Don't Open Till Christmas Read online

  One thing was sure—everybody in that family felt free to say exactly what they were thinking and ask nosy questions. She’d been asked so many times how she liked children that when Lottie voiced the query, Noelle had been unable to stop herself from muttering, “Medium rare.”

  Lottie snorted some huge belly laughs that drew the attention of everyone in the place. “I like this one,” she’d said to Mark. “Don’t let her get away.”

  Don’t let her get away.

  How nice it was to imagine, for a moment at least, that she and Mark really did have something he’d fight to hold on to. That the warm way she’d been welcomed into the family fold tonight had been indicative of a real relationship, something solid and tangible and real.

  But they didn’t have that, not really. Deep down, even when she’d been going on romantic dates with him, she’d been constantly reminding herself that this was only temporary. She and Mark were in it for the short term, not the long one, because Noelle was nowhere near ready to risk her heart for anything more. Not when she knew, deep down, that she just didn’t have that lucky forever-love gene, any more than her mother had. And she’d be a fool to forget it.

  “What are you thinking about over there?” Mark asked after they’d ridden silently for an hour.

  “About your family.”

  “Sorry about that,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in the driver’s seat of his large car.

  “I liked them.” Then, remembering what had happened when Lucas and his pretty blond wife, Rachel, had arrived, added, “I can’t believe how generous they’ve all been. Do you know how much that check your brother wrote to the shelter was made out for? Just between the donations from your family’s restaurant and what I was promised at the party the other night, we might be able to salvage Give A Kid A Christmas after all.”

  Maybe her vacation, too.

  For some reason, the thought didn’t make her smile the way it would have two weeks ago. Because suddenly the idea of jetting off to the Caribbean all by herself on Christmas Day didn’t sound nearly as appealing as sitting next to Mark in a booth at his loud family restaurant. As for finding a handsome guy on the beach? Well…she knew without a doubt that she’d be comparing any half-naked beach gigolo with the fully clothed gorgeous hunk of man sitting next to her in the car.

  “I’m really glad,” he said. “Whatever Lucas donated, I’m sure he can afford it. Plus, I know there’ll be more—Rachel went to the back room as we were leaving to get a mayonnaise jar for her bridal shop, which is right up the street.”

  Noelle merely shook her head, still stunned by the generosity of these people who were basically strangers to her, and to the kids at the shelter.

  “By the way, my brother Joe asked me to find out if the house is going to be empty at any time on Christmas Eve. Are you doing anything with the families that day?”

  “Why?”

  Mark glanced at her, his eyes glittering a dark jade under the headlights of an oncoming car. “He’s going to bring a crew of his guys out to build a big jungle gym in the back yard. With a half-dozen of them, they can knock it out in an hour.”

  “You’re kidding me!”

  “Oh, it’s true. Joe’s been in construction since right out of high school. He sponsored a Habitat for Humanity house a year or so ago and got that sucker built from foundation to curtains in nine days.”

  Noelle shook her head at yet another example of the goodness of people—strangers—who’d seen something bad and gone out of their way to try to make it good. “How can you hate Christmas with a family as wonderful and generous as yours?”

  He shrugged. “In my line of work, I don’t often see a lot of evidence of the holiday spirit in December.” Then he posed a question of his own. “How can you hate Christmas when you so obviously love children, and you’re so good with them?”

  She didn’t answer for a moment, wondering how to respond without sounding silly. Wondering which reason, of all the ones she’d told herself about why she hated the holidays, wouldn’t seem petty and childish?

  It wasn’t hard to answer—there was really only one. There always had been. “My father left at Christmastime,” she admitted. “I haven’t seen him since.”

  He sat up a little straighter. “I didn’t know.”

  “I was nine. And after that, well, my mother didn’t exactly look forward to the month of December.”

  “Must have been hell living where you lived.”

