All I Want For Christmas

“Of course,” she said, her voice now a bit chilly.

“Ryan, could you give me a hand here for a minute?” a harried-looking redhead called out from the sales counter, which was surrounded by impatient shoppers.

Ryan waved an acknowledgment. “Perhaps you’d like to look around a bit,” she suggested to Max. “The baby dolls are in that section. I’ll check back with you in a few minutes.”

“Sure, take your time,” he said magnanimously. “I’m in no hurry.”

He watched her full skirt sway around her very nice legs as she walked away. “No hurry at all,” he murmured.

Without much interest, he roamed the shop, stopping occasionally to study one doll or another. Frankly, they all looked pretty much alike to him.

He glanced at a few price tags and grew even more puzzled. Why were some of them ten bucks and others several hundred dollars? Who the hell could tell the difference?

A dark-haired doll in a blue-and-white dress caught his eye, and he chuckled. Funny. The doll reminded him a bit of Ryan Clark.

He bent to pick the doll up and found himself face-to-face with a little girl with white blond curls and enormous blue eyes. She was studying him so intently that he felt compelled to say something.

“I’m buying a gift for my niece,” he said. “She’s about your age. Do you think she would like this doll?”

“No,” the child answered positively, shaking her head. She pointed toward a round-faced baby doll dressed in frothy lace. “That one’s much better,” she said earnestly. “You should buy that one.”

Amused, Max replaced the dark-haired doll and picked up the other one. “This one, huh?” he asked, noting that the prices were comparable.

The tot nodded. “That’s a much better one for your niece.”

“Then I’d better buy it, hadn’t I?”

He grinned at the look of relief that crossed the child’s face when she glanced at the dark-haired doll. The little girl returned his smile with a particularly sweet one of her own and then disappeared into the crowds around her. Max assumed she’d returned to her mother’s side. He’d bet the kid would be urging her mom to hurry and buy the dark-haired doll for her before some other inconsiderate shopper snapped it up.

Kids, Max thought with an indulgent shake of his head. They were cute, but weird. He would never figure them out.

All in all, it was a good thing he’d long since decided he would never have any of his own.

“HE’S GORGEOUS,” Lynn Patterson whispered as she and Ryan both finished ringing up their sales. “What does he want?”

Ryan followed her assistant’s gaze to the tall, blond man in the green sweater, who was studying a display of clown dolls. “He said he wants a gift for his niece.”

“Niece? Not daughter?”

“Something tells me this guy doesn’t have any kids,” Ryan said wryly, remembering how blank he’d been when she’d asked his niece’s age.

“Then he’s probably single. What are you waiting for, Ryan? Get over there and offer assistance to the man. Personal assistance.”

“Lynn,” Ryan groaned.

“C’mon, look at him. He’s amazing. That hair. Those eyes. Those shoulders. He looks like…like—”

“Like a heartbreaker,” Ryan said flatly.

“Well, yeah,” Lynn admitted. “But what a way to go.”

Ryan’s attention had already wandered. “Lynn, do you see those two kids over there? The boy and girl?”

“Hmm. Cute, aren’t they?”

“They’ve been hanging around in here for quite a while. I don’t think they’re with anyone. Help me keep an eye on them, okay?”

Lynn frowned. “You think they’d try to steal something? At their age?”

Ryan sighed. “Unfortunately, it’s a possibility. They’re starting younger these days.”

Her gaze wandered back to the children. They really were cute kids. The boy hovered protectively over his little sister, watching her so carefully. And the girl was an adorable moppet, curly haired, big eyed, pink cheeked. Their clothes were faded and worn, and there was something about them that made Ryan feel a bit sad.

She couldn’t define it. But there was something…

“I’ve decided to get this one.”

The blond heartbreaker leaned against the counter, a lace-clad baby doll clutched in one hand and the football she’d noticed earlier in the other. He was giving her that sexy, crooked smile again—the one that made her insides quiver even though she told herself it was ridiculous to react that way.

Lynn, she noted wryly, had suddenly—and deliberately, Ryan was sure—disappeared.

Keeping her expression as polite as possible, she reached for the doll in the man’s hand. “This is a nice selection. I’m sure your niece will love it.”

“I hope so. I had some assistance from an expert,” he said with a grin, nodding over his shoulder.

