Jonah Read online

  “Are you sure, Edie?” Jonah asked.

  “Yes.” She turned to the manager. “Mr. Trotter, I give you my word, that nothing of an...er...sexual nature was going on between Jonah and me, nor will it ever. I was simply trying to help him with his unfortunate flea problem.”

  Mr. Trotter cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “you have been an exemplary employee until now. I guess I can give you another chance.”

  He waggled a finger under Jonah’s nose. “But if I even get a whiff that there is hanky-panky going on between the two of you, then you’re both out on your ears. Is that understood? Carmichael’s has an image to uphold.”

  Edie forced a smile. “Yes, sir, thank you. You won’t regret your decision.”

  Jonah said nothing, just kept glaring at Trotter with a wicked stare that sent goose bumps up Edie’s spine. Jonah possessed a volatile edginess that appealed to the nurturer in her. She wanted to pacify him.

  “Let me see if I can find another Santa suit,” Trotter said. “Wait here, Stevenson. Miss Preston, back to work.” He made shooing motions at her.

  Edie ducked her head, scurrying around Trotter and through the door, the bells on her hat jangling merrily.

  She breathed a sigh of relief, but it was only temporary. Yes, she had managed to hold on to her holiday job, but in the process, she had promised to keep her hands off sexy Santa Jonah.

  And as luck would have it, he was the most intriguing man she’d met in years.

  Chapter Two

  “Jingle Bells” jangled from the store’s sound system for the nine zillionth time as a pair of twin toddlers sat crooked in the corners of Jonah’s elbows, toothily drooling over his hands in surprisingly coordinated unison.

  He was going hoarse from too many boisterous ho, ho, hos, and his backside still itched like the dickens.

  All around their little North Pole island, shoppers bustled, pushing and vying for bargains at the sales racks. The perfume counter was two aisles over, and Jonah was convinced the scent of rose petals was permanently embedded in his nostrils.

  Mistletoe and holly hung from the ceiling above them, and the numerous Christmas lights, strung throughout the entire tableau, twinkled merrily off and on. Periodically, a nasal-voiced announcer would break in over the PA system to declare a sale on gold-plated back scratchers in bath accessories or nativity-scene decorated finger bowls in fine china.

  Chief West sure knew how to torture a guy. And punishment was all this assignment amounted to because Jonah didn’t have a spare moment to watch the employees in order to figure out who was behind the recent rash of store thefts. Most of his investigative efforts would have to be concentrated after hours when he finished with the Santa gig every day.

  He sighed. That meant twelve- and fourteen-hour workdays. Most of it spent in this red-and-white getup.

  Okay. His chief had made an impression. Jonah had learned his lesson. He would never again wreck the mayor’s car.

  “You all look so adorable.” Edie grinned. “Santa and the twins.”

  Jonah shot her a dirty look. The woman was way too perky for his own good.

  “Smile,” instructed the twins’ mother, standing off to one side.

  Jonah faked a smile for the kids’ sake.

  “Say ‘fruitcake!’” Elf Edie sang out gaily as she bent slightly to peer through the camera mounted on a tripod and clicked the shutter.

  Jonah blinked against the glare from the photography lights.

  At the rate he was going, he’d have third-degree retinal burns by the time this day was finished. He’d already endured an endless litany of “Santa, I wants” over the course of the last two hours. Nobody seemed to care that Santa wanted a potty break, a double-meat cheeseburger, and a thick chocolate malt.

  The twins were no more enamored of the infernal camera than he. They both broke into instant tears.

  “Ho, ho, ho.” Jonah jostled the babies, trying to quiet them. They stared into his face, then looked at each other and sobbed harder.

  “I’ll take them off your hands.” Their mother stepped forward and relieved him of his charges.

  The young mother had his complete admiration. How she dared brave the store alone the day after Thanksgiving with two eighteen-month-olds in tow was beyond his comprehension.

  The mother loaded her twins into a double stroller then went over to pay Edie for the photos she was printing out.

