Chapter 15

Shelby was running scared. She had been for the last two days.

Noel wasn't sure if that was a good sign or a bad one - he hoped it was good. Not for the first time he wished he had his sister Summer's sense of strategy. Not one of them had ever been able to defeat her at board games or even cards. If ever there was a campaign that needed to be won, it was Noel's battle for Shelby's heart. She was meant to be his, damn it. She just didn't know it yet.

Noel had grown up in a household filled with love. His parents were practically stupid with it, even after thirty-five years of marriage. Okay - thirty-five and a half. Noel would be hitting that birthday on Christmas and his parents had been married a whole six months when he was born. Yet never once had either of them hinted that they'd been forced, or that they regretted it - or him - for a second. Nope, they'd just loved each other and all their kids with a warmth that colored every aspect of their lives. His father might put on his British reserve at the office, but at home he'd been as involved and loving a parent as anyone could wish for and Noel knew he was a lucky man.

Shelby had never known that kind of affection. His heart broke thinking about the way she'd talked about her mother and he'd have happily hunted down her absentee father and broken both his legs if the man hadn't already been dead. She didn't even have a sibling to love. No wonder she was so skittish about getting involved with a man. Noel figured he had two more days to teach her what love was all about. He only hoped it would be enough.

For now, she seemed to need to pull back a bit. Noel could allow that, as long as she just meant physically. He wasn't going to back off completely. But maybe some activity other than sex would be good for a bit. For the last two days, they'd done little more than eat, sleep, read and hump like bunnies.

The next day, after their late-afternoon lunch, he leaned back in his chair and grinned.

"You remember the ice skates in the miniature? Want to go see if they're still there?"

"Ice skates?" She shot him a look of pure skepticism. "You've got to be kidding. I haven't done that in years and I wasn't particularly good even then. I haven't even rollerbladed in close to a decade."

"Now you sound like you're ancient. I happen to know you're a mere babe of twenty-nine." She'd told him that much the night before over dinner.

"Yeah, I know, you're ancient." She rolled her eyes. "I still think it's a recipe for disaster. There's no emergency room here, remember."

"Well, all those clothes you've got on should act as padding if you fall," he teased. No way would he let her get really hurt. "Come on, let's give it a try. At the very least, we can walk around outside for a bit while it's still daylight."

Shelby nodded. "It always looked romantic in movies, ladies skating in their long dresses. I'll have to put on some petticoats so the skirt doesn't get caught under the blades."

"See. You know you want to try it," he coaxed. "Think of them as even more padding."

She wrinkled her pert little nose, with its six - he'd counted - freckles and stuck her tongue out at him. "Know-it-all."

"Chicken." He stuck his tongue out too. "Now let's go add some layers so we can go outside and play."

"You're just a great big kid, aren't you?" she asked as he followed her up the stairs.

Noel laughed. "Guilty, I suppose. Beats being a stick-in-the-mud."

"Am not," she chanted back.

Noel laughed again and jerked his head toward the top of the stairs. "Prove it."

Skating turned out to be more fun than she'd expected. She did stumble a couple of times, but Noel kept hold of her arm and never allowed her to fall on her ass. As they'd expected, the skates were exactly where they'd been in the miniature, sitting right next to the wooden park bench beside the frozen pond. Funny how it had been snowing for days and yet the ice was perfectly clear. Come to think of it, so were the steps and the walkways. Cool stuff, these magical servants. Too bad she couldn't take one of those home with her for Christmas.

Christmas. She'd been looking forward to it, simply for the time away from work, but the highlight of her plans had been a thick stack of romance books and one charity function - she and Jana had agreed to help distribute toys at a home for battered women and children on Christmas morning. Jana had invited her to dinner with her family afterward, but Shelby had declined. She'd gone last year and despite everyone's best efforts, she'd been miserable. There was nothing lonelier than being the only outsider at a family gathering.

Now it looked like she'd spend the entire holiday replaying the memories of her time with Noel. Heck, maybe she should start keeping a journal. That way, when she was old and alone, she could look back at those pages and remember just how wonderful this interlude had been.

"So, how were the ledgers? Learn anything interesting?" Noel wasn't even breathing heavily, the brat, despite the cold and exertion. He guided her easily around the pond, his skates moving as if they were extensions of his feet.

"They were fascinating," she said, panting a little between words. His legs were so long she had to work harder to keep up. "So many little details we can learn about the way people lived. Oh - and I remember you said you were born on Christmas. Did you know you're not the first? I found three births recorded in the ledger - one on Christmas, one on Easter a few years later and the last one was on May Day, two years after that. Holiday birthdays seem to really run in your family."

"You've got that right. My dad's another Christmas baby. Sam was born on Halloween, or Samhain," he told her. "Star is short for Ostara, a pagan word for Easter. Her actual birthday is the spring equinox. Summer on Midsummer and Val on Valentine's Day - which isn't far from the ancient holiday Imbolc. I've got cousins born on May Day, or Beltane, the fall equinox and Lughnasa, another ancient summer holiday. Plus one more on Christmas and two more Halloweens. Holiday births for the Holiday clan, every single one of us."

"That's a little - odd." Shelby still couldn't fathom even having that many relatives, let alone knowing all their birthdays. Her toe caught on a small bump in the ice and she skidded, but, as usual, Noel caught her and kept her on her feet.

Noel chuckled. "I never said my family wasn't odd. I guess most of us always figured it was some sort of weird coincidence. We never really believed my dad when he said it was magic. According to him, the Holiday family descended from the ancient Fae guardians of the sacred ceremonies and that each of us still holds a little of the magic associated with their particular day."

"Wow." She wouldn't have believed it two days ago, but after getting zapped into a Christmas ornament, she couldn't rule anything out. "So you think you accidentally triggered it when we touched the village? Probably lots of latent magic in the house since it's been shrunk down and everything."

"That could be it. I have to say, I was a little ticked at the beginning. I was planning to catch up on some card designs this weekend. Now though..." With no warning at all, he spun her into a circle, ending by pulling her into his arms. "Now I'm not sorry at all. I'm enjoying every minute, Shelby. Part of me is going to hate to go home tomorrow."

"Me too," she admitted then nearly bit her tongue. She hadn't intended to say that out loud.