Holiday Hostage

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

“ T hank you, Mr. Jenkins, I appreciate all your help.” My hands are clasped in a white-knuckled grip to prevent myself from wringing them like an old dish towel, contradicting the smile I’m flashing at the assistant branch manager of Harmony Savings and Loan. “You have no idea how much this means to me. There’s no way I could save Grammy’s bakery without it.”

Because it sure as hell isn’t going to be my baking that saves the day.

And that truth is almost as hard to swallow as the burnt banana-nut bread still lining the shelves at Sweet Treats and Savory Eats. I may have inherited my grammy’s apron and the business she grew out of her kitchen into a storefront on Main Street in the heart of Harmony, but the one thing I did not inherit was her ability to bake.

“That’s, er…umm. That’s not exactly…” Mr. Jenkins wedges his index finger between his neck and the collar of his pale blue dress shirt. He tugs as if the starch is too stiff and the buttons are too tight like he’s slowly being strangled to death in his business casual.

Not . Key word there. Just like it had been when he gave me the bank’s answer thirty seconds ago.

My smile falters. I feel the muscles in my face slacken as my brain catches up to what’s happening and what Mr. Jenkins just said. I wasn’t approved. I did not get the loan. My heart and stomach drop—much like the center of the sheet cake I pulled out of the oven before heading to the bank this morning.

“I was denied the loan?” Disappointment—not disbelief—alters the tone of my voice, shifting the words into a question rather than the statement I meant them to be.

Eartha Kitt’s sultry voice carries across the lobby through the thin glass walls of Jenkins’s small office as she attempts to seduce Santa and secure all the gifts on her Christmas list. Is it too late to write a holiday wish list and get it to the North Pole? Not that it matters. The odds of Jolly ole St. Nicholas stuffing my stocking full of money are as good as getting me the line of credit.

Besides, even if the big guy did exist, he’d swap that cash for coal the second he took a bite of one of my cookies.

“I’m sorry, Laiken. There’s just too much risk and not enough reward.” Mr. Jenkins slid a small stack of papers into a manila envelope with my name printed on a label stuck to the tab.

“It’s a bakery, not a hedge fund.” My arms wrap instinctively around my middle to soothe myself and my upset stomach, to stop myself from projectile vomiting all the emotions I choked down with each bite of the casseroles I reheated since Gram’s death. “I just need a little help to turn things around. With a little marketing and an online sales system, I know I can do that.”

I also need a new baker.

Somehow, I don’t think admitting that to Mr. Jenkins will help change the underwriter’s mind about denying me the line of credit. If I’m honest, my checking account balance and my life are about as upside down as a pineapple cake.

“I really am sorry, Laiken. I know how much that bakery meant to your grandmother.” His smile is soft and sympathetic, which makes me feel even more pathetic. “My wife got my birthday cake from that bakery every year. Best Black Forest cake I’ve ever had. I’m going to miss that tradition.”

I’m just going to miss her.

Another carol over the speaker system assaults my ears. Ugh. I yank my red wool scarf off the back of the chair I’d been sitting in and loop it around my neck.

Fa la la la la, my ass. Cram that bough of holly right up your…

Mr. Jenkins’s slack-jawed smile and wide-eyed expression stares me in the face. I didn’t realize I said that out loud. So much for holiday cheer. The only thing I’ll be decking the halls with this year is disappointment.

I swipe away the tears tracking down my cheeks with the back of my hand. After thanking Mr. Jenkins for his time, I gather what’s left of my self-respect and push to my feet. It’s official. I’ve hit rock bottom.

If not for the sound of gunshots cutting through Sinatra’s “White Christmas,” I might have been able to hear the universe ask me to hold their eggnog.

“No heroes and no one gets hurt,” shouts a man wearing a black balaclava face mask with an anatomically correct white skull airbrushed on it. He orders everyone to lie face down on the floor with their hands above their heads. “That goes for you too, princess.”

Two other men wearing the same skull masks as their partner descend on the teller line and instruct the bank employees behind the counter to leave any dye packs or marked bills in their cash drawers and empty the rest.

“You’re not going to give us any trouble, are you, princess?” the gunman in charge of crowd control asks. It takes a second for my brain to process that he’s speaking to me.

“Me? Trouble?” I squeak out the words. My hands are up, palms out and level with my ears, but I’m still standing, frozen to the spot for some inexplicable reason.

Glacial-blue eyes peer out at me from behind the mask, piercing through the fear coursing through my veins and straight into my soul. I should be terrified. I am terrified, but there is something about how this guy looks at me. A fire burns in the depths of those icy blues, making me believe he doesn’t want to hurt me. Not really.

“On your knees, princess.” His deep voice is authoritative, and under different circumstances, I would have found it sexy as sin. But sex fantasies are not the reason I comply. The gunman’s attention remains fixed on me, watching as I get down on my knees before him, staring at him from my position on the floor. His voice drops to a gravelly whisper. One I’m not sure he means for me to hear. “Fuck me.”

He glances back at his partners, then a tactical-style watch with a matte black finish and its timer running strapped to his wrist. “One minute forty seconds. How are we doing, boys?”

