15
I WAKE UP in the middle of the night with a body pinning me to the bed, Luka’s breathing steady and even against my neck. He’s always been a cuddler, shifting and rolling and moving in his sleep until he’s wrapped around me. The first time we ever shared a sleeping space, we were camping together at the beach, the edges of the tent shaking in the heavy winds off the water, our sleeping bags in parallel, a lantern hanging in the corner. He had sheepishly tried to make a little wall between us with sweatshirts and a bag of tortilla chips, mumbling something about chronic cuddling. I had thought he was joking until I woke up with Luka’s thigh across my hips, his arms twisted around my torso, and the bag of tortilla chips wedged under my back.
I scratch my nails lightly down his forearm and smile when he nuzzles closer. It’s nice to have him here. It’s nice to wake up with him next to me.
Or on top of me.
I shift and yawn and peer at the clock on the corner of my dresser, Luka’s left arm wrapping tighter around my middle with the motion. It takes me a second to understand why I’m awake, and then I hear it again, a metallic ping from my phone. I reach for it, and Luka grunts, turning onto his side and burrowing under one of the seven thousand pillows against my headboard.
Every man I have ever dated has complained about the number of pillows I keep on my bed. But not Luka. Tonight before he collapsed into an exhausted heap, he muttered a quiet “Fuck yeah” before smothering himself with a cozy chenille. He was asleep in less than thirty seconds.
I wince at the bright screen of my phone in my dark room, navigating to the camera app. The alarm system has gone off a couple of times in the middle of the night since I installed it. Once it was a family of deer grazing at
the dried-out corn stalks stacked by the tractors. Another time it was Beckett, doing whatever it is he does out in the fields before the sun rises. The last time it was an inquisitive robin, nothing but a flash of her feathers as she pecked at the top of the camera, the whole thing shaking.
So I don’t know what I’m anticipating when I swipe to open the notification about movement on camera three, but it’s certainly not a hooded figure throwing rocks.
Awareness has me jolting up in bed, watching as the person abandons the rocks and looks at the ground by their feet for something else instead. I watch with my heart hammering as they find something long and thin—a rake, it looks like, left out of the barn—and reach up. The picture jolts, swims, and then goes dark.
“Luka.” I toss my phone and practically fall out of bed, looking for my sweatpants. They’re folded neatly over my desk chair. I try to hop into them, my hands shaking too badly for me to get a good grip on the waistband.
“Luka, wake up.”
He groans and shimmies farther down into my mountain of pillows. “I can’t take you to get tacos right now, La. M’ sleeping.”
I find my left boot half hidden under my bed and jump on one foot as I attempt to pull it on. “There’s someone outside.”
That has Luka sitting up, blinking blearily at me, hair sticking up in wild disarray. “What?”
“The cameras,” I explain. “Someone just knocked one out with a rake.”
He throws back my comforter, feet finding the hardwood. “Just now?”
“Yeah.” I reach for my phone, dark on my bedspread. I don’t know why; there’s no use in showing him a disconnected camera. “The notification from the camera woke me up and I saw someone.”
He pulls his sweatshirt over his head and then looks pointedly at where I’m still trying to jam my foot into a boot. “And you were going to, what, go outside and strike up a friendly conversation?”
I frown. “Obviously I have to go out there and see what’s going on.”
He scratches at the back of his head roughly, making his hair stick up even worse. It would be cute if I could focus for half a second. “No. Not
obviously. Stay here and call Beckett,” he tells me. He takes a step toward the hallway and then turns back to me. “Call Beckett, and then call Dane.”
I trail after him out of my bedroom. “I’m going with you.”
“You are not.”
I follow him to the entryway and grab my coat before he can shove it out of my reach in the closet. I stuff my arms into the sleeves, defiant, and grab a hat, pulling it down over my tangled curls. It feels like I’m arming myself for battle. Luka frowns at me with a heavy sigh, quickly pulling on his jacket.
“Do you still have that softball bat?”
I nod. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Hopefully nothing.”
I call Beckett when Luka is half buried in my hall closet, emerging with the softball bat I used for maybe three years when I decided I was going to make it to the Junior League Softball World Series. It’s bright pink with a tie- dye hand grip, and I refuse to get rid of it because my mom worked overtime for a month to buy me that thing. I love it. I hit exactly zero home runs with that bad boy.
