by Debbie Mason
There was one big difference though. Her family got an extra Texas-size helping of alpha, which made them way more annoying than the Gallaghers. Thinking back to her interactions with Aidan Gallagher this past summer, she revised that thought. He was the a in alpha and annoying.
“I know they do, and I love them too. I just wish they’d remember I’m thirty-two and not fifteen.”
Colin looked down at her feet, and his lips twitched. She followed his gaze. She had on a cozy red plaid onesie with fake fur lining the hood and reindeer slippers on her feet. She shrugged, smiling up at him. “What can I say? I love Christmas.”
“No one would argue with you there. That’s quite the plan you’ve come up with for decorating Main Street. I got a look at it yesterday.”
“Do you think it’s too much? I made sure there was enough room for the fire trucks to pass under the lights and garland.” It was her first year as head of Harmony Harbor’s Christmas committee, and she wanted to do a good job.
“It’s ambitious, that’s for sure.”
“If you think I’m being ambitious, you should see what they’re doing in Bridgeport. It’s important that we keep up, you know? For the manor’s sake.” Bridgeport was the town adjacent to Harmony Harbor and was the home to Greystone Manor’s biggest competitor.
Which was the reason Julia had volunteered to head up the committee despite having a bookstore and coffee shop to run and a book to write. Now that she thought about it, it was no wonder she couldn’t keep the code for her alarm straight. But it’s not like she had a choice. Greystone played an important role in ensuring the Gallagher family’s happiness.
“So my mother and the Widows Club keep reminding me,” Colin responded to her keeping-up-with-the-Joneses comment, or in this case the town of Bridgeport. “Don’t worry, I approved the plan. A few of the boys have volunteered to give you a hand on Sunday. I’ll e-mail you their contact information.”
She hoped his second oldest son wasn’t one of them. “That’s great, thank you. Now we just have to pray that Mrs. Bradford doesn’t try and file another injunction against us.”
The seventy-something woman’s husband owned the local bank, and Mrs. Bradford had chaired the Christmas committee for the past twenty years. She wasn’t happy that she’d been replaced by Julia, and she’d made her unhappiness known by taking the town to court for wrongful dismissal. The case had been thrown out, of course, but Mrs. Bradford still managed to put them two weeks behind in their decorating schedule.
“She won’t try again. Not with the Widows Club threatening to close their accounts at the bank if she does.” His radio crackled. “I better get going. Give your apartment an hour to air out before you go back up.”
She nodded and followed him through the bookstore and the small coffee bar to the front door. “Thanks so much for coming so quickly. I’m just sorry it was for another false alarm.” She wrinkled her nose. “Umm, not that I wanted it to be a real fire, just that… well, you know what I mean.”
He laughed and patted her cheek. “You’re welcome. Happy Thanksgiving, honey.”
She held back a heartfelt sigh. Colin Gallagher was the nicest man, and so handsome too. After everything he’d lost, he deserved the happiest of happily-ever-afters. She was glad that she’d played a small role in helping him achieve it. “You have a happy Thanksgiving too. Say hi to Maggie for me and tell her two o’clock Sunday is fine.”
Julia smiled at the thought that all her scheming and plotting to get Maggie and Colin together had finally paid off. She’d spent most of the fall maneuvering the couple into chance meetings all around town.
Her smile fell at the look that came over Colin’s face. It was not the look of a man who’d just heard the name of the woman he loved. He looked like a man hearing the name of the woman he’d just dumped. Again.
He shifted on his booted feet. “The thing is, Maggie and I… Maybe you should just call and let her know the time.”
The bell above the door tinkled as Colin said goodbye and closed it behind him. Through the frosted glass, she watched him get into the fire truck. She didn’t understand it. The man was brave, heroic even. Every day he put himself in danger on the job, and he had been doing so for more than thirty-five years. But when it came to opening his heart to love again, he got cold feet. This was the second time he’d bailed on poor Maggie. As far as Julia was concerned it would be the last because, one way or another, she was getting the couple together for good.
