The Thief Who Saved Christmas

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

RYAN

I should be sainted for looking away from Anabelle Whitman’s tits. I got a enough of an eyeful to decide they’re perfect—Goldilocks would be blissed out, because they’re not too big, not too small, but exactly the right size for a handful of heaven. But I showed the restraint of a much stronger man and looked away from her as I all but shoved the sweater at her, a Christmas gift from an ex-girlfriend who’d told me I dressed like a high school dropout and needed all the help I could get. I’d pointed out that I was a high school dropout, something she hadn’t known, I guess, and she’d walked out on me. Left me with the sweater, though, and suddenly I have a new appreciation for it.

Anabelle looks softer in the big, oversized sweater, her eyes still those same baby-deer eyes I admired a year ago.

God, she’s pretty.

A can’t be touched kind of pretty, which, let’s be honest, makes her even prettier.

Some guy just came through the door—someone she knows, clearly—but now that I don’t need to look away from her anymore, it’s hard to want to. Especially when she’s wearing something that’s mine.

My first impression of Anabelle was that she’s a bit uptight. Nothing that’s happened in the last half hour has made me think otherwise, but that side of her is balanced by sweetness, like the cherry in an old-fashioned. That sweetness is reflected in those lovely light-brown eyes of hers and the satisfaction she takes in her Christmas decorations. And when she talks about her grandmother, it’s all around her, dancing on her skin and in her eyes, and in the slight curl of her hair—more than a wave but barely.

I’ll bet she was the valedictorian of her class, and made a heartfelt speech that pleased the adults in the audience and made the kids roll their eyes. I wouldn’t know what a speech like that would sound like, on account of the whole high-school-dropout thing, but I wish I could listen to Anabelle recite hers.

“Anabelle?” the newcomer repeats, and I finally turn to look at him.

The guy is a couple of inches taller than me but skinny, with blond hair that forms a widow’s peak at his forehead, shoes so shiny I could probably see my face in them, and a black overcoat. A peacoat, they call them.

He looks like he should speak with a British accent.

“Weston,” Anabelle says, her tone worried. She lets her sopping-wet blouse fall to the ground, and the cat rushes forward from behind the giant nutcracker in the corner and snatches it with his mouth.

“ Saint Nick ,” she hisses, and again, I feel a stab of protectiveness. She’s twisted into knots, overwhelmed. I can see it in the way her eyes are bouncing between the cat, who’s licking the chocolate-stained shirt like it’s catnip, and the guy in the peacoat, who’s watching her with horror. Like he thinks she just broke some ironclad law of manners.

“What on earth is going on?” he asks, with plenty of bite in his voice.

I make the split-second decision that I don’t like this guy one bit. Take Edith’s impression of him and add in his holier-than-thou attitude, and you get an asshole.

I stoop to grab the shirt from the cat. Dogs can’t eat chocolate. I know dick-all about cats, so it could be a four-legged-creature thing. But now I’m holding Anabelle’s soaked shirt, she’s in my sweater, and Weston is starting to look pissed off.

“Here,” I say, handing him her soaked shirt.

Better for him to be holding it, I guess.

He accepts it reflexively—and then drops it with an expression of distaste. The cat makes another go at it, so I pick it up again.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Anabelle says, swiping the soaked shirt from me.

“Were you drinking , Anabelle?” Weston’s gaze swings from me, to her, to the mug she’d promptly deposited back onto the desk. “It smells like Baileys in here.”

“Only a little.” She straightens the sweater self-consciously. “I spilled my hot chocolate all over the front of my blouse, and Ryan was kind enough to give me one of his sweaters so I didn’t have to walk up to my room sopping wet.”

He shifts his weight on his feet, his mouth turning down in disapproval. “You were drinking in front of guests?”

“She was drinking with me,” I say, because I don’t like the way he’s talking to her. Like she’s irresponsible and dumb, when anyone who’s met this woman must know she’s smarter than them, their smartest friend, and their smartest friend. “I’m a friend of Edith’s, and Anabelle just shared the bad news with me. It only felt natural to raise a toast to a great woman.”

