Unforgettable Christmas Dreams: Gifts of Joy

by Rebecca York

  “For thirteen years? You walk out of my life and don’t contact me? Don’t let me know what happened or even that you’re still alive?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  He couldn’t at first. But by the time his situation had changed, so had he. He’d become a man Lexie didn’t know. Wouldn’t want to know. One he hadn’t wanted her to know. He’d wanted her to be happy, to have a good life, and it looked like she did…though she wasn’t wearing a ring and he didn’t see signs of another man.

  The room was all Lexie, casual yet with a hint of sophistication. The couch, a matching chair in front of the fireplace, a leather chair with a scrolled back by the windows, maybe for reading. The lamps had shades of stained glass or mica; the accessories on mission-style tables were feminine in design. Nothing to indicate that a man lived here.

  That kiss Lexie had given him had certainly been hungry enough…

  Suddenly she said, “Get out!” Her face was flushed, her expression angry.

  “What? You were just attacked.”

  “Thank you for saving me,” she said evenly. “I’m fine now, so you can go back to wherever you’ve been hiding for the last thirteen years. You know where to find the door.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. Someone has to protect you.”

  “I’ve had to do that for myself since you left, and you’re not someone I can count on!”

  The truth of that struck Simon like a physical blow. Too much time had gone by. He couldn’t possibly connect with Lexie the way he had in that other life.

  “Let me take you to see a doctor—”

  “I’m fine. I don’t need a doctor. I don’t need you. Just go, please.”

  Simon clenched his jaw so he wouldn’t argue with her. She probably was fine. He had a lot of experience dealing with injured men on the battlefield, and though she had exhibited some strange behavior, he chalked that up to the shock of seeing a dead man. She’d gotten over that quickly enough. She appeared ready to do battle again.

  “At least tell me that you’ll file a police report.” Simon had every reason for staying dead for the moment, at least until he figured out who had sent him to that hell and why he hadn’t simply been killed, as had the kid he’d seen murdered. He had to stay dead until he exacted the revenge he sought, his reason for being. “Just don’t mention me.”

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Lexie said caustically, “you’re still dead and buried.”

  ***

  The real shock of Simon’s being alive didn’t hit Lexie until he left. Alive. After all these years. It hardly seemed real to her. She was still in love with him and he hadn’t even cared enough to let her know he was alive.

  And then another thought hit her. Katie. What was she going to do about that? Her chest squeezed tight. If she told Simon he had a daughter, would he want to meet Katie only to abandon her, too? He hadn’t said anything about staying and she couldn’t bear to see her daughter’s heart broken as hers had been. She knew just how awful that felt.

  Protecting her daughter from emotional pain was her main responsibility here. Thankfully, Katie was staying with her grandparents for a few days. The pressure on her chest let up a little. She wouldn’t have to make the decision as to whether to tell Simon just yet. Perhaps she would never see him again. How would she know?

  Lexie called the police and got the runaround about no one being there; the chief would call her back. Fat chance. She waited half an hour, then decided to go in and make the report in person.

  Trying to keep her teeming emotions under control, Lexie got her keys and started for the front door.

  Afraid that her attacker might still be out there, however, she decided to check and went from window to window to stare out into the dark. Her pulse spiked, but she saw nothing, no one.

  Not even Simon.

  Heart hammering, Lexie grabbed her bag, slipped out of the house, raced to her SUV, got inside and immediately locked herself in. She drove straight to the police station, an old house a block off Main Street, bought by the city to house offices for its small force.

  “Hey, Lexie,” Martha, the dispatcher/receptionist at the front desk, said when she entered. “Chief Hammer just got in.”

  “Good.” Without waiting to be announced, Lexie headed for his office. The door was open, so she walked right in. “I want to report an attempted robbery.”

  Frowning, Hammer looked up from his newspaper. “Something happen after I left the garden center?”

  “Not there, at my home. I was attacked.”

  “What was stolen?”

  “Nothing. I, uh, fought him off.”

  “If nothing was stolen…”

  Lexie seethed. He didn’t want to write up the report. As usual, Chief Hammer was trying to get out of doing any work.

  “What if I was hurt?”

  “Are you?”

  “Not really.” Though the side of her face was still a bit sore where the attacker had hit her.

  “You know, Lexie, it was probably some out-of-towner just looking for money during the Christmas season. You should have given up your pocketbook and he would have fled.”

  Yeah, that would have made things easier for everyone. Lexie clenched and unclenched her jaw. “He didn’t want my bag. He had me on the ground and his hands were all over me and—”

  Hammer raised his hand for her to stop. “Draper!” he yelled. “I need you to take a report.”

  The police chief really was adept at avoiding work.

  A young officer named Sam Draper appeared at the door and waved her out of the room and over to a desk where he took her report. He hemmed and hawed to himself a bit before saying, “If this guy was interested in robbing you, I don’t get why he didn’t just take your shoulder bag.”

  “You and me both.” She didn’t want to say she’d been rescued. She didn’t want anyone to know that Simon was alive any more than he did.

  “You say he had you on the ground and was feeling your, um, pockets?”

