The Thief Who Saved Christmas

Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

ANABELLE

Guests with fake names: 1

I feel a wave of sympathy for this tardy stranger. Late or not, he must have cared for my grandmother. I’ll have to share the news with him—a thought that fills my stomach with sick dread.

“Are you Ryan?” I ask.

There’s a look of abject shock on his face, as if he can’t quite believe what’s happening.

Right. I may know who he is, but he has no idea who I am.

I set down Saint Nick and rise from my chair.

“My grandmother told me someone would be coming,” I explain, stepping out from behind the desk. “I’d assumed it wouldn’t be Ryan Reynolds the celebrity.”

Saint Nick gets to our guest first, and to my surprise, he hisses at Ryan, his stripy orange fur puffing up like he’s seen his arch-nemesis cat, Fiddlesticks, from three houses down. “Oh goodness…he’s never like this with anyone.”

Saint Nick bats at Ryan with claws extended, getting in a few good swipes, much to my horror. Those claws of doom hurt, but he usually only whips them out at bathtime.

“Lucky me,” Ryan mutters, retreating a step toward the door.

His voice is a bit rough but still smooth—like the fine-grade sandpaper I use on some of the old things I make new.

I swoop down and grab my cat, who yowls in protest, his fur standing up like he’s a puffer fish.

A line appears between Ryan’s eyebrows. “Where’s your grandmother?”

I take a deep breath. “Let’s go sit in the parlor for a moment.”

Something hardens in his gaze, and I know he knows. A gasp of air escapes me, because I understand the pain he’s feeling. It’s been sitting on my shoulders for weeks, making itself at home in my stiff muscles and dry eyes.

“Behave,” I whisper into Saint Nick’s furry ear and then set him down again.

He slinks away and then dashes behind the human-sized wooden nutcracker doll that stands guard behind my desk, but not before glaring at Ryan over his shoulder.

I slip the sealed envelope from the top of Grandma Edith’s desk into the pocket of my cardigan and lead Ryan into the parlor. He brings his bag with him.

I’ve tried to create an inviting and fun atmosphere, but I’ve only had a couple of guests come down to Hot Chocolate Happy Hour, held each day at 5 p.m., to enjoy hot chocolate from the carafe on the credenza, seasoned with some of the liqueurs stored beneath it. My grandmother always kept hot chocolate for guests at this time of year. It’s the little things, Belle , she’d say with a grin.

In the summer, she served sweet tea. Hot chocolate in the winter. Sometimes warm spiced cider in the fall. My memories of my childhood all seem to be organized around which drink was being served at the inn, a thought that makes me smile.

“Wow,” Ryan says as we walk in, his head swiveling as if it’s on one of those selfie sticks. “You’ve…made some changes.”

I can’t read the expression on his face, but his tone suggests he finds the changes off-putting. My personal Santa collection now lives in the parlor. All one hundred and seven of my merry men, an army of stuffed, stone, wood, plastic, and otherwise crafted Santas. Many of them are vintage, rescued from estate sales or bargain bins. Several of them are worth quite a bit of money, although none, of course, are as valuable as the starburst ornament that Grandma Edith gave away to a fellow collector to “spite” my father. Dad’s word.

Grandma Edith informed him about her dispensation of the ornament at the end of February, after she told everyone about her terminal diagnosis. Because, of course, my father being my father, the ornament was the first thing he asked about. He now goes to every advertised estate sale in the hope that he’ll find it and whoever took it has no idea of its true worth.

I try not to get offended by Ryan’s reaction to my Santas. He’s hardly the only one to have a knee-jerk reaction to my collection. But there’s no denying the cards are stacking up against this mysterious Ryan Reynolds. First, he’s a day late. Second, my sweet cat hates him. This is the third strike against him.

I give an aggrieved sniff. “It’s a renowned collection. They’ve been written up in House decorations are lovely.

As usual, I have failed to please anyone.

“No,” Ryan says quickly. “It’s just…this was an important place for me. Your grandma and I spent last Christmas together. Well. Sort of.”

“You did?” I ask in disbelief as Saint Nick sits directly on top of my foot.

Grandma Edith had told me she’d spent Christmas with a friend, but I’d assumed she meant Cynthia, and she’d never corrected me.

Ryan’s jaw stiffens, but he nods at me. “I stayed at the B&B last Christmas Eve. Your grandma and I got to talking. She was quite the lady.” He angles his head slightly, his eyes scanning my face. “You were at your ex-boyfriend’s, I think.”

“Current boyfriend.”

“Ah, okay. Congratulations.”

I rub my nose, feeling a pinch of self-consciousness. Being in a relationship with Weston doesn’t feel like a cause for celebration. He’s just…Weston.

Jo tells me this is not the way a person is supposed to feel about their significant other. I’ve argued it’s natural for some apathy to slip in after over a year of dating. She contends that it is natural…in the twilight of a relationship.

I suspect she has a point, but everything in my life has changed over the past few months, and the thought of altering my life further makes me want to curl into a ball.

“You must’ve been together awhile now, huh?” Ryan says as if he can read my thoughts. Or maybe it’s my face he’s reading.