Needless to say, I did not make it to the Junior League Softball World Series.
Luka hefts it over his shoulder and peeks out my front door like the boogeyman himself is about to jump from behind a fence post. He tries to close me in, but I hustle after him, keeping my steps light down the front stairs. Beckett answers on the third ring.
“Why are you calling me at—”
“There’s someone on the farm,” I rush out, keeping my voice low just in case. Just in case what, I have no idea.
Luka gestures at me, a wordless question. Where? I point toward the Santa barn, sitting large and ominous on the other side of the ice-skating rink we had installed three days ago. The farm looks different in the middle of the night, the moon blocked out by a heavy cover of clouds, a breeze whispering through the trees. Everything sounds like footsteps, and I feel like our hooded intruder is going to come tearing out at us at any second.
I grip Luka’s arm. “Someone knocked out the barn camera.”
“Are you alone?” Beckett asks. There’s rummaging in the background, a string of creative curse words, and a crash.
“Luka is here. We’re heading that way.”
“I’ll be right there.”
Luka stays close to me as we round the rink, fists clenched tight around the colorful handle of the bat. He nods at my phone as I hang up. “Dane.”
“You really think I need to call the police?”
The look he gives me is one part incredulous, another part unadulterated exasperation. “Dane,” he says, through clenched teeth.
I doubt whoever knocked out the camera is a real threat. It’s probably just one of the kids from the high school messing around. They were wearing a hoodie with a badger, for goodness sake.
I call Dane and he answers on the first ring.
“What’s wrong?”
“Someone is on the farm,” I repeat for what feels like the hundredth time.
“My alarm went off, and it was someone knocking out the camera. It’s disconnected now.”
I stare hard into the dark, looking for any sort of movement. My eyes are playing tricks on me. Every twitching tree branch is someone’s leg. The big banners that circle the rink a flash of a sweatshirt.
“Why are you whisperin’? Stella, I swear to god—” Another round of creative curse words, and these phone conversations are starting to get repetitive. “Are you outside right now?”
I run my bottom lip between my teeth. “Maybe.”
“Go back inside.”
“I’m with Luka.”
“Then the both of you go back inside. Do not engage the trespasser on your property, Stella Bloom, or I will lock you up myself. The same goes for Luka.” He exhales a breath like he’s just run fifteen miles with a barrel strapped to his back. “Now go sit in your house, lock all the doors, and wait for me to get there. Do you understand?”
I glance over at Luka. We’re almost at the barn now, the tall red siding within arm’s reach. We hug close to the side, keeping to the shadows. Luka
nods toward the disabled camera. “We’ll check the locks on the barn real quick,” he whispers. “Then go back.”
“Do you understand, Stella?” I hear a car door slam and then the rumble of an engine.
“I understand,” I say quickly, eager to get him off the phone. I understand why he wants me to do that, but I don’t necessarily agree. “See you soon.”
He starts to say something else, but I end the call, tucking my phone in my back pocket. Together, Luka and I creep toward the large sliding doors, both of my hands wrapped firmly around his arm. He’s going to have ten tiny bruises on his bicep from my fingers. My heartbeat pounds through me, adrenaline making me shake. Luka stops abruptly next to me, and I almost stumble forward, preoccupied with looking at the bits of camera scattered on the ground. Luka steadies me and then points at the barn door.
It’s open.
We stare at each other. Suddenly, Dane’s instructions make a lot more sense. I shake my head and gesture back toward my house. Luka frowns and points once at the ground and then nods his head forward, clear instructions for Stay here while I go look. Absolutely not. He is not going into the dark barn by himself with nothing but a baseball bat. I shake my head furiously.
He rolls his eyes.
Fortunately, our standoff is interrupted by a figure strolling out of the barn.
I almost bite my tongue clean in two, a squeak of surprise as Luka forcefully drags me behind him. I wish we had never come out here and just waited for Dane like any other sane human being would have. Luka was right. What’s my plan here? Ask him nicely to stop destroying my things?
The shadowed figure stills, clearly having spotted us. Luka raises the bat in front of us. I wish I had one of those plastic candy canes. If Luka is right and this is the same person who has been causing all my problems since we opened, I’d like to get in a whack or two.
