Christmas Hearts: In the Company of Snipers

by Irish Winters

  Our house. She liked those words. Alex had accepted her into his life from the very start. She’d never been just a guest. She’d been his family. His all.

  Kelsey allowed a small smile remembering Zack’s bug-eyed bellow at the catastrophe he’d nearly caused. After they’d put the blazing fruitcake out, it really tasted quite divine. She did get a little silly after the third slice, but hey. It was Christmas Eve. She deserved to be a little crazy last year. She’d been just as sad then.

  But now…

  It might take every last bottle of that Delirium Noel to loosen the blade nestled so deep in her heart.

  Alex reached behind him and brought a square bundle around to her lap. He’d wrapped it in brown paper with a simple twine bow, a man’s version of gift wrap. “Merry Christmas,” he said with a moist kiss to her ear. “I love you, sweetheart, more than I’ll ever be able to tell you.”

  She couldn’t help it. Hot tears fell down her cheeks. “For me?” she choked, her poor heart tender and raw. Didn’t he know? He’d given her so much already, his love and his dedication. His home. The only reason she lived and breathed and dreamed was because he’d taken a chance on her when he’d lifted her up out of that cemetery, away from her sons’ grave, and showed her how to breathe again. How to live.

  He cupped her face in his warm manly palm and tipped her chin until their eyes locked. He bumped his forehead to hers. “Everything I am and all I own is because of you, sweetheart. I hope you know that. I’d be nothing without you.”

  Closing the short distance, he kissed her mouth softly, his tongue and lips a soothing promise. That was all she needed, his touch. His scent. The shadow that had been sitting on her shoulders, crouching over her like a vulture waiting on her corpse, evaporated in the sweet, peppermint warmth of his love.

  She turned into his arms and let the magic that was Alex work its miracle. Their tongues tangled as they embraced, their hearts beating together. Their bodies intimately in tune, in sync, and in love. This was why the good Lord sent Alex. To save her from herself.

  “I love you,” he murmured, ending the wet kiss with a soft smack on her backside. “Now be a good girl and open your present.”

  But he was bossy. Well, alrighty then. Kelsey pulled the twine and unraveled the gift and…

  Oh, my gosh. Her jaw nearly hit to the floor. Alex had given her a handmade wooden heart, expertly constructed of different colors and kinds of wood. Some light. Some dark. The dark brown grain of the walnut she recognized. The golden pine. The cherry. The lovely veins and twisted knots of the cedar. This heart was a three-dimensional treasure, not a flat work of art. It had to be what he’d been so busy working on all afternoon, why he’d told her to stay out of the basement.

  “It’s a puzzle heart, Kelsey. Open it,” he urged, his voice huskier than usual. “Go on. Just break it apart. Don’t worry. I made it so the pieces will fit back together. You’ll see.”

  Tears dripped down her cheeks at the thought of breaking something so lovely, especially since he’d made it, but he gave her no chance to argue. It was a rare thing, but Alex could be such a little boy. He was excited and he couldn’t wait. His hands covered hers as he cracked the wooden pieces apart like an egg and…

  “Oh no.” Her hand flew to her open mouth. Each of the wooden pieces he’d fashioned held a secret name burned into the wood on the inside. With that one crack she was holding Tommy. Sara. Jackie. Abby.

  She choked. Every one of those names meant joy and pain, but to see them again brought those dear, sweet people back to life. Her darling, dark-haired baby boys clambered up into her lap again. They snuggled. They giggled, their little noggins pressed to her heart, their baby powdery scent once more in her nose.

  Other words fell into her hands. Family. Home. Future. Past. Christmas. Love. All burned into the wood in Alex’s strong lettering. She couldn’t see through her tears. As they spilled into her lap, out fell another heart. A red crystal heart.

  “You’re holding my heart, Kelsey,” he explained gruffly. “All of it, and only you have the power to put it back together, to keep us together. You’ve always had that power. You always will.”

  A sob sneaked out of her. This—this!—was why God had sent her to Alex in that far off forest. To keep her from falling into outer darkness when tough, beautiful days like Christmas came calling. To keep her remembering there was still good in the world. That there was still a reason to live.

