The Last Noel. Heather Graham

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СКАЧАТЬ why didn’t we buy a house on a Caribbean island?”

      “We couldn’t afford a house on a Caribbean island,” David said, but he sounded a lot more cheerful than he had earlier. He hesitated, then said, “Frazier, will you grab that end?”

      Frazier hesitated, as well, before saying, “Sure, Dad.”

      “Good. You two deal with the lights, and I’ll get the food on the table,” Skyler said.

      “Let’s get Mister Sixteen and Rebellious down here, too, huh?” Kat said. “He can give us a hand.”

      “Good idea, and would you get Uncle Paddy, too?”

      There was a short silence after she spoke. Perhaps she’d even imagined it, she thought.

      David wasn’t thrilled about her uncle being there, she knew, and she was suddenly thankful that they’d both been born the children of Irish immigrants. He would never expect her to actually turn away a relative, even if he felt that Paddy was a drunk who deserved whatever he was suffering now. Which wasn’t really fair, she thought, but David was entitled to his opinion.

      Often enough, Uncle Paddy was the real Irish entertainment at the pub. In his own way, of course.

      Kat sprang to life, dispelling whatever awkwardness there might have been. She grinned and ran halfway up the stairs, then called, “Jamie! Jamie O’Boyle! Get your delinquent ass down here on the double. Uncle Paddy…dinner.”

      “I could have yelled myself,” Skyler said.

      “But you’d never have used such poetic language,” Kat said, and even David laughed.

      

      The first thing Craig realized when he came to was that his head was killing him.

      Quintin packed one hell of a wallop.

      He didn’t know how long he’d been out, didn’t know how far they had come. All he knew was that even from where he lay, tossed into the backseat of their stolen vehicle, when he first cracked his eyes open it looked like the whole world had turned white.

      Impossible.

      He closed his eyes again, waited a long moment, then reopened them. The world was still white. It was snow, and not just snow, but fiercely blowing snow. Hell. It was a nor’easter and a mean one. A blizzard.

      He ached all over and wondered if anything in his body was broken.

      And what about the old man they had robbed?

      His stomach tightened painfully when he caught sight of a familiar stand of trees and realized he knew exactly where they were. For a moment, memories filled his mind and drove away the pain, and then every muscle in his body tensed in an effort at self-preservation, as the car suddenly spun and came to a violent halt in a snowdrift.

      “Asshole!” Quintin shouted from the front seat.

      “You’re the asshole,” Scooter returned savagely. “You try driving in this shit.”

      “Doesn’t matter now. We’re stuck. We’ll have to get out and walk.”

      “We’re in the middle of nowhere!” Scooter protested.

      “No, we’re not. There’s a house right up there,” Quintin snapped, pointing. “I can see the lights in the windows.”

      “What? We’re going to drop in for Christmas dinner?” Scooter demanded angrily.

      “It’s still Christmas Eve,” Quintin said. “The season of peace and goodwill toward men.”

      “Fine. We’re going to crash somebody’s Christmas Eve dinner?” Scooter asked, sounding doubtful, even disbelieving, and thoroughly uneasy.

      “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Quintin said.

      Craig’s head was still in agony. Despite that, he felt a terrible sense of dread. Inwardly, he cringed, his mind screaming.

      He knew that house. He had dropped by often in a different time.

      In a different life.

      He remembered it so well: set on a little hill, a beautiful house, comfortable and warm, a place where a family—a real family—gathered and cooked and celebrated the holidays.

      How could they have settled on that house? How could the fates be that unfair? It wasn’t even right on the road, for God’s sake; they should never even have known it was there as they drove past in the storm.

      “We’ve got to get away from here. Far away,” Scooter argued.

      Good thought, Craig approved silently.

      “Far away?” Quintin mocked. “You’re out of your mind. Just how far do you think we can get in this weather, without a car—seeing as someone drove ours into a snowdrift? We need a place to stay. Are you insane? Can’t you see? We’re not going to get anywhere tonight.”

      Scooter was silent for a moment, then said, “We shouldn’t see people tonight.”

      “Don’t you mean people shouldn’t see us?” Quintin asked. He laughed. “Like it will make a difference. Whatever we have to do, we’ll do.”

      In the back, eyes shut again as he pretended he was still unconscious, Craig shuddered inwardly and considered his options. Depending on how he looked at things, they went from few to nonexistent.

      Sorrow ripped through him at the thought of the old man they had left behind, followed by a fresh onslaught of dread.

      He prayed in silence, trying desperately to think of a way out and cursing fate for his present situation.

      How the hell had he ended up here? And tonight of all nights?

      

      “Ah, me poor bones,” Uncle Paddy moaned when Kat went up to repeat the news that dinner was ready, although he looked quite comfortable, reclining against a stack of pillows on the very nice daybed that sat near the radiator in the guest room. He had been happily watching television, and he’d apparently gotten her mother to bring him up some tea and cookies earlier. She suspected he hadn’t been in a speck of pain until she’d knocked briefly and opened the door to his room.

      She stared at him, then set her hands on her hips and slipped into an echo of his accent. “Your old bones are just fine, Uncle Patrick. It’s no sympathy you’ll be getting tonight.”

      Her uncle looked at her indignantly—a look he’d mastered, she thought.

      “A few drops of whiskey would be makin’ ’em a whole lot better, me fine lass.”

      “Maybe later.”

      “I’ve got to be getting down the stairs,” he said.

      “Uncle Paddy, even I know it’s easier to get down a flight of stairs before taking a shot of whiskey,” Jamie said from behind Kat, making her start СКАЧАТЬ