The Gallaghers’ happiness had been her priority, her mission, for eighty-four-plus weeks. And as much as she wanted Josh to rest in peace, she also wanted to hang up her fairy godmother wings and move on with her life. Being responsible for someone else’s happiness—make that five someones’—was a heavy burden to bear.
She’d hoped that by helping the Gallaghers achieve theirs, she’d find her own. Weighed down as she was by guilt, true happiness had been an elusive thing these past few years. She was ready to change that. Her goal had been to hang up her wings on New Year’s Eve. She’d been thrilled when it looked like she’d achieved her objective months before her self-imposed deadline. Now here she was strapping her wings back on with only five weeks until the ball dropped.
Disappointment and a small dose of self-pity caused her stomach to head for her toes as slowly as that big old ball in Times Square. But before she managed to sink even a foot into despair, Julia reminded herself of something her mother used to say: Nothing is impossible; the word itself says “I’m possible.”
A few years ago, she’d discovered her mother had borrowed the line from Audrey Hepburn. Julia decided she’d borrow some of that positive thinking for herself today. The odds of accomplishing her goal by New Year’s Eve weren’t impossible or insurmountable. After all, she had only Colin left. And whether he’d admit it or not, he was in love with Maggie. Everyone in town knew it… Obviously he didn’t, or at the very least, he was a pro at denying his feelings.
Another small flicker of doubt crept up on her at the thought that Colin’s fear of loving again might be stronger than Julia’s matchmaking skills. But like before, she brushed those pesky worries aside, this time with the reminder that she had four successes to her name. Colin’s sons, Finn, Griffin, and Liam were all happily married, and Julia credited herself with playing a small role in helping them achieve their dreams.
Their brother Aidan’s dream hadn’t included a wife, for which Julia would be eternally grateful. And it had nothing to do with her secret crush on the man. Tall, dark, and dangerous had destroyed any tender feelings Julia might have had for him last summer. Up until then, she’d thought he was a prince among men. But he’d turned out to be a beast. In good conscience, she couldn’t match him with any of her friends.
So yes, she’d been relieved to learn that what Aidan wanted most was a job. The former DEA agent had moved home to Harmony Harbor in order to prove to a judge that he could provide a stable environment for his six-year-old daughter. But he’d needed a job to do that.
So, in true fairy godmother fashion, she’d managed to convince Paul, the chief of police, to hire Aidan at HHPD three weeks ago. She’d even been able to conclude her assignment without any direct contact with Aidan. Not an easy feat in Harmony Harbor. In her book, that made it a win all around.
As long as she didn’t think about Paul, who apparently assumed that they were an item. Because while she didn’t have to interact with Aidan to make his wish come true, she’d had to interact with his boss-to-be to get him the job. Interact as in date him. Three dates to be exact.
However, she didn’t have time to worry about Paul now. If she planned to be fairy wing–free by New Year’s Eve, she had work to do and no time to lose. She turned to look over her bookstore, and a plan began to formulate in her mind. One that would require a predawn visit to Maggie’s house on Breakwater Way.
There was just one teensy problem with her plan. Detective Aidan Gallagher was staying in his childhood home across from M
aggie’s. But surely it was early enough that he was still in bed dreaming of sugarplums. She snorted at the thought of something sweet entering Aidan Gallagher’s dreams. He’d probably shoot it if it did.
Chapter Two
Aidan Gallagher woke up to a golden retriever licking his face and wondered what had become of his life. The question had nothing to do with the family dog kissing him awake instead of a hot blonde. It was because, at the age of thirty-seven, he hadn’t expected to be waking up in a too-small bed in a room decorated with superheroes.
Now, if it was a temporary thing, that would have been a different story. But he’d been living with his dad at the family home on Breakwater Way for more than three months.
Figuring out why things had gone wrong wasn’t especially difficult—he’d let emotions cloud his judgment. And every single time he let that unreliable organ called a heart overrule his brain, he suffered the consequences. But this time the fallout didn’t only affect him.
