It Must Be Christmas: Three Holiday Stories
Jennifer Crusie & Mandy Baxter & Donna Alward
Chapter 1
Trudy Maxwell pushed her way through the crowded old toy store, fed up with Christmas shopping, Christmas carols, Christmas in general, and toy stores in particular. Especially this toy store. For the worst one in town, it had an awful lot of people in it. Probably only on Christmas Eve, she thought, and stopped a harried-looking teenager wearing an apron and a name tag, accidentally smacking him with her lone shopping bag as she caught his arm. “Oh. Sorry. Listen, I need a Major MacGuffin.”
The kid pulled his arm away. “You and everybody else, lady.”
“Just tell me where they are,” Trudy said, not caring she was being dissed by somebody who probably couldn’t drive yet. Anything to get a homicidal doll that spit toxic waste.
“When we had them, they were in the back, row four, to the right. But those things have been gone since before Thanksgiving.” The kid shrugged. “You shoulda tried eBay.”
“And I would have, if I hadn’t just found out I needed it today,” Trudy said with savage cheerfulness. “So, row four, to the right? Thank you.”
She threaded her way through the crowd, heading for the back of the store. Above her, Madonna cooed “Santa Baby,” the ancient store speakers making the carol to sex and greed sound a little tinny. Whatever had happened to “The Little Drummer Boy”? That had been annoying, too, but in a traditional way, like fruitcake. She’d be happy to hear a “rum-pa-pum-pum” again, anything that didn’t make Christmas sound like it was about getting stuff.
Especially since she was desperate to get some stuff.
The crowd thinned out as she got to the back of the store. Halfway down the last section of the fourth row, she found the dusty, splintered wood shelf marked with a card that said: Major MacGuffin, the Tough One Two. It was, of course, empty.
“Damn,” she said, and turned to look at the shelf next to it, hoping a careless stock boy might have—
Six feet two of broad-shouldered, dark-haired grave disappointment stood there, looking as startled as she was, and her treacherous heart lurched sideways at the sight.
“Uh, merry Christmas, Trudy,” Nolan Mitchell said, clearly wishing he were somewhere else.
Yes, this makes my evening, she thought, and turned away.
“Trudy?”
“I don’t talk to strangers,” Trudy said over her shoulder, and tried to ignore her pounding heart to concentrate on the lack of MacGuffins in front of her. She’d been polite and well behaved with Nolan Mitchell for three dates, and he’d still dumped her, so the hell with him.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call—”
“I really don’t care,” Trudy said, keeping her back to him. “In October, I cared. In November, I decided you were a thoughtless, inconsiderate loser. And in December, I forgot all about you.”
Madonna sang, “Been an awful good girl,” and Trudy thought, Like I had a choice. The least he could have done was seduce her before he abandoned her.
“It’s not like I seduced and abandoned you,” he said, and when she turned and glared at him, he added, “Okay, wrong thing to say. I really am sorry I didn’t call. Work got crazy—”
“You’re a literature professor,” Trudy said. “Chinese literature. How can that get craz—” She shook her head. “Never mind. You didn’t like me, you didn’t call, I don’t care.” She turned back to the shelf, concentrating on not concentrating on Nolan. So it was empty. That didn’t necessarily mean there were no MacGuffins. Maybe—
“Okay, I’m the rat here,” Nolan said, with the gravelly good humor in his voice that had made her weaken and agree to go out the fourth time he’d asked her even though he was a lit professor, even though she’d known better.
The silence stretched out and he added, “It was rude and inconsiderate of me.”
She thought, So he has a nice voice, so he’s sorry, big deal, and tried hard to ignore him, and then he said, “Come on. It’s Christmas. Peace on earth. Goodwill to men. I’m a man.”
You certainly are, her id said.
We’ve been through this, she told her baser self. He’s no good. We don’t like him. He’s bad for us.
“Okay, so you’ve forgotten I exist. That means we can start over.” He came around her and stuck his hand out. “Hi. I’m Nolan Mitchell and I—”
“No,” Trudy said, annoyed with herself for wanting to take his hand. “We can’t start over. You were a grave disappointment. Grave disappointments do not get do-overs.”