by Debbie Mason
At her we’ll have it cleaned up, he looked around the shop and, seeing no one else about, looked down at her. “I’ll be on my way.”
“No. You owe me.”
He supposed she had a point but he couldn’t afford to dally, so he bent down, picked up the red and white roses, crammed them into the vase, then straightened to hand it to her. “There you go.”
“You can’t be serious? I have to soak up all the water and—”
“Evie, the candles, they look nice, but we can’t see. And this one here”—Rosa DiRossi nodded at her friend—“nearly set her coat sleeve on fire.”
Caine gave Evangeline a told you so smile, which she completely ignored because she seemed to be thinking about something else. Something that put a determined look in her eyes. “My fuses blew, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I don’t have a clue how to change them. But I’ve found just the man for the job.” With a smug smile, she patted his arm.
If the circuit box was in the basement of a house this age, she couldn’t pay him enough to go down there and flip her breakers. He had people who did those sorts of things. “Sorry, I—”
“You look familiar. Do I know you?” Rosa DiRossi asked him.
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He tapped the brim of his ball cap as though to say goodbye, lowering it further over his eyes. “Now, I—” He took a step toward the door and caught a glimpse of Kitty Gallagher and Theia across the street. He needed to find another way out. Bollocks.
“Fine, then. Get me a torch and I’ll go have a look,” he said to Evangeline as he moved toward the back of the store and out of Theia’s line of sight.
“Ha ha. Holiday House might be old, but it was hardly built in the Dark Ages, so sorry, we don’t have any torches lying around.”
“I meant a flashlight. You must have one—”
“I knew it! I knew you were somehow connected to Wicklow Developments.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Torch. You’re Irish!”
“So what if I am? We’re in Massachusetts. You can’t throw a stone without hitting an Irishman or -woman.”
“Really. So why would a man disguise his accent if he didn’t have something to hide?”
“Because this man doesna have an accent unless he’s bedeviled by a woman, is why. So if you’re done with your inquisition, hand over your bloody flashlight, and I’ll go down and take care of your breakers for you.”
“Thank you, and you’ve just proved to me that you have nothing to do with Wicklow Developments and that ogre of a CEO Caine Elliot.” She stopped at the sales counter to retrieve a flashlight.
“And how exactly did I do that?” he asked as he accepted the flashlight, not in the least surprised that she’d referred to him as an ogre.
“Because you’re helping me even though you don’t want to, that’s why. Caine Elliot is a coldhearted, vengeful billionaire who wouldn’t lift a finger to help anyone but himself.”
Now, that he did take offense to. He’d gone out of his way to protect her from his grandmother’s wrath. Emily Green Elliot, his grandmother, would do whatever was necessary to get what she wanted. She didn’t care at what cost or who she hurt. She was a cutthroat businesswoman and had become more so after the doctor’s diagnosis. Neither age nor cancer had softened her. She was as formidable and as rigid as the day Caine’s mother had left him with her.
At the sound of Santa ho, ho, ho-ing, Caine said, “Which way to the basement?”
Evangeline had barely finished pointing him in the right direction when he strode toward the back of the house. Not a moment too soon, he thought, upon hearing Theia’s voice in the shop.
As he made his way to the kitchen, the flashlight’s beam landed on the door to the basement. He got a little squirrely just looking at it, knowing what was probably down there. He hated dark, old, rat-infested houses with a passion.
He moved the light to the right. All he had to do was take ten steps and he’d be out the door. He’d hire an electrician to fix the woman’s bloody breakers, save himself the trouble. He’d already gone to enough trouble on her account.
Bollocks. He was no longer a scrawny twelve-year-old trying to befriend the boys in town by acting brave. He was thirty-seven, for feck’s sake, long past time for him to have gotten over his fear of rats. Besides, what if it wasn’t a bunch of blown fuses after all? What if this was his grandmother’s doing? As Caine had discovered over the years, anger was a powerful motivator, a tool to combat fear.