“What’re you guys doing?”
Luka drops the bat with a heaving sigh and bends at the waist, bracing himself on his knees. Tension releases me in a rush, leaving me lightheaded
and pissed off. I pick up a piece of camera off the ground and lob it at Beckett. He smacks it away.
“What the hell are you doing sneaking around out here?”
“I was checking to see if the barn is locked. What are you two doing?” He squints at Luka, who is still recovering from a heart attack, bent in half. “Is that a pink bat?”
“It’s rose gold,” I snap. “Were the doors locked?”
Beckett nods. “No damage inside. Just the camera here.”
“Someone jammed the door a week ago,” Luka offers. “It wasn’t closing all the way.”
“Is that what that was?” I knew something was wrong with the damn thing, and I didn’t think twice about it. “Do you think they’re still here?” I look around us as Luka picks up the bat and straightens. I’ve just now noticed one of the kittens is in Beckett’s front pocket. Vixen, by the looks of it.
Maybe Comet.
“Do you still have everything on the switch?” Last year we connected all of the decorations to a single, digital switch. It makes it easier than Beckett and me walking all over the farm, unplugging more than a hundred extension cords. Beckett hilariously still refers to it as “the switch,” like flicking on the
light when you step into the garage.
“Good idea,” whispers Luka.
I hand Beckett my phone. “What idea?”
The farm suddenly blazes to life around us, every single light blinking on at once. It’s like that scene in Christmas Vacation when Chevy Chase pulls the extension cords over his head. I’m pretty sure you can see us from space right now. I blink against the sudden brightness and then see it, a flash of white and a knocked-over rake, the trees rustling in the entrance to the west pasture.
“There,” I point, and Beckett hands me the kitten before tearing in that direction, Luka quick on his heels with that ridiculous bat held loosely in his left hand. I briefly consider going after them, but there’s no way. Luka and Beckett both ran track in high school, and no one knows these fields better than Beckett. Good luck to whoever thinks they can outrun them.
I hold Comet/Vixen up to my face and give her nose a tiny kiss. She meows at me. “I know, sweetheart. Let’s go back to the house and wait for Dane.”
It’s less intimidating to walk home with all of the lights on. Still, I’m careful to pay attention to my surroundings. I have no idea if this person was alone or not, and Luka took my bat with him. If Beckett is right and it’s the twins wreaking havoc, it’s likely one of them is still hiding close to the barn.
But my trip back to the cottage is uneventful. I sit down on the front steps of my little cottage and strain my ears, listening for any sound of Luka or Beckett or our trespassers. I chew on my lip and watch the lights sway back and forth, the pinprick of two headlights appearing at the entrance to the farm. Dane races down the dirt road like a bat out of hell, the crunch of gravel loud beneath his tires. He’s out of his car door before the vehicle has even come to a complete stop, wearing his full uniform and with a fierce frown on his face. I wonder if he sleeps in his sheriff’s badge.
“I told you to stay in the house.”
I hold up the kitten in an effort to distract him and respectfully don’t point out that I am sitting on the steps of my house.
Dane frowns and glances around the yard. “Where is Luka?”
I wince. “You’re not going to like the answer.”
He sighs and rolls his shoulders back. I’ve just aged him five years with
one late-night call. “Where is he?”
“With Beckett.”
“Are you being deliberately vague right now?” He tips the brim of his hat up with his knuckles and gives me the same look he gave me when I was nineteen and telling him I had no idea how that PBR can ended up in my hand. “Where is Beckett?”
I debate my options. Dane pinches the bridge of his nose, and I decide to be honest.
“They took off into the fields when we saw someone.”
Dane sighs, a few choice words on the tip of his tongue before he swallows them down with obvious effort. “Was it when you lit it up?”
I nod. “Beckett’s idea.”
“It was a good idea. Woulda been a better idea had you waited for appropriate backup.” He turns and looks over his shoulder as another set of headlights appears down the road. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “I called in Caleb. Because I understand the importance of protocol and support.” Whew, shots fired. I’m pretty sure if Dane could get away with slapping me in handcuffs and stowing me in the back seat of his car for an indeterminate period of time, he would. He sets his fists to his hips as Caleb’s cruiser rumbles to a stop next to his car. “Which direction did they run?”
