by Liana Brooks
“Quite.” Katrina stepped out, leaving a manila file folder with Delilah’s information next to a blank sheet of paper and a pen. It was good to find a kindred soul who appreciated dead-tree documentation. Such a shame Katrina was a hubris-riddled fool.
The minute the door swung shut the handcuffs dropped to the ground. Delilah scribbled the word GOODBYE on the paper, took her file folder, and collapsed a bit of tile floor. Dropping into a supply closet was sheer dumb luck, but Delilah wasn’t one to question providence. The locked door swung open at her touch, and she sauntered into the winter sunlight a free woman.
Chapter Twenty
Delilah,
It’s been a week and I don’t know where you are. I miss you. There isn’t an hour that goes past that I don’t want to call you. I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me, but please, let me know you’re safe. If you get this email...let me know.
All my love,
Alan
Alan shoved another pile of paperwork to the side. If he kept up this pace he might be able to find an end to the mess before the New Year rolled around.
The door opened and shut. He kept reading, scribbling his signature over highlighted portions and flipping pages as if his life depended on it.
The person who’d entered finally cleared their throat. “Boss?” It was Jesse, the office manager hired to replace the late Chasten Huntley.
“Yes?” Alan turned away from his computer reluctantly.
Jesse raised an eyebrow. “You do realize it’s Christmas Eve, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to be Scrooge?”
Alan blinked in confusion. The reference seemed to have no meaning. A vague recollection of a Muppet movie floated past. “You want to go home?”
“Everyone wants to go home, boss. Except you, and you’re wearing the suit you wore yesterday.”
Alan looked down at his shirt. “I changed my tie.”
Jesse sighed. “Is this about the girl from the news?”
Delilah. Thinking about her in handcuffs made him want to run. To rescue her or to run away, he wasn’t sure which. The Company had hauled her off while the building was still smoking and he’d been useless. Absolutely, infuriatingly useless. “It’s not about her,” he lied. “I just like to work.”
“So it has nothing to do with the flowers that got returned from her office, or all those phone calls where no one answered?”
“No.”
Jesse squinted at him. “Yeah. How’d you make it as a politician? You can’t lie.”
Alan shrugged. “An honest politician in Chicago? People voted for me because I have novelty value. It’s like being the only unicorn in the petting zoo. Everyone thinks I’m pretty.”
“I’ve got bad news for you, handsome. Unicorn or not, no woman is going to give you the time of day when you act like this. Go home, shower, sleep, order some Chinese food tomorrow and watch reruns of Christmas specials until you feel like puking. But don’t come back to the office until the third.”
“The third?” Panic took over. “What am I supposed to do with that much free time?”
“Sleep?” Jesse suggested. “Go grocery shopping? Scrub your sink? I don’t know, what do single people do when they have time off? Maybe you could get a hobby. Take up crochet, or something.” He crossed the room, snatched Alan’s pen away, and pointed at the door. “It’s time to call it a night, boss.”
“Are you allowed to order me out of the office?” Alan asked as Jesse fished his coat out of the small office closet.
“That’s what you pay me for. It’s right in the contract, subsection B12: Make sure the office environment is healthy, safe, and pleasant for everyone. That includes monitoring overtime hours and making sure people don’t kill themselves for the greater good of the city.”
“I like the city,” Alan protested feebly.
“And the city likes you,” Jesse reassured him in a calm voice usually reserved for small, frightened children. “But it’s not worth dying for.”
No, only losing the love of his life for.
He let Jesse usher him out. Everyone else had gone home, limp garlands from the party he’d missed hung on the walls, another sad reminder of all he’d given up. Because he was a superhero. Because he was a freak. Because... He stepped outside into the snowy street. Chicago at rush hour on a holiday was never empty, but it felt that way. It was already getting dark and the snow was piling up. Alan trudged through it, kicking the slush in front of him.
