Kitabı oku: «Love, Lies and Mistletoe»

CHAPTER ONE

“IS THAT THE one that got away?”

Jacob Marx placed his cell phone facedown onto the bar and glanced over his shoulder where Heather, the pool hall’s bartender, was so close, strands of her long, dark brown hair rested on his shoulder. The scent of peppermint filled his nose. Huh, must be a holiday thing—last month she’d smelled like pumpkin spice. Not that he paid much attention; he just rememb “Sweet for the sweet.” ered how it had left him craving a Starbucks pumpkin spiced latte.

“No,” he said, turning his attention back to the rum and Coke he’d been nursing for an hour. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but sitting at the bar beat being alone every evening, thinking about the life passing him by in New York. He’d done that enough in his first few weeks in tiny Brookhollow, New Jersey, located right between Nowhere Land and Boringsville.

Heather went around the bar and set down a tray of empty beer glasses. “Are you sure? ’Cause it would explain a lot,” she said, stacking the dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

Jacob picked up the phone, and closing the photo of his sister and eight-year-old nephew, he tucked it into his pocket. “Yeah, like what?” He leaned forward on the bar. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have, but the talkative brunette was likely to tell him what she thought anyway.

“Like why you’re such a—”

“Heather, we need another round on lane four.” Candace, the waitress working the bowling alley side of the local hot spot, passed them carrying a food order from the kitchen.

The smell of the hot wings on the tray tempted Jacob to place an order of his own, but checking his glucose monitor, he decided not to mess with his currently stable blood sugars.

“I’ll be right back,” Heather said, filling a tray with beers from the mini-fridge behind the bar.

“Take your time,” Jacob mumbled. He’d rather not spend his evenings at the pool hall when he wasn’t on duty, but, unfortunately, in a town as small as this one, there were few options. Other than this pool hall/bowling alley/movie theater complex, the only other bar in town was the Green Gator, a karaoke joint. And he’d rather have his eyes poked out than go there.

He watched Heather carry the drinks to the bowling lane and collect the cash from the under-forty league members. The teams were practicing for their annual holiday bowling tournament, which had been so well-advertised and talked about all over town that anyone would think it was the Super Bowl.

A holiday bowling tournament was creating an excited buzz. Man, this town couldn’t possibly be more boring.

But boring, quiet, uneventful was what he’d wanted, right?

Jacob drained the contents of his glass and threw several bills onto the bar as he stood.

“Hey, where are you going? We haven’t finished our discussion yet,” Heather said, returning. The holiday music had stopped playing, and she reached for another CD. More Christmas tunes. Same playlist every night that week. They’d already had the argument that it was too early to be playing that crap, but he’d lost and she’d only turned the music up louder.

“We weren’t having a discussion. You were just insulting me, so I think I’ll head out.”

“Look, I didn’t mean any offense,” she said, as the first few notes of “I’ll Be Home with Bells On” started to play.

“Could have fooled me,” he grumbled, sliding into his leather jacket.

“All I’m saying is people around here are curious about you. You’ve been here for four months, and no one really knows your deal.” She slid the other CD back into its case and turned to lean her hip against the bar.

“My deal?” he asked, his gaze returning to hers.

“Why you’re here.”

“Because it’s such a quaint, idyllic town isn’t enough reason?”

Heather shrugged. “Fine. But just so you know, when people around here get curious about someone, they start speculating on their own. Believe me, I’ve heard a dozen rumors already.” She turned away from him and resumed hanging a set of colored Christmas lights behind the bar.

Again, too early, but at least she hadn’t asked for his help. Christmas wasn’t exactly his thing. Or at least it hadn’t been for the last few years.

Jacob hesitated. He didn’t give a rat’s behind what these local people were saying about him, but his gut tightened at being the topic of conversation. Had someone actually figured out why he was there? Small-town gossip made him nervous, and while he had confidence in Sheriff Bishop’s discretion, he could never be too sure. Thirteen years on the job had made it impossible to trust anyone. Probably why he’d never gotten married. Actually, precisely why he hadn’t gotten married.

Sighing, he sat back down. “Okay, let’s hear them.”

Heather continued singing as the song reached its chorus, ignoring him now.

“Hey, Talks-a-lot!”

She turned with a wide smile that caught him off guard, and he felt the tips of his ears grow hot.

