He couldn’t explain why he felt this protective urge to help a stranger. He just did.
Maybe it was her huge doe eyes that failed to hide abject terror. The woman was clearly frightened to death, and, even so, she insisted on pulling off a robbery.
Then again, maybe it was her absolutely sensuous lower lip (her upper lip wasn’t too bad, either) that tugged at his long-deadened emotions.
He hoped it wasn’t because the brave front this screwball put on reminded him so much of that day six years ago when he and Ginny had emerged from the doctor’s office. They’d gone in expecting to hear good news—that Ginny was finally pregnant. Instead, the obstetrician had dealt her a staggering blow. She had advanced cervical cancer and less than a year to live.
The look Ginny had given him when they’d hit the street had been filled with terror, but, at the same time, she’d had a desperate need to put on a brave front. Like this dingbat.
He’d been unable to help Ginny, but maybe he could help the dingbat.
Ginny’s desperation had been understandable, but why did this squirrely bubblehead need five hundred dollars so desperately?
Well, he’d soon find out.
Twining his handcuffed hand with Dirty Harriet’s, he walked inside, inhaling deeply. And it is Giorgio, I know it is.
Being bad was harder than she’d imagined…
Jessica should have pulled her hand out of Erik’s firm grasp, but he gave her strength, somehow. The feel of his pulse throbbing against hers, wrist to wrist, comforted and strengthened her for the formidable task she’d set for herself.
“Okay, let’s do it,” she said resolutely.
He squeezed her hand in answer, but she thought she heard him mumble, “Dumber than a doornail.” She wasn’t sure if he referred to her, or himself.
The guy behind the counter, presumably Sam—a gray-haired gentleman who was probably somebody’s grandfather—nodded at them and went back to waiting on a teenage boy who was purchasing about a gross of condoms and a magazine titled Nympho Nurses.
Hundreds of videos lined one wall, and magazine racks covered the other. There were several aisles of glass-topped counters displaying every kind of paraphernalia from edible underwear to bizarrely shaped vibrators to body oils that heated up on skin contact.
To her annoyance, Erik picked up one of the latter bottles and examined it closely, reading the instructions on the back. “Hmmmm,” he said aloud. Then the lech winked at her.
His wink—a mere wink—caused her heart to lurch and her breasts to swell. Even in a ridiculous Santa wig and beard, the guy was drop-dead gorgeous and utterly charming. Quickly she turned her face away, not wanting him to see her heated blush or her attraction to him.
As her eyes scanned the room, Jessica smiled. If she’d entertained any misgivings about their drawing undue attention, wearing Santa outfits and handcuffed together, she’d worried in vain. A stereo speaker belted out old chipmunk Christmas carols, and the customers went about their business browsing the wares.
To her amazement, two other Santas cruised the aisles, one of them schnockered and the other eyeing a pair of padded handcuffs with a matching velvet whip—probably a Christmas present for his spouse. Gawd! There were also a sophisticated-looking yuppie couple—definitely lovers, by the seductive glances they exchanged repeatedly; a young guy in a jeans jacket, cowboy hat, and boots; and two twenty-something women who giggled as they handled a pair of red satin men’s bikini briefs that played “Jingle Bells” when a string was pulled.
“Gee, this isn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” she whispered, tugging on Erik’s handcuffed wrist. “We should pretend that we’re regular customers until the shop empties out a little, don’t you think?”
“Whatever you say, Tiffany. You’re the boss.”
“Hmmmph!”
She immediately changed her mind about the shop not being so bad when she backed into Rita, a life-size balloon of a nude, flame-haired woman with breasts the size of cantaloupes and red nipples resembling maraschino cherries. Two of the bimbo’s plastic girlfriends, Bridget and Trish, stood next to her—a blonde and a brunette.
Do men really buy garbage like this? When the drunk Santa put his arm around the blond balloon’s waist and hauled her up to the cash register, Jessica answered her own question. Yep, they do.
“Would you like a Bruce Balloon, honey?” Erik chuckled.
