Once Upon a Christmas (5 page)

“We’re firing up the barbecue later,” Sam said,
calling her back to their conversation. “Clarissa and David and I—sure you
don’t want to come? It would be great to have you.”

Clarissa rolled her eyes. “David saw one of those TV
chefs grill a Thanksgiving turkey on his Weber 6000. Now he’s dying to try it
himself, so we’re having a test run this afternoon.”

“Sounds tempting,” Holly hedged, “but…”

“Come on,” Sam coaxed with a seductive grin. His
voice lowered intimately. “It’ll be fun.”

He nodded toward the door, as though they’d pick up right
there and head outside, just for the fun of it. Holly could picture it: a
backyard patio filled with friends, a pitcher filled with sangria…her,
getting to know Sam.

You’ll never get that promotion that way,
a voice
inside her whispered.
Shut up,
she told it. But the tide was turned.

“I can’t. I’m sorry. Thanks for the invitation, though.
You guys have fun.” She glanced at her watch. “Now I really
am
late. Do you still want to see the house tonight?”

Sam nodded. “I’d love to.”

Holly whipped open her day planner. “We agreed on
six-thirty, right?”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Sam answered. His
words called to mind a very interesting image, one Holly refused to contemplate
beyond a few seconds. Almost as though he’d guessed what she’d been thinking,
he added with a wink, “It’s been a pleasure meeting you, Holly.”

She fled before he could guess anything more incriminating.

At 6:25 that evening, Sam McKenzie parked his pickup truck
in front of Holly’s white-framed house at the address Clarissa had given him.
The porch light was on, and lamplight shone through both of the curtained front
windows. It looked welcoming. Heading up the walk, juggling the things he’d
brought, he surveyed the house with approval. It was sturdy, if a little
run-down, and it had a character newer houses typically lacked.

Pink geraniums crowded together in the built-in stone
planters that flanked the porch steps and filled the air with their spicy
scent. The porch itself was clean-swept, adorned with only a
Happy
Thanksgiving
welcome mat and a white wood swing that swayed in the breeze.
The loud clunk of his boots on the floorboards must have announced his arrival,
because just as Sam touched the doorbell, Holly opened the door.

“Hi! You’re here.”

She sounded surprised. He peered through the aluminum
screened door, trying to gauge her reaction. With the light behind her, though,
her face was cast in shadow.

“Did you think I wouldn’t show?”

“I, ummm…well, I guess not.” She pushed open the
door to let him in. “I mean, I didn’t think you
wouldn’t
.”
Holly smiled and rolled her eyes. “That is, you said you would, and I can’t
imagine anybody who’s related to Clarissa saying anything they didn’t mean. It
must be in the bloodline or something.”

He laughed as he moved past her into the house. He’d say one
thing for Holly: She definitely had his cousin pegged.

“We’re not generally known to be hesitant about things,”
Sam agreed. One of those things he wasn’t hesitant about was Holly. From the
moment he’d touched her in the restaurant he’d felt something between them,
something hot and intriguing and inevitable. It was that feeling, more than
mere architectural curiosity, that had brought him to her house.

Sam turned to face her and saw she was looking at the flat
white box in his hand. Nodding at it, Holly sniffed at the savory aroma rising
from it.

“Mmmm. I hope that’s what I think it is.”

“Dinner.” He brandished the box that was rapidly
heating his left hand. “Pizza, from Angelo’s.” He handed over the
bottle of red wine he’d brought. “And something to drink. I hope you haven’t
eaten already.”

“No—in fact, I just got home from work.” Holly
motioned with the bottle for Sam to follow her through the wood-framed archway
to the kitchen. He did.

“I didn’t think I’d be at the office as long as I was,”
she went on, setting the wine atop the counter. She opened the cupboard and
pulled out a pair of plates. “Once I get going, I lose track of time,
sometimes.”

With a shy smile she reached for the pizza box he’d been
balancing on one hand. She slid it gracefully onto the countertop. “I was
half afraid you’d get here before I did.”

“You’re an accountant?” Sam asked, remembering
their conversation at the Grill earlier.

“Officially, I’m a controller, but that’s just a fancy
word for it. I work for the county, like Clarissa.”

