Dave glanced at Denise. “I can take him home,” she interceded.
Presley’s smile bloomed like a speeded up movie of a flower opening. “All right, Denise!”
Denise looked at Kirk. “You promise you’ll get her home safely?”
“Yes, Mom.”
She ignored his cheek and turned her attention to Presley. “And do you promise that you’ll call me in the morning so that I know you made it home okay?”
Presley nodded, making her jingle bell earrings tinkled merrily. “Yes, Mom.”
She seemed satisfied. “Have a great time, then.”
“We will,” they promised. Presley gathered up her purse as Dave handed over the car keys. She gave Denise a discreet “thank you” and a cheek-to-cheek air kiss, and the two of them left in the direction of the coatroom.
• • •
They stayed as long as Denise felt that she had to. It wouldn’t have done for one of the station’s marquee personalities to bail before the guests did, and so they hung out together, sitting at the table, greeting people who stopped to visit and dancing together once or twice. Along the way, Denise paused for more autographs and pictures, allowed herself to be introduced to more strangers, and was in every way a gracious hostess.
And Dave never left her side.
He couldn’t believe his luck in having Denise ask him —
him
— to be her stand-in date for the evening. He told himself not to read anything too much into it, but inside, he was exultant. Denise was sitting with him, dancing with him, and — in just a few minutes — would be leaving with him. Merry Christmas, indeed. She wouldn’t be doing any of this if she didn’t like him, right? He waited by her side, sharing in the introductions, keeping his hand possessively on the small of her back, and biding his time until they could both leave.
A half hour after midnight, he caught Denise stifling a yawn. She grinned at him apologetically. “About ready to go?”
“Any time.”
“Come on, Dave. Let’s make our exit.”
They reclaimed their coats and he followed her to the hotel parking garage. “I have your Christmas present in the trunk,” she told him, smiling back at him over her shoulder.
“Your gift is in my desk at the station.”
“You can give it to me at the station on Monday.”
He shrugged. “Okay. I just feel a little funny. I mean, I hate to get presents when I’m empty handed and can’t reciprocate.”
She paused in front of the elevator door and pressed the button before turning to look at him. “You didn’t have to get me anything at all, you know.”
“I wanted to. I like you, Neesie.”
She smiled. “I like you too, Dave.”
Dave stood very still looking at her. He wanted to kiss her, he wanted to pump his fist in victory, he wanted to do a touchdown dance right there in the hallway of the Seasons Hotel. But at that moment the elevator door opened and she stepped inside. She held the “Open Door” button and looked back at him. “Coming?”
He roused himself and stepped onto the elevator. “Wait,” he said as she reached for the button to take them to the underground parking garage. “It’s not that far to the station. I’ve got my key to the main door. Do you want to walk there with me? It will only take a few minutes and then we can exchange presents at the same time.”
She tilted her head and studied him for a minute. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s go.
Because it was after midnight, the station was all but deserted. During the week, in the small hours of the morning, a syndicated show from out on the west coast was aired. There’d be a lone board operator staying on overnight to watch over things until the morning crew arrived, but he would be in the studios in the northern end of the building and Dave and Denise were heading to the office suite in the southern wing. Most of the lights were off as they made their way through the lobby and down the hallway.
“This is so weird,” Denise remarked in a hushed voice, looking around at the dimly lit surroundings.
“You don’t have to whisper,” he told her.
Dave led the way to his office, flicked on the ceiling light, and stepped inside. He went straight to his desk and pulled out a plain envelope. He glanced at it, then up at Denise a little uncertainly. “Should I give this to you now, or do you want to wait?”
“Why don’t we wait until we have both presents?” she said, eyeing the envelope. “It will feel fairer that way.”
“More like Christmas, too,” he said with a faint smile. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Walking back to the hotel was surprisingly cozy. The stores that they passed all had Christmas displays with lights still twinkling, but Dave knew that Denise’s pantyhose-clad legs had to be cold, and so he worked up enough nerve to catch her hand and they hurried along as best they could with Denise’s high heeled shoes.