The lobby was empty. He rode the elevator up alone. The silence wrapped around him and he walked to his front door like a man approaching the gallows. For a brief, shining moment he’d almost had everything he wanted. There had been the promise of a real holiday in front of him. He let the dream image of Delilah sitting with him by a Christmas tree surface in his memory once more. It was so real that for one sparkling second, he could almost smell her perfume as he fumbled for his keys.
The door fell open.
Delilah stood by the console table wrapped in a heavy black coat, lit only by the lights from the city outside, her hair and makeup a flawless shield. “I wondered how late you were planning on working,” she said without preamble.
His mouth dried out. “How...”
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow, her face an emotionless ivory mask. “They had me in handcuffs, Alan. How do you think I got away?”
Handcuffs... “Oh.”
The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “I’m glad you had the sense not to come rushing in. For a moment, I worried you’d think I was helpless.”
“I did. I just didn’t know what to do.”
Delilah shrugged it away. “No matter. The Company gave me the information I wanted, so it all worked out on that end. You were the last loose thread I needed to take care of.” She tapped a white envelope on the console table. “Your Christmas card. Happy holidays.” She made eye contact, cool and deliberate and dismissive, and then swept past his reaching hand as if he was the least of her worries. He probably was.
Alan sat in the dark as the scent of her perfume faded into the chill air. Christmas alone. Again.
He leaned against the console table and took a deep, shuddering breath. It hurt. It hurt almost as much as the time when he was six and thought that one family might actually adopt him. They’d been so nice, so sweet, and so generous. There’d been a mountain of toys bought and wrapped—and then on Christmas Eve the department of child services took him away. His adoption hadn’t gone through. He’d waited for them to come back, but they never did. They’d found another adoption agency, another little boy, and his one chance for happiness was gone without a trace.
His hand clenched around the envelope, and he felt something hard.
Quickly, Alan flipped on a lamp and ripped the envelope open. A Christmas card with a horse-drawn sleigh and carolers slid out. Inside, there was a round-trip ticket to Vermont, a printout of a car reservation in Vermont for Christmas morning, an address, and a key. He held his breath as his heart raced.
She couldn’t have...
She wouldn’t...
The idea was too large to think of in one piece. Could she have found his family? Delilah, with her quick fingers and her seemingly endless list of resources. Even if he asked her not to look, wouldn’t she? Always prying. Always hunting for answers. That was Delilah...
He took a deep breath.
No, he’d said he didn’t want to know them, and she would have known that he meant it. So... He turned the key over in his hand. An airplane ticket, a car, and a house key. Invitation or threat? Or... challenge. She was going to drag him kicking and screaming out of Chicago after all. At least for a few days. He checked the dates on the flight again. There was no way he was going to sleep tonight, and maybe if he arrived early the airline could bump him up to an earlier flight. It was worth a shot.
Chapter Twenty-One
Miss Samson,
I owe y
ou. Come to Toronto if you ever want to collect.
—I
The car swerved dangerously on the icy road. Alan fought the wheel and managed to bring the rental car to a stop next to a snowdrift. Flat tire. It figured. Heavy snowstorms had threatened to close O’Hare airport overnight, so he’d flown out early, not wanting to risk getting snowed in and missing Delilah. But every step since then had been fraught with trouble. The rental agency didn’t have cars. When he was finally given a tiny, blue two-door POS, the onboard GPS couldn’t find the highway he needed. Then the GPS talked in Swedish for five miles. And now there was a flat tire.
Movement out of the corner of his eye made Alan turn. The little red sedan that had followed him since town had stopped behind him and the single occupant, a blonde woman wearing a sweater and jeans, was picking her way through the snow to him. She was thirty, maybe a few years older. Alan rolled down the window. “I’m fine. You can keep going.”
“And how are you going to get anywhere with a flat tire?” the woman asked. Fine lines appeared around her eyes when she smiled and he bumped his estimation of her age up an extra ten years.
