Her Mistletoe Man
Like the rest of the Babcock family members, Aunt Shirley was a trusting soul, welcoming anyone and everyone into her life. In fact, it was that very generosity of spirit that had led the older woman to raise Ruth and her older sister after their parents had died.
Aunt Shirley had protected her when Ruth was a child, and now it was Ruth’s turn to repay the favor. She would not let this situation unfold like that roofing repair sham her family had fallen for. Or the unsecured-bond investment scheme Aunt Shirley had naively bought into.
“I don’t know, Aunt Shirley,” Ruth said. “Something doesn’t seem right about this particular long-lost relative. For all we know, he could be another shyster, or even an ax murderer.”
“Nonsense.” Aunt Shirley disengaged her hand from Boris’s grasp and closed the musty book. “I won’t have you talking about your own cousin that way. In every family there are three horse thieves for every prince. Regardless of whether his branch of the family tree is represented on a coat of arms or has a noose hanging from it, he’s still family.”
She straightened and addressed Ruth with an expression that made it clear she hadn’t learned the lesson taught by the roofer and investment crook. “I’m sure that nice young man has a perfectly reasonable explanation for his name not appearing in our Bible.”
Ruth shook her head at her aunt’s complete trust in other people. The older woman had a reputation around Willow Glen as being wealthy and more than a little eccentric. She hated to think that another unscrupulous person might try to take advantage of that trust.
“Cousin Tucker is a fine fellow,” Aunt Shirley said, trying to reassure her. “Just give him a chance.”
Give him a chance to do what? Rob them blind? Murder them in their sleep? It was clear she would get nowhere with her family, so she let the subject rest for now. With a few well-chosen questions, she would soon ascertain the newcomer’s genealogical background as well as his intentions.
As Tucker came down the curved staircase, he saw the group huddled over a large Bible. They were probably reading the nativity story. He had serious doubts about his own sanity, agreeing to join in the Christmas celebrations when that was specifically what he’d been trying to avoid this year. If it weren’t for the brown-eyed brunette, he’d be in his room reveling in a game of solitaire right now.
If he’d been a suspicious man, he would conclude that certain women have the ability to zap men with a mysterious pheromone that robs them of their reasoning powers. If that were the case, he must have been hit with a double dose of the stuff.
By the time he entered the parlor, the group had finished their discussion or prayer or whatever, and all turned as one to face him. Discomfited by their scrutiny, Tucker glanced down to make a quick assessment of his appearance: turtleneck tucked neatly into jeans, zipper up, and both socks matched. Nope, nothing wrong there.
When he looked up, they were still staring at him. Especially the brunette. Only she seemed to be studying him harder than the others.
The sandy-haired teenager with too much makeup spoke first. “Hey, cuz.”
Tucker wrinkled his eyebrows. Cuz? He wasn’t up on teen slang, but he hoped it was a compliment.
“Glad you could join us,” said Aunt Shirley.
Oren spoke next. “She didn’t twist your arm, did she? Shirley is the bossiest woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to know.”
Rather than coming to her defense, the others smiled and nodded their agreement. Aunt Shirley smiled, too, as if she were proud of the distinction.
“No,” Tucker said, “my arms are just fine.” It was his brain he had to work on. He had come here to be alone, so why on earth was he standing amid ten strangers with the intent of celebrating the very holiday he’d been trying to avoid?
“Good,” said Aunt Shirley, “then you can climb that ladder and use those arms to string the electric lights on the tree.”
“There she goes again,” Oren griped. Turning to the proprietress of the inn, he added, “The least you could do is introduce him to everybody before you start bossing him around.”
The brunette stepped closer to Tucker. “That’s okay, I’ll take care of it.” Then she rattled off their names, pointing to each as she did so.
Aunt Shirley, he already knew, and her boyfriend Boris Schmidt. Then Oren Cooper and his wife Ada May. And their son, Dewey, who appeared to be in his fifties. Eldon and Rosemary Givens, and Brooke, their teenage daughter. The brunette’s sister, Vivian Marsh, with blue eyes so enormous she reminded him of a Siamese cat.
And, finally, the brunette.
“I’m Ruth,” she said, extending her hand.
Her hand was small yet strong. Just like the rest of her, he suspected. He couldn’t help wanting to get to know her better. Much better.
“Any of these names ring a bell?” she asked, sweeping a hand to indicate the people she’d just introduced.
Schmidt, Cooper, Givens, Marsh. He didn’t recognize the family names, but it had been a long time since he’d been home to Willow Glen. Even so, most of these people were older than his own thirty-one years, save the Marsh sisters, who appeared to be about his age or a little younger. And Brooke. Tucker shrugged, giving a gentle shake of his head.
