Page 16 of The Thief Who Saved Christmas

His lips thin. “It seems to me you’ve already had it.”

Dick.

“And you told me that no one showed up for it yesterday.”

Double dick.

“I’ll be going to Hot Chocolate Happy Hour today,” I say. “And for the foreseeable future.”

Weston glares at me like I’m a bug he’d like to grind slowly to death beneath his shoe. As if I give a shit. He’s more important than me, obviously. He’s richer than me, no question. But if itcame down to a battle of wills, of man versus man, I know I’m the one who’d crush him.

We have a stare-off for an enjoyable minute, before Anabelle surprises me by glancing her fingertips off my arm. “Tomorrow,” she says, her voice pitched low. “We’ll have it tomorrow. Weston’s right. We already had our happy hour today.”

I don’t like it. I don’t want to send her off with this dick, but then again, he is her boyfriend, and I’m just the man who lent her a sweater and made her feel sad about her grandmother.

“Sounds good,” I tell her before nodding to him. “Lovely to meet you, Weston. Or do you go by Westie?”

“Weston,” he replies in a pissed-off tone.

Fair enough.

“I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. I’m going to be staying at the inn indefinitely.”

His jaw tightens further, to the point where the muscle probably wants to pop and crackle. “Oh? What do you do?”

“I don’t think people should be defined by what they do for a living,” I tell him. “I’ll be seeing you around.”

A bullshit answer, to be sure, but he’s not the kind of man I want knowing I’m a former criminal. I head up the stairs, and to my surprise Anabelle walks beside me while Weston waits below.

When I give her a sidelong glance on the stairs, she explains, “My room. It’s next to yours.”

Well, mother of God. The possibility hadn’t even occurred to me. I’m not sure if it’s good news or bad, but it’s definitely something.

I look at her one last time before entering my room. She’s swimming in my sweater, the bottom hem covering her ass, and something twists inside of my chest.

The power of suggestion, I’m guessing.

I shake it off and say, “I’ll be seeing you, Anabelle.”

She nods and thankfully doesn’t seem displeased.

When I get inside the room and close the door, I smile at the tinsel tree in the corner, decorated with Santa hats and jingle bells. The Anabelle Effect doesn’t last long, though, because the news she gave me in the parlor was like a kick right to the ’nads. I sit down hard on the closest of the two beds, my elbows finding my knees, my hands finding my hair.

Fuck.Fucking fuckity shit balls fucky-fucker.

I can’tbelieveGrandma Edith is gone.

In none of the thousands of times I’d imagined how my return to The Crooked Quill would go down had this possibility entered into it.

Which is dumb considering she flat-out told me she had three years at most.

You believe what you want to believe, Ryan,I can almost hear Jake telling me.Always have.

I’d cared about that old woman.

Maybe it sounds impossible for her to have mattered so much to me after one night, but she did. She made me feel like I could be more than what I was.

I pull my hair with my hands, resisting the urge to let out a primal shout that would probably freak out Anabelle, her cat, her prick of a boyfriend, and every Christmas-loving tourist burrowed into the inn.

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