Gina Wilkins - Make-Believe Mistletoe

Maybe a few blunt answers to her questions would make the futility of any romantic expectations clear to her. Labeling it a game seemed an odd way to determine their fate, but he had learned not to be overly surprised by anything Lucy suggested.

“What question do you want to ask me?” Banner said, injecting just enough resignation in his tone to let Lucy know what he really thought about this exercise-which should be her first clue to their incompatibility, he mused.

His reluctance to participate didn't seem to bother her in the least. She reached for one of the cookies he had set out to accompany their tea when she replied. “Question one. Hmm. What's your birthday?”

Hardly a question of deep importance, he thought, which meant he could answer without weighing his words, “April 3. I'll be thirty-one.”

“That's two answers for one question,” she observed cheerily. “I should get extra points.”

“I didn't know we were awarding points.”

“I'll fill you in on that part later. Your turn to ask a question.”

The woman wasn't quite normal, which, Banner had to admit, if only to himself, was one of her charms. “I can't think of anything to ask. You go ahead.”

She sighed heavily. “Banner, you have to play the game correctly. Surely you can think of something to ask me.”

He shrugged. “Okay. What's your birthday?”

“July 25. I'm a Leo. Since you're an Aries, that makes us a very interesting combination.”

He cleared his throat, feeling the need to derail that train of thought before it got a good start. “Yeah, whatever. I've never been particularly interested in astrology. You don't really believe in that stuff, do you?”

“No cheating, dude. It's my turn to ask a question.”

He couldn't help chuckling at her wording. “So it is.”

She lowered her teacup and picked up her half-eaten cookie. “I like it when you laugh. You don't do it often enough.”

“That wasn't a question, it was an observation. Doesn't count.” But he liked that she liked it when he laughed. Which only demonstrated how much she messed with his mind, he thought in exasperation.

She seemed delighted that he was participating in her game, however reluctantly. “Okay, question two. What's your favorite color?”

He didn't know how she figured she was going to get to know him with such superficial questions-nor did he know how he was going to convince her of how different they were if all she asked were trivialities-but he gave her an answer, anyway. “Blue, I guess.”

“Most men say blue. Did you know that?”

“Is that another question?”

“No, just an observation.” She swallowed the last of her cookie and reached for another. “What's your next question?”

“I don't know-what's your favorite color?”

She frowned at him. “You aren't giving this enough thought. You're simply asking the same questions I am.”

“So maybe I really want to know your favorite color. What is it?”

“You know that pinky-purple color that a clear blue sky turns to just before sunset? That's my favorite color.”

Of course it was. He certainly shouldn't have expected her to give a simple, predictable answer like red or green or yellow.

She propped her elbows on the table and studied him. “What sort of music do you like?”

Question three, he thought. Only seventeen more to go. “Alan Jackson's in my CD player right now. Last week I was in the mood for Celtic tunes.”

“Ah. An eclectic listener. So am I-though I suppose I listen to classical recordings more than anything else.”

That was no surprise to him, either. Hadn't he read somewhere that there was a strong connection between mathematics and Mozart? “I didn't ask you what sort of music you liked.”

She chuckled. “Consider that a freebie. You still have eighteen questions.”

Oddly enough, he felt much more relaxed now than he had earlier. Had that been her intention with the whimsical game? He decided it probably had been her plan, since her questions weren't exactly thought provoking.

He tried to think of another question for her. There were a few things he wouldn't mind knowing about her, but most of them seemed too personal to ask. So he asked, instead, “What's your favorite snack food?”

“That's a good one,” she said with a nod of approval. “You can tell a lot about a person from their favorite foods. Have you ever had a deep-fried Twinkie?”

“I can't say that I have. That's your favorite snack?”

“No, but I had one at the state fair last year. I'm a fiend for chocolate-covered malted milk balls. I love the way they dissolve in your mouth when the chocolate is gone.”

Banner cleared his throat and shifted a bit in his chair. Something about the sensuous look on her face aroused him all over again. “I see.”

“Aren't you going to tell me your favorite snack?”

“You haven't asked,” he reminded her.

The way her full lower lip protruded when she pouted was enough to raise his blood pressure by a few dozen points. He dragged his gaze away from her mouth and reached for a cookie as she said, “Okay, if you have to be picky about it, I'll make it a formal question. What's your favorite snack food?”

“Moon pies.”

“Chocolate or banana?”

His left eyebrow rose. “That's question number five?”

“No. It's four-A.”

His mouth twitched with a wanna-be smile. “I'm not sure that's in the rules.”

“I make the rules,” she reminded him airily. “Chocolate or banana?”

“Banana.”

“Yuck.”

“No editorializing, please. That happens to be my favorite.”

“I don't remember seeing any moon pies in your pantry.”

“I'm out. Finished them off a couple of days ago and haven't been back to the store since. I'll stock up with a half-dozen boxes next time I go to town.”

She looked him up and down in a leisurely manner that made his heart start to pound. “Sure doesn't look like you eat half a dozen boxes of moon pies at a time. Not an extra ounce on you.”

Damn. He could almost feel himself starting to blush. Because she had embarrassed him, he blurted his next question without thought, grabbing randomly for another cookie at the same time, even though he hadn't taken a bite of the first one yet. “Have you always been afraid of the dark?”

