The Naughty List (2 page)

“I love you too, Sir,” she whispered back, arching underneath him. He’d given her one explicit order at the beginning of their relationship—she was always to call him “Sir” when he was inside her. This was an order she happily complied with every time.

He held back and waited as long as he could before coming. Everything disappeared when he was inside Anya—his sorrow, his memories, the dreams that still haunted him on the bad nights that thankfully had become few and far between since bringing her home with him.

Anya clenched around him with a lusty cry. He would have laughed at her vocal acrobatics, but he was too pre-occupied with his own orgasm.

He pulled gently out of her and watched her face for any telltale winces or grimaces. The girl had been a virgin before him, and sometimes he left her raw from his thrusts. But she wore only a smile of angelic bliss.

“Simultaneous orgasm,” he said as he rolled onto his side and pulled her back to his chest. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

“It’s a Christmas miracle.” Anya pressed into him and sighed.

“I’m not sure if God gives Christmas miracles to sinners like us.” He gently bit the back of her shoulder.

“We are not sinners,” she protested and Daniel heard a note of hurt in her voice. “We love each other. I’m your…” she paused and searched for the right word.

Daniel grinned into her skin.

“
Property
is the word you’re looking for. A nice Old Testament concept. I think God would respect that.”

“Moi aussi,”
she said, slipping into French.
Me, too.
She did that often when tired or spent. On those rare occasions she didn’t fall into French after sex, he knew his job wasn’t quite done yet.

They lapsed into contented silence as they stared up at the Christmas tree from the carpeted floor. He and Maggie had made love so many times under the tree that he knew this view well. Maggie had been Christmas crazy. Her first husband had been both an atheist and an asshole and had outlawed Christmas in the house. When she and Daniel had married, it had been a December, Christmas-themed , seven years they spent together, Christmas had meant not only celebrating the season, but commemorating their love.

Anya stretched out her hand and tapped an ornament.

“What is this?” she asked, gently removing it from the tree to inspect it closer.

Daniel’s stomach dropped, but he kept his voice even and calm.

“Maggie gave that to me our first Christmas.”

A simple ornament, it consisted of nothing but a bell painted snow white with the words “Daniel and Maggie’s First Christmas” on it and the year they were married.

“It’s pretty.” Anya’s voice held only sincerity and no hurt that he could detect.

“Maggie loved Christmas.” He took the ornament from Anya’s hand. “She has an older sister named Carol. Maggie said when she was a little girl she drove her parents nuts. She thought it was so unfair Christmas was all about Carol. They sang Christmas Carols. They read Dickens’s
A Christmas Carol
. Four-year-old Maggie was so jealous, her parents had to start singing ‘Christmas Maggies’ just to shut her up.”

“Did you read her
A Christmas Maggie
?” Anya asked, taking the ornament from his hand and placing it back on the tree.

“I did better than that. I found a beautiful leather-bound early edition of the book and had a bookbinder friend of mine sew in a new title page that said
A Christmas Maggie
. She cried when she opened it our second Christmas together.”

Christmases with Maggie had been perfect, every last one of them better than the one before. Until the last one when they knew it would be their final Christmas together. And even then…

“Do you miss her?” Anya asked the question so softly he barely heard her.

“Of course. She was my wife for seven years.” He spoke matter-of-factly, almost brusquely, and only realized the error of his tone when Anya wriggled off the floor and fled the room, tears on her cheeks.

“Dammit.” Daniel came to his feet and followed her. She’d run not to the bedroom they shared but one of the guest rooms. He turned the knob and found the door locked. “Anya, open the door right now. That’s an order.”

The order was not obeyed. Nor the next one to talk to him, or the one after to please
please
talk to him.

Daniel rested his forehead against the door and took a deep breath, cursing himself. Anya—barely twenty-three, a virgin before him. He was her first love, he reminded himself. His marriage had always been a touchy subject between them. Anya admitted once that she feared he’d never love her like he’d loved his wife. No amount of reassurance had made that fear in her eyes completely disappear. By saying that of course he still missed Maggie, he’d played right into Anya’s deepest fears.

“I’ll be downstairs,” he called through the door. “I’ll be there when you want to come out.”

