Free A Fool's Gold Christmas by Susan Mallery

spotted Charlie by her rig and called out to her.
    She turned to him and raised her eyebrows. “You’re wearing a suit.”
    He glanced down at his clothes and then back at her. “Yes.”
    “Looks uncomfortable.”
    “I’m used to it.”
    Charlie was tall, over five-ten, he would guess, with broad shoulders and plenty of muscle. He didn’t know much about what it took to be a firefighter, but he knew physical strength was a part of it. Still, at that moment, she had the happy, glowing smile of a woman in love.
    “You didn’t come here to model clothes,” she said. “What’s up?”
    “I heard you spoke to Evie about a work party for her sets. I wanted to talk to you about that. How do I get something like that organized?”
    “You volunteering?”
    “I am.”
    “Know which end of a hammer hits the nail?”
    “I’ve done construction.”
    She looked him up and down. “I have my doubts.”
    “It’s how I got through my fancy college.”
    “Was it fancy?”
    “There were bows and lace.”
    She grinned. “Okay, I like a man who can take a little teasing. Now, about the work party. Do you know Patience McGraw?”
    “No.”
    “She’s a hair stylist, and her daughter is in Evie’s class. Which means nothing to you. Okay, the point is she mentioned the work party, as well. So we’ve been coordinating. Let me get my notes.”
    She disappeared out a side door, then reappeared a minute later, carrying a piece of paper. There were a couple of dozen names and phone numbers on it.
    “Evie has a supply list,” Dante told her. “We put that together when we went to see the sets.”
    “Good. We’re thinking next Saturday. It’s early enough in the season that not everyone is busy.” She waved the names and phone numbers. “How many people are you willing to call?”
    “As many as you want.”
    “I like that. You have potential.” She tore the paper in half and handed one of the pieces to him. “Oh, and make sure Rafe, Shane and Clay are there. I keep meaning to mention it, but I haven’t yet and I’m working a double shift.”
    “I’ll get them there.”
    Charlie glanced at the list, then back at him. “Why are you helping Evie?”
    A seemingly simple question with a complicated answer. Because the more he learned about her past, the more he wanted to knock a few heads together. As he couldn’t do that, making her current dance crisis better was the other option. Because she was dynamite in tights and he was a man who enjoyed a beautiful woman. But maybe, most honestly, because this time of year he always missed his mom and he knew that helping out Evie would make his mother proud.
    “Christmas is my thing,” he said instead.
    “Why do I think there’s more to that story?”
    * * *
    E VIE PUSHED THE play button on the CD player and waited for the familiar music to begin. She’d warmed up already, and her first class wasn’t for an hour. While there was plenty of paperwork to do and she still had to decide on the last transition in the show, she was restless. Her muscles nearly twitched, and her brain was fuzzy. She knew the solution. The question was, would her body cooperate?
    She banged the box of her toe shoes against the floor a couple of times to make sure she’d tied them on correctly. The music surrounded her as she raised her arm. She silently counted to eight in her head, then, as the familiar notes filled the studio, moved both her feet and arms.
    She’d never performed the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” although she’d been an understudy twice. Now she kept time with the music, landing in effacé en fondu . Her body wobbled slightly, but she kept on. Revelé and passé . Up. With ballet, the dancer was always lifting. In modern dance, she would go down first, as if scooping from the earth before going up, but in ballet, the goal was the sky. A turn and—
    Pain ripped through her leg and her hip. Ignoring the fiery sensation, she raised herself again, her pelvis tucked, her