“If you love it.” He got out of the car and was around to her side before she could even touch the door handle. He opened her door and she stepped out, and then they got the quads into the stroller. “Let’s go check it out.”
He fished a key from the pocket of his leather jacket. “They’re out buying moving boxes right now. They said we should take a look around. If we’re interested, they’ll sell to us. If not, they’ll list it.”
Allie stared up at the house. She couldn’t even imagine living in such a big, grand home. She’d always dreamed of having a house like this someday. But someday had always been her old standby—not reality.
“And look—the Cohens already have a ramp for their strollers—they have three kids under six.” He easily wheeled the stroller up the ramp, opened the door, and she followed him inside.
She gasped. It was as if HGTV had asked her for her dream requirements for a house, then brought her into one ready-made for her. The foyer opened into a huge airy space with vaulted ceilings, a loft above. To the right, a grand staircase curved high up. A wall of windows with sliding doors to the back showed a huge deck and a big backyard, fenced.
The kitchen was a chef’s dream. The downstairs bathroom had a kiddie-size toilet and a regular-size one. There was a biggish family room with gorgeous light streaming through another entrance to the yard, and two smaller rooms, a den for each of them. Upstairs were five bedrooms, a huge master bedroom with the bathroom of her fantasies, including a spa-jet tub. The four other bedrooms were much smaller, but just right for kids.
“Our house was a starter house, Allie. Tiny and great when it was just the two of us, walkable to the PD and town. But we’ve outgrown it. And to be honest, the thought of what you had to endure there alone breaks my heart.”
“What do you mean?”
“You grieved for me there. You were alone with four newborns there. You had to pack up my stuff and take it to the attic there. Maybe a fresh start in a house that fits us all is just what we need.”
She thought so, too. She loved her house, loved that she had experienced all the good and all the bad there. That was life. But as she spun around, taking in the huge white-brick fireplace and the wall of windows in the living room, she felt renewed. A fresh start. For the six of them. “I’m not gonna lie. I love it. I already feel like I live here. That’s how connected I feel to the house.”
“I thought you would. When I saw the pictures at work, I just thought—this is Allie. And we’ll barely have to do any accommodations for the quads because so much is already baby-and kid-proofed.”
Her cup runneth over to the point that she couldn’t speak for a moment. She looked around at the warm white walls and beautiful wood floors. She could see herself cooking in that kitchen, developing her business even more. She could see the quads taking their first steps in the big open space and running around the fenced-in yard. She could see them casting pennies in the wishing well and making wishes.
But were they moving too fast? He’d barely been back a week. They were supposed to be taking things slow.
This was a huge commitment. A new house.
“Theo, what if...”
“What if what?”
She bit her lip and looked outside, two shade trees making a perfect spot for a hammock.
“What if come New Year, you turn back into a pumpkin?” he said, wincing.
She whirled around. “Yes. Exactly. Well, not a pumpkin, but you get the drift. Right now you’re a prince. You’re everything I hoped for for the babies, Theo. But you’re on vacation. What happens come March, April, when you’re deep into casework? When the local FBI asks you to join a task force to go after organized crime spreading into Wedlock Creek?”
“Allie, I can’t promise you that I won’t give my all to my job. That’s who I am. But I will promise you that I’ll give my all to you and the babies, too.”
And when you start resenting that you can’t chase a lead or work till 3:00 a.m....? That you can’t risk your life the way you would have before because you have four children depending on you?
She really wasn’t sure that he could make promises.
“I want this to work,” he said. “And so do you. So we’re committing. We’re a family and this is a family house.”
Committing. That was what she wanted, right? If she wanted it, she had to take the risk and trust him. “So we’ll make an offer? Can we afford it?”
“We paid a premium for living right in town. That little two-bedroom will sell for more than this huge farmhouse will cost us.”
“Wow,” she said. “And all this space. No neighbors right on top of us. I can’t even see any neighbors’ houses!”
“Five acres,” he said.
“Five acres,” she repeated. “And a beautiful red barn with a weathervane.”
“The house has plenty of room, but I was thinking the barn could be converted into a playhouse for the tykes.”
Her babies, who’d had to share a nursery, would have their own playhouse. She shook her head with wonder, her cup seriously running over.
As Allie looked around, all she could think was that the house represented the future—their future.
“So we’ll make an offer?” she asked, barely able to contain her glee.
He smiled. “We’ll make an offer.”
She threw her arms around him and he hugged her back.
“To new beginnings,” she said.
“To new beginnings.”
* * *
The next day, after he and Allie had slept on the idea of buying the farmhouse and decided to definitely make an offer, Theo was in the Wedlock Creek Police Department, shaking on the deal he’d made—thanks to Allie’s real estate agent sister Lila—with Officer Cohen. Lila would put their house up for sale, and hopefully, things would move fast once all the usual stuff that had to be taken care of on both sides was done.
“Stark, got a minute?” the captain called over as Theo was heading out.
“Sure,” he said, following the tall, husky man into his office.