  She couldn’t prevent a humorless laugh. “You’ve no idea. I think she was determined to stay in Christmas as some kind of self-inflicted punishment for the failure of her marriage.”

  His voice low, he said, “Or maybe she just wanted to stay where she’d once been happy.”

  Yeah, she supposed that was possible, too. Sometime in recent years, Noelle had begun to understand her mother’s behavior, and the decisions she’d made. They even got along well now…from a distance.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “up until that point, I’d always considered Christmas my holiday, since my birthday’s Christmas Eve.”

  He glanced over in surprise. “Really? So you’ve got one coming up soon.”

  She nodded. “Yes. And even though I always complained about having to share my big day with the lamb of God,” she added dryly, “I always secretly loved it. It made me feel extra special. Like Christmas—the holiday and the town—were all celebrating me every year, too.”

  He was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking it over. Mark quickly understood, coming to the correct conclusion. “Until that year. When Christmas became about loss and heartache, your mother’s sadness and your own sense of hurt and abandonment.”

  Noelle shouldn’t have been surprised at how quickly he’d figured her out. She knew the man was incredibly intuitive. Still, the warm concern in his voice soothed her, surprised her. Comforted her. “Yes.”

  He wasn’t finished. “And because you’d wrapped yourself in with the whole Christmas experience, let me take a wild guess and say deep down, you somehow blamed yourself for your father leaving?”

  This time, Noelle wasn’t just surprised at Mark’s perceptiveness—she was outright shocked. Her breath caught in her throat and she stared at him, wondering if the man had somehow opened a window into her psyche and glimpsed a part of Noelle that she’d never ever shown to the world. “How did you…”

  “It’s not unusual for the kids to blame themselves,” he explained.

  Noelle knew that. In her job, she saw it all the time, and she understood it. Now. As for then? Well…“I was too young to really understand.”

  “Of course you were. But not too young to avoid grabbing the blame and heaping it on your own head when you were just a kid caught in a bad situation.”

  Noelle sat quietly for a long moment, letting Mark’s assessment sink in. He’d said aloud something she’d never admitted, even to herself, despite having lots of experience with kids from broken homes. She’d just never put it that baldly before in reference to her own life.

  Bringing her hand to his mouth, he pressed a gentle kiss on her fingers. “You were a little girl, sweetheart. And you know now why you felt the way you did about Christmas.”

  “Sure.” She nodded, letting her hand, still enclosed in Mark’s, drop to his powerful leg.

  With a grunt he said, “Which is why it bites that you let the dickless wonder you almost married screw the holiday up for you even more.”

  Noelle couldn’t prevent a gurgle of laughter at Mark’s vivid description and disgusted tone. “I guess I don’t need to tell you much about that situation. Sue obviously filled you in enough for you to get a good picture of my ex and how I reacted to what happened.”

  He didn’t look over. “She told me the basics.” Then, squeezing her hand in his lap, he added, “The rest I’ve figured out for myself, learning a little more about what makes you tick every time we’ve been together.”

  The way he said it made Noelle suspect he really did k
now her, very well. Maybe better than anyone else. Which made her even more anxious to know about him. Shifting sideways, facing him in the near darkness, she murmured, “So tell me why your family is so surprised to see you with a woman. You’ve got a nasty bump in your romantic track record too, don’t you.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I was engaged once, about five years ago, and it ended pretty badly.” He didn’t elaborate, leaving her to wonder if he, too, had been the victim of a faithless fiancée. How ironic if their stories were so similar.

  “Hey, you asked my cousin about me,” she said when he fell silent. “If you don’t fill me in, I might just have to go to the family. Maybe Lottie.”

  Groaning, Mark turned his head to glare at her. “Don’t even think about it.” His tone sounded more horrified than angry, and Noelle couldn’t help laughing. Obviously his sister was the person to approach if she ever needed the dirt on anything.

  “You might as well just get it over with and tell me.”

  He again tried to refuse. “You don’t want to know this.”