“Vault’s open,” one of his partners calls out from the other side of the bank. “A minute fifteen before we start hearing sirens.”

“On their best day,” taunts a third voice, this one a little distant, muffled by the reinforced walls surrounding the vault. “Worst day and we’ve still got two and a half.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not stupid. We planned it based on best response times and are sticking to it.” The second man’s voice fades a little as he joins his partner in the vault.

“It’s almost over, princess.” The gunman cocks his head to one side, his eyes narrowing as he looms over me. “We’re not going to hurt you. Shit. Don’t cry.”

“I’m not crying.” Except I am.

I’m practically sobbing. With a sniffle, I rub my cheek against my shoulder to wipe away some of my tears. It stems the tide for a second, but a fresh wave flows over my bottom lashes and soaks my cheeks.

I have no idea what it is about this guy and his glacier-blue eyes—he’s a damned bank robber, for crying out loud—but with one look from him, everything comes pouring out. He gets the condensed version of my literal sob story. The guy’s on a time limit after all.

From Grammy’s death to meeting with her lawyer about her will and inheriting the bakery with absolutely no clue how to bake to meeting with the accountant and inheriting all the debt that came with it to my last-ditch effort to save my grandmother’s legacy.

“Which brings us to how I ended up in the stupid bank in the first place to get a loan. Mr. Jenkins broke the bad news the bank was turning me down right before you came in to rob it. Merry Christmas to me, right? At least someone is walking out of here today with the money they came in for.” My shoulders quake with another sob.

Mr. Jenkins rolls his eyes in their sockets even though looking up at me from his prone position on the floor is hard. Despite his wide, bulging eyes and left cheek squished against the marble floor tile, the what-in-the-hell-is-the-matter-with-you look on his face is pretty clear.

“I’m sorry,” I said, meeting Mr. Jenkins’s gaze of shock with one of my own. What the hell is the matter with me? “Apparently I’m an oversharer when being held at gunpoint.”

“Technically, I’d have to be aiming the gun at you for it to be at gunpoint,” the bank robber muttered with an amused tone in his voice.

He bends down and brushes the back of his hand across my cheek, wiping my tears. When I flinch under his touch, his hand slides along my jaw, fingertips slipping into my hair. He tightens his grip and tips my head up, forcing me to look him in the eyes. Those penetrating blue eyes. “I told you, princess, no one is going to hurt you. I promise.”

Sirens wail in the distance and force his attention away from me.

“Shit. Sounds like the Harmony Police Department has their shit together today after all. Wrap it up, boys.”

The sirens grow louder, and from what I can tell, there are more of them. More than our small town can afford on its shrinking tax revenue and budget cuts. Someone must have triggered a silent alarm system.

“Somebody set off the alarm,” the blue-eyed bank robber calls out to his partners, coming to the same conclusion as me about the police’s quick arrival. “My money’s on the dream-crushing stiff suit over here.”

Mr. Jenkins whimpers when a steel-toed boot nudges his ribs.

“The cops aren’t going to let us just walk out of here,” the last man out of the vault says as he crosses the lobby and drops a black backpack beside two identical packs.

“Of course they are.” A different crew member turns toward us and nods at the blue-eyed gunman. “Given the right incentive, they’ll do whatever the hell we say. Grab a partner. It’s couples only on the dance floor.”

“Are you out of your goddamn mind? We’re not taking hostages,” the third gunman barks out, arguing with his partner.

“I didn’t survive that fucking desert just to get shot up and bleed out in a bank in some bullshit backwater town.” The robber slings the strap of what looks like one of those assault rifles that have been all over the news across his shoulder, securing the gun at his back, and pulls a handgun from a holster strapped to his thigh.

He cocks the weapon and orders one of the bank tellers, Lynne or Lindsey or some L name like that, over to his side. She's crying, shaking her head, but follows orders because the one thing I assume everyone in this bank—myself included—has in common with the gunman is that we don’t want to die today.

“Let’s go, princess.” Blue eyes flicks his left wrist, his fingers still gripped around the gun in his hand, and motions toward the door. “Looks like you and I are dance partners.”

I pause a beat, waiting for Mr. Jenkins to object or offer himself up as a hostage instead of me in some chivalrous act like in the movies. Not because he’s a swoon-worthy leading man that, according to some Hollywood blockbuster script, I’ll have a happily ever after with, but just because it seems like the right thing to do.

Of course, if things happened simply because they were the right thing to do, I would have been approved for the stupid loan.

“Really?” I ask, glaring at Mr. Jenkins as I push myself to my feet. I mean, he could have at least pretended to object to my being taken hostage. “I think it’s time I find a new bank. I’ll be closing my accounts. If I make it out of this alive, that is.”

The gunman shakes his head and laughs. His eyes crinkle at the corners, evidence of a smile hidden beneath his mask. I’m glad one of us finds this situation amusing. Me? I’m scared out of my damn mind, but I can’t help feeling the tiniest bit of satisfaction for having been the one to make Mr. Tall, Dark, and Dangerous smile.

He wastes no time swatting the butterflies fluttering inside my stomach when he snakes his muscular arm around my waist. He jerks my body flush against his and presses his gun to my head.