He almost added “I love you” but the one bitter spark of anger at her overreaction stopped his tongue.

For the rest of the evening, Daniel straightened the mess they’d made of the living room with the Christmas decorations. He called a few relatives to wish them a Merry Christmas and pretended everything was perfect when they asked about his new girlfriend.

“Together since summer,” he told his cousin Matthew in Ontario. “She’s not a ‘new’ girlfriend anymore.”

“Lost that new girlfriend smell already, huh?”

“And your mother wonders why you’re still single at thirty-three, Matt.”

He considered and discarded the idea of calling Carol, Maggie’s sister. On the phone, their voices sounded almost identical. Hearing Carol on the phone was akin to coming face to face or ear to ear with the ghost of his dead wife. And Maggie had been haunting him far too much already today.

The time crept closer to midnight and Anya still hadn’t come downstairs to talk to him. He considered going to bed but didn’t want to sleep alone in the room they shared. So instead he sat in the big armchair Maggie had given him as a birthday gift one year. She’d called it his Masterpiece Theater throne and said any librarian worth his salt needed a chair that pretentious.

Before he closed his eyes, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny box of Tiffany blue. Opening it, he stared at the princess cut diamond engagement ring. In the low light of the Christmas tree, the diamond sparkled like the Star of Bethlehem. If he didn’t close the box soon, wise men and shepherds would start showing up on his doorstep. But he couldn’t close it. Not quite yet. Tomorrow morning, Christmas morning, he’d planned on surprising Anya with the ring as her last present—the ring and a promise to love her and keep her for the rest of his life. But now he wondered if the fight hadn’t been a moment of serendipity saving him from making a huge mistake. Anya… so much younger than he, so much less experienced and so sensitive. Until their fight this evening, he’d been absolutely certain she was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, the woman he wanted to raise children with. He didn’t even care if they were his children or her younger brothers and sisters she called every single day to check on. But now… now he wondered if Anya hadn’t been right to be afraid. Did he love her as much as Maggie? And if he didn’t, should he marry her, anyway?

Sleep slowly stole into the room and crept up on him. The ring fell from his fingers as his eyes closed.

A few minutes or a few hours later, he felt a hand on his knee gently shaking him awake.

“What?” he asked, his eyes still shut.

“I told you that if you sleep in that damn chair, you’ll get a permanent crick in your neck.”

“Then you shouldn’t have bought it for me, Mags,” Daniel said as pried his eyes open. Mags? “Maggie?”

Daniel sat forward in the chair, suddenly more awake than he’d ever been in his entire life. In front of him kneeling on the floor by his feet with her chin on his knee, was Maggie, his wife who had been dead and buried for years.

“What?” he asked again, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. “What are you doing here?”

She gave him a wicked blue-eyed smile, her chestnut hair falling in waves around her oval face. She didn’t look a day over thirty-five, younger than he’d ever seen her. In fact, she looked breathtaking—so young, so beautiful, so untouched by the pain and suffering the cancer had inflicted on her, the cancer that had killed his beautiful wife.

“Merry Christmas, Daniel.”

Daniel didn’t bother asking any more questions. How Maggie got there… why she was there… he couldn’t care less. He came out of the chair, dragged her to her feet, and held her more tightly in his arms than he’d ever held anyone in his life. He didn’t know what to do—hold her for eternity or drag or to the ground and make love to her for the rest of his life. It had to be a dream, after all. Didn’t it?

While he decided, he kept his arms around her, pulling her even harder against him.

“Good thing I’m dead,” Maggie gasped in his ear. “Or you might kill me.”

Daniel laughed through tears as he buried his face into her hair and inhaled. Vanilla… Maggie’s hair always smelled faintly of vanilla.

“Don’t say that. Don’t say you’re dead. I know I’m dreaming, so at least let it be a good dream,” Daniel whispered, pulling her even closer, so close he could feel her heart beating against his chest. He loved that feeling—heart to heart. After sex he would stay inside her a few moments just to relish that sensation as long as possible.

Maggie reached up and pinched him viciously hard on his arm. Flinching, Daniel laughed and pulled back to look at her face.

