Beachcomber Santa

by Stephanie Queen

  Beachcomber Santa

  A Beachcomber Investigations Series Novella

  Book 2

  By Stephanie Queen

  Beachcomber Santa

  Copyright © 2015 Stephanie Queen

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Acknowledgment

  To the Name That Character contest winner, L.Lam. Thank you for your assistance and support, and most of all—thank you for naming the Missing Santa in Beachcomber Santa, Rusty Gates.

  Praise for Stephanie Queen’s Books

  The Throwbacks

  “Boston comes vividly alive in the first of Queen’s Scotland Yard Exchange Program series. Grace is an engaging heroine with charm, humor and sass. Resplendent in rich detail, laugh-out-loud moments, a fast-paced plot and spellbinding characters, The Throwbacks is a stellar not-to-be-missed standout!”

  —Romantic Times Book Review

  Playing the Game

  “Reading Queen is an absolutely scrumptious experience. Readers will fall in love, get heated, laugh and have an energizing adventure. The story has sublime settings, smooth writing that melds into a well-developed plot and characters who come alive like Pop Rocks and carbonated beverages.”

  —Romantic Times Book Review

  “If you’re a fan of fast paced contemporaries, Playing The Game delivers one heck of a story”

  —Storm Goddess Book Reviews

  “A refreshing and fun romance story that swept my off my feet.”

  —I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read

  Between a Rock and a Mad Woman

  “Absolutely delightful”

  —RomanticLoveBooks.com

  “I was riveted! The twists, turns, surprises & the love story that resulted were outstanding and I can’t wait to read more”

  —HesperiaLovesBooks.com

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgment

  Praise for Stephanie Queen’s Books

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  A Note to Readers

  Stephanie Queen Books

  Chapter 1

  Dane was lucky more than smart. Lucky more than charming. Shana might have left the island and him for good. He had no idea why she hadn’t put her bags on a ferry, taken off from Martha’s Vineyard and never looked back. Instead, she had moved a few blocks away. It felt like she was on the dark side of the moon.

  A shudder rippled through him. The beach shack felt too still without her. He eyed his liquor cabinet—the freezer—where he had a bottle of tequila stashed. The bottle was the one she bought when he’d asked her to pick it up. A little over three weeks ago. He hadn’t seen her since.

  Leaving the tequila, he stepped out his back door. It was mid-afternoon. He hesitated about whether to turn left toward the harbor and the cleansing sea air, or to turn right and head to the street towards Mrs. Jones’s place where Shana rented efficiency for the off-season.

  The ocean breeze came up from his left. It was cold. He had no jacket on. That made up his mind. Today his mind was weak. He turned away from his usual solace of the harbor and sea air, and headed to Shana’s place dressed only in his t-shirt and jeans. He didn’t even care if she accused him of being macho.

  Maybe that wasn’t entirely true. He had a reputation to keep up. The legend. Maybe it was all he had. That was a depressing enough thought to shove aside. He bent his mind on coming up with a plausible excuse why he needed to see her. As he passed his neighbor’s yard decorated with a life-sized plastic replica of Rudolph, he decided the upcoming holiday season was the perfect reason. Friends were entitled to stop in on friends at Christmas time, weren’t they?

  He shook his head and kicked a stray rock a good fifty feet in disgust. She’d never buy it. He didn’t have a Christmas tree, no stocking. Not a single light. He hadn’t bought anyone a Christmas gift in years. Not even his mother. His mother had been happy with the money he sent all year long, regular calls and an occasional visit on Mother’s Day.

  Too bad he didn’t have a business excuse to see Shana. They were still partners in Beachcomber Investigations—as far as he knew. But they hadn’t had a case since they saved his friend Acer’s butt from a sniper last month. This was a sore spot with Shana. She needed the work and the money. He had talked her into giving up her career with the Scotland Yard to be his partner in the private investigation business. No wonder he was on her shit list.

  He neared Shana’s unit. It was tacked onto the side of Mrs. Jones’s house. Fear flashed through him, searing his chest and leaving his heart pounding. He thought about turning around—something he’d never done before. What the hell was he afraid of?

  He was not one to back down from a challenge. He never turned around. Shana had him in goddamn knots. He stopped and knew the only thing worse than turning around was to knock on her door and have her look at him like he was a pathetic fool. Or to have her turn him away.

  But then his phone rang and changed everything.

  Chapter 2

  “Hello? Mr. Blaise?”

  He recognized the nervous voice of the kid from the restaurant. Dane hadn’t heard from the kid since the sniper case.

  “If it isn’t Ronnie Ryan. I thought maybe you’d had enough of the spying—I mean intelligence gathering business after the sniper fiasco—I mean case—with the FBI,” Dane said. His enthusiasm on hearing the kid’s voice was more due to the welcome distraction from his self-loathing than because the kid might be calling for some good reason.

