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Damn her sweet, wonderful, impulsive hide.
Jonah had wanted to follow Trotter and Freddie, see where they were taking the stolen goods to fence. Now his cover was about to be blown. They had his woman, and he would die before he let them leave the premises with her.
But Trotter had a gun pressed to her head.
Jonah’s gut roiled.
He stood, then moved past the shelf and around the boxes. He raised his gun in both hands. “Police. Let her go, Trotter. It’s not worth dying over.”
“Police?” Edie’s words echoed in the building. “You’re a cop?”
Jonah’s eyes met hers. And darn if she didn’t grin as big as a kid in a cotton candy factory.
Trotter swung his gaze to Jonah and cursed vehemently. Freddie the Fish was still tossing electronic equipment into the wooden crate. He stopped what he was doing and blinked. “Santa?”
“Sorry, Freddie, I’m afraid a sack of coal is all you’re going to find in your stocking this Christmas. Get your hands over your head.”
Jonah turned the gun on Freddie. The man kept staring at him as if he couldn’t believe he was being arrested by Santa Claus. Jonah stepped over, relieved him of his gun, and ordered him onto the ground. He cuffed Freddie, then trained his duty weapon on Trotter.
Trotter remained at the loading dock entrance, Edie clutched in his arms.
But the woman didn’t have the presence of mind to be afraid. She kept haranguing him with words. Jonah almost smiled.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she lectured. “Didn’t your mother teach you that it’s not nice to point?”
“My mother’s dead,” Trotter said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Trotter shrugged. “That’s life.”
“Well, stop and think a moment. What will your wife say?”
“She left me. Ran off with an insurance executive. I didn’t make enough money to please her,” Trotter responded bitterly.
Jonah watched Edie’s face. He could see her mental cogs whirling. What was she up to?
“A man of your standing.” Edie shook her head as if she didn’t have a pistol against her temple. “Why would you do this?”
From his position on the ground, Freddie the Fish snorted. “He doesn’t make enough to pay off his gambling debts. He’s into my boss to the tune of two hundred grand.”
“For shame!” Edie scolded, and Jonah prayed Trotter wouldn’t blow her away just to shut her up. “And to think I had so much respect for you.”
Trotter blinked. “You did?”
“Yes, but that was before I found out about this. How on earth do you expect to earn back my trust?”
The girl was as nutty as a Christmas fruitcake, Jonah concluded. He’d suspected this about her the moment they’d met when she’d tried to block him from stripping out of his flea-bitten Santa suit. Lucky for her, he was very fond of fruitcake.
Most women in the same predicament would sob or faint or freeze. Any of those responses would have been normal reactions.
But Edie Preston certainly was not normal.
Not by a long shot.
Her unconventional approach was one of the things he liked most about her.
“Well?” Edie demanded. “How do you expect to redeem your reputation?”
Trotter seemed confused. Jonah used the opportunity to creep closer.
“What do you mean?” Trotter asked, sweat beads popping out on his broad forehead. “There’s nothing to redeem. I’m going to kill you and Santa, then I’m going to load those electronics onto this truck and drive away.”
“Hey,” Freddie protested. “What about me?”
“You’ve set me up with the fence. You’ve served your purpose,” Trotter said. “Maybe I’ll shoot you, too. Place the gun in your hand. Make it look like you murdered them, then shot yourself out of remorse.” Trotter paused to consider his new scenario. “Yes. It just might work. After all, as the girl said, I do have a reputation. Who would believe I was robbing the store?”
“It’s not going to happen, Trotter. Put down the gun and let Edie go,” Jonah said tightly.
“You’re in no position to be issuing orders, Stevenson.”
Jonah stared at Edie, peering deeply into her eyes. Silently, he sent her a message and prayed mental telepathy really worked.
Duck, run, move your head, anything to give me a clear shot at him.
She didn’t seem the least bit scared. Imperceptibly, she nodded. Had she understood what he wanted?
“This has gone on long enough, Mr. Trotter.” Her voice was firm.
Then with a quick one-two action, she came down hard on his instep with her heel and drove her elbow backward into his gut.
“Oomph.” Trotter’s face darkened, and he loosened his grip on her.
Run, Edie, run.
But instead of moving out of the way, Edie turned inward, grasped Trotter’s gun-toting wrist, and bit him.