She went on to describe the people the agency served and the
various functions of her office with an enthusiasm Sam might have found
unbelievable coming from anyone else. Somehow, it seemed very real coming from
Holly. Her words came faster, keeping tempo with her double-speed gestures. She
talked about depreciation and budgets with the same zeal his buddies reserved
for, say, strip poker or professional football.

She paused. “Why are you smiling like that?”

Sam flipped open the pizza box, stalling for time. “This
looks great, doesn’t it?”

Holly’s inquisitive expression never wavered. He wasn’t
going to get off the hook that easily.

“You’re lucky to have work you love,” Sam said,
realizing only as he said it how true those words were. “Even if it is
something like
accounting
,” he added with a mock shudder.

“Hey! I happen to be very good at what I do.”

“I believe you.”

She looked skeptical.

Sam went on anyway. “Not everybody is lucky enough to
spend their days doing something they love.”

She turned her back to the counter and leaned against it,
listening, her palms propped on the edge for balance. “Are you?”

He’d walked right into that one. “Until recently, no.
Now I am.”

He lifted a wedge of pizza from the box and transferred it
to a plate, which he handed to Holly. She watched him intently.

“But your teaching helps people,” she said. “Do
you think that makes a difference?”

Holly took a bite of pizza, then set the plate down again
and moved a little closer. Her eyes were green, Sam noticed, green as new
spring grass. She expected an answer. He knew it.

Sam wanted to give her one. But standing there so close,
close enough to smell the faint muskiness of her perfume, thoughts of work and
career planning were the furthest things from his mind.

She seemed different tonight. Why, he couldn’t tell for
sure. It wasn’t her clothes. They were the same kind of lady-lawyer stuff she’d
been wearing in the restaurant earlier—a pair of ordinary khaki pants and a
plain white shirt. So why was he imagining himself unbuttoning those buttons,
revealing the woman underneath? Why was he wondering what Holly would do if he
leaned over and kissed her, if he pinned her against the countertop and lost
himself in her?

“Sam?”

He’d forgotten what they were discussing. Some smooth talker
he was. Sam scrambled for the topic at hand.

“Yeah, I think helping people makes a difference. And
for me it was a lot of little things that added up to a job I loved. I didn’t
plan it that way. Once I’d taken the first step, the rest just followed.”

He lifted a slice of pizza for himself, not bothering with a
plate, and took a bite. Beneath the toppings, the double cheese and sauce were
still hot. Perfect. Sam closed his eyes and savored the first bite. When he
opened them again, Holly’s curious gaze was still focused on him.

“You’re the lucky one,” she said. “I don’t
think anything’s ever happened to me that I didn’t have to work for.” She
laughed a little and reached for the wine bottle, pouring them each a glass. “Don’t
get me wrong—for the most part I’ve been successful. But I can’t imagine just
leaving things to chance like that, waiting to see what comes.”

“Why not? Sometimes what comes along is exactly what
you’ve been looking for.”

Holly shook her head. “I just can’t see it.”

Sam wondered what kind of failure she’d come up against,
what it was that had wrecked her “mostly successful” planning.
Whatever it was, it had made her a woman afraid to travel without a roadmap at
her side. He didn’t know how to explain joyriding to a woman like that.

“You must have pretty detailed plans for your house
renovation, then,” he remarked, glancing around the kitchen.

A spacious, open-planned room, it was trimmed with the
natural woodwork and built-in storage cabinets typical of a Craftsman-era home.
It was filled with personal things, too—flowering plants, copper cookware, and
a small rectangular table with a banquette that probably wasn’t original to the
house. Still, it suited her.

“Oh, I do!” Holly said, smiling. “I’ll show
you.” She disappeared around the corner to the living room. She returned a
few minutes later, balancing an opened book in her arms.

“See?” She nodded at the opened pages. She moved
closer to him, their heads almost touching as they looked at the photographs
she’d marked. “It’ll look just like this when I’m done.”

Her hair brushed his arm. Sam’s skin prickled with goose
bumps. He couldn’t remember when he’d had a response like that to a woman. It
felt good. It also felt as if he were seventeen again, trying to hide a
surprise erection behind his history textbook.

