Five Stolen Rings

Chapter 23

JACK

Stella freaking Partridge.

I think I might fall in love with that woman—love her wildly, desperately, because she’s beautiful and infuriating and precious, and I’m weak.

A giant, loud part of my brain is screaming at me to shore up my defenses, to reinforce the walls around my heart before Stella breaks them all down; a different, quieter part just wants to look at her for a while, all bundled up in my too-large clothes like a teddy bear.

That quiet part of my brain is the same one asking the question, over and over: Would it really be so bad?

Letting myself love her, when for so long she was the one thing I denied myself—would it really be so bad? Because I’ll tell you this: I don’t want to be her friend. If friends don’t see each other every day, if friends don’t touch or flirt or kiss—and obviously they don’t—I’m not satisfied with that.

I will say, though—who gave Stella permission to be right about my mother’s rings? Where does she get the audacity to be correct the one single time in my life I want to be correct instead?

A wave of frustration washes over me, not at Stella but at the situation in general. I could talk to a lawyer, I guess. But I think more efficient would be talking to Maude herself—with the threat of a lawyer.

I wasn’t close to my father. When he died, I involved myself only minimally in his affairs. But maybe I should have done more.

Still, I can’t deny that there’s a tiny part of me that feels relieved right now—relieved that I’m taking a different path. It’s going to be a longer path, with more hurdles and potholes, and I’m not a particularly patient man, especially when it comes to dealing with nonsense.

But I guess I’ll do it.

“What should I name a cat, if I get one?” I say to Stella, trying to keep my weariness out of my voice.

“Hmm,” she says, and even though I keep my eyes on the road, I see her glance over at me. “Name it Stella.”

A snort of surprised laughter escapes me as I flick the turn signal. “No can do, Stella girl. Pick a different name.”

“How about Maude?”

“Never mind; you’re fired,” I say with a grin as something inside me eases. “I’ll think of a name myself.” Then, shooting a look at her, I add, “What do you want to eat? Burgers? Tacos?”

“Tacos,” she says, and I nod.

“Tacos it is.”

We eat in the parking lot of the taco place, and then we head up to the foothills. After all the breaking and entering I’ve done at my stepmother’s place, it’s downright strange to enter through the front door. I try to get Stella to come look at the painting in Maude’s closet—a portrait of Maude in a racier-than-normal flamenco dress, holding an exaggerated dance pose—but she refuses, so I leave her to feed the animals and water the plants while I put the box back. When we reconvene a few minutes later, we head out through the front door and go back to the car.

“Where now?” I say as we shuffle down the driveway.

“Home,” Stella answers.

I glance at her. “Your home, or mine?”

I’m pushing it; I know. But she just sighs and shakes her head, a reluctant smile curling over her perfect lips.

“You’re incorrigible. My home,” she says. “And you will go to yours.”

“Your loss,” I say with a shrug and an exaggerated sigh that puffs into the icy night air. “The things I could— ow. ”

She’s holding her hand up to whack me on the arm again, so I reach up and grab it.

“Behave yourself,” she says. “You were the one who wanted to be friends, Jacky. ”

I shudder. “I’ll behave,” I say, letting go of her hand. “Just don’t call me that ever again.”

“No promises,” she says with a grin. She pauses as her expression fades into something more serious. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” she says.

“It is,” I say, nodding.

“What are you doing?”

“Ah.” I rub the back of my neck, trying to quell my embarrassment. Because what kind of guy spends Christmas alone? I really should get a cat. “I don’t know. Just—hanging out, I guess.”

“Absolutely not,” she says, coming to a sudden halt. She rounds on me, jabbing me in the chest. “You will come to my parents’ house at noon. I expect you to bring a gift for me. Got it?”

“I—what?”

“A gift,” she says, overemphasizing the word and poking me in the chest again. “Also known as a present.”

I roll my eyes and swat her hand away. “I’m familiar with the term, thanks. I just meant—” I clear my throat as something warm tries to rise in my chest. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am. Come at noon. If you’re late, you’re on my blacklist.”

“You don’t have a blacklist,” I say lightly, but my heart is doing strange things, and my chest feels like it’s filled with balloons, or maybe bubbles.

“Sure I do. Fuller Nathan Smith Jr.,” she says, and I scowl.

“I guess I have a blacklist too.”

“Mmm,” she says with a nod. “Now let’s go. It’s cold out here.”

STELLA

When I wake up on the morning of Christmas Eve, I am a woman on a mission. I have—I check the clock—four hours to learn how to make a friendship bracelet, and while I was good at my job at the architecture firm, I am less good at arts and crafts.

Thank goodness for YouTube, and thank extra goodness for my mother’s sewing room, from which I pilfer about ten different kinds of embroidery thread.

