Sunday's Child(18)

Something flickered in Andor’s eyes. It spoke of melancholy and regret. “When did you lose your belief?”

She released a squirming Jake and shrugged. “I don’t remember exactly. Later than a lot of kids. I think I might have been twelve.”

“That is later. Most are younger.”

That was true. She’d held onto her beliefs, even in the face of the cynical scorn dished out by her peers. Her certainty that Santa existed had been fueled by more than her mother’s assurances. “I think it was because I had this really vivid dream of meeting Santa one Christmas Eve. I was sure it was real and that I was wide awake. He was standing by this sad little tree my mom bought at a garage sale. I loved that tree.”

She frowned, clawing at the hazy memory of a childhood she’d put behind her long ago. “He was wearing long robes.” She glanced at Andor, who no longer stared at the TV but watched her with a stoic face. “Bishop’s vestments I bet. He was standing next to an elf. A really tall one wearing armor of all things.” She shook her head. “I thought Santa’s elves were little like the Keebler elves. And they don’t go in armed to the teeth.” She was getting a headache and tucked the memory back into the recesses of her mind. “Then again,” she joked, “if Santa is the patron saint of pawn brokers, he probably needs a bodyguard elf.”

Her smile faded when Andor didn’t return it, and his eyes had a faraway look. She really needed to stop making jokes. She sucked at it. Serious was more her speed. “When did you stop believing?” she asked.

He came back to her with the question. His tempting mouth curved into her favorite expression. “I haven’t.”

“Haven’t what?”

“Stopped believing.”

Claire eyed him suspiciously. “Really?”

“Really.”

Andor was handsome, intelligent, funny and good with her son. He was also a little odd about all things Christmas. Claire celebrated the last. Finally. The guy wasn’t perfect. She leaned into his side. “That’s nice. I like that you believe in magic.”

Andor’s fingertips combed through her hair. “The world is filled with magic, Claire. Jake is proof of that. You just have to look a little deeper.”

Claire was falling hard for him. Falling hard and fast. She almost broke the sound barrier at his words. She had chosen so badly with Lucas. Did she actually get it right this time with Andor?

Her cell phone’s ringtone knocked her back into reality. She grabbed it off the coffee table. “Speak of the devil,” she murmured. Lucas’s name and phone number flashed on the screen. Andor muted the TV.

Claire answered on the third ring. “Hey, Lucas.”

“Hey yourself, gorgeous,” her ex said. “Happy Thansgifing.” He slurred the words, and Claire suspected Thanksgiving dinner had been a buffet of double martinis or several shots of expensive single malt.

She raised a staying hand as Andor stood. “You too, Lucas,” she replied. Leave it to her ex to spoil a perfect evening. “Do you want to speak to Jake?”

“Yeah. Wanna wish him Haffy Thansgif.”

Claire rolled her eyes. Jake was more articulate than this, and he had speech therapy three times a week. “Hold on, I’ll get him.” She pressed the mute button and grasped Andor’s hand. “Do you have to go?”

He nodded, his fingers caressing her knuckles. “I have to stop at the museum and check a few things. We were having trouble with the lighting on three of the trees in the Christmas exhibit.” He lifted her hand to his mouth. Claire made a strangled sound when she felt the tip of his tongue glide across her fingers. His gaze was gaslight blue, full of heat and promise. “You beguiled me into staying longer than I meant to, Claire.”

“Sorcery,” she teased.

“The best kind,” he replied. “I’ll see myself out.” He released her hand, waved to Jake and gestured to the phone. “Your ex will wonder if you’ve forgotten him.”

She watched him disappear around the corner of the short hallway, heard the front door open and close, and listened to his car back out of her driveway. “I did that the moment I met you,” she said softly.





8





Every year, on December sixth, Andor joined the throng of worshippers who entered the Basilica of Saint Nicholas in Bari, Italy and found a pew near the back of the church where he sat beside its namesake. This year was no different.

Nicholas, dressed in the garb of a twenty-first century gentleman, leaned over and whispered, “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

Andor kept his gaze on the altar and the steady parade of people looking for places to sit. “You say that every year, and I’m here every year.”

He’d balked at attending the saint’s feast day the first twenty years of his exile. This was ground sacred to a deity whose existence he acknowledged but didn’t worship. He was ljósálfar-born and sensitive to the warp and weft of the magic woven into the air and ground peculiar to Midgard. It pulsed in sacred wells, grass-capped kurgans and temples like these. In this church built in Nicholas’s honor, it resonated heavy in his bones, a power colossal beyond measure and ancient beyond comprehension. The first time he crossed the church’s threshold, he’d nearly bolted right back out. It had taken sheer will to hold his glamour in place and keep his feet planted on the floor.