Leslie Kelly – Wicked Christmas Nights: It Happened One Christmas (страница 23)

The very idea made him sick. And violence surged up within him when he so much as thought Jude’s name.

But now it was time to think about something else. Making sure she was okay and felt safe, for one. Wondering what the hell had happened with his life in the past twelve hours for another.

Nah, he’d think about that tomorrow.

“Here we are,” he said when he pulled up outside the tiny rental house where he lived. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was a place of his own—a place nobody had helped him get. He didn’t love the location, but he loved not feeling like he owed anything to anybody. Especially his father.

“I can’t tell you how much I…”

“Forget it,” he said, waving off her thank you. Probably her twentieth since they’d left her place.

Reaching into the tiny back compartment of the truck, he grabbed her small suitcase and her camera bag, then got out, going around to open her door. She didn’t wait, hopping out before he had made it around the bumper. “What a cute house!”

He raised a brow. “Seriously?”

“Sure. You have a yard and everything. I can’t tell you how much I miss backyard barbecues in the summer.”

“The last tenant left a grill. Maybe I’ll cook up some burgers tomorrow.”

She laughed. “In the snow?”

“You call this snow? Yeesh. Until you’ve experienced a lake effects winter, you don’t know the meaning of snow.”

“I have,” she told him. “I grew up in Chicago.”

Shocked, he almost tripped. “Seriously?” The woman he had begun to suspect was the girl of his dreams had grown up in the same city, and he’d never even been aware of her? That seemed wrong on some cosmic level.

“Uh huh. And even the thought of that windy winter reminds me why I’ll never go back.”

His heart twisted a little at that admission, but he pushed aside the disappointment. “Yeah, I can’t say I’m missing it right now, either.”

“Do you think you’ll ever go back?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Actually he didn’t just think it, he knew it. One of these days, he was going to have to return and face up to his responsibilities. His father wasn’t getting any younger, or any healthier, and not one of his sisters showed any interest in construction.

Ross, on the other hand, genuinely loved it. He’d had a toy tool set as a kid, had built his first birdhouse at four. By the time he was ten, he had constructed a four-story Barbie house for his kid sister. He just had a real affinity for building things, and had never wanted to do anything else. Some even called it a gift.

Going away to college, then to grad school, and learning drafting and architecture had just made him better at his craft. More than that, he truly wanted to run the company one day, as his grandfather and now his father always said he would.

He just didn’t want to be forced to work there under his father’s watchful eye now. Having spent every summer and school holiday building things for Elite Construction, and knowing he’d end up doing that for much of his life, he just wanted some time to himself. To be free, to go somewhere new, to be totally on his own. That wasn’t too much to ask, was it?

Well, it was according to his father.

“Ross?”

Realizing he’d fallen into a morose silence, he shook his head, hard. “Hold on a sec,” he told her, going to the back of his covered truck to retrieve the robotic dinosaur and the bags of presents he’d been supposed to mail today. He’d told Lucy about them on the way home, and she’d promised to help him package them up tonight, then find a UPS store tomorrow.

Once inside, he flipped on the lights, and zoned-in on the thermostat. No, this wasn’t a Chicago winter, but it was still pretty damn cold. Plus the house was old and drafty.

He jacked up the heat, then turned back to Lucy, who looked a lot less shell-shocked than she had when they’d left the city. He didn’t try to hide his relief, glad for that strong, resilient streak he’d sensed in her from the moment they’d met.

Right now, she acted as though she didn’t have a care in the world. In fact, she was wandering around, comfortable enough to be nosy and check out the house. “Oh, my God, is that really a lava lamp?”

“Like the grill, also left by a former tenant. As was the couch and the ugly kitchen table.”

Lucky for him. After laying out cash for a security deposit, plus first and last month’s rent, he hadn’t had much money for furnishings.

Kinda funny, really, how he was living now. He’d been raised in a house with ten bedrooms on twenty acres. His sisters had each had a horse in the stable, and he’d had his choice of car when he’d turned sixteen. He hadn’t necessarily been born with a solid silver spoon in his mouth, but it would have to be called silver-plated.

And now he lived in a drafty, tiny old house with hand-me-down furniture and an old analog TV that got only one station, and that only if there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He drove a five-year-old truck whose payments were still enough to make him wince once a month. Ate boxed mac-and-cheese and Ramen noodles, the way a lot of the scholarship kids in college had.

Most shocking of all? He liked it.

You do this and you’re on your own, totally cut off! Don’t expect a penny from me!

His father’s angry voice echoed in his head. But so did an answering whisper: But I did it anyway, didn’t I? And I’m doing just fine.

“What about the bean bag chair?” Lucy asked, interrupting his thoughts of the angry scene last summer, right after graduation, when he’d decided not to move back home.

He admitted, “What can I say? I bought that one. It seemed to go with the decor.”

“Lemme guess…thrift store shopping spree?”

“Bingo.” Shrugging, he added, “I was on a budget.”

“I think my groovy, peace-sign Santa would fit in very well here.”

“Don’t even think about pawning that thing off on me. Even if it weren’t broken, I wouldn’t let that drugged-out St. Nick and those zombie-kids anywhere near my Christmas tree. It might lose all its needles in pure fear.”

She finally noticed the small tree, standing in the front corner near the window. Her smile faded a little, as if she’d suddenly remembered it was Christmas Eve, albeit very early on Christmas Eve—only about 1:00 a.m.

It was a sad-looking thing. He’d bought it on impulse—it had been the last one on a lot up the block, scrawny and short, with half its needles already gone. It had reminded him of Charlie Brown’s tree…in need of a home. So he’d shelled out the ten bucks and brought it here, sticking it in a bucket since he didn’t have a tree stand.

Nor had he had any real ornaments to put on it. Right now, an empty aluminum pot-pie tin served as a star on the top, and a bunch of picture hangers and odds-and-ends hung from the few branches.

As she stared at the pathetic thing, Lucy’s sadness appeared to fade. She shook her head, a slow, reluctant smile widening her pretty mouth. “Are those beer can tabs?”

“Just a few,” he admitted. “I was experimenting. I’m not a big drinker, so I only had a few cans in the fridge. I finally raided my toolbox.”

Putting a hand on her hip and tilting her head, she said, “And you had the nerve to criticize my Christmas decorations?”

“Hey, mine’s pathetic, not terrifying.”

“My snow globe from last year wasn’t terrifying.”

“Oh, no? Let me guess. A tiny female elf wearing pasties and a G-string?”

Her eyes rounded. “Ooh, that sounds fabulous! But, no, it was just a North Pole scene.”

He crossed his arms, waiting.

“With a clown that popped out of Santa’s chimney like a Jack-in-the-Box.”

Shuddering, he said, “Clowns are terrifying. What’s wrong with Jack?”

“Why would a Jack-in-the-Box be in Santa’s chimney?”

“Why would a clown?”

“Well, that’s the point,” she said, laughing at the ridiculous conversation. “None of it makes any sense!”

“Which makes it perfect to you and your brother. Merry Christmas to the Scrooge siblings.”

“Exactly!”

Liking that her good mood was back, he asked, “Hey, are you hungry? I’ve got frozen pizza, frozen bagels, frozen burgers… .”

“Typical single guy menu, huh?”

“Yep. Oh, if you want some wine, I think I have a box in the back of the fridge.”

She snickered.

“It was a housewarming gift from a neighbor.”

One pretty brow went up. “Oh? Not a basket of muffins?”