12 Stocking Stuffers
Page 45
But that wasn’t the case. It had been years, and he still hadn’t quite gotten over her.
It wasn’t arrogance to know that he could have had any girl he wanted in Crescent Cove. Any girl but Angel, who never went anywhere without Jeffrey Hastings by her side. They would have been prom queen and king, he thought cynically. Childhood sweethearts, teenage steadies, the perfect marriage that had been preordained by the Fates.
A marriage that had shattered. He wondered why.
It wasn’t important. He hadn’t come back to Crescent Cove to relive old times; he’d come to lick his wounds and keep a low profile. Softhearted people would say he’d come to heal. More realistic ones would argue he’d come to hide.
In fact, the house on Black’s Point was one of the few things he had left, after the government got through with him. The penthouse apartment in New York, the house in Tahoe, the condo in Hawaii were all gone. As well as the cars, the money and any shred of reputation he might have once had.
And his brothers.
They’d wanted him to join them. They’d siphoned off enough of the money from Worldcomp to keep them very comfortable for the rest of their lives, while thousands of people had lost their life savings, pension plans had gone bankrupt and the very name of their company was becoming synonymous with corporate greed and treachery.
But he’d stayed. As only a junior partner, he stayed to face the music. Once his brothers had left the country he had no more allegiance to anything but the truth, ugly as it was. The Jackson brothers had ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars, covering up that the company was in desperate financial trouble, and they’d departed before it had all blown up in their faces. Leaving Brody behind with his inconvenient conscience.
They’d finished with him in Washington. He’d testified, answered questions, unearthed hidden records—and lost almost everything. He had the house in Vermont, an old Saab, ten thousand dollars and a law degree that he’d never used. And never would, given his reputation.
It was irrelevant that he hadn’t known what his brothers were doing. That was no excuse—it had happened on his watch and he counted it as his responsibility, while his brothers enjoyed life in the Cayman Islands.
He kicked the branches that Angel had cut. She certainly didn’t have much of an eye; these trees were sparse and spindly. He picked up the pair of clippers that had gone flying when he’d startled her and shoved them in his pocket. He’d have to find some way to return them, and the smart thing to do would be to avoid seeing her again.
He could pretend that he hadn’t known she was in Crescent Cove when he’d made up his mind where he’d go, but he’d never been very good at lying to himself. He’d known she was here—the Crescent Cove Chronicle kept a busy social page for such a tiny town—and her presence had been a dangerous lure he couldn’t resist.
He needed to resist it now, now that he’d come face-to-face with her. He hadn’t realized she’d had such an effect on him. Even with Jeff Hastings out of her life, she was still unfinished business, and he’d be wise to keep her that way, at least until he had a better idea of what he was going to do with his shattered life.
At this point there was no room for Angel McKenna, no matter how much he wanted there to be. He’d thought maybe they could have a few laughs for old times’ sake. But he was surprised to find his feelings for Angel were just too powerful. He needed to be smart for once and keep his distance.
Life was complicated enough.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Two
Second Week in Advent
Angie slid into the booth at Mort’s Diner, dumping her mountain of packages onto the seat beside her before she could meet Patsy’s amused gaze from across the table. “Been shopping?” Patsy inquired in a dulcet tone.
“It’s Christmas. What can I say?” Angie reached for one of Patsy’s French fries.
“Weren’t you the person who just last year said she was never going to celebrate Christmas again? It was all Ethan and I could do to drag you over to our house for Christmas dinner. You didn’t even have a tree, for heaven’s sake. And now you’ve gone all holly-jolly on me. What’s the change?”
Before she had a chance to speak, Mort herself set a mug of coffee down in front of her. “Pie’s almost gone,” she said. “You gonna get back to work?”
“I’ll bring you a delivery by this afternoon,” Angie said, feeling guilty. There were four pies sitting on the counter in the old farmhouse, just a part of Mort’s most recent order. She’d been halfway to Burlington before she’d remembered them, and she’d almost turned back, but they were talking about snow tomorrow, and she didn’t dare wait any longer.
Mort departed in a dignified huff, shuffling in the rundown slippers she habitually wore in the old-fashioned diner, and Angie took a deep sip of her coffee, shuddering. “There are times when I would kill for a latte. This stuff could strip the enamel off your teeth.”
“You could have had one in Burlington,” Patsy said. “As a matter of fact, that’s one of the best things about this miserable pregnancy—I can no longer tolerate the battery acid Mort calls coffee. If Junior ever decides to pop out I might just never go back.”
Angie eyed her friend’s huge belly, which was pushing against the table in the small booth. “She’ll come when she’s ready,” Angie said, deliberately keeping up their ongoing battle. Patsy insisted her baby was a boy; she’d been so exhausted from morning sickness and so uncomfortable and unwieldy later on that she’d decided only a male could be oppressing her. Her husband had received this bitter pronouncement with his usual calm good humor. It was almost impossible to ruffle Ethan, and he had kept his volatile wife on a relatively even keel during most of her difficult, long-sought-for pregnancy.
