She could only hope Tate would remember that bond and forgive her for overstepping and bringing the children here.
“Henry and Alice are staying with me for a few weeks because of a...family situation.”
“Our mom died last year and our dad is in the slammer,” Henry announced.
Annie winced, not quite sure where he had picked up that particular term. Not from her, certainly. She wouldn’t have used those words so bluntly but couldn’t deny they were accurate.
Tate looked nonplussed at the information. “Is that right?”
“It’s only temporary,” she told him quickly. “Wes had a little run-in with the law and was sentenced to serve thirty days in the county jail. The children are staying with me in the caretaker’s apartment through the holidays. I hope that’s okay.”
Tate didn’t seem to know how to respond. She had the impression it was very much not okay with him.
“We can talk about it later.”
Annie frowned, anxiety and nerves sending icy fingers down her spine. She didn’t like the sound of that.
What would she do if he told her she had to find somewhere else for the children to spend Christmas? She would have to quit. She didn’t want to as she enjoyed working here. What other choice would she have, though?
“Why don’t we, um, go inside,” she suggested. “We can talk more there.”
“We won, right?” Alice pressed. “We hit you like six times and you only hit us twice each.”
Her priority right now wasn’t really deciding who won a snowball fight. But then, she was not six years old. “You absolutely won.”
“Yay! That means we each get two cookies instead of only one!”
Annie had always planned to give them two cookies each anyway. She was a sucker for these two. The twins knew this and took full advantage.
“Kids, why don’t you go change out of your snow stuff and hang out in your room for a few moments,” she said when they were inside the mud room. “I’ll be there soon to get your cookies.”
The twins looked reluctant but they went straight to her apartment through her own private entrance, leaving her alone with Tate.
Drat the man for somehow managing to seem more gorgeous in person than he looked on screen.
She must have seen the clip of a public television documentary he had appeared in at least a dozen times, watching him help villagers dig a well in Africa.
He had looked rugged and appealing on screen, even tired and sweaty. Seeing him now, dressed in jeans and a luxurious-looking leather coat, made her feel slightly breathless, a feeling she wasn’t happy about.
“You obviously weren’t expecting me.”
The understatement of the month. And they would probably see a little snow this winter here in Star Valley.
“No. I’m sorry. Maybe I missed an email or something.”
Earlier in the year, Wallace would text her about once a month to tell her and the housekeeper/cook Deb Garza that he would be flying in for a few days, when he was arriving, what time to pick him up and how long he would stay.
That had been his pattern early on, anyway. Then he caught pneumonia in late spring and never seemed to bounce back. He seemed to be a little stronger the last time she spoke on the phone with him in late October and he had been planning to come during the holidays but a heart attack had claimed him out of the blue only a few weeks later.
“We must have had a miscommunication,” Tate said with a frown. “I thought my grandmother was sending word we were coming and she must have thought I would inform you.”
“We?” Was someone else here that she hadn’t seen yet?
“The rest of my family. I’m the advance guard, so to speak, but they’re all showing up by the end of the week.”
Annie gaped at him. “The rest of your family?”
“The whole lot of us. My grandmother Irene, her sister Lillian, my mother Pamela and her husband Stanford. And my two sisters.”
“Both of them? Even Brianna?”
“Yes. That’s the plan. You were always good friends with Brie, weren’t you?”
“That was a long time ago. Another lifetime. I think the summer we were eleven was probably the last time I saw her.”
The instant she said the words, she regretted them. Both of them knew what had happened that terrible summer.
Brianna and Tate’s father Cole Sheridan, Wallace’s son, had fallen down a steep mountainside to his death while horseback riding with his children.
The tragedy had lasting ramifications that rippled to this day.
“Yes. Everyone is flying in Friday. I offered to come out a early to make sure the house was ready for company. Things have been so hectic, I guess I just assumed my grandmother would have informed the staff, like my grandfather used to do.”
“What staff?” Annie could hear the slight edge of hysteria in her voice. “There is no staff except me, Levi Moran, the ranch manager, and a ranchhand, Bill Shaw.”
Tate frowned. “What about a housekeeper? A cook?”