Following his gesture, she saw the little blond girl and her brother. Ryan smiled, then turned to the cash register. “Will this be all?”

“For now,” he murmured, making the words sound as though they had another meaning.

She didn’t even blink; she simply rang up the purchase and gave him the total. He handed her a gold credit card.

“My name’s Max Monroe,” he said unnecessarily. “I have some more shopping to do and then I thought I’d grab an early dinner in the Mexican restaurant downstairs. Will you join me?”

“Thank you, but no. I have to work,” she explained. She wasn’t exactly surprised by the invitation, but she still felt a bit flustered by it.

He lifted an eyebrow. “You’ll have time to eat, won’t you?”

She shook her head. “It’s one of the busiest shopping days of the season. I won’t be able to take off any time this evening.”

“Then how about a late dinner? After your shop closes, I mean.”

“Thank you again, but no.”

“Some other time, maybe?”

She gave him a vague smile. “If you’ll excuse me,” she murmured, nodding to the two women who’d just come up behind him, their arms loaded with dolls and accessories. “I have to tend to my other customers now.”

Max didn’t look particularly disappointed—not that she’d expected him to. She was sure he could find any number of women in the mall who’d dearly love to “grab an early dinner” with him. She just didn’t happen to be one of them.

He gave her a jaunty salute, tucked the bag holding the doll under his arm with the football and sauntered out of the shop.

Ryan was aware of several long, appreciative sighs from customers in her shop who’d watched him leave. She was also well aware of the frown of disapproval she was getting from her assistant. She suspected that Lynn had overheard the invitation, and Ryan’s refusal. She knew she’d be hearing about it later.

But for now, she had a shop to run.

“OH, MAN,” Pip groaned outside the doll shop. “He crashed and burned.”

“What does that mean?” Kelsey asked innocently.

“Never mind.” He sighed. Things had looked so promising for a minute there.

“There he goes,” Kelsey whispered, pointing toward the glass elevator in the center of the mall. “Our dad’s getting away.”

Pip looked at his Batman digital watch and frowned. “We have to be going, too.”

“But, Pip—”

“It’s getting late, Kels. You don’t want to get caught, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Okay, let’s go then. We’ll come back tomorrow.”

That cheered her some. “Can we see our mom again tomorrow? And my doll?”

“Sure.”

“And Santa?”

“Again?”

“Yes. There’s something else I want to tell him.”

Pip sighed heavily. Caring for a little girl was such a responsibility, he thought somberly. “We’ll see. Okay?”

“Okay, Pip.” She slipped her hand into his.

Together they headed for the same elevator the man named Max had used only minutes before.

ON SATURDAY the mall was as crowded as it had been the previous day. It took Max nearly twenty minutes to find a parking space when he arrived early that afternoon. Not that he particularly minded cruising the parking lot watching the shoppers; it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do.

He should probably be working, but he wasn’t in the mood today. To the dismay of his agent and editors, who considered him the worst case of wasted potential they’d ever known, he was all too rarely in the mood to work.

Max was bored—certainly not an unfamiliar condition for him. Problem was, there’d been few challenges lately in his self-indulgent, hedonistic, freedom-above-all-else life-style. And he thrived on challenges. Which was the reason he’d headed back to the mall today.

A brisk wind was blowing, reminding him that winter was definitely at hand. He tucked his leather driving gloves into a pocket of his bomber jacket and pulled the collar higher around his neck. His thick, dark gold hair blew slightly in the wind. He stepped beneath the mall awning and ran a hand through the heavy strands, letting them fall haphazardly into place.

A heavyset woman with a bad complexion and a sweet smile stood beside a collection box patiently ringing a handbell, her nose red from the wind. Her chubby hands were pink with cold and callused from years of abuse. Max dug in his jeans pocket, pulled out a ten-dollar bill and slipped it into the collection box.

“Bless you, sir. And Merry Christmas to ya,” the woman said brightly.

“Cool day, isn’t it?” he asked her.

Still smiling, she nodded. “It certainly is. Your donation will help buy blankets and warm food for those that don’t have ’em.”

On impulse, Max pulled out his leather gloves and pressed them into the woman’s free hand. “Wear these,” he urged. “You don’t want your hand to freeze to that bell handle,” he added lightly.

