His Mistletoe Bride

He was in a business where he got thrown plenty of curveballs, but he had never developed a liking for being caught off guard, surprised, and the chief’s niece was a surprise.

He’d been around enough fear to recognize the real McCoy, and to see wariness still haunted her eyes, despite his uniform. Or maybe because of it. Lots of people were afraid of police. He kept the space between them, but Boo began to wiggle forward on her belly, still humming happily. Tag snapped his finger at his dog, pointed at his feet.

Boo gave him a pleading look over her shoulder, then flopped over on her back and pointed all four feet in the air.

Lila Grainger’s eyes left his face for the first time. Despite his uniform, he had the feeling she would bolt for the back if he made one move toward her. But when she looked at Boo, she smiled, and some finely held tension left her.

“What an adorable dog.”

Maybe that explained her overreaction to the slamming of the door. Visual impairment. Boo was about the furthest thing from adorable on the planet!

An upside-down paw waved at her, and Lila Grainger laughed, proving she could see just fine, and that she was even sexier than he had first thought, which was unfortunate, because he’d rated her plenty sexy on that first glance.

“I missed the meeting last night,” Tag said, getting down to business. He folded his arms over his chest, to make himself look big and remote, not a man in the least moved by the sexiness of strangers.

“Meeting?” she stammered, uneasily.

“I’ve been assigned to the Committee.” He wanted to make that very plain. Assigned. Not volunteered.

“Oh, that meeting,” she said too hastily, and tucked a wisp of that feathery hair behind her ear, “That’s fine. We have enough people. More than enough. You look like a busy guy. No time for this type of thing. But thanks for dropping by. There’s some leftover shortbread by the cash register. Go ahead and take some.”

She was trying to get rid of him. Even with the distraction of the cookies, which he stole a glance at and saw were chocolate dipped, and with the further distraction of that wisp of hair popping back out from behind her ear, the policeman in him went on red alert as her eyes shifted uneasily to the right. The chief had been right. She was up to something. Something that she didn’t want him to know about.

He was really watching her now. Every detail suddenly interested him, including ones that had nothing to do with what she might be trying to hide, like the fact she had faint circles under her eyes, as if she had trouble sleeping, and the fact that her ring finger was empty.

She was single. Miss L. Toe not Mrs. L. Toe. There was absolutely no reason he should feel uneasy about that. He didn’t do the relationship thing. He’d become a master at ignoring that initial twitch of interest that could lead a man into that quicksand world of caring.

At his brother’s funeral, six and a half years ago, the minister had said, All love leads to loss. Somehow it had become a credo Tag lived by—the dog had wormed her way by his defenses, but no one else.

And now, Boo, too, was going to drive the point home. That to develop attachments, to care about anything, even a dog, made a man vulnerable, stole his power from him as surely as Delilah had stolen Sampson’s hair.

Not that he could indulge in such introspection right now. He made himself not look at Boo, who was still waving her paw engagingly at Lila Grainger.

“Well, nice of you to drop in, Officer, um—”

“Taggert,” he supplied. What was causing her to feel such discomfort? He’d startled her, but there was more. He could sense it, even without Boo’s help. Her uncle had been absolutely right.

She was up to something.

Or else the news he’d gotten yesterday, and that sudden poignant memory of his brother tearing into that gift, had rattled him badly enough that he was jumping at shadows.

After all, what could she be up to that she wouldn’t want the police department—her uncle—to know about? She hardly looked like the type to decide to finance the saving of Christmas with a little illegal activity, like selling drugs or smuggling.

Still, Tag had a cop’s gift. He knew instinctively when people were hiding something, and she was.

“Have you got some minutes from the meeting?” he pushed, just a little.

“Minutes?” her voice became suspiciously squeaky. “Of course not. It was very informal.”

“So did you come up with a plan of action? For saving the Christmas display in Bandstand Park?”

“Oh,” Lila said, her voice filled with bright and very fake cheer again, “we just bounced some preliminary ideas around. You know.”