  She stroked his fingers gently. “Yes, I really do. You once loved someone enough to propose marriage and I’d like to know what she did to make you swear off relationships for five years.”

  With a deep sigh, he admitted, “She turned out to be a thief.”

  She sucked in a surprised breath.

  “And she drew a line in the sand, saying if I truly loved her, I had to betray my principles and become someone I wasn’t in order to cover for her.”

  Noelle was momentarily shocked into silence, almost regretting prodding him so hard. This had been a lot worse than a cheating tramp of an ex who’d broken his heart. She’d actually tried to break his spirit, to turn this proud, honest man into someone else, simply to suit her own purposes.

  “I hate her.”

  He laughed softly. But before he could respond, they reached their destination, and Noelle realized the conversation was better dropped, anyway. She honestly didn’t want to know any more about the bitch who’d had Mark’s heart and had crushed it between her thieving hands.

  Pulling into town, Noelle couldn’t help smiling in delight, remembering, suddenly, what this place looked like at night as its namesake holiday drew ever nearer. Darkness having descended completely, the town had put on all her holiday finery. Christmas, Illinois, was lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. Clean and bright, the whole place washed away the darkness of their previous conversation.

  Each house outlined with lights, the streets were something out of a holiday movie. Santas and reindeer perched on roofs and nutcrackers stood guard on porches. There were toy workshops and elves, and a living nativity standing sentry outside a local church. They’d be there every night until the twenty-fourth, she had no doubt.

  “Wow,” Mark murmured, looking around wide-eyed as they drove through the heavy traffic clogging the streets. There were always a lot of out-of-town visitors coming through at this time of year.

  “It is pretty, in a Clark Griswald kind of way,” she said with a smile of rueful amusement.

  “I need to get Tony and Gloria to bring my nephews out here,” he murmured. “It’s like a holiday fantasyland.” He sounded admiring, not jaded. In his wide eyes, twinkling under the lights of the garland strung every ten feet across the main street through town, Noelle caught a glimpse of the little boy who’d once loved Christmas enough to take the blame for his sister’s schoolyard fight.

  “So,” she said softly, “maybe there are one or two things you like about Christmas, after all?”

  His gaze shifted over. “The holiday or the town?”

  “Both,” she said with a laugh.

  “Yeah,” he said, joining her in her laughter. “I guess there are.”

  WHEN THEY’D ARRIVED at the Candy Cane Inn, Mark had enjoyed the hour of conversation with Randy and Sue. For a pregnant woman, Noelle’s cousin could put away a whole lot of pizza. It was a good thing they’d brought three pies, because she’d wanted to sample each kind. He just hoped the baby liked pepperoni, green pepper and mushrooms.

  Yeah, it’d been a nice, quiet evening. At least, until Noelle’s ex had shown up.

  “I still can’t believe you were engaged to that guy,” he said as they sat in Sue’s bedroom, a few minutes after Randy had left to escort his cousin Jeremy to the door.

  Meeting the other man had been something of a shock, but not one that had given Mark a moment’s concern. Because Noelle’s ex was absolutely nothing to be threatened by.

  Jeremy Taggert was probably considered good looking by female standards, with his sandy-colored hair and boyish face. But he was a skinny-ass loser as far as Mark was concerned.

  “Me, either,” Sue said, her mouth full of pizza. She swilled it down with a big sip of grapefruit juice. “That’s what I call a lucky escape.” Then she giggled. “Did you see his face? I wanted to jump out of this bed and kiss you when you put your arm around Noelle,” she told Mark.

  Noelle was quiet, still sitting on a chair beside Sue’s bed, as she had throughout the brief visit of the man she’d been set to marry one year ago. Mark had kept a close eye on her for the excruciating five minutes of the visit. She’d done a good job of playing the cool, completely recovered ex-girlfriend. But when Mark had seen the way her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, he’d known she wasn’t. So he’d moved closer, sitting on the arm of the chair and dropping his arm across her shoulders.

