Once Upon a Christmas (33 page)

“Okay.” She sounded deadly serious, as though they
were discussing taxes, or maybe an impending shoe sale. “Just like this?”

“Good.” Dylan eased his hands over her wrists,
straightening them, then over her forearms and up to her slender biceps. “When
you swing, the power comes from here. And also”—he cupped her waist and
felt her body tremble in his arms—“from here.”

“Ummm, shouldn’t we start with the ball first?”
Her voice sounded as though she’d been holding in her breath and released it
all to speak. “Dylan?”

“We’ll get to that.” He stroked his cheek along
hers under the pretense of adjusting her stance. Sweat beaded between his
shoulder blades and rolled beneath his faded shirt, sweat that had nothing to
do with the desert sun beating down on them both. “We’ve got all the time
in the world.”

She stilled. Her head came up. “No, we don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look.” Glancing back at him, Stacey cupped his
chin in her fingers. She turned his head toward the entrance to the mini-golf
course.

A tall, aggressively stylish blond woman stepped on the
green. She paused with one hand to her sunglasses and surveyed the course. The
desk clerk from the hotel.

Dylan frowned. “Did she give you the twenty-minute
blow-by-blow account of the bouquet throwing at her wedding? Or was I just
lucky?”

“Nah. I was lucky the same way. Except I was treated to
a rendition of the wedding toasts. Verbatim.” She looked over her shoulder
at him. “What’s the matter, you don’t like weddings?”

“Not unless I’m a participant.” He watched as she
swung her purse by its shoulder strap, caught it in her hands, and started
rummaging through it. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to come up with a disguise.” She pulled
out a crushed white hat, a tube of something, and a dark pair of tortoiseshell
sunglasses, then grabbed his arm. “Come on.”

He had just enough time to grab their putters and the balls
before she hauled him by the forearm behind one of the fake apple trees. Dylan
ducked to avoid one of the eight-inch red painted apples, then hunkered down
beside Stacey. She grabbed the pretend tree trunk with one hand and peered
around it.

“It’s her, all right.” Looking businesslike, she
crouched beside Dylan and dropped her supplies on the green. She shoved the
sunglasses on her head like a headband, grabbed the tube, and squeezed a blob
of something baby blue in her palm. Squinting, she eyed Dylan.

“So,” he said, “we’re hiding back here
because…?”

“Because I need time to think before dealing with
somebody else from the hotel, that’s why.” Stacey grabbed his chin, turned
his head to the side and back again, then frowned fiercely. “Also because this
time I’m leaving nothing up to chance.” She dipped her forefinger in the
baby blue goo. “Hold still.”

“Whaddya mean?” Dylan slurred, finding it hard to
talk with her hand clamped onto his chin like a vise. “She’s just a hotel
employee. What’s she going to do, dial direct to Aunt Geraldine and turn
us—hey!”

He caught her wrist partway to his face. The goo on her
fingertip gleamed in the sunlight. So did her ex-husband’s wedding ring.
Unreasonably, he wanted to twist it off and drop it in the murky mini-golf
pond. Instead, he nodded at the blue goo. “Where are you going with that
stuff?”

Stacey cocked her head sideways as though being forced to
explain things to an especially backward partner in crime. “I’m going to
make sure you’re
inconspicuous
.”

She sounded fairly smug, he thought, for a person supposedly
afraid of having her honeymoon deception found out any second.

“Not with that stuff, you’re not.”

“Quit being a baby. It’s just zinc oxide ointment.
Sunscreen. You don’t stop needing sunscreen just because it’s winter, you know.”

“It’s blue.” Dylan backed up as far as he could
without leaving the concealing shade of the thick plaster tree trunk. He raised
an eyebrow at her. “Is this your idea of revenge for this morning? Are you
sure that’s not eye shadow, or rouge, or something?”

“As if I want blue cheeks.” She blew a deep breath
and crab-walked over to him, then locked her vise grip on his chin again. Her
flowery scent, soap or shampoo or something else, washed over him, successfully
scrambling his thoughts enough that Dylan quit squirming for a second.

Stacey seized the opportunity. “And anyway, you’re
being ridiculous.” She peered speculatively at the goo on her finger. “You’d
look awful with blue eye shadow. It would totally clash with your eyes.”

Dylan smirked. “Ha, ha.”