“Yow!” he yelped.
His gun clattered to the cement.
“Serves you right,” Freddie the Fish mumbled from his low-level vantage point.
Jonah didn’t waste a second. He covered the ground between him and Trotter in two long-legged strides. He took the man by the collar and held on for dear life, his duty weapon pushed against Trotter’s cheek. Let him have a dose of what he’d just dished out to Edie.
Pride for her welled inside him.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yeah!” She feigned boxing moves at Trotter, hopping from one foot to the other. Jab, jab, uppercut. “That’ll teach you to mess with Santa Claus, you big bully.”
The woman was too much. Jonah grinned. “You made a mistake when you took this one as a hostage, Trotter.”
“Tell me about it.” Trotter glowered. “I should have fired you both when I had the chance.”
“Edie,” Jonah commanded. “Get the cell phone out of my hip pocket. Dial 9-1-1. Get them to patch you through to Chief Truman West. Tell him that Santa’s got a surprise package waiting for him in Carmichael’s warehouse.”
#
JONAH WAS A COP. JONAH was a cop. Edie mentally chanted, grinning.
She should have known her instincts about him hadn’t led her astray. She hadn’t made a mistake by falling in love with him.
She’d been waiting on a bench in the busy police station for over three hours. She’d already given her statement to one of the officers who’d arrived to help Jonah cart off Trotter and his unhappy accomplice.
Now she was waiting for Jonah to wrap up the details of the arrest. They had a lot to discuss.
Like what the future might hold.
An eager excitement fizzed inside her, and Edie struggled to quell her nervousness.
When Jonah finally emerged from behind closed doors minus the Santa suit, his dark hair combed back off his head, a gun holster at his hip, a badge pinned on his chest, Edie’s heart tripped.
He was so handsome. So forceful. So manly. He was chatting with another officer, and he hadn’t seen her yet. She gulped and held her breath.
Her nervousness transformed into something much more palpable.
Fear.
A million what-ifs rose to her mind. What if he didn’t want her? What if she had somehow screwed things up between them?
She pushed aside her fears. Edie wasn’t one to sit and wonder. For better or worse, she was the type to grab the bull by the horns and demand answers.
He finished his conversation and started across the room. Phones rang, computer keyboards clacked, voices hummed, but Edie could scarcely hear anything over the steady pounding of her heart.
Rising to her feet, she moved toward him.
“Jonah.”
“Edie.” He stopped.
Anxiously, she studied his face, searching for a sign.
“You’re still here.”
“Yes.”
“I thought you’d be long gone.” He smiled faintly. A smile was a good thing. Yes?
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“That’s good. I needed to talk to you too.”
“You do?”
His features turned serious. “Do you have any idea how foolhardy you acted today?” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you simply charged over to Trotter and started lecturing him.”
“He had it coming.” She notched her chin upward.
“Edie, he is a dangerous man; he had a gun. Didn’t you think about that?”
“I could only think about one thing,” she said.
“And what was that?”
“How he was framing the other guys. Blaming them for his wrongdoings. He had to be held accountable. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing.”
“Fools rush in,” Jonah muttered and shook his head.
Her heart knocked painfully against her chest. He thought she was a fool.
“Did you learn anything from this?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“About rushing into situations without enough information.”
“Now that you mention it,” she admitted, “I was pretty scared.”
A smile crooked one corner of his mouth. “I never would have guessed. You were cucumber cool. And you really threw Trotter off guard. When we were interrogating him, he kept saying ‘that girl wouldn’t stop lecturing me.’”
“Really?”
“You’ve got high expectations of people, Edie Preston.”
She couldn’t mistake the twinkle in his eye. That was a good sign. Right?
“Do you need a ride home?” He angled his head.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“This way.” He placed a hand to the small of her back and guided her to the door and into the night.
Edie gnawed on her bottom lip, wishing desperately that she’d had her makeup kit with her so she could freshen up. Unfortunately, she was also in her elf suit with the darned jangling jingle bells.
Please, she thought, just let me survive the drive home. Let me find the right words to tell him how I feel about him.
When they reached the parking lot, he stopped beside his car and took her hand.
“Listen, Edie, I want you to know that I’ve had a great time these past five weeks playing Santa with you.”