Grinning to himself, he concentrated instead on the pictures
Holly was showing him, squinting at the series of interior and exterior shots
of another Craftsman-style house. This one had been gussied up like a museum,
with period furniture and hardwood floors you could probably see yourself in.

“It’s the most perfect example of the style I could
find,” Holly said. “What do you think?”

Sam thought it looked like a house that ought to be
roped-off so visitors could pass through without messing anything up.

“Well,” he equivocated, “this house is in Massachusetts. It would be hard to duplicate the effect out here in the West. What kind of
modifications did you have in mind?”

“Modifications?” She looked puzzled. “Like
what? This house is perfect.”

Sam looked at the photos again, trying to place Holly inside
them. Inside that house. He couldn’t do it. It looked too stiff.
Unapproachable.

“It’s too perfect. Maybe that’s the problem.”

Holly shook her head. “That’s ridiculous. It can’t be
too
perfect.”

“You’ve got to be able to live in the house, too. This
house”—he tapped the photo with his fingers—“wouldn’t work in Arizona. The landscaping is all wrong for the climate, for one thing. The chairs look about
as comfortable as stadium bleachers, and these bare windows here look nice, but
unless all your neighbors live five miles away you’re going to want some
shutters or blinds for privacy. And—”

Holly snapped the book shut, all but flattening his nose
with the pages in the process. Sam felt about as popular as the hunter who shot
Bambi’s mother.

“Okay,” he said quickly, “you don’t want me
messing around with your design. Understandable. It’s perfect. But maybe, just
maybe,
it’s not right for this house.”

She frowned, drumming her fingertips on the book.

“Renovating a house can be tricky,” Sam said. “If
you’re not careful, it’s easy to design the heart, the
you
, right out of
it. Your house has a history. It’s had generations of owners. Every one of them
touched these walls.” Sam reached for her hand and pressed it, warm
beneath his, against the white plaster wall. “Every one of them left
something here. Now it’s your turn.”

Beneath his palm, Holly’s hand trembled. He brushed his
thumb along the edge of hers, downward to her wrist, easing the pressure of his
grip in case she wanted to move away. She didn’t. Sam moved closer, until they
were only inches apart.

She was still, watching him. She was warm, luring him. She
was sexy as hell, surprising him. He took the only action that seemed
reasonable under the circumstances, and kissed her.

His thoughts were veering into new and dangerous directions
by the time Holly ended the kiss.

“Do you always win arguments this way?” she asked,
managing to look both hot and bothered, and just plain bothered, as she
clutched the book to her chest.

“Nah. Sometimes I need a rebuttal,” he murmured,
lowering his mouth to hers again. Damn, she felt good. Kissing Holly was like
eating chocolate for breakfast—pleasurable, sweet, but probably not very smart.

She dropped the design book on his foot.

“Ow!”

“Ooops, sorry.”

She didn’t look the least bit repentant. She whipped her
hand out from beneath his, then bent to pick up the book and thumped it on the
countertop.

“Listen, Lothario. I think we need to get a few things
straight.”

“Can we wait until my foot quits throbbing? That damn
book must weigh at least ten pounds.”

She shook her head. “Number one, I didn’t invite you
over here so you could perform some pizza and wine seduction routine on me.
That was a cheap shot—”

“A double deluxe pizza from Angelo’s isn’t all that
cheap,” Sam argued. “Have you got any aspirin?” he added,
tugging at his boot. If the pain was any indication, he’d lay bets his big toe
was broken.

Holly, clearly not a woman to be jollied out of her agenda,
cast him a scathing look. “You’ll be fine. It’s not that heavy a book.”
She continued talking, ticking off items on her fingers as she went. “Number
two, I wanted your opinion on my house renovation, but you just wrecked my
whole vision. Have you ever heard of tact?”

“You asked what I thought. I was supposed to lie?”

Shaking her head, she paced to the living room. “How do
you ever get any jobs, anyway?” Holly waved the question away. “No,
never mind, don’t answer that. I think I know.”

Carrying his boot, Sam followed her. “What the hell
does that mean?”