Cole in My Stocking (2 page)

Then I registered what he’d said.
“Should be interesting.”
He must have meant me being in the same room with the Newburgh Police Department.

Shame pulsed up my neck and over my cheeks. I’d worked so hard to purge that shame from my system. Now it was back like it had never been gone, fresh as it had been the night he had to be remembering right now.

“Looks like you could use a little help,” he said.

I blinked. “Yeah.” The shame receded. I wasn’t Mandy Homerun instead of Mandy Holcomb. My years of education, internships, and working with women who had suffered abuse came back in a flood of confidence. Only, that flood was accompanied by a different kind of shame, shame that I’d forgotten all the knowledge I’d crammed into my brain. I’d let myself get pulled into the emotional undertow of a past I’d spent years in counseling to deal with. “I can’t get the tire off,” I said past numb lips. “It’s stuck.”

Cole’s hand on my window frame was relaxed and pale. Very New Hampshire in December. He tapped his middle finger absently on the depressed door-lock post. I couldn’t help noticing the lack of any notable jewelry on the neighboring ring finger. It was his left hand.

“Sit tight,” he said, smirking. Cocky. “I’ll change it.” He slapped the window ledge and stepped to the rear of the beast while I powered up the window to keep the heat in.

Five minutes later, he was back, red faced. I’d been watching in the mirror. He hadn’t been able to get the wheel off either.

My turn to smirk. I resisted the urge to say I’d told him so as I lowered the window again.

“Must be rusted on,” he said. “Come on. Get in the cruiser.”—He pronounced it
crooz-ah
. “We’ll swing by your dad’s and pick up some WD-40 from the shop. You got the keys, right?”

“I know where he keeps them.” Dad’s lawyer was supposed to have left me a key to the trailer in a hiding spot on the porch. Presuming I could get into the trailer, I could find the keys to the shop. I even remembered where Dad kept the WD-40. “But I’m not getting in the cruiser.” I folded my arms. No way was I getting in a police car. Never again. Not willingly, anyway.

“It’s not even a mile. Come on. Let’s do this so I can get home. Been a long day.” He rubbed his stubble. “Couple-a days, actually.” He flicked up the lock and opened my door.

I yanked it closed. “No.” I heard the edge of panic in my voice and turned it down a few notches. “I’ll call for a tow—shoot.” My phone. I kept forgetting.

I jammed my hand between the seat and the console, knowing it was futile even as I did it. Desperation was a funny thing. It made you believe you had a shot at pulling off the impossible. “You made me drop my phone between the seats when you knocked on my window,” I explained, realizing I must look completely insane. I gave up the effort. It would take a flashlight, a coat hanger and a lot of patience I didn’t have right now to get that phone out. “Can I borrow yours? You have a cell, right? Just let me make a call and you can get out of here.”

He studied me a few beats and pulled a cell phone from his belt, but he didn’t hand it to me. He jabbed at the screen and put it on speaker. When his call connected, a female voice came on the line. He grinned as he told the mystery woman he needed a favor and gave her our location. “Bring some WD-40 with you,” he said before signing off. “It’ll be a few minutes,” he told me. “Put up the window and crank that heat.”

He left to get in his patrol car. I expected him to be on his way, but he stayed put. Before long another patrol car pulled up behind his. A tall female officer with a great rack—and I’m not talking gun rack—got out. Cole greeted her with a smile and speech that was muffled through my sealed up windows but clearly cordial.

Irrational jealousy made me clench my fists on my knees.

Cole snagged the blue can Officer Busty handed him. Was it my imagination, or was she standing a little closer than professionalism dictated? I mean, come on, this was a roadside emergency, not a state patrol department mixer.

Logically I knew it was stupid to think jealous thoughts in the direction of a guy sixteen years my senior whom I barely knew and hadn’t seen in years. But it was what I felt. I owned it. I’d get over it. My crush on Cole was back from hiatus. Fine. It’d be gone again as soon as I hit the road back to Philly.

Which couldn’t happen soon enough.