  Despite his best intentions to keep his lingering glances to himself, Jonah found his gaze straying down the curve of Edie’s well-shaped thighs encased so enticingly in forest-green tights. She wore a red tunic sweater that just barely covered her equally well-shaped bottom.

  Knock it off, Stevenson. You can’t get involved with her no matter how enticing the view. Don’t get mixed up with people you work with. Remember Dawanda Beaman?

  How could he forget Dawanda?

  When he was in El Paso, he’d been assigned to guard the leggy supermodel after she received death threats for testifying against a murder defendant Jonah had arrested.

  She’d seduced him, and he’d fallen for her hook, line, and sinker, to the point where he went to political functions, dressed in tuxedos, and even took elocution lessons to please her. When Dawanda dumped him for a billionaire polo player, Jonah had been crushed.

  What a complicated mess that relationship had been, and ever after, he made it a personal policy never to get involved with co-workers or witnesses or informants. Plus, he didn’t get mixed up with anyone who couldn’t accept him for who he was, faults and all.

  And especially not any woman who wanted to turn him into something he wasn’t. He’d had enough of that from his Aunt Polly.

  Still, despite his declaration to the contrary, he couldn’t seem to stop his eyes from roving. Nothing wrong with looking at the menu, after all, just as long as you didn’t order anything.

  Jonah tilted his head and boldly admired how the wide black belt nipped in neatly at Edie’s slender waist. Sneaking peeks at this fetching, camera-wielding elf made the job tolerable.

  “Got a nice tail on her, doesn’t she, Santa?”

  What? Jonah looked over at the next kid standing in line.

  The boy was about eight with a cynical oh-yeah? expression on his freckled face. He leaned against the thick velvet rope with a cocky stance, arms crossed over his chest, legs wide apart, defiant chin in the air. The kid had no parent with him.

  Uh-oh.

  Jonah had seen that same truculent stance too many times in the mirror not to recognize trouble when he spotted it. Twenty years ago, he’d been the one to stand in line for the joy of heckling Santa.

  Paybacks were a witch.

  “Aren’t you a little young for such talk?” Jonah asked dryly.

  As a kid, whenever he had acted outrageously, he’d done so for one reason—attention. It had been tough growing up with an absent father and a mother who worked two jobs to make ends meet.

  His mother had been unable to control his rambunctious nature, and he’d run wild. Then his mother had died of kidney failure when he was twelve. Angry at the world, he’d turned to shoplifting and petty vandalism to ease his emotional pain.

  He craved discipline, and Aunt Polly had shown up to adopt him and rescue him from himself and took him to her ranch. And while his aunt’s efforts had kept him from ending up on the wrong side of the law as an adult, no matter how hard he had tried to please her, he’d always fallen short of his goal. Since his mother’s death, no one had loved him unconditionally.

  Jonah motioned to the boy. “Come here.”

  The kid shook his head. “No way. For all I know you’re some old perv.”

  “I’m Santa, kid.”

  “There’s no such thing as Santa. You’re a fraud, a fake. I’ll even pull off your beard and prove it.” Quick as lightning, the kid vaulted over the rope and onto the plywood sleigh.

  He reached out to snatch at the artificial beard but before he could grab it, Jonah’s finge
rs locked around the boy’s wrist.

  Jonah stared him in the eye. “I’m guessing Santa didn’t bring you much last year.”

  The boy looked startled. “There is no Santa.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Oh, yeah? Then how come you didn’t bring me the bike I asked for last Christmas? Why didn’t you bring my daddy back home?” The boy’s voice broke just a little on that last question.

  “So that’s what this is all about,” Jonah murmured. He put his arm around the boy’s waist and lifted him onto his lap.

  The boy did not resist.

  “You want to tell me about it?”

  The boy ducked his head and shrugged. “Nothing to tell. My dad left me and my mom. He never calls, never sends presents. My mom works real hard cleaning rooms at a motel, but she doesn’t have much money. You know what I got for Christmas last year? Underwear and socks and then she took me out to a fast food restaurant.”