  Kelsey turned into Alex’s arms, needing the steel in his body. She didn’t have to see his face to know he was crying too, just kissed him in tears and love and a little bit of lust, too. The scent of her man wrapped her up like a Christmas present, and there was no place—no place—she’d rather be. No one she’d rather be with.

  “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” he asked, wiping his face before he settled her under his arm. The man hated to be seen with tears in his eyes, so that was another unexpected gift, for him to reveal the vulnerable side of him on this holiest of nights.

  “Like two turtle doves in a pear tree,” she whispered, needing one last kiss from those sexy lips she craved. One more brush of his whiskered chin on hers. Tilting her head, she met him halfway with hungry lips and a more contented soul. Life wasn’t perfect, but it was worth living.

  He kissed her fiercely as if he was pouring all of his love into her, as if he needed her as much as she needed him. Trembling with emotion, she whispered against his mouth, “I have a gift for you, too.”

  He eased into the corner of the couch, his back to the cushion, not letting her go. “Let me put this one away first.” He was right. The pieces of her puzzle heart fit easily back together. He’d made it so the names were hidden again, the red crystal in its secret, sacred place. She could almost feel it beating in her palms once the pieces took the shape of a strong man’s heart again. Only now it was hers.

  But wasn’t God funny in his sublime, wise way?

  She drew in a deep, cleansing breath. “Hold this for me,” she said as she handed Alex his gift to her, while she retrieved her gift to him from beneath the cushion.

  “I love you from the bottom of my heart,” she told him softly and truly. “I didn’t know what real love was until I met you. You saved my life, and you’ve held me together when I was falling apart. You gave me a reason to keep on living.”

  She took her heart back and set his Christmas gift on his lap. He groused, wiping his face one last time. “This has to stop. What the hell would Zack think if he showed up now? Both of us crying like babies.”

  “He’d think we’ve caught the real spirit of Christmas, that’s what.” Kelsey settled herself on Alex’s knees, straddling him, distracting him so he’d never guess what he held in his hands.

  His brows arched devilishly. “You like the table in my workshop, don’t you?”

  She smiled beguilingly, and let him think he knew what he was getting for Christmas, that it had something to do with sex. Men were so easy. “Go on. Open it.”

  His lips twitched as he peeled back the gold ribbons and red foil paper. Her gift fell into his hands. The soberest, saddest blues blinked back at her. His lips pursed. Alex swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “You made this? For me?”

  She could only nod as she gave up her suggestive seat and melted to the floor at his feet, her arms clasped over his knees. “I have some skills,” she said bravely, trying not to let her tears get the best of her.

  Her gift. Her heart. An identical twin to the puzzle heart he’d given her. A little rougher. A little less polished. But just as good.

  “I don’t know if I want to know what’s inside,” he rasped, his eyes brimmed and glistening. “I mean, it’s perfect, and you made it with your own hands, and… and…”

  “And it’s hard to break someone else’s heart, isn’t it?” she asked gently, her slender fingers cupping his bigger hands, urging him to do the deed. With a small sideways shift, the wooden pieces broke apart.

  His lips
pinched thin and tight as he read what she’d burned onto the hidden inside of each wooden piece. She’d also chosen the names of the dear ones they’d lost, but she’d included others. Butterfly Kisses. Snow Angels. Forever. Mommy. Daddy. Lover.

  A single crystal tear fell out amongst the pieces.

  “Wow,” he growled, blinking furiously to keep his tough guy persona intact. As if.

  Her heart swelled with a ferocious need for that table downstairs in his workshop. Kelsey lifted to one knee and tackled him, spilling the pieces of her gift to the floor. She pushed him into the couch, her hands holding his head while she mauled his lips in love and tears, sniffling all the way. He needed a good hard kiss.

  He growled as his fingers tunneled into her short curls, holding her just as passionately as she held him. “I love you so damned hard,” he breathed into her open mouth. “Do you have any idea what this gift means to me?”

  She nodded and blessed him with more tears and a deep wet kiss. She knew. Oh, how she knew.