“Deb Garza used to fill both of those roles but after Wallace got sick and stopped coming to Angel’s View, she decided to retire. She moved down to Kemmerer to live with her sister. Your grandfather told me to hold off hiring anyone to replace her for now. We have a cleaning crew that comes a couple times a month to keep the dust bunnies under control but that’s it. I take care of the rest.”
Tate sighed. “That’s going to be a problem, then. I have four days to get the house ready for Christmas and no idea how the hell I’m supposed to pull that off.”
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The Lights on Knockbridge Lane
by Roan Parrish
Chapter One
Adam
Everyone on Knockbridge Lane had a different theory about Westley Mobray. It was the first thing Adam Mills heard about as he introduced himself around last week, when he and August moved in.
The eight-year-old McKinnon twins next door said he was a vampire. Their parents, Darren and Rose McKinnon, scoffed at that, but said he could be a witch. Marisol Gutierrez three doors down insisted she’d seen him skulking around the neighborhood at night, hunting for animals to sacrifice to the devil. A teenager at the end of the street reported that anyone who looked him in the eyes would be hypnotized, and anyone who touched him would turn to stone. Mr. Montgomery on the corner just said freak.
Westley Mobray was never seen before sunset, though mysterious packages arrived on his doorstep often. He never spoke to anyone and never waved hello. And late at night, the windows of his run-down house glowed an eerie green.
At least, that’s what they told Adam.
So when he saw the man in question through the twilit haze of his own front window—with his daughter in tow—he was understandably startled. Especially since he’d thought she was playing quietly in her room.
He’d slammed two coffees to prevent it, but he’d been asleep. The kind of light, unsatisfying sleep he often fell into
when he had a moment of quiet. Which was something that didn’t happen that often as the newly single parent of an eight-year-old.
His insomnia had been pretty bad since the divorce, and worse since they moved back to Garnet Run, where he was the only one responsible for Gus.
The knock at the door jerked him out of that strange sleep, and he scrambled for the door, stubbing his toe in the process, so that when he yanked it open he was biting back the kind of words that he tried with varying degrees of success not to say in front of Gus.
He focused on Gus first. She was all in one piece and was even smiling. It was her I did something bad and delightful smile, but a smile was good—at least when on a child who seemed to have been forcibly dragged home by an irate stranger.
“Where is your coat?” is what came out of Adam’s mouth.
Sometimes he tried to remember what it was like when he talked about things like the composition of his next shot, which restaurant’s tiramisu he preferred, or the latest cozy mystery he was reading.
Now he said things like “Where is your coat” and “Don’t take that apart” and “If you don’t stop making that sound I might have to throttle you.” Okay, he didn’t say the last one so much as think it. Often.
“It’s not that cold,” his wonderful, brilliant daughter said, her lips only vaguely blue.
Adam counseled himself to breathe.
Once he’d determined that Gus was all in one piece and frostbite wasn’t imminent, he turned his attention to the man who’d brought her home.
“Um,” he said intelligently.
Westley Mobray was tall and severe, with shaved dark hair and strong dark eyebrows over piercing blue eyes. Those eyes were narrowed slightly, either in anger or—if the neighborhood rumors were to be believed—because he never went outside when there was the slightest bit of light still in the sky, as it would, of course, burn him to ash.
“She broke into my house,” he said. His voice was low and rough with disuse.
“She’s eight.”
Mobray cocked his head as if unsure what that might have to do with Gus’ felonious misdeeds.
Adam sighed.
“Gus, did you break into our neighbor’s house?”
She squinted and screwed up her face in a way that said she absolutely had. Adam and Gus had a strict No Lying policy, which had resulted in Gus developing a keen sense of words and their exact meanings.
“I didn’t break anything,” she settled on finally.
Adam offered up a silent prayer to the universe that his daughter not end up in prison.
“Did you enter without being invited?” he clarified.
And the vampire hits just kept coming.
She bit her lip and nodded.
“You can’t do that, baby. It’s not safe for you and it’s not okay to intrude on other people’s privacy.”
She looked down at her toes, the very image of contrition. Then she peeked up at him with a glint in her big blue eyes.
“But he has lizards,” she said softly.
“Okay, let’s get you inside,” Adam said quickly. Once Gus got going on something that fascinated her—and lizards were the most recent addition to that list—she tended to forget any reason why she shouldn’t abandon all sense (or rules) to pursue it.