As they drove home, she asked him what his favorite Christmas carol was, and told him hers, and then he taught her a silly song about Santa getting stuck up in the chimney. She told him that she thought he’d make a good Santa — that he had the right build and a twinkle in his eye. He told her that he had actually been a mall Santa while he was in college, to make extra money to buy Christmas presents with. He asked her what the best Christmas present she’d ever gotten had been — a trip to Disney World with her family — and he told her that he’d never been to Disney World. The family had planned a trip when he was a kid, but Diane had been diagnosed with a case of mononucleosis a few days before they were set to leave, and so the trip had never happened. Twenty odd years later, he still resented that.
• • •
God, he was easy to talk to. She liked that about him. Most men, in her experience, either tried to get her to talk about herself — something that she usually found faintly intrusive — or worse, just wanted to talk about themselves. Or sports. But Dave was happy talking about anything. And he was funny. She laughed when he told her about the time Presley wore an open bracelet and accidentally managed to hook it on Paul Lund’s front belt loop.
And the time he and Kirk and Ghoulie had gone to a newly married couple’s house for dinner only to discover that the couple had had a big fight just before they arrived. “They kept excusing themselves to go in the kitchen, and you’d hear them yelling at each other, but in kind of a hissy way, you know? Like we wouldn’t hear them if they kept their voices down. So finally I say, ‘Is this a bad time? We could reschedule,’ and Danielle says — through her teeth, mind you — ‘No. This is a great time. Now sit down at the table and I’ll bring out dinner, dammit!’” He glanced aside at her. “They’ve invited both of us over since then, but none of us have ever gone back there.”
She laughed but she felt a pang of sympathy for the poor woman. She could relate, especially after that awful phone call from her husband’s mistress. She knew what it was like to be furious with a man but not wanting to show that anger to the world. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation. She looked at Dave and wondered if he ever got mad. As far as she could tell, he didn’t have much of a temper. Even on the rare occasions when she knew that he’d been pissed — like that day on the beach when Manny and Pat had made him one of the running jokes in their home movie — he had kept his anger mostly under control. She liked that about him. Heck, she liked him. He was better than a good friend; he was a good man. She trusted him. He was funny and smart and responsible. She could see herself getting involved with a man again, as long as he was someone like Dave.
She looked at him in the light from the dashboard. He was softly humming under his breath along with the music. He was pretty much a 180 from Jason. He wasn’t stylish or fashionable; he wasn’t an operator; he wasn’t even especially handsome, she thought. But he was sweet and kind. Jason might have been a gentleman, but Dave was a gentle man. She loved to watch him interact with other people, from Theresa the cleaning lady to her smart-mouthed mother. And looks, she knew, weren’t everything. She loved the way his eyes crinkled on the corners when he was happy, and how his cheeks dimpled when he smiled. And he smiled a lot, she thought. He was a man who truly enjoyed life.
• • •
When they pulled into his driveway in Everett, Denise opened the trunk to retrieve his present. “Whoa!” Dave exclaimed when he saw the size of the thing. He estimated that it was about the size of an air conditioner. “Do you need help with that?”
“I got it,” she told him. “You need your hands to unlock the door.”
He reached into his pocket to check and make sure that her gift was still there. He felt a terrible wave of nervousness about his gift. He’d had a hard time coming up with just the right thing to give her — something not too expensive or intimate, but then again, nothing cheap or impersonal. He was walking a fine line with her — theirs was really just a workplace relationship and not a romance, as much as he hoped that it might become one. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable or pressured by too opulent a gift, but he didn’t want to let the holiday pass without giving her some token of his esteem either. Still, looking at the size of her gift — God, it was huge! — he began to worry that he had chosen poorly.
He unlocked the door and held it open for her, then lead her upstairs to his apartment. Cookie chirped a sleepy greeting when he came in, then turned her head around to rest on her back and settled back down again. “Can I get you something?” he asked. “A drink?”
She shook her head as she peeled off her gloves. “No thanks, it’s a long ride home.” He pulled the white envelope out of his pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table before reaching to unzip his jacket. He draped their coats over the arm of a living room chair, then looked at the gaily wrapped present that she’d set on the couch. “Wow. I wasn’t expecting anything, especially not something so …
big
. It makes my envelope look pretty puny in comparison.”