The captain closed the door behind Theo, then gestured for him to sit down as he rounded the desk.
A closed door? What was this about?
“We’ve got a weird case and I’d like to handle it quickly and quietly, not start a hysteria,” the captain said. “We have a Christmas-present thief on our hands.”
Had he heard that correctly? “A Christmas-present thief?”
Captain White nodded. “Two houses, both in the same neighborhood, were hit up. One present from each home was stolen from under the tree. Both marked with a kid’s name.”
A simple burglary. Back when he was on the force, he hadn’t had a case like that since his rookie days.
“Would you mind looking into it?” Captain White asked. “Detective Barelli has a huge caseload at the moment, and I’m not comfortable putting the rookies on this. Something tells me we’re not dealing with a typical thief here.”
“Breaking and entering?” Theo asked.
“Entering, but no breaking. Both times a side and a back door were left unlocked. Another reason I wanted to ask you was that the neighborhood is yours. Both houses are on Oak Hill Road.” The captain handed over a very thin case file.
“I’ll take care of it,” Theo said. File in hand, he headed out, stopping at the desk in the far corner that would be his. The private area had been his “office” two years ago but had been turned into a makeshift meeting space. Now the captain had had it turned back into his office. He sat down in his chair, the familiarity making his heart skip a beat. This place, the PD, this office, made him feel as at home as that house had.
He read through the file.
42 Oak Hill Road. Owners reported a medium-size wrapped gift was missing from under the tree. They didn’t think anything of it until they mentioned it, over coffee, to
a neighbor four doors down, and she mentioned another neighbor had said a present was missing from under their tree. In both cases, no sign of forced entry; a side or back door had been left open. The parents questioned their children—in one home, a five-and seven-year-old, in the other a seven-and three-year-old—if one of them had swiped the gift, and the children insisted they didn’t and a room check didn’t turn up evidence.
That had been Theo’s first thought, that a kid in the home had gotten antsy and wanted what was in that box marked for him or her. Tomorrow he’d pay the families a visit, get more of a sense of the situation.
As he was packing up, he overheard Reed Barelli and another officer talking over a complicated case. There was suspicion of organized crime bleeding into Wedlock Creek, taking advantage of the increase in population that December always brought. The famed Wedlock Creek Chapel attracted Christmas and New Year’s visitors who wanted to marry there for the holidays. A tip had come in about gun smuggling. The FBI had asked for the PD’s help, and Reed and two other officers had been assigned. Come January, it was highly likely that Theo would be asked to join the team. Exactly the kind of case he liked. And exactly the kind that had destroyed his marriage.
Because he’d let it. The case wasn’t sending Barelli off the deep end; he had five kids under three to get home to every night, and he did, leaving his work at the office, on the street. So would Theo.
But what if he couldn’t? What if the call of the job was too strong and it became the priority in his heart and mind? What if he ended up thinking, She’ll just have to understand?
And another thing. He wasn’t even on the force yet, and now he had a case. Should he have turned it down, even though it was just a two-time present-napping? What if it turned into something bigger?
What if, what if, what if. You decide. You choose. If you want your marriage to not just work but thrive, you’ll make that happen.
But the more he listened in on their strategy, the more he itched to rush over and offer some ideas of his own. Instead, he forced himself to think about mistletoe. He wanted to surprise Allie with a sprig for the doorway into the family room so she’d have to kiss him a lot. The old Theo would have assumed something green hanging from the doorway was mold and would have gotten rid of it.
So there was progress being made here. At least, Theo hoped so.
* * *
“Is that mistletoe?” Allie asked, peering up at the doorway between the hallway and the family room.
“Yes, yes it is,” Theo said, a baby in each arm. “And since we’re standing under it...”
“You have to kiss each baby,” she finished for him with a sly smile.
He laughed and gave each beautiful baby a big kiss on the cheek. “And you.”
Sneaky guy. She had to say she liked this side of Theo. Playful. Letting her know he wanted to kiss her.
She glanced up at the sprig of mistletoe and then puckered up for her kiss.
“Oh, that’s sexy,” he said, grinning.
“We each have two babies in our arms,” she pointed out. “It’s as sexy as we can get.”
And were they supposed to be getting sexy?
He leaned forward and kissed her, and the moment his warm, familiar lips were on hers she wanted more, more, more. A deeper kiss. A longer kiss. She wanted him to pick her up and carry her upstairs to their bedroom.
But as she’d pointed out, they had four babies to get settled in the family room for playtime. An hour of crawling, pulling up, banging, babbling, making a ton of noise with gobs of toys gave the quads their fill of movement and they went happily into their Exersaucers, where they could scoot around and play with all the attachments.
With the babies engaged just a few feet away from them, Theo sat on the couch and patted the spot beside him. “Come sit. I want to talk to you about something.”
She stared at him. Uh-oh. Those words were never about something good. When he wanted to tell her about the farmhouse for sale, he’d made it a surprise. When he wanted to tell her about the Cohens accepting the offer Lila had made on their behalf, he’d shown her a photo Lila had texted him of her putting an Under Contract sign on the property.