“West pasture,” I offer.
Dane turns on his heel.
“Wait a sec.” I hop off the steps and stride over to him, wrapping both arms around his chest. I squeeze tight, Vixen/Comet meowing happily from her place smooshed between us. “Thank you for coming,” I mutter into his sheriff’s badge. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
One hand briefly presses between my shoulder blades, his chin tapping at the top of my head. He sighs and I squeeze tighter. “Just glad you’re safe,” he rumbles. He pulls away from me and rounds the front of his car. Caleb is just climbing out of his, a little bit sleep-rumpled, his uniform shirt untucked and his deputy badge clipped upside down. “Stay here with Caleb. I’ll go get the boys.”
Caleb and Dane confer at his bumper. Dane points to me and then points at the house three times in rapid succession. It seems like he’s just saying, Keep her in the house, keep her in the house, keep her in the house, over and over again, but Caleb nods like it’s day one at the police academy, eager to take instruction.
Caleb is a good guy. We went to high school together here in Inglewild. I remember him as shy and a little bit awkward, tall and lanky with glasses too big for his face. He’s certainly shed that image with age. He’s downright handsome now, with dark brown eyes and a wide smile. A dimple that winks to life in his left cheek every time he laughs. Beautiful olive skin. His thin frame has filled out with muscle, and he keeps his dark hair cropped close to the sides and a little bit longer on top. It’s sticking up a bit in the back right
now, and I wonder if he’s annoyed he had to come all the way out here in the middle of the night.
I heard Becky Gardener talking at the grocery store once about how it’s a crying shame he hasn’t dated seriously in all the time he’s been deputy.
Dane climbs into his car and backs down the driveway and Caleb gives me a little wave.
“Hiya, Ms. Bloom.” He nods to the kitten curled in the crook of my elbow while doing his best to hide a yawn. He shakes it off and tucks his hands into his pockets. “Evening, Ms. Kitten.”
The kitten stretches in my arms and kneads her paws into my shoulder twice before resettling. Must be Comet, then. “You’ve known me for years, Caleb. I think Stella is fine.” I smile at him, shivering a bit in my wool coat.
He must be freezing in just his button-down. I jerk a nod back toward my house. “Come on inside. I’ll put some coffee on while we wait.”
It’s hard not to worry. Even though I’m convinced it’s a bored rotation of teenagers terrorizing the farm, I’m still nervous that Luka and Beckett are out there alone. I try to reassure myself that they’re together, that Dane is on his way, but my heart is having trouble settling in my chest. Its unlikely caffeine will help, but I need to do something with my hands. Caleb follows me into the house and I gesture toward the table. My gaze drifts to the couch and I blush furiously, remembering how I straddled Luka on it just hours ago, his body warm and solid beneath me. How his hands traced under the hem of my sweater to the bare skin of my back, fingertips dragging until I shivered and rolled my hips against his hardness.
I clear my throat and deposit Comet on the little pillow fort of blankets I still have set up in the corner.
“Thanks for coming all the way out, Caleb. I appreciate the help.”
He nods and lingers in the doorway of the kitchen, studying the collection of artwork, greeting cards, and photos I have pinned to the wall. He smiles at a picture of me and Layla, the two of us at a barbecue with our arms wrapped around each other, half collapsed in laughter. He straightens it with his pinky.
“It’s no trouble. Part of the job.”
“Still”—I collect mugs out of the dishwasher while the coffeepot gets to work—“I imagine you don’t get many late-night calls.”
He finds a seat at the table and stretches out his long legs, palms pressed flat against the tabletop. His gaze keeps darting to the plate of baked goods in the middle of the kitchen island, a collection of different things Layla has been working on for the holiday season. “Not many,” he agrees. “Though I feel like the high schoolers have been finding all sorts of mischief this year.
Dane says Mercury must be in permanent retrograde at this point.”
“Oh yeah? Anything interesting?”
He’s looking at the peppermint bear claw with such naked longing I have to hide my smile in the collar of my sweater. “Just, ah—” He shakes himself out of his sugar-related fantasies. “Without naming names, we found a couple of kids skinny dipping in the fountain in the middle of town. Another pair of kids parked behind the café and were missing their shirts. Ms. Beatrice had something to say about that when she saw them on her security camera.”
