“ARE YOU GOING TO SIT DOWN or just stand there frowning at me?”
She blinked and forced a bright smile. “I think this is a great time to exchange our own Christmas gifts, don’t you? I mean, tomorrow’s going to be so hectic.”
“What makes you think I got you a Christmas present?” he drawled, but his faint smile told her he was teasing.
She wrinkled her nose at him and turned toward the doorway. “I left yours out in my car. I’ll be right back.”
“Be careful. There’s still a little ice on the sidewalk from that snowfall earlier in the week.”
She moved toward the door. “Thanks. I’ll watch my step.”
Motion lights activated when Melissa stepped outside. Her breath hung in the air as she moved quickly to her car, shivering in the cold night breeze. Maybe she should have put on a coat, she thought, huddling into the thin chocolate-brown turtleneck she wore with dark jeans and brown suede boots that were more decorative than practical for slippery walkways. She really would have to be careful. Hurting herself in a fall would ruin her carefully scripted agenda for tomorrow.
She took a beautifully wrapped package out of the trunk of her car, then looked at it nervously for a moment. It had been so hard choosing a gift for a man as wealthy and complex as Tom. He wasn’t particularly materialistic, not overly sentimental, nor a collector of anything in particular. When he wanted or needed something, he bought it for himself. His biggest indulgences had been his house here and the ultraluxurious motor home he lived in at the racetracks.
Pretty much a man who had everything, except the Championship trophy that had eluded him for the past three years, and she couldn’t buy him that.
Though she made a decent income as a vice president of her mother’s growing and thriving realty company, Melissa wasn’t wealthy, especially when compared to Tom. And while that didn’t matter to either of them, she’d still agonized for months about what she could get him for Christmas that would have some meaning for him. She had ended up spending more than she had intended. Staring at that wrapped box now, she hoped she’d made the right choice.
“Melissa?” she heard him call from the house. “You okay out there?”
“I’m coming,” she said, slamming the trunk.
It was nice that he worried about her, she decided, picking her way carefully to the front door. He wasn’t the type to express his feelings in flowery words or declarations, but the nice dinner he had served her earlier, complete with candles and a rose, and his concern for her safety were his way of telling her she was special to him. At least, that was what she wanted to believe.
“You should have worn a coat,” he scolded when she walked back inside. Closing the door behind her, he drew her closer to the fire. “Your teeth are chattering.”
“Not quite.” But she shivered as she handed him the eight-inch-square package wrapped in green-and-red plaid paper with a big red bow. “Merry Christmas, Tom.”
He took the gift a bit awkwardly. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “You haven’t opened it yet.”
“I’m sure I’ll like it.”
They moved to the couch and sat side by side on the deep cushions. “I have a gift for you, too,” he said.
“Open yours first.” She couldn’t wait any longer.
He pulled off the bow, tore away the paper, then studied the hinged, dark box he’d uncovered.
“You’re supposed to look inside it,” she said, wondering why she was suddenly so anxious.
Maybe her tension was affecting him. She would have sworn he looked rather nervous when he lifted the lid of the box. He went very still when he saw what was inside.
“You’re always looking at your watch,” she said, a bit self-consciously. “Always wondering how much longer you’ll have to stay at a publicity event, how long until you’re back behind the wheel of your car. I hoped maybe you would think of me when you look at this one.”
“It’s—Melissa, it’s amazing.”
“It’s vintage,” she said, knowing she was babbling. “I couldn’t afford a fancy new Rolex or anything like that, but I thought this one was interesting. It’s a—”
“It’s great,” he murmured, lifting the watch almost reverently out of the box. “Stainless steel case and band, 17 jewel Swiss movement. Bidirectional pilot’s bezel. Three subregisters. Made in—what? The early seventies?”
“In 1967,” she said wonderingly. “How do you—”
“My granddad had one almost exactly like this. He’s the one who got me into racing, you know. He worked the pits at a couple of dirt tracks, hung out with some of the early legends of stock car racing. He took me to the track for the first time when I was four years old and my parents were having one of their knock-down, drag-out weekends. He won the watch in a poker game when a race had been rained out one Saturday night. He loved that watch. How did you know?”
“I didn’t,” she whispered. “I just always picture you looking at your watch, and I thought you might get a kick out of a vintage one. When I saw this, I knew it was the one I wanted to buy.”
