Yuletide Protector (Love Inspired Suspense)

by Lisa Mondello

  “Belinda has roped me into carving turkey for the last four years,” Kevin said.

  “Oh, you’re always so good with the elderly women. They all love you.”

  Daria gave him a sidelong glance and smiled. She knew just how easy it had been for Kevin to win over Mrs. Hildebrand.

  “We get a lot of elderly who can’t travel far,” Kevin said. “Jerry has even offered a van service to pick them up.”

  Jerry nodded. “It’s what I’d want someone to do for my parents if they were alone.”

  “That’s so sweet of you,” Daria said.

  Pastor Harrison slapped Jerry on the back. “It’s a good community with a lot of wonderful people. Kevin told me the other day he might bring a friend with him to church this week. I’m glad you decided to come with him.”

  Daria glanced in Kevin’s direction and he knew he was in trouble. But he couldn’t say that he was sorry he’d talked to Pastor Harrison. He’d known the pastor since he was a kid. Pastor Harrison had been a huge comfort when Lucy was killed. His guidance was important to Kevin.

  He’d prayed for guidance with the pastor and that guidance had led Daria here with him today. He was glad he had.

  Daria’s sweet laugh and sunshine smile had dug under his skin, settling into places in his soul he didn’t even know existed until now. Having her here with him today opened up a place in his heart he’d forced shut.

  He thought Daria might be angry. But she surprised him when she said, “I’m really glad he invited me to come. I loved your sermon.”

  “You’re one of the rare people who actually listened to everything I said. I noticed you immediately.”

  Daria smiled.

  “Will you be spending the holidays with your family?” Belinda asked Daria.

  She gave a quick glance to Kevin, then to Belinda. “No, my parents are in Mexico.”

  Pastor Harrison’s expression turned serious. “Surely you won’t be spending Christmas alone.”

  Before Daria could answer, Kevin stepped in. “I thought I might convince Daria to spend the holiday with me.”

  Belinda’s eyes widened. “Oh, this is perfect! Why don’t you come down with Kevin for the Christmas dinner here. We can always use an extra hand.”

  Kevin’s first instinct was to decline for Daria. There’d be a lot of people at the Christmas dinner. This was Daria’s first visit to the church and the last thing he wanted was to overwhelm her, causing her to run in the opposite direction. But then she surprised him.

  “I’d love to come.”

  “Are you sure?” Kevin asked.

  “Why not? I’d like to help out. I was going to be alone anyway. This way we can have a little fun, have Christmas turkey here and spend the rest of the afternoon working on the house. That is, if you still want to spend the day with me.”

  “Great!” Belinda said, clapping her hands together.

  Kevin took a moment to talk with Pastor Harrison when Daria excused herself to go change clothes in the restroom.

  “It’s okay to take your guard down,” Pastor Harrison said. “She seems like a sweet girl.”

  “Not with an ex-husband who is determined to kill her,” Kevin said in a low voice that others couldn’t hear.

  “I’ll pray for you both.”

  “I appreciate that.” Even the comfort of the pastor’s words didn’t shake the feeling that perhaps they were all underestimating just how dangerous George Carlisle was. Determined not to let it ruin the rest of the day, Kevin offered those fears up to the Lord and waited for Daria.

  As they walked across the marina parking lot to where Kevin’s sailboat was in dry dock, Kevin decided that insisting Daria come with him to the marina for the day was the right idea.

  A gust of wind pushed the door against the building as he tried to open it. “Let me hold the door for you,” he said. “With this December wind, it’s liable to fly back at you just as you’re walking through.”

  “The water’s pretty choppy today. I’m surprised there are boats out at all,” Daria said, looking out into Narragansett Bay.

  Once inside with the door securely shut tight, the wind coming off the bay whistled through the rafters.

  “Some people are braver than me,” Kevin said with a chuckle. “Either that or they have a cast-iron stomach.”

  With her scarf pulled tight around her neck, Daria looked around. “I’ve never been out on the water before.”

  “Yeah? Maybe we can remedy that in the spring.”

  Daria walked into the bay and looked around at the covered boats until her eyes settled on his.

  “Let me guess. Your boat is Her Gypsy Heart?” she said, pointing to the thirty-two-foot sailboat sitting up on the trailer at the end of the bay.

  “That’s the one,” he said, beaming with pride. “I still have a few little odds and ends to finish up the inside cabin. It’s a lot easier to do it over the winter in dry dock than trying to steady a drill out on the water.”

  “I can imagine.”

  He glanced at her then, saw the vacant look she’d had earlier had been replaced by anticipation and intrigue.

  “You’ve been fixing your boat up by yourself?”

  “Trying to. I bought it almost four years ago. Tyler—he’s the guy you met earlier in the office—used to be a cop.”

  “And now he manages the marina?”

  “Yeah, but when I met him he was Jake’s partner. Anyway, he’d just started working here when this old girl came sailing in. She was barely seaworthy then.”

  Daria waited as Kevin dragged a ladder to the side of the boat and climbed it, then proceeded to undo the boat cover and peel it back so the deck was exposed. He turned to extend a hand to help her board, but instead of coming toward him, she put a hand on her hip and took the length of the boat in with a long, slow perusal.