“Dave, it’s a gift, not a barter,” she said with exasperation. “Besides, it’s from Mom and me. We started it last summer when you helped us paint the porch.”
His eyes shot from the gift to her. “You mean you made it yourself?”
“Mom and me. We took turns working on it. I was afraid we wouldn’t finish it before Christmas, but we did.” She smiled at him. “Open it.”
He looked from her to the present and back one more time, then sat on the couch and ripped into the paper with all the enthusiasm of a kid at Christmas. The paper parted to reveal a crocheted afghan, brightly rowed in red, white, and blue ripples. “Oh, wow!” he exclaimed. “You made this?”
She nodded.
He had tried crocheting once. His grandmother had tried to teach him once when he was a kid and school was cancelled due to snow. It was very slow going and he had never gotten the knack, so he gave it up, but he had some idea of how much effort had gone into this gift. He stood up and unfolded it in order to admire the completed product. “We didn’t know what color we should make it, but we finally decided that you were a sports fan, so we went with the Patriots’ team colors. I hope that was okay.”
“Aw, this is great. My grandmother used to crochet afghans. She used to say every stitch was a kiss.” He looked up at her again, his eyes shining. “The last one she made me is in a plastic bag on my closet shelf. It’s beautiful, but too precious to use, you know?”
“So you like it?”
He lowered the afghan and stepped toward her, covering her hand with his and leaning in to kiss her cheek. “I love it,” he told her. “Thank you so much.”
Denise beamed. “Mom would work on it at night while I was at the station, and I’d work on it in the morning while she was writing.”
“It’s beautiful.” He glanced down at the lowly envelope on the coffee table. “My gift is going to seem kind of pale in comparison.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. When he didn’t move, she said, “Is it all right if I open it now?”
Feeling like he was about to be embarrassed — how could any bought gift compare with one that two women had spent nearly four months making with their own hands? — he bent to pick up the plain envelope. He wished now that he had time to choose again, but he saw no way out. He extended the envelope to her. “Merry Christmas,” he said lamely.
She took the envelope and opened it carefully, running her fingernail along the seam. She pulled out the card and looked at the image of a lone tree in the snowy moonlight. “Pretty,” she commented before opening it. Then, “Oh, Dave … ” She looked up at his with her eyes wide. “Membership to the Museum of Fine Arts?”
He nodded, solemnly. “I knew that you liked art, and you seemed to have a good time the day we went. Now you can go whenever you like. On me.” He shifted his weight on his feet. “I thought you’d like it.”
“I love it,” she told him, stepping into his arms. “That’s so sweet!” She kissed him on the cheek, then stepped back.
“With that they’ll let you know about upcoming events and stuff. And you can get into the exhibits before they’re open to the general public.”
“Can I bring a guest?” she asked him, sliding the card back into the envelope.
“Uh, yeah.” he said. “You can.”
“Will you go with me?” she asked.
He looked at her uncertainly. “If you want me to,” he told her quietly.
“I do.” She smiled. “If you want.”
“I want,” he said quietly.
“It’s an excellent present, Dave. Thanks.”
He sighed, relieved. “I’m glad you like it. I love the afghan.”
“Then it’s a good night all around.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “It is. Are you sure I can’t get you a drink or something to eat?”
She shook her head. “No. I should be going, really. It’s been a good night, but also a long one. It’s late and I should really be getting home.”
“Are you okay to drive?” he asked.
She grinned. “I’m not that tired.”
“If you were, you’re welcome to crash here,” he offered. “You could have my bed, and I can take the couch if you want.”
“That’s a sweet offer, but no. Thank you.”
“All right,” he conceded. It had been a long shot, but one worth taking. He watched as she slipped the envelope into her purse and then roused himself enough to fetch her coat and hold it for her to put back on. He stepped back and stuck his hands in his pockets as she buttoned up her coat. He hated to see her go; hated for the night to end, really. He had gotten to spend the better part of the night with her, and it had been … great.