I laugh. “I’m sure she did.”
He gives me a shy smile, cupping his hands together and sitting up straighter in the chair. “She was trying to put up WANTED posters in her shop, right behind the counter. I think she had them printed special. You know, those sandwich board posters? It took me almost two hours to convince her not to.”
Now that he’s mentioned it, I have seen Eliza Bowers and that Stillman kid working there on the weekends. I reach for the pot of coffee. “Is that how Ms. Beatrice is staffing the café now?”
“With blackmail and threats?” Caleb grins. “Yes, ma’am.”
I snort and we lapse into silence. I peek out the window that looks out over the fields. Nothing but the usual: string lights over the expanse of dark trees winding to Beckett’s house and over the foothills. I wish I had been able to put cameras all over the property. I’d be able to see what’s going on out
there.
“You’ve been having some trouble?”
I shrug. “Not much really. Nothing serious at least. This is the first time I’ve felt—” Afraid? Maybe. Concerned, I think, is more likely. Worried that
someone is actively trying to hurt my business. “Well, I suppose this is the first time I’ve thought it’s intentional.”
“Dane said something about smashed pumpkins. Some broken fence posts?”
I pour two mugs of coffee and snag the plate of baked goods, meeting him at the table. His pretty eyes light up like I’ve just handed him a winning lottery ticket. He helps himself to the bear claw, and I choose a muffin for myself, picking at the top.
“That and some missing shipments, a couple of other odd things that don’t make sense. It felt like a string of very bad luck, but now I don’t know.” I think of the trees in the south pasture that have gone rotten for no good reason. The flat tires on all the tractors three months ago. The broken barn door. “Luka and Beckett think it’s all connected.”
“You’re not so sure?”
“I guess I don’t know,” I say, playing with the edge of the plastic wrap. It has little Christmas trees dotted all over it, a special order from a catering company in California. I bought about a hundred rolls for Layla last season.
“Who would want to bring down a Christmas tree farm?”
“I suppose that’s true,” he muses. “Though if I’ve learned anything doing this job, it’s that people always have a reason. Even if it’s a strange one.”
“You think there’s a reason someone knocked out my camera?”
“I think it’s likely that person didn’t want you to see what they were planning on doing tonight. You didn’t see anything odd or out of place?”
I shake my head. Just the broken camera. “Luka says the door to the barn was wedged open last week.”
“Dane will figure out what’s going on. Nothing gets past him,” Caleb says and takes a monstrous bite out of his pastry, his face the picture of bliss.
When he blinks open his eyes, he blushes a bit, color rising high on his cheeks.
“Layla makes the best stuff,” he says bashfully around a mouthful of crumbs. He swallows and chases it with a sip of coffee. “I was pretty jealous when Dane came back to the station with a basket of goodies the other day.”
“He didn’t share?”
Caleb looks at me like I’ve got four heads and one of them just asked for a tissue. “You don’t share Layla’s bear claws.”
I look pointedly at the half of a bear claw that’s still clutched in his hand.
He curls it closer to his chest. “I’ll let her know you send your compliments.”
At that, the blush on his cheeks intensifies to a bright fiery red.
Interesting. He fidgets in his chair, crossing and uncrossing his legs beneath the table. “She’s—ah—no problems over at the bakehouse?”
I smile down into my coffee cup, amused. “She found a window open when she came in about a month ago, but nothing was stolen or damaged. I think a bird flew in, but he found his way right out again when she unlocked the doors.”
“Just like Snow White.” He sighs and, oh boy, I think Caleb has a crush.
It’s pretty obvious as I watch him bounce his knee under the table, a question on the tip of his tongue. I let him sweat it out.
He manages to last about thirty seconds.
“Um, is she—” He forcibly stills his leg under the table. “Is she still seeing that Jacob guy?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Is that part of the investigation, Deputy?”
At his flustered and slightly embarrassed look, a bright laugh bursts out of me. He peels a bit of peppermint off his bear claw and lobs it at me, that blush still burning over his cheeks and down lower to his neck. It’s a delight to see someone so buttoned-up get a little ruffled. I hear the stomp of boots on the porch stairs and push my chair back, a smile still tugging at the corners of my mouth.
“She is. But between you and me, I think she deserves better.”
