Starting from Scratch (22 page)

H
e'd thought he could just leave the gifts on her doorstep and make a quick getaway. Obviously not. Why did Elisha always manage to complicate things at every turn?

Ryan began to back away. “Look, I have to leave.”

She cocked her head, doing her best to look innocent. “We're not the last house on your run, Santa?”

His face clouded. He was embarrassed at being caught doing something nice. Ryan cleared his throat. “Max, I'm not—”

“Not Santa Claus? Yes, I know. But your secret's safe with me.” Elisha hooked her arm through his and began to gently but firmly pull him inside. “However, I'm not above a little blackmail. Girls,” she shouted over her shoulder, in case she needed reinforcements. “Company's here.”

He began to tug his arm away and found that she had one hell of a grip. For a little thing, she was certainly a lot stronger than he would have thought.

“Let them sleep,” he ordered gruffly.

Elisha was pretty sure she was witnessing the rise of color in his face. The man was embarrassed, she thought with a secret note of triumph.

So you
are
human after all. Nice to know.

“This is Christmas morning,” she pointed out as she succeeded in getting him over the threshold. “Nobody really sleeps late on Christmas morning. They start waking up one minute past Christmas Eve.” Her eyes swept over him as she did a quick calculation, weighing pros and cons. “If I let go of your arm, will you bolt?”

He met her gaze with an unwavering one of his own. Elisha couldn't begin to read what was going on inside his head. She only knew what she
wanted
to be going on in there.

“Can't make any promises.”

Well, at least the man didn't lie. That put him way ahead of a lot of other men she knew.

“Just promise me that one,” she requested. “I won't ask for anything else.”

Ryan made no reply, but something in her heart told her that she could trust him to stay put. At least for now. Slowly, she released her hold. He remained where he was. She grinned at him. Inside her chest, her heart was doing somersaults.

“Good, now make yourself useful and bring in that loot you just planted on my doorstep.” She stooped down beside him to help. Her robe tangled with the pile she picked up and she had to pull it out of the way. “Why would you do that anyway?” she wanted to know. “Why wouldn't you just knock and come in with your presents?”

Grudgingly, he followed her into the house, his arms laden with the gifts he'd wrapped less than twelve hours ago. “Because I didn't want this.”

She set her small pile in front of the tree, gesturing for him to do the same. “This?” she repeated.

His face was as dark as thunder as he placed his armload next to hers. “A fuss.”

“A fuss,” she echoed. Elisha shook her head and laughed as she looked at him. “Mister, if you think this is a fuss, then you have no idea what the word really means.”

Behind her, she could hear the pounding for two sets of feet as her nieces came running down the stairs. For rather petite creatures, Andrea and Beth could sound like a herd of charging elephants when bounty was involved.

“Look who's here, girls,” she tossed needlessly over her shoulder.

“Mr. S.! Merry Christmas!” Beth's greeting was filled with pure joy as she rushed over and threw her arms around his waist, hugging him before he had a chance to place any gifts between himself and the little girl.

It was clear to Elisha that Beth was hungry for male influence in her life. And she had targeted Ryan to be that male. The little girl could have done a lot worse.

From where she stood, Elisha felt they both had a lot to gain from the interaction. Beth still needed a father figure and Ryan could do with the kinder, gentler influence of a family-type setting to draw on.

“Here, I'll take those,” Andrea offered, making a straight line for the gifts that had just been deposited in front of the tree.

“Of course you will.” Elisha could feel her eyes smiling as she watched the two girls. “Obviously, you think they're for you.”

“At least some. Right?” Andrea raised her eyes in Ryan's direction.

He raised a broad shoulder beneath the pea jacket he had favored since his early days in the navy and then let it casually drop again. “There might be some with your name on them,” he allowed.

Beth tugged on the bottom of his jacket. “Me, too?” she asked, her small face turned up to his. It was a long distance between faces.

The frown lines that were so much a part of Ryan's face faded as he nodded and said, “You, too.”

The girls quickly divided the loot, placing their gifts on the side of the tree they had staked out the night before. Right for Beth, left for Andrea. There were several gifts in the middle. Those were intended for Elisha.

The gifts she had for the guests who were coming to dinner had been placed to the rear of the tree, out of possible harm's way until Christmas morning was officially over. She'd seen the girls' exuberance when they opened their gifts and was taking no chances.

Ryan found himself standing close to Elisha. And reluctant to draw away. The issue of his own survival, his own space, was no longer as compelling as it had been even a few minutes earlier.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Ryan thought. He looked at Elisha. “Aren't you going to ask if there's a gift for you?”

There was nothing coy or calculating in her face as she shook her head. “I don't have to. I already got my gift. You're staying for dinner.”

He hadn't said so in so many words, even though he'd reversed his decision about dinner late last night. Still, he'd wanted to be the one to say as much. Ryan kept a poker face. “Don't get ahead of yourself.”

“That's not negotiable,” she informed him simply. Her eyes shone. “You're staying for dinner. Even if it means I have to handcuff you to the table.”

There was a certain twinkle in his eye as he said, “You'd be surprised what I could do with a pair of handcuffs.”

She lifted her chin, unfazed. “No, I wouldn't.”

“Aunt Lise, there's one in here for you,” Beth declared. From the center of the silver foil-wrapped gifts, she plucked a small square box and held it up over her head like a trophy.

