Kissing Under the Mistletoe

"Congratulations. What kind of things is your partner taking care of?"

"All the financial stuff," she said, as if it were no big deal that she’d turned her money over to someone else’s care. "Distribution channels. Packaging. Running the retail store."

"You trust her that much?"

"Him," she clarified, before adding, "And yes, he was a colleague of my father’s at Harvard, and has a great reputation in the food retail world. Why wouldn’t I trust him?"

Rafe could think of a hundred possible reasons, but before he could start laying them out one by one, she began to slide the spaghetti strands into a pot of water she’d put on to boil and asked, "Now that you’ve heard my long and winding story, tell me all about yours."

"I run a private investigation agency."

"I should have guessed that," she said with a wide smile. "Talk about the perfect job for you."

"What makes you think it’s perfect for me?"

She gave him a strange look, as though she couldn’t believe he was asking her that. "Whenever we played hide-and-seek, you always won, because you were able to put together clues no one else could."

"That’s just a kids game, Brooke. And you were always giggling and giving yourself away."

Her laughter—all grown up now and layered with sensuality he couldn’t manage to miss—washed over him. "You haven’t forgotten your nickname, have you?"

"No, but I was hoping you had."

"Not a chance, Tracker."

He groaned. "Remind me to strangle Mia the next time I see her for ever coming up with that."

"I’m sure no one outside of your family and mine knew it," she assured him, "although no one has ever forgotten the way you found that scared little boy in the mountains."

His parents had just told them they were losing the lake house. Rafe had escaped to the mountains to try to run off the painful thought of losing the one place that truly felt like home to him. He’d found the local search and rescue crew trying to locate a missing boy whose family was on vacation at the lake. As far as they knew, the kid had been chasing after his dog when he left their rental house. The dog came back home, but the boy didn’t. The crew had been afraid that the skinny five-year-old wouldn’t make it through the night in his T-shirt and shorts. Young enough to run, and to keep running after as many dead ends as he needed to, Rafe had used his tracking skills to locate the little boy. Forty-five minutes later, he’d found the kid shivering with dried tear tracks on his cheeks.

"Being a P.I. in Seattle seems like the grown-up version of what you always used to do."

Rafe had spent his life watching people ignore every clue around them. But Brooke, it seemed, didn’t miss a single one. Which also meant it was unlikely that she’d missed his clear attraction to her.

"Although I do have one question for you." He braced himself for her to say all the usual things people did, such as asking him for exciting stories that he hadn’t felt like telling for a long time. "Can you teach me to pick a lock, too?"

Feeling like it would be corrupting her to teach her something like that, he said, "You don’t need to know how to do that, Brooke."

Strangely, she looked a little disappointed by his answer, but instead of pushing him on it, she asked, "How long do you think you’ll be able to be away from your office?"

"A few weeks. I’ve got a half-dozen great employees who will be running the place for me while I’m here."

She gave him an expectant look, as if she was waiting for him to tell her more about his P.I. career, but Rafe didn’t feel like talking about it. He hadn’t told anyone about his discontent with his career. Not his employees. Not his friends. Not even his family. He’d simply continued doing his job, even though he could no longer remember why he’d ever wanted to do it in the first place.

Fortunately, instead of asking him questions he didn’t want to answer about why he hadn’t gushed about his job, she said, "I was so surprised when your family sold the house. I missed you all so much."

It suddenly hit him that she must not know what had happened. "That winter after our final summer here, my father lost his job. He couldn’t find another job that paid anywhere close to what he’d been making."

He didn’t tell her the bank had actually taken the house...and that the stress of barely being able to keep them afloat on savings and then loans from friends had turned his father completely gray.

"I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it wasn’t too long until things turned around for your family."

"Eventually Dad got another job." At lower pay for a boss he didn’t see eye to eye with. "And Ian started working while he was in college, which helped." His oldest brother had walked away from the chance to play pro football to help out their family, but Ian had done it without a word of complaint.

Brooke didn’t seem surprised to hear it. "Ian was so much older, but he always made sure that the bigger kids on the beach weren’t messing with me and Mia."

That was his oldest brother to a T. He took care of the people he loved—no matter the cost to himself.

"What is he doing now?"

"Ian has pretty much singlehandedly taken over the business world with his venture capital fund. He’s brilliant at picking which businesses to get behind.”