Oh, no. Here it comes. You’re a great girl but...
“Me, too,” she whispered, her gaze scanning his face, searching for answers.
“You’re a great girl.”
Her stomach roiled. Her hands trembled. Tears gathered behind her eyelids.
So much for taking a walk on the wild side.
“You’re a wonderful guy.” She blinked. Willed away the tears.
“I know I’m not good enough for you. I grew up the hard way, on the streets. I spent my youth rebelling against authority. If it hadn’t been for my Aunt Polly...” He shook his head. “But I digress. I’m a cop. I see the dark-and-dirty side of life. You’re an optimist. You’re clean and pure and innocent. I’m afraid...” He stopped.
“Afraid of what?” she urged.
He took a deep breath. Were those tears glistening in his eyes? Her heart stuttered. “If we start dating that I’ll ruin what I love most about you.”
What he loved most about her? Her pulse quickened.
“Your inherent belief in the goodness of your fellow man.”
A lock of hair had fallen across his forehead. She raised on tiptoes and patted the strand back into place.
“Shh,” she said. “Don’t be silly. We’re perfect together. I need your cold-eyed realism just as much as you need my cockeyed optimism. You’ve taught me so much about life, Jonah Stevenson, in such a short time.”
“Same here.” His voice was gruff.
“For so many years, I’ve been like everyone’s kid sister. Guys don’t make passes at me. Construction workers don’t whistle at me on the street. I’m the good girl. But you make me feel like a real woman. Alive, sexy, sexual. You’ve given me the courage to take risks, to really experience life. I can’t tell you how good that feels.”
“Really?”
She nodded.
He actually blushed. Big, tough cop didn’t know how to take a compliment. “Well, you make me feel pretty sexy, too. The last thing I ever expected was to fall in love with you.”
Emotions knotted in her throat. “You’re in love with me?”
“Hell, yes,” he said gruffly. “Why do you think I was trying to break things off with you?”
“Is that what you usually do when you’re in love? Run away?”
“I’m scared I can’t live up to your expectations. I was worried you’d pass judgment on me. That I wouldn’t measure up to your expectations. Aunt Polly wanted so much from me. So did my last girlfriend. I can’t offer you anything more than what you see right now, Edie. Take me as I am. For better or worse.” He held his arms wide, exposing himself to her.
Instinctively, she knew this was a very difficult thing for him to do—lay himself bare.
“And if I say yes?”
“Then I’m taking you back to my place.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.”
Embracing the exhilarating insanity of the moment, Edie climbed into the Corvette beside him and snapped her seat belt into place. He drove through the light traffic to his quaint house in his eclectic neighborhood.
I’d love living here, she realized, in this melting pot of cultures.
Jonah pulled into the driveway and leapt from the car, hustling around to the passenger side to help her out.
He ushered her up the steps and across the threshold, both their breaths coming in sharp, hurried gasps. He positioned her on the couch, then turned on the stereo.
“Walking in a Winter Wonderland” played.
He joined her on the couch and pulled her into his lap. “Christmas will always be our special time,” he whispered, his warm breath feathering the hairs back from her ears.
She giggled.
“We won’t be able to hear a Christmas song without thinking back on this moment,” he continued.
“Or see a sprig of mistletoe without remembering the first time you kissed me.”
“You mean like this?” Jonah kissed her softly, gently, repeatedly.
“More like this,” Edie said, introducing her tongue into the mix.
“Whew.” He pulled back a few minutes later.
“When you take a walk on the wild side, you really take a walk on the wild side.”
“I learned from the best.” She grinned.
“I love the way you smile,” he said.
“I love the way you smell.” She buried her nose against his neck. “Like pine cones and peppermint and gingerbread.”
He caught her chin in his palm and turned her face to meet his eyes. “And I love you, Edie Preston, with all my heart and soul.”
“I love you, too, Jonah,” she whispered. “More than you’ll ever know.”
He rose to his feet, Edie clutched firmly in his arms. Her giggle echoed in the room. “Where are we going?” she demanded.
“To the bedroom.”
“Ah.”
“Got a problem with that?”
“No. Not at all. But I do have one request.”
“And that is?”
“Do you still have the Santa suit?” she whispered. “Because I’ve always had this wild little fantasy...”