Return to Christmas Page 3

  “I won’t,” she said meekly, waiting until he’d disappeared back behind the partitions.

  She almost fell over again when she leapt up from the sofa, but she caught the back of the chair he’d been straddling long enough to steady herself before she ran, grabbing her single shoe as she went. The first flight on the stalled escalator was hell on her stockinged feet, and she risked pausing long enough to put her shoes on when she reached the fallen one. There was no sound of pursuit, and she kept going, determined to get to the streets and safety, where everything would suddenly begin to make sense.

  Maybe there was a simple explanation. She’d been so stressed out, skipping meals, that she might have passed out earlier and not remembered. Someone might have found her, dazed and confused, and thought she was one of the hired reenactors, told her to change her clothes and she’d numbly done so. Or someone had done it as a prank. Or...

  She shook her head, the dizzying thoughts only making things worse. She wasn’t going to speculate; she was going to run like hell. Back on the first floor, the whole reenactment thing would be going strong—it couldn’t be later than seven o’clock, and people would still be shopping. Though turning off the old escalators didn’t make sense. They had been in the store since it was built—if they were looking to be historically accurate, then running them would have fit right in.

  She fell out onto the first floor, the unevenly graduated steps tripping her up and sending her sprawling, and this time there were no strong arms to catch her. She lay still for a moment, ignoring the pain in her knees and elbows.

  It was dark. There was the faintest glow of an incandescent light from somewhere, keeping the cavernous area from total darkness, but all the shoppers, all the actors, all the staff had left in the short amount of time she’d been on the eighth floor, leaving the endless space dim and unnerving. Scrambling to her feet, she raced down the empty aisles, shoes sliding on the highly polished wood floor, until she came slamming up against the door, gasping with relief.

  It was locked. Of course, it was—she ran across to the revolving door, pushing, throwing herself against it, again and again. She tried the next one—there were two on the front and two on each side—then spun around, trying to quash her sudden panic as she headed back into the store to the Seventh Avenue entrances. Darkness swirled around her as she struggled toward the doors, overwhelming her, and when she slammed herself against the revolving panels, they didn’t move. A scream bubbled up in her throat, mindless panic taking over. In a place this big, there had to be an army of night security guards who’d rescue her...

  She was met with nothing but silence, and her knees gave way. She sank down on the floor, her entire body throbbing from her repeated assaults against the sturdy entrances, and she wanted nothing more than to burst into tears, she who hated crying. What the hell? She drew up her knees and hugged them to her, ignoring the flowered material, ignoring the stupid shoes, ignoring—oh, my God, she had seams in her pantyhose. But pantyhose didn’t have seams, and she yanked up her skirt to see the stockings attached to serviceable garters.

  Slumping down, she thumped her head on the floor in quiet frustration. The logical answer was that she was dreaming, but she was twenty-seven years old, and dreams had never felt like this. It was wrong, so wrong, and she was trapped inside it.

  She had no idea how long she lay there as impossibilities swirled around in her mind—it could have been fifteen minutes, it could have been two hours, until she pushed herself up, remembering her unwilling rescuer. Either he was still up there, and could help her, or he knew a way to get out of this mausoleum. She had to go back.

  She found the bank of elevators, but of course the doors were shut tight and no amount of button-pressing did any good. It was seven flights up on the frozen escalator with the treacherous wood slats. She sighed. At least she could check the upper floors for some kind of fire escape—weren’t they legally required to have them? She wasn’t going to give up until she tried every single possibility.

  She’d lost all sense of time when she finally reached the eighth floor. There was no one, nothing on the lower floors, not even a working telephone. There was a good chance she’d be trapped in the small anteroom between the two parts of the store, the doors locked on both sides, but to her surprise the part that should have held electronics was open.

  He was gone, though, and she couldn’t decide if it was relief or disappointment flooding through her. He might be a grump, but he was all she had, and now even he had managed to escape.

  She needed to calm down. She was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to search any more. This was one of the largest stores in the world—she could look for weeks and not run out of places to try, and right now, she was simply too overwhelmed. Instead, she was going to stretch out on that lumpy sofa and sleep until someone came and woke her and let her out of there. She ought to sue the pants off Macy’s—she’d be happy with a million-dollar settlement or a shopping spree—but she wasn’t particularly litigious, and besides, until today she’d absolutely loved Macy’s. It probably wasn’t their fault that this publicity stunt had gone horribly awry, at least for her.

  There was a small lamp burning in the back room, barely illuminating the darkness, but the sofa was there. She was still wearing a coat—she’d been afraid to take it off and look at it—but the room was cool, and she was going to need some kind of cover. She pulled off the coat, taking in the sedate cut, the flair, the tasteful mink collar. The man had been an idiot—the clothes she found herself in were very expensive, even if they were seventy years out of date.

  She kicked off her shoes, then decided to unfasten her stockings, when she realized why her stomach felt so odd, so...compressed. She was wearing a damned girdle!