“I don’t,” he said uncooperatively.

“We changed the name. We’re going to call ourselves Save Our Snow Mountain Christmas. SOS for short.”

She looked at him like she expected his approval. When he said nothing she began to talk fast and nervously, another sure sign of a person who was being evasive.

“We might put up a tree. A big one,” she said in a rush, “just to keep the Christmas spirit alive until we can come up with some money and get the Santa’s Workshop display fixed. Or get the town to change their minds.”

She blushed when she said that, as if she was planning something naughty to get the town to change their minds, but just looking at her he could tell her idea of naughty and his would be completely different. He thought if she showed up in one of those red, fur-trimmed bikinis the town would do whatever the hell she wanted.

As if to prove how differently their minds worked, and that she was the girl least likely to ever wear a red fur-trimmed bikini, she said, “We might try putting a real Santa in the park on weekends.”

“There are no real Santas,” he said dryly, knowing with new conviction he was hearing only part of the story.

“I was thinking of asking that portly man who works with Uncle Paul. Do you think he’d do it for free?”

Portly was a very kind way to describe the most senior member of the Snow Mountain department.

“Jamison?” Tag asked, incredulously. “You want Karl Jamison to play Santa?”

Jamison, who was not portly, but obese, who chewed—and spat—tobacco, and who had the world’s largest off-color vocabulary thanks to ten years in the Marine Corp, was the man least likely to play Santa.

“He just looked like he’d make a good Santa,” she said wistfully.

Karl Jamison was the man most likely to kill Christmas forever on Snow Mountain should he ever be appointed a weekend Santa Claus.

“You wouldn’t make a good Santa,” she said, eyeing Tag speculatively before turning her eyes away, fiddling with the candy cane. “You’re too—”

Despite the insult of being declared a worse Santa than Jamison, a number of ways to finish that sentence came to his mind: tall, dark, handsome, which just served to prove he had not been as successful at shutting down that initial spark of interest as he had hoped.

But she shot him another glance and finished her sentence with, “Unjolly.”

He was not a literary giant like her, but he was pretty sure if he ran unjolly through the computer spelling checker at the station, it was going to make that noise he hated.

Still, unjolly was as accurate a description as any, so why was he vaguely annoyed that she had spotted his true nature, completely unsuitable in the peace and joy department, so instantly and accurately?

And since she had handed him his escape from her ridiculous committee practically gift-wrapped, why wasn’t he gratefully bowing his way toward the door?

Instead he heard himself asking, “So besides that, did you come up with any other ideas for saving Christmas in Snow Mountain?”

He did not try to hide his cynicism, and her look of uneasiness increased.

“No, nothing at all,” she said, way, way too quickly.

She was afraid of him. Or something. There were a lot of mysteries in Lila Grainger’s eyes, and a man could be drawn to them, tempted to probe them, which was another reason to just get out of here, accept with grace and gratitude there was no room for cynical, Christmas-hating cops on the SOS committee.

But the chief wasn’t going to believe he hadn’t done something: kicked an elf, broken a manger, been rude and unreasonable, to get himself off the Save Christmas Committee hook. He slid one wistful look over his shoulder at the door, but sucked it up.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to do something?” he asked gruffly. Damn. Now he was probably going to end up building a Santa throne that could hold Jamison without collapsing. Which would be a gigantic project.

But she was as eager to get rid of him as he was to leave.

“No, really, I can’t think of a single thing.” In fact, now she was backing away from him.

Only she’d forgotten the broken glass on the floor, and she was in her socks. She cried out, lifted her foot, the heel already crimson with blood.

“It’s nothing,” she said as he moved instinctively toward her. She slammed her foot back down with such conviction she nearly made herself faint.

She toppled, just as he arrived at her, and he managed to scoop her up before she hit the floor. She weighed practically nothing, perhaps a few pounds more than Boo, not that she was anything like Boo.

