Colorado Christmas Magic

by Caitlin McKenna

  And what about Jack? Would it mean his arrival at the Carrolls’ B&B was truly a coincidence? How depressing. It was ironic to think that she felt more secure about their relationship when she believed a magic mailbox brought him to her, than knowing they happened to be in the same place at the same time. It was simply fate versus chance. But which one would win? Which one would decide her future with Jack?

  Chapter Eighteen

  With hot drinks in hand, Jack and Charley strolled down the street together in comfortable silence. He’d voiced his theory to her, which was solid, except for one thing. Why had Tony Braca been invited to St. Nicholas? He could see how the captain’s brother would be targeted for his newly acquired money, but what was the angle on Braca? Jack needed to pay Felicity and Nolan a visit to get some answers, and he’d need to do it soon. But for now, he’d enjoy investigating the mailbox connection while spending time with Charley.

  “My car’s right over there if you’re still up for a stakeout,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee.

  “Absolutely. You might call me a stakeout geek now, if there is such a thing. It’s exciting to think about who we might catch.”

  And she just made me fall for her even more, he thought as they reached his car.

  “I see you parked closer tonight.”

  “Just a little. We still don’t want to be detected.” He opened the car door for her. “Besides, I’ve brought extra ammunition.”

  Her eyes sparkled with anticipation. “What?”

  He waggled his eyebrows as he closed her door. He then circled around to the driver’s side and climbed in. “I attached an audio bug to the bottom of the mailbox.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Now we can hear any movement occurring near the mailbox, even if we can’t see it.” He dialed the number that connected to the transmitter.

  A huge grin took over her face. “When did you set this up?”

  “Before I found you at the diner.” He tapped the speaker icon on his phone, and the rustling sound of pine trees moving in the wind filled the car.

  “This is so cool.” She laughed. “We’re like spies.”

  “That’s the idea. Hey, can you grab the binoculars out of the glove box?”

  She popped the latch and handed them over.

  “Tonight, we’ve got great eyes and ears.” He surveyed the mailbox through the binoculars, adjusting the focus. “This guy’s all but caught.”

  The two suddenly heard footsteps in the distance. Charley’s eyes expanded in suspense. “Which direction is he coming from?”

  Jack homed in on the mailbox. “I can’t tell, but he’s definitely moving toward us.”

  They stared at the mailbox, neither saying a word. The footsteps got louder, closer—

  A sharp knock on Charley’s window had her jumping with a yelp. She whipped around to find Angel holding up a takeout bag. Jack turned on the car to roll down the window.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Angel said. “I just got off my shift and thought you might like a couple slices of hot apple pie.”

  “That’s so sweet of you.” Charley took the takeout bag from her. “Thank you, Angel.”

  Jack leaned over the armrest. “How did you know we were here?”

  “You think you’re the first ones to come up with the Santa Stakeout?” She erupted with a short laugh. “Oh, please.”

  “Just how many stakeouts have there been?” Charley asked.

  “Too many to count.”

  Charley slumped with a disappointed sigh.

  Jack felt a little deflated too. If Angel had assumed they were on a stakeout, the guy collecting the Scrooge suggestions might also assume that. “Has anyone been successful?”

  “Every single one of them.” She raised a brow and flashed them an enigmatic smile before walking away.

  “I don’t think she was referring to past stakeouts,” he said.

  “No, I don’t think she was.”

  Their eyes met, both sensing something was happening between them, but then a car door slammed behind them. Jack banged his head against the headrest, irritated by the interruption as Charley let out a big sigh.

  Resigning himself to work, he raised the binoculars, surveying the mailbox and its surroundings.

  Charley sat back and sipped her tea. “See anything unusual?”

  “Not yet.” He handed them over so she could take a look for herself. “It’s colder tonight, which means fewer people will be out walking. Hopefully, that will cut down on the number of false alarms.” He watched her concentrating on the mailbox, looking fascinated with what they were doing.

  She lowered the binoculars and caught him staring. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He scratched his nose.

  “The look on your face was more than nothing.”

  Man, she knows how to read me already. “I can’t get over how genuinely interested you are in all of this.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Just the opposite. It’s one more thing we have in common.”

  Her eyes gleamed with an intensity he remembered in high school. “I guess it is.”

  He wanted more time with her than one week—to know if it was possible, if they were possible—but the days were going by too fast. If anyone was losing interest in stakeouts, it was him. “Time for pie?”

  “What?” She laughed, lowering the binoculars. “You want pie now?” Her eyes ran over his body. “Where could you possibly put it?”

  “There’s always room for pie.”

  She let out a resigned huff before she rummaged around in the takeout bag for plastic utensils. “You seriously need to give me the details of your workout routine because if I keep eating like this, I’m going to need it.”

  “What are you talking about?” His eyes brazenly ran over her. “You’re in perfect shape.”

  “And I have to make several food sacrifices to keep it. You, apparently, can eat whatever you want.”