She looked where he pointed his free hand and saw a six-foot tall male balloon whose endowments were impressive, to say the least. Bruce. Jessica’s eyes almost bugged out.
“Uh, I don’t think so, honey,” she responded, trying to appear casual.
Erik’s devilish blue eyes crinkled with mirth as he guided her over toward the video shelves and began to peruse the offerings nonchalantly. After flicking through A-cup Cuties, Breaststrokes, Porking Miss Piggy, and Hot to Trot, he turned to the “legitimate” movie section. Hah! There is no such thing as legitimate in this place. There he snickered as he read the titles aloud. Hannah Does Her Two Sisters, Forrest Hump, High Nooner, Close Encounters of the Lewdest Kind, Lord of the Fly, The Breasts of Madison County, and Three Days of the Condom.
“Let’s get out of this section,” she urged.
“No, no, no.” He rebelled as his eyes latched onto something new. “How about this, sweetie?” he asked brightly, shoving a video case in her face. “Tiffany’s Great Adventure.”
She made a gurgling sound of revulsion as her face heated up some more. At a sudden blast of cold air, her eyes darted to the doorway where the teenage boy exited, followed by the plastered Santa and the yuppie couple, who’d bought some assorted lotions and a video.
“Merry Christmas,” the proprietor called out after them cheerfully. “Hope you have a great night. Ho, ho, ho!”
The other Santa followed soon after, purchasing nothing.
Okay, only three more to go—the two women and the cowboy. With any luck, there wouldn’t be any new customers at this time of night.
“Have you ever tried these?” asked one of the women next to her. Her friend had moved to the register where she was paying for the Jingle Bells jock strap.
Me? Is she talking to me?
She was. “Have you ever tried these?” the woman repeated, holding up two eggs connected by a thin electric wire to a battery-operated controller which began to vibrate when she pressed a button. The woman twittered, and Jessica’s mouth dropped open. She refused to look at Erik to see what he was doing.
“What is that?” she blurted out, and immediately regretted her loose tongue when Erik answered, “Love eggs.”
She and the woman both looked at him, and he shrugged. “I read about them in a magazine.”
“Sure you did,” Jessica muttered under her breath.
But he heard her. “Hey, I haven’t been in one of these places since I was a teenager. Not my style.”
Soon after, the two women left the store, and the cowboy headed toward the back of the shop where a weary-looking woman dressed only in a black teddy, garter belt, and stiletto heels emerged through a set of swinging, western-style doors. She was crooking a long painted fingernail toward the cowboy, who shuffled back with a puppy-dog grin. Jessica wasn’t sure if it was the dude’s turn for a nude massage or a body piercing.
No matter. That left her and Erik alone with the proprietor.
“Can I help you folks?” the old guy asked. “Great handcuffs, by the way.”
Jessica was about to pull out her gun when Erik pinched her fingers in warning and handed the owner a bottle. “Yeah, I’ll buy this.”
She hadn’t realized he still carried the warming oil.
“That’ll be nine ninety-five.”
One-handed, Erik fished out his wallet and laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter.
Okay, this is it. Now’s the time. Oh, geez, oh, geez! Jessica reached in her pocket for the empty pistol, but in the process accidentally elbowed a display on the counter. To her horror, she knocke
d over a sort of vibrator thing with a huge wiggly tongue on the end, which began to jiggle madly. With two fingers, she distastefully tried to pick the thing up and turn it off, but it shimmied away from her, right off the counter to the floor. She dropped down to her knees, pulling Erik with her, and tried to catch the obscene object.
Erik and the shop owner were laughing hysterically at her antics. Angry now, she gave the thing a kick, which shut it off.
When she stood up, shaking with mortification, her cap and wig slipped, and her long hair billowed out in a flaming explosion midway down her back.
Erik gaped at her as if someone had just handed him a bomb. “I can’t believe it! You look like Little Orphan Annie,” he exclaimed, fingering one of the corkscrew curls—the bane of her life. At least he’d stopped laughing at her.