It had been a long, long time since he had held anything so close and so soft as Miss Lila Grainger. A yearning so intense it nearly stole his breath shot through him. Before he could stop himself, he had pulled her scent, wild summer strawberries, deep inside himself and it felt as if it was filling an emptiness he had not thought could be filled.

He wanted to drop her. He wanted to hold her tighter. He wanted to be the same man he had been thirty seconds ago, and was not sure he ever could be again.

“Oh, my,” she moaned, her breath warm against his chest. “This has gone very badly.”

He felt her sweet weight in her arms, saw the pulse going crazy in her neck, heard the dog humming at his heel with what he could suddenly and clearly identify as adoration, and thought, You got that right.

Out loud he said, without a single shred of emotion that might clue her in to how he felt about her softness pressed against him, “Where’s your first-aid kit?”

CHAPTER TWO

LILA sat on the edge of the toilet in the bathroom, staring at the dark head bent over her foot.

Despite the fact Officer Taggert had perfected that policeman look of professional remoteness, he had actually flinched at the bathroom decor, which she knew to be fabulous: an imaginative creation of what Santa’s washroom would look like.

There was a fake window, framed in snowmen-patterned curtains, looking out over beautifully hand-painted scenes from the North Pole. The towels had Christmas trees on them, the soap had glitter, the toilet paper, one of her top selling items, was printed with Ho, Ho, Ho.

In fact, before he had arrived, Lila had been sitting at her desk, contemplating starting her first ever book, How to Have a Perfect Christmas, with a really fun chapter on bathroom decorating for the holidays.

But now, despite the cheer of the bright red and white paint and the merry decor, the atmosphere in the close quarters of the bathroom seemed mildly icy. Taggert was remote, determined to keep his professional distance though, really, it seemed a little too late for that.

She had already felt him, felt the hard, unrelenting, pure-man strength of him, and been as dazed by that as by the pain in her foot.

Dazed would describe her reaction to him, period—the reason she had stepped on broken glass.

After the initial fear had come something even more frightening. A feeling, unfounded because you could not know a person from simply looking at them.

But her feeling had been instant, and felt deeply.

The world is a better place because this man is in it.

She tried to thrust the thought away as soon as she had it. You could not know that about a complete stranger, even if he was wearing a police uniform. Despite making great strides since arriving in Snow Mountain, she was not sleeping well, and she knew her judgment was not what it once had been.

Naturally, now, she was doing her darnedest to be as perfectly poised and professional as he was, trying to act as though being picked up and carried down the hall by an extraordinarily appealing man was an everyday ho-hum kind of experience for her.

The dog seemed determined for them all to get cozy again. It had squeezed in between the toilet bowl and the sink, and was nuzzling her hand with its warm, damp nose.

“This really isn’t necessary,” she said again, her world is a better place feeling causing her to feel guilty about the secret she was determined to keep from him.

She was amazed that he had not seen the results of last night’s meeting crammed into the dark corner by the bathroom: protest signs, freshly painted.

Lila had found out this morning that it was necessary to have a permit to assemble in Snow Mountain, a ridiculous formality given the tininess of the town, she felt. She had also found out that it took a number of weeks to get a permit, and she needed to draw attention to the fact Town Council had voted to cancel Christmas at Snow Mountain, now.

The unpermitted protest was scheduled for the Thursday before Thanksgiving. The SOS team was nearly delirious with delight over the plan to close down Main Street right in front of the town hall until some funding was reinstated for the Santa’s Workshop display at Bandstand Park.

Her committee was not a bunch of hotheaded rebels, either, not the kind of people one would ordinarily expect at a protest. They were nice people, decent, law-abiding, hardworking people who were willing to stand up for what they believed in.

And they believed in Christmas.

Still, Lila was pretty sure her uncle would kill her if he knew. And this man in front of her? If the world was a better place because of him, it was probably because he would be exceedingly intolerant of schemes that fell even the teensiest bit outside of the law.

