Once Upon a Christmas (7 page)

To his credit, at least Sam didn’t laugh. Most people
laughed at the garlic press story.

“Then there was the time—”

“That’s enough for now,” Holly interrupted,
steering Brad toward the front door. “Thanks for stopping by. Let Thomas
know I’ll be calling him tomorrow to get a second opinion on Sam’s toe, would
you?”

Thomas White was Brad’s partner, the doctor he shared office
space with. Brad would have preferred his own office, Holly knew, but he couldn’t
afford to go it alone yet.

“Thomas is an obstetrician,” Brad told her. “Toes
are hardly his specialty. Take my word for it—all that’s required is rest. Sam
will be fine.”

Sam waved from the sofa. “Thanks, Doc. And thanks for
the warning, too,” he added with a grin, nodding toward Holly.

She scowled. So much for making Brad jealous with her new
roommate. Instead, Brad and Sam seemed intent on doing some sort of
male-bonding thing, although she couldn’t imagine why.

They had nothing in common, aside from gender. Brad was a
successful doctor, respected by his peers. Sam was…not. Brad was organized,
neat, ambitious, and blessed with model-quality good looks. Sam was…actually
kind of scruffy-macho-looking, and if he were any more relaxed, he’d be asleep.

And now he was her roommate. Holly hoped she’d done the
right thing. Closing the front door behind Brad, she went to check on Sam in
the living room.

“You and Brad don’t go together very well,” he
remarked.

The pain reliever she’d given him must have taken effect,
because he seemed in much better spirits than he had earlier.

“What makes you say that?” Holly fluffed up the
throw pillows in the brown armchair Brad had been sitting in, then bent to
brush a piece of lint from the edge of the sofa.

“For one thing, you didn’t give me your business card
ten minutes after we met,” Sam replied, dropping Brad’s beige engraved
card on the coffee table.

She scooped it up and put it beside Sam’s wineglass, where
he’d be sure to remember it later. “I didn’t do your bookkeeping, either,”
she pointed out in Brad’s defense. “If I had, you can be sure I’d have
given you my card, too.”

“Okay, then, for another thing, you wouldn’t have
embarrassed a friend for the sake of a funny story.”

“I wasn’t embarrassed,” Holly lied. So what if she
was a little sensitive to Brad’s teasing? It would have been much more
embarrassing to admit her embarrassment. Besides, when she and Brad went to
parties together, everyone else seemed to find his jokes funny.

“Anyway, how do you know I wouldn’t?” she
protested. “You don’t know—maybe I go around lampooning my friends all the
time.”

Sam grunted noncommittally. “I doubt it.”

Holly raised her eyebrows.

“I can’t explain it,” he said with a shrug. “But
I still think it’s true. The two of you don’t mesh.”

She didn’t know how true that could be when he couldn’t even
explain it properly. She shrugged right back at him. “You’re wrong. Brad
and I are perfectly well-suited for one another.”

“Well-suited?” He made a face.

She’d definitely have to think up another phrase to describe
her relationship with Brad.

“Yes. Brad is exactly the kind of man a girl dreams of.
Even my mother loves him.” It was true. Her mom had all but hired the
Goodyear blimp to broadcast the news when her daughter had begun dating Brad
the Doctor.

Sam looked up at her. For once his expression was serious. “Do
you
love him?”

Despite everything, Holly hadn’t expected
that
. “Of
course. Why wouldn’t I? Brad and I had planned a nice life together.”

What a strange thing for him to ask. She leaned closer to
Sam, intent on picking up the wine bottle so it wouldn’t leave a ring on the
coffee table. The next thing she knew, he’d caught hold of her arm and was
gently pulling her down.

“Sounds real cozy,” Sam said. “Like a
stockbroker’s convention.”

Holly had to brace one hand on the sofa back to keep from
toppling onto his lap. Their faces were only inches apart.

“And anyway, you can’t ‘plan’ love,” he added
quietly. “Brad doesn’t deserve your loyalty.”

“It’s not just—”

Sam pressed a fingertip to her lips to quiet her. She was
too surprised by the tenderness of the gesture to move away.