He hadn’t meant to blurt out his secret name for her. The truth was he had one for almost everyone in town. Four months in sleepy, low-crime Brookhollow was driving him mad. He had to do something to entertain himself. And he didn’t want to get attached to anyone or anything. Nicknames helped.

“Talks-a-lot, huh?”

He shrugged.

So did she. “I’m good with that. Been called worse. Okay, so here’s what I’ve heard.” She lowered her voice. “Blink once if it’s true, twice if it’s not.”

“No.”

She huffed. “Fine. Well, one story is that you shot a fellow cop in New York and you felt so guilty about it, you needed to get away.”

“I have shot a fellow cop before. Don’t feel the least bit guilty.” The rookie officer had caught a bullet in his left butt cheek in a liquor store robbery shoot-out, after ignoring protocol and advancing on the perpetrator. He’d been lucky it was only his butt; if Jacob hadn’t fired when he had, the guy may not have walked away at all. “What else you got?”

Her eyes widened for a quick moment, then she said, “Another theory is that you were fired, and no other big-city department would hire you.”

That was a little closer. “Fired for what?”

“The thoughts on that are varied. Some people say it was for withholding narcotics, others for killing an innocent bystander in a shoot-out. One person was kinder and said it was because you’d gotten strung out and went a little crazy.”

That was kinder? “That all you got?”

“Pretty much...the others are too ridiculous to be true.”

Right.

These people knew nothing. Reassured and relieved, he stood again and reached for his gloves. “Well, sorry to say they are all wrong. I’m just here for a change of scenery.”

“No one’s buying that story, Jake—I mean, Sheriff Matthews,” she said.

Jake. Sheriff Matthews. Man, the worst part about this whole thing was not even being allowed to keep his own name. He hated when people called him Jake, but at least he answered to it. Better than getting used to something totally different, and he wasn’t about to argue any of the conditions of his placement. Originally, they’d wanted to send him with his sister and nephew to some remote location, indefinitely, under the federal witness protection program. He’d been lucky to convince the department to let him stay close to New York and take on this mundane sheriff position instead. He’d claimed he wanted to stay nearby for when and if the drug case went to court and they needed him to testify, but the truth was he was still on the undercover case...just not officially.

“I’m not asking anyone to buy it,” he said, heading toward the door. He just needed them to mind their own business. “Have a good night.”

* * *

HEATHER CRADLED HER cell phone against her shoulder as she carried the heavy garbage bag through the back door of the pool hall. She set the trash down on the icy ground next to the already heaping bin, making a mental note to call the disposal company in the morning to come empty it. When she’d taken over running the bar from Melody Myers eleven months ago she a) hadn’t expected it to be so hard and b) hadn’t expected to be running it longer than six months.

“You still there?” her older sister said on the other end of the line.

“Barely,” she mumbled, glancing at the seconds ticking away on her phone. Cameron had left her on hold for almost nine minutes.

“Sorry... I’m working, you know,” she said distractedly.

Heather shivered in the late November air as she made her way back inside. “So am I.”

“Yeah, at some crappy pool hall in the middle of nowhere. Heather, you have an MBA.”

“I know,” she said, tugging the heavy metal door closed behind her and locking it. She hadn’t forgotten how hard she’d worked for the life and career she’d once had in New York; she was just struggling to figure out how to get back there, to all of that. “That’s why I’m asking you for this favor.”

“Heather, this is Highstone Acquisitions in Manhattan. Not some rinky-dink firm.”

She sighed, suppressing the urge to remind her sister that she had worked at Clarke and Johnston for over ten years. They weren’t a rinky-dink firm, either. “That’s why I want to apply for a job there.”

“Heather, you know I love you and I want nothing more than to have you back here in the city, but this is Rob’s employer. Asking him to stick his neck on the line for you is...”

Heather gaped. Sticking his neck on the line? Seriously? “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cam,” she said. “You know what? Never mind.” She’d look up the firm herself and apply for the acquisitions agent position without Rob’s help. It would be the fourth one she’d applied for in a year. She’d yet to even be called for an interview. And it baffled her. Her résumé was solid. She had the MBA Cameron had just mentioned. It was as though her previous employer had blackballed her somehow, she thought bitterly.

Calling in the favor to her sister’s husband had meant swallowing her pride, but she was getting desperate. She had exactly five hundred and seventy-two dollars left in her bank account, after depleting her savings for the past year while she searched for a job.

