McDonald_NoELFngWay_GEN_Dec2015 (6 page)

Dancer was no dummy about intuiting the most likely hot chocolate maker among them. Her daughter skipped back to hold Cupid’s hand again. Nicky moved a little closer to his grandmother. Vixen hoped he didn’t feel threatened by Cupid’s attention to her daughter. Dancer could be a bit possessive without realizing it might not be fair.

“Who wants to help me in the kitchen?” Cupid asked.

The joyful jumping up and down of both children as they volunteered drowned out all the adults laughing at their enthusiasm.

***

Vixen watched them dance their way out of the room before turning back to meet Dash’s happy gaze.

“Hi. I’m glad you’re here,” Dash said. “I wish I had something better to say, but I can’t think of a single thing while looking at you in that outfit… even without the red heels… and the missing hat.”

“Ha. Ha. Don’t give up your day job. You’re not that funny,” she said.

Vixen walked around him and pretended interest in his tree. She had to put her attention somewhere other than his handsome face, which made her temporarily lose her mental faculties.

“I see you take the same eclectic approach to tree decorating that I do,” she said.

Dash tore his gaze from Vixen to look his tree. “We go with squashed tinsel and big balls. Nicky’s choice.”

Despite her resolve to not laugh at Dash’s teasing, Vixen did anyway.

She sighed as she studied his tree again. “If it were up to me, I’d get one of those pre-lit trees you can pull up from the center. The simplicity appeals to my practical side. I don’t think I could endure the screaming fit that would come with not using the one Grandma Summer gave us.”

Dash laughed. “Blix said we had a lot in common. I’d love one of trees that you could set up in two minutes. You just may be the perfect woman for me.”

Vixen snorted and shook her head. “And it only took you a decade to change your mind.”

Dash sighed. “Actually… it took marrying a great person, having a child with her, and loving her with all my heart. When I lost Melody, it reorganized my priorities in a way nothing else ever had. If it’s any consolation to you, I wish I’d been a better person with her now too.”

Vixen found her gaze seeking his. “I’m genuinely sorry for your loss, Dash. Dancer’s father and I were only dating when I got pregnant. I can’t say I loved him, but I thought I was starting to. My feelings became a moot point after he decided he didn’t want either of us. So I know what you mean by the unexpected reorganization of your priorities.”

Dash reached out a hand. He sighed when Vixen reluctantly put hers in it. Turning, he headed for the doorway leading out into the hall.

Vixen lifted one eyebrow. “Are we going to go help Cupid too? I’m sure she’ll save us some marshmallows. The question is—will I be able to get Dancer to sleep tonight after all the sugar she’s going to consume?”

Dash stopped in the doorway. “The only comfort I can offer is that I’ll be facing the same challenge with Nicky. My plan is to work my son hard putting a train together until he falls over in exhaustion.”

Vixen laughed. “I just can’t reconcile the self-centered boy I knew in college with who you’ve become.”

“Well, not everything has changed,” Dash promised, grinning as he pointed up.

Vixen lifted her gaze. “And I fell into your trap. Are you seriously going to use a lame tradition that reveres a fungus as an excuse to kiss me?”

When Vixen lowered her face, Dash put his fingers under her chin and directed her gaze to his. “Yes. Until I no longer need an excuse.”

He lowered his mouth to hers before Vixen could protest. It was as good as he’d imagined and better than he remembered. Her vibrating groan sent him over the edge and his lips devoured hers in an age-old response. Not holding back any longer, Dash pulled her firmly into his arms. It felt like he’d been waiting forever to hold her body against his.

Feeling herself melt against Dash, Vixen tried to wrestle her body out of his arms. He let her lean back, but had yet to turn loose. She was breathless from a single, blood-churning kiss. His half-lidded gaze said he knew it.

“Let me go, Dash. I can’t do this again. I can’t. I have too much at risk.”

“Okay. Let’s do this instead,” Dash whispered. He kissed her forehead, her temple, the corner of her eye. As she relaxed in his arms, he kissed a path down her cheek to the edge of her mouth and hovered there. “Fast. Slow. Just so you let me.”

