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“But—”
“Do you think we should tell her now? That we’ve picked her for our mom, I mean. Do you think she’ll be excited? I am!”
That was obvious. Feeling as though the situation was rapidly getting out of hand, Pip tried to calm his sister, who was tugging eagerly at his hand again. “We can’t just tell her that, Kels. We have to have a plan.”
Since Kelsey had great respect for Pip’s plans—after all, hadn’t it been one of his plans that had brought them to this mall in search of parents?—she grew still and nodded gravely. “What plan?”
Darned if he knew. “Let’s just watch her for a minute,” he suggested in a conspiratorial murmur. “We want to be sure.”
That seemed reasonable to Kelsey. They pretended great interest in the dolls while they crept closer to the sales desk, where the woman had gone to ring up a sale for the pregnant woman.
“Ryan, do we have any more of the red-and-green-plaid wrapping paper?” a tall, red-haired woman behind the counter asked. “I can’t find any.”
The dark-haired saleslady turned to answer.
“Ryan,” Kelsey whispered. “Her name is Ryan. Isn’t that pretty?”
Pip had always considered that a boy’s name himself, but he kept quiet, continuing to watch the woman who so fascinated his sister.
“It’s been a madhouse today, hasn’t it?” the redhead was asking, pretending to wipe her brow with one hand. “Why do I have the feeling we’re going to be here very late tonight restocking and doing paperwork?”
“You don’t have to stay very late,” Ryan assured her. “I know Jack will be impatient for you to get home. I can handle most of it myself.”
The redhead made a face. “You will not. I told you I’d help you get through the Christmas season and I will. Jack will understand. It’s you I’m worried about. You’re going to be so busy during the next month that you’ll be lucky to have any social life at all.”
Ryan shrugged. “What social life? It’s not as if I’m dating anyone right now. Face it, Lynn, I’m a single in a doubles’ season. I might as well be working instead of sitting at home watching old Christmas movies on cable.”
Several customers approached the desk, their arms loaded with purchases. Both Ryan and the woman she’d called Lynn snapped to attention.
So she was a single lady. Could be a problem.
Pip took Kelsey’s hand, figuring they’d lingered in the doll shop as long as they could without attracting undue attention. “C’mon,” he murmured. “Let’s go.”
“But—”
“The plan,” he reminded her when she hesitated. “We have to work out the plan.”
She nodded and followed him out, with only one last, wistful look over her shoulder. Pip wasn’t sure whether it was directed at the doll or the woman named Ryan. Maybe both.
Sratching his head, he looked around the crowded mall, as if in search of inspiration. He spotted the sporting-goods store across the way.
“There’s the other shop Santa told us to visit,” he exclaimed. “Maybe we’ll get an idea while we’re in there.”
“Maybe that’s where we’ll find our dad,” Kelsey agreed.
Pip wasn’t so sure it would be that easy, but at least visiting the sporting-goods store would buy him some time to think.
During the past week, it had occurred to him that he and Kelsey could find the parents they’d been longing for at the mall—didn’t the advertisements all say that you could find anything at the mall? Teeming with shoppers, the mall seemed a good place to look around, pick out some likely looking prospects.
He hadn’t expected Kelsey to pick out a single lady. He’d sort of hoped for a set.
Kelsey was more interested in the store employees than in the merchandise so artfully displayed for Christmas browsers. She frowned.
“I don’t think I like that one,” she said, pointing to a scowling clerk behind the sales desk. The unpleasant-looking man was arguing with a customer about a return, and there was a vein throbbing in his skinny neck, as though he was really angry. “I don’t want him for my dad,” she stated flatly.
“Me, either,” Pip agreed, eyeing the shopkeeper’s soft-looking hands. Sissy hands. Probably never held a football in his life.
His attention was suddenly caught by someone who obviously knew exactly what to do with a football. He was standing ten feet from Pip and Kelsey, tossing a ball from one hand to another as though testing its feel.
He was a tall man who seemed to loom over the other customers, at least from Pip’s viewpoint. He had dark blond hair—rather like Pip’s own—and eyes that might have been blue or gray. Pip couldn’t tell which.
He had a dark tan—he was the outdoors type, apparently—and a strong chin. He was wearing a thick green sweater and very faded jeans, with what looked to Pip like real Western boots. His nose was just a little crooked, but Pip liked it.
As though sensing that someone was watching him, the man suddenly looked up. His gaze met Pip’s. He smiled.
Kelsey’s fingers tightened around Pip’s hand. Pip squeezed absently, staring at the man’s smile. Like his nose, it was a little crooked. But again Pip approved.
This, he thought, looked like a guy a kid wouldn’t mind having for a dad.
The man tossed the ball into the air again, catching it neatly. “Looks like a good one, doesn’t it?”
Pip nodded politely in response to the friendly question. “Yes, sir. That looks like a great ball.”
“Glad to know you agree. I think I’ll buy it.”
Pip watched as the man made his way across the store to the unfriendly salesclerk.
“Well?” Kelsey whispered.
“Yeah,” Pip murmured. “Maybe.”
When the man left the sporting-goods store they were right on his heels, trying their best to blend into the shopping crowd so he wouldn’t notice them. He went into a nearby ice-cream parlor, and Pip dug into his pocket for the ten-dollar bill.
“Want an ice-cream cone?” he asked Kelsey, who nodded eagerly.
A bubbly blond waitress and a more somber-looking older woman stood behind the counter. The man the children had been following headed straight for the blonde.
Pip placed his order with the other woman, watching the man out of the corner of his eye, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.
The man was leaning on the counter, smiling that crooked smile at the blonde, who seemed to find it as appealing as Pip had.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, sounding to Pip a bit breathless.
“What do you recommend?” the man asked, leaning closer.