“One more,” Andrea added. For Elisha's benefit she held up what appeared to be a gift-wrapped index card, five by seven in length and as flat as a dime. Delicate brown eyebrows drew together over the bridge of her nose as Andrea looked first at the foil-wrapped gift, then at Ryan. “Did you flatten this by accident?”

“By design,” he told her. “Always by design.” He looked at Elisha. “You can open that one second.”

“You're the boss,” she allowed.

He laughed in response. He had no idea she could lie so smoothly. “And if I believed that, where's the bridge you want to sell me?”

“Later,” she quipped. Taking Ryan's gift from Beth, she waved both girls back to their pile of presents. “Go ahead, start ripping.”

Beth needed no more encouragement than that. As for Andrea, Christmas had a way of penetrating her bored-teenager-in-search-of-herself facade, turning her back into the Andrea everyone else had always known and loved. The girls went at their piles with gusto.

Turning back to Ryan, Elisha thought she detected an uneasiness in him. That was definitely a first. She'd never seen the man anything but confident before. But then, it was a morning for firsts.

“What made you buy the girls presents?” she asked.

He shrugged again. Reaching over, she began to unbutton his pea jacket. He gave her an incredulous look, then finished the job himself. “I figured I owed them something for decorating the tree.”

She smiled knowingly. The man just couldn't admit to having a softer side. “I see.”

He looked at the two items she was still holding in her hand. “Are you going to hang on to those indefinitely or open them?”

She looked down at the two gifts. Multicolored lights from the Christmas tree were splaying themselves across the silver foil. It looked as if she were holding fire in her hands. “I thought I'd hold on to them for a while. Savor the fact that you brought me something.”

Impatience added color to his profile. “Oh, for God's sake, open the damn things.”

“Said in the true spirit of Christmas,” she laughed. Giving in, she began to undo the foil around the flat gift with her thumbnail.

“No.” He stopped her. “I said to open that one first.” Ryan nodded at the box.

“Okay.” Tucking the other gift under her arm, she unwrapped the square box instead.

And found a black velvet box beneath the foil.

Her mouth grew dry as she stared at the gift. If anyone but Ryan had given it to her, she would have immediately guessed that there was a ring inside the box. But it was from Ryan, which meant that it was probably anything
but
a ring.

“Are you planning on trying to guess its weight?” he prodded.

“No.” Elisha ran her tongue along her lips. It didn't help. Everything was bone dry. There wasn't enough moisture to form a dewdrop.

She held her breath. And flipped open the box.

The heart-shaped diamond caught the light coming in through the front window and changed it into a rainbow before chasing it back out onto the far wall.

She was holding a rainbow in her hand.

More than that, she was holding a promise.

Incredulous, she raised her eyes to his face. For possibly the first time in her life, she found herself completely and utterly speechless, unable to form a single word.

“Now open the other one,” he prompted.

Like someone moving in a dream, Elisha did as he instructed. Her brain felt like a vast wasteland, unable to form or retain a single thought. Ripping open the second gift, she almost succeeded in ripping what was inside, as well. It
was
an index card.

And written on it was a single sentence. A single question: “Will you marry me?”

“Why…” She almost choked, her throat was so dry. Starting again, she raised her eyes to his. “Why did you write this down?”

Dammit, he couldn't read her expression. She looked shell-shocked. Was that a good thing? Or was she looking for a way to say no? Hell, he'd come this far, he had to press on. “Because I'm a better writer than a talker. And I figured you liked editing things.” As if to underscore that, he handed her a pen.

There was an earthquake going on inside of her. Or at least what she would have imagined one to feel like. Everything within her body was shaking.

Willing the tremor out of her hand, Elisha took the pen and wrote something on the side of the index card.

Taking a deep breath, she gave it back to him.

Ryan realized he'd stopped breathing altogether. Stopped breathing until he read what she'd written. “‘Yes.'”

He grinned as he drew air back into his lungs. He'd been in the throes of agony, sweating bullets from the moment he'd walked into the small Forty-seventh Street jewelry store. The place was run by Jacob Wolfe, a man whose life he'd once saved. Jacob sold him the best diamond he had, then proceeded to create a unique setting for it in under twelve hours.

It was a masterpiece. But it would have been nothing if she'd turned him down.

The next moment, Ryan found himself surrounded by Andrea and Beth. Surrounded, he knew, by the kind of love that had eluded him all of his life. And he was getting it on the family plan. In the depths of his soul, he had to admit that he rather liked that.

Taking the ring out of the box, he slipped it onto Elisha's finger. The fit was perfect, as he knew it would be.

Elisha's head threatened to begin spinning again. If she listened really, really hard, she could swear she heard the sound of a white charger's hoofbeats as the horse galloped up to her house, delivering the prince to her doorstep.

The sound was probably just her own heart, gone into triple time.

“Are you sure you mean this?”

His eyes met hers. She had her answer before it even left his lips. “Max, I never say anything I don't mean.”

Her mouth curved. “Technically, you haven't actually ‘said' anything yet.”

Fully aware that women liked to hear the words, Ryan took a deep breath and forced them from his lips, one at a time like parachuted commandos, ready for action, evacuating an airplane. “Will you marry me?”

“Because?” she coaxed.

“Because?” he echoed, confused.

“Because you love me?” she supplied.

He gave a half shrug, wanting to hide at least some of his feelings until a later time. “Yeah, that.”