His Christmas Fantasy

“What were you thinking? What did you tell him? Oh, and remind me to never split a pitcher of margaritas with you again. Ever. And you are a major chicken-shit that you didn’t tell me this to my face.” She finally ran out of steam and ended her rant.

“Relax. I was subtle.”

Yeah. Darren was to subtle what she was to beauty-queen beautiful. Giselle groaned. “There’s nothing subtle about you.”

“I called him under the guise of talking about a couple of his pieces in a small gallery, you know, one photographer to another. I hadn’t even gotten around to working you into the conversation when he brought you up.”

“He brought me up?” she echoed rather stupidly, her pulse moving into overdrive. She idly smoothed her hand over the gearshift’s rounded knob.

“Apparently he recognized my name and knew I worked with you. Said he reads the magazine. He asked about you. I mentioned the divorce, yada, yada, yada, he asked for your number.”

A raindrop splattered against her windshield. Then another and another.

“He called and left a message a couple of weeks ago,” she told him.

“Let me guess, you didn’t call him back.” Giselle could practically see his eyes roll.

It began to rain in earnest. “What was the point? My intention is to get over him, not talk to him.” “Did you ever think, Girl Genius, that talking to him, going on assignment with him is just the way to do that?”

“Actually, no. It strikes me as dangerously stupid.” Case in point: she’d told Sam she didn’t want to work with him. That was the sensible, cautious side of her. However, there was a part of her deep down inside that wanted to give in to the opportunity to spend four torturous days with him. In the last half hour, she’d felt more alive, more tuned in to everything, as if she’d finally fully awakened since…well, the last time she was around Sam McKendrick. What she felt around Sam was what she’d wanted to feel when she’d married Barry—an electric sizzle, an almost frantic compulsion to touch and be touched, a restless ache deep inside that seemed an instinctive response to him.

She slammed the lid shut on that Pandora’s box. Not only had Sam been her sister’s husband, he’d cheated on Helene. Strictly off limits. Verboten.

Frustration welled inside her, a countermeasure to her incendiary sexual response to Mr. Wrong. “Riddle me this. How am I supposed to get over him when he’s right frickin’ there?”

“Selle, honey, haven’t you ever been shopping, seen a wickedly expensive dress and known that even if you were willing to eat beans for the next two months, you still couldn’t have that dress?”

“Um…no. I don’t really wear dresses,” she said, “so I’ve never been in that situation.” He deserved a dose of obtuse.

Darren offered a long-suffering sigh. “For hypothetical situations, we’re going to pretend you have. What should you do?”

He loved constructing these little illustrative vignettes. What the hell, she’d play along. He usually made a point…sooner or later. “Walk away and look for a knockoff I can afford in another store.”

“That’s your first mistake.” Darren pounced on her. “And that’s why you wound up with a man who didn’t suit you. You settled.”

“Sometimes you’re amazingly insightful.”

“I know.” She sensed his grin on the other end. “What you need to do is march into that store and try on the dress. You always try it on and then when it doesn’t look as good as it should on your bodacious self for that kind of money, you can walk away from it feeling good about not buying it.”

The idea of “trying on” Sam instantly gave her a mental image of the two of them engaged in hot, sweaty sex, which actually was a mental image that was never very far away. “I’m not trying him on.” “I didn’t mean literally…although that could work. I meant that if you spend a couple of days with him, you might find out you don’t really like him.” She heard Gerald’s voice in the background. “Hold on a sec,” Darren said to her, and then he was talking to Gerald. “Yeah, I’m almost through. I’m talking Giselle off a ledge.”

She snorted in his ear. “Humph. Talking yourself out of hot water is more like it.” He laughed, and she continued, “And what if you try on the dress and it looks even better than you thought and you still can’t have it?”

“You’re screwed.” He didn’t have to sound so cheery about it. “But at least you can admire the way you look in it for a few minutes. Or sell your soul to the devil and buy it anyway.”

“That’s so helpful…and reassuring.”

“I’m always here for you, hon. Listen, gotta run. Give me a call when you get back and you can thank me then.”

“Or not. I’d suggest you spend the next few days getting your affairs in order,” she suggested darkly.

Another laugh, followed by, “Ta,” and Darren was gone.

Giselle disconnected the call on her end. She tucked the phone back into her case and watched the rain form rivulets on her windshield. She still didn’t know how Sam had wound up on this assignment. And it didn’t really matter, did it?

