Page 25 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
With her behind him, Jace stepped into the downstairs. The door opened into a small entry, with racks crowded with coats, and rows of boots and shoes lined up against the wall. There was a thick, braided rug on the floor that looked handmade.
Beyond that, a large living room took up most of the space at the front of the house. It looked lived-in, too; the furniture was squashy and patched and dusted with pet hair, there were dog toys everywhere, and bookcases groaning with a disordered mix of books and magazines. Family pictures hung on the walls, and there were holiday garlands draped across the mantel and around the doors and windows.
“I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” Holly half-whispered behind him. As she came in on Jace’s heels, the doll clutched in one hand, she bent over to pick up a knotted rope toy and put it on a shelf.
“Don’t worry about it. Stay here ‘til I clear the house.”
“Can’t I come with you?”
She was so close she was almost tripping over him. The destroyed doll had really unnerved her, and he couldn’t blame her. “Okay, just keep behind me.”
From the living room, they went into a dimly lit dining area with a large, old-fashioned table, and from there to the kitchen. The dogs ran immediately to a pair of food bowls and a water dish near the door, looking hopeful.
The kitchen was bright and cheery, with checked curtains and canisters with painted fruit on them, a classic country vibe. Like the rest of the house, it was messy enough to feel lived in, without being unhygienic or dirty. There were dishes in the drain and a large bowl on the counter covered with a dish towel. A second door led to the backyard, with a few more shoes and boots beside it and jackets hanging on a rack. Jace looked out just to make sure there were no other surprises behind the house.
With that confirmed, he went on clearing the house. There was a large bedroom at the back of the house with an attached office or study—”Dad’s room,” Holly said, though he had guessed that. The surprising thing was how many female touches were in the room (cute cherubic figures on shelves, a lacy throw over the back of a chair); it was clear that the memory of Holly’s mom was still vividly present in the household. He also checked the master bathroom and a laundry room.
From there, he went upstairs. Here there were several doorways along a hall.
“My sisters’ old rooms and mine,” Holly said. She was still following him, holding the doll. “Mine is this one here, at the top of the stairs.”
“How many bedrooms?”
“Three. Plus a bathroom. The younger ones used to share.”
Holly’s room looked like it had barely changed since she was a kid. There were dolls on shelves, quite a lot of them, and posters of boy bands ten or fifteen years out of date. There was something almost sad about it, like a time capsuleinto which she had tried to reinsert herself. But there was no prowler.
The other rooms had evidently been repurposed from the original uses of their inhabitants, although they still had beds and some girlish decorations on the walls. But one had a sewing machine in the middle of the floor and bins of craft supplies, and the other seemed to be in use as a general storage area, with boxes of books stacked on the bed.
No one was in any of the rooms, and while it wasn’t like he’d be able to tell if anything had been damaged or taken with all the cheerful clutter, at least he could recognize that nothing had been damaged or spoiled like the doll. Whatever anger had led to someone cutting up the doll hadn’t been carried out against the rest of the house.
Just the doll.
Jace didn’t like that at all.
He heard a sudden gasp from Holly’s room, and half-ran down the hall to where she was standing just outside the door.
“That wasn’t there when I got up this morning,” Holly said.
She pointed to the bed. At first Jace didn’t know what she was pointing at. Then he saw a small, folded piece of paper in the middle of her neatly fixed pink and white comforter.
Before he could caution her about touching it, she picked it up and unfolded it. For a minute she stood there looking at it. Then she made a faint hissing sound. Jace looked from her hands to her face, where her brows were drawn into a contorted, furious expression that sat uneasily on features made for smiling.
“Thatasshole,” she snarled.
Jace offered a hand. Holly shoved the note into it, dropped the doll on the bed, and whipped out her phone. She began typing furiously.
The note said, in scrawled handwriting even worse than Jace’s,You’ll change your mind. You’ll see.
A cold chill ran down Jace’s spine, and the heat of fury began to rise in him. “Who wrote this?”
“I’d put good money on my stupid worthless ex, either that or one of his awful friends.” Holly was still typing. “I’m unblocking him just for this. How does this sound?Leave me the fuck alone, Rob. If you show up again, I’m calling the police.”
“Sounds perfect,” Jace said. Now he had a target for his rage. He was all but vibrating with it, his wolf snarling with protective fury. Taking a deep breath, he tried to control it. “You sure you shouldn’t call the police now? This looks pretty serious.”
Holly pressed send and dropped the phone on the bed. She sank down next to it and looked at her hands. “Look at me. I’m shaking.”
Jace sat beside her and cautiously put a hand on her arm. He couldn’t quite bring himself to put his arm around her again as he had so impulsively on the porch—not here, in the bastion of her most intimate space. But he felt her lean against his hand anyway.