  Getting out of it was a challenge, but there was no way she’d be able to sleep with that thing clamped around her. When it was done, she sank down on the couch and pulled her coat over her. It was toasty warm, and she wiggled her toes beneath it. “I’m going to wake up in my own bed,” she announced to the universe. “Or at least someone will be around to let me the hell out of here.” It came out sounding like a threat rather than wishful thinking, and she was tempted to add, “or else” before she thought better of it. She wasn’t even going to contemplate failure. If she did, she’d never sleep, and this haunted building, which was so empty it didn’t even seem to contain ghosts, would give her a nervous breakdown.

  “I’m going to sleep now,” she announced to the universe. Closing her eyes, she proceeded to do exactly that.

  John Larsen stood in the doorway, looking at her as she slept. Why in the hell hadn’t she left? The only reason he hadn’t gone after her had been fear that he’d slow her departure. He wanted her gone, for good—she had no business being here.

  He’d been sure he’d locked the doors that she’d first stumbled through and started babbling crazy things. The world was a strange place, and the city contained some of the strangest of people. Girls like the one sleeping so peacefully on his couch were usually put away by society in some nice, country estate where they wouldn’t get into trouble. Madison—what a damned stupid name—must have escaped her watchers.

  He sighed. He should wake her up, escort her out of the building as he’d planned, and then come back in for his own fitful night’s sleep. He looked at the sofa she’d commandeered almost wistfully. He wasn’t supposed to be here any more than she was, at least at this hour, and he had to make sure this nutcase didn’t queer his deal.

  She didn’t look like a nutcase. Her clothes and shoes were expensive, her hair neatly done. Still, she’d looked as out of place as if she’d come from the moon, and her behavior was equally bizarre. But she was pretty.

  Really pretty, in fact. She had thick, dark hair that had come loose when she’d lost her hat, and it was tumbling down her shoulders. Her eyes were gorgeous as well, a greeny-blue that made him think of Ireland. She was too thin, but with another twenty pounds, her figure would
be downright spectacular—he had to make himself look away from the nice breasts and long, bare legs. She’d taken off her stockings and even her girdle and left them pooled on the floor beside her when she’d stolen his bed. Most women he knew wouldn’t be caught dead without their stockings.

  No wedding ring, and he wasn’t going to think about why that pleased him. He wasn’t interested in relationships, and certainly not with someone like her. Maybe someday he’d do the usual—white picket fence and freckle-faced kids, the good old American dream, but right then he couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t imagine anything but getting through the next day.

  The smartest thing he could do was leave, find a hotel for the night, and by the time he came to work tomorrow she’d be long gone, just a bizarre memory.

  But she’d seemed so shaken about everything she saw, everything he said, as if she really had come from another planet like something in one of those movie serials he’d watched as a kid. If she woke up here, alone, she’d be terrified.

  He owed her nothing, and he didn’t really care, but some long-ago training of his mother’s managed to sneak through his overriding indifference. You looked after those who were weaker than you, those who were in trouble, and this girl was most definitely in trouble, even if it wasn’t the pregnant kind. He didn’t want her running into any of the security guards who kept an eye on things, particularly Benny—she was easily frightened. Look at the way she ran from him.

  No, he could put up with one uncomfortable night. Hell, if he got really tired, he could go up to the tenth floor and take a nap in one of the beds on display with no one the wiser, but that would take him too far away from her. He tipped back in the chair. He’d slept worse places—in dirt, in mud, in blood as the rain and snow came down. This was the height of luxury in comparison, and at least this time no one was trying to kill him. He closed his eyes.

  Chapter 3

  Madison really didn’t want to open her eyes. She lay very still, aware of the early morning light, the lumpy surface beneath her that was most definitely not her bed. She could smell cigarettes and the trace of an old-fashioned perfume like her grandmother used to wear, and she knew, she just knew it was coming from her own skin. And she wasn’t alone—she could hear someone else’s steady breathing.

  She came up with half a dozen alternatives—she’d spent the night at a friend’s, she’d been in an accident, she’d had a psychotic break, she’d been kidnapped... Even that seemed better than the inescapable truth. She knew where she was. She just wasn’t sure when.

  She’d seen all the movies, read ten times as many romances about time travel, and sure, she’d loved them. She liked her modern conveniences—Wi-Fi and cell phones and streaming anything she wanted on TV, but she would have given them up gladly for the right reason. The future was equally enticing—hot aliens and sexy werewolves and vast new worlds would do just fine. In fact, anywhere but 2020 and the emptiness of her current life—there were worlds and centuries of fabulousness out there.

  So where did she end up? At the absolute nadir of time and place—America in the bland 1950s.

  Or at least that’s where she assumed she was. She’d always liked vintage clothing, and with her somewhat limited knowledge, the early 1950s were a good guess. Her grandmother was married around then...oh, Jesus, she hadn’t turned into Nana Rose, had she?

  No, Nana Rose had been short and stolid. Madison had sensed that she still had her own body despite the very peculiar underclothing covering it. She was still here, wherever “here” was.

  Macy’s, she reminded herself grimly. She was going to swear off recreational shopping once everything righted itself. At the moment, all she could do was hold on and go with the flow.

