Christmas Confidential (8 page)

Heat flared, scorching her cheeks, as she resettled in her seat. Lord, if she opened the door, she could probably melt all the snow within a ten-foot radius. “I didn’t—”

“I’m going to. Just not now. Not here.”

Not now, not here, not ever.
“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” she said with a sniff.

“It’s on my Christmas wish list.”

“Yeah, well, good luck with that.”

“I don’t need luck. Santa never disappoints those who truly believe, and I do.”

And life never disappointed those who were smart enough not to believe. If she never hoped for anything, then she could never be disappointed.

But try as she might to pretend she’d run out of hope twelve years ago, she was kidding herself. She had high hopes for this visit with Sophy. She hoped Oliver and Chloe would welcome her back into their lives. She hoped somewhere in their hearts they remembered her and their mom. She hoped she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life alone.

What was hoping for one little kiss compared to all of that?

Chapter 4

D
ean figured out an alternative route on state highways, hoping to get on the interstate at the next access some forty miles away. After stowing the map, this time between the driver’s seat and the console, he dug in the rear seat again for a bottle of water and a bag of chips, then shifted into gear and pulled back onto the highway.

Thanks to the pileup on the interstate, the two-lane road had heavier traffic than was usual, but the increased volume kept the road pretty clear of snow, so he didn’t have to concentrate totally on driving.

Which meant he could think about Miri and how good she smelled and how close they’d been. He should have kissed her while he’d had the chance. It had been a long time since he’d kissed anyone besides his mother.

Fifteen or sixteen months.

Since his last date with Miri.

He forced his fingers to loosen their grip on the steering wheel as the realization settled in his gut. He’d gone out with a few women since her arrest, but he hadn’t kissed even one of them. Hadn’t thought about it. Sure as hell hadn’t thought about having sex with them.

Of course, he’d been busy. The embezzlement hadn’t been his only case, and after tying that up, it had been Christmas, then New Year’s and old cases, new cases, life in general. It hadn’t been any kind of obligation to Miri—or worse, commitment—that kept him celibate. Just some dates a man got lucky, some he didn’t and some he didn’t want to.

Deliberately he shifted to a safer course of thought. The dually that had almost hit them had been the same one he’d seen at the motel. Was it coincidence, or did it mean something?

The rational voice in his head said of course it meant something: that the vehicle had been traveling east on I-20 with them. That the men had stopped for the night at the motel, just like them. That they’d continued their trip in the same direction, just like him and Miri. It couldn’t mean anything else. He hadn’t told anyone he’d made contact with her or that he’d be traveling with her. His policy was to not bother clients with little details unless they insisted on it, and Mr. Smith didn’t. He trusted Dean to do his job well without guidance.

Still, coincidences bothered him, even though life was full of them.

“You said three sisters and two husbands. Did one of your sisters get divorced?”

Miri’s voice startled him. She was so good at being quiet that it took him a moment to grasp that she was actually initiating conversation. “Bette’s in the process. Her husband ran off last summer with the nanny, who was all of twenty. I offered to fly up and smash his face in, but she settled for hiring the best divorce lawyer in Chicago instead.”

“Good for her.” After a pause, she added, “Lucky for you.”

He scowled, but his heart wasn’t in it. “The guy
sucker punched
me. You know, I’ve won most of the fights I’ve been in.”

“You certainly won ours.”

“What we had wasn’t a fight, Miriam. It was a relationship.”

“Until you brought the police to arrest me.”

Something hot prickled along his neck. He wouldn’t feel guilty about doing his job, damn it. “You said you didn’t hold that against me.”

“I don’t. I just wish...”

After a moment’s silence, he coaxed, “What? Tell Santa’s helper and maybe, if you’ve been a good girl, he’ll make it come true.”

Her fingers worked the bear’s fur, in contrast to the wry smile she gave him. “I was good enough for the Department of Corrections to let me go.” Then she gave him a measuring look. “You’re kind of big to be an elf, aren’t you?”