  “Right.”

  “Any idea of what your attacker could have been looking for?”

  She shook her head. “No.” Not until that moment. Suddenly she thought of the key Marie had given her. The key she’d slipped into her back pocket. She stopped herself from feeling for it to make sure it was still there. She wiggled her butt against the back of the chair and felt something hard that must be the key. Thinking caution would serve her well at this point, she said, “No idea at all.”

  Draper said, “I really don’t know that we’ll be able to get this guy, being that he was wearing a mask and all. Are you sure you can’t identify something about him? Height? Body type? Something about his hands?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. I was so freaked, it… it seemed like a nightmare.”

  “Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll follow you home and drive around your place, give the area a good look-see to make sure the guy’s gone.”

  Lexie nodded. “Thanks, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Only when she rose and turned to go did Lexie realize that Chief Hammer was leaning against his office doorjamb. He’d been watching her the whole time, but she had no clue what he was thinking. His face was expressionless.

  Draper followed her home in the police vehicle, an SUV, then pulled up next to her and rolled down his window. “Stay put while I circle the area, make sure it’s safe.”

  “Will do.”

  She followed Draper’s progress with her gaze until his vehicle disappeared behind a stand of trees. Her thoughts wandered, going from the key and what her attacker might want from it to Simon.

  Where had he been all these years? Why had he left in the first place? He’d said he had no choice. How was that possible? Lexie began regretting sending him away without getting answers to her many questions.

  Startled from her thoughts as the police vehicle pulled up next to her again, she lowered her window. Moonlight silvered Draper’s half-regretful expression. />
  “No one around,” he said. “Wish I coulda got the guy for you, but at least you’re safe. House looks locked up tight, too. I can check inside if you want.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lexie rolled up her window and grabbed her shoulder bag, then slid out of her SUV. Moving to the entrance, grateful that Draper was watching her back, she unlocked the door, then, pulse quickening, she let him in first and quickly followed. Minutes passed, seeming like forever. He came out of the kitchen, gave her a thumbs-up and headed upstairs. Lexie breathed normally only when he came back down.

  “All clear.”

  “I really appreciate your looking out for me.”

  He gave her a crooked smile and tipped his hat. “My job.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  Closing the door after him, Lexie would like to think this was the end of it, that her attacker wouldn’t be back, but she wasn’t so certain that was true. She went around the house, closing the blinds.

  At least Katie was with her parents and sister for a few nights and didn’t have to be afraid. Her parents… She would have to call them. Sam Draper’s wife was one of the town gossips. Shelley Zachary, Brandon’s housekeeper, being the other. Lexie was sure that everyone would know what had happened by morning.

  She couldn’t let her parents hear it from someone else, so she would have to call them and tell them what happened, leaving Simon out of the story. Though she hated lying, Lexie couldn’t tell anyone Simon was back. Not yet, anyway.

  Before making the call, she needed to put the key someplace safe until she could figure out why it was so important. But where? She looked around the room, her eyes lighting on the staircase. There was a hollow in the newel. She and Katie had used it to hide messages to each other ever since Katie learned to write. No one else knew about their special hiding place. Since Katie wasn’t going to be home for a couple of days, the key would be safe there.

  Taking the key from her back pocket, she unscrewed the newel.

  “Why are you so special someone would attack me to get hold of you?” she murmured, turning the key in her fingers.

  No answer came to her. How would she ever figure it out?

  Setting it in the hiding place, Lexie went to the phone to make that call to her parents.

  Chapter Five

  Not wanting his presence known until he figured out the mystery of his past and a way to avenge the horror that had been done to him, Simon had camped out where he and Lexie used to go to be alone, a fishing shack in a stand of trees about a hundred yards from the water. To get there, he had to pass the swampy area that everyone in town always avoided, which had just been revealed as a mass grave.

  On the way to the shack now, Simon slowed his truck when he neared the Duck Blind, which his father owned, at the west end of town, where the commercial buildings trailed off. Rufus was just coming out of the bar-restaurant. His salt-and-pepper hair had thinned a bit as had his still-muscular body. Even from a distance, Simon could see the short, scraggly beard he’d always had. To Simon’s surprise, his father didn’t seem to be drunk. His hand was steady as he locked the door and he walked a straight line heading for the only car left in the small lot to one side of the building.

  As far as Simon could tell, his old man was stone-cold sober.

  Warmth flooded through him, and he realized that his father’s apparent sobriety made him happy. There had been times when he’d felt his father really had loved him, though mostly that had been before his mother died and Rufus hadn’t been drinking so heavily. Afterward, his father had immersed himself in booze.

  Thinking about the old man had always plunged Simon in a dark mood. Now perhaps he would have reason to put those bad memories behind him. He only wished his father could have sobered up when he was still around. If he had, things would have gone very differently in Simon’s life.

  A thought that made him stay in the truck.

  He wanted to catch up with his father, but he wasn’t ready to do so just yet. Their rocky relationship was still too clear in his mind, especially the argument that had made Simon decide to run away. He’d tried to talk his father into cutting back on the drinking. He’d even poured half a bottle of whiskey down the drain. The old man had responded with his fists and by saying that Simon was no son of his.