“You’re not dreaming, Daniel.” Maggie grinned at him.

“Then how are you here?”

She shrugged and her eyes gleamed with secrets.

“Someone upstairs decided you needed something for Christmas. Something that wouldn’t fit into a box. Not even one this size.” She held up the tiny box of Tiffany blue.

“Look… I can explain—” Daniel began but Maggie cut him off.

“I’ve been gone a long time.” Maggie kissed him quick and soft on the lips. “You’re allowed to move on, fall in love, get remarried…”

Daniel shook his head.

“I know I’m allowed. I even know that’s what you wanted…” In the months before Maggie died, she’d brought up Daniel’s future without her several times. She did everything she could to persuade him that not only should he move on after she died, she wanted him to. Even in her last hours she’d whispered to him,
I’m going to die but you’re going to live for a long time. Promise me you won’t live alone… you’re the best man I’ve ever known. Don’t let that go to waste… don’t give up on love, on life… promise me…
And through his tears, he’d nodded and replied with a hoarse,
I promise, Mags.

“Then what’s the problem?” Maggie arched an eyebrow at him. How many times had she asked him that question during their marriage? He’d never figured out a good answer to that question.

“Anya… She’s… too young, too…” Pausing to search for words, he could only sigh. “She’s not you.”

“Very true.” Maggie nodded sagely. “And for that you should be eternally grateful.”

Daniel’s eyes widened in shock. “What is that supposed to mean?” He glared at her. “You were the best thing that ever happened to me.”

“And you were the best thing that ever happened to me, too. Our marriage was strong, most of the time. I didn’t know I could love anyone as much as I loved you. Didn’t even think I was capable of that kind of love and happiness. But.”

“But?”

Maggie smiled at him again, a mysterious other-worldly smile. In life he’d never seen her smile like that.

“But… for such an intelligent man, you have a very bad memory,” Maggie teased as she raised a hand and ran it through his hair. She tapped him on the forehead.

“I remember nothing but amazing days with you. And even more amazing nights,” he said, running his hands up her arms. She wore red silk pajamas, a pair he’d gotten her for Christmas one year. Boxy and boyish, they hid her incredible curves, but she needed something to wear when family came around. And nothing turned him on more than stripping her out of them and slowly revealing the female figure beneath the masculine cut.

“Really?” She pursed her lips at him. “Let me show you something. Close your eyes.”

“I always loved this game,” Daniel said, closing his eyes as she’d asked.

“Don’t get your hopes… or anything else up, you Wicked Man. Open your eyes.”

Daniel opened them and inhaled in surprised. The dark and quiet living room had suddenly been transformed. Light came in from everywhere—the tree, the Christmas candelabras in the windows, the lamps, the red and green candles… voices filled the room, laughter. Two dozen people—Maggie’s family and Daniel’s family—mixed together as Christmas music played in the background.

“Shit.” Daniel grabbed Maggie’s hand and pulled her against the wall as another Maggie passed them holding a bottle of wine and three empty glasses.

“No one can see us,” she said, squeezing his hand. “This is just a memory we’re in.”

“A memory?” Daniel glanced around. He saw himself standing by the fireplace with Maggie’s sister Carol talking softly and smiling. He knew this memory. Christmas number three with Maggie—the Christmas they’d decided to invite everyone in both families to her house in the country. “God, it is. I do remember this. You gave me a watch that year.”

“A Daniel Roth watch—seemed fitting.”

“And I gave you…”

“This.” Maggie held up her hand to show a three-stone diamond ring on her right ring finger.

“One diamond for each year of happiness you’d given me.” Daniel took her hand and kissed the ring.

“I loved being married to a man who knew how to buy jewelry.”

Daniel grinned as he surveyed the scene. “This was a good Christmas. I loved having my parents here, your parents, the sibs…”

“The kids,” Maggie said, nodding toward Rachel and Jayson, Maggie’s niece and nephew.

“Yes. The kids.” Daniel swallowed as eight-year-old Rachel stuck a bow on top of four-year-old Jayson’s head. Jayson ripped it off and slapped it onto Rachel’s head and the screeching laughter of the children echoed off the walls.