His anger had been doing a fine job combating his fear up until he found himself standing in an unfinished basement with rough-hewn walls and a dirt floor that made it difficult to see droppings. Good. He’d convince himself there wasn’t— The thought broke off when a pair of beady red eyes peered at him through the beam of light. Cocky bastard didn’t even move when Caine took a fierce step toward him. Fecking brilliant. Another of his pals joined him.
At the ring of Caine’s phone, the rats skittered away. He glanced at the screen. It was his uncle. Caine would call him back once the job was done. He’d buy him a pint for saving his pride. He’d been seconds away from turning tail and running back up the crooked, wooden staircase. It didn’t matter that no one would know. Caine would.
He let the call go to voice mail, moving the light over the walls. The beam landed on a rusted circuit box. With his eyes focused on the spot, he walked across the basement floor, refusing to look anywhere else but straight ahead. Ignoring the tremor in his hand, he opened the cover and spotted the problem right away. He flipped the four breakers. Success, he thought at the sound of cheering from above.
No one had messed with the fuses, not even the rats. But time had, time and a lack of capital to invest in upkeep. Wicklow Developments was doing Ms. Christmas a favor. She’d tied herself to a sinking ship. He, out of anyone, understood loyalty to family, but there were times when you had to think of yourself. For Evangeline Christmas that time was now, and it was also long past time he was gone from this place, but something kept him down there.
It was Emily. He didn’t trust his grandmother. She didn’t make idle threats. He reached up and pulled the string dangling from the bare lightbulb. And there, on the opposite wall, was a heart drawn in red with the words EC and AP together forever in the center.
It didn’t make sense to him. Had his grandmother had this done, and if so, why? There’d been nothing in Evangeline’s background check to make him see this as a threat. To him it made more sense that this was something a young Evangeline had done when she’d visited her great-aunt during summer holidays.
Caine pulled the string, pitching the basement into complete darkness—except for the two pairs of disembodied red dots coming toward him. Feck it. He turned and ran up the stairs, his size and heavy boots ensuring he wasn’t quiet about it. As he reached the landing, he heard Theia and Evangeline talking about the messenger, Theia in a decidedly suspicious tone of voice. They also sounded like they were coming his way.
Pulling his hat lower and his scarf up, he sprinted across the kitchen to the back door, grateful to find it unlocked. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the lane that the door being unlocked struck him as odd, especially as he’d seen the number of dead bolts on both the front and back doors. But he didn’t have time to think about it because his uncle and his car weren’t at their meeting place.
His cell phone rang at the same time a door opened. He glanced at the screen. It was Theia. Shutting off the ringer, he ducked behind a hedge. A bitter wind rustled the crumpled leaves at his feet, and he huddled in his jacket as he scrolled to his uncle’s text.
Give me a ring when you need me, boyo. I’m having an Irish breakfast at Jolly Rogers.
“I’ll ring you all right,” Caine muttered as another text came in. This one was from Theia.
A messenger? Really? You have some explaining to do, my friend.
After sending his uncle a text to come get him, Caine pulled off
the fake black beard with a wince. Next time he’d go with cheap and easy to remove. It felt like he’d gotten a close shave. He probably could use one. He’d been up close to thirty-six hours.
Peering through the hedge to ensure Theia wasn’t at the back door or looking through the kitchen window of Holiday House, he stood to toss the beard in a garbage can at the side of the shed the hedge backed against. At a guttural yell, he stopped midstride.
“Mangy mutt! I’ll shoot you next time I see you around my garbage.”
Caine looked about, trying to figure out how the man had spotted him. Then something pinged off the tin can. A dog whined, and what looked like an underweight and uncared-for golden retriever came into view, tripping over its paws as it scrambled backward.
“Easy now. Come here. That’s a boy. You’re a friendly one, aren’t you?” he said when the dog licked his hand, pushing against his legs. Caine crouched beside him, giving him a scratch behind the ears as he checked for a collar. “Looks like you’re on your own and not having an easy time of it, are you, mate?”
