Mistletoe And Murder

When he was far enough from the building to be safe, he picked a dry spot on one of the cement parking blocks near an overhead light post and sank down on it, keeping her in his arms and ignoring the ache in his knee.

Sirens whined in the distance.

He looked down into her heart-shaped face. Her eyes were closed, but she still gripped the Christmas toy she’d considered worth her life.

“Mallory!” he called to urge her awake, loudly because he could hardly hear and figured she was at least as bad off. He had to make sure she’d be okay in case he passed out. “Mallory, open your eyes.”

She did. They were deep, sea-green eyes, he saw in the lamplight. He’d seen them before, of course, but he had purposely not noticed their color. Not noticed anything but how they smiled when she smiled. Didn’t want to notice now.

But he did.

“You saved me,” she said. She covered one ear and frowned. “I can’t hear.”

“What?” he asked her.

“You saved me,” she said again, louder, and coughed with the effort. Her lips lifted in a gentle smile that gifted him more than any present she could give him. She took a breath and said loudly, “I owe you.”

“No, you don’t,” he said just as loudly. He didn’t want anyone to owe him, especially not a woman like Mallory. “I saved you for a purely selfish reason. So you don’t owe me anything.”

“What reason?”

Oh, great. Now he had to hurt her again, because he wasn’t lying. Everything he did lately was for selfish reasons.

“I would have to take a bunch of your cases over if you ended up in the hospital, and I’m overworked as it is.”

The smile left her lips, and she shut her eyes again. Wonderful. That was why he didn’t get involved with people anymore. He just hurt them, and he couldn’t seem to stop.

The regret that he’d tried his best to bury burned once more in him. But if he made amends, she might get the idea he wanted to be friends. He didn’t. All he wanted was to be left alone.

Stop thinking, he told himself. Shut down. Observe. Watch for anyone who looked familiar, who might be behind the bombing. Protect Mallory from him. Since he’d spent years in the Shepherd Falls Police Department, being on guard was easy to do, and much better than actually feeling anything.

People gawked from the parking lot across the street, probably too afraid of another explosion to come closer and offer help. He searched their faces, hoping to see someone he’d arrested in the past who might want to kill him. But the growing darkness made it difficult to see into the shadows. Actually, he and Mallory were the ones in the light—from the overhead safety lamps the city had installed to keep the probation officers safe.

The irony of that didn’t escape him. He was a sitting duck.

Fire and rescue screeched around the corner as Shamus watched, followed by police cars, their flashing red-and-blue lights adding to the red-and-green Christmas ones decorating the Shepherd Falls business district.

“Help me stand up, Shamus,” Mallory said, jolting him. He’d thought she’d passed out. With some relief that she had survived the blast better off than he’d thought, he helped her to her feet. She was wobbly, but remained upright as the paramedics pulled up nearby.

“I’ll fill in the police. You go to the hospital,” he told her, hoping she didn’t try to argue with him.

She didn’t. Instead, she held Mosey’s Santa out with both her trembling hands. “I’m trusting you to keep this safe for Mosey. It was—”

“His daughter’s. Yeah.” He didn’t want to touch it. He couldn’t believe he’d criticized her for saving it, and she still wanted him to take it.

“I trust you to get it safely back to Mosey.”

It was too much, her looking at him like he’d hung the moon. Unable to refuse, he took it into his hands and debated smashing it into a million pieces because it had almost cost Mallory her life. But he couldn’t, not with her sea-green gaze fastened on to him.

After she was tucked into an ambulance, he refused to have his leg checked. It wasn’t bleeding, so he’d survive. He always did.

The ambulance rolled away. Shamus started limping in the direction of an officer to see who was lead investigator on the bombing, and that’s when he spotted the present Mallory had given him. Its silver ribbons and shiny red wrapping paper were wet from the snow, torn up and blackened some from the blast, but the box was still in one piece.

He picked it up but refused to open it, pretending his knee didn’t hurt, pretending he wasn’t angry he didn’t stop the bombing somehow…and pretending he wasn’t worried about Mallory.

Bowing his head, he thanked God for saving him and Mallory both, and promised that he would not get attached to her, no matter what.

It should be easy enough not to. They had nothing in common. From what he’d observed in the last month, Mallory Larsen always had a kind word about and for everyone. He didn’t like to talk at all. She thought she could really help her probationers. He was under no such delusions about his. She was always concerned and wanted everyone to be happy. He had no desire to be happy.

She was sunshine, and he was a thundercloud. Judging by that, when she came to her senses, she wouldn’t want a thing to do with him.

And that suited him just fine.

Wondering if she should try calling Shamus again, Mallory nestled into the soft cushions of her best friend’s plush white sofa, which was like a balm to her aches and bruises. Ginny had rescued Mallory on Friday night from having to go to her parents’ house to recuperate by insisting she’d be more comfortable in Ginny’s penthouse. Her mother couldn’t even argue with the truth.

Thank goodness.

She watched Ginny gazing out her huge picture window overlooking a major part of Shepherd Falls. Her friend had been pacing for almost an hour and, despite her anxiety over the bombing, still looked every bit like the highly paid fashion model she’d once been, blond hair and makeup perfect. How did she do that?

“Please don’t worry, Ginny,” Mallory told her. “They’re looking for Tripp, and when they find him, they’ll get to the bottom of whoever is behind the bombing.”

“I know,” Ginny agreed. “But until then, whoever was behind this is out there somewhere, and he might set off more explosions.” She moved from the window to her ceiling-high, white-branched Christmas tree to fiddle with the silver-and-blue decorations. “We’ll still be in danger.”

“But we’ll be guarded, since they’re moving us to the courthouse, remember?” The basement, anyway, but it was still good. She’d found out about the move when Bess, the chief probation officer, had phoned them to check on her. “We’ll have little to nothing to worry about.”

Ginny didn’t respond, so Mallory went back to the romance novel on her lap. Her mind, however, was on Shamus. Why wasn’t he calling back? She’d left three messages on Saturday, and one earlier that afternoon.

She’d call him one final time, she decided. And in this message, she would use gentle persuasion.

“Maybe I ought to hire a bodyguard for you.”

Her gaze flew to meet Ginny’s. Her friend had more money than she could ever spend from a trust fund and investments made while she’d been a model, but Mallory couldn’t let her do that. She did not want to be that far in debt to anyone.

“I don’t want a bodyguard. God will watch over me.” Even though Ginny wasn’t a believer, Mallory reminded her anyway, hoping to be a witness of her faith.

Ginny just stared at her.

“Not only that,” Mallory continued, “you’ve done plenty as it is, letting me stay here so I wouldn’t have to go to Mom and Dad’s. Mom was sweet in the hospital, but she kept begging me to move back home where I’d be safe. You were a lifesaver. I was close to buckling under the pressure.”

“Sure you were.” Ginny, who knew better, grinned. She stepped away from the tree to join Mallory at the other end of the sofa.

“Your dad was there when I arrived to get you. How did it go?”

“He told Mom if I came home I needed to pay room and board.”

Ginny winced, her brown eyes filling with sympathy. “You almost got blown up, and that’s all your father said?”

Mallory shrugged. After years of that kind of thing out of Gideon Larsen, she’d come to expect it. That didn’t mean the words didn’t hurt, but there was nothing she could do. No one could change the past, or her part in it.