  At last he eased her up from his face, his hands still cupping her cheeks. “But why the crystal tear? Do I make you cry? Are you sad living here with me?”

  “Oh, no. It’s for all my tears of happiness, Alex. They’re all because of you.”

  He groaned. Dragging her up from the floor, he pulled her to his lap, her head under his chin, her ear to his heart and his hand on the small of her back. She relaxed, listening to the steady beat of the only hero tough enough to take on the tragic ghouls in her world, to save her from them, to beat them off and win. To make her life better.

  “I love you, Kelsey,” he declared with husky fervor. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do without you. What I’d be. I can’t imagine it.”

  “We’d be what we were before, Alex. We’d be lost. Still sad. Broken. Still mad.”

  He nodded, his warm breath wafting over her face. She drew in a deep sigh and let the ghosts of Christmases past go. They’d be back, but she didn’t mind. She could carry them now. She had Alex.

  With his usual heavy fist, Zack arrived as Alex suspected he would, pounding on their front door with a hearty, “Happy Holidays! Let me in. It’s freezing out here.”

  Kelsey eased up from Alex’s warm embrace, but he didn’t let her go. Just traced her bottom lip with his fingertip, his eyes soft in the evening glow. “You make me happier than I can ever tell you. Merry Christmas, Kelsey.”

  And right then and there, she got what she’d truly wanted.

  Her hero finally—really—smiled.

  Lost Hearts

  Bringing LiLi home

  This story takes place immediately after Junior Agent Zack Lennox located Mei Xing’s daughter in book #3. If you’d like to read how Zack and Mei met and fell in love, follow this link to: In the Company of Snipers, Zack, Book 3.

  Chapter One

  “We just landed,” Zack murmured into his cell phone. The crowded trans-Atlantic, red-eye flight from Paris, France, had just touched down at Reagan International in Crystal City, Virginia. It was early Christmas morning. The sun wasn’t up yet, and he had a lost little girl to deliver to her nervous wreck of a mother.

  “Hurry,” Mei ordered, her voice wrapped tight with longing. “I’ll be waiting.”

  “We’re on our way.” Zack could feel her tears from miles away.

  Poor Mei Xing, now his dearly beloved and soon to be his wife, had lost her six-year-old daughter, LiLi, at the start of the school year to what she’d insisted was the Black Dragon syndicate out of Mainland China. Engrossed in the sex-trade and child-smuggling like they were, it was a semi-logical conclusion for a distraught, frantic mother to have made, especially when the syndicate had activated a cell in the D.C. area.

  But bastards were the same the world over. The syndicate never had LiLi Xing. Her biological father was the real deceiver behind LiLi’s abduction off an Anacostia street in broad daylight. Christopher Elias Jones II, the wretched, egotistical son of a famous East Coast heart surgeon, had the money, means, and the wherewithal to trick Mei into believing that no one in law enforcement, or the world for that matter, cared about her or her daughter.

  The younger Jones hadn’t wanted a thing to do with LiLi or her mother until his conscience woke up one day, and then, he’d only wanted his daughter. He’d paid cruel men to steal her from Mei, and he’d secreted LiLi out of the country to a far off place Mei could never have afforded to go—Paris, France. He went back to work at the prestigious Saint-Antoine University Hospital as if nothing could touch him.

  Guess again. Zack Lennox touched him, and hid fist ached to tough him again. He rolled the pinch out of his neck, the pinch he got every time he thought of Jones and the hell he’d put Mei Xing and her daughter through.

  Driven to the edge of insanity with the loss of her child, Mei had resorted to treachery and her own brand of deceit to get her into places like police data systems and the county morgue. She’d faked federal badges and passed herself off as an Immigration and Customs officer. She was gutsy, belligerent and downright nasty, but the moment she’d tangled with Alex Stewart and his team of covert operators, her tough-chick façade fell apart.

