His job rocked, dammit. “I think I have a right to do whatever job I want to do,” she said coolly.
Joe sighed and put down his sandwich. A rare occurrence, letting go of his food, signaling he was very serious. “Molly, listen to me. I can’t think of you in this job that I do, in the thick of it, with the constant danger.”
“And yet you do it. Do you think I don’t worry? Or that Kylie doesn’t?” she asked, referring to Joe’s better half.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” he said stubbornly.
The unspoken word being again. Because they both knew what he was really referring to, which was the one time she’d been involved in his world and she’d nearly died. She still carried the scars, inside and out.
He blamed himself.
But she did not. “Look,” she said softly, wanting to make him understand and end this discussion once and for all. “I’m smart. I’m resourceful. I’m resilient.”
He nodded his agreement, which warmed her just a little bit. “All things I learned from you,” she said and squeezed his hand, smiling at the look of surprise on his face. “You’ve always taken care of me, Joe. Always,” she repeated fiercely. “And I’m thankful and grateful for it. But I’m good, okay? I’m better than good. And it’s time for you to let me go, to let me make my own decisions.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he admitted. “But I’ll try.”
“Try real hard,” she suggested.
Chapter 3
#BadSanta
By the time Molly got home that evening, she was completely done in. She lived in Outer Sunset, about twenty minutes from work on a good day with no traffic.
But there was always traffic.
When she walked up the few steps to her apartment building, she found three elves waiting for her.
Seemed they’d multiplied.
The shortest elf was Mrs. Berkowitz, her neighbor. The other elf was Mrs. White, Mrs. Berkowitz’s knitting partner. Molly had never seen Elf Number Three before, who was younger than the other two by a good decade. “Evening, ladies,” Molly said, getting her first real smile of the day. “Looking good.”
“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Berkowitz said. “But your boss said he wouldn’t take our case.”
“I know. I heard. I’m sorry—”
“We really need your help. Santa’s stealing from us.”
Molly leaned against her porch railing. “You know for a fact that he’s actually stealing?”
“Yes. He’s saying there aren’t any profits to pay us from, but he has money. Bingo alone brings it in, I’ve seen the piles of cash. We need your help,” she said so earnestly that her little elf ears quivered.
Molly looked over at Mrs. White, who nodded. And then Elf Number Three.
“That’s Janet,” Mrs. Berkowitz said of the sweet-looking, softly rounded woman. “She heard us talking about the money and wants to join the cause.”
“The cause?” Molly repeated.
“Yes, the Santa Claus cause,” Mrs. Berkowitz said with a straight face. “We worked hard all year. We won’t stand for being ripped off, it’s not right.”
If true, it wasn’t right at all. The men in her life might not understand her need to step in, but they should. It’d been from them that she’d learned to do the morally right thing even when no one else believed. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” she promised.
Mrs. Berkowitz looked relieved. “Oh, thank you, we so appreciate it. And of course we want to pay you, but until we can get our hands on our money—”
“It’s okay,” Molly said. “I’m not officially an investigator anyway. But if we get to the bottom of this case, I might be able to convince my boss to let me be one, so see, we’re helping each other.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Berkowitz said fervently. “You’re a godsend.”
Several hours later, Molly sat in her bed staring at her laptop. She’d researched the Christmas village, the owners, and the bingo hall. The hall itself was leased by the same company that leased the adjoining lot and parking area for the Christmas village. St. Michael’s Bingo. Near as she could tell, in spite of the company’s name, it wasn’t affiliated with a church or specific charity. And Mrs. Berkowitz had been right. According to Yelp ratings and other reviews, it did appear that bingo brought in lots of business and was extremely popular.
So why hadn’t Santa been able to pay his elves?
And why couldn’t she find the names of the people associated with running St. Michael’s Bingo? The website was one page consisting of nothing more than a pic of the village with their hours and address listed. No contact, no number.
Molly called Mrs. Berkowitz. “Who runs the village and the bingo hall?”
“Santa.”
Molly rubbed the spot between her eyes. “Does Santa have a name?”
“Santa.”
Molly had to laugh. “The guy who puts on the Santa suit. What’s his name?”
“Oh. We call him Crazy Nick.”
“As in . . . St. Nicolas?” Molly asked.
“No, as in Crazy Nick.”
Okay, she’d bite. “What makes him crazy?”
“Well, he’s had four wives, for one. And they all work for him even though they hate him. That’s what makes him crazy. He’s always grumpy. If I had four ex-wives, I don’t think I’d want them working for me.”
“Does Crazy Nick have a last name?” Molly asked.
“Probably, but I don’t know it. I could ask one of his exes for you on my next shift. But I’ve gotta go, dear. Jeopardy’s on.”
Molly disconnected. She needed to dig deeper, but for that she needed her work computer and superior programs. Telling herself she’d get up early, she went to bed.
And dreamed of warm, deep brown eyes the color of her favorite thing in the world—chocolate. She dreamed of a wicked smile to go with, and hands that had pulled her close, but not to sleep . . .
The next afternoon, Lucas was dividing his time between peering out through his binoculars and eyeing the screen of his tablet, which was streaming a live feed from the bugged building they were surveilling. He was doing his damnedest to concentrate on the job instead of how cruel life was that he’d slept with Molly but couldn’t remember a single minute of it.
Was her body as warm and curvy as it seemed in those sexy business dresses she always wore?
And what did she wear underneath? Lace? Silk? He had absolutely zero preference; he loved any of it. Had she slowly stripped out of everything and then run her hands all over his body? Had he gotten his mouth on hers? Did she taste as good as he imagined she would—
“It’s effing hot in here,” Joe muttered.
Since the guy had been complaining for hours, Lucas didn’t respond. Especially because it was hot in here.
“I’m hungry,” Joe said.
Lucas lowered the binoculars and pulled out an earbud of his headset. “Anything else?”
“My ass is numb.”
“And you want me to what exactly?” Lucas asked.
“Just saying,” Joe muttered and blew out a breath. “We’ve been here forever.”
Here, being the inside of a surveillance van. They were an hour north of San Francisco, in Sonoma at the Sonoma Raceway. And yeah, for December, the day was unseasonably warm and it was effing hot, and they’d run out of food a few hours ago.
He was there for surveillance and to record any evidence, but had been ordered to stay away from any real action, with Joe as backup on the off chance things were sour.
Lucas was ridiculously grateful to be on the job at all.
“I’m just saying,” Joe said.
“What are you just saying?”
Joe gave him a look. “Why aren’t you listening?”
Because I’m fantasizing about your sister naked and under me, moaning my name . . .
“This isn’t going to happen today,” Joe decided, pulling off his headset. “Intel was wrong.”
Intel on today’s surveillance had come from Molly’s research, research that Lucas had gone over with a fine-tooth comb. “My gut says otherwise,” he said. And his gut was almost always right. He’d honed his instincts at his previous job with the DEA, where he’d worked undercover for five years. Several of his cases had involved huge insurance fraud schemes, and it’d been one of those jobs to cost Lucas the love of his life, however indirectly.