Mischief Under The Mistletoe Page 4

  It’s your bed anyway, the devil on his other shoulders chimed in. And your doll for that matter. You heard what she said. She’s for you, bucko. Enjoy!

  Already that low heady throb was beginning to pulse in the base of his cock. Do I get a vote?

  “Oh, hell no,” Calder breathed.

  But already Ailsa was creeping closer, timidly trying to pry up a spare corner of blanket so she could crawl in beside him. All soft and warm and innocent as she cuddled up against him.

  To share his body heat, the angel reminded.

  You made her to take a proper pounding, the devil replied.

  His balls had tightened and all he could feel below the waist was how confined his shorts had become. Please, oh please, give me a vote.

  Calder pointed at her, and he was glad it was dark because he didn’t want to know how badly his hand was shaking. “No touching below the waist,” he told her firmly. He’d have loved to say no touching period, but no way were two people going to share a queen-sized bed without touching. “It’s straight to sleep with you, got it?”

  Fingers plucking at the folds of the quilt, Ailsa eagerly nodded. “I’ll be good.”

  Yeah, and he’d be the pope.

  Not with this hardon, the angel and demon agreed together.

  Against all his better judgment, Calder eased off the headboard. He divided the pillows so she’d have a place to rest her head. He did his best to fold himself onto one half of the bed and consume only one half of the quilts piled up on top of him. Knowing he was making the biggest mistake of his life and afraid it might be one he’d enjoy, Calder lifted a corner of the covers, wordlessly inviting her in. “Come on, then.”

  Ailsa launched herself at that opening, scrambling to get into the warmth and, Jesus, it really was cold out there. Her toes as they scraped his thigh felt like ice. He caught his breath, certain in the next scrambling instant she was going to slam right up against him, wiggling and cuddling to get as close as she possibly could just as fast as she possibly could. But she didn’t. As rapidly as she had thrown herself under the blankets beside him, she suddenly stopped moving. It was as if there were an invisible hairsbreadth of an invisible barrier between them and Ailsa did not cross it. She huddled with the quilts drawn up to her chin, and her hands folded tight beneath it and her head not quite on the pillow. She stared at him with huge grateful eyes, and she shivered. “Thank you, Calder.”

  Oh, this was a mistake.

  You’ll never be able to stop yourself, the angel groaned.

  It’s okay, the devil laughed. She doesn’t want you to.

  Nothing below the waist, he’d said. Technically, he wasn’t violating his own terms when he said, “You can cuddle up...” His throat felt as tight as his balls. He cleared it, twice. “If you want to.”

  There went the invisible barrier between them, dissolving away as she melted against him. His chest became her new pillow and it was amazing how fast the stray wisps of her pale blonde hair found their way to tickle his chin. Her hand tucked between her chin and his skin. Her cheek was both soft and cold. Her breasts plumped against his stomach and side and her iceberg of a leg hooked over his. But the chill of her naked thigh only served to bring his attention to all the rest of her that was just as naked, just as pressed up against him and just as off limits.

  “Goodnight,” she sighed, her eyes drifting shut. She wiggled her bottom, settling in with the heat of her mons already building against his thigh.

  No way in hell was he going to be able to sleep like this.

  “Goodnight,” he whispered back.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE ONLY REASON HIS thermal leggings stayed on Ailsa was because he tied a cord belt around her waist. She positively swam in his t-shirts, as well as the long blue and black checkered flannel shirt he’d buttoned on over the top of them, and the red knit sweater his mother had sent him for last Christmas. The one with the white reindeer leaping across the front. On him, they’d have been leaping across his chest. Being so big on her, it looked like they were leaping to catch her nipples in their gaping, white-knit mouths. His own watered. Lucky fucking reindeer.

  “But I don’t have any ouches,” she said, sitting on the table where he’d put her, alternately swinging her feet and extending them to him so he could wrap Band-Aids around her heels and toes.

  “Not yet,” he agreed. “With any luck, it’ll stay that way.”

