Page 75 of Christmas Kisses

“Here. Use my hips as an anchor.” The situation in my jeans worsens when Angel grabs my hands and places them on her hips before she straddles my thigh. Unlike my wicked thoughts in the shower last night, she’s wearing panties. I can still feel the heat of her pussy, though. “I’d offer to get you a dining room chair, but they’re also armless, so you’ll still flap around like a fish on a hook.”

I try to keep the wagon on the trail by using her analogy as a conversation opener. “You don’t seem like the type to fish.”

She half scoffs, halfpffts, fanning my face with her coffee breath. We shared breakfast this morning like nothing happened last night—neither her brutal ego slaying nor her nightmare—and then we entered the bathroom for a joint operation to return my hair to its pre-peroxide days. “I wasn’t given much choice when I was a child. My father was obsessed with fishing. Anywhere he went, I went.”

With all the blood in my body still surging to my dick, my tact slips down a slippery slope. “Was?”

Angel stills for the quickest second before she sections off the last part of my hair while striving to act like her heart isn’t breaking. “Yeah. He passed away three years ago.”

Before I can summon a single sympathy, she dumps the empty dye bowl into the sink and squirms out of my hold. “Let it set for fifteen minutes, and then wash it out withcoolwater.”

“Angel,” I shout, endeavoring to lessen her brisk steps out of the bathroom, desperate for answers to the riddles she constantly bombards me with.

“Cold water, Christian. Hot will strip the coloring agents before they’ve set.”

She races out before I can get another word out, forcing the task onto Tahlia.

I previously said I didn’t want to read about Angel’s past in a report, but I am running out of time. When I purchased a tree from a lot forty miles from Ravenshoe, I had no clue that they’d send her family’s tree. It is on the verge of dying. If my intuition is right, that will hurt Angel more than my attempt to evict her from her home.

“Oh god…”

My eyes shoot to the partially open bathroom door before I reply to Tahlia’s faint whisper, “What?”

Her swallow to lube her throat is audible. “Do you remember that accident three Christmases ago that was broadcast across the globe because it claimed thirteen lives on Christmas Day?” She must hear my nod. “Angel’s parents were a part of the pileup, except no one knew of their involvement for two days because their car went over the ravine where the guardrail had been compromised in an earlier accident.”

“Jesus Christ.” I swallow, settling my stomach. “So she was?—”

“Alone over Christmas and unaware that they’d been involved in an accident.” A keyboard being clicked sounds down the line. “It gets worse. An online article printed days after the accident stated that Angel, Mr. and Mrs. McClymont’s only child, usually came home every Christmas, but since she had been cast as the lead in a Broadway Musical, she delayed her return until Christmas Day.” My stomach drops when she says, “Her parents didn’t know she had booked a red eye for Christmas Eve. They’d planned to surprise her in New York. That’s why they were on the freeway.” Her sigh rustles down the line. “The exact freeway Angel traveled down only hours later since she had missed her flight.”

“How did she miss her flight?”

I can think of a hundred ways. Not a single one matches Tahlia’s reply. “She was trapped in an elevator for over five hours.” I cuss when she says, “Like that wasn’t bad enough, the same song played on repeat the entire time. I’ll…”

“Be Home for Christmas,” we say at the same time.

I take a moment to sort through the facts. It is an extremely long thirty seconds that offers little solutions. “Now we know why Angel loathes Christmas and how this time of the year is difficult for her?—”

“Which you worsened by commencing your extraction operation only four days out from the big event.”

I grunt in agreement. “In my defense, at the time, I thought the benefits would outweigh the negatives.”

“Do you feel differently now?”

“Very much so,” I reply without thought. “I was an idiot.”

I feel even guiltier now than I did when my contact at the tenancy agency announced Angel’s parents had lived in this building almost a decade before they brought their only child home from the hospital.

This isn’t just a rental property to Angel.

It is her home.

“Is there anything in the search that could help with this case?”

I’m not asking for Mrs. Richler or myself. I am asking for Angel and the neighbors she’s been trying to help for as long as she’s been struggling to get a grip on her grief.

Mrs. Richler is sly and underhanded, but her reasoning behind wanting Angel removed from the tenancy ledger of this building is valid. She doesn’t have a lease, which means she doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

If the inquiries I made into this building didn’t see the sale of Angel’s apartment fall through, I would have kept her on as a tenant, but my deposit was returned to my account yesterday morning.

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