Lucy didn't seem to find the question too personal. Nor did she seem to mind answering. “I think it started when I was ten or eleven. That's when my mother got sick, and she seemed to always be worse at night. Several times I woke up and found a baby-sitter in the house after my father had taken my mother to the hospital. It got to where I was afraid to go to bed because I didn't know what would have changed in my world by the time I woke up.”

She sighed a little and gazed down into her teacup as she continued, “I woke one morning to be told that she had passed away during the night-just as I had always predicted, I suppose. I've given a lot of thought to my neurosis during the past few years, and that's the best answer I can come up with. It's not that I'm so terrified of the dark that I turn into a screaming hysteric or anything like that-I just don't like not being able to see.”

Because he didn't know what to say in response to that heart-wrenching explanation, and being so lousy at expressing sympathy, Banner changed the subject. “Are you cold? We can move back into the living room in front of the fire, if you are.”

“No, I'm fine. This sweater's warm and the hot tea tastes wonderful. And I'm enjoying our game. It's a way for me to get to know the real you.”

That was the problem, of course. He wasn't sure how to show anyone the real him. He just…was.

Still looking at him much too knowingly, Lucy said, “My turn to ask a question. What's your first name?”

That made him frown. “Haven't I told you that already?” She smiled again. “No. You said to call you Banner.”

“Oh.” Embarrassed, he shrugged. “Habit, I guess. It's Richard. Richard Merchant Banner.”

“You don't care for the name Richard? And that's question 6-A, not a new one.”

He shrugged again without protesting her fast-and-loose rule making. “It's my father's name. I answered-reluctantly-to Ricky as a kid, but I outgrew that by the time I was in high school. Never really liked any of the other nicknames for Richard and my middle name is my mother's maiden name, not exactly one I'd want to answer to. Banner just seemed to suit me.”

“Richard Banner. It's a nice name.”

“It's my father's,” he repeated. “I'd have preferred a name of my own.”

She seemed to consider that response as she slowly chewed a bite of cookie, and then she swallowed and prodded, “Your turn.”

“Er-what's your middle name?”

“Jane, after my maternal grandmother. My aunt Janie was named for her, too.”

He really couldn't think of anything else to ask about her that seemed safely impersonal. Wasn't she tired of this game yet? Did she really intend to ask him fifteen more inconsequential questions? He didn't see what she thought they were accomplishing, other than killing time by making small talk.

She certainly wasn't getting to know the “real” him with such trivialities.

But Lucy's next question turned out to be far from innocuous. “What was your ex-wife like?” she asked, her gaze focused intently on his face.

Banner's response was a startled, “Why?”

“I'm just curious. We're trying to get to know each other better, remember? I'll tell you about my last serious relationship, if you like, and you don't even have to use one of your questions. Not that there's much to tell. I thought I had found a partner, and he thought he had found a second mommy. Wanted me to take care of his needs without giving much consideration to mine. Needless to say, it didn't last long. How about your marriage?”

Deciding to think about what she had told him later, he concentrated on her question. “It lasted less than a year.”

“Did you love her?”

It was an extremely personal question, of course, and he had every right to decline to answer. Some things didn't belong in any sort of game. Instead, he scowled and said flatly, “I thought we were suited. I was mistaken. I was trying to prove that everyone else was wrong about my ability to maintain a meaningful relationship with another person, but all I succeeded in doing was proving that they had been right after all.”

Lucy shook her head in exasperation. “You decided that from one failed relationship? Didn't it occur to you that perhaps you simply ran your experiment with the wrong partner?”

He shrugged. “I know exactly what I proved. And that was your seventh question, by the way.”

Her hands wrapped tightly around her teacup, she ignored the reference to the game. “You're afraid to try again to have a real relationship with anyone.”

“I'm not afraid,” he countered instantly. “Just realistic.”

“So the kisses we've shared have been…?”

She let the quiet words fade off, waiting for him to complete the sentence.

“They were nice,” he said after a moment. “But I know you'll have to leave soon.”

He was making it clear that he would do nothing to detain her. “Nice,” she repeated with a lifted eyebrow. “That's the way you describe our kisses?”

A faint flush crept up his neck from the open collar of his sweatshirt. It seemed that he had accidentally tripped over her feminine ego. “They were, uh, really nice. Great.”

Without warning, Lucy rose and rounded the table toward him. He rose instinctively to meet her.

Stopping directly in front of him, she reached out to stroke a hand up his chest. “I really think I can do better than 'nice.' Why don't you give me a chance to prove it?”

He really tried to resist her. But then her other arm went around his neck, and his willpower crumbled just like the cookie he'd been mutilating only moments before.

His arms went around her and his mouth met hers.

The spectacular kiss-much better than nice-was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. It wasn't a sound Banner heard much, so it took him a moment to identify the sound. Dragging his mouth from Lucy's, he released her and snagged the receiver from the kitchen extension. His voice was gruff when he barked, “Hello.”

After only a slight pause, a man's voice asked, “Is Lucy Guerin there?”

“Yeah. Hold on.” Banner motioned with the phone toward his guest. “It's for you.”

He moved aside as she took the phone, giving him a smile that made his chest tighten again. Lucy's high-voltage smiles were definitely dangerous, especially when they followed one of her mega-watt kisses.

Hulk was sitting at the door, patiently waiting to be let outside. As Banner moved to open the door, he heard Lucy say into the phone, “Daddy! Merry Christmas. Are you at Aunt Janie's house?”