  She let her eyes blink open for a moment, then closed them again. The blond god was sprawled in an uncomfortable-looking chair, sound asleep and looking marginally less cranky. What the hell was he doing here? Had he appointed himself her guardian angel? It seemed unlikely, given how annoyed he was that she’d managed to breach his inner sanctum. Or was he keeping an eye on her so that he could turn her over to the police when the store opened? Technically, she was trespassing, despite her strong desire not to, but if her choice was to be trapped in Macy’s or a New York City jail cell, then she’d take Macy’s, thankyouverymuch.

  She opened her eyes again to look at the man. He was almost ridiculously good-looking, with strong cheekbones, firm jaw, broad shoulders. She tended to like skinny men, and this man wasn’t—he was strong and solid, and she was still unexpectedly entranced by his forearms. This was a man who could battle dragons for a woman, except that he’d been doing a pretty good impersonation of a dragon himself.

  She remembered his very blue eyes—those had stood out as well, making her think of icy northern lakes. Only his mouth seemed out of character. It was a little thin, a little grim, and any smile he’d managed had been tinged with sarcasm. It was also sexy as hell.

  Okay, so now she was thinking about sex in the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling would faint. All these people probably slept in single beds, married or not, with chaste kisses and polite sex that came to a stop once they reached thirty and had their babies. Oh, God, why the 1950s?

  Her entire body ached. The sofa had been no bed of roses, and her fists and arms hurt from pounding at the various doors that had refused to yield to her demands. Now that daylight was approaching, she could simply calm down and wait, and once the store was filled with customers, the doors would have to be unlocked. She would walk through those revolving doors right back into the twenty-first century.

  It was a plan, beautiful in its simplicity, and she let out her pent-up breath silently. Her eyes were still on the man, and she realized she’d been absently ogling him. He had long legs in those ridiculous, high-waisted pants, and she realized he had garters holding up his socks. Was he wearing a girdle as well?

  No, he certainly didn’t need one. Did men even wear girdles? He was, without doubt, a fine-looking man, particularly when he was asleep and his mouth was shut. One could forgive a lot for a man who looked like that.

  Not her, of course. This was just a bizarre visit, not a world where she was going to live. He was probably married—or at least dating someone. He belonged here—she didn’t.

  And she wasn’t going to allow herself the tempting fantasy of what it would be like to be from this time and this place. She had to keep her eye on the prize, which in this case was getting home. This was the Twilight Zone, not Outlander, and she couldn’t get let herself get distracted.

  Which meant that until she made her way to the door, she was going to have to behave herself. She had complete faith that once she walked out into the New York streets, she was going to be back where she belonged. She just had to chill until that happened.

  She closed her eyes again, calmer now. She was smart, inventive. She could carry it off. She was woman, invincible.

  She was also starving. She needed to pee again, and she’d discovered the old bathroom back in the warrens behind the showroom walls last night. She started to move, very slowly, very quietly, when the blue eyes she’d remembered flew open and the front legs of the chair slammed down on the floor.

  “Awake, are you?” His voice was cool, not at all sleepy-sounding. He must be one of those miserable people who was alert first thing in the morning without the help of coffee. She hated people like that.

  “As you see,” she said, swinging her legs over to the side. The floor was cold beneath her bare toes, and she winced. “And hungry.”

  He raised an eyebrow. He really could do that, not as well as Stephen Colbert, but it was a pretty impressive put-down. “Why didn’t you go home last night?”

  She hadn’t had time to think of an answer. “Why didn’t you?” she countered.

  There was just the tiniest trace of a flush on those magnificent cheekbones. “I was working late. I often bed down on the sofa. Unfortunately, Goldilocks had already taken possession.”

  “Sorry,�
� she said, totally without remorse. “And actually, I tried to find my way out of this place. I couldn’t find a door that worked.” True enough, she reminded herself. Better not to lie when you can help it. “This place is like a labyrinth—I’m surprised there aren’t other lost souls trying to find their way out.”

  “I’ve never had any trouble.”

  “Doesn’t count. You work here—you know the place. Whereas the shoppers who come in—”

  “Know the place very well,” he interrupted her. “Macy’s isn’t just a store, it’s an institution.”

  It was feeling a little too much like an institution to her right then—the wrong kind—but she said nothing, and he didn’t seem to expect a response. “Coffee and doughnuts okay?”

  For a moment she thought she hadn’t heard him. “Coffee?” she echoed in a strained, hopeful voice. “And doughnuts?”

  And then he did something absolutely terrible. He smiled. It was a small one, still tinged slightly with sarcasm, but it was still a smile a girl could fall in love with.

  WTF? Girl? She hadn’t been a girl since she was sixteen, and you didn’t go falling in love with a man because of his smile.

  “I’ve got friends in high places,” he said. “Mainly the café on the third floor that offers brunch every day. The doughnuts are delivered around five, and they start making coffee at the same time. I can get you some.”

  “You don’t need any?” she said, fighting off her weakness.

  “Oh, hell, yes.” He was watching her, waiting for some kind of reaction, but she had no idea what. Then he went on. “Since I’m getting some for me, I’m willing to help you out too.”

  “Listen, Mr....” She didn’t know his full name. She was tempted to call him Sir Galahad, but one sarcastic person was enough.