There had been more expensive vintage watches for sale, a couple that she’d been told were more desirable to collectors—but this one had immediately drawn her attention. It had cost her a few months’ rent, but she’d decided it was worth watching her budget for a while. Though she’d hoped he would like it, she’d honestly had no idea it would have any special meaning to him. Another shiver ran down her spine, and this one had nothing to do with the cold. “I really didn’t know about your grandfather’s watch. What happened to his?”
“My father still has it, I guess. Unless he’s sold it. He and granddad were never particularly close.”
He took off the watch he’d been wearing—and which had probably cost him twice as much as she’d paid for the vintage one—and clasped her gift around his wrist. “It’s really great.”
“It’s been fully reconditioned to keep accurate time. It has to be wound manually, of course, but—”
“It’s perfect,” he assured her, leaning down to press a hard kiss on her lips. “Thank you.”
Swallowing a lump in her throat, she beamed up at him. It looked as though she had chosen the right gift, after all.
WITH ONE LAST GLANCE at his wrist, Tom turned on the couch to retrieve the small, wrapped package on the table behind him. He looked at it for a moment before offering it to Melissa, who accepted it with a smile of anticipation.
He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, he thought glumly. He wasn’t the type to come up with the perfect, clever gift. He’d never really given it that much thought.
His family had always shopped, sometimes not until the last minute, because it was expected of them rather than for any real joy in giving to each other. And even though Melissa meant more to him than anyone who shared his gene pool, he hadn’t had a clue about what to buy for her. Things didn’t mean much to him—at least, not usually, he thought with another glance at the watch he knew he would always treasure. Melissa had never seemed to care that much about fancy stuff, either, though she always dressed well and invested in state-of-the-art technology for her business.
Now he found himself wishing he’d put just a little more thought into his gift for her this year. Instead, he’d walked into a jewelry store, consulted for a few minutes with a saleswoman, and walked out twenty minutes later with a wrapped gift that had seemed fine at the time.
How could he have known that she would have put so much effort into what she got him? Even if it had been an accident that she’d bought him a watch just like the one that had meant so much to his grandfather, she’d still gone to a lot of trouble to find something he didn’t have. Something that would make him think of her whenever he looked at it, she’d said.
She peeled away the gold-and-white paper the jewelry store gift wrapper had decorated with gold ribbon, and opened the velvet box she had revealed. “Oh, Tom, this is lovely. Thank you.”
She sounded sincere enough, he decided cautiously, studying her expression as she lifted the diamond necklace from the box. Her eyes had lit up when she saw the expensive bauble, and her smile looked genuine when she turned her face toward his.
“I told the salesperson that you’ve got a thing for starfish,” he told her a bit awkwardly. “She showed me this necklace. If there’s something else you’d rather have…”
“This is perfect,” she assured him, studying the pendant more closely.
The whimsically shaped, diamond-encrusted gold starfish hung from a gold chain. It had been ridiculously expensive, but the saleswoman had assured him it was a quality piece set with fine stones. It had made Tom think of the brass starfish paperweight she kept on her desk, and the little starfish that served as a zipper pull on the soft leather briefcase that was never far from her side.
He’d asked her once about her penchant for starfish, and she’d said with a shrug that they always made her smile. When the saleswoman had asked what sort of thing his girlfriend liked, that comment had popped into his head.
“Thank you,” she said again, reaching up to kiss his cheek. “It means even more to me because you went to so much trouble to find something that made you think specifically of me.”
He cleared his throat, wishing it had taken him more than one stop to find the necklace, just so he’d feel that he’d worked a bit harder for it.
She handed him the necklace, then scooted around to turn her back to him, lifting the hair off her nape to expose the back of her neck to him. “Will you put it on me?”
His hands weren’t quite steady when he looped the delicate gold chain around her neck and fumbled with the clasp. She turned back around as soon as he’d fastened it, one hand touching the pendant as she asked, “How does it look?”
He didn’t even glance at the pendant when he murmured, “Beautiful.”
A light flush warmed her cheeks. She moved her hand from the necklace to his face, stroking her fingertips across his mouth. He caught them, kissed them, his gaze locked with hers. Her dark eyes glittered with reflections of the fire, the candles, the colorful Christmas lights. He moved closer until it was his own reflection he saw in them.
Her mouth was soft beneath his, her lips warm and eager. Tom lifted a hand to the back of her head, burying his fingers in her thick, auburn hair holding her still as he changed the angle of the kiss. Not that she seemed in any hurry to move away.
They finally surfaced for air, and after inhaling deeply a few times, Tom stood and held down a hand to her. Smiling tremulously up at him, Melissa placed hers into it and let him draw her onto her feet and into his arms.