Eight years ago today, he married a woman he’d been casually dating for two months. His family told him it was a mistake. But he was desperate to ease the pain of losing his mother and sister and went ahead with the wedding only six weeks after the accident. Then one morning, after years of trying to make his marriage work, he looked into his four-year-old daughter’s wary eyes and realized he was doing her more harm than good and pulled the plug. The woman he married became hard and bitter, and she took him to the cleaners. He didn’t fight her, because he let emotions mess with his head once again, and he felt guilty that he no longer loved her and wasn’t sure that he ever had. But the one thing he never doubted was that he wanted to be a good father to his daughter.
A close call on his last assignment with the DEA and then a threat from Harper, his ex, had shown Aidan the light. If he wanted to be there for Ella Rose the way his dad had always been there for him, he needed to make a change. So he quit the job that he loved and moved back to the small town he’d done his best to avoid for the past eight years.
By then Harper had changed the rules of the game. As a psychiatrist, she knew how to play the system. And the system liked her a whole lot more than it liked him. For Ella Rose’s sake, Aidan couldn’t allow his ex to continue using their daughter as a pawn. He’d been up half the night trying to figure out a way to stop her.
Following up a chin-to-ear lick with an insistent bark, the family dog effectively put an end to Aidan’s internal battle with his feelings. He lifted his hand to wipe Miller’s doggy drool from his beard and glanced out the window across the room. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I am not taking you out until the sun comes up. So just—”
The retriever latched on to the blanket that Aidan was thinking about pulling over his head, dragging it off the bed.
“Seriously, I’m not doing this right now. Go back to bed.”
Somehow Miller interpreted that to mean let’s play and began racing from one side of the room to the other. Aidan bowed his head. These days no one listened to him, so he didn’t know why he expected Miller to.
“All right, you win. Cut it out before you scratch the floors.” And Aidan got tagged to refinish them.
He threw back the sheet and grabbed his jeans from the end of the bed, barely managing to get them on before Miller was head-butting him out the door. Something was up with the dog. His behavior wasn’t normal. Aidan corrected himself—unless Miller saw Maggie, who lived across the street.
The dog galloped down the short flight of stairs and raced to the bay window facing onto the street. His nose pressed to the glass, Miller whined.
The dog had been in a funk since Aidan’s dad stopped dating Maggie. “You gotta get over her, buddy. Find a girl of your own,” Aidan said as he walked across the living room to stand at the dog’s side.
While Miller was disappointed the couple were no longer an item, Aidan wasn’t. Maggie was a nice lady, but everyone knew there was only room in his father’s heart for Aidan’s mother. It was better that his dad ended it before Maggie got hurt.
“Come on, buddy. Maggie doesn’t get up until nine on a workday, and today’s a holiday. She’ll probably sleep till… What the hell?” He pressed his face to the glass to get a better look at the shadow moving across Maggie’s front lawn. There was only one reason for someone to be creeping around her house at this time of the morning.
“Good dog,” Aidan said, and sprinted to the entryway. Miller was getting an extra doggy treat today.
Shoving his feet into his boots while shrugging into his leather jacket, Aidan contemplated getting his Glock from the safe but decided he didn’t have time to waste. He didn’t want the dirtbag to step one foot in the home of a sleeping woman. From what he could make out of the shadow, the guy was short and slight. At six three and two-twenty, Aidan would have no problem taking him down.
He’d barely gotten the door open when Miller darted past him. Aidan’s stomach lurched at the thought the perp might have a weapon. If anything happened to the dog on his watch… “Miller, get back here!” Aidan yelled, now more concerned about the dog than catching the intruder unaware.
Barking, Miller charged across Maggie’s lawn to the side of the house where the man had been looking in a window. Aidan raced after Miller, registering that the perp was a woman just before the retriever leaped into the air and took her down. By the time Aidan reached the side yard, Miller was giving the woman’s face a bath.
It was a woman Aidan recognized. The sweetheart of Harmony Harbor.