She shivered, still taken totally aback by her reaction of such total awareness to Officer Taggert. She, of all people, knew to be distrustful of instant attraction, since she had paid the horrific price of someone’s totally unwanted and unencouraged attraction to her.

She’d been reminded of the consequences of that just a few minutes ago, when she’d once again experienced that horrible startled reflex, a reflex she had assured herself was almost gone—until the door had slammed tonight.

She had known as soon as she’d arrived in

Snow Mountain that her doubts about opening the first storefront for her unexpectedly successful Internet Christmas company had been unfounded. It had been the right decision to pack up her life and move across the country.

Her healing, her return to normal, could begin here, in this sleepy little town nestled among forests and mountains.

Finally she was going to be able to overcome the block that she’d been experiencing ever since she’d been approached, because of the Internet success of her small company, to write How to Have a Perfect Christmas under the pseudonym, Miss L. Toe.

For weeks now, Lila had been experiencing excitement and hope instead of that horrible feeling of flatness, interspersed with anxiety. Except for the sleep problem, she was feeling so much better.

Snow Mountain had so much unrealized potential! It was a magical place, a town off a Christmas card. It was the place that could inspire her to write a great first book, to launch a great storefront for her Internet business.

But no lights? No Christmas display in the town square?

She remembered that display so clearly from the time her family had flown up here from their home in Florida to spend Christmas with her mother’s oldest brother, Uncle Paul, the year she’d turned ten. She still remembered that Christmas more vividly than any other. The magic of snow, and real Christmas trees, the feeling in that small town.

Maybe that’s what had pulled her back to this place when her world had fallen apart.

So, she just wasn’t having Town Council squash her dreams before they even got started! She was giving herself over to creating the perfect Christmas store and the perfect Christmas town and the perfect book on creating the perfect Christmas. It gave her a sense of safety and control over the things that had been snatched from her.

Her arrival in Snow Mountain had returned to her a belief that there were places in the world that were wonderfully old-fashioned, where children still walked to school and played in the streets without their parents hovering, where women never gave a thought to walking alone, where violent things rarely happened.

But then the wrench—Town Council practically canceling Christmas!

Still, despite that challenge to her control over creating the perfect Christmas, Lila was aware of beginning to feel safe again. Tonight was a perfect example: She’d left her door unlocked even after store hours.

Lila was aware that her initial reaction of panic to the unexpected arrival in her shop had faded. It had not faded because she knew the man who had changed her world forever was in jail, but rather illogically because Officer Taggert radiated the strength and calm—the certain forbidding sternness—of a man who could be relied on to protect, to keep the world safe, to uphold standards of decency.

At first, she’d felt anxious that maybe he’d heard a whisper about the planned protest, especially when he seemed so suspicious, probing. Minutes of the meeting, for Pete’s sake.

But it had soon become very apparent to her that, despite his offer to help, Officer Taggert’s heart was not in it at all. He’d been ordered here by her uncle, and had put in an appearance.

Unless he saw the signs on his way out the door, the protest was safe.

She felt the tiniest little shiver of apprehension that she was on the wrong side of the law, but her purpose was so right that she felt justified.

Then it occurred to her that maybe the shiver she was feeling was not apprehension, but a treacherous little stirring of something else, despite the deliberate remoteness of the man who shared the bathroom with her.

Appreciation, primal compared to her rather philosophical thought that the world was a better place because he was in it. It was an almost clinical awareness of a healthy female for a healthy male. It didn’t help that she had felt the strong bands of his arms around her, his easy strength as he had carried her to the bathroom.

He had seemed indifferent to their close proximity. But then again, he’d missed the protest signs, and he didn’t look like a man who missed much, so maybe he’d felt a forbidden little stirring, too. He was a healthy male after all.

Taggert was at least six-one of pure male perfection: sleek muscle, long legs, deep chest, broad, broad shoulders, all accentuated magnificently by the crisp lines of his light blue on navy police uniform.