“Besides, that wouldn’t look very inconspicuous, now
would it?” Her gaze darted toward the blond hotel desk clerk, then met
his. “Now hold still.”

Her finger, laden with shimmery blue, came closer.

Dylan eyed the stuff warily. “I don’t care if we’re
found out.” He leaned far enough away that she couldn’t touch him. “I’m
not letting you smear that stuff on me.”

“If you keep arguing with me, you’re going to blow our
hiding place. Trust me, will you?”

Trust me
. It was what he was always asking her to do
for him. How could he refuse?

He couldn’t. Hell.

“Only if I get to smear some on you, too.”

Hey, that might actually be fun
. Grinning, Dylan
thrust his face forward again.

“Fine.” She came closer, peering at him intently.

He admired the curve of her cheek, the delicate arch of her
eyebrows, the straight, even line of her nose. He tried not to indulge his
suspicions that Stacey was about to give him his first beauty makeover.

“Cute freckles,” he said, hoping to distract
himself with a little conversation. Too late. Her finger smoothed cool goo on
the bridge of his nose. He jerked backward.

She smiled. “I don’t have freckles. Hold still. This
will only take a minute.”

She did have freckles, a pale smattering just over the
bridge of her nose and the top of her cheeks. They looked cute.

“Yes, you do.”

She plopped her sunglasses on her face. “Quit trying to
distract me.” She dabbed a couple more times, spread her goo-covered
finger across both his cheeks, than examined her handiwork with a critical
expression. “I guess that’ll do.”

Keeping her baby-blue covered palm aloft, Stacey dug into
her purse, muttered something. She pulled out a mangy-looking Diamondbacks
baseball cap and a pair of aviator sunglasses. Dylan leaned over, looking into
the depths of her purse.

“Have you got any snacks in there? Maybe a hank of
bratwurst or a spare Thanksgiving turkey? I’m getting kind of hungry, and it
looks as if you’ve got room for—”

She smacked him in the knee with the cap. “Ha, ha.
Here, put these on.”

She shoved the cap and aviators toward him. Leaning closer,
she turned up his shirt collar, too. He felt like The Fonz.

“I happen to travel prepared,” she said staunchly.
“There’s no crime in that.”

“These look like men’s sunglasses.”

“They are.” Stacey shrugged. “They used to
belong to Charlie. I haven’t seen him lately to return them.”

Dylan looked at the hat and sunglasses in his hand, having a
satisfying vision of himself stomping the stuff into dust. Sighing, he put them
on instead. “How come you’re still carrying around your ex-husband’s
personal belongings?”

“Look. I only divorced Charlie. I didn’t hire a hit man
to rub him out, or anything. Sheesh. To hear you talk, you’d think I’m packing
a Charlie Ames voodoo doll in here.” Stacey fiddled one-handed with
something inside her purse.

“Are you? Because I think the voodoo idea actually has
some merit.”

“Ha, ha.”

Dylan adjusted his hat brim, then reached over to scoop a
little of the blue oxide goo from her palm. Time for
his
turn at finger
painting.

“You’re supposed to put it on the angled, prominent
parts of your face,” she instructed, setting her purse down. “Like
your nose and chee”—Stacey looked up at him, mid-sentence, and burst out
laughing—“ch—ch—cheekbones,” she choked out, trying to stifle her
amusement.

He frowned. “What’s so funny?”

“You.” She caught his expression, looked
chagrined, and tried to settle down by coming closer so Dylan could apply some
goo.

Except when she got there, her gaze roamed over his hat, his
sunglasses, his turned-up collar, and his undoubtedly bizarre-looking
goo-smeared face. He could tell she lost the battle to quit laughing right
there. Her lips quirked. A sound something like a snort came out. She pressed
her mouth tightly together.

“Go ahead,” she said, pushing the words between
barely moving lips. Stacey removed her sunglasses and nodded toward his hand,
indicating the ointment. “I’m ready. I think.”

Dylan raised his goo-tipped finger and swiped a gob of baby
blue onto her nose. Her gaze wandered from his face upward, then made another
circuit around his head. Her body started shaking. With suppressed laughter.

He rested his forearms on his thighs. “
What
?”

A laugh burbled from between her lips. “You look like
The Invisible Man. All you need is a trench coat and you’re in business.”

