Three Nights before Christmas (6 page)

She gave him no response except a brief scratch of her head—with her middle finger. Gabriel’s mouth fell open, and his delighted gaze shot to Austin, who just rolled his eyes and walked away toward his own stand.

Gabriel fell into step next to him. “Not a fan of yours, huh?”

“Feeling’s mutual.” Or at least it should’ve been. But a strange mix of admiration and amusement mingled in his chest, two emotions he’d never experienced with other ex-offenders. As far as he could see, she kept her head down and did her job. Generally, when he came across ex-cons, it was because they were in the forest acting like dicks. Drunk and disorderly. Threatening other campers.

Not Lacey. She worked her ass off.

“There’s got to be a story there, if she hasn’t fallen for old Golden Balls.”

Austin cringed and stopped dead in his tracks. “Shit. I thought that name had died a death.”

“I’m resurrecting it unless you tell me what happened between you and Miss Congeniality.”

Sighing, Austin sat at the table Gabriel had set up. “Can’t. Sorry.”

Gabriel’s brows rose knowingly. “Ahh, one of those.”

Shaking his head, Austin tried to head Gabriel’s assumption off at the pass. “Not like that. Not even close.”

“Then what?”

Austin glanced at Lacey, but she was busy helping the two guys she was with create a magical mini forest, all lit up with blue twinkle lights. Gabriel had been in a godforsaken war zone when the Copper Mountain drug bust had gone down, so Lacey’s name wouldn’t mean anything to him. For Lacey’s sake, Austin wanted to keep it that way. As much as he detested her crime, the parole board had decided she deserved a fresh start. He was trying his best to respect that. “She’s just someone I met at work. That’s all. Don’t ask any more questions unless you want me to dig my nose into your private life.”

“Hey, my life’s an open book.”

Austin gave him a disbelieving look, and Gabriel returned a wry smile. “These days, anyway. But fair enough. Everyone’s entitled to their secrets.”

That they were, but the
secret
in this case was Lacey’s, not Austin’s, and it wasn’t so secret in this town. Still, that didn’t mean Austin had a right to spread it further. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

Gabriel handed him a shoebox full of tickets that had clearly been made by his kindergarten-teacher fiancée, Molly, and her eleven-year-old son, Josh. The box had been covered in red felt and had puffy white stuff glued around the edges, as if it had been made of Santa’s hat. The tickets themselves were an explosion of clip-art—dancing elves, a ruddy-faced Santa, mistletoe and ivy—and laminated to protect them from Montana’s December weather. They were such a labor of love that Austin grinned as he flicked through them. “You’re a lucky man, bro.”

“You have no idea. Molly and I are taking Josh to see Santa at the Graff, and we’ll slip away for the tree-lighting ceremony, but we’ll come back here in between to give you a break.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

Gabriel made a face. “And you don’t have to sit here all day selling tickets for us.”

“I know I don’t have to. I want to. What are uncles for?”

Gabriel’s smile started slowly, just a hint of happiness at first, but then it grew to stretch his cheeks. “You’re my favorite brother, you know that?”

Austin laughed. “Yeah, well, Wyatt’s not exactly stiff competition. Go meet Santa, make sure he’s still on board to play the role for us, and bring me something hot when you come back.”

Gabriel’s gaze slid not so subtly toward Lacey.

“A hot
drink
, dickhead.”

“Careful, families are starting to show up.”

Austin jerked his head back in surprise. “Man, it’s like you were never in the military.”

Gabriel shrugged. “What can I say? Raising a kid changes things.”

With a brief wave, Gabriel took off to find his new family, leaving Austin on his own to shift uncomfortably on a butt-freezing metal chair as he waited for people to be drawn in by the sign for Santa’s Wonderland. Snowflakes had started to fall, the leftovers from last night’s storm, and drifts of snow lined the street. Delicious scents reached him as food vendors set up their trucks and restaurants got to work preparing for the influx of hungry families. The air filled with peppermint, chocolate, and cinnamon. His stomach rumbled. He hazarded a glance at Lacey’s stand. She hadn’t sat down since she’d arrived. The two guys had disappeared, leaving her to work on her own. But, as far as he could tell, she’d finished the biggest tasks. Now she took ornaments from a box and decorated the two trees that flanked the entrance to the pathway she’d created through her magical forest. Austin folded his hands on his table and tried not to look bored.