  With a crooked smile, she said, “She doesn’t look very old to me.”

  “Old girl or not, she’s my pride and joy. She’s a beauty now, but you should have seen her the day I bought her. Jake thought I was nuts. One of these days I’m going to sail her down the coast to the Florida Keys. See how she does.”

  Daria was looking at him in a way that told him she understood. And for the first time since he met her, he understood something important about her, too. Daria’s connection to her house was similar to what he felt for this boat.

  But unlike Daria, Kevin knew his sailboat was just an object. The joy it gave him was something he felt deep inside, but it couldn’t complete him the way Daria seemed to believe her house could complete her.

  She curled her fingers around the rungs of the ladder. “You’ve got some Gypsy blood, Kevin.”

  “Nomadic, maybe. I really don’t know if I’ll ever do it. My dad and I talk about taking a scuba lesson and sailing for buried treasure in the Caribbean. It drives my mother crazy.”

  “She doesn’t like the idea?”

  Extending his hand, he helped Daria climb onto the deck. “Not unless there is a bottle of Dramamine handy. Who knows? It still remains to be seen if Her Gypsy Heart can even handle a voyage that long. When I’m working on her though, or when I’m out on the water, staring out into that vast ocean beyond the bay, I have these fantasies of sailing her around the world.”

  “Really? You’d give up everything you have here just to sail around the world alone?”

  “Well, maybe not alone. But it’s not like there is a whole lot keeping me here anymore. My parents have moved down south. My sister is married to a navy man and hasn’t been back to Rhode Island for any length of time in years. I mostly go visit her and the kids wherever Larry’s stationed. It’s just me and my little boat here now.”

  She was quiet a minute and he wondered what had brought that on.

  “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

  TWELVE

  Daria stepped down into the cabin of Her Gypsy Heart and looked around in awe. When Kevin had helped her work on the house, she hadn’t realized he was a
craftsman. Sure, it was clear after a few minutes he was good with her tools. But what he’d done restoring the sailboat was exquisite.

  It was true she’d never set foot on a boat before today, but she’d seen plenty of pictures and she knew good work when she saw it. As she walked around, she admired all the little things Kevin had done to make it his. Having worked these last months renovating her own house, she could appreciate the little details a true craftsman would take pride in. And there was much to be proud of where Her Gypsy Heart was concerned.

  Still, once they got down to work, Daria was most intrigued by how Kevin behaved. He seemed much calmer here on the boat than when he was sitting outside on the curb by her house. This was truly his sanctuary. She felt honored that he’d shared it with her.

  They took a quick break, having a root beer while sitting on deck. They’d been quietly working the last hour and she’d spent the time concentrating on the features of Kevin’s face, something she always believed told its own story. Every line had a story.

  “How did you get that scar over your eyebrow?” she finally asked when he caught her staring. She’d noticed it the other night while he slept. Now her curiosity got the better of her.

  Kevin lifted his eyes as if he could actually see the scar, then chuckled deeply. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. Now you have to tell me.”

  He finished the rest of his drink and set the empty bottle on the seat next to him.

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Then you should have no problem telling me the story.”

  “I was trying to climb the trellis on the side of my parents’ house and, uh, didn’t make it.”

  “Oh, no. How far did you fall?”

  “Far enough. I needed eight stitches.”

  Daria put her hand to her head in sympathy. “Ouch.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I remember the emergency-room doctor wanting to shave my eyebrow to get a nice clean stitch and my mother arguing with him that she didn’t want me to end up like those movie actresses who shaved their eyebrows and then didn’t have them grow back.” He laughed, loud and rich, making his voice echo in the confines of the marina. “All she could imagine was me walking around with one eyebrow for the rest of my life.”

  Daria couldn’t help but laugh, too.

  “So she took her tweezers out of her purse and started plucking the hair around my wound. Dad got all hot under the collar and started screaming about how he drew the line at lipstick and eye shadow.”

  “All for climbing the trellis. What were you doing up there, saving a kitten or something?”

  His expression faltered just a fraction. “No, I wanted to check on my sister.”

  Daria eyed him suspiciously. “Spying on your sister got you eight stitches? I hope it was worth it.”

  He shrugged, but Daria could tell they’d just touched some troubled waters.

  She allowed the silence to linger and not push Kevin in a direction that was uncomfortable. If he wanted to talk about it he could. This was a safe harbor. There had to be someplace on this earth that was safe. When it seemed the time had well passed on the subject, Kevin looked at her, his eyes serious and intense.

  “In a way, you remind me of Lucy,” he said quietly.

  There was just a hint of a smile on his face that let her know that Lucy, whoever she was, had been special to Kevin.

  “I thought your sister’s name was Judy.”

  “Lucy was her best friend. She lived next door.”

  “Ah, the picture is starting to come into view now. So you had it bad for your big sister’s best friend and you climbed the trellis to spy on both of them?”