  “Where are we going?” She watched while he slipped two thick socks over the Band-Aids.

  “I need to make a phone call and you’re going to come with me because I don’t want to clean up whatever you’ll do to my house while I’m gone.”

  “Oh.” She watched him dress her other foot, before stuffing rags down into the toes of the only pair of boots he owned. Putting them on her meant he was about to walk two miles into town through about six inches of snow in his regular shoes. Unfortunately, his regular shoes would not have stayed on her, no matter how he tied them. His feet were too big and hers were... well, he’d made them dainty. He tied extra shoe laces around her shins in the hopes the boots might stay on and with a minimum of blister-inducing slipping.

  “Okay.” He patted her hip. “Stick close to me. No dawdling, and if we run into anyone, what are you supposed to do?”

  She brightened. “Be polite.”

  “And?”

  “Be human.”

  He looked at her. “And?”

  Playing with the hems of her sweater sleeves, she thought about it. “Let you do all the talking?”

  “That’s my girl.”

  The walk into town took twice as long as it ought to have. Not only did he have snow in his socks six feet off his front porch, but it was like trying to walk a small child to town. She stopped and exclaimed over everything, the ice on the thistles, the snow on the road, the lapping of the water along the slushy edges of the Loch. She stomped and danced through the mud puddles. There weren’t many trees in this part of Scotland. Hell, half of everything he made through the tourist season went to bringing in enough wood and coal to heat his way through the winter, so he didn’t have to burn peat. But right before the gates of town was a line of trees almost as old as the town itself. They overgrew the narrow road like Mother Nature’s welcoming arches and were the carefully nurtured reason for why vehicles over nine-feet tall had to unload right there on the road, fifty yards from the gate. As they passed under those snow-laden tree boughs, the breeze rolling across the Loch caught loose snow and ice crystals from the branches and, to Ailsa’s delight, made it “snow”.

  She laughed and danced, arms cast to the sky, twirling in her too big clothes and slipping in her too big boots, and she did not stop until the snowing did. Tell the truth, he wasn’t sure he wanted her to stop. She looked so... free. And small. And he had no idea what he was going to say to explain who she was or how she’d come to be here in the middle of winter when all traffic in and out of Kinloch Hourn had stopped months ago. Fortunately, of the ten or so folks who lived here year-round, he only had to worry about three. Fergus McGowen, who manned the general store, which also doubled as a post office, and of course his wife, Miriam. And in the crofter’s hut behind the good Father’s bed and breakfast, sweet old Moira Campbell, who did all the cooking for the B&B during tourist season and who, within three minutes of polite conversation so damned subtle that a fellow didn’t know she was doing it, could glean everything worth knowing from a person and was equally as free in sharing that information with others.

  He really hoped it was too cold and too early in the morning for her to be up and out of bed.

  “Come on,” he said, beckoning Ailsa to fall back into step beside him. Hopefully before she could become too distracted by the veiny pattern in the ice around her feet.

  “It’s so pretty,” she exclaimed, hurrying to catch up when he started walking again.

  “You’ve never seen ice or snow before?”

  “Not like this. It’s so different when you ac
tually have eyes.”

  That caught his attention. As they crossed under the snowy boughs of the last pair of trees, he reached for her hand so she couldn’t become enchanted by the icicles hanging off the welcome sign.

  “I want to taste one,” she said plaintively, but he kept firm hold and pulled her along behind him.

  “I’ve got ice at home,” he promised. “Clean ice. You can have all you want, but we have to hurry.”

  “Why?”

  “So that nobody sees you and starts asking ques—”

  “Yoo-hoo!”

  His gut tied an instant knot. He’d have tucked Ailsa behind him, but she was already enthusiastically waving back at Moira, who was waving at them from the second-floor window of the little cottage almost completely tucked away behind the good Father’s B&B.

  “Good morning!” she called. “Gracious.” She pulled the halves of her bathrobe more warmly around her. “What brings you to town?”