He sold a few tickets to Santa’s Wonderland, mostly to parents who knew it was a fundraiser for a camp Gabriel and Molly were trying to start for kids like Josh, who’d been paralyzed from the waist down last year and now needed specially adapted equipment to help him be the rambunctious kid he naturally was.

Over the course of the morning, Lacey’s trees drew a hell of a lot of attention. Good thing, too, because Austin’s table was so close he could call a group of kids over with “Hey, want to see Santa’s workshop?”

The reaction was a resounding “Yeah!”

He waved them over. “Let me tell you about a magical place called Santa’s Wonderland. Did you know Santa has a workshop up on Copper Mountain?”

“No, he doesn’t!” a little girl with red braids shouted. “His workshop is in the North Pole.”

“That’s right. His
main
workshop is in the North Pole.” Austin leaned closer, as if he were about to share a secret. The kids copied him, crowding each other to be the first to hear it. “But he has a satellite workshop on Copper Mountain.”

“He builds
satellites
?” an older girl gasped.

Austin paused. “Uh, no. That’s not what I meant.”

“But that’s what you said,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s not what I meant. I just—” How did he explain what
satellite
meant to kids who were young enough to believe in Santa? Why had he even used that word?

He glanced over just in time to catch Lacey watching him, arms crossed, and amusement written all over her face. He couldn’t help himself. “Ms. Gallagher, how would you describe it?”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t. I’d get arrested for luring kids into the forest.”

Then she turned away and approached an elderly couple looking at one of her trees, leaving Austin a little bit stunned and more than a little chastened for trying to draw her in to his conversation.

“What does
lure
mean?” a boy asked.

“It’s what you use to catch fish,” the older girl said, brimming with superiority.

Behind her, Gabriel strolled up with his arm around Molly, and Josh wheeled himself through the snow using upper-body strength that was incredible for an eleven-year-old kid. Someday, when his testosterone kicked in, that boy was going to kick ass at whatever sport he chose—as long as he had opportunities like the ones Molly and Gabriel wanted to provide him, opportunities to develop his skills, build his strength and not be held back by his injuries.

And that was why Austin was freezing his ass off, losing an argument to a young girl. He redoubled his efforts. “Santa will be visiting Copper Mountain every day in the week before Christmas. He’ll have lots of fun things for you to do. You can visit his workshop, meet some of his elves, take a sleigh ride through the snow, and eat yummy food.”

“And ride in a steam train!” Josh shouted, his voice overflowing with excitement.

The kids gasped, spinning to give him their full attention. Austin and Gabriel shared a worried cringe over their heads.

“Uh, Josh—” Gabriel started.

But—typical—the boy wouldn’t listen. His hands moved a mile a minute as he wove a story for the younger kids. “Gabriel and my new uncles have an old steam train. It used to bring copper down from Copper Mountain, but it hasn’t been used in almost a hundred years. They’re fixing it, though, and it’ll take you up to Santa’s Wonderland. Wanna go?”

Shouts filled the air and the group of excited kids jumped up and down.

Heart sinking low in his gut, Austin tried to temper their enthusiasm. “Actually, we’re not sure whether—”

“Want to buy a ticket for the train?” Josh asked.

The kids shouted, “Yeah!”

Josh pointed at the table. “Go line up, and I’ll be right there.”

Nausea burned Austin’s throat at the prospect of disappointing not only Josh but all these kids. When they’d dashed to the table and formed the most orderly line he’d ever seen, he rubbed his hand across his throbbing forehead.

Josh grinned. “And
that
, gentlemen, is how you sell tickets.”