Weston’s eyes narrow, and he shifts his feet again, drawing attention to his shiny shoes, which seem completely inappropriate for winter weather. “I take it you’re Ryan Reynolds.”

I lift my brow and glance at Anabelle. “My reputation precedes me.”

She’s worrying at the sleeves of my sweater, and I have to smile at the sight of her dressed in something of mine while her asshole boyfriend glowers at us.

“I told you I’d been expecting you,” she explains, her gaze apologetic, as if she thinks this guy’s poor attitude is anyone’s fault but his own. “Grandma wrote about you in her last letter to me. It was a mystery, and I like solving mysteries. So I told Weston and my friend Jo.”

I could point out that all she’d needed to do to solve the mystery was open the note, but this is another sweet thing about Anabelle: she clearly wouldn’t have. I’ll bet she would have kept it safe and sealed even if the world had been on the brink of ending.

“Well, mystery solved,” Weston says flatly. “Why don’t you get changed, Belle? I’ll wait down here.”

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“It’s a surprise.” His tone is terse, his jaw tense. I’ll bet she’s in for a barrel of fun.

“I’m working,” she objects. “Hot Chocolate Happy Hour is at five.”

His lips thin. “It seems to me you’ve already had it.”

Dick.

“And you told me that no one showed up for it yesterday.”

Double dick.

“I’ll be going to Hot Chocolate Happy Hour today,” I say. “And for the foreseeable future.”

Weston glares at me like I’m a bug he’d like to grind slowly to death beneath his shoe. As if I give a shit. He’s more important than me, obviously. He’s richer than me, no question. But if it came down to a battle of wills, of man versus man, I know I’m the one who’d crush him.

We have a stare-off for an enjoyable minute, before Anabelle surprises me by glancing her fingertips off my arm. “Tomorrow,” she says, her voice pitched low. “We’ll have it tomorrow. Weston’s right. We already had our happy hour today.”

I don’t like it. I don’t want to send her off with this dick, but then again, he is her boyfriend, and I’m just the man who lent her a sweater and made her feel sad about her grandmother.

“Sounds good,” I tell her before nodding to him. “Lovely to meet you, Weston. Or do you go by Westie?”

“Weston,” he replies in a pissed-off tone.

Fair enough.

“I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. I’m going to be staying at the inn indefinitely.”

His jaw tightens further, to the point where the muscle probably wants to pop and crackle. “Oh? What do you do?”

“I don’t think people should be defined by what they do for a living,” I tell him. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

A bullshit answer, to be sure, but he’s not the kind of man I want knowing I’m a former criminal. I head up the stairs, and to my surprise Anabelle walks beside me while Weston waits below.

When I give her a sidelong glance on the stairs, she explains, “My room. It’s next to yours.”

Well, mother of God. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. I’m not sure if it’s good news or bad, but it’s definitely something.

I look at her one last time before entering my room. She’s swimming in my sweater, the bottom hem covering her ass, and something twists inside of my chest.

The power of suggestion, I’m guessing.

I shake it off and say, “I’ll be seeing you, Anabelle.”

She nods and thankfully doesn’t seem displeased.

When I get inside the room and close the door, I smile at the tinsel tree in the corner, decorated with Santa hats and jingle bells. The Anabelle Effect doesn’t last long, though, because the news she gave me in the parlor was like a kick right to the ’nads. I sit down hard on the closest of the two beds, my elbows finding my knees, my hands finding my hair.

Fuck. Fucking fuckity shit balls fucky-fucker.

I can’t believe Grandma Edith is gone.

In none of the thousands of times I’d imagined how my return to The Crooked Quill would go down had this possibility entered into it.

Which is dumb considering she flat-out told me she had three years at most.

You believe what you want to believe, Ryan, I can almost hear Jake telling me. Always have.

I’d cared about that old woman.

Maybe it sounds impossible for her to have mattered so much to me after one night, but she did. She made me feel like I could be more than what I was.

I pull my hair with my hands, resisting the urge to let out a primal shout that would probably freak out Anabelle, her cat, her prick of a boyfriend, and every Christmas-loving tourist burrowed into the inn.