Using all her willpower… and it took it all… she pushed hard until she broke Dash’s hold and stepped away. There wasn’t a body part that didn’t acknowledge his power over it. Her draw to him had not lessened over time. If his buddies hadn’t intervened back in college, Dasher Sleigh might have fathered her child because she would have done anything he asked.

Since that was the scariest of all the thoughts she’d had since they’d met again, Vixen took two more steps backwards.

“I don’t plan to let you do anything else to me and I don’t know why you think I would. Just because I feel attracted to you doesn’t mean I have to act on it. Please keep your physical distance until I can talk Dancer into leaving.”

Dash sighed, his heart hurting as badly as the rest of him. “Vixen… are you always going to hate me?”

Vixen shrugged. “Until I get over turning myself into a doormat for the men I care about, distance and denial are the only forms of self-protection I have. Excuse me. I need to find Dancer.”

She turned away blindly from the man she desired and followed the sounds of laughing children until she found the kitchen.

His head lifted when the staging room door opened, but his heart plummeted when the wrong elf walked through it. Vixen hadn’t tried to contact him since Sunday and he’d stopped himself countless times from contacting her. But he hadn’t gone more than a few minutes a day without thinking about kissing Vixen again.

Not wanting to work his Santa shift with him was the ultimate rejection… worse even than her protests about not giving in to her attraction to him. How could he think anything else?

Dash smiled at the woman looking at him strangely. Lynda worked in their accounting department. She was very nice looking, but he’d never once considered asking her out, not even after Blix took over the role of company figurehead.

“Hi Lynda. Are you my elf today?”

“Yes, I am. Hello Dash,” she said, nodding. “What happened to Vixen? Is she okay? Blix called and asked me to switch shifts with her for the rest of the week.”

“No idea,” Dash lied, tightening the six-inch black belt around his red velvet jacket. “Maybe she had a conflict of some sort.”

Lynda shrugged and went to a mirror to adjust her hat. “Being a single mother is hard, I imagine. Sure glad I waited to have kids. I just love this outfit. I’m planning on keeping it and finding a pair of red heels to go with it like Vixen wore the day she modeled it. What do you think?”

Dash sighed. Nope. Not a single fantasy. He still wasn’t interested. Apparently, he was a one-woman elf. He just wished Vixen could believe him.

“Seems like it would be hard to walk in those heels. I’ll see you out there, Lynda.”

Without feeling any guilt at all over her disappointment, Dash left her frowning at her own reflection.

***

Despite the holiday rush and all the Christmas rentals, business was slow some days during the week. Vixen smiled as cheerfully as she could manage as she rang out the only customer she’d had all morning. When the shop door closed, she sighed in acceptance. No sale Tuesdays sucked even in her busiest seasons.

She usually put her shop’s down time to good use by moving around inventory and doing other menial tasks. None of that was happening today. Between Dancer’s sugar high Sunday night and her own tortured thoughts for the last two, her sleep cycle had been reduced to a precious few hours.

“You look hung over again today, Vixen. Have too much spiked eggnog again last night?”

Vixen laughed and shook her head. Ann was one of her favorite new employees. The woman had already lightened her load. She was promoting Ann to assistant manager as soon as her finances allowed.

“Can you handle locking up this evening, Ann? I think I need to take the afternoon off.”

“Sure. Are you elfing tonight?”

Vixen unlocked a drawer under the counter and retrieved her purse. “No. I’m not up to elfing either. My uncle filled my place with other volunteers. There are plenty of elves. I won’t be missed.”

Except maybe by Dash, Vixen thought reluctantly, swallowing back the anxiety knowing it caused her.

She hadn’t spoken to him since she last saw him, but she had come to a conclusion about their relationship. Abstinence wasn’t going to work. She knew herself better and had been dealing with it for two days. She was only stalling now to give herself time enough to come up with a strategy to avoid more heartache. But if she didn’t purge Dasher Sleigh from her libido driven longings soon, she was going to become useless to the world.

The man had morphed into an obsession… probably because he was a kissing genius.

The best she could hope for was that Dash would wait until after the holidays to dump her. In the meantime, maybe she could talk him into keeping their relationship low key and out of their respective family’s spotlight.

Just because she’d decided to go the stupid route in following her heart, it didn’t mean she needed to put her daughter’s heart at risk in the process.