“I had to know,” he said. “I had to ask,
because even though we just met this morning, I’m already crazy about you. I
had to know if there’s a chance for us to—”

Crazy about her?
How could that be? Stunned, she
tried to pull away. His hand on her arm held her still for the rest of his
words.

“—if there’s a chance for us to be together. I know
this sounds crazy. I always thought love at first sight was just another name
for lust, but now…well, now I think maybe it’s more than that.”

“Sam—” Her voice failed her. Holly took in a huge
breath and tried again. “I don’t—”

“I do want you.” His voice was quiet. Serious. “I’d
be lying if I said I don’t. But that’s not all there is to this.”

His gaze shifted from her eyes to her face. He moved his
hand higher, stroking his thumb across her cheek in a tiny caress. The way he
looked at her was somehow curious, appreciative, and unmistakably honest, all
at the same time.

This couldn’t be happening. Holly pushed away from the sofa,
away from him.

“You’ve had too much wine.” She grabbed the wine
bottle and nearly clobbered his injured foot with it in her rush to get away
from him. “Maybe too much pain reliever, too. I’m sure you won’t remember
any of this in the morning.”

Sam didn’t move. “Yes, I will. I didn’t have that much
wine. And even if I didn’t remember it,
you
would. You’d remember, and
wonder, and pretty soon we’d be right back here talking about it again. So we
might as well deal with it right now, don’t you think?”

Holly thought she might be hyperventilating. “This is
insane,” she managed to say. Then she made good her escape to the kitchen,
leaving Sam stranded atop his pillows and—she hoped—unable to follow her.

She didn’t know what to do. He’d seemed perfectly sane
earlier. Holly set down the wine bottle, saw that her hand was shaking, and
hugged both arms around herself to keep that unsteady feeling from spreading to
the rest of her.

It didn’t work.

Clarissa wouldn’t have pushed so hard for this roommate
arrangement if her cousin really was unbalanced, would she? No, of course not.
Clarissa had known Sam since childhood. Surely he couldn’t have hidden some
kind of crazed love-at-first-sight tendencies for that long.

Maybe this was just Clarissa’s twisted idea of a practical
joke. It was possible. Holly had been the unwitting victim of a number of her
best friend’s schemes. Usually they were funny only to Clarissa. Sidling to the
doorway, she peered around the corner at the back of Sam’s head, fully
expecting him to be convulsed with laughter that the joke had gone over so
easily.

He wasn’t laughing.

Okay, so that wasn’t it. Turning, Holly finished the last
dregs of red wine straight from the bottle and thought about it some more.
Maybe Sam was one of those people who fell in love easily. Maybe he’d just
broken up with another woman and he was on the rebound, wanting to salve his
ego with the nearest skirt-wearing remedy. Maybe this was simply another
attempt to get her into bed, since the kiss hadn’t worked earlier.

More likely, she was blowing the whole thing way out of
proportion, she chided herself. Straightening her shoulders, she headed back to
the living room and sat in the chair across from Sam. She folded her hands in
her lap, then gave him her most level-headed look.

“I don’t believe in love at first sight,” she
said.

“Me, neither,” Sam replied, just as evenly. “At
least, I didn’t when I woke up this morning.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she went on.

He nodded. “I know.”

Holly flung both arms wide. “See? You’re proving my
point!” She’d finally met somebody who was even worse at arguing than she
was. “It’s impossible. We barely know each other. You can’t love somebody
you don’t really know.”

Sam grinned. He did that a lot, she’d noticed. Unlike Brad.
Brad had really missed his calling as one of those guards at Buckingham Palace who were never allowed to smile.

There she went again, comparing the two of them. That had to
stop. It wasn’t fair to anyone.

“We should get to know each other better, then,”
Sam said.

For some reason, those words made her feel even more
panicked than before. Determined not to show it, Holly said, “Well, we’re
going to be roommates. I guess we’ll have plenty of time to get acquainted.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” He glanced pointedly
at the empty spot beside him on the sofa. “Why don’t we start right now?”

He should have looked ridiculous—a big, brawny man with his
foot propped at nose-height on those pink-fringed pillows. He should have
looked crazy, going on about love at first sight like he had. The trouble was,
he didn’t.

