Free Holiday Sparks by Taryn Elliott Page B

with bouncing blonde pigtails and demand to see what Santa brought you?”
    She stopped a few feet away from the front of the store. “Santa made a really small pit stop at my house, and when I figured out he didn’t exist, well…I couldn’t see making my mom spend unnecessarily on me.”
    She hadn’t meant to say so much.
    What was it about Ben Hartley that made her do things that were so out of character? He didn’t need to know her sob story. What a way to kill the mood. He moved into her space and she froze. Now he was going to feel sorry for her. She was asking for a night alone the way she was going.
    He lifted her chin with his finger. There was sadness in his deep, dark eyes but there was also a steady calmness. “I come from a single-parent home too.” He kept his eyes open as he leaned in. The kiss was sweet and slow. Like their first kiss, it was spring-breeze soft. Her eyes drifted shut and she fell into his taste. He kept it light and she followed his lead. Content to drift on the gentleness in his touch, she sighed when he drew back.
    “I’m going to make you love Christmas again.”
    She reached up to cup his face. “How about you make my store look like Christmas on crack and we’ll be even.”
    He pressed his forehead to hers for a moment then stood back. “Okay, we’ve got some testing to do.”
    She followed him to the displays, placing his laptop on the counter at the customer service desk. Ben had taken over a corner of it to set up the wireless circuit boards. It was the largest area and he could get at it easily if anything happened through the holidays. The things he could do with Bluetooth technology were as close to amazing as she’d ever seen.
    He hopped over the desk and disappeared behind the tree to plug in whatever it was that he’d created back there. He flipped the switch and the front end literally glowed. Every light was on and without the rest of the store’s halogens it was even more pronounced. The tree was majestic with the classy white lights and huge, colorful ornaments he’d bought. Instead of the greens, purples and blues that had been on the first tree now it was all gold, red and orange. The only kaleidoscope of color was the trunk of the tree. He’d lined it with colored fat retro bulbs.
    Their LED light was bright in a strangely flat way and served as a perfect base for the warm LED whites he’d bought. She thought it would dull the color of the tree, but it only accentuated the golds of the ornaments and made the whole room pop. If she didn’t know better, she’d be expecting a warm fire to be crackling bedside the tree.
    He’d used a cooler-toned white light to decorate the evergreen wreaths behind each register. Fat silver bows hung from the bottoms with holly berries instead of ornaments. It was pure class. Even without the light show, the man knew how to create an amazing space. She lifted herself onto the podium Jaime used to watch over the cashiers and direct traffic on the busy days.
    Ben was behind the customer service desk at the back wall, directly across from her. He was intent on his little shells of electronics and tapping on his laptop. Suddenly an updated version of O Holy Night shot out of the speakers, making her heart jump. Christina Aguilera’s unique voice soared.
    The displays fluttered then steadied. The tree light took on a swirling pattern in time with the soft song. It was as lovely as fairy wings. Surely something so elegant couldn’t be designed so easily. Just how much work had he put into this? The song drifted into a jazzy piano piece with a gospel chorus and the tree flashed and came alive.
    She couldn’t stop the smile.
    The man was good.
    In fact, it was even better than she’d hoped for.
    He came around the counter and walked to her as the song changed to Elvis. He crossed the floor and held his hand out to her. She laughed and shook her head. He circled her waist and pulled her down from the podium, drawing her into an