Scrooge and the Single Girl. Christine Rimmer

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      “Omigod.”

      It was Will Bravo’s car. She was sure of it. It was a very distinctive car, the Mercedes Benz version of a sport utility vehicle. Silver in color. What did they call it? A G-Class, she thought.

      Will Bravo’s car.

      Jilly shivered. Will was Caitlin’s middle son. The only one of Caitlin’s three sons who remained a bachelor, the other two having married Jilly’s two dearest friends, Jane Elliott and Celia Tuttle.

      Will Bravo’s car….

      Everything was starting to make way too much sense. “Caitlin, how could you?” Jilly whispered under her breath. She felt tricked. Used. Thoroughly manipulated.

      She grabbed her purse from the floor in front of the passenger seat and fumbled through it until she came up with her phone. She’d stored Caitlin’s number, just in case she might need it. She punched it up. But when she put the phone to her ear, instead of ringing at the other end, all she got was static.

      Jilly yanked the device away from her ear and glared at it. Terrific. So much for being able to count on her cell.

      Missy meowed.

      Jilly shoved the phone back in her purse, stuck her arm over the seat and got her coat and hat. She pulled on the coat and jammed the hat on her head. Then she hooked her purse over one shoulder, grabbed the cat carrier, leaned on her door and climbed out into the raging storm.

      Chapter Two

      Will Bravo was just about to sit down to his solitary dinner of franks and beans, with a copy of Crime and Punishment for company, when someone knocked on the kitchen door.

      What the…?

      His grandmother’s cabin was off the beaten path in every way. To get there, you had to have directions. Even when the weather was good, nobody ever just dropped in. Which was why he was here in the first place. He wanted to be left alone.

      Whoever it was knocked some more.

      Will went over and pulled open the door, and Jillian Diamond blew in on a huge gust of snow-laden wind. She was wearing a red wool hat, a big shearling coat, faded overalls, lace-up boots and a red-and-green striped sweater with a row of red reindeer embroidered on the turtleneck collar. In her left hand, she clutched an animal carrier from which suspicious meowing sounds were issuing.

      Will couldn’t believe this. “What the hell are you doing here?”

      Now, wasn’t that going to be fun to explain? Jilly thought. She caught the door and pushed it shut, then set Missy’s carrier on the warped linoleum floor, sliding her purse off her shoulder and dropping it next to her unhappy cat.

      “I asked you what you’re doing here,” Will demanded for the second time.

      She didn’t know where to start, so she countered provokingly, “I could ask you the same question.”

      He studied her for a moment, his head tipped sideways. And then he folded his big arms across his broad chest and informed her, “I’m here every year from the twenty-second or twenty-third until the day after New Year’s.”

      Jilly swiped her hat off her head and beat it against her leg to shake off the snow. “Well, sorry. I honestly didn’t know.”

      He grunted. “You could have asked anyone. My mother—” Oh my, Jilly thought, surprise, surprise. “—my brothers. Even, more than likely, your two best friends.”

      “Oh, really?”

      “Yeah. Really.”

      “Well, this may come as a rude shock to you, but asking if you were going to be here never even occurred to me.” Yeah, okay. Maybe it should have occurred to her. Given what she knew about Caitlin Bravo, it all seemed achingly obvious now. But that was called hindsight and it and $3.49 would get you a venti latte at Starbuck’s.

      He was glaring at her, as if he suspected her of all kinds of awful things, as if he didn’t believe a word she had said. She didn’t even want to look at him.

      So she didn’t. She looked away, and found herself staring at the single place-setting and the thick hard-bound book waiting on the ancient drop-leaf table about three feet from the door. Delicious comfort food smells issued from the pot on the stove.

      “Answer my question,” he growled at her. “What are you doing here?”

      From the carrier, Missy meowed plaintively. “Look,” Jilly said with a sigh. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I swear I didn’t have a clue that you were going to be here.”

      He made a low scoffing sound. Jilly could see it all, right there in his gorgeous, lagoon-blue eyes. He thought she was after him. He believed she had known that he was staying here, that she’d followed him up here to the middle of nowhere to try and hook up with him.

      She threw up both hands. “Think what you want to think. The deal is, though I truly hate to put you out, it’s very bad out there. I’m stuck here for the night and we both know it.”

      He did more scowling and glaring. Then at last he gave in and muttered grudgingly, “You’re right. You’re going nowhere tonight.”

      Oh, thank you so much for admitting the obvious, she thought. She said, “Right now, I need to get a few things in from my car.” Missy meowed again. “Like a litter box and some cat food, for starters.”

      “All right. That’s reasonable.” Various coats and wool scarves hung on a line of wooden pegs beside the door. He grabbed a hooded down jacket. “Let’s go.”

      Nothing would have given her more pleasure than to tell him she didn’t need his help. But there was her pride—and then there were her suitcases, the cat supplies and the various exotic lettuces and veggies and the hormone-free fresh turkey she’d brought to roast for her happy single-girl’s Christmas feast. And what about that bottle of good pinot grigio she’d bought to enjoy with her Christmas dinner, not to mention the pricey champagne she’d bought to toast the New Year? No way she was leaving them outside to freeze. If she trekked everything in alone, it would take two trips, maybe three. And it really was cold out there.

      “Thank you,” she said tightly as she stuck her hat back on her head.

      Outside, even under the protection provided by the porch, the icy wind seemed to cut the frozen night like the blade of a bitterly sharp knife. Once they moved off the porch and into the open clearing, it got worse. They struggled against the wind, getting beaten in the face with freezing snow, finding no shelter as they passed beneath the single bare maple tree between the vehicles and the cars. It wasn’t really all that far; it only felt like a hundred miles.

      When they reached the cars at last, she went around to the rear of her Toyota and lifted the hatch. She passed him a twenty-pound bag of cat litter and another bag containing cat food and a plastic litter box. He managed to handle all that with one arm, so she also gave him the smaller of her two suitcases—it had her pjs in it, and a change of underwear, all she’d need for one night. Then, after giving him a backhanded wave meant to dismiss him, she turned to the bags of groceries and started going through them, consolidating the food СКАЧАТЬ