“Not all of Santa’s helpers are elves.” His grin was as good-natured as he could make it. “I’ve never put on tights and curly-toed shoes, but my sisters bullied me into donning the red suit and beard a couple of times. Scared the hell out of my nieces and nephews. I swear, the baby girls recognized my scent or something because to this day, those two are wary around me.”

“Smart girls.”

“The other five girls and the two boys love me,” he protested, slowing to follow the line of cars ahead of them onto a northbound road. If he’d read the map correctly, this road would eventually turn east and lead them right back to the interstate. Or he could just follow the other drivers.

“Your family’s really heavy on the girl gene, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, but I’m planning on having at least a couple of boys. No matter how many girls it takes to get them.”

“You have someone in mind for doing the actual
having?
”

It was stupid and juvenile, but the image that popped into his head immediately was Miri, surrounded by little boys, all black-haired and blue-eyed like him and beautiful like her. Tough like her, too. And, of course, charming like him.

When he didn’t answer, she laughed drily. “Yeah, it’s kind of hard to have that kind of relationship when you start out the first date with the multiple-babies/boys thing, isn’t it?”

Consider yourself warned,
he thought, then wasn’t sure if he was talking to himself or her.

The squeak of the wipers drew his attention to the fact that the snow had stopped. He turned them to the low setting to keep the windshield clean of splashing from the traffic before asking, “What about your family? All girls or mostly boys?”

Apparently in sudden need of a lukewarm drink, she leaned into the back for a bottle of water and a candy bar. When she’d taken a swig, she tore open the plastic wrapper on the candy but didn’t take a bite. “Three girls, one boy.”

Wow, more information that I didn’t have to pry out with a crowbar. It’s my lucky day, considering my car almost ended up in a ditch.
“Let me guess. You’re the oldest.”

“I am.”

“What about their kids?”

The look that crossed her face showed him the true meaning of
bittersweet
. It was haunting and sad and full of love and sorrow, and it made him want to wrap his arms around her and make everything all right, at least for the moment.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been in touch with them for a long time.”

Long
was relative. A couple of years? Five? Ten? Had she left home at the first chance she’d gotten? Had her parents kicked her out? Had she done something to cause them to break off contact with her? Not likely, if she’d been caring for her sick mother.

But the mother had died. Maybe Miri had no longer felt needed. Maybe things had been bad between her and her father. Maybe the grief had driven her to someplace new.

There was so much he didn’t know about her. So much he wanted to know.

“Sorry.” It was a meaningless word that made him wish for something else to say, but if the right thing was in his brain, he couldn’t locate it.

“Yeah, well, you know what they say. Stuff happens.”

He grinned again. “You must not be from Texas, because around here, we don’t say ‘stuff.’” He hesitated. Another personal question might make her shut up again, but she’d started it, right? And he doubted she would volunteer much, if anything, without his asking. “Where are you from?”

The wipers swiped slowly left, back to the right, then left again before a small shiver rippled through her. “North Carolina.”

His breathing automatically grew shallow, as if a full inhalation might startle her. “You don’t sound like a Tar Heel.” Though accents could be lost, learned or faked. He knew that from work experience.

“I left there a long time ago.”

Long
again. Relative, again. “You’re only thirty. How long could it have been?”

His breathing might be shallow. Hers was heavy and weary. “Twelve years. And enough with the questions.”

She’d left home at eighteen, most likely on her own. What had happened to her sisters and brother? Did they wonder where their big sister had gone? Did they care? Did they even remember her?

That desire to hold her tight intensified, but he settled for gripping the steering wheel. If he tried to touch her, she would probably withdraw, because no matter what she said, she did blame him for her arrest.

He understood that. He just wished she understood that he hadn’t had a choice. It just wasn’t in him to ignore a crime. His duty to Mr. Smith and his own sense of honor had required him to do the right thing.

But if they’d met under different circumstances, if Mr. Smith had never hired him or she’d never been tempted by her boss’s fortune...

Maybe that should go on his Christmas wish list, but changing the past was impossible, even for the big guy with the elves.