“I’ll be fine. I can call the rental company. Get a tow truck.” Be late. Hopefully Delilah would forgive him.
“Do you have cell reception?” the woman asked.
Alan pulled out his phone to check. No signal.
His face must have given her the answer. “Why don’t you come with me?” she asked. “Our cabin’s five miles from here, and we have a land line.”
“I don’t know if I should leave the car,” Alan said. “My girlfriend—uh, friend...”—my something—”paid for it. I don’t want her to get in trouble.”
“I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but no one’s going to steal that car. People in rural Vermont aren’t that desperate for bad transportation.”
He smiled. “Yeah, I don’t even know why it was on the rental lot.”
“This girlfriend’s breaking up with you?” the woman guessed.
“I hope not. They told me they had someone break into the lot last night. All the fences were broken. This is probably the rental agent’s car.” And he’d given it a flat tire driving on the icy, bumpy, rural road.
“Pop the trunk,” the woman said. “I’ll take you to my place and you can call from there. Come on. I don’t bite!”
Alan felt the blood rush to his cheeks. “Thanks, um. Miss?”
“Missus,” she said as he climbed out of the car, “but I’ll take the compliment. You can call me Tabitha.”
He grabbed his carry-on bag out of the trunk, locked the little car, and climbed into the tropical warmth of Tabitha’s car. “So, you’re not a native New Englander?”
She laughed. “Is it that obvious? Actually, I was born as far away from New England as you can get on the East Coast. Born and raised in Coral Gables, outside Miami. Beautiful place. I hate it.”
“Um? That’s a little...”
“Harsh?” Tabitha waved a hand. “It was miserable. My parents ignored me and even paradise can get lonely. But that’s old news. I got married just after college, had five babies who are all grown up, and life is pretty darn perfect now.”
Alan laughed. “Wow. Um, okay. I don’t know what to say, sorry. I’m not a family person, I guess.”
“Only child?” Tabitha asked as they wound through the scenic pine forest.
“Foster child. No one wanted me.” Except Delilah. Maybe. He drummed his fingers on his knee.
Tabitha leaned forward, blue eyes sparkling. “So, this is me being a nosy future grandma, but are you ever going to be a family person? Is this girlfriend The One? Are you going to settle down?” She waited a beat and asked, “Are you going to run screaming because I’m asking?”
“Are all potential mother-in-laws like you?”
Tabitha’s smile split into a cheery grin. “Of course not! You don’t meet a girl like me every dynasty.” When he didn’t respond quickly enough she nudged him with her elbow. “You need to brush up on your Disney references.” The car turned down a street lined with feathery pine boughs that bent under heavy snow to form a dreamlike tunnel. “Ah, there we are. Home sweet holiday rental home. I wanted to stay in Texas, but my second daughter got to pick the location for Christmas this year and she decided we needed a rustic retreat. Or so she says. I think it’s because Major Cobb’s family lives nearby.”
“Who?” Alan asked as the car pulled to a stop outside a stone mansion that could only be considered rustic by someone who thought Chicago was a cute little town. Delilah would have loved it.
“Major Cobb? He was our neighbor years and years ago. My youngest daughter has been engaged to his oldest son since kindergarten. She’s usually in Africa, my youngest daughter that is, so getting her to leave work for a week was like pulling teeth. We bribed her with having the Cobbs nearby.”
Alan followed her inside to a cozy living room with a roaring fire and a towering, undecorated, Christmas tree. “Did you guys just get here?”
“Last night,” Tabitha said. “Here, make yourself comfy. I bet there’s cookies baking.”
“Isn’t it dangerous to leave the stove on while no one’s home?”
Tabitha tilted her head in confusion. “Oh. Yes. It would be. But there’s always someone at home. We don’t have minions for nothing!” Her eyes widened. “I meant kids. Not minions. I don’t have real minions. Who would? That’s a super villain-ish thing, and I’m obviously not a villain. Or a superhuman. Or anything. And if I were, I would totally be a superhero with a very cute outfit. But there are kids here. My son and baby-son-in-law and my extra-son are downstairs playing video games. One’s natural birth, one we had by marriage, and the other we had by adoption at gun point.”