Shrugging off my leather bag, I unzip it and withdraw the hard case nestled inside. Then I open it, revealing the ornament. The overhead light plays with the crystals embedded in the glass, as if the damn thing’s happy to be home.

Grandma Edith will never get to see it now. She’ll never know what I did to get it back to her…

Truth is, I’ve spent the last year trying to be the man Edith Whitman thought I could be. Most of the time, I’ve failed spectacularly. But I can be like a bulldog when I latch on to an idea, and I’d latched on to the idea of becoming a man she would be proud to call her friend and Jake would again be proud to call his brother.

The result?

It’s been a bumpy road, but I finally broken ties with my boss, Roark, a couple of months ago. I convinced Javier and his buddy, Roark’s other muscle, to do the same, and together we’d stolen back some of the valuable things he’d taken from other people.

Javier and his friend, the unfortunately nicknamed Bad Mike, took most of the haul to sell, but first I rescued two things: the watch that led to my falling-out with my brother and the ornament that rightfully belonged to Grandma Edith.

Is Roark feeling vengeful?

Probably.

But without his muscle or Jake and me, he’s just an old man. Too old for the game he was playing. Besides, while he might want to stab me in the back, he’d have to find me first, and he would never look for me here. Only an idiot would return to the scene of a crime.

It’s a well-known fact that I am an idiot, but my former boss thinks everyone is as mercenary as he is. He’d never dream of giving away what could be sold. So he’ll assume I want to sell, same as Javier and Bad Mike are doing.

So if he’s looking for us, it’ll be on the dark web.

I get the sense that, like Bad Mike, Javier isn’t looking to go clean, but I don’t hold it against him. He’s a buddy of many years’ standing, which he’s proven many times over. Like when he helped me track down my brother, who had indeed left New York City.

Jake is living near Asheville, North Carolina now, and he’s got himself a girlfriend and a job.

He has a whole life that doesn’t involve me, and for all I know, he’d like to keep it that way.

Maybe I should let him.

I have his phone number, but I haven’t dialed it yet. He doesn’t have mine, because all I have with me is my junk phone. I guess he could email me, and maybe he has, but I haven’t checked the account. Can’t bring myself to, in case there’s nothing there.

I’ve changed, but a voice in my head suggests it’s not enough.

I pick up the box and run my fingers gently over the spikes of the sweetgum ornament. They bite.

Part of me wants to head downstairs, hang the ornament on Anabelle’s tree beneath the flat stares of over a hundred Santas, and be done with this place.

I’d promised to return, and I did. With the ornament, no less. Most people would agree that I’ve fulfilled my duty, done and dusted. I can leave Williamsburg so I can start figuring out what the hell a retired criminal with zero skills at anything else can do with his life.

I can get over myself and visit my brother.

But then there’s the letter…

Setting the ornament aside, I tug the note out of my pocket again, my gaze running over Edith’s perfect penmanship.

Dear Ryan,

Unfortunately, if you’re reading this, I didn’t make it. Believe me, I tried. I wanted to greet you here with some hot chocolate and hear your story. I imagine it would be an entertaining one. But our plans mean little to the universe, and mine, alas, will not come to pass.

I know you came back, Ryan. I have faith that you’re sitting in my parlor, reading this note. Inside of you, there’s a man of honor, of integrity. I might not have been able to see clearly through my eyes, but I’ve always counted myself an excellent judge of a person’s character.

Which brings me to my next point.

You have your own life, your own plans, I am sure. But I’m asking you for a favor, dear boy.

Anabelle is in trouble. She’s still with Weston, the heel, and I’m worried she’ll stay with him. I’m also concerned she’ll be in over her head with running the inn alone, if she has chosen to keep it open.

I’m begging you, boy. Stay until Christmas. I believe you two can help each other. I’m praying for it.

Until we meet again.

Yours,

Grandma Edith

It’s a hard thing to toss away someone’s dying wish.

I tell myself that’s why I’m going to stay, not because I have a crush on Anabelle Whitman.

Romancing Edith’s lovely granddaughter would be a shitty way of repaying her kindness. I’m tempted anyway, which is probably why I don’t think I’ve changed enough to present myself to my brother.