I'm Your Santa Read online

  The silence was unnerving. She finally broke it.

  “The town was established in 1870. It sits between two rivers. The early Indians said that it would never be hit by a tornado because of that.” She glanced at him. He didn’t look that enthused with her history lesson.

  “And they believed it?” he asked.

  She relaxed. Maybe he was a little interested. She continued, “Apparently not since most everyone has a storm cellar.” She slowly drove around the square. The Christmas decorations were a little frayed, but festive. Colored lights were strung from each business and there were red bows on the doors. Santa Claus sat in a big white chair handing out candy canes by the old matinee turned community theater.

  “It’s small,” he pointed out the obvious. “Uh…quaint.”

  She chuckled. “I know what you mean. When I graduated from high school all I could think about was getting out of Two Creeks and going to college. Freedom at last.”

  “Did the city live up to your expectations?”

  “Not really. I missed everything I thought I wanted to escape. The people, the places.”

  “And what places did you go to in Two Creeks?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “We have a park. I walked there every day during the summer. It’s a very nice park.” She drove a couple of blocks and pulled into the parking area. “Isn’t this the best playground you’ve ever seen?”

  “The absolute best.” He grinned.

  He had a very nice smile. She faced front. Much safer to look at the playground equipment. “I used to swing in the middle one.” She pointed toward a group of three swings. “My friend Amy was on one side and Maggie on the other.” She sighed, remembering as if it were yesterday.

  “And where are they now?”

  “Amy is a model and Maggie a lawyer. They moved to the big city and stayed, but we get together when they come home. We all meet at the park and catch up with what’s going on.”

  “And you got your teaching degree and came home.”

  She shrugged. “What can I say, I love Two Creeks. We’re down to earth, and we have very little crime.” Well, except when John Cavenaugh blew into town and attempted to kill Wade and Fallon. Other than that minor incident, it was fairly quiet. Hardly even worth mentioning. “What more could you ask for?”

  “Big city, excitement, restaurants, shows…a little variety?”

  She studied him. Why would a preacher be interested in material things? He met her gaze and cleared his throat.

  “That is, for regular people. I’m perfectly content no matter where I’m at.”

  Of course. They’d been talking about small town versus big city and nothing specific. For a second there she had begun to question Trey and if he was actually telling the truth about his background. She was getting as paranoid as Wade. She wasn’t suspicious by nature and she didn’t want to start now. Or maybe it had been wishful thinking on her part.

  She started the car. “How do you feel about the theater?”

  He choked.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, sure. Uh, exactly what do you mean?” he finally asked after his coughing spell ended.

  “My sister-in-law is in charge of the community theater.” She grinned. “I have the lead in the Christmas play and rehearsal is in twenty minutes. How would you like to sit in the audience and check us for accuracy?”

  “Accuracy?”

  “You know, with the bible stuff and all.”

  He looked a little pale. Odd. But of course, she had to be imagining things again.

  Six

  Accuracy? Trey glanced down at the worn Bible he’d picked up in a thrift store. The Bible was only a prop. Ah, man, he was screwed. He thought back to the times he’d gone to church, which were sporadic at best. His father didn’t believe in much—including God. No, he was in trouble if they asked anything specific.

  His past was coming back to haunt him.

  “Sure,” he told Bailey. “I’d love to be a part of making your play a success.” He wondered if they strung people up in Two Creeks.

  “Good,” she said with excitement, then chewed on her bottom lip. “Uh, Fallon seems a little hard at first but…”

  “Her bite is worse than her bark?” he finished.

  “Yeah. She had a hard life growing up.” She glanced across the seat of the car. “Much like you.”

  “And she runs this theater.”

  She nodded. “Yeah, well she used to be an undercover CIA agent.”

  Her brother was the sheriff, her sister-in-law ex-CIA. Man, if they found out he wasn’t a preacher he’d be dead meat.

  But they wouldn’t. He drew in a deep breath, telling himself he’d be getting his Oscar by the time they figured out his real identity. If he could fool them, he could fool an audience.

  She parked the car in front of a red brick building and they got out. A sign proclaimed it as Ye Olde Theater.

  “Merry Christmas,” Santa said in a gruff voice as he sat in the over-sized white chair.

  Santa looked an awful lot like the doctor.

  “Here,” he thrust a candy cane toward them. “I don’t know why I have to sit out here freezing my butt off just to make the dentist some money.”

  Santa sounded an awful lot like the doctor, too.

  “You do it because you love it and you know it,” Bailey said with laughter in her voice.

  “’Cause no one else will do it,” he grumbled, but there was a twinkle in his eyes.

  He hobbled inside, Bailey opening the doors. He bet that most kids were afraid to be bad.

  “This used to be the old movie house,” Bailey said as they walked across frayed red carpet. “Flubber was the last movie shown here. The town is so small that the theater was losing money and had to shut down. Fallon bought the building, and once every couple of months we have a play.”

  “And the actors?”

  “High school students, housewives, some of the older people from the nursing home even join in. We sort of take turns playing the lead. This month is mine.”

  Great, he’d landed in Mayberry.

