Christmas in Hawthorn Bay

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His familiar blue eyes narrowed briefly, and then he raised one eyebrow high. Oh, God, she thought. She knew that expression. She knew it so well it took her breath away.

“I think I can control myself, Nora. After all, I have no reason to hurt him, do I? He hasn’t messed with anything that belongs to me.”

“No.” She felt like an idiot. The man who stood here, with his expensive suit and his expensive haircut and his sardonic voice…he wasn’t going to get in a brawl over some woman he’d forgotten a decade ago.

He didn’t lust after Nora Carson’s body anymore, or her heart, for that matter.

But that didn’t mean she was safe.

She might still have something he wanted. Something he’d battle for. Something that would bring out the bare-knuckled street fighter she used to know. Just thinking of it made her racing heart come to a dead standstill.

She just might have his son.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I’M OUT,” THE MAN in the camel-hair suit said, slapping his cards facedown on the game table set up in the gun room of Sweet Tides. “My wife will kill me if I lose any more. You’re too damn lucky this week, Killian.”

“He’s too lucky every week,” the older man across from him, who had a strangely bouffant set of gray curls, grumbled around his unlit cigar.

“What can I say?” Sean laughed. “The angels love me. You in or out, Curly?”

“In, damn it. I’m not afraid of you.” Curly held onto his cards, but he kept rearranging them nervously while his cigar bobbed up and down.

Jack, who had spent the past hour sitting by the window reading through some eminent domain research, could see even from this distance that Curly’s knuckles were white with tension.

Jack smiled, bending his head back to the boring papers. Damn if Sean wasn’t going to take this hand, too.

It had been the same all night. One by one, the yellow and blue mother-of-pearl chips had marched their way across the green felt, as if under military orders, to stand in neat piles at Sean’s elbow.

Frankly, Jack had been shocked to hear that Sean even had a regular poker game. Like drinking, gambling had always been something the brothers avoided. Too much like dear old dad.

But, just before his friends had arrived, Sean had given Jack the quick rundown. About five years ago, Sean had decided to give cards a try, and he’d discovered that, unlike Crazy Kelly, he was pretty good.

Jack couldn’t bring himself to join in the game—technically, it was illegal, and he knew there were people in this town who would love any excuse to put a Killian behind bars, even if it was just for jaywalking or quarter stakes in a friendly neighborhood game.

But he’d enjoyed watching. He’d learned a lot about his brother. Sure, they’d spent plenty of time together on Sean’s trips out to Kansas City, but this was different. Like observing a very clever wild animal in its natural habitat.

He’d also learned a lot about the pretty brunette grad student Stacy Holtsinger, the one Sean had mentioned earlier. Stacy had climbed down from the attic about an hour ago, brushed the dust from her hair and had immediately started refilling glasses and peanut bowls.

Apparently Stacy had been studying Sweet Tides history long enough to become the unofficial hostess of the Saturday-night game.

And what else, Jack wondered?

Curly grudgingly tossed a couple of blue chips into the pile. “Okay, big shot. Show me.”

Sean smiled. He had a Killian smile, equal parts cocky bastard and pure good humor. The cocky part had made people around here yearn to tar and feather Killian men for generations. The good-humored part had kept them from doing it. Usually.

Sean splayed out his cards on the table. “Straight. King high.”

The other man took a deep breath. “Crap.”

Chuckling, Sean started picking up his winnings. As if on cue, Stacy appeared at his shoulder, grinning happily, and refilled his sweet tea.

“More beer, anyone?” She tore her gaze from Sean—reluctantly, Jack thought with a new twinge of curiosity—and she scanned the table. “Or is it time to switch to coffee?”

The other men began looking at their watches, as Stacy had no doubt intended they should. As the big winner, Sean couldn’t suggest quitting, so obviously she’d stepped in with the gentle hint. Within minutes, everyone had cashed out. Then they pulled on their overcoats and headed for the door.

After seeing the men out together like an old married couple, Sean and Stacy came back into the gun room, still grinning. He high-fived Jack, then went over to the game table and flicked the first stack of chips. It fell sideways, knocking down the next stack, then the next, like dominos. Apparently Sean had won often enough to have perfected his technique.

“Okay, I’m impressed,” Jack said. “What’s your secret? Marked cards?”

“Hell, no.” Sean tilted his head back and finished off his tea in a long swig. “Why would I need to cheat? Poker’s not exactly rocket science. I just have three unbreakable rules.”

“Yeah? What are they?”

Jack noticed that Stacy was already smiling. She knew the rules, obviously. She knew a lot, for someone who supposedly was only interested in dead Killians.

“One, I never bet big when I’m broke, tired, pissed off or in love. Two, I never bet big unless I’m holding something better than a pair of tens. Three, I never bet big, period.”

He held up four five-dollar bills. “My total winnings tonight.”

Jack laughed. “In other words, you’re the anti-Kelly.”

“Pretty much.” Sean put his hand out and stopped Stacy, who had begun to clear away the beer bottles and peanuts. “Leave this stuff. I’ll get it in the morning. I want you to show Jack the letter.”

She hesitated, but then, with one last look at Sean, she went over to the mantel, an ornate marble affair carved with a hunting scene, and picked up a plastic sleeve into which a yellowed document had been slipped.

She brought it over to where Jack had been reading. She twisted the knob on the desk lamp, increasing the wattage.

“It’s from 1864,” she said, holding it out for him to take. She looked uncertain, as if she thought he might reject it. He wondered what she’d heard about him—from Sean, and from everyone else in Hawthorn Bay. Probably the attempted-murder story had grown claws and fangs over the past twelve years.

“Who wrote it?” He took the letter, even though he still believed the whole thing was a wild goose chase. Every now and then, someone would heat up the search for the gold. Sometimes it was greedy treasure-hunters. More often it was someone young and naive, like this woman. Either way, it always ended in disappointment.

Because there was no gold. There was only a harvest of dreams, lying tender on the ground, ready to be stomped flat by reality.

Even worse, he had a feeling that finding the gold wasn’t Stacy Holtsinger’s only dream. If he were a betting man, he’d bet that she had a thing for Sean.

Jack felt vaguely sorry for the woman, who seemed very nice but innocent, younger than the thirty or so Sean had said she was. And needy. Definitely needy.

He wondered if he should give her a heads-up.

Her boyish figure, her tortoiseshell glasses and her baggy jeans and sweater were the wrong recipe for snagging Sean’s attention. Sean had no interest in settling down with a refined, well-educated woman. He liked his females lusty, busty and loud.

Or at least he used to. Of course, he also used to say he had no interest in following their dad down the poker trail, too, so maybe Jack didn’t know as much as he thought he did.

He turned his attention to the letter, deciding it would be premature to nudge poor Stacy Holtsinger toward contact lenses and implants just yet.

“It was written by Joe Killian,” Stacy said. She cleared her throat. “It was written to his wife, Julia. She seems to have left him, a year or two before, ostensibly to wait out the war with her family back in Philadelphia. But this letter makes it sound as if she left because of a quarrel.”