  Her ex hadn’t liked it. Which had made Mark drop a kiss on the top of Noelle’s head and rub lazy, possessive circles on her upper arm.

  At that point, he’d seriously thought the other guy’s eyes were gonna bug clear out of his head.

  “He looks like a teenager,” Mark muttered. “Too young to even have hair on his balls.”

  Sue snorted, as did her husband, who’d just returned to the room. Noelle was the only one who remained silent.

  “What’d you say he does again? Grocery store clerk?”

  Randy explained, “He’s actually in the family business, working for my uncle Ralph at his car dealership and helping to run the Santa school, which is open from September to December.” The other man shrugged. “This year business wasn’t so great at either place so Jeremy had to get a job part-time at the supermarket.”

  The Santa school. The very school he’d been looking into last weekend. The coincidence didn’t escape him. “You said the school is a family business?”

  Randy nodded. “Yeah, my grandfather started it as a gag but it really got popular.”

  “Randy worked there, too, until we got married and took over the inn together,” said Sue.

  Maybe it was just his dislike of Jeremy Taggert, but something made Mark anxious to learn more. The Santa crime spree investigation was going nowhere else fast and he was damned if he wanted any more kids robbed if there was anything he could do to prevent it. “Do you mind giving me your uncle’s name and phone number?” he asked. “He might be able to help me with something I’m working on back in the city.”

  Randy nodded. “Of course! I have a bunch of brochures right downstairs that you can take with you, and Uncle Ralph’s contact information is right on it.” Then, looking curious he asked, “Are you hosting some kind of holiday event at your family restaurant? Looking for a reference for one of our students?”

  He shook his head. “Not exactly.” But he didn’t elaborate. Randy might not be actively involved in the business now, but he had been. And it was still run by his family.

  No, he didn’t seriously think Randy could be involved in anything illegal coming out of that school. But he’d learned his lesson long ago about playing things close to his chest when it came to his job.

  Looking down at Noelle, he realized he hadn’t been following that advice when it came to his personal life. Because there was no doubt in his mind that he was falling for the woman. Falling hard.

  The desire to follow Jeremy Taggert and unload on him for what he’d done to Noelle
warred with his desire to see what was making her frown in thought like she was. “You okay?” he asked, his hand still on her shoulder. Though he couldn’t imagine that Noelle would mourn the loss of the dork who’d just left, she did seem awfully quiet.

  Not answering his question, she instead addressed one to her cousin. “You set that up, didn’t you?”

  Sue’s face pinkened.

  “You had him come over here to bump into me on purpose.” Noelle’s voice wasn’t angry, merely quietly curious. Analytical.

  “Well, he deserves to remember what he lost.”

  Sue sounded so self-righteous and unapologetic, obviously still furious about what Jeremy the jerk had done. Noelle didn’t appear upset at all, just very deep in thought. As if Jeremy’s arrival had set some wheels turning in her brain. He only wished he knew what kind of wild thoughts they were spinning.

  During the drive back to Chicago later that night, he tried to think of a way to find out. They’d left Christmas at around ten. Traffic had been even heavier than it was two hours ago. Each car they passed was loaded with indulgent-looking parents and bouncing children, some probably already wearing their pajamas under their heavy coats, just like he and his siblings used to do. And just like them, these kids were filling their eyes and imaginations with all Christmas had to offer.

  Eventually, after they made it past the very last set of lights to the highway and were cruising toward home, he quietly asked, “You okay?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  That same distracted tone. It bugged him, mainly because he felt a distance between them, which had not been there on their drive earlier tonight. “Did seeing him upset you?”

  “Not in the way you might think.”

  “Well, in what way then?”

  She turned a tiny bit toward her own window, her body language telling him a lot more than he really wanted to know.

  Like, maybe she still cared for the prick who’d dumped her. His whole body stiff, he muttered, “Don’t tell me you still have feelings for him.”