But Angie had decided it had to be a girl, and she was hearing nothing else. Mort was running a pool on sex, weight and birth date, and so far most of the town was siding with Angie’s pronouncement.
“There are things more important than lattes,” Angie said.
“Name one.”
“This!” Angie grabbed a brightly colored bag, opened it and whipped out a tiny red scrap of fabric. It looked as if it might fit a doll, but the red embroidery on the lacy collar said “Baby’s First Christmas.”
Patsy accepted the gift with feigned displeasure. “Junior’s not going to like being in drag for his first Christmas.”
“Any child you raise is going to be completely broad-minded about such things,” Angie said. “Besides, he’s going to be a girl.”
“Humph,” said Patsy, clearly not in the mood for fighting. “What else did you buy?”
“Lots of things.”
“Like what?”
Angie took a deep breath. “Christmas napkins, Christmas glasses, soda pop with Santa on the can, Christmas pasta, Christmas paper plates, Christmas candy, Christmas towels. I even got enough fabric to make a Christmas shower curtain.”
“Good God,” Patsy said weakly.
“Plus, I got a baby’s first Christmas tree ornament, a baby’s first Christmas bib, a baby’s first Christmas picture frame, even a pair of miniature red overalls on the rare chance that I’m wrong about your incipient offspring.”
“You’ve gone crazy,” Patsy said flatly. “Next thing you’ll tell me is that you bought Christmas toilet paper.”
“No. Christmas paper towels, and a Christmas toilet seat, but no toilet paper. Why, do you have some?”
“If I had such a revolting possession you can rest assured I’d give it to you immediately,” Patsy said with a shudder. “As it is, I’m too busy being pregnant to think about Christmas. Ethan’s already brought home the tree, and it’ll be up to him to decorate. I never wanted this baby in the first place.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Angie said in a soothing voice. “And all those trips into Burlington,
all those painful procedures were what…? An excuse for a girl’s day out with me?”
“Exactly,” Patsy said, casting an accusing glance, daring her to disagree. “I want the last piece of pie.”
“Of course you do,” Angie said. She looked at the counter. “What’s with all the flatlanders?” There were more than half a dozen strangers there, choking on Mort’s coffee, talking in low voices among themselves.
“What do you think? The media have arrived. They think Brody Jackson is here.”
Angie blinked. “Really? Why would they care?”
“Don’t you read the newspapers, Angie? Worldcomp has gone bankrupt, and he and his smarmy older brothers hid the financial details until they could get their own money out of it. They’ve bankrupted hundreds of thousands of people. It’s even worse than Enron.”
“I gave up newspapers when I moved here,” she said. “I had no idea. Why are they looking for him?”
“He’s one of the most notorious men in America. His brothers skipped the country and are out of reach, but Brody stayed.”
“Why?”
Patsy shrugged. “You remember Brody. Always the handsome prince. He’s probably just living up to his self-image of nobility.”
“You are so cynical,” Angie said, taking another sip of coffee and shivering.
“Maybe he thought by coming clean he’d get off easy. He handed everything over to the special commission—all the records, everything like that. In return he didn’t have to go to jail. Things won’t go so well for his sleazy brothers if they ever set foot back in this country.” She finished the milk shake with a noisy slurp. “As for Brody, he lost everything. Absolutely everything. The press love stories about how the mighty have fallen, and he used to get a lot of press, he and that model wife of his.”
“He’s married?”
“No, she divorced him before any of this came out.”
“That’s a shame,” Angie said, wondering why she was feeling sudden relief.
“So,” Patsy said, “are you going to warn him?”
Angie jerked her head up. “What do you mean?”
“I know he’s here, Angie. Everyone does. You can’t keep secrets in a town this size, though as far as I’m aware he hasn’t left Black’s Point since he arrived. You’re the only one out that road. There’s no way you wouldn’t have seen him.”
“He wants to be left alone.”
“I understand that. And none of us will help these vultures. But it won’t take long for them to find out where the Jackson place is. It’s a matter of town record. Hell, if they went to BK’s Grocery they could even buy a map of the area with everyone’s house marked on it.”
“I’ve got to go.” Angie couldn’t shove the table back any farther against Junior, but she slid out, grabbing her packages. “Tell Mort I’ll be back with the pies in a few hours.”
“Where are you off to? Or need I ask? You’re going to warn him, aren’t you? You always had a soft spot for Brody.”
“I never had a soft spot for anyone but Jeffrey since I was a kid and you know it,” she said stoutly. “I just happen to hate seeing anyone hounded.”
“Sure you do,” Patsy said with a smug smile. “Say hi for me, will you?”
The men at the counter watched her as she headed toward the door, and she forced herself to slow down, not scramble desperately. It was none of her business. If Brody and his older brothers had ripped off thousands of people—no, hundreds of thousands, Patsy had said—then he deserved everything that happened to him.
But she had a natural aversion to the tabloid press in all its various guises. Besides, she had to get home anyway, she reminded herself with a fair amount of righteousness. She had to make two more pies to go with the ones she’d already finished. And she found she was in sudden, dire need of a little exercise. A short walk down toward the lake would be just the thing.