Caine remembered well what it was like to live a hardscrabble life, as did his uncle. But while Caine’s fortunes had improved at the age of twelve, Seamus had spent most of the past twenty-five years on and off the street.
“You could use a hand up too, I’m thinking,” Caine said to the dog, glancing back at Holiday House. “This just might be your lucky day. I think I can solve your problem and hers. Although she’d never admit to having one.” An unfair assumption on his part. She had no idea her back door had been unlocked and wouldn’t suspect anything nefarious because she’d now assume he was the one who had unlocked it.
Both he and the dog looked up when a black Mercedes drove up the lane, mowing down two garbage cans along its way. Caine’s gaze shot to Holiday House, and he released a relieved breath when the back door didn’t open in response to the noise. Had Theia appeared, his uncle would have rolled over faster than Caine’s new canine friend.
Seamus got out of the car to check the bumper for scratches, using his jacket to buff one out. “I swear those cans came out of nowhere.” His uncle turned, smiling at the dog. “Now, who is this fine fellow? Oh, but you are a lovely boy, aren’t you?” He patted the dog. “He reminds me of your Max. He was a grand dog.” His uncle teared up, as he tended to whenever he talked about the past. “She should have let you take him. A boy who’d lost his family should’ve been allowed to keep his dog.”
“It was a long time ago, so let’s concentrate on the problem at hand. We have to get Ms. Christmas to adopt Max.”
His uncle gave him a watery smile.
Caine sighed. “You cry more than any woman I’ve ever known. It was a slip of the tongue. Dry your eyes and let’s get the job done. Ms. Christmas needs a watchdog, and this dog needs a home.”
“You barely gave me enough time to break my fast, so I have a take-away bag in the car. How be I get some sausages? We’ll toss them into the lass’s kitchen, shut Max in, then run.”
“If we do that, we won’t know if she keeps him.” Though she seemed the type who would. “If she doesn’t, she needs an alarm system.” Which he knew she couldn’t afford, and it wasn’t something someone could donate to her without drawing suspicion. “And we can’t leave the dog wandering the streets.”
“Aye, I see what you’re saying.” His uncle tapped his white-whiskered chin. He hadn’t been pleased when Caine had dragged him out of his warm bed last night. Seamus wasn’t a fan of flying, even if it was his nephew at the controls. But Caine didn’t have a choice. He had to bring him. It had taken him four days to teach his uncle to use a smartphone and three days for his uncle to finally understand how the television and appliances worked. Seamus was as lost in Caine’s world as Caine himself had once been.
His uncle also found trouble faster than a two-year-old.
“I’ve got a plan. I just need a few things.” Seamus walked off, leaving Caine with the dog.
And perhaps because his uncle had lived on the streets, he was very good at scavenging for what he needed, because ten minutes later he returned with some rope, tape, paper, and a pen. In the time he’d been gone, Theia hadn’t texted Caine again or opened the back door of Holiday House, so he figured they were good.
His uncle had Caine tie the rope loosely around the dog’s neck while Seamus wrote on the paper. My name is Max, and I need a home. I like yours. Then he taped the note to the rope.
Caine scrubbed his hand over his face, thinking he’d need to come up with another way to deal with both Max’s and Evangeline’s problems.
“All right, come on now, boy.” Seamus pulled a sausage from the takeout bag, then dangled it in front of the dog’s nose.
“Uncle, I’ll stay here in case she opens the door before you get away.”
Seamus nodded as he led the dog across the frozen ground to the back of Holiday House, breaking off a piece of sausage to reward Max once they reached the top of the steps. With the dog busy wolfing down the meat, Seamus tied the other end of the rope to the railing. “Okay, now, do your best to look pathetic,” his uncle told the dog while pounding on the door. A minute later, he pressed his ear to it. “Someone’s coming.” He gave Max another bite of sausage, then ran down the steps to hide beneath the stoop.
Caine decided it was a good thing he’d left Seamus to execute the plan. Even though his uncle was five-seven with the build of a fifteen-year-old boy, he was barely able to squeeze beneath it.
