The lights, the smells, the sales, the noises, everything about the month ripped open his never-healing chest wound.
Abby’s initial shocked expression must have mirrored his own when he’d agreed to be her Santa.
Mortification and panic had struggled for top seat. Yet he hadn’t been able to take back his ill-fated yes. Not when the wariness she’d eyed him with since the morning after they’d met had finally disappeared, replaced with surprise and soft hazel-eyed gratitude. That look had done something to his insides. Something strange and foreign and despite knowing how difficult today was going to be, he hadn’t retracted his agreement.
Not when doing so would disappoint Abby.
Thank God the deed was behind him and he could put Christmas nonsense behind him, where it belonged.
Thankfully de-Santafied, he wandered around Abby’s living room. The room had been taken hostage by Christmas Past since the last time he’d been here, two months ago. He’d swear he’d stepped into a nostalgic Christmas movie scene from a couple of decades ago.
An ancient wreath hung over Abby’s fireplace, a slightly thinning silver garland was draped over a doorway with faded red ribbons marking each corner. A small Christmas village complete with fake glittery snow and dozens of tiny trees and villagers was set up on a white cloth-covered table, clearly set up in a place of honor beside the tree. The nine main pieces of the village looked old, expensive.
Her live Christmas tree towered almost to the ceiling, a ceramic-faced angel’s tinsel halo mere inches from it. What a crazy tradition. Trees indoors. The entire room smelt like the pine tree—like Christmas. Smells he didn’t like. Smells that haunted him and took him to hellish places he didn’t want to go.
There had been a Christmas tree in the waiting room of the emergency department the morning Sandra and Shelby had died. Amazing how the smell could take him back to sitting in that room, a broken man, a doctor who hadn’t been able to do a damned thing to save his baby girl and her mother.
He walked over to the fireplace, eyeing the giant painted toy soldiers to each side, picking up a slightly worn wooden nutcracker. He shook his head, waiting for the nausea to hit him, waiting for the cold sweat to cover his skin, the grief to bring him to his knees.
Christmas did that to him. Sure, he’d learned to bury his pain beneath what most labeled as cynicism, but that didn’t mean in private moments the past didn’t sneak up to take a stab through his armor, to chip away another piece of what was left of him.
And yet, for the first time since Sandra and Shelby’s deaths, he’d agreed to do something that fed into the whole commercialism of Christmas. All because pretty little nurse Abby Arnold had asked him. She’d lit up so brilliantly someone could stick a halo on her head and place her on top of a tree.
He’d definitely found a piece of heaven on earth in her arms. Had found solace he hadn’t expected in the heat of her kisses.
Solace? After the first sweep of his mouth over her lush lips, he hadn’t been seeking comfort but acting on the attraction he’d instantly felt for the pretty brunette nurse. He’d been on fire. With lust. With need. With the desire to be inside her curvy body.
He hadn’t been remembering or forgetting. He’d been in the moment. With Abby.
He’d wanted her the second he’d laid eyes on her, but never had he experienced such all-consuming sex as that morning. So all-consuming he’d known they couldn’t repeat it. Quite easily he could see himself getting obsessed with having her body wrapped around him, getting serious when he had no intention of ever having another serious relationship. Just look at how often he thought of Abby and they’d only had the one morning where they’d made love, twice, and collapsed into exhausted sleep.
Letting out a slow, controlled breath, Dirk placed the nutcracker back on her mantel. Any time, any place, any thing. Why had he teased her into making such an outlandish promise? Better yet, why had he asked for what he had?
He turned, planning to go and find Abby, to tell her he’d changed his mind and needed to go.
A fat tabby cat in a wicker basket at the end of the sofa caught his eye. They’d been formally introduced when the cat had jumped onto the bed, waking both Dirk and Abby in the middle of the afternoon that mid-October day. The cat had been observing his perusal of the room but other than watch him with boredom the cat never moved except to close its eyes.
Realizing another smell, one that was making his stomach grumble, was taking precedence over the pine and was coming through an open doorway, he followed his nose.
When he stepped into the kitchen, he stopped still at the sight that met him, wondering if he’d had one too many kids call him Santa. Because he certainly had the feeling that he’d stepped into an old Christmas movie again.
Singing to the soft Christmas music playing on the mounted under-the-counter player, Abby had on an apron that had Mr. and Mrs. Claus kissing under a sprig of mistletoe on the front. She’d pulled her thick hair back with a red ribbon and had kicked off her shoes for a pair of worn, fuzzy Rudolph slippers.
Stirring a mixture in a glass bowl, a whimsical smile played on her lips as she swayed to the beat of “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.” She looked happy. Like she belonged in this house with its hand-me-down decorations and cozy holiday atmosphere.
Not that he found any of this cozy.
Only there was something about Abby that made him feel warmth where only coldness had resided for so long. There was also something about her that made him want to hold mistletoe over her head and kiss her.
He’d need a thatched hut with a mistletoe roof over her head to justify all the places he wanted to kiss Abby Arnold.
He wanted to do more than kiss her. Lots more. Like take some of that fudge and smear it across her…
Her gaze lifting from the glass bowl she held, she smiled, knocking the breath from his lungs with her beauty and sincerity. “I can’t believe you wanted homemade fudge as your any time, any place, any thing.”
Her smile said he’d pleased her with his ravings about the goodies she’d brought to the break room at the hospital and how he wanted another bite.
He wanted another bite all right.
Her dimples dug a little deeper into her lovely face. “Some men are so easy.”
Smiling at him like that, she made him feel easy. Like he was cookie dough in her hands, waiting for her to mold him into whatever shape she wanted. So why was he still there? Why hadn’t he told her he was leaving as he’d come in here to do?
Why was he smiling back at her? Why was he eyeing the pan of chocolate-chip cookies she’d taken out of the oven and feeling a pang of hunger in his belly? A pang that didn’t begin to compare to the one below his belt caused by eyeing Abby.
“If they’ve tasted your homemade goodies, I understand why. Especially the peanut-butter fudge.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes sparkled like the silver tinsel draping her tree. “It was my mother’s recipe.”
“Was?”
A flicker of pain crossed her face. “She died.”
“I’m sorry.” He was. Death was never easy. If anyone knew that, he did. In spades. No, death wasn’t easy. Not even when you were a highly trained doctor who’d been dealing with life and death on a daily basis for years.
Just look at how stupidly he’d behaved that first night he and Abby had worked together. Even now, his reaction to the motor vehicle accident victims bothered him, but he understood why, understood that when he’d been battling to save the mother and daughter, he’d been trying to save his wife, trying to save Shelby.
Only to fail.
But he’d held up fine, wearing the mask he’d perfected in those months following their deaths. Pretending he was okay when inside all he’d