There were still no tire tracks on Black’s Point Road except her own. The town had plowed down to the Jackson compound, but so far she hadn’t seen anyone else drive past her house. No sign of Brody Jackson at all.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true. There’d been a sign, all right. The morning after her arrival back in Crescent Cove she’d found a huge pile of freshly cut evergreen branches on her porch, with her missing clippers on the railing. No note, but then, there was no doubt where they’d come from. She’d scooped them up and inhaled the fragrance. Not a cat spruce among them.
The whole house had smelled like Christmas ever since. He’d brought her more than she’d needed—she’d made the Advent wreath, setting the Christmas candle in the middle of it, a wreath for the front door, a wreath for the fence at the end of the driveway, and if she’d been able to figure out how to do it she would have made a wreath for the front of her Jeep. She made a kissing ball to hang in her living room—not that anyone would be kissing her in the near or even distant future, but she’d always liked them. She made boughs for her mantel and the arched doorway into the parlor, and she had still had enough greenery left to make one more wreath and kissing ball. The wreath would be a simple thank-you to her invisible neighbor, and the kissing ball would be for…Maybe sour old Mort might appreciate one in the diner. Anything was possible.
She jumped out of the car, leaving her purchases piled in the back seat, and grabbed the extra wreath off the front porch. She hadn’t planned to deliver it in broad daylight—after all, he’d dropped his unexpected gift off when she’d been asleep. It would be easier if she didn’t have to see him at all, but with the media hot on his trail she figured she owed him that much, if for nothing more than old times’ sake, which he’d forgotten long ago.
She’d planned to walk down to the Jackson place, but at the last minute she got in the car again and drove the quarter mile down the road to his driveway. She pulled her car across the front of it, effectively blocking access, and climbed out, then headed down the narrow, snow-covered path to the house.
There was no sign of him, no sign of a car, but the snow on the front deck was freshly shoveled, and she knew he was still there. For a moment she almost chickened out—he was hardly her responsibility, and sooner or later he’d have to face what he’d done.
But then, Patsy was right. She’d always had an irrational soft spot for Brody Jackson, even though she and Jeffrey had been practically joined at the hip. For the sake of that long-ago, almost indecipherable feeling, she owed him this much.
She didn’t even have to knock on the door. She was halfway across the snow-packed deck when the glass door opened and Brody stood there, a mug of coffee in one hand, an unreadable expression on his face.
It was the first real look she’d gotten—when she’d run into him a few nights earlier he’d been nothing more than a huge, dark figure. In the light of day he was startling.
He was the same man, yet entirely different. His shaggy, bleached-blond hair was now a definite brown, and didn’t seem to have been cut in months. His eyes were still blue, but they were shadowed now, and his face was lean, drawn. He’d had the most remarkable mouth—smiling, lush, ridiculously kissable.
She should know—she’d kissed him. Twice.
But that mouth was drawn in a thin line. His blue eyes were expressionless and he only opened the door a crack. Enough for her to see the faded jeans on his long legs, the bare feet, the old flannel shirt with several buttons missing.
Oh, he was still gorgeous—there was no question about that. Bad luck and bad behavior couldn’t change that much, and the scruffy stubble and shaggy dark hair only made him appear more real.
“Why are you here?” he greeted her in a wary, unwelcoming voice. “And what’s that?”
For a moment she forgot why she was there. He was still distracting, even in his current downbeat state. “I made you a Christmas wreath. You were so nice to bring me all that greenery that I wanted to thank you.”
“I brought you the greenery so you wouldn’t come traipsing around my house,” he said. “And I’
m not in the mood to celebrate Christmas.”
“Tough,” she said. There was a cast-iron hook beside the door, one that held a hanging plant in the summer, and she dumped the wreath over it, against the house. “I’ve got more than enough Christmas spirit to spare. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“I assume you’ll tell me sooner or later.”
The cynical, world-weary tone was so unlike that of the Brody Jackson she’d once known that she was momentarily silenced. But only momentarily.
“There are camera crews in town, searching for you. I saw at least half a dozen of them in Mort’s Diner, as well as trucks from CNN, Fox and a couple of the networks.”
Brody’s response was swift and obscene. “Why aren’t they here yet?”
“They don’t know where you are.”
“And you didn’t tell them? Why?”
She considered it for a moment. “I’m not really sure. It’s not as if we’ve ever been particular friends. I guess I don’t like people being hounded. Or maybe I just don’t want a bunch of people crawling around Black’s Point.”
“I think you’re too late.” They could both hear the sound of the trucks and cars, noisy in the winter stillness, as they left the main highway and started down the narrow road.
“Not necessarily. I don’t give up easily.”
“And you’re implying I do?” Brody said.
She didn’t answer that. “Where’s your car?”
“We have a garage, remember?”
“Then go back in the house and stay put. I’ll get rid of them.”
His expression was dubious. “You think you’ll be able to accomplish something the best lawyers in the country couldn’t? They’re like barracudas—they won’t be satisfied till they tear the flesh from my bones.”
“Very melodramatic,” she said, her voice brisk. “They’re only trying to make a living. I just don’t want them doing it in my backyard.”