The fact that he added, “You’re beautiful,” came too late. Comparing her to Little Orphan Annie was not a compliment in her book—not now, and not when she’d been a real orphan. And there was no way she was beautiful with her wild mop of red hair. No way!
She fought the tears that filled her eyes. Angry with herself and Erik, she jerked out her revolver and started to aim it at the guy behind the counter, who was holding his sides as he continued to howl. With a quivering voice, she shouted, “This . . . is . . . a . . . stick—”
“No!” Erik roared, and with one swift motion he hefted her into the air and over his shoulder, the gun dangling from her fingers. As he headed toward the door with his free hand clamped over her struggling behind, he informed Sam the Sleaze, who’d just noticed the gun and was making hyperventilating noises, “Don’t worry, this is a game my wife likes to play every Christmas.”
Sam expelled a wheeze of relief. “Hey, I see this kind of thing all the time. It’s the curse of my business.”
“I’ll give you a curse,” Jessica raged.
“Merry Christmas,” Erik laughed.
“Ho, ho, ho!” Sam chortled.
Love strikes at the oddest times . . .
“You scum! You slimeball! Put me down. Right now. I can’t believe you did this. Oooh, oooh, this is awful. I needed that money. You don’t know what this means.”
Kicking and screaming and thrashing, she pounded his back with her free hand. She dug her fingernails into the palm of his cuffed hand. She landed a pointed toe on his thigh.
“Ouch!”
Finally he set Little Orphan Tiffany down next to his car and immediately raised both her flailing arms over her head and held them on the car roof by the wrists with his cuffed hand. He pressed his lower body against hers to keep her from escaping or doing him more bodily harm, not an easy task with both of their pillow-bellies.
Angry himself now and sick of this game which had gotten way out of hand, he tore off his disguise, tossing the cap and beard and wig to the snow-covered ground. Then he yanked off her beard. Finally he got his first good gander at his surprising Santa.
Time seemed to stand still.
An ethereal silence surrounded them as snowflakes as big as golf balls came down, landing with feather lightness on her mane of curly red hair, in her eyelashes . . . on her parted lips.
She no longer struggled. In fact, she stared at him with equal awe.
Tears burned in his eyes for reasons he couldn’t explain. All he knew was that the tight knot surrounding his heart—a knot he hadn’t even realized was there—began to unravel. And he felt as light as the snowflakes caressing his face. And hopeful.
It was so strange.
“Are you an angel? A Christmas mirage?” he murmured. Lowering his lips toward hers—those luscious lips that had drawn him from the start, he sighed.
Instead of protesting, she arched upward, meeting him halfway. “I’m no angel.”
“Thank God.”
Against his lips she whispered, “I’m not really a nun, either.”
“I know,” he smiled, then repeated, “Thank God.”
“You shouldn’t kiss me,” she demurred even as she parted her lips. “My Christmas Curse might rub off on you.”
“Rub all you want, babe,” he growled, grinding his big belly against hers. “I’m cursed already.”
“What’s that hard thing?” she asked suddenly.
He laughed.
“Not that. Under your jacket.”
“A bulletproof vest.”
She raised a brow. “So, you weren’t afraid of me at all.”
“Oh, I was afraid of what you’d do. I still am.”
She smiled enigmatically, as if he’d better be.
But he couldn’t think about that now. All he could think about was this tempting redhead in his arms.
Cupping her jaw with his free hand to hold her in place, he slanted his lips over hers, shaping her for his kiss, relishing the contrast of cool lips and hot breath. Hard and demanding, soft and cajoling.
She whimpered.
He groaned.
Powerful, bone-melting sensations overwhelmed him. Suddenly he wanted so many things, and they all seemed to revolve around this woman—this stranger. Pulling away slightly, he studied her face—misty eyes locked with his in question, mouth already swollen from his kisses. Their warm breaths, panting, frosted in the cold air between them. Hearts thudding in unison, they tried to comprehend what was happening.
In that instant, he understood. Blood hammered in his ears as the realization hit Erik like a thunderbolt.