At least that’s how he thought of her. A thought that was filled with a heavy dose of sarcasm. You couldn’t mention Julia Landon’s name in town without being subjected to a litany of accolades. Any time he’d voiced his legitimate concerns about her to his family, they shot him down with talk about how kind and sweet she was.
Aidan didn’t buy it. He was good at his job for a reason. He could spot a liar and a con from a mile away. In Julia Landon’s case, also a stalker with a couple screws loose.
He wondered what his family would think if he shared the news that she’d given Old Lady Rosenbloom ten grand to secure the house on Primrose Lane for Olivia back in June. Scratch that. He knew exactly what they’d think, and that’s why he’d decided to keep the information to himself until he dug a little deeper.
Because while they’d no doubt credit the gift to one more example of Julia’s largesse, he knew better. She couldn’t afford to dole out thousands of dollars to his family like she had been over the past year. The woman was up to her pretty violet eyes in debt. He frowned at the thought, wondering why he was thinking about her eyes.
Then he realized he was standing over her and looking into her big eyes, and he couldn’t deny that they were pretty. They were also shadowed by an emotion he didn’t like. Fear.
She was looking at him the same way she had the day he’d hauled her to the station to interrogate her about Olivia’s disappearance. Considering how aggressive and confrontational he’d been with Julia that morning, he couldn’t say he blamed her for being nervous. In his defense, he’d been desperate to find his sister-in-law, and Julia had a weird obsession with his family. On top of that, none of her excuses rang true.
There was no gray in his world. You were either innocent or guilty. And Julia Landon was guilty of something. He just hadn’t figured out what yet.
“Miller, get off her,” he said, trubled by the gruffness in his command. The only explanation he could come up with was that the way Julia was biting down on her cherry-red lips reminded him of the time he’d kissed her sweet mouth. For some reason, the memory of that brief moment with her under the mistletoe had stuck around for nearly a year. Even now he felt a flicker of interest, of heat. It didn’t make sense. She wasn’t his type. He liked his women tall, blond, and edgy. A woman who could hold her own against him.
Even last Christmas it had been obvious that Julia, with her midnight-black hair and big purple eyes, didn’t have any edges. She was sweet and soft and smelled l
ike candy canes.
For a fraction of a second while he’d stood under the mistletoe with his mouth on hers, he’d wondered if blond and edgy were overrated. Until fifteen minutes later when Julia gifted his niece with the cottage she’d just won in the manor’s Christmas raffle. A cottage that was worth at least two hundred grand.
Yeah, something definitely didn’t add up with her.
He thrust out a hand. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t arrest you.”
She blinked up at him, and then her eyes skittered away like a frightened deer. “Um, you need a legitimate reason to arrest me? I don’t think stopping by to drop off an invitation at a friend’s will cut it with the chief,” she murmured, ignoring Aidan and his outstretched hand to gently push at Miller’s chest. “I’m happy to see you too, boy, but I have to get up.”
Aidan’s teeth clenched at the mention of his boss. Benson had let it be known he wasn’t a fan of Aidan’s tactics or his record with the DEA when he’d grudgingly hired him last month. But everyone at the station knew he was a fan of the woman trying to get out from under Aidan’s dog.
“Maybe you can explain to your boyfriend why you were pulling your Peeping Tom act.” He lifted his chin at the side window she’d been looking into and then scooped up Miller, who looked as happy with Aidan as the woman attempting to push herself to her feet, her red fur snow boots sliding on a frozen puddle left by the drainage pipe.
“I’m a woman. I can’t be a Peeping Tom. But even if I could be, I wasn’t, peeping, I mean. I was just checking to see if Maggie was awake.”
“Sure you were, Peeping Tomette.” He put Miller down and turned to help Julia up. It didn’t escape his notice that she didn’t deny Benson was her boyfriend. Nor did it escape his notice that the muscle in his own jaw was flexing at the thought of her with his boss. Aidan assured himself that his reaction had nothing to do with an interest in Julia. It was because Benson was at least twenty-five years her senior.
