Nick of Time

Busted. Now, how did he back out of this? “I don’t suppose this could wait until morning?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “No way, cowboy.”

Nick sighed and cupped her elbow. “Come on. Let’s check out your room, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

Mary resisted only a minute, her eyes still narrowed as if she didn’t trust him any more than she trusted the men who’d invaded her room. The thought disappointed him, although why, he didn’t know. In his line of business, he was always living a lie to infiltrate the situation.

“I’m watching you, Nick St. Claire, or whatever your real name is. And I’m trained in self-defense so don’t try anything.”

A smile tugged at Nick’s lips. “So noted.” Mary Christmas was no pushover and he bet she meant it about the self-defense training. He stepped into her room and stood perfectly still, staring at everything as it lay. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t anything odd or out of place. Her suitcase leaned against one wall, the clothing she’d worn earlier littered the bed, and a minimal assortment of toiletries lay scattered across the dresser. “Can you tell whether anything has moved from where you originally set it?”

Mary’s arms dropped to her sides as she inspected the room. “Everything looks the same except the water on the floor from the melted snow.” She opened the dresser drawers one by one. “No. Nothing in here is different from when I unpacked.”

When Nick caught a glimpse of lacy black panties and a matching bra, his heartbeat stuttered. He could picture beautiful Mary, dark lace resting against pale skin and nothing else. With a gulp, he turned his attention to the rest of the room. “What about the bed?” From one leap of the imagination to the next, he could have stuffed a sock in his mouth.

Her color high, Mary moved toward the queen-size mattress. “I don’t remember turning back the covers.” She touched a hand to the pillow.

Nick snagged her wrist, arresting her movement before she could lift the pillow. “Let me.”

Shrugging off his grip, she stepped to the side enough to allow him close to the bed. “Are you worried someone planted a bomb under my pillow?” she asked, her indignant tone fading with each word.

“Not really, but better safe than sorry.” He lifted the pillow.

Mary gasped.

A small box wrapped in shiny red wrapping paper lay against the crisp white sheets.

The fear Mary had felt only a moment earlier dissipated. “Dad.”

“This box?” Nick frowned. “Do you think your father left it?”

“It has to be him.” She reached out, grasped the gift and tore off the paper.

Nick grabbed the wrapping paper as it fell to the floor, lifting it with the tips of his fingers. He wrapped a tissue around the foil paper. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to keep this.”

She shrugged, staring down at the small white box resting in her hand. A smile lifted the corners of her lips for the first time since she’d learned of her father’s disappearance, denting Nick’s indifference like a head-on collision.

In a voice almost too soft to hear, she whispered, “We used to play a game called find the present when I was a child. He’d wrap a clue in the gift and hide it somewhere. When I found it, I had to guess what it meant and follow it to the next clue.”

Mary lifted the lid of the box and pushed aside a fluff of tissue paper. Buried inside was a shiny silver key.

“Any idea what the key belongs to?”

“No.” When she reached out, he caught her hand, wrapping his warm fingers around her cold ones.

“Wait, there might be fingerprints.” He continued to hold her hand, his shoulder rubbing against hers.

“They’ll be my father’s.” Mary pulled free of his fingers.

He maintained his hold. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, of course.” She held up the tissue where words had been scrawled in pencil. “That’s his writing as well.” She squinted as she read the message. “The past holds the secrets. What do you suppose that means?”

“I don’t know, but let me have the key. Maybe we can lift a print off it.” He snatched a tissue from the box on the dresser and carefully lifted the key from the box. “I’ll be right back.” Nick gave her a quick glance and then strode across the hall to his room, where he retrieved a fingerprint kit from his suitcase.

“I tell you, it’s my father’s handwriting. I’d know it anywhere.” Mary followed him across the hall and closed the door behind them.

“Still, it doesn’t hurt to check prints against the databases.”

“My father is not a criminal.” Mary crossed her arms over her chest, her chin jutting out at a stubborn angle. “Aren’t those databases geared toward criminals?”