  She barely looked at Ailsa, but that didn’t mean Calder couldn’t feel the cannibalistic teeth of her curiosity eating her up from one full cobble-stoned block away.

  “Just...” He indicated the massive stone building parked in front of hers, “—need to make a phone call.”

  She waved her hands. “The doors are never locked, but you—”

  “I know that,” he finished with her, and forced a smile. He waved, caught Ailsa’s arm and tugged her into line behind him. “We have to hurry,” he told her, hustling her across the snowy yard, past the Christmas displays, the flower bushes covered in multicolored lights, and the brightly lit manger scene just off the front porch. Kinloch Hourn. Probably the only place left in the world where Baby Jesus didn’t have to be bicycle chained to His straw bed to keep from being stolen.

  “Why are we hurrying?” Ailsa asked, hugging his arm to keep from slipping as he rushed her up the steps.

  “Because in about five minutes we’re going to have company.”

  For more than two hundred years, a single-story stone and moss church had stood in the middle of Kinloch Hourn, until the winter of ‘03 when it dropped enough snow in two days to bury them up to the rafters. Calder hadn’t been there for that, but three pictures hanging in the front hall of the B&B recorded the event. One was an aerial view of the town, taken by Moira’s great nephew who’d wanted to check in on his Grand Nan, as he called her. The other was a picture of the tree archway, with enough snow carved out of it to make a tunnel through the trees. The third was of the church, completely collapsed. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense to rebuild for thirty people, so the good Father simply moved his services into the dining hall of his bed and breakfast. His was the only household with a phone, and he never locked the doors, especially not during the winter months when anything could happen and he himself vacationed in Bermuda with his sister.

  Having a doll come to life on him certainly ought to count as ‘anything’, and Calder wasn’t going to waste any time in making that phone call. He checked his watch. He also gave himself four minutes, tops, before Moira was in her galoshes and racing through the snow to get a nosier look.

  “Be good,” he told Ailsa, who stood in the middle of the wood and stained-glass window foyer. She stared up in wonder at the grand staircase until flashes of light from the dining hall attracted her attention. There, morning sunlight was bouncing in through the windows and off the myriad of crystals that dripped from every lamp and chandelier, casting dancing colorful lights over all the floor, ceiling and walls and every stitch of furniture in between. “Don’t touch anything.”

  “Oh,” she whispered, reaching up to catch a sparkle of prism light in the palm of her hand.

  He tucked into a tiny closet of a private room, watching to make sure she’d obey until the door closed. The room was little more than a nook under the grand staircase, and it was only big enough to hold the chair he folded himself into and the table on which sat the only phone in town.

  Calder let his hand rest on the receiver for half a second, trying to compose himself for the call he was about to make. Icing on the crazy cake. He couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he couldn’t think of anyone else.

  He checked his watch. Three and a half minutes and change. Swearing under his breath, he dialed his mother back in the States. It wasn’t until the ringing started, that he subtracted the six hours’ time differential. Shit. It was one in the morning her time.

  “Someone had best be bleeding out both eyes,” his mother groggily answered by way of hello. Her accent was always heaviest when she was half asleep.

  Calder winced, trying to smile though she couldn’t see it. “How’s the most beautiful mother in all the world?”

  Silence reigned from the other end of the line. He was starting to wonder if they’d been disconnected when, sounding a little more awake now and slightly concerned, she asked, “Are you bleeding out your eyes?”

  “No, no. I’m fine.” He winced again. “It’s just, um... I’ve got a problem, and... honestly, I don’t know anyone else I can talk to about this, and... oh, hey. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas, my left foot!” By the sounds of her, she was fully awake now, struggling to sit up and fighting back motherly alarm. “What kind of problem?”

  “This is going to sound crazy.” He rubbed his eyes. Now that he had her on the line, he wasn’t sure how or where to begin. “Okay, um.”

  “Crazy?” she echoed. “Crazy? Oh, Lord.” His mother sighed. “It’s all right, me darling. You dinnae have to say it. I already know.”