She blinked in surprise. “But—”

“Merry Christmas,” he said as he walked away, feeling uncomfortable with his gesture.

“Thank you, sir. God bless you,” she called after him, already tugging the soft gloves over her rough hands.

Max blended into the crowd of people pushing their way through the mall entrance. He’d have to pick up a new pair of gloves, he thought. He hadn’t really liked the way the others fit, anyway.

The same Christmas carols he’d heard yesterday poured from overhead speakers, blending with the jabber of constantly moving shoppers. The enticing aroma of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies drifted from a Mrs. Field’s shop, blending with the scents of cinnamon and evergreen and peppermint from Christmas displays.

A frowning, forty-something woman bumped Max’s arm and dropped her packages. He helped her retrieve them, flirted with her for a moment, then moved away, leaving her smiling.

“Hey, Max. How’s it goin’?”

The call made Max look around. He nodded when he spotted an acquaintance walking his way. “Hi, Stan. Doing some shopping?”

A stocky African-American of about Max’s age, Stan carried a chubby baby in a backpack and held the hand of a little boy who might have been three or four.

“The wife dragged me down here,” Stan admitted with a grimace. “She’s in J.C. Penney’s now. I told her I’d take the kids to ride the Christmas train while she shopped. Standing in a line full of whining kids beats the hell out of watching her choose a flannel nightgown for her sister.”

Max laughed. “I feel for you, pal.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing staying single, buddy.”

“Whatever it is, I’m getting along just fine without it,” Max quipped.

“You just wait. Someday I’m going to find you in the mall with a wife and a half-dozen kids, and then I’m going to be the one laughing my butt off.”

“No way, Stan. Trust me.”

“Mmm.” Stan grinned, apparently unconvinced. “You playing tomorrow?” he asked as his son tugged impatiently at his hand.

“Yeah, probably. You?”

“I’ll be there.”

“Daddy. Train,” the little boy insisted.

Stan sighed. “Gotta go. See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. See ya’, Stan.” Max watched the trio move away, then shook his head sympathetically. Poor guy.

He headed again for the escalators. His winding path took him past the gingerbread house in the center of the mall, where a long line of ankle-biters waited to sit on Santa’s plump lap. Now there was a nightmare of a temporary job, Max thought with a shudder. He wondered how many times a day Santa’s lap got soaked by leaky toddlers.

As if he’d heard Max’s thoughts, the white-bearded, red-suited man glanced his way. Their gazes held for a moment. The older man smiled and nodded, almost as if they’d met before.

Max returned the nod and told himself the guy was just doing his job, spreading Christmas cheer among the shoppers to make them more inclined to spend their money. He moved on, though he had the odd sensation that he was being watched as he shuffled onto the escalator between an elderly woman and three giggling teenage girls.

RYAN WAS TAKING a lunch break in the mall food court on the ground floor. She sat alone at one end of a long table, a fast-food salad in front of her.

She would have worked straight through the day, but business had slowed a bit during the past hour and Lynn had insisted she take a break. Lynn was sometimes fussier than an old mother hen, but now that Ryan was sitting down, she was glad she’d let her assistant talk her into the respite.

She took a long, appreciative sip of her iced tea, then opened a packet of low-fat ranch dressing and squeezed some onto her salad. She had just stabbed her plastic fork into a crisp chunk of lettuce when someone slid into the seat directly across the table from her.

She glanced up and was glad she hadn’t yet started to eat. She was quite sure she would have choked.

“Mind if I join you?” Max Monroe asked, smiling across the table at her as he unwrapped a bacon double cheeseburger.

It annoyed her that she remembered his name. It irritated her that he had found her now, when there was little she could do to avoid him. And most of all, it made her absolutely furious that the sight of his unruly, gold-streaked hair and ridiculously crooked grin made her go all breathless and quivery like some awestruck adolescent.

She took a deep breath, had a stern mental talk with her hormones and gave him a cool shrug. “It’s an open food court,” she said. “You can sit wherever you like.”

Unfazed by her less-than-gracious reply, Max arranged his meal in front of him—the burger, a large order of fries, a jug-size soft drink and a deep-fried apple pie. Glancing from the high-calorie, high-everything-else food to his slim, firm waist, Ryan wondered jealously if he routinely ate that way, and if so, where did it all go.

