Abby sighed.
Other than her very busy volunteer schedule and long work hours, Abby led a lonely life. Oh, she had friends, lots of friends, amazing friends like Danielle, but she didn’t have someone to come home to, someone to whom she was the most important person in their life, someone to love and be loved by. Only her tabby cat Mistletoe cared whether or not she came home in the mornings after working the emergency department night shift.
Oblivious to her onset of melancholy, Dirk adjusted his belly padding, scratched at his glued-on beard. “I’ll never complain about a monkey suit again. After this getup, wearing a tuxedo will feel like a real treat.”
Pulling herself from her unwanted self-pitying thoughts and trying not to think about how handsome Dirk would look in a tux, out of a tux, Abby focused on the here and now. She had a great life, a great job and great friends. She was a needed, productive member of society. At the moment she was needed to give downtown Philadelphia children a magical visit with Santa.
Abby wasn’t the kind of woman to disappoint. Not when she had any say in the matter and never when it came to children and Christmas.
“Better let me adjust your beard there, Santa.” She tugged on Dirk’s fake white beard, soothing down the coarse lifelike hair he’d ruffled with his scratching.
Just touching him prickled her skin with goose bumps.
Glancing everywhere but at her, he fanned his face. “Man, this thing is hot.”
He was what was hot. Hot as a roaring fire she’d like to warm herself next to. Oh, my! Abby turned away before she had to fan her face, too.
“You think that’s why Santa’s cheeks stay red?” She reached into the break room’s refrigerator and pulled out a cold bottle of water.
“I thought it was from kissing all the mommies under the mistletoe,” he surprised her by saying.
Abby blinked at him, at how the corners of his mouth hitched upward ever so slightly. Was he flirting with her?
Laughing a bit nervously, she handed him the water. “Well, there is that.”
Twisting off the top and taking a long swig, Dirk sagged into a chair, his blue gaze lifting to hers. “Tell me I don’t really have to go back out there.”
“You don’t have to, but you will, anyway.”
He would, too. In the short time since he’d arrived in Philadelphia, just a couple of weeks prior to Halloween, Dirk had proved himself the type of man who didn’t shirk a commitment. Even one he so obviously regretted having made. Why had he? Guilt at what had happened between them? At his hasty retreat into “This never should have happened” immediately afterward? She’d hid her hurt. She knew she had. And she’d told herself she should be relieved—workplace romances never seemed to end well.
“You’re right.” Even for a guy dressed like Santa Claus his sigh was a bit too melodramatic. “I will, but you owe me, Abs. Big-time. Any time. Any place. Any thing. You owe me. Take note.”
Despite how her heart tattooed a funky beat at his unexpected words, wondering if maybe that morning haunted him, too, Abby placed her hands on her hips. Or maybe it was because of his words she felt the need to stand her ground. “I think ‘any’ is a bit too general.”
“Nope.” He shook his Santafied head. “Any it is.”
She sighed. How bad could owing him be? They’d both agreed falling into bed together had been a mistake, the result of a particularly bad night in the E.R. where three people had died due to trauma received in a multicar accident. Although they’d done everything medically possible, the internal injuries had been too extensive. An elderly man had suffered a heart attack and hit another car head-on. He’d died instantly, but a two-year-old girl and her mother had been alive, barely, when paramedics had rushed them into the emergency room. The mother had died within minutes, the child soon thereafter. Abby’s heart had felt ripped out by shift change. Surprisingly, Dirk had been just as devastated. It had been the only time she’d seen his E.R. physician armor crack.
They’d ended up at her house, clinging to each other for comfort. That’s all that morning had been. Comfort sex between two normal, healthy adults who found each other attractive.
Not that comfort sex with Dirk had been a bad thing. She supposed sex with any man of his probable experience would be fabulous. Definitely, Dirk had been fabulous. Practice made perfect, right?
Which meant there was no way his any thing, any time, any place would have anything to do with a repeat performance. He might have been well on his way to the perfect lover, but she’d been sorely lacking in practice.
As in a couple of not-so-perfect boyfriends.
So why had she asked Dirk in when he’d dropped her by her house when he’d caught her crying in the elevator and insisted on driving her home? How had him walking her to her front door ended with him carrying her to her bedroom, stripping her naked, and initiating her to the joys shared between a man and a woman that up to that point she’d only believed happened in romance novels?
“Abs?” He pulled her back to the present.
She blinked again, hoping more fervently than every kid on Christmas Eve that he couldn’t read her thoughts.
He pushed the gold-rimmed glasses back against the straight slant of his nose. “Do we have a deal?”
She may as well agree. It wasn’t as if Dirk would ever really need anything from her. He was gorgeous, and despite his grumblings about having to play the role of Santa, Dirk was good-hearted, an honorable man and an excellent doctor. The physical chemistry between them kept her from being a hundred percent comfortable in his presence—how could she be comfortable when she looked at him and remembered how delicious his kisses tasted, how his naked body felt gliding against hers?
Just thinking about him made her feel a little giddy. There was always a little extra bounce to her step on the nights her shift overlapped his emergency room duties.
“Fine.” She met his gaze and wondered what he was up to. The man was brilliant. He was also the only Santa she had. She needed him. “For the kids. I owe you.”
“Good,” he said, standing. “Let’s get this over with.”
Dirk’s smile scared her. Which felt wrong. How could a smiling Santa be intimidating? Yet, as his gloved hand clasped hers, her nervous system lit up like a twinkling Christmas tree.
Chapter Two
FROM the moment his precious two-year-old daughter and his wife had been killed in a car accident on their way to an early-morning Christmas bargain sale, Dirk Kelley had hated Christmas.
He’d avoided anything to do with the holiday year after year. To the point that his family had held a well-intended but unnecessary intervention at last year’s not-so-joyous festivities.
After their unwelcome confrontation, telling him he needed to deal with Sandra and Shelby’s deaths, they’d continued to hound him, to try to set him up on dates, to beg him to live life. By early summer, he’d known he had to move away from Oak Park, where his family resided, before the next holiday season. Much to their disappointment, he’d accepted the job in Philadelphia, knowing he was far enough away to avoid holiday get-togethers and their piteous look, but not so far away that he couldn’t make it home if there was an emergency. He loved them, just couldn’t deal with the pity in their eyes, their interference in what was left of his life.
They were wrong. He hadn’t needed the intervention. What he’d needed was for his wife and daughter to be alive, but that was impossible. He’d accepted that inevitability years ago, accepted that he had to move on with his life, and he had. But that didn’t mean he’d ever want to be involved with another woman or would welcome the month of