I know Jack’s bracelet he made for me all those years ago was black, but I am just not a black-bracelet girl. I don’t even know that Jack is a black-bracelet guy anymore. He was angry and lonely and emotional back then in a way he’s not anymore.

So I think some blues and greens and grays would be nice, like the ocean. I’ll make myself one that’s purple and yellow—my favorites.

I do mine first, because I want to practice before I actually do Jack’s. And although my handiwork is uneven and wobbly at the beginning, by the tail end of my bracelet, I’ve got nice, uniform sections of alternating purple and yellow. Jack’s looks even better when I finish his, if I do say so myself.

I spend the rest of the morning baking with my mom while my dad putters around the house, humming off-key Christmas carols and tidying up and tinkering and dusting. He’s a small man, jolly and cheerful and always doing something—he can’t sit still for longer than five minutes. Every time he passes by the kitchen, he kisses my mom on the lips, me on the forehead, and then he ducks out again, off doing who-knows-what.

I really lucked out with my family. My parents are alive and happy and loving, and there are no half-naked portraits hanging anywhere in their house.

It’s the little things.

“So what time is Jack coming over?” my mom asks now, and I startle out of my wandering thoughts.

“Noon,” I say. I line up my reindeer-shaped cookie cutter and press it into the dough, giving it a little wiggle. I remove the cookie carefully, place it on the baking sheet, and then do another .

“It’s wonderful that you’re reconnecting.” There’s a heavy pause from where my mom is greasing another baking sheet next to me; after a few more seconds of silence, she goes on, “I always wondered what happened between you two.”

Of course, what she really means is Tell me what happened between you two. Parents have many ways to ask questions without actually asking questions.

“I basically ditched him once I got to Windsor because people made fun of him, and I didn’t want them to make fun of me too,” I say bitterly.

“Stella!” my mom says, a mixture of shock and disapproval, and I nod.

“I know,” I say, grimacing. I shove the cookie cutter into the thin dough harder than necessary. “It was horrible. I deeply regret everything. Please don’t give me a hard time about it.”

When I glance over at my mom, it’s just in time to see her mouth snapping closed, her eyes hesitant, her light hair frizzy from the warmth of the kitchen.

“Well,” she says, drawing the word out. “If you’re sure you know better now…?”

“I really, really do,” I say with a sigh.

“Because Jack was such a sweetheart.”

I snort at this. He was not a sweetheart—or, rather, he wasn’t a sweetheart to anyone but my mom. I think he treated her the way he wished he’d treated his mom when she was alive. Still, I just nod again.

“Well, we’ve moved past all that,” I say. “And I actually like him a lot.”

“Do you?” my mom says as she sprinkles flour on the countertop. Her voice is just a little too casual, which makes me think she either already knew this, or she’s trying not to make a big deal about it so I’ll open up more.

“I do,” I admit with a little smile. “He’s…”

Home. He feels like home. And safe—secure. He’s always been that way for me.

“He’s pretty great,” I finally say. “And the woman whose house I watched—Maude?”

My mom nods.

“She’s actually his stepmother. That’s how we ran into each other again.”

It’s not technically a lie, though I’m inclined to think we would have run into each other eventually anyway. Lucky is a small town.

“Everything went okay there?” my mom says. “She’s back today, right?”

I shrug. “It was fine.” More or less. “She’s supposed to be back today. If I haven’t heard from her by the day after Christmas, I’ll call her.” Because I could see Maude being the kind of woman who tries to hold out on paying someone.

“That’s good,” my mom says absently. “Good, good. Here”—she taps me and holds out her hand—“pass me that ball of dough.”

We work more or less quietly for the next half hour, humming Christmas songs and chatting and sampling little bits of dough.

The doorbell finally rings when I’m halfway through cutting out the gingerbread-shaped batch and the reindeer batch is already in the oven.

And it’s stupid, the way my heart leaps. It’s just Jack. I might have a bit of a crush on him, but there’s no need for all these stupid butterflies to take flight. They can conduct themselves in a dignified manner, can’t they?

I quickly pull my apron over my head and glance down at my clothes—an off-white sweater and comfortable jeans. I look decent enough. So I run my fingers through my hair and then hurry to the front door, checking the clock on my phone as I do.

A smile tugs over my lips when I see the time: three minutes past noon.

The front door opens with a lurch when I turn the handle, the front wreath swaying and knocking gently, and for a second I just let myself look at the man in front of me.

There’s an expression on his face I haven’t seen much of—it’s nervous, almost, like he’s not quite sure what he’s doing here at my front door. His arms are tucked behind his back, and he’s dressed in a sweater and nice jeans.

He was born to wear sweaters. This one is emerald green, a striking color against the brown-black of his hair and his eyes. His skin is pale enough that he always seems to have a five o’clock shadow, and I find myself fighting the sudden urge to reach out and touch his jaw—to feel the sharp curve, to find out for myself if his skin is smoothly shaven or sandpaper rough.