She took another bite of her low-calorie, low-fat, low-taste salad, finding less pleasure in it than she would have a few minutes earlier.

“Didn’t we meet yesterday in the doll shop upstairs?” he asked, though she suspected he remembered their meeting as well as she did.

She gave him a polite, deliberately distant smile. “Yes, I believe we did.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m Max Monroe. And you’re Ryan, right?”

“Ryan Clark.” She made no pretense at being flattered that he’d remembered.

“How’s business today?” he asked, after swallowing a hefty bite of his sandwich.

She concentrated on her salad—or pretended to. “Busy.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course.” She wondered why he was wasting time talking to her when she was making it obvious that she wasn’t interested.

At least, she was trying not to be interested.

Okay, the guy was gorgeous. His knock-your-socks-off smile made her toes curl.

If she’d run into him even a year earlier, she’d probably have bantered right back at him, maybe thrown a few passes of her own. She’d have been open to the possibility of a frivolous flirtation, maybe a light-hearted, unquestionably temporary affair—though such encounters had been extremely rare for her. A year ago, she’d been busy preparing to open her business. She hadn’t been ready for a serious relationship, though she might have made time for a bit of fun with a man like Max, had one come along.

But that had been then, and things had changed. Her life was moving along exactly the way she’d planned, and a brief fling didn’t fit in with her new goals. Now it was time to get serious about looking for Mr. Right.

She would almost have bet her precious shop that it would be a complete waste of energy to expect anything permanent with a man like Max Monroe. If she was going to start a family before she reached thirty, there wasn’t time to get distracted by a charming heartbreaker.

She looked up and her gaze met Max’s. His smile crinkled the corners of his blue-gray eyes with tiny lines that hinted at hours spent in the sun. It made her want to smile back at him. It also made her think of fun and laughter and lighthearted conversation and teeth-rattling lovemaking.

If only she’d met him a year or so ago, she thought wistfully. Back when she’d still had time to have her teeth rattled a bit.

Her iced tea splashed precariously against the sides of the paper cup when the table was suddenly jarred from close by. Both Ryan and Max grabbed their drinks to prevent them from spilling. Ryan looked down, not quite sure if she was relieved or disappointed that the spell that had fallen when her eyes locked with Max’s had been abruptly broken.

Two children, a boy and a smaller girl, were just sliding into seats close to Ryan and Max. The boy flushed and looked sheepish when he saw that Ryan was looking at him. “Sorry,” he said. “I stumbled against the table.”

“That’s okay,” she assured him. “No harm done.”

She started to turn away, then hesitated when she noticed the little girl across the table from the boy. Big blue eyes. A mop of white blond curls. A Cupid’s bow of a mouth. And the boy—sandy haired, with blue eyes that looked surprisingly shrewd for his age and a no-nonsense little chin that would one day be formidable.

She’d seen them before, she realized. Yesterday, in her shop.

The little girl was smiling at her. Ryan instinctively returned the smile, which made the child giggle.

“Kelsey,” the boy murmured, handing his little sister a decorated box that held a McDonald’s Happy Meal. “Settle down and eat your lunch.”

Ryan glanced at Max, who was watching her with a grin. She knew he was as amused—and bemused—as she by the boy’s overly mature manner. She smiled wryly back at him.

“Look at what I got in my Happy Meal, Pip,” the child he’d called Kelsey said, holding up a molded-plastic figure. “Minnie Mouse!”

“Yeah, that’s cool,” her brother said, taking a bite of his own small cheeseburger. “Hang on to it or you’ll lose it.”

Kelsey clutched the toy more firmly in her chubby hand. “I won’t lose it.”

“Eat your lunch, now.”

“Okay, Pip.” The little girl obediently took an enormous mouthful of her own burger.

Biting the inside of her lip to avoid laughing, Ryan wondered if the children were eating alone while their mother shopped. They seemed awfully young to be wandering through a crowded mall on their own.

She remembered that they had seemed unaccompanied the day before, in her shop, and she shook her head slightly in disapproval of their parents’ negligence. She would have liked to chat with the children, but didn’t want to encourage them to talk to strangers.

Max apparently didn’t consider that precaution. “You guys doing some Christmas shopping?” he asked encouragingly.

“You might say that,” the boy answered after a momentary consideration.

His sister giggled at a private joke.

