mother, but the threat of that happening had always been in her mind. She found herself look-ing around with a strange mixture of excitement and dread in the pit of her stomach, as if she were unconsciously searching the crowd for Grant's black head, for his tall, wide-shouldered form.
Darius suddenly yanked free of his mother's grip, and Noreen felt close to panic again. Then she saw that he was racing for the line of children waiting to talk to Santa. Darius loped ahead of her as eagerly and trustingly as a puppy, his short quick legs spraddling everywhere, shoestrings snapping in all directions, sure his mother would follow at her proper adult pace.
Watching him, she smiled fondly. Instead of Velcro fasteners, he insisted on shoelaces because his best friend's teenage brother, Raymond Liska, had laces. It did no good to tell Darius that big brothers could have laces because they were able to tie them.
There was an empty bench right in front of Santa's Workshop, and Noreen sank down on it, piling her bundles beside her. Her feet ached all the way up her calves to her knees. She loosened her scarf. It wasn't even noon yet, and she was exhausted from shopping and from chasing Darius-two jobs she vowed long ago never to take on simultaneously.
But Christmas was coming soon, and all four-year-old boys had to talk to Santa at least once. Darius had talked to five Santas since Thanksgiving. Every time he had done so, his big blue eyes had grown huge as he'd leaned into Santa's ear and whispered. When she'd asked him what he wanted he'd refused to tell her.
'Santa knows,' he would say wisely.
Today Noreen had dragged him to every toy store in the mall. With huge shining eyes, Darius had handled the toys, at first with exuberant enthusiasm, until she'd asked him, 'What do you want?' Then he had reluctantly set the toys back at cockeyed angles on the shelf. His darling baby-plump face had become still, and his answer had been reverent and enigmatic.
'Santa knows.'
'You must tell Mommy.'
'Why?'
Little did he know that she had almost nothing for him under the tree. That was the main reason she had let the Liskas persuade her to come into San Antonio.
As Noreen watched Darius jump joyfully into Santa's plump red velvet lap she thought,
'Silent Night,' her favorite Christmas carol, was being piped over the sound system. For the first time since seven that morning when she'd climbed into the Liskas' Suburban, she relaxed. She glanced down at her wristwatch. She and Darius still had an hour to shop before they were to rendezvous with the Liskas and their four children for lunch on the river at Casa Rio.
Noreen groaned inwardly as she watched Darius unwrap the peppermint candy cane that Santa had given him and whisper into Santa's ear at the same time. Santa was going to have sticky ears. Sugar made Darius absolutely hyper. He wouldn't eat lunch, and he probably wouldn't nap on the way home.
'So what special present do you want Santa to bring you this year, young man?' Santa asked.
'Special?' The word was new. Darius licked his candy cane thoughtfully.
'The best present you've ever gotten?' Santa prompted.
Darius whispered again, but Santa couldn't make out the whisper and told him so.
Darius's eager, piping voice rang through the store. 'The best present ever? A daddy that's even better than Leo's, that's what!'
Noreen looked up sharply at her son, all the old sorrow upon her. Her brown eyes grew bleak. She had tried to explain so many times to Darius that his father was in Heaven. She'd framed her favorite picture of Larry and kept it in Darius's room.
Noreen scarcely heard Santa's low rumble. But she heard her son's matter-of-fact reply. 'Nope. Just a daddy.'
'What about a toy truck or a car?'
Darius shook his black head as stubbornly as his father would have. As stubbornly as any Hale.
Santa was setting the child down, helping him get his balance as Noreen came over and gently took Darius's hand.
'You could have told me what you wanted,' she said softly to her son, her voice immeasurably sad.
'Do you think Santa can really bring me a daddy?'
'Honey, I told you how your father died. You have his picture on that little table by your bed.'
Darius's big blue eyes, so like his father's and his Uncle Grant's, grew solemn at that memory. 'But I need a real live daddy, too.'
She rumpled Darius's black hair. 'A daddy is… well… er… That's a very complicated present.'
'That's why I asked Santa, Mom. 'Cause he's magic.'
Noreen remained silent. She turned helplessly back to Santa, who had been eavesdropping. But Santa was no help. With a merry jingling of tiny bells, he just tipped his hat and gave her an audacious wink.
For a moment she remembered her marriage, Larry's death, Grant, the bitter loss of it all. And suddenly she was so cold inside that she could feel nothing else.
Noreen was in a hurry now, a hurry to leave the mall and make it to the Casa Rio by one-thirty to meet Sara and Jim and their brood. She had shopped in a frenzy ever since she'd found out what Darius really wanted for Christmas. She couldn't provide the father he wanted, but she could get him other things. Now she was so loaded down with bags that she could no longer hold them all, and Darius was even carrying the two he'd bought for Leo and another friend.
They were on the escalator when the nightmare she had dreaded for five long years became a reality.
There was no time to prepare. No time to run. She and Darius were trapped on that gliding silver stairway.
They were going down.
Her ex brother-in-law was going up.
Fortunately, Grant wasn't looking in her direction when she saw him. She went rigid with shock, turned her head away, and lifted her shaking hand to cover her features. But not before his harsh, set face had etched itself into her brain, and into her heart and soul, as well.
He looked tired. Tired and haggard in a way that wrenched her heart.
But he was as handsome as ever. He was taller than other men, and broader through the shoulders. So tall he dwarfed her in comparison. His face was lean and dark, his hair as thick and black and unruly as her own, his eyes the same dazzling blue she remembered, his mouth still as beautifully shaped.
As if she could have forgotten him.
As if any woman could.
Her heart was beating like a mad thing gone wild. She was almost safe. They were gliding past each other. She would probably never see him again. Why would she? He was a Hale and, no doubt, by now one of the most powerful lawyers in San Antonio. She was a nobody, a small-town librarian.
How many nights had she dreamed of him? He had probably never given her another thought.
A fatal impulse possessed her. Forgetting her fears for Darius, forgetting she was risking her new life in doing so, she couldn't resist glancing over her shoulder for one last glimpse of him.
She did so just when Grant was looking back.
Their eyes met.
And so did their souls. One fleeting instant of mutual longing bound them before other, darker emotions stormed to the surface.
Slowly his black brows drew together-in a smoldering rage or in hate, she did not know which. Terror welled up in her.
Fortunately, the moving escalators were crowded. Fortunately, the railing was high, and Grant couldn't see that she was with a child.
'Norie!'
The husky sound of his voice crying her name cut her like a knife.
Grant shouted a second time as she scrambled to get off the escalator, pulling Darius, juggling packages.