  “That’s not going to happen this year,” Jonah told him. “Santa’s going to see to it personally. You go over there and give that pretty elf your name and address.”

  The boy looked at him. “Really?”

  The expectant hope in his eyes hit Jonah clean to the bone. He knew what it was like to be poor and unwanted. “Really.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “But Santa’s got one request of you.”

  The boy rolled his eyes. “I knew there’d be a catch.”

  “It’s not a catch. It’s common courtesy.”

  The boy sighed. “What is it?”

  “Watch your mouth and mind your mother.”

  “Okay.” He shrugged. “I guess I can do that.”

  “Promise?”

  “Bring me a bike and we’ll talk.”

  The kid drove a hard bargain. Jonah handed him a candy cane and watched him scurry over to Edie.

  A warm feeling sprouted in his chest. He had helped that boy feel better about himself, and Jonah would make sure the kid had a special Christmas this year.

  Edie talked to the boy, then turned to smile at Jonah, an expression of awe on her fresh face. That look struck him like an arrow to the heart.

  Maybe this assignment wasn’t going to be so crummy after all.

  THE MORE SHE SAW OF JONAH Stevenson, the more impressed and confused Edie became. He was handsome, and Lord, was he in great shape. He had a killer smile and infinite patience with crying babies. He’d stood up to Mr. Trotter for her, and he’d done a very nice thing giving special attention to that unhappy young boy.

  So why was a guy like him playing department store Santa?

  Curiosity gnawed at her.

  From previous years as an elf at Carmichael’s, a seasonal position she’d held all through undergraduate school and while earning her Master of Psychology, she knew that usually only two types of men took the job. One, men so down on their luck they could only get temporary, minimum-wage employment, or two, retired grandfathers who enjoyed children.

  With his looks and skills, Jonah could easily have found a better paying job.

  Unless he was in some kind of trouble. He denied being an alcoholic, but what about drugs? What about a gambling or sex addiction?

  Edie cast him a speculative glance.

  He chatted with a little girl who wanted to know what reindeers ate so she could leave something for Rudolph and the other reindeers on Christmas Eve along with the requisite cookies and milk for Santa.

  As a child, Edie had been the same, always worried about everyone and trying to make sure they were all taken care of. Her father had told her that reindeers ate Cheerios. Funny, she’d thought at the time, that Cheerios was Dad’s favorite cereal, too.

  Jonah told the little girl that reindeers loved oatmeal because it made them fly higher and faster.

  What a great imagination.

  Edie’s curiosity kicked into overdrive. He was such a paradox. She had to know more about him and why he was working at the store.

  Who knows? Maybe he is like you. Maybe he just loves Christmas. Or maybe he is going to school and needs money for tuition.

  Thank heavens it was time for their prescheduled break. Maybe she would take him to lunch and sate her curiosity.

  She took the stand-up cardboard sign that had the face of a clock printed on it and moveable plastic hands.

  It said: Santa Will be Back at _____. Edie set the time for two o’clock and posted the sign at the end of the line.

  “Ready for a break?” she asked him a few minutes later after the last child had gone through.

  “You read my mind.”

  “Not exactly.” She grinned. “My stomach’s been growling for over an hour. Would you like to grab a bite at the cafeteria down the block?”

  “Dressed like this?”

  “Of course not. You’d be mobbed.”

  “Do we have time to change?”

  “We’ve got an hour.” Edie pointed to the sign.

  “You’re an angel.” He hopped down from the sleigh and landed gracefully beside her.

  She peered at him, wondering why her heart was pounding so hard and why she had an irresistible urge to break into song. “You’ve got something on your cheek.”

  “Where?” He raised a hand. “Ick. Something sticky.”

  Edie stood on tiptoe to inspect him closer. “Looks like kid gunk.”

  “A lollipop-chomping little girl decided to kiss me.”

  “I’ve got some moist towelettes. When you’re working around kids, you never know when one will come in handy.” She took a small flat package from the pocket of her tunic and tore it open. “Hold still.”