Bad hands, I think as my fingers twitch. Behave yourselves.

“Well, well, well,” I say to Jack, letting my voice drawl the way his did when I got stuck in that stupid tree at Maude’s house. I fold my arms and lean against the door frame. “I seem to remember telling you that if you were late, you would be on my blacklist.”

He leans closer, and his nervous expression fades away, his eyes dancing with humor instead. “And when you said that, I remember thinking that you’re too much of a sweetheart to actually have a blacklist—no matter what you say. ”

I blink in surprise, thoroughly taken aback. “I?—”

But I break off when he produces a potted poinsettia from seemingly out of nowhere—he pulls it from behind his back and holds it up with a flourish.

“Ooh,” I say, looking at the velvety petals and the cellophane-wrapped pot. “Pretty. For me?”

“For your parents.”

I nod. “But—why?”

“I don’t even know,” he says, looking bemused. “An hour ago I just panicked that I didn’t have a gift for them. I snuck into the florist’s right before they were closing for the day.”

I slap my hand over my mouth to hide my laugh, but it doesn’t work; he raises one dark brow at me.

“Are you laughing at me, Princess?”

I clear my throat and arrange my facial expression into something more neutral. “I would never.” Then I step back and open the door wider. “Come in, esteemed holiday guest. And prepare yourself for a million questions.”

This doesn’t seem to faze him; if anything, he looks happy about the prospect, smiling broadly as he enters.

But I guess, looking at it from his perspective, answering a ton of questions would be nice. Because it means someone is present enough and cares enough to ask.

I want that for him—and maybe I want to be that for him, too, if he’ll let me.

“Jack!” my mother says, emerging into the entryway, her arms open. She folds him into a hug immediately, without asking, without warning, and for a second he’s clearly startled. His body freezes, his eyes popping wide—but a second later he relaxes, the tension draining out of his frame, and a genuine smile spreads over his face as he hugs my mom .

“Hi, Mrs. Partridge,” he says warmly as he wraps one arm around her, the other still holding the poinsettia.

“It’s so good to see you, sweetie,” she says, squeezing him tight. “But look how tall you’ve gotten! Have you grown?” She steps back, holding him at arms’ length and inspecting him. “You have. You’re taller!”

“Probably,” Jack says, nodding and smiling still. “I’m about six-two now. Here”—he holds out the flower—“I brought this for you.”

This goes over beautifully, of course, because Jack is nothing if not charming.

“Jack!” my dad says as he rounds the corner and sees us. He beams, his balding head reflecting the overhead light as he hurries forward. “Good to see you. It’s been a long time.”

They shake hands and begin chatting about What have you been up to and life lately and work and so on—and I have to say, Jack is a lot nicer to my parents than he is to me.

“I’m a nice person, Princess,” he says under his breath when I point this out. My parents have gone ahead of us, my mom hurrying back to check on the beeping oven, my dad heading to the dining room to place the poinsettia in some light. “And besides, I want them to like me.”

“What about me?” I say without thinking—and I wish I could take the words back, because we’re supposed to be keeping things friendly.

But Jack doesn’t mind at all; he shoots me a grin and lowers his voice. “You already like me?—”

“All right,” I cut him off loudly, and his grin widens, his eyes full of laughter. “Should we go over a list of appropriate friend behavior?” I say.

He clears his throat and nods, a mock-serious expression on his face. “Hit me with it. ”

I hold up one finger. “No flirting,” I say. “No touching, no teasing. And no—” My words die as my eyes find the mistletoe hanging over the door frame; I revive them and spit them out. “No thinking about those things, either.”

“Ah,” Jack says softly, slowing to a stop. “That’s one promise I can’t make, Stella girl.” He’s too close, and his expression as he looks down at me is too much —too warm, too knowing, too everything, and he smells too good, too familiar.

I could step into him, wrap my arms around him, and it would be heaven. He would be warm and solid and steady?—

My stomach flips pleasantly, my heart flutters, but I push those feelings away. “Try,” I say. “Or else…take me on a date.”

It’s the first time I’ve been so direct with my feelings, and my fluttering heart flutters a little harder. But I’m tired of beating around the bush. If I ask him out, he can reject me if he wants—but at least that way I’ll know, and I won’t have to keep thinking about it. I don’t have much patience for games or frustrating in-betweens.

I see his eyes widen the tiniest bit, see him open his mouth to respond?—

But then my mother pokes her head around the corner, a bright smile on her face, and Jack’s mouth snaps shut again.

“Come help me in the kitchen, you two,” she says, beckoning with her hand. She disappears again, and although Jack and I glance at each other?—

The moment is gone.