The Cop Who Stole Christmas (Tall, Hot & Texan)

by Christie Craig

  “Open it,” he said.

  The present was in a big square box and heavy. “What could this be?” She gave it a slight shake.

  “It’s breakable,” he warned.

  She ripped off the paper. The cardboard box didn’t have any writing on it, so she opened it. And when she saw what it was, tears filled her eyes. She pulled the first one out and saw it was the heat activated cup where Santa lost his pants. A few tears slipped down her lashes.

  “There’s a set of four cups. They’re slightly different ones,” he said and then he looked at her face. “Okay, tell me it’s not so bad that I made you cry? I thought you collected them. You asked about where I got that one and I thought—”

  “No.” She wiped her cheeks. “You don’t understand. Mom and I exchanged Christmas cups every year. This . . .” She held up the cup she’d pulled out. “This was the last one she gave me and I accidentally broke it.” Her voice shook.

  She set the cups down and moved to hug him. “I didn’t think I’d ever get another mug for Christmas.”

  “So I didn’t screw up?” he asked, folding his arms around her.

  “No, you couldn’t have given me anything more perfect.” She leaned in and whispered the words right before she kissed him. “Merry Christmas.”

  The kiss lasted and lingered. He untied the silk robe. “Can I unwrap your gifts now?” He looked down at the matching underwear outfit. “We might have to take it a little easy, though.”

  “Easy?” she asked.

  “I’m guessing you didn’t see the news?”

  “What news?” she asked.

  “The media has dubbed me the cop who stole Christmas. I shot Santa. But only after he shot me.”

  “You were shot?” She started running her hands over his chest. “Where?”

  “I was wearing a vest, but it bruised the hell out of my ribs.”

  She started unbuttoning his shirt. When she saw the ugly purple mark she frowned. “That looks painful.” She barely touched the side of the bruise.

  He looked down at her and smiled. “Personally, I think you just wanted to get my shirt off.”

  “Maybe.” She grinned and then frowned back at his mark.

  He pulled her against him again. She made sure not to lean against his right side. “Thank you,” he said.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For being here. For caring.” His hand moved her back, tenderly caressing her. “For spending Christmas eve with me. And Christmas day,” he said. “I’m hoping you’re open.”

  “There’s no other place I’d rather be,” she said.

  He leaned down and kissed her. “Yup. I like this moving forward thing.”

  “Me, too,” she said. “Me, too.”

  Other Books by Christie Craig

  Divorced and Desperate Series

  Divorced, Desperate and Delicious

  Divorced, Desperate and Dating

  Divorced, Desperate and Deceived

  Hotter in Texas Series

  Only in Texas

  Blame It on Texas

  Murder, Mayhem and Mama

  Gotcha!

  Weddings Can Be Murder

  Shut Up and Kiss Me

  For more information: www.Christie-Craig.com

  Young Adult Novels by

  Christie Craig Writing as C. C. Hunter

  New York Times Bestselling Shadow Falls Series (Young Adult)

  Born at Midnight

  Turned at Dark: A Bonus Shadow Falls Short Story (A Free Shadow Falls Novella)

  Awake at Dawn

  Taken at Dusk

  Whispers at Moonrise

  Saved at Sunrise (A Shadow Falls Novella)

  Chosen at Nightfall

  For more information: www.CCHunterBooks.com

  Read on for an extended preview

  of the third book in Christie Craig’s

  Hotter in Texas series,

  Texas Hold ’Em!

  Available from Forever in January 2014

  The following material is printed by permission of

  Hachette Book Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

  Chapter One

  Austin Brook opened his front door and stared at his two PI partners standing shoulder to shoulder on the front porch. They looked pissed enough to chew glass. He knew why they were here. He even knew why they were pissed. Still, he decided the best approach would be to take a page from his dating manual and do the same thing he always did when he got in trouble with a woman. Namely, feign ignorance and pretend everything was just fine.

  “Hey,” he said. “What brings you guys by?”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Dallas O’Connor snapped.