  “Yes, it is—me. No I didn’t have enough.” Ronnie stopped talking. Dane figured he should wait him out. It was the kid’s call and sooner or later he’d realize it.

  “I aah…”

  “Out with it, kid.”

  “I have a case—that is—I need your help. Or Vineyard Haven Groceries needs your help. They said to say—”

  “What about the case, kid?” Dane stood still, less than a stone’s kick from Shana’s place. The cold breeze whipped at his t-shirt. Contrary to popular belief, he did feel the cold. He was not made of ice, or granite or any of the other inhuman materials he’d been accused of being composed of.

  But at least now he had a business excuse to drag Shana from her hiding place and back to his shack where he could—

  Never mind.

  Ronnie said, “It’s the Santa Claus—he’
s missing.”

  Dane took a deep breath. Maybe he’d counted on the business excuse too soon.

  “Let me get this straight. The case you called me about is that you want me to find a missing holiday Santa—the kind that jingles the bell outside the supermarket?”

  “Yes—that’s it. His name is—”

  “How long has he been missing and why don’t you just call the cops?” He knew the answer to both questions, but figured he’d lead the kid through it as an exercise. He was bound to learn something. Some day. Dane eyed Shana’s front window and saw a curtain move. Shit.

  “Since yesterday. We called the cops—”

  “We? Who’s this ‘we’?”

  “Me and Jim.”

  “Jim the deli man?” Dane thought that one through for a beat. He knew Jim to be reliable and not given to flights of fancy. Unlike the kid, Jim Evans wasn’t given to any need for extraneous adventures. Jim had been a marine. He’d had his share of adventures. If Jim thought this was real, maybe it was real.

  “What about the supermarket manager?”

  “Jim is manager on the off-season. He said—”

  “I’ll meet you at the store in half an hour. Back entrance.” Dane had made up his mind. This was as good an excuse as he was likely to get between now and Christmas to drag Shana back into his sphere. It was the holidays, damn it. He was entitled to some warmth.

  Maybe he’d even try to give some back. The muscles in his shoulders tightened like skate laces being tugged by Hercules, but he slipped the phone back in his pocket and walked to her door. Of course, she opened the door before he got close enough to knock.

  The breath was knocked from his lungs as sure as if she’d slammed him in the gut with a medicine ball. The shear sight of her, the feel of the warmth escaping from her home to surround him, the scent of her, all overwhelmed him. One thing flooded his mind and had his veins humming. He wanted her. He needed her. He’d done the right thing coming here. It was like coming home for the holidays.

  He smiled at her. She scowled at him. He laughed out loud.

  After pulling the peanut butter cookies from the oven, something made her go to the window. It was only a half dozen steps across the small space, past her dining table for two and the sofa bed to the front window. There was a film of condensation from the oven’s heat. The entire room—her entire tiny studio home—was filled with the warmth of the oven and the smell of cookies—several kinds. In spite of all the heat, when she pulled the curtain aside and saw Dane Blaise, she shuddered.

  He stood in the street a few steps from the walk to her front door with a phone to his ear. The heat inside her exploded to oven-like proportions and somehow simultaneously goose-bumps rose on her skin as if an arctic blast surrounded her. The arctic blast’s name was Dane—or Fear. Same thing. He was like the monster that chased her in her dreams. Day and night it seemed. But it was no use running from him.

  Not when she felt the shuddering anticipation of his presence so close. Not when she wanted him so much. She had no idea what she wanted from him—besides the obvious. Because there was nothing he could give her but heartache.

  This she’d learned the hard way. She was still learning. She was a stupid girl when it came to the legendary Dane the Demon.

  Ripping the oven mitts from her hands, she tossed them on the couch and went to the door. Looking at herself in the mirrored wall—theoretically it made the place look more spacious—she told herself she didn’t care if she was smudged with flour and wearing ratty old jeans and a red plaid flannel shirt and work boots. She looked more like a lumberjack than a beachcomber. Maybe the look would deter him.

  Pulling the scrunchy from her hair, she let her long golden tresses billow around her shoulders in curling waves and yanked the door open. The bracing cold air that whooshed inside did nothing to brace her.

  Her eyes hit his. Dane stood two steps from her. Outside in the cold. She felt his cold go through her in another shudder. It registered in her frozen mind that he was wearing only a T-shirt. She wanted to drag him inside and hold him and share her heat, make him warm, melt his soul. His eyes had that vulnerable look, the one that sapped her resistance to his kryptonite-like powers. The look that showed his pain and his heart and his valor—it would have been more than she could resist if in the next split second, when she was about to reach out to him and drag him inside, he didn’t mask everything with a cavalier smile. This was why she’d moved out.

  That smile snapped her from succumbing to her weakness and like Pavlov’s dog trained to respond, she pulled her own mask into place to match his smile with her scowl. They were now ready to deal with each other without hurting or maiming or killing each other’s hearts and souls.

