She had to force herself to maintain eye contact. “Yes, you would.”

“If I buy a dozen, when I get down to four pairs I’ll send out to the hotel laundry.”

His voice vibrated down her spine as he moved another half step closer. It wasn’t the direction she’d intended the conversation to take, but she didn’t want it to end. “Compare the cost,” she said after a deep, hard swallow, “of a dozen pairs of socks plus laundry fees against one pair you have to wash out.” She felt like a sock in the wash herself, agitating in the dark blue of his eyes.

“I change when I go out at night. That means I’d have to wash two pairs every night.”

“Well, yes.”

“What if they don’t get dry by morning?”

Now his face loomed directly over hers. A compelling face, a face she was afraid she would begin to see in her dreams, a face she’d like to simply reach up and kiss. Even as she felt her lips swell in anticipation, she heard herself say, “They will if you wring them out properly and pat most of the moisture out of them by wrapping them in a towel, but if you’re that worried about it, maybe you need three pairs.”

He stared at her for a long, long moment, his eyes melting her, his mouth an easily bridgeable inch from hers-then turned away. “Ring ‘em up,” he said to the salesman.

The kiss-op had ended and might never come back again. Mallory’s spine felt like a single strand of angel-hair pasta. Carter’s salesman gave Mallory a triumphant sneer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her own salesman placing a burnt-orange sweater with blue diagonal stripes into a gift box. The sight of it stunned her. How had she managed to pick up that sweater? It looked like a University of Illinois pep squad uniform. Macon had been an undergraduate there, but he’d practically lived in the computer lab. He probably didn’t know what a pep squad was. Had he even been aware there was a football team? He’d think she’d lost her mind.

Which was too true. Not only that, she’d blown it again with Carter. She didn’t have a clue how to make him see her as a woman.

While she signed the sales slip for Macon’s Amazing Christmas Surprise, Carter strolled off with his Big Brown Bag of socks. She wondered why his mother hadn’t taught him a few basic things about packing for trips. Maybe he had a mother who knew other things, like which aria belonged to which opera. Still, sometime before Christmas she’d definitely slip him her copy of her mother’s book.

Somehow she couldn’t imagine Carter reading her mother’s book. She couldn’t imagine Carter going out with a woman who read her mother’s books. This… this Athena person probably read-labels.

She could feel her mood darkening as rapidly as the afternoon sky. When she caught up with Carter at a display of hideously expensive shirts, his liveliness depressed her.

“My God, can you believe what people pay for stuff?” His gaze returned briefly to a last look at a navy-and-white-striped shirt with white collar and cuffs. “I did, too, once. I was twenty-five before I found out you could order a shirt from Lands’ End for forty bucks that looks exactly like this one.” He glanced at her. “All through here?”

“Yes,” Mallory said, wondering if he knew the stripes in the shirt matched his eyes. He’d look great in it.

“What about a little Christmas cheer before we leave?”

“A drink?” At this hour?

“No, I meant go up to the Christmas floor. I like Christmas. You like Christmas?”

“Yes, of course.” She felt embarrassed. Just because Carter forgot socks didn’t mean he’d drink before five o’clock Central Standard Time.

She would have taken the elevator. He whisked her onto the escalator. “This will take longer,” she couldn’t help saying.

“We’ll see more.”

He was clearly not trainable. Just gorgeous, warm, utterly desirable…

“You’d look good in that dress.”

She nearly decapitated herself leaning out over the escalator railing to see it. It was champagne-colored, clingy-and out of sight. “Umm,” she said, and they continued upward, past sports clothes and more sports clothes, towels and sheets, china and silver, at last reaching a floor that smelled of bayberry and spice and glittered with heavily decorated trees.

They strolled through this fantasy land, Carter apparently enjoying himself, while Mallory tried not to think of the time they were wasting. Carter bought an ornament. Mallory rolled her eyes heavenward when she saw the price. While she was looking up, she noticed the balls of mistletoe hanging in each doorway. That’s what she’d like to buy. She’d hang it in the doorway to her bedroom. Next time he yelled, “Mallory!” because he’d forgotten something, she’d open the door, stand directly under it and-

“Santa Claus is in the next room. Come on.”

She had a crick in her neck. Rubbing it out, she followed him dumbly to the store Santa Claus who spied them and said, “Ho-ho-ho,” in a thin, lonely sounding voice. The photographer sat in the store-fixture sleigh, hunched over an F-Stop magazine. It was a large room filled with shoppers, adults who seemed not to notice Santa as they grabbed up wrapping papers and ribbons, ornaments by the dozen.

“He’s not getting much business,” Carter whispered.

“I guess the kids are still in school. Or day care.” Mallory glanced at her watch. “They have to wait until their parents come home from work to visit Santa.” She was still obsessing on mistletoe.

Carter nodded, but said, “I feel sorry for him.” He hesitated, then said, “Sit on his lap. Tell him what you want for Christmas.” His hand nudged her elbow along.

“No, no,” Mallory protested. “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m not going to-”

“I dare you.” A gleam in his dark blue eyes issued a challenge, but something else lay behind it-the certainty she’d refuse.

Could she rise to the challenge? Humiliate herself by doing something completely out of character?

It would certainly get Carter’s attention, wouldn’t it, and wasn’t that what she wanted?

Without another thought, she made a beeline for Santa and perched herself on his lap. Behind her, she heard the most satisfying sound in the world, a sharp gasp of surprise from Carter. Once she was on Santa’s red velour knees and could spin around to see a small and amused audience gathering, she saw he looked uneasy.

Good. Let him feel uneasy for once in his disgustingly self-confident life.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa Claus said. “Well, have you been a good little girl this year?”

“Entirely too good,” Mallory said, “which may be my problem…” She stopped short, realizing this wasn’t a therapy session.

“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa said, shifting a little in his tapestry wing chair. “So what does this very good little girl want for Christmas?”

Mallory let her gaze wander back to Carter. The group gathered around him was larger now, and he seemed edgy. Edgy but sexier than ever with his arms crossed over his broad chest and a slight frown drawing his dark eyebrows down in the middle and up at the ends.

She suddenly knew what she wanted. She knew with a confidence every bit as disgusting as Carter’s. By Christmas, she would make him see her as a woman, a feminine, desirable, irresistible woman, or die trying.

“I want him,” she whispered in Santa’s ear. “I want Carter for Christmas.”

4

Asshe sat on Santa’s lap, a hot flush of humiliation climbing her face, the last thing Mallory expected to hear Santa say was “Him? Ooh. I can’t blame you.”

It was not a Santa-like thing to say. Mallory took a close look into his appropriately blue eyes.

“Ho, ho, ho,” he boomed suddenly, then threw her off balance again by whispering, “You mentioned a problem. So what’s the problem? You’re a dish, he’s a hunk, you’re both single, I presume. And straight.” He sighed.

It was not a Santa-like sigh. “I’m not a dish,” Mallory said, giving him another close look.