Michael remembered their conversation from earlier. Find someone in more pain than you and help them.

As if, he thought cynically.

Still, the words printed untidily on the paper intrigued him. Pulled at him. The words said The Secret Santa Society.

Thirty-nine days until Christmas…

“I need an elf,” Kirsten Morrison said into the phone, “and not the one you sent me last year. I shouldn’t be fussy about a free elf? He got drunk and fell off the sleigh.”

A shiver went up and down her spine, she told herself only because the front door had opened, letting that chill breath of November in.

“A shortage of elves? Oh, a shortage of volunteer elves. So, what would I have to pay for an elf who wouldn’t get drunk and fall off the sleigh?” She said it as if she had money to spare for an elf, which she didn’t.

“Five hundred dollars? Are you kidding me? That’s robbery! What kind of person would rob Santa?”

She peered out her office door to see who had come in. There was no clear line of vision anymore. Once a small market, the front part of her space was now crammed with toys. Sixteen tricycle boxes had arrived this afternoon and were practically blocking the front door.

Trikes that had to be assembled at some point, she made a quick mental note. That was still far down the priority list. She caught sight of her visitor and involuntarily drew in her breath, suddenly not sure it was the air that had chilled her.

He was a big man, maybe a hair under six feet, but with astounding breadth across the shoulders that he brushed snow from. He wore no gloves though winter had decided to arrive last night with a vengeance, and even peering past obstacles she noticed his hands.

Strong hands, capable hands. Hands that could make a woman aware that she was alone, and that there were things, no matter how fiercely independent she became, that she was just never going to be able to do.

He was that kind of man, all right. The kind of man who made a woman suddenly and acutely aware of yearnings she could manage to keep secret—even from herself—most of the time.

He was the beginning of a story that ended happily ever after. Gorgeous in a dark way: unruly hair the color of rich chocolate fell past his collar; whiskers roughened chiseled cheekbones, highlighted a chin carved by the gods, and framed a mouth with lips that were full and sensuous but unsmiling.

And his eyes! Lord have mercy!

They were a shade of green she had never seen before, somewhere between jade and emerald, and they were fringed with a sinfully sooty abundance of lashes.

“Be there in a sec,” she called.

She turned from him, trying to focus on the business at hand. “Five hundred dollars for an elf! Where is your Christmas spirit? Oh! Same to you!”

She smashed down the phone, glared at it, but she was aware she was marshaling herself. Finally, she wove her way through the impromptu storage area the storefront had become. It was getting tight, and a few boxed dolls fell from the top of the last stack of toys she had to negotiate past before she could get to the tiny remaining space by the front door. Space filled by him.

He caught the toppling dolls before they hit the floor, moving with the smooth and effortless speed and grace of an athlete. It put him much too close to her, and she found herself having to crane her neck to look at him, at the same time as being enveloped by an aroma that was clean and crisp and utterly, intoxicatingly male.

Shoot, if he wasn’t even more compelling to look at close up than he had been from a distance! Except for his eyes. This close to him, Kirsten could see something shadowed the green, like ice forming on a forest pond. She tried to name that something and failed. Whatever it was, it put the chill that had swept in the door with him to shame.

He looked at the dolls, both dressed in extravagant princess frills, and handed them to her as if they might burn his hand if he held them too long.

“Thanks,” she said drily. She refrained from adding, As far as I know these dolls do not come in a model that bites big, masculine guys. Mores the pity, she decided.

“Somehow, you don’t look like you’re here to deliver a Santa list,” she said, when he didn’t volunteer what had brought him inside the door clearly marked The Secret Santa Society.

He didn’t reply. In fact, he reached behind him and shut the door, which was leaking cold air, with a snap.

“Oh.” Kirsten had been warned it was a rough part of town. She’d been told over and over to lock the door when she was in the building by herself. But what if someone came to deliver a list and the door was locked? Even one mom, turned away…she shivered.

Besides, the awareness she felt for this man that had appeared in her space was not of the fearful variety though certainly of the dangerous variety.

He was a man attractive enough to make a girl who had given up on fairy tales feel strangely threatened, as if a review of her belief system might be in order. It had been four years, after all…

“So, no Santa list,” she said, aware her cheer was forced, that she was fighting something within herself, “What can I do for you?”

He was watching her with the faintest interest touching his eyes, eyes that seemed deeper and darker the longer she looked at him, but no warmer. There was something in them that reminded her of an iceberg—magnificently beautiful, but fearsome and remote, untouchable.

“I heard you were looking for an elf.”

She was not sure she would have been more shocked if he said he was looking for The Treemont School of Ballet. The words, faintly playful, did not match his eyes. His delivery was absolutely deadpan, and then she realized he had overheard her conversation. She waited for him to smile—to see if a smile would warm his gaze—but no smile was forthcoming. It was as if he could say the words that were tinged with humor—since he was obviously the man least likely to ever be mistaken for an elf—but somehow they couldn’t break through the ice that shrouded his eyes.

“Ah,” she said. “An elf. I’m in desperate need of one, but I’m afraid you’re the wrong size. No applicants over four foot eleven. Last year’s was four foot seven.”

She found herself holding her breath waiting to see if he would smile.

“But he got drunk.” He’d heard a lot of that conversation. Still no smile. Anyone who was not going to smile over a four-foot-seven drunken elf probably wasn’t going to smile about anything. It had the ridiculous effect of making her feel as if she had to make him smile, even though she was more than aware her belief system was on shaky ground, and she shouldn’t be testing its strength.

“He got very rude,” she said, ignoring the shouldn’t. “He kept asking Santa to pull his finger.” In her eagerness to make him smile, she could feel that telltale hint of heat in her chest.

As a schoolgirl, Kirsten had been tormented by blushing. In more recent years, she’d been able to head off the embarrassing tide of crimson by thinking, quickly, of something—anything—else. For some reason the fish display at O’Malley’s Market provided some of the most powerful mind-diverting pictures. Trout, eye in.

“Sounds like a good reason to trade in for bigger elves,” he said. “Those small ones can be so unpredictable.”

“We’ve never had a large elf!” Rules. She found refuge in rules.

“Sorry to hear that—it’s probably an unfair hiring practice, punishable under the equal opportunities act.”

“Actually, I think it’s impersonating an elf that is punishable by something.” For some horrible reason the word spanking came to mind and for a minute she had to close her eyes and picture freshly filleted perch. When she opened them, she said, more weakly than she intended, “Forced ingestion of Christmas cake, egg nog and Christmas carols!”