  “It’s not like I eat doughnuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

  “Ha-ha.” She handed him one of the takeout containers with a set of plastic utensils. “I can’t eat them at all.”

  When he opened the container, the aroma of cinnamon and apples filled the air. He popped open the bag holding the plastic utensils, pulled out a fork and dug in. “Wow.”

  Charley could no longer resist and tasted it for herself. “So good.”

  He scooped up another forkful, froze, then scrambled for his binoculars.

  “What?” Charley sat up on alert. “Did you hear something?”

  “No.” He scanned the area. “I just thought the pie might have been a planned distraction.”

  Charley gasped. “Is it?”

  “All clear.” He started eating again but kept his attention on Charley. “So, why have you been pinned as a Scrooge?”

  “Not exactly sure. Probably my lack of enthusiasm for the holiday season.”

  He could relate and assumed it might be from losing her mom. Even though he’d only spent one Christmas with Charley, he remembered how much she was into it. She’d be listening to Christmas carols every time he came over after school. He helped her decorate her family’s tree right after Thanksgiving. It had been difficult at first, but she had been so cheerful and excited about the placement of every ornament that she helped him remember what it was like before his uncle went missing.

  “Did you shut out Christmas after your mom passed away?”

  “I wanted to, but she left me and my dad Christmas letters and requests to carry on our traditions. We ended up finding comfort in Christmas because of her.”

  “That’s beautiful.”

  “It was,” she said with a pensive look on her face. “But then my dad moved, I got busy with work, and, well, my last few Christmases haven’t exactly been in the top ten.
”

  “Top twenty?”

  She washed down a bite of pie with a sip of tea. “Not even on the list.”

  “That bad?”

  She shrugged. “I keep falling for guys who like to leave at Christmas.”

  He hadn’t expected that answer and regretted pushing her. “You mean they went out of town because they were too cheap to buy you a Christmas present?” he joked, giving her an out.

  “I never thought of that. Maybe that’s why my ex-fiancé chose Christmas Eve to break up with me.” She closed up her pie container and set it aside.

  Jack immediately despised her ex for hurting her. “Nice guy,” he said, putting a filter on his words. He watched her carefully, wondering how much she’d open up about it. “I can see why you might view the Christmas season differently.” The distant look in her eyes told him she was reliving the breakup in her head.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She let out a noisy breath. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said softly, and a small smile touched the corners of her mouth.

  She briefly made eye contact, then stared out the window. “Hunter and I had been engaged for five months. We were good together—except for when it came to our friends. He didn’t care for a few of my girlfriends, and to be honest, I thought one of his buddies was a jerk.”

  “What did you do about it?”

  “I suggested we try to meet couples in order to have more mutual friends.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Good. I was surprised how fast we hit it off with two couples in particular. The six of us joked that someday a TV show would be made based on our friendship.”

  Jack smiled, picturing it. He and Charley had had a whole group of mutual friends. He assumed they would end up being lifelong friends. Of course, that was before his dad moved him to Denver.

  “Hunter wanted us to host a small dinner party for our friends on Christmas Eve. Since I was getting off work at noon, we decided to have it at my apartment, and he said he’d be there around three. At four, I left a message on his cell. By five, I still hadn’t heard from him. I left more messages, sent texts. I was getting really worried, thinking something horrible had happened to him.”

  “That wasn’t like him—to not answer you?” Jack asked in his typical detective fashion.

  “Not at all.”

  “I can see why you were concerned.”

  “I remember how I kept looking out the window, getting more worried by the minute. Finally, at six, right when everybody was about to arrive, he called. He was fine, but he sounded distant. He told me he needed to work late.”

  “What?” Jack couldn’t hide his shocked reaction. “He didn’t think to call earlier?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “What does he do for a living?”

  “He’s a financial advisor, and I get it. My dad’s in the business. I know there are sometimes last-minute client needs that require working late. But it was Christmas Eve. The markets were closed, and the working-late-again excuse kept happening with Hunter more frequently.”

  “Did you ask him why he didn’t answer your previous texts or voice messages?”

  “Yes, but he wouldn’t say. He actually got defensive. When he heard how disappointed I was, he went off on me, like I was the bad guy—as if I didn’t have the right to be upset. He was the one who scared me half to death. He was the one who invited our friends over, but I was the one who had cooked and cleaned for hours and was expected to make excuses for him not showing.”

  “You know, that type of behavior is consistent with someone who’s hiding something,” he had to tell her, even though he assumed she already knew.

  “I figured as much, but I didn’t want to believe it.” She stared at her hands. “Hunter finally showed up around eleven that night. Everyone had left, and I was cleaning up. He simply said the wedding was off. No reason, no warning.” She got quiet for a moment as though she were trying to collect herself. “I can only assume there was someone else in the picture, but I don’t know for sure. To this day, I have no idea what happened.”