  That had broken Simon’s heart.

  The wound had never healed, and yet Simon watched from where he’d stopped near the tree line until his father drove off.

  Then he went on his way, driving as far as he dared. He’d found a place to hide his truck in a stand of pine trees before reaching the swampy area where, as the media had reported, dozens of bodies had been found, some from deaths a century ago; many others more recent.

  Who had done this to them? The same man responsible for his fate? He’d spent years dreaming about using the skills he was learning on the man. In his mind, he’d punished the bastard for what he’d done in every way possible.

  But if the same man was responsible for this atrocity…

  Tentacles of fog wove throughout the area, but Simon could still see the crime scene tape and several pieces of heavy equipment that had been left alongside the excavation. Usually there was a cop car somewhere around, the reason he didn’t want to take his truck all the way to the fishing camp, lest he be spotted. But tonight the police seemed to be elsewhere.

  Simon wondered how many more bodies would be found.

  The mass grave reminded him of several incidents in the war-torn areas he’d fought in. There had been no time for funerals and neat graves with headstones commemorating the lives of the dead. They’d been piled one on top of the other, taking away the last of their dignity.

  But these dead hadn’t been part of a war. From what he understood, these poor souls had been tricked into coming to this country, thinking they would get a better life, but had ended up as spare parts for people who could afford to skip the donor lists.

  So much evil in this world. Everywhere. But this was unfathomable.

  Simon couldn’t make his legs carry him past the mass grave, not without stopping and paying the victims his respect. He bowed his head and said a silent prayer for their souls.

  And then he said one for his own.

  He, too, had done unforgivable things, not out of choice, but out of necessity, and he was ready to do more. Those responsible for the nightmare he’d survived needed to be dealt with, and Simon didn’t believe that justice would be done unless he made sure of it himself. And he was determined that justice would be done.

  A chill suddenly swept over him, as if he were standing in a pocket of cold air.

  When Simon raised his head and opened his eyes, he saw a figure materializing in the fog. In the stand of pine to the east of the mass grave, a man was staring at him. No, not a man. A teenager with a mop of pale hair over hollow eyes and wearing a light leather jacket and ripped jeans.

  Simon’s pulse jagged and, for a moment, he forgot to breathe.

  The figure was so familiar. Simon would swear this was that kid he’d seen shot thirteen years ago!

  It couldn’t be.

  “Hey!” Simon shouted, forgetting he was trying to stay undercover. “Who are you?”

  The ghostly figure gestured to Simon as if asking him to follow before moving off in a swirl of fog. Unable to help himself, Simon complied and followed the kid on a path nearly straight back to his truck and realized this wasn’t far from where he’d been taken while on his way to get Lexie that night so long ago. Pockets of icy air rippled along his skin. No matter how hard he tried, how fast he ran, Simon couldn’t catch up to the wraith.

  Simon absolutely believed that the souls of the departed haunted people. He’d lived with one for months in Somalia — the man he’d killed in self-defense. Only when he had reconciled his own actions had the dead man’s spirit crossed over. Throughout the years he’d been shadowed by other ghosts, but he’d learned to steel himself against them and they’d eventually left him alone.


  Left him empty and hard, damaged goods, without a soul of his own.

  So why was he being haunted now? He hadn’t been responsible for the boy’s death.

  What did this lost soul want from him?

  Once in his truck, he lost the apparition, had to go slow on the road, searching the land from the road to the water as he drove. He spotted the ghostly figure off and on in between the trees all the way to the edge of town, where he ditched the truck behind a warehouse and followed on foot.

  The sidewalks were nearly clear of pedestrians, the streets of vehicles. No one seemed to notice the mist-shrouded kid. Down the block, a stray dog was going about his business, but stopped when the wraith drew near. It didn’t make a sound, but it froze and its ruff went up and then it warily backed off.

  Simon’s ruff went up, too.

  What the hell?

  The kid walked along a red brick fence that surrounded the gray stone church at the center of town, Jenkins Cove Chapel. Suddenly, he disappeared through an opening.

  Heart pounding, Simon ran faster so as not to lose him.

  The fog was lighter here, the chill greater, and once past the fence’s wooden gate, which had been left open, Simon realized where he was.

  The cemetery.

  Why had he brought him here?

  Following the curving redbrick path lined by boxwood on both sides, Simon kept track of the mop of pale hair, which appeared on the other side of the hedge, then lost him altogether. When he came to the open area dotted with gravestones and markers, Simon only half hoped he would actually find him again. He gazed around, past a couple of large willow oaks and a magnolia tree in the center of the graveyard, then spotted the ghostly figure at a far gravesite, touching the stone that identified its occupant.

  Again, it looked up at him with hollow eyes and gestured that he should come.

  Reluctantly, Simon did. Not wanting to cross anyone’s grave — he’d had enough of that in his former life — he stayed on the brick path, keeping his gaze locked on the figure still summoning him.

  One minute the fog seemed to circle the kid, the next he seemed to fade away into the mists.