The clock ticked loudly as he stared.
Tabitha frowned. “Sorry. Is that over-sharing?”
“No, no, it’s just, I...” He almost said he knew a family with minions, but that way led to awkwardness and more stunned silences. Tabitha would probably think he had a concussion. Normal people did not take genetically engineered minions for granted. “Sorry. Why...” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to frame this question.”
“I look so normal, so why am I not a member of the two-point-five WPF club?”
He nodded uncomfortably.
She grinned. “Because two-point-five kids is very hard to arrange for, I always wanted a big family, and white picket fences don’t go with castles.”
Alan dropped his bag on the kitchen table. “Castle? Did you say castle?”
“It’s just a little one,” Tabitha said as she checked the oven for cookies. “In retrospect, I shouldn’t have told my husband to have a house picked out by the time I left the hospital with our youngest. But I didn’t want to go home to the house he’d set on fire—”
“Fire?” Alan shook his head again, wondering if he’d heard correctly. “You’re joking, right?”
Tabitha pulled a tray from the oven and flipped cookies off with a spatula, shaking her head. “Oh, no. Evan’s a wonderful man, practically perfect, but he doesn’t cook very well. He gets too distracted, and it turns out grilled cheese is very flammable. No one was hurt, but I did let him do the house hunting while I was in the hospital with complications.”
“Buying a castle seems a little extravagant.”
“Oh, no, he got it for a steal.” She brought the cookies over. “Have a seat, you’re not in a rush are you?”
“I should call the rental company and get out of your hair,” Alan said, reeling a little.
Tabitha waved his suggestion away. “Nonsense. You look like a young man who’s had too much stress and not enough food lately. Eat a cookie and tell me about this girl of yours.”
“She’s not mine,” Alan said reluctantly as he sat down. “We’re kind of complicated at the moment.”
Tabitha smiled, a warm, genuine expression that wrapped around him like perfect acceptance. “All relationships are complicated. What’s she li
ke?”
Alan bit into his cookie and tried to come up with a good answer. “Amazing? She’s so self-assured. Confident. I’m used to working with drama queens and people who melt down over every little thing, and she’s always so calm. She’s intelligent, beautiful, fun to be with. I can relax with her, joke around...” He trailed off. She was Delilah. How else could he say it?
“Sounds like love,” Tabitha said before taking a bite of her own cookie.
“Is it?” Alan asked. “I liked her for ages but she kept turning me down. Sometimes I think it’s still all a daydream.”
Tabitha brushed cookie crumbs off the table, avoiding eye contact. “Why’d she turn you down?”
“Bad first impression. She says I look like a hitman.”
She met his gaze at that. “Are you?”
Alan raised his eyebrows. “What sort of question is that?”
“An obvious one,” Tabitha said. “You aren’t from Wyoming, are you? Because it would be really funny if you were.”
“Because you know a hitman in Wyoming?” Alan guessed. “No. I’m from Illinois and I’m in politics. Local, not national.”
Tabitha sighed. “Well, I suppose a reunion was too much to hope for.”
“How does that tie in with hitman?”
“I knew one, back in the day. He’s dead now. Punched his pregnant girlfriend and a passerby broke his head on the concrete for it. The son’s much nicer from what I hear. Lives up in Wyoming with his grandparents. I always wondered if he’d follow in his father’s footsteps.” She shrugged. “Do you want another cookie?”
“That’s not a normal segue.”
This time her grin was impish as she waggled her eyebrows at him. “It is in this house.”
Alan leaned back in his chair and watched as Tabitha plated more cookies and poured milk. “You look very familiar.”
“I get that a lot,” she said. “If I was wearing a white sweater you’d get it right away. It’s become something of a signature color for me.”