  Austin grinned. “Well, I was thinking about taking a piss when someone started pounding on my door.”

  Bud, Dallas’s dog, nosed his way between his owner’s legs and stared up with the same bulldog face as Austin’s partners at the Only in Texas agency.

  The fact that Bud was an English bulldog made his look understandable. Not that he didn’t understand his partners’ dire expressions. He knew they were here to derail his plan.

  “I thought you guys were in Galveston.” And he was hoping to be gone before they got back. Austin raised his foot and with the toe of his boot scratched the dog’s neck between the folds of loose canine skin.

  “We came back early. Roberto called us.” Dallas, a big man carrying a bad attitude, pushed inside, and Tyler, slightly less bulky but equally tall, joined him. Bud, snorting and probably farting, followed at their heels.

  Austin shut the door, then regretted it when the strong odor of doggie gas hit him square in the face. Instinctually, all three men waved a hand to clear the air.

  Tyler’s gaze, his eyes as dark as his black hair, shifted to Austin’s suitcases sitting beside the bar. “I thought we decided to let Roberto handle this.”

  Roberto was the professional informant they had digging up info on the SOB, DeLuna, who’d framed them. And while Austin liked Roberto, or at least liked what little he knew of the man, he was taking too damn long to get the job done.

  “No, you two decided that,” Austin said, letting the bitterness shine through in his voice. “I distinctly remember telling you that I was tired of handing everything over to Roberto and getting handed back shit. We’re paying this guy big bucks and we really don’t know crap about him.”

  “So far his leads have all been on the mark,” Dallas insisted.

  “True. But it’s been six months since he’s given us a solid lead on DeLuna.” To Austin that meant it was time for one of them to intervene. And since both of his partners now had wives to consider, he figured it was up to him to do it.

  Not that he minded. Taking down that no-good lowlife claimed top spot on his bucket list.

  “My bet is by now all of DeLuna’s men know our faces,” Dallas said. “You go through with this, and we’ll be buying your casket in a matter of weeks.”

  Austin sat down on his favorite armchair and stretched out his cowboy-boot-clad feet. “Just use the one we keep in the entranceway of the office and save yourself some money.” The damn casket had been left in the building by the previous owners, who ran a funeral home. Now it was sort of their trademark.

  “He’s serious,” Tyler said, using his calm voice that always reminded Austin of a therapist. Not that he’d gone to one in a hell of a long time. Well, not since he was thirteen and had decided that being a ward of the state didn’t mean he had to follow their damn rules.

  “So am I,” Austin said. His mind was made up. He took his bucket list very seriously.

  “What brought this on?” Tyler asked. “Is this about your—?”

  “Stop! Quit trying to get in my head.” Austin’s anger surfaced with a rush. But it was directed more at the stranger who’d shown up at the agency and spilled her dirty laundry right in front of everyone than at his two partners. Still, that didn’t mean he had to discuss it. Discussing it meant thinkin
g about it, and he’d spent a whole hell of a lot of energy trying not to do that.

  “You want to know what brought this on?” he asked. “It was the year and a half I was fucking locked up in prison. Or have both of you forgotten about that?”

  It sure seemed to him they had. Okay, maybe they hadn’t forgotten it, exactly, but they’d somehow gotten past it. And while Austin was friggin’ happy for them that they’d been able to do that, and he’d danced a jig at both their weddings in the last two months, he couldn’t get past it. He wouldn’t until DeLuna was behind bars.

  Or dead.

  Tyler exhaled. “I just think—”

  “Then stop thinking!” Austin moaned. The last thing he wanted was to have anyone rummaging through his mental closet. There were too many damn skeletons, too many nailed-shut trunks of emotional crap, that he didn’t want to think about.

  “Damn it, Austin,” Dallas snapped. “This is shit. We need to stick to our plan.”

  “What plan?” Austin asked. “We don’t seem to have a plan anymore.”