  Like with his uncle’s disappearance. It was the worst feeling to carry every day—the not knowing. “I’m sorry, Charley. When life comes at you so quickly and throws you for a loop, it’s hard to catch your breath.”

  “That’s exactly how I felt. I thought I had good instincts about people. Apparently, I don’t.”

  “You have very good instincts. Don’t question that. In my line of work, I can tell you that when the heart gets involved, the brain ignores a lot.”

  She blew out a quick breath. “Isn’t that the truth.” She stared out the window, probably trying to get Hunter and the pain of what happened out of her head. “Still, it bothers me that I didn’t see it. It’s not like I ignored one thing and then another. I felt like I was completely blindsided.”

  “I’ve been there, but I bet if I asked you specific questions about him, you’d see it. You’d start seeing a pattern of behavior you hadn’t focused on before.”

  “Like what?”

  “Take your girlfriends for example. Are they still your friends?”

  “Of course. I’ve always had a close-knit group of friends.”

  “I remember.” He nodded. “Even in high school you had a knack for choosing loyal, trustworthy friends who respected you, were there for you, and didn’t play games.”

  “They were and still are,” she said. “Hunter had actually suggested, more than once, that it was time I give them up. He said having six girlfriends was too many. How ridiculous is that?”

  “Sounds like he was jealous.”

  “There was no reason to be. He always came first, and my friends treated Hunter with respect, even though he couldn’t give them the same courtesy.”

  “Why couldn’t he appreciate the honest, loyal bond you shared with them?”

  She shook her head, mulling it over, and then she focused intently on him. “Because he wasn’t loyal and couldn’t be honest with me?”

  “Fits the pattern.”

  “I can’t believe I never made that connection,” she said, sounding surprised.

  “It’s easier to see the situation when you’re not directly involved.”

  “Not everyone has that ability.”

  He shrugged. “It’s pretty easy to listen.”

  “And yet so many don’t.”

  Her gaze wasn’t wavering from his. He wanted to lean over and kiss her but knew it would be poor timing. The best thing about their past relationship had been their friendship, and he wasn’t going to jeopardize that now.

  He took her hand in his. “I want you to know that I’ll always be there for you.”

  Her eyes moistened. “That means so much to me, Jack. Thank you.”

  * * *

  After such an intense conversation, Charley offered to do a coffee run. She couldn’t believe how comfortable she’d been telling Jack about her ex-fiancé, and how he so easily saw the problem. How had she gone from being attracted to such a great guy like Jack to picking out a selfish man like Hunter? Jack was being kind when he told her she was a good judge of character. When it came to her romantic relationships, insecurity had somehow taken over, clouding her ability to read a situation correctly, and without knowing what exactly caused her to become so insecure, she knew she could easily be blindsided again.

  The barista called her name, and Charley picked up her drinks at the counter. As she turned to go, she caught sight of two teenagers sitting quietly in the corner. The girl was crying and the boy put his arm around her, trying to comfort her.

  “It’s not forever, and we’ll FaceTime every day,” he said. “I promise.”

  Charley knew exactly how the poor girl felt, and to have a separation happen at Christm
as made it all the worse. The boy must have sensed her staring at them because he glared at her and pulled his girlfriend closer. Charley gave the boy an apologetic nod and hurried out the door, realizing she had been intruding on their private moment.

  As she walked to the car, she thought of those teens, and it took more than a moment to shake it off before she got back inside the SUV.

  “Any developments?” she asked, handing over the straight black coffee to Jack.

  “Nothing yet.” He offered her the binoculars. “You know, I don’t think you told me your theory about this place.”

  She stared at the mailbox. “Before my plane landed in Denver, I had decided, like you, that the legend was nothing more than a tourists’ trap. But now...” She lowered the binoculars and eyed Jack. “The people here are down-to-earth, decent folks who genuinely care about everyone, even strangers. And though I can’t quite buy into the Scrooge Legend, where Santa’s in charge and uses a magical mailbox for communication, I do feel many locals want to help visitors rediscover the true meaning of Christmas.”

  “They definitely nailed the atmosphere.” He turned toward her, studying her.

  “What?”

  “Just trying to connect the dots between the legend, the Scrooge invitations, the swift attitude adjustments, and the reported life-changing events. According to the legend, you’ll have a change of heart strictly by being in St. Nicholas for one short week. That’s a high bar—the time crunch is bad enough, but what about the town itself? For someone like you who’s only known big-city life, isn’t St. Nicholas too quaint to have an impact on you?”

  “I think that’s the point. Because St. Nicholas moves at a snail’s pace, I keep finding myself analyzing my life instead of being glued to my phone.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and gazed out the window. “It’s funny. When I’m so busy that I constantly have to multitask, I don’t have time to think about how I feel. Do I enjoy my job? Do I like where I’m living? Do I want to be with the person I’m dating? Back home, I sometimes find myself just trying to get through the day.”

  “I understand that feeling very well,” he said. “How do you feel here?”