***

Dash had started the day exhausted and was ending it even more so. All tiredness disappeared when he walked into the staging room and found Vixen sitting in the solitary prop chair. She was wearing snug-fitting jeans and cowboy boots paired with a long red sweater, which of course had an elf on it. Her hair was curled and her lips were painted red. He wondered if she knew how much she looked like the grown up version of her pixie daughter.

“Hi. You look like you’re waiting on someone,” Dash said dumbly, feeling as awkward as it was probably possible for any man to feel. He wanted to hug Vixen so badly it was making him stupid. His heart thumped hard when she rose from the chair and walked to him.

“Yes. I’m waiting for someone. I’ve been waiting for you,” she answered.

Dash’s eyes dropped to her fingers as they started adeptly undoing his belt. After it hung loosely, her talented fingers made short work of the coat fasteners until his Santa belly was revealed. Her sigh had him moving his head around and trying to catch her gaze.

“Why are you sighing? What’s wrong?”

Her blazing gaze met his.

“Even sporting a stupidly big gut, you’re still the best looking man I know. All I can think about is getting naked with you. It’s not fair that you’re able to affect me so easily, Dash. Do you affect every woman you meet this way?”

Surprising himself—and her it seemed—he laughed and took a step away.

“Back up. Two days ago you couldn’t handle kissing me. Now you’re ready to get naked? What’s going on here, Vixen? I must have missed something critical in the last two miserable days.”

“No,” Vixen said, hanging her head. “No, I know why you’d think that though. The truth is I’m being stupid in coming here, but I couldn’t do anything else.”

Dash grinned as he slipped off the jacket. “You mean you couldn’t
elf
yourself?”

Vixen laughed. “Yes, okay… I couldn’t
elf
myself.”

Divesting himself of the Santa belly with any coolness was a little harder, especially with Vixen’s gaze never leaving him. He walked past her to the chair and sat to remove his Santa boot coverings. Finally, he peeled the velvet pants off as well.

He didn’t say a word while he hung it all back on hangers and hid it inside the giant costume storage bag she had provided.

When he’d put his dress shirt back on, Dash turned back to her to speak, but promptly lost the ability when Vixen stepped into him to do up his buttons.

“I promise I’m not playing games. I’m just being a woman—a woman who’s learned the hard way to be careful. And we both know you have the power to hurt me. Frankly, I’d rather not go through that again. But today I decided that I have to take whatever risks are involved in this—
thing
between us—or give up sleeping forever. That’s what I came to tell you.”

Dash had his mouth on Vixen’s before he could stop himself. In the back of his mind, he knew it was the wrong place to be kissing her again, but he was afraid not to take advantage of the opening she’d given him. It was a full minute or so before they came up for air.

“You smell like cinnamon cookies,” Dash whispered. “I’m sorry if I rushed you Sunday.”

“More like you scared me because it was too good to be true. And you smell like a Christmas tree… in a good way though,” Vixen added when he laughed. “Being with you is what I want for Christmas. No strings, Dash. This has been a long time coming and I think it’s just natural that we take things to the next level.”

“Boy—you really can’t
elf
yourself, can you?” Dash teased, hugging her tightly. Vixen snickered against his shoulder. “So now that you’ve outed yourself as an honest woman who goes after what she wants, what happens next?”

Vixen shrugged, not able to see it as a joke. “I guess we find someplace to go that has a bed and no children. I vote we do it as quickly as possible. Booma said she would put Dancer to bed and spend the night tonight if I was late. Any chance you could get Cupid to watch Nicky for you?”

“Can I tell her why?” Dash asked, testing the waters.

“I would really rather you didn’t,” Vixen said softly. “I don’t want the pressure of family expectations. Do you?”

Dash considered it as he ran a hand over her face. “I don’t think I care what anyone thinks. I just want you. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Uncle Blix keeps an executive rental on retainer. Let me look at the calendar for it and see if it’s available tonight. If it is, then I’ll call Mom. Are you sure about this? We’re moving kind of fast. We could just go to dinner and make out in my car after.”

Vixen snorted as she walked out of his arms. “I’m not nineteen anymore. Not following through might kill me. I don’t even want dinner, Dash. I just want to stop dreaming and start having you… even if it is just for a little while.”