So whatever this was about, it wasn’t something that would make her happy.
She sat down and braced herself. “What’s up?”
“The captain assigned me a minor case today,” he said.
Allie stared at him. Had she called this or what? Not good news. “But you’re not even on the force yet! Not for two weeks!”
She didn’t add the rush of worry she was feeling—that it was starting already. If he’d been assigned a case when he hadn’t even started back yet, what would it be like come January?
“It’s a minor burglary case in the neighborhood,” he said. “Not a task force. Nothing dangerous.”
“Oh,” she said, her heart rate returning to normal. “But couldn’t the captain have assigned it to a rookie?”
“He wants an experienced cop on it—he thinks there’s something unusual about the case and wants to keep it on the down low until I can report back with more information on what I think is going on.”
“Unusual? In what way?”
“A Christmas-present thief has stolen two gifts—marked with kids’ names—from two houses on Oak Hill Road. I don’t think it’ll take much time. Are you okay with me doing a little investigating?”
“A present thief? Yikes,” she said. “That is unusual. You know, maybe you working a light case before officially rejoining the PD is a good thing. A chance to transition back in while having a family this time around.”
“That’s a good way to look at it,” he said.
What were the chances Theo would become obsessed with the Wedlock Creek Christmas-present snatcher and work all hours of the night, obsessing about catching the perpetrator? Very unlikely.
She thought, anyway. The old Theo had made it his mission to wrap up his cases.
He reached for her hand, and she looked down at their entwined fingers. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“You do?” she asked, wondering if he did. He’d always been very good at reading her mind. Reading her.
He grinned. “You’re thinking that I’m going to catch the thief in no time and be focused on your Christmas present the way I should be.”
She laughed. “That wasn’t what I was thinking. But I prefer it, so let’s go with that.”
He held her gaze, his green eyes intense on her. “I made you a promise, Allie. I won’t ever let my work come between us again.”
When he looked at her that way, spoke with such conviction, she believed him. Or did she just desperately want to?
Because truth be told, not losing him to his work was really what she wanted for Christmas.
Chapter Nine
The next morning, Theo rang the bell of 42 Oak Hill Road. A tall, thin man with silver-rimmed glasses answered the door. After introductions and handshakes, Michael Dumford led Theo to the scene of the crime: the family Christmas tree.
“We’re last-minute shoppers,” his wife, Carrie, said, “So we only had four presents under the tree so far. The one that’s missing was a medium-size wrapped gift—a Lego set for our seven-year-old, Miles.”
“And these three were left untouched,” Theo said, jotting down some notes. “Were they moved, even slightly?”
Michael nodded. “Actually, yes, they all were. I’m quite a stickler for things being just so, and I’d arranged them by size on top of one another. The biggest box, containing a new snowsuit for Lucy, our three-year-old, then the Lego set on top of that, and then two wrapped packs of Pokemon cards on top of that. The Lego set was gone, the small gifts were just lying on the floor, and the big box was a few inches from where I’d placed it.”
Huh. So the thief did some shaking and made some quick decisions.
If you shook a Lego box, you pretty much knew what it was. They were on the pricey side, so it made sense the thief would go for that over a box that didn’t move, which suggested a bulky clothing item.
“And nothing else was taken from the home?” Theo asked.
“We checked and double-checked,” Mrs. Dumford said. “Nothing. There were even two twenty-dollar bills folded on top of that credenza,” she added, pointing. “The money would have been in full view of the thief.”
Interesting. Theo jotted that down. “What day did you notice the gift was missing?”
“It was two days ago. I happened to mention to Lolly Pfferman, four doors down, that the gift just vanished, and she mentioned that her neighbor, Ellen Gibson, also had a present go missing. So we both reported it to the police.”
“Now, Mr. and Mrs. Dumford, I do have to ask this. Are you reasonably certain that your seven-year-old didn’t take the gift? Unable to handle the suspense?”
Mr. Dumford smiled. “It was our first thought. But we asked him and unless he’s a future Academy Award winner, he didn’t take it. We also checked his room thoroughly. No sign of the Lego set or the wrapping paper. And trust me, I may be neat, but he’s not. Even if he hid the ripped-off wrapping paper, bits of it would have been all over the place, including his hair.”
Theo smiled. “And the thief could have just walked right in, no forced entry?”
“We tend to leave the back and side door unlocked during the day,” Mrs. Dumford said. “I’m training our puppy and so I’m in and out of the yard with him all day.”
“Can you recall if anyone other than family was in your home the day the gift went missing? Service worker?”
“No, no one,” Mrs. Dumford said. “I went to pick up Miles from school—he’s in second grade at Wedlock Creek Elementary—and I took him to karate and we stopped for smoothies. We were home by five thirty. And it was after dinner when Michael noticed the Lego set was gone.”
Theo nodded. “Did you notice if the gift was there before you left to pick up Miles?”
She shook her head. “That I can’t say. I just wasn’t focused on the tree or the gifts right then.”
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