The Thief Who Saved Christmas

Chapter 36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

ANABELLE

Life-shaking revelations: 1

I’d expected something like this. I’d decided it was either theft or drugs. I always assume people are watching me for a reaction I don’t know how to give, but this time I know Ryan’s waiting for me to react. And he obviously thinks I’m going to react poorly or pull away from him, so I keep rubbing his back softly, my face pressed to his neck.

His clothes smell stale, but he still smells like Ryan.

When I don’t try to leave, he continues, “I…I was a dumb kid, and I wanted to get my brother and me out of our foster home, so I started pickpocketing people when I was thirteen. I wanted to get enough cash for us to find our own place. It was stupid. But I tried stealing from the wrong guy, and after he roughed me up, he offered to teach me how to properly rob people. He hired Jake and me. I was dumb in school, and I’d never been good at much of anything besides getting into trouble, so it felt good to have someone take an interest. It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t because he liked us and wanted to help us. It was because—”

“Because you were twins,” I say, my heart hurting for him and his brother. I remember what it was to be thirteen and misunderstood. My middle school was so much bigger than my elementary school, full of people I didn’t know, and so loud and smelly and overwhelming that I used to fake stomachaches in the hopes my parents wouldn’t make me go in. They always did.

“He was using you,” I add, hating this man I’ve never met.

“He was,” Ryan agrees, speaking the words into my hair. “I was an idiot.”

“Stop calling yourself that.” I pull back enough to look at him, because he needs to know how serious I am about this. How unwilling I am to listen to anyone call him names, even if it’s himself. “You’re not an idiot. You’re not dumb. You’re not any of those things.”

“You may change your mind about that.”

“I won’t,” I insist, wrapping my hands more tightly around him and burrowing my face into his neck. I can feel his pulse beating fast, and I press a kiss to the pulse point.

“I was good at picking locks,” he says after a moment. “It’s the only real talent I’ve ever had.”

“That’s not true,” I insist, speaking into his neck. “You’re a wonderful cook and a better friend. And you’re very good at…pleasuring me.”

“Anabelle,” he says, his voice low and husky. “God…” I can feel his body responding to the feeling of me wrapped around him. “I…”

I want him. I want him so badly, but I sense he’ll never fully be mine if he doesn’t tell me his story. “I didn’t mean to get us off track. Tell me more.”

He pauses a beat, composing himself, then says, “I wanted to believe it was okay, what we were doing for him, because we were only taking things from rich people. They would hardly miss them, and it was steady work, even if he only paid us a fraction of what he paid himself. And he was…” His pulse is racing along faster, and I know whatever he’s going to say next will hurt him. I rub his back and kiss him once, twice, five times, and finally he breathes out and says, “I fooled myself into thinking he was…you know…my dad. That he cared about me and was proud of me. I told myself it was no different than helping out with a family business.”

I kiss his brow and run my hands through his hair, needing the softness to anchor me as much as I want to give him comfort. I’ve spent the last month wondering what his story is and dreading it, but now that he’s finally telling me, my greatest concern is making him feel loved. What he’s sharing isn’t any worse than what my anxious whirlwind of an imagination has already conjured.

“It was his watch you got rid of,” I realize, having pieced together the clues. “Your boss’s.”

He nods against me.

“And what happened with your brother?”

He’s quiet for so long that I wonder if he’s talked himself out. I do that all the time and wouldn’t hold it against him. But finally he says, “Last year, Roark asked my brother to steal an antique watch from someone. Jake got cold feet. He liked the guy who owned it too much, and it had sentimental value for the man. But we didn’t have the kind of job you could just walk away from. So I took the watch for Jake, and my brother couldn’t forgive me for it. He cut me off and quit the business.”

I shift in his lap, earning a groan from him before he flexes his hand against my shirt and then slips it under. His palm presses to my skin.