  Eyebrows arching, Calder stared at the woodgrain of the wall paneling that entombed this small privacy closet. “You do?”

  “Oh, aye. I’ve already talked to me sewing circle and we’re all agreed at what this is. You run off to the old country, living by yourself—or so you say—for seven years. Cryin’ off of women, nae that you werenae given good reason, mind ye.”

  “Don’t,” he groaned, covering his eyes when she paused meaningfully, but she said it anyway.

  “Playing with yer dolls. It’s not like the signs werenae there.”

  His hand fell into his lap with a slap and he glared at the wall. “Mother,” he said stiffly.

  “Calder,” she replied, drawling his name on tones of loving exasperation. “Lasses or laddies, do you really think I care? You’re me son. I love ye no matter how God made you.”

  “I do not favor the laddies,” Calder snapped. “My damn doll came to life! Seriously, Mom? Nothing but one girl after another from high school on and you think I’m gay?”

  “Dinna ye get snippy with me. And what do ye mean ‘came to life’? Because dolls are creepy, Calder. Their eyes, they follow everyone.”

  “Until you’ve seen one switch back and forth from being a doll to being human, you don’t know what creepy is,” he told her, and then sat there listening to the silence blaring through the phone line and knowing if Ailsa heard him say that, she’d have been hurt and he’d have given anything to take it back again.

  “Yer actually seeing her walk about the room?”

  “And pick things up,” he confirmed. “And talk to me, and make messes, and jump in mud puddles.” And crawl into bed beside him, rolling herself into his arms so sweetly with her fist tucked up under her chin and the heat of her body burning straight through to the core of his. “I... I don’t know what to do, Mom. I like having her around. I really honestly do, but... I don’t think she can refuse anything I ask of her.”

  More silence from the other end of the phone.

  Almost certain he was about to regret it, he asked, “Are you still there?”

  “Oh, aye,” his mother said, a hair too cheerful for it to be real. “I’m here. I’ll always be here for ye, Calder. I’m yer mum.”

  Staring helplessly at the wall panels, Calder shook his head and then shrugged. “What do I do?”

  “She talks to ye?” his mother repeated.

  “All the time.”

  “What sort of thi
ngs does she say? Does she... want ye to do things?”

  Rubbing his eyes, Calder slapped his hand back into his lap. “Oh for the love of... She’s not telling me to hurt myself, Mom.”

  “Or others,” she said defensively. “That door swings both ways, darlin’.”

  “I called you for help. If I wanted this, I’d have called Cousin Angus.”

  “Forget Angus! Call yer cousin, April, she’s the psychiatrist! And while yer at it, be sure to tell her I told ye this would happen. I knew it straight from the start when you first said ye were going off to live on yer own in that old house. Icing on the crazy cake,” she said, just before he slapped the phone receiver back onto its cradle.

  “I’m not gay and I’m not crazy,” Calder snapped at the phone. Wedging himself back out of the tight-fitting chair, he stood in the confines of this tiny closet, struggling to compose himself before venturing out to collect Ailsa, and that was when it occurred to him. What he was, was alone. He’d been alone for seven years. Truth be told, what with the marriage he’d had, he’d been alone a wee bit longer than that; he simply hadn’t known it at the time.

  He knew it now, though. Unfortunately, he knew it because of Ailsa. He’d been alone, but he hadn’t felt his loneliness. Not until she was suddenly... there. Whispering her soft, plaintive plea in the shadows of his mind, Play with me. Making it snow in his kitchen. Making it hell in his bed. She was so small, so fragile... so innocent. Almost childlike in her ways. He didn’t want to send her away, but how could he hold her when in the back of his mind he suspected he might well be somehow forcing her will?

  I am for you, she’d told him.

  Calder closed his eyes, but doing so brought fresh to his mind all the parts of her as he’d made her. All the dainty little details. All the perverse things he’d thought about doing, things that could not have been further from his mind during the creations of any of his other dolls, and yet he couldn’t stop thinking about them with Ailsa.