  They went through double doors, and down to the stage. The seats were in place but the screen was gone. Floor to ceiling deep-red drapes opened to reveal a scarred wooden stage floor. The heavy scent of cedar came from a decorated Christmas tree in the corner.

  His father had never put up a tree. They were a waste of time, he’d said. So were presents.

  Even now, Trey managed to be out of town during Christmas. Usually, he’d be at his hunting lodge—alone. He liked it better that way.

  “You okay? You look…sad.”

  He dragged his gaze from the decorated tree. Sad? Boy, was she way off the mark. “I’ll just sit back here,” he said.

  “Not this far back,” she said. “Come down to the front where you’ll be able to see.”

  He reluctantly followed. The front wasn’t good.

  No, that was Jeremy talking. Trey, the preacher, would be more sociable, more involved.

  She pulled over a crate so he could prop up his foot, then stole a pillow from the stage to cushion it.

  “Good?” she asked as she knelt by his injured foot and looked up at him. Her hair shimmered in the light and her face fairly glowed.

  Good, yeah, she looked better than good. “Great.”

  Their gazes locked and for just a second he wondered what it would be like to have grown up here, been raised differently. The small town, Christmas, a decorated tree, and presents…

  A noise from behind brought him back to his senses. What the hell was he doing? Christmas was just another holiday to line the merchants’ pockets. Bailey was just as gullible as most people who were taken in by a sentimental attitude.

  He turned in his seat and saw the group coming toward him. He almost jumped up and hobbled to the nearest exit. He hated crowds and there was a small one barreling toward him at a high rate of speed.

  “You must be the preacher,” a tall woman with e
bony hair to her shoulders said. She eyed him with more than a touch of suspicion.

  The CIA agent. Had to be. He returned her gaze. “The one and only.”

  She stared, taking his measure as she tried to discover if he were friend or foe. “You don’t look like any preacher I’ve ever seen.”

  “Actually,” a young woman pushed her way to the front. “He looks like that actor—Jeremy what’s-his-name.”

  “Well, he’s not,” Bailey told them.

  “He’s a playboy,” the young woman said. “A different woman every night. I read all about him in the tabloids. The actor, not you, of course.”

  Bailey sighed and shook her head. “The one looking at you suspiciously is my sister-in-law, Fallon. The young woman dragging the actor’s name through the mud is Callie.”

  “When I finish college I’m going to Hollywood to be an actress. Fallon said I have talent,” she continued.

  He wanted to warn the young innocent to stay where she was, marry a rancher and have kids. She’d be a lot better off for it. But he couldn’t do that.

  “And I’m Audrey,” a woman said with a deep southern accent. She wore the biggest reddest hat he’d ever seen. “And he is a playboy. The actor, of course, I read the tabloids, too.”

  “You know what they say, you can’t believe everything you read,” he told them.

  Audrey had a wicked smile on her face. “But honey, that’s the fun of reading those sleazy magazines.”

  Bailey glared at the woman. “He’s a preacher,” she reminded her.

  “We can’t practice from down here, either,” Fallon said and shooed the whole bunch up on stage.

  Trey made himself as comfortable as he could in the seat and prepared himself for a long boring day. The small cast began to assemble on stage. More townspeople trickled in, looked at him with a smile on their face before joining everyone on stage.

  “Okay,” Fallon said. “We’re going to start at the beginning.

  The stage cleared. The chatter lowered to a dull roar before going silent. A young man came out pulling a horse on wheels, with Bailey sitting on top.

  Now he’d never read the Bible but he was pretty sure Mary was on a mule.

  “Joseph, my husband, are thee getting tired?” Bailey asked.

  “It does not matter, my wife. We must make Bethlehem by nightfall so you might have a place to rest,” Albert told her.

  They were so bad that he almost burst out laughing.

  Fallon walked to the stage. “No, it’s not coming across well. You sound stilted. Just like last time.”

  “They need to become the character,” Trey spoke up before he thought.

  Fallon spun on her heel and looked down at him from her lofty position on stage. “That’s it!”

  “What do you mean?” Bailey asked.

  There was no turning back now. He took a deep breath. “Fallon, Bailey said you used to go undercover. So you had to pretend you were someone else, right?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s the same way with acting.”

  “Of course. I don’t know why I didn’t see it sooner.” Her eyes narrowed. “How come you know so much about acting?”

  “I was involved with a teen program when I went through the seminary.” He was damn good when the need arose. Still, he didn’t breathe easy until Fallon nodded. She’d accepted his lie.

  Fallon called on him during the rest of the rehearsal for his opinion. He was okay with that as long as they didn’t ask him if the biblical story was accurate.

  He’d gotten the gist of what they were doing. Bailey was Mary, and Joseph, he learned, was Albert. And the fact that Bailey couldn’t act. Albert was a little better.

  But Bailey was sincere. Very sincere and that should count for something.

  Callie, on the other hand, had more talent than some big name stars who’d gotten their start because Daddy was in the industry, or they’d kept the director’s sofa warm.

  The rest of the cast needed a lot of work. Point in fact, a shepherdess that he’d eventually figured out was one of Fallon’s twin daughters, and not more than four or five years old, had stolen the baby Jesus. She’d then gone to sit in a shadowed corner of the stage where she preceded to undress the doll.