“Very funny.” She was probably right, but that
didn’t mean he had to like it. Here he was, trying to do things her way—her
supposedly
inconspicuous
way—and she couldn’t quit giggling over it. “Wait
until you see what you look like when I’m finished with you.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Try me.”

“Shhh! I think I hear something.”

Dylan heard it, too. The desk clerk’s cheery, high-pitched
voice, floating toward them from the Tee Time cup.

“Come on, Mark! Let’s get going! I’ve got to be back at
work this afternoon!”

“Okay, honey!” a chipper-sounding male voice
answered.

Great. There were two of them. Identically buoyant.

“Hurry up.” Stacey stuck her face forward.

You asked for it
. Loading up his fingertip again,
Dylan smoothed out the blue goo until it covered her whole nose, plus her
supposedly nonexistent freckles. Then he dunked into the ointment again and
drew three thick stripes on each of her cheeks. He finished up with fat blue
dots in the center of her forehead, above each eyebrow, and on her chin.

A masterpiece.

By Picasso, maybe.

“Done.” He accepted the tissue she offered to wipe
off his hands and scrubbed them clean of ointment. “You’d better give it a
minute to dry.”

“Thanks.” Smiling with the pleasure of a woman in
charge for the first time, Stacey fanned her fingers in front of her face. She
grabbed two handfuls of her shoulder-length hair, twisted them behind her head,
then squashed her white floppy hat over the whole bunched-up assembly. She
eased on her sunglasses with conspicuous care. “I think we’re set. Let’s
go.”

Dylan eyed her hat. “Okay, Little Buddy.”

“Huh?”

“We look like The Invisible Man meets Gilligan.”

Just for a second, her face took on a wary expression. “You’re
kidding, right?”

“Yeah.” If following her idiotic plan was his only
chance of getting in Stacey’s good graces, you bet he was kidding. Dylan helped
her to her feet, waited as she brushed off her skirt, then gathered up their
golfing gear. “Of course I’m kidding.”

He still wasn’t convinced this would make them look
inconspicuous. However, the further he followed her loose-limbed, graceful sway
toward Tee Time, the less he cared. It was enough just to be together.
Cooperating, for a change.

Halfway to the giant teacup, Stacey stopped so fast her
tennis shoes squeaked. Dylan, too engrossed in admiring her to have full
control over his feet, bumped into her. She teetered—half-unbalanced by the
weight of her monster purse, he figured—then grabbed his arm and managed to
spin around to face him.

“Hold it.” She whipped her purse between them. In
the spirit of cooperation, Dylan propped it up with his hands while she
shuffled things around in it. “I forgot this.”

She pulled out a disposable camera.

She slung it by its strap around his neck, then stepped back
to examine the effect. “That’s it! You look like the perfect tourist.”

“Or maybe Claude Raines on vacation.”

Stacey smiled. “Now you’re getting into the swing of
things. Let’s go.”

“Whew! That was close!” Stacey muttered two hours
later, feeling triumphant and not a little bit vindicated from the safety of
her perch in the Jeep’s passenger seat.

“Nah.” Dylan braked beneath the Atmosphere’s
porte-cochere. He turned off the ignition, leaned against the steering wheel,
and gave her a heart-stopping grin. “Not close at all. Admit it. Your plan
worked.”

Stacey shook her head. “I must have been out in the sun
too long.” She pretended to fan herself with the souvenir pennant he’d
bought her at the mini-golf course. “Are you actually agreeing with me
that my
inconspicuous
method worked best?”

“Best?” His grin widened.

Despite his Invisible Man-as-tourist getup, she thought he
looked pretty fantastic.
It figured. Not even a disguise could make Dylan
Davis look goofy
.

“I didn’t say your plan was the best.” He tossed
the keys to a valet. “I just said it worked. This time.”

“This time, huh?” Stacey watched him round the
front of the Jeep, then stop beside her seat. “This time and every time,
you mean.”

Dylan grunted noncommittally. He held up his hand, and she
took it, too happy with the recent turn of events to try to force an agreement
out of him. Their golf game had been a success, they’d remained relatively
incognito—despite some amused glances from the other mini-golf patrons—and,
most importantly, they’d actually learned to cooperate.

Surely before too long he’d come to the realization that,
when it came to the honeymoon charade at least, she was right.