Adam passed her behind him and looked up at Westley Mobray.
“I’m really sorry about that,” he said.
“She climbed in through my basement window.”
Adam winced. Gus really was remarkably resourceful. And limber.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll talk to her. She just, uh, really likes lizards. It started as a dinosaur thing and now... Anyway. Eight-year-olds.”
The mysterious neighbor didn’t say anything, just continued to look at Adam with a keen, curious gaze.
“I don’t think I’m hypnotized,” Adam muttered. Would you know if you were hypnotized, or was that part of hypnosis?
“Excuse me?” Westley Mobray said.
“Uh, nothing. Thanks for bringing her home. I’m Adam Mills, by the way.” He stuck out his hand. “We just moved here. That’s Gus. August. But she likes Gus.”
Mobray didn’t shake Adam’s hand—so Adam wouldn’t feel his preternatural chill?—so he shoved it in his pocket. But at least there was no chance he’d turn to stone.
“Wes,” said the man who was probably not a vampire or a witch or a Medusa. Freak? Well, the jury was out. But Adam tended to like freaks.
Then he turned and walked away, broad shoulders blocking the last of the day’s light.
Inside, Gus had helped herself to a glass of apple juice and she held up the bottle to Adam angelically, to ask if he wanted some.
He nodded and she poured him some juice. He rummaged around in the disordered cabinets, looking for something to fix for dinner.
“Gus,” he began, assuming the lecture would flow naturally once he opened his mouth.
“Daddy, he has the best basement,” Gus gushed. “Four lizards. One has orange and black on its back and one is red and the other two are brown and he has a snake—I don’t know what kind—and he showed me a huge, hairy spider!”
Adam choked on his juice.
He did not, historically, care for spiders.
“A, um, spider?” he squeaked.
“A turanyulla,” she confirmed.
“Tarantula,” he corrected automatically. “You saw this when you climbed in the window?”
“He showed me the tarantula.” She said the word slowly and carefully. “He put it right in my face!”
Said face was lit with joy. Adam’s stomach dropped.
“He what?”
“I’m sorry I climbed in. It was just so interesting.”
Interesting was Gus’ buzzword. She had discovered, rightfully, that Adam liked when she was interested in things. Now she used it like a shovel to dig herself out of every mess she got in.
“So the, er, tarantula was placed near your, um, face?” His voice broke at the end.
“He thought it would scare me.” She grinned hugely. “But it was so cool.”
“Come,” he wheezed. He grabbed her hand, burst through the door and stalked to the last house on the street. Damn, it was cold.
Wes Mobray’s house certainly did nothing to discourage rumors of his supernatural being. It was a two-story Craftsman cottage, like the one he and Gus were renting. But unlike theirs, which was painted in cheery white and blue, it wore a peeling coat of brown, and every window but two—one that must have been Gus’ basement ingress, and one small upstairs window—was covered from the inside with brown paper.
The whole thing gave the house the look of a crumpled paper bag. A crumpled gothic paper bag.
Adam felt a momentary pang of pity for Wes Mobray. Maligned and gossiped about by neighbors, living in this depressing paper bag of a house... But then he remembered what had brought him over here and he steeled himself to ring the doorbell.
It took ages, but after several more rings and some angry knocking, the door creaked open and Wes Mobray peered out, looking very confused.
“You!” Adam accused with a practiced pointer finger to Wes’ face. “Put a tarantula in my daughter’s face?!”
“She broke into my house,” he said simply.
“I don’t care. You do not shove poisonous, terrifying—” Adam shuddered “—creepy spiders in children’s faces!”
“You’re scared of spiders.”
The man’s infuriatingly handsome face quirked with the hint of a smile. Adam felt parts of himself turn just the tiniest bit to stone. He squared his shoulders and drew himself up to his full (admittedly not terribly imposing) height.
He looked Westley Mobray dead in his rather beautiful eyes and said firmly and with utter conviction: “Yes. I am terrified of them.”
Copyright © 2021 by Roan Parrish
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ISBN-13: 9780369710277
Her Christmas Future
Copyright © 2021 by TTQ Books LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Her Christmas Future Page 21