“I’m sorry,” Cameron said, sounding sincere. “That’s not what I meant.” She sighed. “Okay, Rob’s direct boss is Mike Ainsley. He owns the company. His phone number...”

Going to the register behind the bar, Heather ripped off a piece of receipt paper. “Can’t I just email him?”

“He’ll probably want you to email a résumé, but Rob always says he likes to have a chat with potential candidates first.”

That made sense, and she wasn’t opposed to calling him, she was just hoping for more time to prepare for a discussion with the man. She wanted to make sure she got a shot at this position. “How old is he?”

“Old. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re looking for a new employer this time, not a potential boyfriend, remember?”

Heather cringed. Her sister would throw that in her face again. “Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson about that,” she mumbled. Three years in a relationship with her boss at Clarke and Johnston, only to lose him as both employer and boyfriend, had taught her to diversify.

Workplace relationships were not an option anymore.

“Good. So, just put away your sarcasm and resist every urge to be funny, and get through a short telephone call. We really do want you back here in the city.”

She wanted to get back to her old life, too. She’d been away and out of the game long enough. Her career as an acquisitions agent, buying out smaller companies on behalf of million-dollar clients—usually box stores and hotel chains—had come to a halt after she’d been fired and dumped in the same week. She’d hightailed it to Brookhollow for her friend Victoria’s wedding and a mini-vacation. She hadn’t planned to stay for two years. The reminder of her friend momentarily gave her pause. “Look, Cam, I’ll be there as soon as I can, but Victoria is depending on me now, too.” Victoria ran a B and B in town. Her business partner and best friend had died months before in a car accident, and Heather had stepped in to help as much as possible. Days at the Brookhollow Inn’s front desk and evenings at the pool hall were starting to take their toll, but leaving both her friend and the bar shorthanded made her feel guilty.

Yet every time she checked her bank account, she was reminded of how much she needed to get a job and get back to the city. She was volunteering her time at the B and B in exchange for a room, and the bar paid minimum wage and was never busy enough for her to make much in tips. “Victoria never expected you stay, and she’s a good friend—she’ll understand your decision. Just like you supported hers to move back to Brookview.”

“Brookhollow.”

“Sure, whatever. Call Mike Ainsley and secure this position before Christmas. We really want you to spend the holidays with us this year. Last year wasn’t the same without you.”

Guilt washed over her. Without their parents, she and her sister had always spent the holidays together, but the year before she’d decided to stay in Brookhollow, knowing that Christmas in the city—her first one single and alone—might be too depressing. But the holiday hadn’t been the same for her, either. And the truth was, she wasn’t happy in the small town anymore. It was time to move on. “I’ll call him in the morning.”

* * *

JACOB UNLOCKED THE back door of the three-story house on Pine Street where he was renting the attic-turned-bachelor-suite from Mrs. Kelly, a retired schoolteacher. Despite the late hour, all of the lights were on. He suspected she waited up for him every evening, and he sighed when he heard the sound of her slippers shuffling down the hallway.

“Jake, that you?” she called.

So much for sneaking upstairs unnoticed. “Yeah, Mrs. Kelly, it’s just me.”

“Hi, dear,” she said as she entered the back porch off of the kitchen. “I was hoping you’d be home sooner.”

Home? Hardly. Home was a two-bedroom apartment in the city that he hadn’t seen in three years, first living undercover in a dive motel in Brooklyn, where he slept with his clothes on and his gun under his pillow, and then hiding out here in Brookhollow, where the only danger—for now—was this woman’s nosiness.

Home was such a distant memory, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize it even if he ever did see it again.

He sighed. “Why? What did you need help with?” In addition to paying three hundred dollars in rent for the twenty by twenty, six-foot high space that had given him a permanent neck cramp from stooping, he’d also become her jar opener, her sidewalk clearer and, most recently, her plumber.

“Well, I wanted to start my holiday decorating...”

“Isn’t it a little soon?” Heather could argue that businesses needed to get an early push on the season, but individuals? Was that really necessary?

Mrs. Kelly’s expression revealed that she thought he was crazy for even making the suggestion. “Of course not.”

“Right. Okay, so what do you need?” Because he knew that’s where this was headed.