“I’d treasured that dumb watch my boss had given me,” he continues. “It had seemed like proof that he gave a shit, you know? But he obviously didn’t. So I tried to give it back to Roark out of spite, but he told me he didn’t want it. That he’d never liked it, and if I didn’t want it either, I could throw it away. So I did.”

I can tell the memory’s a bitter one, so I continue my ministrations, rubbing his back, pressing kisses to him.

He sighs and says, “By then, I wanted to quit too. I finally saw our boss for the man he really was. But he said he’d only leave Jake alone if I did exactly as he ordered.”

He’s shaking slightly, his breath quickening, and I know what he’s about to say. I’ve considered this too.

“He sent you here to steal my grandmother’s ornament,” I say softly, my hands still caressing him—his hair, his back, his firm chest through his clothes—while my legs encircle his waist.

“Anabelle,” he says, pulling away enough to look me in the eye. “How’d you…”

I smile at him. “Why else would you have come to The Crooked Quill by yourself under an assumed name?”

He gives me a half-hearted smile. “Right. You’re smarter than me.”

“Is it a problem that you were arrested? Will the police know it’s a fake ID?”

“I had my real ID on me. Roark always had us destroy our fake IDs after sending us somewhere.”

“So all I had to do was look in your wallet to learn your real last name?”

He shrugs, looking remorseful. “I should have told you. I was…ashamed. I wanted to leave the past behind, but you were right when you told me that’s impossible. I might not want to be Ryan Langston anymore, but he’ll always be a part of me.”

“Good. Because I love him too. I love all of the parts of you.”

“God, I really don’t deserve you.”

“We’re going to add that to the list of things you should stop staying.”

He holds my gaze. “I need you to know I didn’t steal the ornament. I couldn’t. I got to talking to your grandmother, and she told me about you and the inn and your parents. Hell, she told me the whole story of the ornament I’d been sent to take. She also told me she was dying. I decided I was going to leave in the night and face the music with Roark, but I went in to look at the ornament one last time. You know, one last look at the thing that was going to screw me. She caught me in there and knew I was up to something. I found myself telling her everything, Anabelle, and she…”

A couple of tears fall down his cheeks, and my whole heart belongs to him. To this man who only knew my grandmother for a day but loved her. To the boy he was, so lost and lonely and in need of human kindness that he let himself be taken in by a horrible man.

I lean in and kiss the tears away, tasting their salt, and look up into his golden eyes. “She gave it to you, didn’t she?”

Fresh tears fall from his eyes, and I squeeze my legs around him and hug him. “She did,” he says. “And I promised her I’d come back on December 1st.”

“You did.”

“No,” he says, pulling back to smile sheepishly at me. “I was tardy.”

I smile too, loving this symmetry between us. But I have one question left for him, perhaps the most important. “How’d you get away from that awful man, Ryan?”

“It’s a long story, but it comes down to this. He wasn’t going to let me leave. One of his enforcers, Javier, and I were good friends, and I got to know his other guy, Mike, too. I convinced them there was no reason we should keep getting paid peanuts when we were the ones who did all the work and took all the risks. So I helped them empty his stockroom full of stolen goods. I took the ornament and the antique watch that cost me my brother, which Roark hadn’t sold yet, and they kept everything else. I returned the watch to its rightful owner for Jake before I came here.”

“Are you sure Roark isn’t going to come after you?” I ask, instantly imagining the worst. A criminal, showing up at the B&B to kidnap Ryan.

“Yeah,” he says. “His operation had gotten a lot smaller by then. Javier and Mike were the only muscle he had left. Without them, without me and Jake, he’s just an old man without any respect for the law. Javier’s been keeping an eye on him, and it looks like he’s buying a place in the Caribbean.”

“He’s getting away with it,” I say with an aggrieved sniff. “That hardly seems fair.”