Caine ducked behind the hedge at the side of the shed when the door opened to reveal Evangeline. “You poor thing. You must be freezing.” She looked around, luckily not down, then went to untie the rope. “Come on, Max. Let’s get you warm.”
His grandmother would say there’s a sucker born every day.
Chapter Three
Colleen Gallagher stood in the grand hall overseeing the arrival of Greystone Manor’s Christmas tree. The majestic twenty-five-foot fir was well suited to the hall’s soaring timbered ceilings, magnificent stone fireplace, and elegant staircase with its red velvet runner and brass railings.
The manor had been built in the early nineteenth century to resemble a castle, complete with the requisite turrets, stained-glass windows, and extensive gardens. Twenty years before, Colleen had taken advantage of the fairy-tale beauty of the family home to turn it into a hotel. She’d liked to stay busy, and they’d needed the income—upkeep on an estate Greystone’s size and age was costly.
Colleen returned her attention to her great-grandsons, who were struggling to get the tree through the oak doors. If they weren’t more careful, it would soon resemble a Charlie Brown Christmas tree only bigger.
“Mind where you’re…” she began before remembering it would do her no good. Colleen was a ghost, you see. Silently overseeing was about all she could do, which she found annoying.
She liked to be in on the action, especially Christmas action. Her great-grandchildren used to say she had FOMO—fear of missing out, in case you’re wondering. She’d had no idea what it meant at the time they’d said it either, but lately she’d come to think they were right.
Still, while she missed out on a lot, she was here. And for that she was eternally grateful, because three years before, on All Saints Day, only yards from where she now stood, her heart had given out. Truth be told, it had been beating for a hundred and four years, so it hadn’t come as a complete surprise.
What did shock her though? She’d seen the light, heard the chorus of heavenly angels sing, and still managed to miss out on her ride to the great beyond. As her great-granddaughter Theia liked to say, Colleen was gone but hadn’t left the building. And she had no intention of leaving until she secured the manor’s future and that of her great-grandchildren. She wanted them settled with their one true love just as Colleen once was.
Oh, but she and her Patrick had had a grand love affair. They’d been happily wed for fifty years before her husband’s heart gave out. Patrick had been seventy-eight at
the time, working as a superior court judge right up until the day he died.
It was the ideal profession for the man. Though she’d been less than thrilled over the years when he judged her tendency for sticking her nose in other people’s business and managing the state of affairs to go the way she wanted.
Those very things she’d done that had turned Patrick’s hair gray before its time were the reason she may have dragged her feet when the golden light beckoned. She’d been afraid Saint Peter would slam the pearly gates in her face and send her straight to hell. Which was why, along with protecting the manor and matching her great-grandchildren with their loves, she needed to right the wrongs of the past.
She shivered a little at the thought her work here was almost done. She had only one great-granddaughter left to see settled, she’d righted the majority of wrongs from her past (at least the ones she remembered), and the manor…The manor was in grave danger from its greatest threat to date, Caine Elliot.
She was afraid she’d met her match, and not only because the lad was canny and rich, but because she couldn’t put her finger on his motivation. If she wanted to win the battle, she had to know her opponent. He wanted to do more than tear down her beloved manor to build condos—of that she was certain.
The tall silver-haired man in the bespoke black suit directing the lads to lower the tree into the stand beside the fireplace was Jasper, her once–right hand man and confidant. In the past, he would have known exactly what Caine Elliot was up to, but things had changed over the last year. Jasper had fallen in love with the woman in the elegant white blouse and black pants who crossed to his side. Her white-blond hair framing her classically beautiful face, Kitty offered Jasper a winsome smile that clearly captivated the man.
Truth be told, Jasper had been in love with Kitty for as long as Colleen could remember. But Kitty had been married to Colleen’s son Ronan, so in love she’d had eyes for no one else. It wasn’t until years after Ronan’s death that the pair’s relationship had changed. Colleen believed it was her death, and not her son’s, that eventually brought them together. Still, she couldn’t believe Jasper had let love cloud his mind and judgment so completely. He had to know something about Caine.