Come hell or high water, she was getting over Sam on this trip. The alternative wasn’t an option.

3

GISELLE SHIFTED in her aisle seat on Sunday morning as the non-stop Atlanta-to-Phoenix flight continued to board.

Sam had arrived. She sensed him, felt him, as if she was tuned in to him on a level she’d never experienced with anyone else. She looked up from her magazine and her breath caught in her throat as her eyes met his. He just looked so…well, damn glad to see her. The kind of look lovers would share on a crowded plane.

And then he was there, beside her.

“Worried I wouldn’t make it?” Sam said by way of greeting. His cocky grin, however, carried an edge of uncertainty.

“One can always hope.” Instead of coming out crisp and biting as she’d intended, she sounded breathless and teasing, undone by that combination of smile and faint hesitation, as if it actually mattered to him whether she was glad to see him or not. And once again she was disgusted with herself that even though he was a cheating bastard, his blue eyes still set her heart tripping.

Giselle had arrived at the airport early enough to grab a coffee and bagel and skim the morning newspaper before she was called to board the flight from Atlanta to Phoenix. Arriving early hadn’t been a problem since she’d tossed and turned all night—yet another sleepless night compliments of Sam McKendrick.

She really hadn’t been sure Sam would show at all. But there he stood, larger than life.

Stepping closer to her aisle seat, he hoisted his equipment bag into the overhead bin, which was all good and fine except it put his other equipment right at eye level.

Look away, look away, look away, she told herself, but somewhere along the route to her brain her libido intercepted the message and she continued to stare at his crotch, the bulge between his thighs thrown into relief by his upraised arms. Finally, he settled his carryon and she hastily averted her eyes, which did nothing to abate the heat radiating from her core. One lousy Sam’s-crotch-at-her-eye-level encounter and it was as if a furnace switch had been flipped on inside her.

“Want to move over?”

He wished. “No. I don’t.” She smiled and stood, stepping out into the aisle. She always requested the aisle seat. A blonde who’d given Giselle a dismissing look earlier sat next to the window. Giselle hated being squashed into the center seat. She offered Sam a bright smile. “I believe you’re in the middle.”

Karma was a bitch. Going to Sedona, doing this story, this was her big chance to get over this…ridiculous…making-her-crazy…thing she had for Sam. This was supposed to be her cure, her fix. And then he’d ruined it by showing up. Of all the assignments to get—him…now. Seemed sort of fitting he had to scrunch his sixfoot plus, broad-shouldered, long, muscular-legged, crotch-bulging—self into the center seat. Served him right for plaguing her.

She extended her two hands, palms up, the way they did on game shows when they were showcasing a prize. “Enjoy.” She offered an evil smirk.

His blue eyes twinkled and she wanted to kick herself. She was aiming for hateful, at least sarcastic, and he seemed to think she was flirting with him. She wasn’t flirting. Nope. Because that would be like ducking under a line of yellow tape with Warning Do Not Cross in big bold black letters.

“Okay, then.” He slid in, folding himself into the tight spot.

Giselle sat back down and her space shrank proportionately to accommodate Sam next to her. Short of leaning out into the aisle, she couldn’t get away from his broad shoulder against hers. Her stomach somersaulted, and she felt even more flushed than when she’d been face to crotch two minutes ago. He dug around and clicked his seat belt into place, his muscles bunching against her arm as he completed the simple task.

And he smelled…well, good, dammit. Not that she wanted to be stuck next to him for the next four hours if he had body odor or halitosis, but she didn’t need this, either. His scent was fresh and clean, like that of a man just out of the shower with the faint blend of soap, deodorant and a hint of mint toothpaste. Enticing. Appealing. Arousing.

No doubt about it, karma was definitely a bitch. And she was paying for having developed a crush on her sister’s husband the first time she laid eyes on him and for wanting him from then to now and all the stinking time in between and for still feeling this horrible tingly, I’m-so-alive feeling when she was around him, even though she knew he was a cheat and she was a sick puppy to still feel that way. Yes, she was being punished.

He turned his head to face her. They were close enough she could see her reflection in his eyes. It was like being enveloped in a blanket of Sam, of forbidden want. Forget it. She wasn’t being punished. She was being tortured.

“I read through your notes and the article outline last night,” he said. “I wanted to bounce a couple of ideas off you.”