Page 64 of Holding Out For A Holiday Hero

It hadn’t been a line. It had just been him, waiting hours and hours outside of the locker room at the University of Georgia. A scrawny kid who’d scraped and saved and taken the bus to the college. His mother had been furious when he finally came home. She’d thought that he’d run away.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jake told his brother. “I need to get back inside.” He turned away and reached for the doorknob.

“The football wasn’t the best present I ever got. You were the best present.”

Shit. “Don’t you dare get all emotional on me.”

“I would never.”

Yeah, he would.

“Just…thanks for being my brother. That’s all I’m saying.”

Jake whipped around and stared in surprise at Tommy.

“If she’s smart, she’ll fall in love with you, and this will just be the first of many Christmases when I come over to find True and a giant Christmas tree waiting at your place. You deserve some happiness, brother. And I hope you get it.” Tommy pulled out his gloves. “Damn cold out here. We’re supposed to get a lot more snow soon. A white Christmas will be fun, don’t you think?”

“It will be a pain in the ass.” Automatic words. Words that he…didn’t mean.

Tommy laughed. “Bah humbug, to you, too.” He waved and darted for his car.

“Tommy!”

His brother glanced back.

Jake swallowed. Twice. “Merry Christmas.”

A wide smile split Tommy’s face. “Didn’t kill you to say it, did it?” Laughing, he hurried away.

No, it hadn’t killed him.

Jake swung away. He twisted the doorknob and headed inside. Silence waited for him. Squaring his shoulders, he strode for the den. He and True had to finish their talk. The one where he very much hoped she didn’t tell him that they were done.

“True, I?—”

He drew up to a dead stop.

True stood near the Christmas tree again. Only she wasn’t alone. A man in a bulky, black coat—a man wearing a black ski mask over his face and gloves on his hands—stood right beside her. And in one of his glove-covered hands, he held a gun.

A gun that was pressed to True’s head.

Every muscle in Jake’s body locked down.

“Ho, ho, ho, bastard,” the man in the mask rasped. “Don’t make another move, or I will pull the trigger, and your big Christmas gift this year will be one dead True.”

Chapter Fourteen

“I didn’t need to be visited by three Christmas spirits. I just needed one to change my life.

Hello, Ghost of Christmas Past. Now that you’re here, don’t ever leave me.”

– Jake Hale

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(“Yeah, also, I think old Ebenezer was technically visited by four spirits—doesn’t Jacob Marley count as a spirit? And why the hell wasn’t Scrooge scared straight as soon as he saw all those chains?”)

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