“Well, my nephew used to come and help me get my things out of the storage space...but he’s away at the police academy in Boston.”

That’s right, her nephew was Cody Kelly, the young man who’d been counting on the sheriff’s position here in Brookhollow once he graduated in a few weeks. Well, the kid could have it...as soon as Jacob didn’t need it anymore.

“He’ll be here during the holidays of course, so don’t worry, you’ll get a chance to meet him.”

He wasn’t worrying, and he seriously doubted he’d be attending the family’s holiday festivities. The young man probably wasn’t thrilled that Jacob had taken his position and wouldn’t be excited about meeting him, either.

“But in the meantime...”

“You’d like me to get your decorations out for you.”

She smiled. “You are such a sweet boy.”

“First thing in the morning, I’ll get everything out before I go to work,” he said, turning the corner and starting to climb the stairs.

She hurried after him. “I was kinda hoping to get started tonight.”

Jacob poked his head around the corner, checking the time on the microwave. “It’s eleven-thirty. You want to start decorating now?”

She nodded. “I’m a bit of a night owl.”

He stifled a yawn. “Mrs. Kelly...” How did he tell the woman that, just because he was renting space in her home, she couldn’t expect him to be there to help her with every project? That he preferred his privacy and space. He should never have ignored his gut, which had told him moving into her attic apartment would be a mistake. The price had been right, and at the time, he’d hoped he wouldn’t need the place for more than a few weeks, a month at most. But a few weeks had quickly turned into four months and counting.

Four long months hiding who he really was, avoiding meaningful contact with people in town, trying to get used to once again being a beat cop—handing out tickets and issuing fines—and desperately trying to convince Mrs. Kelly that he could do his own laundry and that she didn’t need to go into his apartment for any reason, especially not to put away his clothes. He’d learned quickly to keep anything personal in his locker at the station, away from curious old eyes.

The only thing he kept close by was his gun...and he hoped his landlady wouldn’t be nosy enough to check inside the toilet tank in his bathroom.

But just in case, better to stay in her good books... “Where is the storage space?”

Her eyes lit up. “Well, since I turned the attic into an apartment, I’ve been storing everything in the crawl space,” she said, leading the way.

He hesitated. Crawl space?

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

He followed. “Mrs. Kelly, do you mean like underneath your house? That kind of crawl space?”

“That’s right,” she said, opening a half-size door beneath the staircase at the end of the hall. She reached inside and pulled a string attached to the lightbulb in the low ceiling. “Everything is in here.”

Yeah, everything like spiders, mice, enough dust to induce an asthma attack in the healthiest of lungs...

“I can no longer bend enough to get in there,” she said.

Jacob glanced at her. Mrs. Kelly was barely five feet tall; if she couldn’t bend low enough, how could he? “Huh, Mrs. Kelly... I’m not sure I’m the guy for this job. Why don’t you hire a junior high kid to come over after school and help you? Pay them twenty bucks, and I’m sure they’ll be eager to help any way they can.”

“Pay someone?” She looked at him as though he’d suggested burning it all. She shook her head. “No need. You’re here. There’s only four or five boxes.” She peered inside the space and waved him closer.

Sighing, he got down on his knees and crawled beneath the stairs. The cold draft coming from the large, uninsulated space made him shiver. He hoped she didn’t have any snow globes among her decorations; they were probably frozen solid.

“They are all over in that far corner.”

Of course they were.

“Most of them are labeled.”

Most?

“If you’re not sure, open the top flaps. It should be easy to tell what’s Christmas stuff and what’s not.” She moved past him and straightened. “Thanks, dear. I’ll leave you to it.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head, not for the first time wondering if maybe staying in the city and putting his life at risk was such a bad option after all.

Of course the department hadn’t left him much choice. It was either get out of town while the gun smoke settled on the bust that had gone wrong or be permanently removed from the force.

Heading farther into the space, he grabbed several nearby boxes and propped open the door.

“Oh, Jake, please close that while you’re in there. That draft is really cold.”

Right. “Okay, Mrs. Kelly,” he mumbled, moving the boxes aside and letting the door close behind him.

He was grateful for his jacket and gloves as he moved toward the corner where she said the boxes would be. Dishes... Clothing... Christmas decorations—in a far back corner behind dozens of other boxes. He sighed. It had been a long time since he’d needed to dig out holiday decorations...and he’d been hoping to avoid any reminder of better, happier times. He reached for the boxes and tried to simply focus on the task ahead of him. He just needed to get through the season.