This spontaneity business wasn’t all it was cracked up to
be, Holly realized. Agreeing to let Sam move in was the most spontaneous act
she could remember making, and already it was throwing her nice, steady life
out of whack.

But Brad leaving her was what had really messed everything
up. If seeing her with a roommate like Sam could bring Brad back to his
senses—and there was still a good chance it could—it would be worth it. She and
Brad made sense together. Holly had to do all she could to rebuild their
relationship—to make her life the way it used to be…ideally, before the
official eggnog-and-jingle-bells season set in.

Sam watched her, still waiting.

Holly sighed, but didn’t move any closer to him. “I
have to be honest, Sam. What I said before is true. I’m trying to work things
out with Brad. Even though we’re…apart…right now, I haven’t given up on him
yet. I can’t.”

He was silent, thinking. Then, “I hope Brad knows how
lucky he is. I wouldn’t have let you go in the first place.”

“Thanks.”

It was sweet of him to say that. But Holly had no intention
of letting Brad let her go, either. Her plan was almost ready to go into
motion.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to change Brad’s mind,”
she said. Then she stood, turning to Sam with both hands on her hips. In her
most businesslike tone, she added, “As for you, you’re not looking so
good—”

“Thanks.”

She grinned. “That’s not what I mean.” Obviously,
he was pretty easy on the eyes. “But I do think you should get some rest.
Are you going to be all right driving home?”

Sam flexed his injured foot. “If I said I wasn’t, then
what?”

Then I’d say you should stay with me tonight.
The
thought came out of nowhere. Holly blinked. Obviously the events of the past
week had affected her more than she’d thought. She was lonely without Brad,
that was all—lonely and vulnerable and not at all looking forward to crawling
into that big empty bed all by herself again tonight.

“Then I’d drive you home myself,” she said,
forcing a certainty into her voice that she didn’t really feel. “I could
pick you up again in the morning, or…or whenever you decide to move in…”

“Is tomorrow too soon for you?” Sam’s gaze caught
hers and held, clear and honest and much too perceptive for her peace of mind.

“Not at all.” If she was going to be spontaneous,
she was going to do it all the way. “The sooner the better.”

He seemed to approve. If he’d been calling her bluff, he was
pleased with the results.

After some discussion about the state of his Wile E. Coyote foot,
they compromised on the following weekend for a move-in date. They ironed out
the details, and Sam pronounced himself fit to drive. He lifted his foot from
the pillow pile to the floor, then held up his hand to her.

“Can I trust you to help me up, or is that just asking
for trouble?”

“Very funny.” Holly caught hold of his hand. He
squeezed back, and without thinking she glanced down at their coupled hands.
His was bigger, stronger, browner—so different from hers. It was…it was
stupid to stand there staring at his hands. She dug her heels in the rug and
pulled.

She realized her mistake in the same instant the rug slid
across the glossy hardwood floor. By then it was too late to correct it. She
fell forward on top of him, landing with enough momentum to roll them both hard
against the sofa back.

“Ooof!”

She lifted her face from his shirtfront, shook her hair out
of her eyes, and found herself plastered against him from chest to knees. She
was all of four inches from Sam’s face.

“I think you have an unconscious desire to be close to
me,” he said, unsuccessfully trying to hide a smile.

“You did that on purpose, didn’t you?” she shot
back.

She tried to wriggle backwards so she could stand. It didn’t
work, partly because Sam’s strong arm around her waist kept her there, and
partly because she was afraid to wriggle too hard and accidentally hurt him
again.

“I didn’t do anything.”

His chest rumbled against hers as he spoke. They were much
too close. Holly wriggled a little more.

Sam’s eyelids lowered slightly. She would have sworn he was
looking at her lips. At the thought, her stomach did a flip. She wriggled in
earnest.

“Mmmm. That feels good.”

She stopped cold. He was right. It did feel good.
Really
good. She was still thinking about that fact when Sam’s hands slipped from her
waist and starting moving toward her hips in long, slow arcs. Holly sucked in
her breath, her attention temporarily caught by the feel of Sam’s hands on her
body. His fingers, warm and sure, traced a path over her lower back and
downward.

Reality came crashing back.