He rolled off with a flourish and settled behind the table, where he handled the transactions. Austin, Gabriel, and Molly formed their own little huddle of adult realism on the edge of the crowd.

“What are the chances of the train being finished on time?” Molly asked, her voice hushed.

Gabriel glanced at him, since Austin had volunteered to project manage this part of the fundraiser.

Austin grimaced. “I’ve hit some snags. There were a couple of replacement parts that took longer to source than I expected. And some of the mechanical problems stumped me, so I’ve had to find experts but it’s tough to describe problems to them over the phone, even if I video call them and show them what I’m talking about.”

“Sooo…” Molly said, “the chances are…?”

“Not great.”

She nodded. “We’ve overcome much worse. I know you’re busting your behind, Austin, and that’s what matters most.”

No, it wasn’t. He’d busted his ass, yes. But he would do anything for Josh—and for countless kids he hadn’t met yet who deserved a chance to ride horses and do ropes courses and all the things he’d taken for granted as an adolescent.

“I’ll get the train finished, Molly. I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“I don’t.” He squeezed her shoulders and dipped his head to meet her eyes. “The
Copper Mountain Express
will be finished in time.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Lacey hoisting a baled tree onto her shoulder and sliding it into the back of a mom’s pickup truck. He’d eaten a lot of crap in his life. Pride was going to be the hardest to choke down.

‡

T
he rev-rev-rev of
a chainsaw split the peaceful mountain air. Lacey laid its teeth against a spruce’s bark, feeling the saw’s bite in the way it tried to leap from her hands. She held her grip steady and slowly fed the metal through the tree’s trunk. The saw’s eager, throaty growl turned into a high whine as it slid through the wood before jerking out the other side with a triumphant roar.

“Timber!” she shouted, even though Joel and Tony were cutting and baling trees far enough away that they were in no danger. She quickly flipped off the saw and stepped out of the falling tree’s path, watching it tip over into the snow with a soft
pffft
.

A movement at the edge of the area they were clearing caught her eye. A man in a thick blue jacket, jeans, and snow boots made his way to her.

She tried to hide her dismay from her face, but it got tougher every day. Austin trudged over the snow until he stood a few feet away, eying the chainsaw in a way that showed he knew exactly what she could do with it if she were angry enough.

She was angry enough.

But she wasn’t stupid enough—despite what he’d once said about her in court.

Criminally stupid.

She set the chainsaw on the fallen tree, clenched her fists and tried to take deep breaths to calm her rage. But she couldn’t fill her lungs deeply enough to get at the source of that rage. She couldn’t catch enough breath to cool the fire in her belly.

Her impotence made her eyes sting and blur, which pissed her off even more because she didn’t want Austin to think he’d made her cry. And she wasn’t crying, exactly. These tears weren’t from pain or sorrow. They sprang from somewhere far deeper, an abyss that had opened up at the moment of her arrest and grown larger after it.

“Nice work,” Austin said calmly, gesturing at the tree.

“Fuck you.”

He blinked and so did she. She hadn’t intended the words to come out. In her head rang
Thank you, Officer. What can I do for you today?
Yet it seemed her heart was doing the talking, not her head. And now that she started, she couldn’t stop. She cleared the distance between them in two steps, her finger pointing at the middle of his chest but being careful not to touch him. She’d been too well conditioned never to touch an officer of the law. That was how body parts got yanked from their sockets and time inside got extended.

“I said fuck you,” she repeated, even though he hadn’t asked her to. It just felt good, and she’d needed to underline it. “Every time you come here, I have to call my parole officer and tell him I’ve had another brush with the law, and I’m sick of it. If you want to search the place, search it. If you want to search me, search me.”

The words cost her a hell of a lot. She desperately wanted to say
get a warrant
, but she no longer had the right to that kind of physical security. He didn’t need probable cause or reasonable suspicion or anything else. The fact she was a parolee was the only cause he needed to treat her like a suspect.