He nods. “But if he doesn’t get away with it, then neither do I. Or Jake. Or Javier. Maybe I don’t deserve to. I can make excuses for myself all I like, but I was a criminal, Anabelle.” He rubs his nose, looking so obviously miserable that I don’t need to ask him how he’s feeling. “And even though Cynthia’s dad seems like he’s a great lawyer, there’s a chance he won’t get me off. I got arrested a couple of times as a kid. I don’t know if the police have seen that yet. I wasn’t sure how much to tell Mr. Matthews.”

“Say anything you want to Cynth’s father, and then only share what he tells you it’s okay to say. Aren’t juvenile records sealed?”

“I don’t know anything about that. Or anything in general, it feels like.”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“We?” he asks, giving me a look that’s half puppy dog.

“ We ,” I insist firmly. “Now, as much as I love this Santa costume, let’s get you out of it and into the shower. You smell like a jail cell.”

“Oh shit, sorry.” He gently lifts me off to the side and then takes off his socks and shoes and gets up. The sight of his bare feet on my carpet makes me feel grounded, and I nearly laugh. I’m relieved, I realize. Relieved that it wasn’t worse, and that I, at least, find his past excusable. I have no doubt that a judge and a jury would feel differently, but I have no intention of letting him face a judge and a jury anytime soon.

I get up too and unfasten his Santa coat, running both of my hands up his powerful chest until I get to his thick arms. One push, and the oversized jacket falls to the ground, revealing more of him to me. But not enough.

“There’s my hot Santa,” I say, pressing my palms to him and looking up at him with a smile. Needing him to know that I’m still here, still all in. “Now, while I love that you wanted to protect me, I’m going to need you to keep your hands to yourself in the future. When it comes to defending my honor, that is. I definitely don’t want you to keep your hands to yourself when you’re alone with me.”

“I’m a mess,” he says, almost like he wants me to turn him out. Or maybe he’s just so certain it’s going to happen sometime that he wants to get ahead of it.

“So am I.”

“And I think I lost my job. Ada’s disappointed in me.”

“You’ll make it up to her.”

I unbutton his pants. Unzip them. He lets me undress him while I stay clothed. When I’m finished, he stands before me completely naked, his arousal jutting up toward me. But he doesn’t touch it, or me, or even himself. He’s just watching me. Waiting. Trusting me.

“You don’t want to touch me?” I ask.

His Adam’s apple bobs with his gulp. “I don’t trust myself to touch you right now.”

“ I trust you.”

“If you threw me out bare-ass naked in the cold, it would be no more than I deserve.”

“For defending my honor and being good to me and my friends? I hope you think better of me than that.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it, before saying quietly, “I think better of you than anyone else in the world. I’m damn lucky just to know you, and I would have felt that way even if you’d thrown me out.”

I take his hand, weaving my fingers through his rougher ones, and lead him into the en suite bathroom. Then I turn the shower on, letting it get warm, and remove my clothes, all while he watches me with as much interest as if I’d been wearing the red teddy instead of an old sweater.

Still, he doesn’t reach for me.

I test the water and find it warm, so I take a fresh cloth from the storage cabinet by the door and lead him into the updated shower stall with me. He’s overcome, which is something I understand all too well.

I don’t say anything in the shower. I just wet the cloth and lather it up and start to clean his body, leaning in to run my lips over his chest, his arms, and then lower down to trace his hardness with my tongue after I finish with the cloth.

His eyes are full of warm emotion as he lifts me to my feet and kisses my wet lips. “I don’t care that you’re too good for me. Does that mean I’m still an asshole?”

I don’t know if he’s talking to me or himself, but I decide to answer. “No. You’re not an asshole. You’re the man I love.”

I kiss him again and again, moaning into his mouth a little when his hand reaches between my legs, and moaning more loudly when he leans down to suck and kiss my breasts while his hand continues to caress me. His fingers dip inside, and suddenly it’s not at all enough.

“I want you to make love to me, Ryan. Now.”

He already knows I’m on birth control to help manage my cramps. He’s seen the packs in my room. I don’t want any more barriers between us, and I hope he feels the same way.

His eyes darken with desire, and he presses me against the wet wall of the shower. “Thank God.”