“Been to see Santa yet?”

Kelsey nodded avidly. “Twice. I forgot to tell him something the first time, so I went back. He remembered me. He said he would—”

“Kelsey!” Pip said patiently. “It was a yes-or-no question.”

“Oh. Then, yes. We seen him.”

“Saw him,” Pip murmured.

Kelsey gave a deep sigh. “Saw him,” she repeated.

“Didn’t I see you in my shop yesterday?” Ryan asked, forgetting her own mental warnings about talking to the kids.

“The doll shop,” Kelsey said, nodding again. “I like your store very much.”

“It’s a cool shop,” her brother agreed politely. “If you like dolls, I guess,” he couldn’t resist adding.

Ryan laughed. “I happen to like dolls.”

“Me, too,” Kelsey seconded fervently.

“Feel free to come back in and look around whenever you like,” Ryan said, touched by the child’s obvious delight in the shop. She had never gotten over her own childhood fascination with dolls of any shape and size, so she could easily identify with her.

Kelsey looked pleased by the invitation. “Thank you. Maybe Pip will let me come look again after lunch.”

The boy nodded, still concentrating on his hamburger.

“I remember you,” Max said suddenly, looking at the girl. “You helped me pick out a doll for my niece yesterday.”

The child smiled shyly. “My name’s Kelsey,” she volunteered. “That’s my brother. His name is Peter, but I call him Pip, ‘cause I like Pip better.”

“Hello, Kelsey. Hi, Pip. I’m Max.”

The children acknowledged his greeting, then turned expectantly to Ryan.

“I’m Ryan,” she said obligingly.

“I’m six years old.” Kelsey made the announcement with pride. “Pip’s nine.”

“I’m thirty-four,” Max said gravely. “How old are you, Ryan?”

She gave him a pointed look. “I’m twenty-eight.”

“Are you married, Ryan?” Kelsey asked innocently.

“No,” she said, forcing a smile. “I’m not married.”

“Are you married, Max?” Pip asked casually.

“No,” Max answered, still looking amused. “How about you, Pip? Tied the knot yet?”

Kelsey dissolved into giggles. “He’s not married, silly,” she said reprovingly. “He’s only a kid—even if he is a lot older than me.”

“Oh, that’s right. I guess I forgot for a minute,” Max said, winking at Ryan.

She reached desperately for her iced tea, wondering in exasperation how a crooked grin and a quick wink could raise her body temperature by about fifty degrees.

“We saw you in the sporting-goods store, too,” Pip told Max. “You bought a football. Have you played with it yet?”

Max chuckled. “Not yet. I’ll probably try it out on Sunday. Some of my friends and I get together on Sunday afternoons to play touch football in City Park.”

“City Park’s not far from where we live,” Kelsey commented. “Me and Pip go there sometimes and play on the swings. I like to swing.”

A mall employee in a bright red-and-green uniform approached the table with a colorful bouquet of helium-filled balloons bobbing behind her.

“Hi,” she said, her ponytail bouncing perkily. She looked at Ryan. “Would your kids like a balloon? They’re free.”

“Oh, uh…” Flustered, Ryan looked at the children.

“I’d like one, thank you,” Kelsey said, pointing to a red balloon. “May I have that one?”

“Sure.” The young woman plucked the red balloon from the batch and pressed the string into Kelsey’s hand. “Don’t let go now or it’ll fly away. Maybe your dad’ll tie it to your wrist.”

Before anyone could answer, she turned to Pip. “How about you? Want a balloon?”

Pip shook his head. “No, thank you.”

“Okay. See ya, then. Have a nice day.”

The young woman had already spotted another family group. As she moved toward them, she looked over her shoulder at Ryan. “Nice kids,” she said.

Fortunately, Ryan was spared having to answer.

Kelsey was grinning at Max. “She thought you were my daddy.”

“Yeah. I guess she did.” Max looked almost as disconcerted as Ryan had felt when the woman had mistaken her for the children’s mother.

“You don’t have any children, do you, Max?”

“No, Kelsey. I don’t have any children.”

The child gave him a melting smile. “Would you like some?”

She jerked suddenly, as though she’d been kicked beneath the table. “Ouch, Pip! That—”

“Finish your french fries,” her brother said quickly. “You don’t want them to get cold.”