Unfortunately, I had a to-do list a mile long, and I couldn’t leave until it was done. Topping the list was meeting with Max, my dad’s lawyer and executor, to start closing down the gunsmith business. Then cleaning out the trailer and figuring out what to do with anything valuable or sentimental. Then the funeral on Christmas Eve morning. Somewhere in there, I’d have to figure out Dad’s medical bills, which had apparently racked up at an alarming rate in the six weeks since his diagnosis. Max would help, he’d told me on the phone, but since he charged by the hour, he’d encouraged me to do as much as I could myself. My student loans had dibs on anything left over after Dad’s estate was settled. Therefore, I was ready to put in some serious hours to keep Max’s bill down.

Which meant I’d be around town for a while, definitely ’til after the New Year. I put in for two weeks’ vacation at the non-profit I worked for in Philly, but I could envision it turning into even more. However long it took, I’d whip that to-do list into submission and get home as soon as possible. Then I could forget the buzz of excitement that had taken me off guard upon seeing Cole again. I could forget Newburgh and all the insecurities that had come rushing back in the past hour.

After some grunting and groaning, Cole got the old wheel off while the other officer looked on. Remembering I had the lug nuts in my coat pocket, I got out of the car as Cole slid the new tire into place. I held them out, the metal chilling on my palm.

Cole took them one by one as he needed them. It made me happy he did it that way instead of grabbing them all at once, like he wanted to prolong our interaction or something. Delusional of me, I know. I was reading too much into it.

Officer Busty looked on, leaning on the back of the beast. I felt her sneaking glances at me, but I had yet to catch her in the act. Did she know who I was? Did she know
what
I was, or rather what Newburgh claimed I was?

She and Cole had been having a quiet conversation when I’d gotten out of the car, but with me standing nearby, they’d clammed up. All the lug nuts gone, I muttered a thank you to the rescue squad and returned to my seat warmer. The second my door closed, their conversation resumed.

My cheeks got hot. I was suddenly in high school again, after the night Chief Tooley had picked me up for underage drinking. The arrest he’d threatened me with had never come to fruition, probably because my dad had talked him out of it—I’d never asked. Arrest or not, my reputation, which had already been on the sketchy end, took a hit anyway.

My locker had occupied the coveted social real estate between Emily Knox’s and Freddie Calhoun’s lockers. Emily and Freddie were popular kids who ran in a better dressed, more law-abiding circle than I did, but they’d always been nice enough to me, and me to them. After that night, they’d started freezing me out. I would show up to change my books, and silence would descend on locker row. The second I’d slam the flimsy metal door and walk away, conversation would ramp up behind me. I’d catch whispered bits of condemnation as I hurried to class.
“Drunk off her ass… You hear who she left with?... Three guys at once, older dudes… Lives with her alchie father next door to the dump…that’s where trash like her belongs.”

It sucked being back home. I hadn’t even made it to the trailer yet, and I already felt about as welcome as a kid with lice at a sleepover.

Officer Busty finally moved when Cole opened up the back of the beast to stow the jack and the flat. She got in her cruiser and took off with a perky honk and a wave he returned with a big old grin. Not that my eyes were glued to him in the rearview mirror or anything.

I powered down my window when he came alongside my door. I meant to thank him again, but what came out instead was, “Friend of yours?”

He lowered his eyebrows in question like he didn’t know who I was talking about.

“Officer Busty,” I blurted. “She a friend of yours?”

Cole’s eyes crinkled at the corners. His expression softened. It was as good as a confession of undying love. They were a thing. Officer Oakley and Officer Busty. Their children would be blessed with physical perfection and out-of-this-world coolness. They’d be riding their Fisher Price Harleys in an asphalt driveway with no weeds growing up through the cracks. White picket fence, the whole shebang.

Envisioning their perfect life together shouldn’t have caused a sharp pain behind my breastbone, but it did. People felt irrational emotions when grieving. Dad’s death would likely skew my reactions to all kinds of things in the coming weeks. After six years of schooling resulting in a double master’s in public health and counseling psychology, I knew this. Unfortunately, knowing the pain was irrational didn’t make it any more bearable.

“Her name’s Stacey,” Cole said. “She’s married to a professor at UNH.”

I felt my nose wrinkle. “You’re having an affair with a married woman?” If we’d been parked beside a canyon, I’m pretty sure my screech would have echoed for many uncomfortable seconds.

An honest to goodness chuckle huffed from between his lips. “We’re just friends.”