Nick would rather she stayed back in her own room, but given the circumstances, he didn’t throw her out. Instead, he got down to the business of lifting the prints. He’d send them to Royce back in D.C. and see if they could find a match.

“I get it. You’re not going to answer my question, are you?”

“Nope.”

Mary wrapped her arms around the middle of her cottoncandy pink bathrobe. “Are you a cop or FBI agent?”

He glanced up for a brief moment, a flash of memory pulling his lips into a tight line. “Former FBI.”

“So you’re CIA or something like that?”

His attention returned to the fingerprints. “Something like that.”

She shook her head. “I’m standing here in my bathrobe talking to a stranger, and I don’t even know if he’s one of the good guys or the bad guys.” Mary had her bottom lip between her teeth, her brows furrowed into a worried frown.

“I like to think I’m one of the good guys,” he said, returning his concentration back to his task. For the most part. Though he’d crossed the lines more times than he cared to admit.

“Yeah, sure. And I guess it was a coincidence you showed up at the airport when I did, my father disappeared and someone broke into my room.” Her hands fisted and she propped them on her slim hips. “How do I know you’re one of the good guys? Do you have credentials to prove it?”

He completed his task before he stood. “I’m going to wash my hands, and then I’ll tell you what I can.”

“I get it, you’re not going to tell me anything.”

“Pretty much.” He pushed past her, strode through the doorway and down the hall, where he washed his hands in the communal bathroom. All the while he picked through what he knew to come up with what he could tell her. He hoped it was enough to appease her. As an SOS agent, he wasn’t at liberty to divulge his true duties. By doing so, he placed his entire organization in jeopardy and he wouldn’t do that, no matter how pretty the girl was. And Mary was a knockout.

MARY PACED inside Nick’s room. Despite her misgivings, she couldn’t or wouldn’t believe the man was one of the bad guys. So far, he’d been nothing but polite and helpful. Although she didn’t believe he was on the wrong side, she knew he was holding back information and she meant to extract it, one way or another. That he’d avoided the truth made her angry. She stoked her anger, letting it build with each passing minute.

When Nick walked back into the room, she braced herself, ready for anything. She held the gun he’d carried in both hands and pointed it at him. “Now, tell me what you know or I’ll shoot you.”

Nick smiled, shaking his head. “You won’t shoot me.”

His patronizing attitude only made her angrier. “You know so much about me, what makes you think I won’t?”

He closed the door behind him and then lunged for the weapon, yanking it from her grasp. “For one, it isn’t loaded.”

Deflated and feeling on less firm footing, Mary straightened her back and flicked her drying hair over her shoulder. “So, I wouldn’t have shot you anyway. Just give me answers, not more lies.”

“Have a seat.”

Mary glanced around the room, realizing the only place she could sit was on the bed. His bed. Tingling awareness started in her chest, spread south into her belly and lower still. “No, thank you. I prefer to stand.”

He nodded, his expression hardening into an impenetrable mask. “I came because a dead man in Brooklyn, New York, left a note to help Santa.”

“A dead man?” The blood drained from Mary’s face and a hand fluttered to her chest. “I never knew my father had friends in New York. I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, but if the man took the time to send help to Santa in North Pole, I thought it important enough to check into. Given that your father is now missing, there might be credence to his request.”

Mary sat on the bed and rested her head in her hands, willing a sudden attack of nausea to abate before she made a bigger fool of herself. When she finally had her stomach in check, she glanced up. “That still doesn’t tell me who you are and why you were with a dead man in New York.”

“Let’s just say we received an urgent call from him but arrived too late. By the time we got there, he was already dead.”

“We?”

A smile tipped the edges of his lips, the effect sending danger signals ricocheting through Mary’s brain.

“Never mind the ‘we.’”

“Argh!” She stomped her foot. “I don’t like all the secrets. Can you at least tell me who the dead man was?”

“Frank Richards. Does the name ring any bells?”

Mary scratched through her memory. “I’ve never met a man by that name, nor has Dad mentioned it. My dad and I are very close.”