I love her, he thought, disbelieving, at first. Then he smiled, happier than he’d been in ages. I love her.
He’d never believed in love at first sight before. He did now. I love her. He couldn’t stop saying the words in his head.
Should he tell her?
No, not yet. He didn’t want to scare her away. Besides, he needed more time to think. He rolled the words around in his mind with a joyous relish: I love her.
“I feel weird,” she said, as if reading his mind.
“So do I, babe. So do I.”
She blinked at him. “It must be the Christmas Curse.”
He shook his head vehemently. “No, it’s a Christmas Miracle.”
Chapter Three
She was a fruitcake, all right . . . sweet and nutty . . .
“Are you still cold?” Erik asked the shivering woman next to him as he pulled out onto the highway. Lord, how he wanted to stop the car and take her in his arms, but he didn’t have the right . . . yet. She already appeared scared to death of him. Instead, he turned up the heat.
Jessie—that was the name of the woman he loved, Jessica Jones . . . she’d just told him so—shook her head and bit her bottom lip in concentration. She was probably planning another heist. Perhaps a cathouse this time, he thought with a chuckle. God, I love her.
Or maybe she was having second thoughts about their killer kiss.
Uh-oh. No, he wouldn’t let himself think that. Now that he’d found a woman he could love, after all these years, he wouldn’t let her go. She would love him. He was determined.
But he was nervous, too, and that was something new for him. For the past five years, ever since Ginny died, he’d had more women than he could handle. But he hadn’t cared about a single one of them.
Now that he did care, would he be rejected?
Erik clenched the steering wheel tighter. He had to believe that everything would work out all right. God didn’t hand out miracles and then yank them away. Nope, all he needed was a little time.
Erik considered his next move as he drove back to the Piggly Jiggly parking lot. Jessie insisted she had to get the van and return to Clara’s House, mission unaccomplished. Alone.
Hah! Not if I have anything to do with it.
He could barely see through the wildly swinging windshield wipers which couldn’t keep pace with the falling snow. It would be a white Christmas this year, after all, if this blizzard kept up. He’d already tried using the storm as an excuse to keep Jessie with him, but she’d refused adamantly, pointing out that the van had snow tires.
> Luckily they’d been able to find the handcuff key under the back seat floor mat, after some amusing calisthenics necessitated by their bound wrists. Amusing to him, at least. In the close confines, with all her squirming, he’d gotten a real good idea of what kind of body his Santa babe hid under her suit—tall, curvy, not too lean. Perfect.
So now he and Jessie sat unattached for the first time in hours. And Erik felt as if a mile separated them, not three feet.
He reached over and twined his fingers with hers.
Startled, she glanced first at their linked hands, then at him, questioning. He hoped she got the silent message he was unable to speak out loud, just yet.
Fear flashed through her wide doe-brown eyes for a moment—of what, he wasn’t sure—but he suspected she was about to pull away.
“Don’t be afraid of me, Jessie,” he said, his voice husky. “I won’t hurt you.”
“But I might hurt you,” she said in a voice laden with regret. “I’m cursed. And it’s Christmas. I don’t stand a chance. Neither do you. You’ll be better off when you’re rid of me.”
He squeezed her hand. “Maybe the trick is to replace your Christmas bad luck with good luck. You know that saying ‘When someone hands you a bag of bones, make soup.’”
“Don’t you mean lemons, and lemonade?”
He scowled at her interruption and went on. “Treat our meeting as a miracle instead of a curse . . . oh, hell, I’m not very good with this kind of stuff. I have all these thoughts and feelings inside, but they just don’t come out right.” He ducked his head in embarrassment. “I’m not very good with words.”
She squeezed his hand back, and he thought his heart would explode with happiness. “You’re doing just fine,” she assured him.
“I still say we should go to my place. It’s only fifteen minutes from here. You could warm up, and—”
“No, I’ve got to get back. Sister Clara will be frantic.”
“Sister? I thought she was your aunt.”