  Dallas’s shoulders tightened. “The plan hasn’t changed. We keep picking apart DeLuna’s organization until we force him to come out of whatever hole he’s taken cover in and face us. Use your brain for once. You know as well as I do that we lose every advantage by going to him instead of having him come to us.”

  “Look, nothing personal, but you two have other priorities right now,” Austin said. “As in wives. And I get it. But what he did still eats away at my gut. I want my pound of flesh.”

  “Roberto is working it,” Dallas said. “If you go in now, you’ll probably get him killed. Can you live with that?”

  Austin raked a hand over his face. When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at his partners’ concerned faces. Real concern. Damn it to hell, he knew they were here because they cared. And yes, he felt the same way about them. If anything, the bond he had with these two was the closest he’d ever come to having a family, but . . .

  “I don’t know what Roberto told you,” he said, speaking calmer, “but I’ve already worked this out with him. I’m not even going to Fort Worth. I’m checking the other lead that—”

  “Which lead?” Dallas asked.

  “The sister.”

  “Half sister,” Tyler corrected.

  “Whatever,” Austin said. “They’re Latin, and you”—he pointed to Tyler—“know how important family is in that culture.”

  “She’s half-Latin,” Tyler corrected again. “And stop stereotyping.”

  “It’s a good stereotype,” Austin said. For someone who grew up without a family, he could have used a little of that stereotype in his life. Of course, when he saw how his partners’ families drove them crazy, sometimes he wasn’t so sure.

  “Roberto watched her for a month and found no connection to DeLuna,” Dallas added.

  “Yeah,” Austin replied, “but I’d bet my left nut she knows what rock he’s hiding under.”

  “You could lose more than your left nut. And even if she knows, why would she tell you?” Dallas asked. “Plus, Roberto tried connecting with her and it didn’t work.”

  Austin smiled. “I’m not Roberto. I’m charming. Women like me. It’s a gift.”

  He was just like his biological father . . . or so his “mother,” aka the woman who’d given birth to him, raised him for a few years, and then abandoned him, had said when she’d shown up last week. The brief conversation they’d shared came back to haunt him, but he pushed it aside. He wasn’t going to think about that. Nope. So he shoved the memory back into his mental closet.

  Only it kept falling out. She’d come looking for peace of mind and ruined his in the process.

  “We know the type of women who find you charming,” Tyler said. “Leah Reece is educated, and she’s part Latin, which means she’s too smart to fall into bed with you.”

  “Now who’s stereotyping?” Austin asked. “Besides, I didn’t say I was going to sleep with her. I’m going to charm her. Get her to trust me enough to confide in me. And actually, her being Latin works in my favor.” He grinned. “We’ve discussed this before. I go for blondes. Of all the Victoria’s Secret models, there’s only one brunette I’d pick before I’d sleep with their whole catalog of blond models.”

  “How the hell did Victoria’s Secret models come into this?” Dallas ranted.

  “Anytime you can bring them into the conversation, it’s a good thing,” Austin added with humor. “Besides, I’ve already worked out a plan. Roberto rented the apartment next to hers. She’s a vet, and I’m thinking about getting a dog. I’ll buy one, then pop in to see her and say . . . ‘Hey, aren’t we neighbors?’ And, voilà! Instant connection.”

  “Right,” Tyler said. “Once again, you didn’t do your research. Leah Reece isn’t a regular vet, she’s a specialty vet. Special as in a feline specialist. Feline as in cats.” He laughed. “I’d pay to be a fly on the wall. You, an ailurophobe, are going to try to charm a feline specialist. I’ll bet she owns at least two or three cats.”

  People owned three cats? “I’m not scared of cats.” But it would be a cold day in hell before he acquired one of those clawed varmints. The scar beneath his right arm started to itch.

  “So, the vet angle won’t work,” Austin said. “I’ll find a different way.” Somehow he’d win Leah Reece over enough that she’d confide in him about her brother. How hard could it be? She was, according to Roberto, a petite, pretty little thing with a soft spot for animals.