  “Where’s baby Jesus?” Fallon asked

  Bailey began to look around. The rest of the cast joined in. The little girl scooted farther back into the shadows. Trey laughed. Organized, it wasn’t.

  “Janey, did you take baby Jesus again?”

  “No,” came a voice from the folds of the curtain. Then a dark head poked out. “Baby Jesus was wet and I had to make him dry.”

  Fallon scurried to her daughter and scooped her up. “You have to leave the baby Jesus in the cradle. That’s why I let you bring your baby.”

  “I didn’t take the baby Jesus, Mommy,” the other twin, Julie, piped in. “I’m bein’ good.”

  “For once.” But she softened her words with laughter. “Okay, let’s call it a day. That’s enough practice. Pizza anyone? I hope so because I called it in earlier.” She looked at her watch. “And it should be here about…now”

  Bailey looked at him, he shrugged. What the hell was he supposed to say? No, I’d feel more comfortable back at the guesthouse. That he’d had enough interacting with people for one day.

  He clutched the Bible as if it were a lifeline and followed everyone back up front. There was a room off to the side with long tables.

  “After Fallon bought the theater and donated so much back to the community,” Bailey told him. “Everyone chipped in and had the addition built. We have a lot of potluck dinners here and it’s raised community spirit.

  “Potluck?”

  “You know, everyone brings a covered dish.”

  “And you like this bonding?”

  “Very much. I want the town to grow. So many little towns fade away to nothing. I had a grandmother who was born in Tokeem, Texas. Ever heard of it?”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s because it no longer exists. I don’t want that to happen to our town. First, you make the community strong, then you bring in new business. That way you build on that strength and help it to grow.”

  He watched the way her eyes danced, and he liked what he saw. This was her passion. Everyone needed to have at least one thing in his life that meant this much.

  “Pizza’s here!” someone called out.

  “Preacher, would you say grace?” Audrey asked in her deep southern drawl.

  Oh, God, he had to pray again—no pun intended. Trey made his way to the head of the table. He could do this. After all, how hard was it to pray?

  He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and thought back to the last movie he’d watched that was even remotely biblical. Man, he couldn’t even think of one.

  “Oh, God,” he moaned.

  Crap, he’d spoken aloud. He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Oh, God, please bless this…pizza we are about to eat and bless the cast of this…this…uh…wonderful play honoring…uh…you.”

  Man, he wasn’t this nervous when he faced a hard-nosed director. Okay, he could do this. A quick amen and it would be over.

  “Bless all your children.” That sounded good. “Amen.”

  Everyone around the table murmured amen.

  That hadn’t been so hard. He was getting pretty good…

  “Could’ve been worse. If Reverend Benton were saying grace, the pizza would’ve gotten cold. As it is, it’s still warm.”

  He didn’t see who’d whispered the words, but apparently Bailey knew the voice because she sent a quelling look in the direction of one of the teen boys who’d been ogling the teen girls. Bailey offered him an apologetic look. It didn’t really bother Trey, though. No, what was bothering him the most was the way he felt every time Bailey looked at him.

  Bailey smiled as she drove them back to her house. There was something so infectious and appealing about her that he couldn’t help returning her smile.
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br />   “You know,” she began, “the people who put on the plays at the community theater have very little talent, except maybe Callie. We have so much fun doing it, though. Many of the people are older—retired and on a fixed income. They don’t have a lot of money to go and do things. The theater gives them a reason to get out of the house and visit with everyone. It also keeps the younger ones out of mischief.”

  “I agree,” he spoke solemnly.

  She looked at him. “About the fellowship?”

  He shook his head, keeping a straight face. “No, about not having any talent.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “You’re not supposed to agree with that part. That was so low. And you call yourself a preacher.” Her affronted air didn’t last and she burst out laughing.

  He enjoyed the sound. It wrapped around him, making him feel…hell, he wasn’t sure how it made him feel. He thought he liked it, though.

  “I had fun today,” he said, and realized just how much he meant it.

  “You sound surprised.”

  He shrugged. How could he answer her? He grew up in the city and had always lived in the city. He’d fought plenty of battles, lived on the edge, taken risks—but this bonding? It was something new. It scared him, but it was like an addictive drug, and he wanted more.

  She pulled into the driveway of her house and came around to his side, but he already had the door open and was maneuvering out of the vehicle.

  “Do you like to watch movies?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. My house. Six sharp. Dinner and a movie.”

  He watched as she waltzed away. His gaze riveted on the sway of her hips in her tight-fitting jeans. His grin was slow. Bailey Tanner was flirting again. He liked when she flirted. It was damned sexy.

  Except she was playing with fire. He only hoped she didn’t get burned. Or worse, he hoped he didn’t.

  Seven

  “I’m flirting with a preacher,” Bailey said into the phone.

  “What’s your point?” Kathy asked. “They’re still men.”

  She sighed and dropped down onto the sofa. “He’s a man of God. I don’t want to be married to a preacher.”

  There was a choking sound on the other end. “He asked you to marry him?”