  But Kevin didn’t laugh or even crack a smile. He just looked at her the way he had that first morning when he’d asked her to pack her things and move far away where George couldn’t find her.

  “It was the day Lucy was killed by her ex-boyfriend.”

  Daria gasped.

  “Judy had locked herself in her bedroom and Mom was afraid she was going to do something drastic They’d been such good friends. I figured I could handle climbing up the trellis and getting into the window. I mean, Judy and I fought, but she wasn’t going to push me away. Not at that height, anyway. Knowing Judy, she’d have been really ticked off and yelled at me, but at least I’d have made it into the room. I figured I’d talk to her, help her through what she was feeling. I mean, we were all going through it, too.”

  He smirked then and shrugged. “I did have it bad for Lucy. She was kinda cool. She didn’t push me away like I was some geeky kid, which I was at that time. All feet and arms.”

  Daria couldn’t imagine it. But there had to have been a time before Kevin had grown into himself, gone from boy to man.

  “Anyway, I only made it about halfway up the trellis before it started to break away from the house. I lost my grip and fell into a shrub.”

  “That probably got your sister out of her room,” Daria said quietly.

  “And how. It wasn’t the way I’d planned, but she ended up flying out of the house and running to the front lawn. As soon as she realized I didn’t break my neck, she stood there and yelled at me for scaring her. I felt like a real idiot and then I just felt bad for her. I mean, she’d just lost her best friend.”

  “What happened?”

  Kevin looked at her directly. “Do you really want to know?”

  Daria wasn’t sure if she did. But she’d come this far and she wasn’t about to stop him.

  “Lucy had broken up with her boyfriend of three years. All through their relationship, Jimmy had been what she’d called a ‘gentle soul.’ It started like it always does. Innocent. You’ve never seen him angry and then something inside him snaps. I remember Jimmy standing out in the rain one night, just staring at her window and crying like a baby.”

  Daria could easily picture it in her mind. “He loved her.”

  Kevin groaned. “He murdered her, Daria. That isn’t love.”

  “I know. But he just came after her? Just like that? No warning?”

  “A lot of times, there is no warning at all. But looking back, there were warning signs. Judy told me Jimmy used to get angry and grab Lucy, leaving bruises on her. Lucy would always say she fell or was just a klutz. Everyone believed her. It got worse toward the end of their relationship, which is why Lucy broke it off with him. But I never saw any of that. Jimmy always seemed like a good guy.”

  Daria leaned closer to him. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to comfort him or herself. But she felt warmed by the closeness, by how she always felt safe with Kevin.

  “One night, about a month after they’d broken up, Jimmy stood out in the rain and kept yelling for Lucy. Just calling her name until her parents called the police. I remember thinking the guy looked so pathetic. Judy was on the phone with Lucy because Lucy was scared right up until the police came. Part of me had some stupid kid fantasy that if Jimmy was out of the picture it would open the door for me. Lucy was really nice. Not just pretty, but a nice girl who actually took the time to sit with me and talk to me like I was something more than her best friend’s geeky younger brother.”

  “That’s not stupid. You were a kid and Lucy was your first crush. No one ever forgets their first real crush.

  “What happened to Lucy? Did her boyfriend came back after the police left?”

  “No. Jimmy waited about a month after that night before he drove to our high school to see Lucy again. Judy didn’t want me walking home with her friends because she didn’t want her cool friends to see me with her.” He shrugged. “I have to admit, me and my friends had played some pretty wild tricks on Judy, so I deserved it.

  “Anyway, the two girls were walking ahead of us. My buddy and I figured we were in a good position to eavesdrop on whatever conversation they were having. Keeping a respectable distance to pretend we weren’t tailing them, of course.”

&
nbsp; “Of course.”

  “And then Jimmy pulled up along the curb. I remember the smile on his face. He seemed harmless, not at all pathetic like he’d been that night on the lawn. But looking back I always wondered if he was smiling because he knew right then he was going to kill Lucy.”

  Kevin sighed, thinking of how things could have turned out if he’d only done something that day. Lucy probably would have gone on to grow into a stunning woman, married, had a family of her own, just like Judy had. All that was snuffed out that afternoon.

  Daria was watching him intently. It was important to him that she know how determined Lucy’s situation made him to ensure that Daria’s problem with her ex-husband didn’t turn into a repeat of Lucy’s death. He’d seen the same thing play out many times over the years. Maybe it didn’t always end in a murder. But he’d gone on countless calls where a woman was beaten by a so-called loved one and refused to leave.

  “Jimmy said he just wanted to talk, to let her know he was okay with everything. He was going to drive her to work at the market. Judy said goodbye and kept walking.”

  He looked down at the bottle next to him, which was spilling the dregs of root beer onto the bench. He grabbed a paper towel and quickly wiped it away.

  “They found Lucy later that night in the Dumpster behind the market. She’d never even made it in to work.”

  Daria covered her face with her hands. “That is truly horrible. For all of you.”

  It had been horrible. Over fifteen years later he still remembered what it felt like to hear that Lucy was dead.

  “Knowing how important your faith is to you, I imagine it was a big help to get you through that difficult time.”