“What about your stepmother?”

Her jaw tightened. “She’s only been in the picture for the past couple months. Before that, my father and I had no secrets from each other.”

“What do you know about his life before he moved here?”

“My dad’s lived in North Pole ever since I was born.”

“Where did he live before that?”

“I don’t know, I never asked. I knew he’d been in the military, but he didn’t like to talk about it.” For someone who loved her father more than any man in her life, she didn’t know him very well, did she? Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed hard.

“What about your mother?”

“She was from Fairbanks, born and raised.”

“Was?” he prodded, his voice low, but insistent.

Mary turned to stare at the curtained window. “She died fourteen years ago in a car wreck.” Her death had been the reason Mary had stayed in North Pole as long as she did. Her father had loved his first wife completely. Olivia Claus had been a shining beacon, a consistently happy woman, content in her life in Alaska, thrilled to be a part of Christmas Towne and in love with her husband. And Santa had loved her more than life itself.

When Olivia Claus died, Santa needed Mary more than ever.

For the next twelve years, she’d concentrated on making her father happy. She graduated with honors from high school, went to college in Fairbanks and put off her dreams of moving to the Lower 48, indefinitely. Then she’d met Bradley and thought she was in love. When he’d turned out to be a cheat, her dreams of raising her children near her father fell through. That’s when her father arranged for her move to Seattle, to get away from bad memories.

She shook herself out of her morose musings. “How old was the man in Brooklyn?”

“Early sixties, maybe. We’re still looking into his background. I don’t know much about him yet, other than he was a retired army sergeant.”

“You think he might have known my dad before he moved to Alaska? Back when he’d been in the military?” When had her father moved to North Pole? Perhaps she could ask Christmas Towne’s janitor, Mr. Feegan. He’d known her dad about as long as anyone, she guessed. A glance at the clock confirmed it was too late to call now. At nearly midnight, she wouldn’t get a coherent response if she got him to answer the phone at all.

And Nick still hadn’t answered all her questions. “You still haven’t said who you work for.”

“Let’s just say I work for the country. You better get some rest. We want to start fresh and early looking for your father.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Like what?”

“That I still don’t know what you are.”

“I’m just a man here to help Santa.”

“Like some kind of saint from heaven?” Mary snorted. “North Pole’s very own St. Nick?”

“I’m no saint.” All humor disappeared from his face, leaving his eyes dark and fathomless.

She glanced at the gun in his hand. “How do I know you’re not here to kill my father? How do I know you didn’t kill Frank Richards?”

“You don’t.” He set the gun inside a dresser drawer and scooped her elbow into his palm. “Now, are you going to your room, or would your rather sleep here?”

Mary’s heart flip-flopped in her chest at the thought of staying in the same room with this man who was sexy enough to be a model and with just enough mystery to be dangerous. A deadly combination for her underexercised libido. If she didn’t leave now, it might be fatal to more than her tenuous hold on self-preservation. Who was to say he wouldn’t kill her? Her skin chilled. “I’m going.”

She couldn’t hustle across the hallway and into her room fast enough. When she turned to close the door, she noticed Nick leaning in his door frame. Having shed his jacket and with his black hair falling over his forehead, he could crank up any female’s blood pressure and she was no different. Damn.

Mary glared at him. “I intend to learn more about you and what’s happened to my father tomorrow. So don’t go anywhere.”

His lips twisted. “Don’t worry. I’m not. I’m just as interested in finding your father as you are.”

After closing the door with a sharp click, Mary leaned against it and wondered if Nick’s reasons were much darker than hers. She tested the lock on her window, and shoved her dresser in front of the door. When she fell into bed, she lay with her eyes half-open, jumping every time the heater kicked on or the walls settled. Questions raced through her mind, keeping her awake into the wee hours.

Who had bumped into her in the hallway? Was he after her father? Why hadn’t her father tried harder to contact her once she was in North Pole? And what did the sexy mystery man across the hall have to do with her father’s disappearance? Most of all, what did her father’s clue mean?

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