“So how do we talk if I can’t ask questions?”

Her eyes narrowed, fine lines wrinkling her forehead. “We don’t have to talk. We could just be quiet and enjoy the scenery.”

“What scenery? It’s gray, dreary, the snow is turning to slush, my car’s getting dirty and we’re following a bunch of other dirty cars.”

“We’re not sitting on the side of the road waiting for state troopers and wreckers while you whine over the damage to your precious car.”

“Yeah. Good point.” He tried to be quiet. He really did. But that just wasn’t in him either. Not even six minutes had passed, according to his watch, before he asked, “Are you going to North Carolina after we get to Atlanta?”

She finally took a bite of the candy bar she’d torn open earlier, more to delay responding than from hunger, he’d bet. After swallowing that, she rested the stuffed bear on her feet, then shrugged out of her coat and tossed it into the backseat, picked up the bear again and—finally—answered with a question of her own. “It’s not the keep-having-babies-until-you-get-boys thing that’s keeping you single, is it? You just talk until women run away screaming, desperate for some quiet.”

“I can make women scream. But trust me, Miriam—” he smiled smugly “—it’s got nothing to do with talking.”

* * *

I’m not a screamer.

Miri kept the retort inside—knowing Dean, he’d take it as a challenge and, knowing herself, he’d prove her wrong—and, with exaggerated patience, answered one more of his questions. “No, I’m not going to North Carolina.”
Yet.
“Where I am going has nothing to do with the money.”
Liar.
“What I am planning to do at this moment is take a nap. Is that allowed?”

His expression was petulant—put-on, she suspected, like a lot of his arrogance. Not to say that he didn’t come by his smugness naturally. Just that he was overdoing it. She couldn’t help but wonder why.

“How can you need a nap? You slept like a baby last night.”

“How can you know that? You slept like a rock.”

His gaze flashed to her, pleasure making his baby blues sparkle. “You watched me sleep?”

Not “watched.”
She just happened to have been lying on her right side when she woke up, and he just happened to be in her line of sight, and the bathroom light he’d left on just happened to cast its dim glow on him.

And not for long.
Only long enough to want...

She was a grown, healthy woman who’d spent all but one of the past 433 days locked up with other women. She’d had sex. She’d liked it. It was only natural to want to have it again, though not necessarily with Dean. It was simply that he was the only man around, except for those two jerks at the bus station, and she most certainly didn’t want to have sex with two jerk strangers.

Did that mean Dean wasn’t a jerk? Or merely that he wasn’t a stranger?

She held up Boo and gestured toward the side window. “Can I take a nap?”

His reply was grudgingly given. “Yeah.” Then he tossed the black cap from the dash to her. “You might want to put this between it and the window so the condensation doesn’t get it wet.”

How sad was her life that his minor consideration for Boo touched her somewhere inside?

She tugged the cap over Boo’s head, completely covering his face, then rested the bear against the window and her head against the bear. The cap smelled of shampoo and... Surreptitiously she breathed deeper, but there was nothing else to smell.

Oh, she was even sadder than she’d thought, disappointed that a recently purchased hat Dean had worn for maybe thirty whole minutes didn’t retain some scent of him.

“What’s that thing stuffed with? I can hear it all the way over here.”

She closed her eyes and pretended to relax. “A lot of toy animals have stuffing that crinkles so the child can make noise with it. Besides, if you were as old as Boo, you’d be a little creaky, too.”

“I’m feeling older by the minute,” he murmured, but with every intention of her hearing.

She didn’t actually mean to go to sleep. Given the circumstances, she’d slept fairly well the night before. But the rhythmic
whick
of tires on pavement lulled her away.
Just for a minute.
But the next thing she recognized was the absence of that sound.

She opened her eyes, but one saw only blackness. Dean’s cap, she remembered groggily. Her face was smushed against Boo, no doubt leaving the weave’s imprint on the right side and making for a less than attractive squishiness on the left side. Raising her head, she yawned broadly, then looked around. “Where are we?”