His face was astounding, chiseled masculine perfection, unconscious strength in the set of his chin, the firmness around his mouth, the lines around his eyes. His eyes, which had initially been shaded by the brim of his hat, were now fully visible since he had removed the hat.

While the rest of him was pure cop, one-hundred- percent intimidating and authoritative presence, his eyes were the softest shade of brown, shot through with threads of pure gold. His eyes did not reflect the remoteness of his demeanor, though there were walls up in them, walls that guarded a mystery…and most likely his heart.

He carried himself with the utter confidence of a man who knew his own strength and capabilities perfectly. No swagger, only pure, unadulterated self-assurance.

Now he was on one knee in front of her, focused on her foot. His hair was short, but incredibly thick and shiny, the rich color of dark chocolate. She was amazed by a renegade desire to feel its silk beneath her fingertips.

His hands were unbelievably sure on her ankle, and she stifled a gasp when he pulled her sock away and held her naked foot in the warm, hard cup of his hand. The shiver of appreciation she’d felt graduated to a betraying tingle of pure awareness. She felt terrified in a much different way than she had felt terrified the last two years of her life when she had become the victim of a stalker. He was a man she had worked with, and whose interest in her had seemed so benign…at first.

“Really,” she managed to croak, “I can look after it.”

“Look, either I’m taking a look at it, or I’m taking you to the hospital. You choose.”

He glanced up, and she noticed just the faintest shadow of whiskers on his clean-shaven face, felt swamped by his closeness, his pure masculine scent.

“Are you all right?” he asked, genuine concern faintly overriding the professionalism in the masculine deepness of his voice. “You aren’t going to faint, are you?”

“Faint?” she managed to say, inserting proud outrage into her voice, a woman determined not to be seen as weak ever again. “I am not the fainting kind.”

But she had managed to sound more certain than she actually felt. Was she all right? Why did she feel as if she was standing in the open doorway of a plane, deciding whether to jump?

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” he said patiently. “There is no fainting kind. I’ve seen a Marine faint at the sight of his own blood.”

“Oh.”

“Can I go ahead then? Or do you want me to take you to the hospital?”

The eyes were intent on her face, the voice no-nonsense, though his offering her a choice relaxed something in her, even though, logically, she knew it was not a real choice and he was very much in control.

“Go ahead,” she squeaked.

“It’s not so bad,” he reassured her, lifting her leg so he could get a good look at the heel, gently swabbing away the blood with an alcohol pad. “I see a single cut, not very deep. I think there’s a little piece of glass still in there.”

He reached for tweezers, tugged, held up a tiny fragment of glass for her to see before he dropped it into the wastepaper basket that was painted like a toy drum.

“I’m just going to dress the wound,” he explained, his voice deep, soothing, as if he was talking to a small child. “I don’t see any more glass, no need for stitches. A wound to this part of the body just bleeds a lot.”

The voice of a man who had seen many wounds and much blood, without ever coming even remotely close to fainting; a man who would be just this coolly and reassuringly competent in crises of any magnitude.

He placed a cotton gauze on her foot, held it in place by winding a bandage over her heel and up her ankle in a crisscross pattern, all very professional, clinical, detached.

Not, apparently, being bothered by tingles the way she was.

“You’re obviously used to doing this sort of thing,” she said. “This is obviously your first trip to the North Pole, though.”

He looked surprised, and then he smiled.

It was just the tiniest hint of a smile, but it changed the stern lines of his face completely. She glimpsed for a moment something of his past: something reckless, devil-may-care, mischievous. Charming.

He got up, picked up his hat and brushed off his knee with it. He glanced around at the bathroom decor, his eyes resting briefly on a jar of bright candies labeled Jolly Beans, For Medicinal Use Only.

The smile that had tickled his lips evaporated, and she was aware whatever he had once been, he was not that now. He actually winced, as if such adorable corniness hurt his eyes. He stepped quickly out of the bathroom and back into the hallway.