“How about a hot-fudge brownie supreme?” she suggested, batting her long eyelashes.
Pip thought she looked kind of goofy hanging all over the guy like that. Personally, he preferred the dark-haired woman in the doll shop to this one. He didn’t think he’d care for a mom who giggled and twirled her hair.
The man flirted with the waitress a few more minutes before making his selection. Pip and Kelsey already had their ice-cream cones and were sitting at a tiny round table, eating and watching.
“Here you go,” the waitress said, sliding a towering concoction of fudge, ice cream and whipping cream across the counter to the man. “What’s your name, anyway?” she asked a bit too casually.
“Max. What’s yours?”
“Brittany. Do you play football?” she asked, nodding toward the ball he held under one arm.
“Some of my buddies get together and play most Sunday afternoons at City Park. Come by some time,” he said. “We can always use another player.”
Brittany giggled. “I don’t much like to play, but maybe I’ll be a cheerleader.”
Pip groaned.
Max only nodded. “See you around, Brittany.”
He carried his ice cream to a small table not far from the one Pip and Kelsey had chosen. He caught Pip’s eyes, paused a moment as though in surprised recognition, then smiled and turned his attention to his ice cream.
Max, Pip thought reflectively. Nice name.
He wondered how Max felt about video games and Batman.
Pip and Kelsey finished their cones before Max had half finished his own treat. Still trying to be inconspicuous, they went out into the mall and pretended to look into shop windows until he finally emerged.
They watched as he roamed aimlessly around the mall, tossing the football from hand to hand and stopping occasionally to peer into a window. Both Pip and Kelsey were excited when Max walked past the doll shop, stopped, looked back over his shoulder and then went inside.
“He’s in there with her! ” Kelsey squealed. “Come on, Pip, let’s go watch.”
Pip bit his lower lip, torn between caution and curiosity. Curiosity won out.
“Okay,” he said. “But stay quiet and don’t call attention to us, you hear?”
“Okay, Pip,” Kelsey said absently, her little sneakers already moving toward Beautiful Babies.
2
MAX MONROE FELT more than a bit out of place in the doll shop. He tucked the new football more snugly beneath his arm and wandered through the crowded aisles, eyeing the rows of smiling plastic faces and wondering how a person went about selecting one. Should he just grab the first doll that caught his eye? Were certain dolls more appropriate than others for a girl of a certain age? How was a guy sup-posed to know these things?
He looked around for help.
A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman was already headed his way, wearing a plastic name tag with a doll’s face painted on it identifying her as a store employee. She smiled, and Max promptly forgot why he’d come in.
Nice smile, he thought. Nice face. Great body. A particularly nice left hand. No rings.
“May I help you find something?” she asked, and her voice was more musical than the Christmas carols that filled the air.
He gave her his best helpless-male smile. “I could certainly use some assistance,” he assured her. Especially from you, he added silently.
“Are you looking for a gift?”
“A Christmas present for my niece.” He checked the woman’s name tag as he spoke. Ryan Clark. The word owner was printed in small letters beneath her name.
“How old is your niece?” Ryan Clark asked him.
Max had to think a minute. “Five? Six, maybe.”
“You aren’t sure?”
With a rueful shrug, he shook his head. “My sister and her family live in Hawaii. I don’t get to see them often, I’m afraid. But I’m pretty sure Jenny is five.”
“I see. Well, maybe a baby doll would be most appropriate. Little girls of all ages love something they can cuddle.”
Max liked the sound of that. He took a step closer. “Yeah. Something to cuddle sounds good to me.”
Ryan Clark shot him a suspicious look and took a step backward.
“For my niece, of course,” he added hastily.
Oops. Wrong approach with this one. The blonde at the ice-cream parlor would have responded with a blush and a giggle. Max actually preferred the stern reproval in Ryan Clark’s dark eyes. He always enjoyed a challenge.
“Of course,” she said, her voice now a bit chilly.
“Ryan, could you give me a hand here for a minute?” a harried-looking redhead called out from the sales counter, which was surrounded by impatient shoppers.
Ryan waved an acknowledgment. “Perhaps you’d like to look around a bit,” she suggested to Max. “The baby dolls are in that section. I’ll check back with you in a few minutes.”
“Sure, take your time,” he said magnanimously. “I’m in no hurry.”
He watched her full skirt sway around her very nice legs as she walked away. “No hurry at all,” he murmured.
Without much interest, he roamed the shop, stopping occasionally to study one doll or another. Frankly, they all looked pretty much alike to him.
He glanced at a few price tags and grew even more puzzled. Why were some of them ten bucks and others several hundred dollars? Who the hell could tell the difference?
A dark-haired doll in a blue-and-white dress caught his eye, and he chuckled. Funny. The doll reminded him a bit of Ryan Clark.
He bent to pick the doll up and found himself face-to-face with a little girl with white blond curls and enormous blue eyes. She was studying him so intently that he felt compelled to say something.
“I’m buying a gift for my niece,” he said. “She’s about your age. Do you think she would like this doll?”
“No,” the child answered positively, shaking her head. She pointed toward a round-faced baby doll dressed in frothy lace. “That one’s much better,” she said earnestly. “You should buy that one.”
Amused, Max replaced the dark-haired doll and picked up the other one. “This one, huh?” he asked, noting that the prices were comparable.
The tot nodded. “That’s a much better one for your niece.”
“Then I’d better buy it, hadn’t I?”
He grinned at the look of relief that crossed the child’s face when she glanced at the dark-haired doll. The little girl returned his smile with a particularly sweet one of her own and then disappeared into the crowds around her. Max assumed she’d returned to her mother’s side. He’d bet the kid would be urging her mom to hurry and buy the dark-haired doll for her before some other inconsiderate shopper snapped it up.
