Mary had inherited her blond hair from her mother and her blue eyes from her father. They stood in the snow outside the Christmas Towne store, her father in his full Santa outfit, his long white beard the real deal. Her mother wore a full-length dress trimmed around the collar and hems in faux fur, her long blond hair pinned on the top of her head in a neat bun. Mary wore a miniature version of her mother’s dress. They were all smiling.
Had that been the last time she and her father had been happy? Olivia Claus’s death had been a blow to everyone in North Pole. She’d been the driving force behind Christmas Towne’s involvement in Operation Santa. If someone had a need, her gentle smile and humble presence brought peace and blessings to all.
Tears welled in Mary’s eyes. She missed having a mother. Missed her at her senior prom and high school graduation. Missed being tucked in at night. Mary’s father did the best he could to make her teen years tolerable, loving her and providing the support she needed.
Now he was gone.
A knock startled her out of her memories. The clock on the nightstand glared a bright green 12:00.
She shot from morose depression to jagged nerves in two seconds flat. Tucking her blond hair into a black knit hat, she shrugged into her powder-blue jacket and snowpants, cursing its brightness when she needed a dark coat to move through the night unseen. With the temperature outside somewhere in the negative digits, she couldn’t just walk two blocks without one.
Another knock sounded.
Her hand on the doorknob, Mary inhaled and let it out slowly. She could handle this. Nick was just a man. They were going to her home, the place she’d grown up. Jasmine wasn’t there. No big deal.
With a calm she didn’t feel, she opened the door.
“Ready?” His shoulders, clad in a black leather jacket, filled the doorway, sending a shiver across Mary’s senses. He hadn’t bothered to shave, a shadow of beard making him look like a real badass instead of the good guys he alleged to be.
Black gloves, black pants and a black hat enhanced his black eyes. The man oozed danger from every pore.
As she stepped through the door, a thrill of excitement filled her. “I’m ready.”
Chapter 10
Nick grabbed Mary’s gloved hand. “Let’s go out the back way.”
“You’re the expert, lead the way.” Her cheeks were flushed a rosy pink, her eyes sparkling in the dimly lit hallway. Nick could think of a lot better things to do with her than tromp through the snow in subzero temperatures. Not that she’d go for any of them. He had a little more work to do to gain her full trust. Keeping secrets didn’t help.
That was the nature of the SOS operative. Always a life undercover. Never free to share your work, talk about people you’ve met, interesting places you’ve been. Never committing to lasting relationships outside of the people he worked with. Up until now, he’d been okay with the rules.
With this diminutive blonde poking a hole through his shell, he found himself questioning his lonely life. Not a good thing in his profession.
Mary had almost everything he’d never had. A father who loved her, a town full of people who looked out for her. A home she’d grown up in. She’d had everything until her stepmother moved in, and her father disappeared.
As a child, Nick would have given anything to have half of what Mary had. Without his help, she stood a chance of losing it all. Nick couldn’t let that happen. Finding Santa had become more than his job—more of an obsession.
He moved quickly in the darkness with wind blowing through the only dark jacket he owned, the cold seeping through as though he wore nothing at all. They kept to well-trodden paths to avoid leaving new footprints, which meant walking down the edge of the road. Snowdrifts crept up the buildings, some more than three feet tall. Thick snow swirled, dimming the efforts of the few candy cane streetlights. A twin set of headlight beams speared the darkness from the south on Highway 2, headed their direction.
Nick jerked Mary between buildings and ducked behind a snow-laden bush.
The beams grew brighter until they could make out the body of a police vehicle, creeping along the road on a routine drive-by.
Nick kept Mary crouched behind the bush until the SUV turned left onto Santa Claus Lane and disappeared.
Nick straightened. “Come on.”
Only one light shone in front of Christmas Towne. Mary tugged Nick’s hand and led him around to the back entrance where delivery trucks unloaded during the day onto the dock. “Dad kept a spare key back here under a statue of an elf.” She pulled a penlight from her pocket and shone it toward the ground by the back door. A four-foot drift blocked it. Mary sighed. “So much for getting in without leaving a trace.”
“What do you mean?”
“The elf is under that snowbank.”
“Then we’ll just have to make it look like someone from the shop shoveled it out before they left for the day. Besides, it’s still snowing, our tracks will be covered by morning.” Nick dug into the snow with his gloved hands, burrowing down until he revealed a two-foot-tall concrete elf, painted in bright green and red.
“The key is tucked into the bottom of the statue.” Mary brushed more snow away from the back door with her foot until she’d cleared the entrance.
“I thought you wanted to get into the house. Why are we breaking into the shop?”