“Oh.”
Idiot.
“Thanks for the tire change.” I started the window on its upward trajectory lest he see me turn as crimson as my turtleneck with embarrassment.

At considerable risk to himself, he reached in, moved my finger from the button and lowered the window back down. “You staying at your dad’s place?” he asked, as if I hadn’t nearly guillotined his arm.

“Um.” I stared at his long fingers. His forearm rested well inside the ledge of my window. He was in my space, elbow bent to let his hand dangle far enough down that he almost grazed the puffy down of my sleeve. I felt the almost-touch like tiny jolts to my skin.

He moved his arm back to the window frame, taking his electric fingertips with him.

When I tried to meet his eyes, they were in that blasted shadow again. “Sorry. What?” He’d asked me a question, hadn’t he?

“You staying at your dad’s place?” he repeated.

“Yeah.” I nodded too many times. “Dad’s place,” I echoed unnecessarily. Mentally giving myself a shake, I resolved to get the heck out of there before I made an even bigger dork out of myself.

“Go on home. I’ll follow to make sure you get in okay.”

“You don’t have to do that.” It occurred to me I didn’t know where Cole lived. He’d said he was headed home. Did that mean he lived in Newburgh? There wasn’t much reason to be on Newburgh Junction Road unless your destination lay in the dearth of main arteries the town represented. How far did he live from Dad’s place? Scratch that. None of my business.

“I know I don’t have to,” he said. “I’m doing it anyway. Go on home, Mandy. I’ll take off when you’re safe inside.”

The set of his jaw said he wasn’t going to budge. “It’s not my home,” I muttered before powering up the window.

He let me this time and followed me through Newburgh’s blink-and-you-miss-it downtown and around the unmarked turn-off that led toward the dump…and Dad’s single-wide mobile home.

A few minutes later, I waved from the bay window. Cole flashed his headlights in acknowledgment and backed down the driveway. A current of excitement warmed me from the inside out as I looked forward to seeing him at Dad’s funeral.

And that, kids, is what we call messed up.

* * * *

Cole pulled into the rear parking lot of Troop A headquarters. Route 125 had been a ghost town tonight. He could have used the distraction of a speeder. Hell, he would have even taken a broken taillight. No such luck. After parking the cruiser and cutting the ignition, he thunked his head against the headrest. He was so screwed.

He’d known when he’d watched his buddy, Craig “Gripper” Holcomb, slip away two nights ago that Mandy would be back for the funeral. He’d braced himself to see her again. He’d psyched himself up to tell her all the things Gripper had made him promise to say. He’d known it wasn’t going to be easy, not when six years hadn’t diminished his attraction to her one single iota. But he’d determined to grit his teeth and do what needed to be done. For Grip.

He should have known no amount of preparation would help him. He was beyond help. He was toast. He was FUBAR.

Mandy was even more beautiful than she’d been as a kid. Ever since he’d known her, she’d looked ten years older than she was. As a high-schooler, she’d been a knock-out brunette who would have been at home on the silver screen with her blown out waves and heavily-made-up almond-shaped eyes. It had always bothered Cole that he noticed her, but honestly, a man would have to be sans pulse not to notice a beauty like Mandy Holcomb. How Gripper could stand letting her out of the house dressed in those short skirts, he’d never know.

But she hadn’t been dressed like that tonight. She’d had on flattering, not-too-tight jeans, those flimsy Ugg boots all the women liked wearing nowadays, and a chunky down coat over a turtleneck sweater. Somehow she’d managed to look even more striking all covered up.

Her skin was still flawless. She still wore her hair in long, shining layers the color of black coffee. Her eyes were still a green so vibrant he’d had a hard time looking away from them when she’d stood in the beam of his headlights to hand him lug nuts. Without the eye makeup, their almond shape was more obvious, more intriguing.

She looked different, but she was still drop dead gorgeous. And now she was legal.

Technically she’d been legal when she’d left town. She’d been eighteen. But she’d been a high-schooler. He never would have made a move on an eighteen-year-old, not when he’d been practically twice her age and friends with her father. But she wasn’t eighteen any longer. She was twenty-four now.

If only he could still be thirty-four, the age he’d been when she’d left. If only he could have stopped aging and waited for her to catch up.