Grandma Edith was great at reading faces. She’d know if someone was hungry or hangry or just mean, all by looking at their expression. It seems like an impossible art to me—a face is only a collection of shapes, after all—but her guesses were almost unfailingly accurate.

“Yes, for over a year.”

“And is he good to you, Anabelle?” he asks, leaning slightly over the desk, his tone low and intimate. His eyes are tawny, almost like the coloring of Saint Nick’s, and for half a second, I feel myself leaning in toward him.

Which infuriates me even more than the impertinent question. My spine stiffens. “That, Mr. Reynolds , is none of your business.”

I pick up a pen so I have something to do with my hands—and somewhere else to put my eyes. “I’ve reserved Room B for you. Grandma Edith said that’s where she put you last time. How long would you like to stay?”

“Indefinitely.”

I drop the pen and look into his golden eyes.

“Don’t you have something to get back to? A job? Family?”

He flinches. “No. I’ve got nothing.”

“Do you have the money to pay?” I ask, then immediately regret it. It was an impertinent question. It’s just…people come here on vacation. They don’t stay indefinitely. They definitely don’t stay forever. “Uh…my grandmother said you might want to pay with cash when you leave.”

He chuckles deep in his throat. “I do, yeah. I’m taking…a sabbatical, I guess you could call it, from my regularly scheduled life.”

Frustratingly, he doesn’t offer an explanation for the strange arrangement. A weeks’ long stay would mean a lot of cash.

I take in a slow breath and blow it out. “I feel morally obligated to point out that there are cheaper lodgings if you’re staying for an extended period of time. No one ever stays here for longer than a week.”

“So maybe I’ll be the first.”

I study him for a second, smiling without really knowing why, before saying, “Well, you don’t have nothing anymore. You have Room B, indefinitely . That’s something.”

His eyes twinkle beneath those long lashes. “Lucky me.”

I retrieve Ryan’s key and give it to him, trying not to notice the brush of his skin against mine as he takes it. “Here’s your key.”

“My question about your boyfriend pissed you off,” he observes, studying my face.

“Yes,” I reply, surprised that he’s bringing it up. I’d decided to be a good sport and sweep it under the rug, but I won’t lie in response to a direct question.

“I’m sorry. I’m not very good at saying what I should say when I should say it.”

His honesty startles me into laughter. “That makes two of us, Ryan Reynolds.”

It occurs to me that he’s here under an assumed name and has said he’s staying indefinitely. Is he famous? He’s not the Ryan Reynolds, obviously, but he could be someone else I should recognize.

But I’m bad at recognizing people. So even if the real Ryan Reynolds stepped through my door, I probably wouldn’t know it.

I realize I’ve been staring again, absorbing the shape of his nose, including a little bump which might have been a break at some point, the small scar beneath his mouth, and the cluster of gold around his pupils. At some point, Saint Nick must have freed himself from my foot, but I don’t have any idea where he went.

I absentmindedly reach for my hot chocolate and lift it for a sip—and spill it all over the front of my emerald-green blouse, purchased for me by Weston’s mother. The drink’s not hot, thankfully, but it will stain.

“Oh cripes,” I say, just as Ryan says, “Oh, fuck.”

He looks around, as if he thinks an absorbent towel might be waiting on my desk, and then unzips his bag and tugs out a huge blue sweater and presses it into my hand.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the sweater, so I stand there like a deer caught in the headlights, clutching Ryan’s remarkably soft sweater to my belly while the soaked blouse clings to my skin. The air is full of the scent of chocolate and Baileys. It’s like someone pressed pause on the moment, because I feel incapacitated by the sensation of the wet fabric slicked against me.

“You can use it to wipe off your chest,” Ryan says, his voice a bit lower than before. He’s averting his gaze, staring at the little Christmas elf that sits on the corner of my desk. Which is when I realize my blouse is clinging to my chest in a suggestive way, plastered to the front of my bra. It’s obscene. “Please,” he adds.

“I can’t do that to your sweater!” I sound offended on the sweater’s behalf.

His lips twitch, but he doesn’t look at me. “The color won’t matter. It’s already dark. Or you can put it on over the shirt.”

Suddenly flushed, I insist, “I won’t ruin your sweater.”

“I want you to.” His lips curl into a nearly there smile. “I don’t like the person who gave it to me, so you’d be doing me a favor. You can keep it.”

He’s obviously in no hurry to leave, and it would be rude to give him a flat-out no, and I really, really want to get out of my wet shirt. I need to, to be honest.

“Thank you,” I say. “Of course I won’t keep it, but I would appreciate borrowing it.”

I pull his sweater over my head and down my waist, keeping my arms inside so I can quickly unbutton the sopping wet shirt. I start to pull the blouse off through the neckline, which is loose. The whole thing is loose, because Ryan’s a broad man with big shoulders. And his sweater smells amazing —like Smokey the Bear threw some cloves into a forest fire in an effort to stifle them.

I hear the bell over the entry door chiming just as I finish pulling the original shirt loose.

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

If guests thought I was unprofessional before, what will they think now that I’m performing a soaked-shirt striptease in the lobby?

I don’t know what to do with the dirty blouse, so I keep it in my hand as I turn to face the newcomer.

“Anabelle?” Weston says, his tone shocked.