  “I still don’t like it,” Dallas said.

  “Me, either,” Austin admitted, still thinking about the cats. “But I’m doing it.”

  • • •

  Monday morning, Leah Reece was busy doing one of the things she did best.

  “I swear, you enjoy this, don’t you?” Sara, her vet assistant and good friend, teased as she stroked the anesthetized cat on the table.

  “Can’t you see the satisfaction in her eyes?” Evelyn, the office manager of Purrfect Pet Veterinarian Clinic, added from the doorway.

  Leah grinned but didn’t look up until she removed the second testicle from the tiny incision and dropped it into the metal container. It landed with a tiny thud in the pan beside its brother ball. “I was just thinking that I’m good at it, but it doesn’t bring me the joy you two are insinuating. Now if Spooky walked on two legs, thought he was God’s gift to women, and spewed out come-on lines instead of purring, then it would do my heart good.”

  They laughed. Then Evelyn cleared her throat. “It’s been two years since the divorce. I think it’s time you stop dreaming of castrating them all and remember what a man can do for you.”

  “You mean like cheating on you with your neighbors and running up your credit cards by having phone sex with strangers?” They laughed again. Sometimes even the truth was funny. Or it could be after two years.

  Still in the doorway, Evelyn gave Leah her I’m-serious look. Leah adored Evelyn; she’d been the first employee Leah hired three years ago when she started the practice.

  She’d known Evelyn was the right fit when Leah asked her if she had any prior office management experience and the fifty-five-year-old answered, “Nope, but I managed to keep a household afloat, take in over ten cats, clothe and feed three boys, and get two through college on my husband’s car salesman income. If you need someone who can run a tight ship, balance a budget, knows how to get stains out of men’s underwear, and doesn’t mind picking up hair balls, I’m your woman. Besides, with the economy down, and one boy still in college, I could really use a job.”

  Evelyn cleared her throat again, pulling Leah back to the present. “Brandon was an idiot.”

  And managed to make me feel like one, too. “But he was so good at it.” Leah checked Spooky’s scrotum one more time.

  Sara chuckled. “I think both of us would have helped you castrate Brandon. But Evelyn’s right—not all men are scum.”

  No, Leah thought. Some of them were even worse. Brandon was
just the last in a long line of men in her life to disappoint her. First had been her father. Then her half brother. And a few lying-cheating boyfriends along the way. If not for Luis, her younger brother, she’d have given up on the whole male species. But as it was, she would be hard pressed to trust another man. And the only kind she’d let get close were the feline variety that she’d previously neutered.

  “Don’t you miss it, just a little bit?” Evelyn asked.

  “Miss what?” Leah moved Spooky into the cage on a soft mat where he’d wake up. She gave the unconscious feline an ear rub. Hopefully now that he was fixed, she could find him a home. But Lordy, she was such a sucker for a stray.

  If only she didn’t already have four at home . . .

  “A man’s touch,” Sara answered for Evelyn, her voice dreamy. “The way the palm of his hand moves over your skin or fits just so in the curve of your waist. The way he looks at you like you’re eye candy, making your skin get ultrasensitive. Those sexy bedroom smiles that make you squeeze your thighs together a little tighter. Oh, and that moment when he’s naked between the sheets and—”

  “Oh, my.” Evelyn fanned herself. “I’m calling my Stewart and telling him to come home early.” She walked out, her step peppier than when she’d walked in.

  “Well?” Sara asked.

  “Well, what?” Leah barely got the two words out. Her mind was mush and her body ached for something she didn’t think she could ever allow herself to have again. She’d tried it. As wonderful as it all was in the beginning, it cost too damn much. Both emotionally and monetarily. Phone sex didn’t come cheap.

  “Do you miss it?” Sara asked.

  “Nope,” Leah lied, and looked down at the removed testicles.

  Evelyn appeared in the doorway again. “You have a phone call. He says he’s your brother, but it doesn’t sound like Luis.”