* * *

HEATHER DESCENDED THE refinished hardwood staircase at the Brookhollow Inn the next morning, skipping the third from the bottom step that always creaked, despite Victoria’s husband’s many attempts to fix it.

The inn had been Heather’s home for a year and a half, but when she’d moved in, she’d had nowhere else to be. Visiting the quiet, laid-back small town had seemed like a great break from her stressful life in the city, but the desire to move on was increasing each day, especially as her bank account balance dipped lower.

She scanned the dining room, but it was empty. The B and B’s occupancy rate had dwindled in recent months, since the weather turned colder and the roads were less than ideal to travel on. And they wouldn’t be filling up again until the week before Christmas, when the inn would be full with guests visiting local family for the holidays.

She turned the daily calendar at the check-in desk. Almost another year wasted, without figuring out a plan for her future.

Well, it was time.

She reached into her jeans pocket and retrieved the piece of register tape from the bar. Mike Ainsley and the position at Highstone Acquisitions might be the answer to that. Tucking it in her hand, she poked her head into the kitchen.

Empty.

She headed toward the back of the house, listening carefully for Victoria’s voice. Her friend habitually sat in the back sunroom, feeding her baby girl, Harper, around this time every day. Usually, her off-key singing voice could be heard torturing a lullaby, but today it was quiet. Maybe she hadn’t arrived yet.

One glance through the glass walls of the sunroom revealed that it was snowing heavily, big fluffy white flakes collecting quickly on the already-covered ground.

The grandfather clock in the front sitting room chimed. Nine o’clock. Cameron had texted to say Rob had reluctantly agreed to give his boss a heads-up that she would be calling and that Mike Ainsley was expecting her call at nine. Heading back to the front desk, Heather pulled her cell phone from her purse.

Crap! She had to start remembering to plug in her phone at night. The dead battery light flickered a second longer, then the phone shut off completely. Wonderful. She’d have to make the long distance call at the desk. Luckily, she’d recently taken over paying the B and B’s invoices, so she would know how much to reimburse Victoria for the call.

She wondered if her friend would accept a payment plan schedule.

But what if her friend noticed the acquisition firm’s number on the bill? She bit her lip.

Two minutes past nine.

Picking up the receiver, she heard nothing. No dial tone. The line was dead.

What the...?

Glancing at the display screen on the phone revealed the connection with the server was down. Fantastic. She jiggled the mouse for the computer and waited for the reservation screen to appear. Great, the internet was down, too.

She wanted to scream. Stupid weather caused this to happen often around here. How many times had she told Victoria’s husband, Luke, that the internet phone system may be cheap, but it wasn’t reliable? And now was not the day to have her point proven. 9:04. What had her sister said about Mike Ainsley? He was old-school and didn’t appreciate lateness.

This wasn’t exactly her fault, but unless the other man had ever lived in a middle-of-nowhere town, he was probably not going to accept her excuses. Sitting in the chair, she noticed the old rotary phone on the corner of the desk. The phone lines should still work, just not the computerized system. Diving for it, she held her breath as she picked up the receiver.

Dial tone. Success. Thank God they’d kept the landline as a backup.

Man, this thing was heavy, she thought, retrieving the number and slowly dialing it. Good thing this wasn’t a real emergency. Finally, when the phone started ringing, she sat straighter, mentally rehearsing her pitch.

“Happy holidays. Thank you for calling Highstone Acquisitions, how may I help you?” a chirpy receptionist’s voice said.

“Hi, this is Heather Corbett. I’m calling for Mr. Ainsley.”

“Mr. Ainsley, Junior or Senior?” she asked.

Great, there were two of them. Thanks for the heads up, Cam. “Senior, I believe. Mike.”

“Mike is Junior. Michael is Senior. Which is it?”

Oh, come on. “The one in charge of hiring?”

“I’ll put you through to HR,” the young woman said in a tone that made it possible to imagine her rolling her eyes.

“Oh, no, actually Mr. Ainsley, Senior, I think, was expecting my call at nine,” Heather said.

“It’s ten after.”

It is now! “I know, I apologize. I was having technical difficulties this morning.” With a phone. Wow—could she sound any less competent?