Chapter Ten
It was the damn song.
He’d been doing great, having fun, starting to get into the whole holiday thing for the first time in recent memory. Every shop had carols playing, bells jingling. Every day the church bells rang with a song at high noon. He knew the lineup by heart. “Silent Night,” “The Carol of the Bells,” and “Away in a Manger.” The entire saloon was decked to high heaven and so was the whole danged town.
He had not thought, when he’d accepted the job offer via the net, and headed out here, that he was moving into Christmas central.
And yet, somehow it had been all right. Being with Sophie had made it all right.
Until they had to go and play that damned song.
He probably owed Sophie an apology for reacting to it the way he had. She’d just tried to do something nice for him.
Sophie. The thought of her hit the brakes on his racing thoughts. Her face hovered in his mind’s eye, and he relived those moments in his bedroom upstairs. That kiss. Holy Moses. And she’d been there for that. For him.
She was smart. A doctor, for crying out loud. He didn’t think of himself as an intellectual, really. He’d been a good soldier right up until he’d got himself blown up, and then after he’d recovered, he’d been a good cop, and later a good agent. Right now, he was a good PI-slash-bodyguard. He didn’t know if that was going to be forever, but he didn’t think so.
She was quirky, looking for reasons for everything, the way she was. Deep. Kind of spiritual. He liked it. He found that knowing it made him like her even more than he had before.
He was walking around outside the saloon. He’d gone out through the front doors, not the back, and he could see the parking lot was almost filled to capacity. He was on the job and shouldn’t shirk his duties, even if they weren’t the reason he’d truly been hired.
But he needed a break.
Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he paced past the parking lot and walked out into the grassy meadow beside it. The din of the band—which had wrapped up his song and started another—was almost non-existent there. The stars were blinking to life in the dark blue sky. The sun hadn’t been down long. It wasn’t full dark yet, but the air was cool enough that he could see his breath.
It cleared his head both literally and figuratively. Yeah. Okay, so he and Sophie had got off on the wrong foot. He hadn’t been honest with her, and she’d thought the worst. But things were out in the open now. Things were better now.
He didn’t know exactly what “things” he was referring to. He just knew he liked her. He liked her a lot.
But he didn’t think that “everything-happens-for-a-reason” bit was very logical. He’d almost been a father once. A teenage father, but a father, all the same. That had been taken away from him, and an IED had ensured the chance would never come again. He couldn’t for the life of him think of any reason for something like that.
He took one more breath of brisk fresh air, and thrusting his hands into his jeans’ pockets, started back. He didn’t know why he still let his oldest heartbreak get to him the way he did. He was usually fine, just…all this freaking Christmas. Man. It brought it all back.
He was almost to the door when he saw the guy in the hoodie. Same blue hoody underneath the same denim jacket. Same hunched-up posture. He was probably six two and skinny, and he was lurking around outside the saloon. Not on his way in or out, just hanging.
Darryl headed that way. “Hey. What are you doing out here?”
The guy jerked his head Darryl’s way and then took off at a run. That got Darryl’s blood pumping and he ran after him, vaguely aware of footsteps behind him. Then Sophie yelled, “Darryl, no. Leave him alone, he’s fine.”
He caught the guy by one shoulder, yanked him around so hard, he stumbled and fell on his ass. Then the stranger looked up at him, his hood falling back as he did. A shock of dark hair fell over his face, covering one eye. He was a kid. Just a kid.
Sophia grabbed his arm and yanked it away. “What do you think you’re doing, Darryl? Let him be!” Then she moved him out of the way, wedging herself between him and the kid, and reached down for the boy’s hand, helped him get up. “You okay? Did he hurt you?”
“I’m all right.”
The kid stood there in the glow of the parking lot lights. He had dark, thick lashes, midnight blue eyes, and a narrow face with cheekbones sculpted by a master. His expressive eyes darted from Sophia to Darryl and back again. He looked scared.
Darryl sighed. “This is the third time I’ve seen you lurking around this saloon, kid. “What are you up to?”
“Nothing,” he muttered, straightening his jacket around him and hunching into it. He couldn’t hold Darryl’s gaze.
“What’s your name?”
“None of your business. I was stupid to ever come here.” He shook his head, then just turned and took off running like an Olympic sprinter, and when Darryl lunged as if to go after him, Sophie stepped right in front of him so fast he bumped into her and caught her shoulders to keep one or both of them from falling over.
“Sophie, come on. He’s up to no good.”
“He’s a kid and he’s in trouble. Geeze, that’s the same one who was sleeping on the bench under the town Christmas tree, Darryl. How can you be so heartless?”
She gazed down the road where the kid had been swallowed up by the shadows. “I wanted to help him, but you scared him off, you bully.”
“Just a damn second here,” he said, blurting the words as fast as they came. They were almost blurting themselves. “I show up and you're suspicious I’m working for your drug dealer fiancé–”
“Ex-fiancé!”
