“A toy?” Harrison asked, squinting as he propped the tiki torch up next to the mantle.
Amy bent down and put the Santa on the floor. He began to march in a circle. Round and round he went.
Harrison bent down and picked it up. “His leg is broken,” he announced, and showed Amy where the distinct mark of a dog fang had crushed a bit of one boot.
Amy glanced across to the fallen nutcracker. “There are dozens of them,” she said, making her way across the room. Not only were there Santas, but snowmen with identical black boots. She nudged the nutcracker over with her foot. His own black boot had a spring door from which the Santas and snowmen had fallen. There were still a few in the hollow of his leg. Duchess sniffed around the nutcracker, her tail wagging.
Harrison crouched down to have a look. “Little windup toys,” he said. “But without the windup. Apparently they have buttons these days.” He righted a snowman and pressed the button, and the snowman lurched into a march. Duchess grabbed another snowman and raced down the hall to her bed with her prize.
“What in the hell?” Amy asked.
“I think they must be for a window display.” He stood up. “You know what this discovery calls for, don’t you?” he asked, his eyes shining.
Amy grinned at him. She hadn’t lived with men most of her adult life not to understand how they thought. “Of course I do. We’ll need a fair racecourse, though.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
While Amy went to make sure that Duchess didn’t choke on the snowman, Harrison created a course across the living room carpet, blocking it off with pillows on either side so the Santas and snowmen couldn’t wander too far off course. He tested it with a few of the toys. Then, he and Amy each selected ten competitors—five Santas and five snowmen. They decided each player could determine if a snowman or Santa was appropriate for each heat. They would continue on until a winner emerged victorious from the heats. The winner would receive the surprise Christmas ornament of his or her choice.
They lay down on the carpet, on their bellies. “I seriously do not understand who keeps dozens of windup toys in the boot of their nutcracker,” Amy remarked as the acoustic version of “Jingle Bells” wafted overhead.
“Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die,” Harrison said. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
On the count of three, they pushed the buttons on Harrison’s Santa and her snowman and watched them march off. The first two collided with each other before the finish line. After a lively discussion of how to conduct do-overs, they went again.
By the end of the first five heats, they realized that the Santas in general were an unruly lot. The snowmen, on the other hand, were determined round mounds of fun. Harrison and Amy laughed like children as they raced their toys the length of the two-foot course. When their toys ran out of running room, they set them up again.
The last race featured two snowmen in a head-to-head matchup. One of them went rogue, taking a sharp right detour and heading into a pillow. It made a feeble attempt to climb over, but fell on its side, its feet moving.
“You have got to be kidding me. He quits in the middle of the final?” Harrison tossed his snowman onto the course. “Fat losers, all of them.”
Amy rolled onto her back, tears from laughter leaking from the corners of her eyes.
Harrison reached up to the couch and grabbed the two surprise Christmas ornaments. He rolled onto his side and propped his head on his hand. “You win. Which would you like?”
Amy selected the one on the right and opened it with glee. She withdrew a red ball from the box. “That’s it? That’s the prize?”
Harrison laughed. “Open the other if you like.”
“I certainly will.” She opened that one and withdrew a gingerbread man from the box. “Much better.” She twisted around and hung both ornaments on the massive tree, then turned back to Harrison. “I honestly can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard.”
“Me either.” He stroked her face with his knuckle. “Know what Iwant to do right now?” he asked, his eyes sliding down her nose, to her mouth, to her chest.
The flame she felt for him had been burning low this evening, but it suddenly leaped into full conflagration. She glanced over his shoulder to the clump of mistletoe hanging above the entrance to the living area, just a couple of feet from where they were. “I wonder if it’s the same thing I want to do.”
He moved his knuckle to the side of her neck, tracing a lazy line to her throat, and leaving a trail of fire in the knuckle’s wake. “And what’s that?”
Amy swallowed. She thought about what Julie would say. She thought about how she never knew how to ask for what she wanted, and maybe this was the moment. She said, “I want to kiss you.”
Harrison’s smile was full of relief. “Thank God. I thought you might say s’mores,” he said, and snaked his arm around her middle, pulling her closer. He pressed his mouth to hers.
The touch of his lips to hers added a shot of fuel to the fire in her, and it quickly spread. She sank her fingers into his thick hair, pressed her body against his. She had forgotten what it felt like, to be held by a man. To bedesiredby a man. She had forgotten how a kiss could elevate pleasure with hardly any effort at all.
Harrison rolled onto his back, taking her with him, his hands cupping her face, his tongue slipping between the seam of her lips.
He rolled again, putting her on her back and coming over her. He smiled down at her and pulled a thick tress that held her topknot in place. Her hair began to fall as he moved his hand to her collarbone. “Are you okay with where this is going?” he asked as he slipped his hand into her sweater.