  Then she reached out and ran the towelette over his cheek. Her fingers trembled slightly, and she felt a sudden lightheadedness. She crumpled the towelette in her hand. “There. All gone.”

  He stared at her.

  Edie caught her breath. He had beautiful blue eyes. It was unusual for such a dark-haired man to possess such arresting light-blue eyes. She was more captivated than ever.

  “You’ve got beautiful skin,” he murmured.

  “Th-thank you.”

  “Flawless.”

  “You should see the stuff I slather on my face at night.” She laughed nervously.

  “Now that is a tempting thought.”

  The idea of Jonah seeing her in pj’s sent a flood of heat swamping her body until she felt as if she were standing in a pool of melted butter. Man, but it was hot in here.

  JONAH GAZED INTO THOSE beguiling emerald eyes and knew he had to get away from Edie.

  Fast.

  Or he would be breaking his own rules about getting involved with people he worked with.

  And that wasn’t good. Not good at all.

  He turned his head, and to his dismay he saw a small-potatoes thug he’d arrested numerous times, coming down the luggage aisle and headed right toward him.

  Freddie the Fish.

  So called on the streets because he had pop eyes, fleshy folds of skin around his neck that flapped like gills when he got excited, and he had such a penchant for sardines he always kept a vacuum-sealed pouch of the fish in the front pocket of his shirt.

  Why was Freddie the Fish at Carmichael’s?

  Freddie had been arrested, convicted, and had done time in prison for stealing from warehouses and fencing the stuff with his cousin, Walter the Weasel. Could Freddie be in cahoots with whomever was stealing from the store?

  The evidence pointed to an inside job.

  The thefts had been going on for over a week. So over ten thousand dollars of merchandise had been stolen. Someone who knew the store and knew it well was smuggling the items right out from under the manager’s nose.

  No wonder Trotter was so foul-tempered. Since he’d only been manager for two months, his reign was not off to a good start.

  Jonah frowned. It wasn’t a good idea to assume anything about Freddie. For all he knew, the man was merely doing his Christmas shopping.

  Fred
die swaggered closer.

  Crud! The last thing he needed was to be fingered by Freddie the Fish.

  Do something, Stevenson.

  Desperate to hide his face before Freddie recognized him, Jonah locked gazes with Edie.

  She smiled.

  He pulled her to him and dipped his head.

  Her sweet little mouth rounded in a startled circle.

  Jonah’s lips were already on hers before he realized that Freddie probably wouldn’t have recognized him in the Santa beard, but he was already committed.

  Chapter Three

  Oh! Oh! His touch was incredible.

  Rough, masculine fingers tenderly grazed Edie’s delicate, feminine skin. Hot, firm lips scorched her mouth. Their lips interlocked like matching puzzle pieces.

  Jonah was kissing her!

  It was probably sheer coincidence, not destiny at all, but in that moment, the store sound system began playing, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”

  Immediately, her senses zoomed into overload.

  Tilt! Tilt!

  The smell of him, the pressure of his body flush against hers, the intense thudding of her heart.

  Her mind disengaged from her surroundings. She forgot she was standing in the middle of Carmichael’s, forgot about the multitudinous, post-Thanksgiving shoppers flowing past them, forgot about everything but Santa Jonah and his dangerous kiss.

  And what a kiss it was.

  Long, lingering, and full of promise. What things would he have done with his tongue if they’d been alone?

  Her stomach swooned, her cheeks flamed, her nipples tightened.

  Cease and desist, Edie Renee! There will be absolutely no bursting into spontaneous combustion!

  But her body completely ignored her mind as Jonah’s kiss morphed her from a mild-mannered elf into a human incendiary device.

  “Look, Mommy, Santa Claus is kissing an elf,” a child cried, pulling Edie back to reality.

  “Hey, you two,” a smart-mouthed teenager shouted. “Get a room.”

  “For shame, Santa. What would Mrs. Claus say?” someone else chimed in.