“—and he shows up, starts lurking around everywhere you happen to be, and you want to help him?”
“He’s a child, Darryl.”
“He’s six-two, Sophie.”
She made a noise like she had a hunk of meat caught in her throat, spun on her heel and stomped back inside. “Come on,” she said. “We’re going to put a stop to this crap right now.” She strode across the parking lot, and after one last look in the direction the kid had fled, he followed. She marched through the outer doors and then through the batwings like a hurricane, then stomped through the entire saloon, catching each McIntyre cousin’s eye on the way.
She didn’t have to say anything. The fire in her gaze was enough. They all fell into the comet’s tail she was creating behind her. Her trajectory took them into Jason’s office, which wasn’t really built to house five.
“Close the door, Joey,” she said.
Joey closed it, looking from one of his brothers to the other. “Oh, hell. She knows, doesn’t she?”
“Looks that way,” Jason said, sending an angry glare at Darryl.
“I had to tell her. She thought I was working for the ex,” Darryl explained.
“What is it to you, what she thought?” Rob demanded.
Sophie hooked her pinkie fingers into her lips and gave a whistle that might’ve made their ears bleed. Darryl was tempted to check.
Everyone went silent and she said, “Now, be quiet and just listen. I came out here to get away from a controlling, secret-keeping man, and apparently, I landed myself right in the middle of a whole flock of them. I do not need protecting from wimpy, drunk-ass Skyler, and I certainly don’t need protecting from a poor, hungry, homeless teenage boy.”
“What teenage boy?” Jason asked. “There’s a hungry homeless boy in the mix someplace?”
“The hoody-wearing stalker,” Darryl explained.
She turned to face Jason. “Tell Darryl he’s fired, or I go back to your dad’s, pack my bags and head to New York.”
“Sophia–”
“Right after I tell Vidalia what you three did,” she added.
Jason tried to stay stoic, but Joey went kind of pale and started talking rapidly. “Look, okay, we get it. You’re a grownup and you don’t need protecting. But it turns out, we do need a bouncer.”
“Joey’s right,” Rob said. “We do need him.” Then he shifted his gaze to the man in question. “Darryl, your services to watch over our cousin are no longer needed. We’ll cash out on that before closing time, pay you what we owe—”
“I broke the contract by telling her the truth. I can’t take any money for that,” Darryl said.
The boys all exchanged a look that Sophia thought indicated respect for that decision. And then Jason said, “But we’d like to keep you on as head of security for as long as you’d like to stay in town.”
Darryl heaved a sigh. “I don’t know, guys.”
“Well, you gotta give us time to find a replacement at least,” Joey said. “Two weeks notice is the custom, isn’t it?”
“Not for a fake job.”
“It’s not a fake job,” Jason said. “We’ve got the paperwork. You signed on. You agreed to the terms.”
Sophia frowned at Jason and wanted to throttle him. Yes, she’d been holding her breath and willing Darryl to say he wanted to stay, but she wanted it to be his decision. And her cousins were twisting his arm.
And now he was looking at her as if for the answer. She wanted him to decide to stay, darn it all! Shrugging as if she didn’t care one way or the other, she said, “Stay on if you want, Darryl. But no more watching over me. And that goes for all of you. Got it?”
“Got it.” The three McIntyres said it in unison, and Sophie stared at Darryl, awaiting his agreement.
“Yeah. I’ve got it,” he said.
She nodded, turned and walked out of the office and back to the bar.
Darryl eyed the three brothers. “Guys, this kid she’s defending is almost a man, sixteen, maybe seventeen. Tall, skinny, wearing a blue hoodie and denim jacket—“
“I have noticed him hanging around,” Jason said.
Darryl nodded. “Yeah. Around Sophie. And I don’t like it.”
“Neither do I,” Jason said. “He might be working for her ex. And no matter what she says, that guy was bad news.”
“Most drug dealers are. You roll around with dogs, you’re gonna get fleas. I’d like to check this kid out,” Darryl said. “With your permission.”
Jason looked at his brothers. Joey grimaced and shook his head, and Rob just lowered his. “I think we’d best respect her wishes,” Jason said.
Darryl heaved a sigh. “Okay. All right. Still, I’m going to take you up on your offer to hang around a while longer. I’ll feel better if I do.”
“So…this is your two weeks’ notice?” Robert asked.
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
He was going to check the kid out on his own. Just in case. Because he’d seen men like the one Sophie’s ex before. Obsessed, controlling, incapable of letting go. What did she think good old Skyler would have done if he’d managed to kick her door in one of those times when he’d tried? She wasn’t afraid of him, she said. His gut told him that she should be.
And something inside him wouldn’t let him leave until he’d made damn sure she was safe.
Oklahoma Christmas Blues Page 19