  He laughed at her scowl and said, “Nice place. All four square feet of it.”

  She stepped aside and he stepped past her inside. She slammed the door behind him. Hard. Anger was a good thing.

  “Want a cookie?” She swept past him, feeling the space shrink with him in it as if they were in Alice’s Wonderland and she’d taken one of those pills.

  “As long as it’s not poisoned.”

  She laughed. “So what brings you here—a need to test your macho ability to withstand the cold in a T-shirt or the smell of my delicious holiday cookie assortment baking or, do I dare hope we might actually have a case?” She stopped and turned to him with a plate of cookies.

  “Door number three.” He plucked a cookie from the plate. He’d followed her the few steps into the kitchen area. It was open. There was a small counter where she now stood backed up. It was a bad sign that she became aware of her own breathing. It was harder. He was so close. She watched him take a bite of the cookie. His eyes gave away nothing. He was in Dane Blaise the legend mode—well past Dane Blaise the partner. They’d gotten that far apart.

  Then it registered.

  “We have a case.” She smiled and felt relief sweep through her taking away a measure of tension.

  He smiled too. It was his genuine smile and she knew how he felt. They were back. They could work together, be together and be partners. Familiar. Maybe even friends. In a place where they knew how to behave, where they could appreciate each other without worry of consequences and where they could care and have each other’s back. They could own each other’s place, make a claim to each other’s partnership without hesitation, fully and completely. This is why she stayed on the island.

  “Don’t get too excited. It’s a case of a missing Santa.”

  “Rusty Gates, the grocery Santa is missing?”

  “Figures you’d know him. Do you make it your business to know every stray male on the island?”

  She let a corner of her scowling mouth twitch. Damn if he wasn’t jealous underneath his cavalier attitude. But Shana had to control the unreasonable hitch in her chest. She couldn’t afford to get too excited about Dane’s alpha-male driven jealousy.

  “Everyone knows Rusty Gates is the Santa. Except Dane the Scrooge apparently. Rusty is collecting money for the church Christmas party to benefit needy families. He has lots of friends and people who must be worried about him—don’t be so snobby,” she said. “It’s a case.”

  Dane grinned. “You don’t fool me, girlie. It’s not the case—I know it’s me you want.”

  The breath escaped her involuntarily as she forced a laugh. She couldn’t be sure he was joking. His uncanny sixth sense shouldn’t have surprised her. He always knew her mind. Seemed to read everyone’s mind—even strangers. Her automatic response—going back to her recent training in the Dane Blaise Boot Camp of Emotional Warfare—was to shut down and suit up in her impenetrable armor. In truth, she’d always had the ability to armor herself. It had been a professional necessity when it wasn’t a personal one. But Dane had put her abilities to the ultimate test, and so far it was too close to call whether she was passing or failing. But she was no quitter.

  Thus she was still here on the island trying to save goddamn Dane Blaise from him
self. Without destroying herself.

  Shana pulled on her navy hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with “BEACHCOMBER INVESTIGATIONS” in turquoise. She’d had them made when they officially joined forces after their last case. Claiming Beachcomber Investigations officially—or as official as a logo could make it—had been a way to stay connected after she’d moved out of Dane’s so-called beach shack.

  Dane grunted and smiled around the cookie he bit into. It was his second one.

  “When was the last time you went to the grocery store?” She concentrated on the zipper of her sweatshirt, aware that she was showing too much concern. When he said nothing, but kept chewing the cookie, she looked up to see his satisfied smile. The deepening scowl she shot him was automatic.

  “Nice jacket,” he said.

  “I have a spare if you want—”

  “I’m fine. We’ll be in the Jeep. Once we get back to the shack.” He grabbed a handful of cookies from the plate she’d put down. There were two cookies left.

  She took one of them and they went outside. A gust blew and she studied him. Not even a shudder or a single goose-bump. No cringing. They walked fast, not quite shoulder-to-shoulder, but together.

  “I don’t give a damn if this is only a case of a missing bell-ringing Santa. I’m glad to be back in business.” She felt safe saying this much.

  He smiled at her and lifted a hand from his side. Her chest went into drumbeat mode anticipating a familiar touch, thinking he’d reach out and put an arm around her, pull her into him like he used to do. She’d craved it from the instant she saw him on her doorstep as if he were a hit of heroine and she was a junkie.

  But he shoved the hand in his jeans pocket and looked away. Then he picked up the pace and trotted the rest of the way, leaving her behind in the cold.

  In the Jeep, he waited, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel and cursing himself. Hadn’t he been all about holiday warmth? He darted an accusing glance at the cookies he’d tossed in the console. She shouldn’t have put on that jacket. He shouldn’t have let his guilt get to him about having tossed the matching jacket she’d given him in the trash after she’d left.