  Zack thought he’d drawn the short end of the stick when Alex assigned the mission of wrangling a mama bear, Mei, to find out what was really going on behind LiLi’s disappearance. But then Zack had gotten to know Mei better. The deeper he and she went into the syndicate, the more his eyes were opened. His heart, too. It was one of those tin, motherless babies that finally got through to him, but it was losing another agent, Todd Chandler, that ultimately ended the mastermind behind the syndicate.

  Fortunately, Alex had the money Mei didn’t have. He sent Zack to Paris, and Zack couldn’t get there fast enough. With the cooperation of the French government and the full knowledge of the American Embassy, he’d taken LiLi out of her bed in the middle of the night, and straight off Dr. Jones’ elegant French villa. Christopher Jones was currently cooling his heels in a French jail awaiting extradition to the United States for kidnapping and a host of other charges. His housekeeper and the woman Zack suspected was LiLi’s private tutor, were in jail, too.

  Best of all, because of The TEAM and Zack’s hard work, Mei once again believed in the good will of mankind, and Zack was on his way back to the woman he’d fallen in love with, bringing her the best Christmas present in the world.

  LiLi had fallen asleep on his lap, her little face pressed into the arm of his leather jacket, and that was okay. She was a tiny thing like her mother. Chinese-American. Almond-eyed with golden skin. Straight black hair. LiLi’s was cut in bangs, not pulled back into a severe knot like her mother usually wore hers. Both had the same intense personality. Bossy. Demanding. Bitchy.

  And he loved them for it. He understood where all that feminine angst came from. They’d been thrust into a desperate fight for their lives. He just hoped he could curb that temper now that LiLi was soon to be restored to her mother’s arms. He’d been through hell with Mei and his eyes had been opened. He’d fallen in love. Long story short? His cavalier, love ’em and leave ’em playboy days were definitely behind him.

  LiLi stretched and rubbed her eyes. The flight had taken most of the night. Thank goodness the snow had finally stopped falling. “Where are we?” she asked as she straightened and looked out the window, her brows furrowed, her lips in an angry pout, the same as they’d been since he whisked her off her father’s elegant farmhouse.

  “We’re in Crystal City, Virginia. As soon as we grab my bag, I’m taking you to your mom.”

  “What’s your name?” A bird could’ve perched on that defiant lip of hers, as far out as it was sticking.

  “I’m Zack Lennox, remember? I told you yesterday.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, petulant to the end. “Are you lying to me, too?”

  “No, honey, I don’t lie,” he reassured. She’d have to be handled with kid gloves for a while, but she’d get over that imperious attitude—just like her mother’
s. “Let’s go.”

  The poor thing lost her attitude the minute they exited the Jetway and hit the busy concourse. LiLi clung to his hand until walking with her bumping up against his leg slowed them down. Zack scooped her up into one arm, his carry-on backpack in the other. She circled her arms around his neck, which put her cheek against his, and whimpered, “I don’t want to get lost again.”

  “You won’t,” he murmured. “I’ll never let anything happen to you, honey.”

  “You promise?” she asked, accusation loud in her tone.

  She had no reason to trust him, and Zack wasn’t sure what her father had told her about her mother up to that point, so he gave her what he could. “Wait until you see what Santa brought you for Christmas.”

  Wrong. LiLi burrowed her face into the crook of his neck, hiding from all the passerbys, and cried, “I just want Mommy for Christmas.”

  He squeezed her a little tighter while he walked briskly to the lower level baggage claim, snagged his one bag, then exited the terminal and promptly hailed a cab. The sooner he got her back to Mei, the better.

  A scared little girl’s fingernails dug into his neck every step of the way. Even in the cab, she refused to be belted in. She wanted to sit on his lap. He was her one safe place for the moment, so what could Zack do but hold her? Women’s tears got to him, especially this tenacious, frightened little one’s. They hadn’t fallen yet, and he was going to make certain they didn’t.

  He settled her inside the steel bands of his muscular arms, providing a deep, thick barrier between her and the rest of the world, then handed the cabbie, a dark-skinned gentleman in a turban, a card with his destination. “I’ve got a twenty for you if you can get me to this address in fifteen minutes.”

  The cabbie took the address, but shot him a look. “That is in Old Town Alexandria, sir.”