate.

“I told you, I’m not interested in having a roommate.”

Easing his pickup truck into the early morning traffic that
streamed into town, Sam McKenzie glanced away from the road long enough to be
sure his cousin Clarissa was listening to him. She wasn’t. Oh, she was nodding
her head, all right, but he’d known Clarissa since they were both four feet
tall—long enough to realize that with her, a nod didn’t necessarily indicate
agreement. Sam sighed.

“I’m only in town until after the holidays, then I’m
back to Tucson. I’m sure your friend Holly is terrific, but I’m not in the
market for a roommate. I like to live alone.”

Beside him across the wide bench seat, Clarissa snorted. “Is
that why you’re staying with your folks, because you like to be alone? You know
I love you like a brother, Sam, but I’ve got to be honest, here. That’s truly
pathetic.”

“Don’t hold back. Tell me what you really think.”

She hit him in the shoulder, a punch probably aimed at his
upper arm but sent awry by the bouncing of his old truck.

“Ouch! Does David know he’s married to such a bruiser?”

“My husband doesn’t give me any reason to punch him,”
Clarissa returned archly. “Unlike my knot-headed cousin. Besides, I barely
touched you.”

She twisted in the seat, nearly crushing the sack of
bargain-priced Christmas wrapping paper Sam’s mother had left in his truck
yesterday. He grabbed it, then deposited it in a safer spot—beside the six cans
of cranberry sauce and packets of instant turkey gravy she’d also purchased.

Turning his attention to the road again, Sam automatically scanned
the streets and buildings around them. Everything looked the same as it ever
did in Saguaro Vista, the same as it had since he’d been a kid steering a bike
down Main Street instead of his pickup. The old adobe buildings looked a little
more worn, and now there were strip malls sprouting up like weeds at the edges
of town, but all in all it was nice to come back to. Comforting.

His mouthy cousin was anything but.

“Anyway, the only time you’re alone is when you’re
between girlfriends,” she was saying, sounding so primly sure of herself
he couldn’t stand it.

“I’ve never lived with any of them, either,” he
protested, but Clarissa overrode him, giving Sam a look that allowed no
argument.

“I’m not asking you to marry Holly, for God’s sake! She’s
got a boyfriend she’s dead-set on already, though I can’t imagine why.”

Clarissa gazed out the passenger-side window, the very
picture of nonchalance. Sam didn’t buy her act for a minute. This roommate
thing mattered a lot to her, or she wouldn’t have been nagging him about it for
the past two days.

“This boyfriend doesn’t object to her having a male
roommate?” Either the guy was very, very sure of himself—and her—or he was
just plain stupid.

“Well, technically they’re separated.” She must
have sensed him weakening, because Clarissa smiled and moved in for the kill. “Come
on. Do it as a favor to me, if nothing else. I know! Consider it an early
Christmas present.”

“Ha. I
know
you, remember? You’ll still expect a
boatload of gifts under the tree.”

“Naturally.” She grinned. “But you’ll be one
ahead, won’t you? That’s got to count for something. And all
before
Thanksgiving, too.”