A question niggled at the back of his mind. Assuming these people were all from Willow Glen, which was what Ruth had led him to believe by her implication that he should know them, why were they here instead of celebrating Christmas in their own homes?
Well, they’d been grilling him about his family. Now it was his turn to ask a question or two. “I’ve heard of people whose Thanksgiving tradition is to drive to the Checkered Tablecloth on the other side of town for a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Is gathering at Willow Glen Plantation a new Christmas tradition around here?”
Ruth quirked her mouth, her lips pressing firmly together as if she weren’t satisfied with his negative response. Or the question he’d lobbed at her. “Something like that,” she said as if he should have known.
In the next few minutes, the previously tidy parlor was strewn with ornaments, bows, lights and tinsel. Ruth reeled out the seemingly endless strings of lights as he attached them to the tree. The task threatened to overwhelm him with memories of the Newland family decorating a fresh-cut tree in this room so many years ago. Stringing the lights had been Mr. Newland’s job, and he and Chris had hung the ornaments while Mrs. Newland stood back and pointed out bare spots. The only thing that kept him from bolting from the room was the woman who stood at his elbow, patiently handing up lights. And every time their hands touched, he had to fight the urge to pull her to him and kiss her breathless.
All the while, she kept firing questions at him. The only explanation he could imagine was that she thought he looked familiar and was trying to establish how they may have first met.
He could have come right out and told her they’d never seen each other before this evening, but he liked the sound of her voice. Despite his earlier need for solitude, he found himself enjoying the company of the tiny woman with the giant curiosity.
When he claimed no knowledge of the various names she threw at him, her attitude seemed to change from curiosity to misgiving. Maybe she was finally figuring out that, although he might look familiar, they’d never met before today.
By the time they finished the tree, they’d settled into an uneasy silence. Tucker didn’t know what had derailed their conversation. He didn’t think he’d said anything out of the way. He’d tried asking her a few questions, like what part of Willow Glen she was from, but that seemed to make her even more edgy. So he turned his attention to the other guests and surprised himself by having a good time. For a brief while, the laughter and joking made him forget why he’d come to Willow Glen…and Willow Glen Plantation in particular. After the tree was finished and he’d helped put away the excess decorations, he excused himself and returned to his room.
Ruth watched him go up the stairs.
“The rear view is just as interesting as the front, eh?” Vivian teased.
“Yeah, but he has no business being here.”
“Are you still on that?” Vivian put a hand to her perfectly styled bottle-blond hair. “Why can’t you just leave the guy alone? He seems really nice. Very charming, if you ask me.”
“So did Ted Bundy, but I wouldn’t want him crashing my family reunion.”
“Who’s crashing our family reunion?” Brooke demanded. “Cousin Tucker?”
“He’s not our cousin,” Ruth insisted.
Brooke smiled broadly. “Cool. I call dibsies on him.”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. For all we know, he could be an escaped convict.”
“Or maybe he’s with the Internal Revenue Service, and he’s snooping around for unreported income,” Vivian suggested. She smoothed her soft red sweater over her slim hips. “I wouldn’t mind him looking over my form. In fact, he can audit me anytime.”
Brooke giggled, but Ruth wasn’t amused. “You two may think it’s funny, but something about that guy bugs me.” He seemed to her like a man on a quest, but she wasn’t sure what he wanted from them. She glanced up the stairs, wondering what would motivate a perfect stranger to insinuate himself into their home for the holidays. Well, the others might be willing to swallow the notion that he was a family member, but Ruth knew otherwise. And she was determined to get to the bottom of it. “I’m going up there and see exactly what he’s doing.”
Vivian laughed. “Probably changing his clothes, if you’re lucky.”
Ignoring the laughter of her sister and young cousin, Ruth mounted the steps, taking care to avoid the creaky ones. If Tucker Maddock was truly up to no good, she doubted he’d be so careless as to let her catch him at it. Even so, the least she could do was confront him about his identity and his intentions. She hadn’t wanted to do so downstairs in front of the others, partly to keep from putting him on the spot in case he actually was related in a way she had overlooked, and partly because she knew her gullible family would rise to his defense even if he was an imposter as she suspected. After he’d charmed his way into her family members’ hearts, joking and laughing while decorating the tree, they were convinced he could do no wrong.
As she climbed the last few steps to the third floor—the same level her room was on—she heard what sounded like something being scraped across the floor. Quietly, she made her way down the hall, glancing at the room numbers that remained from the house’s brief bed-and-breakfast days. Ruth tapped lightly at the door of number nine. When no answer came, she turned the knob and peeked inside.
The room was empty.
Closing the door, Ruth went to her own room and checked to see if anything had been disturbed, but it looked the same as she’d left it earlier today. A glance around the empty hallway revealed that the attic door stood ajar several inches.
Ruth walked closer and saw that the attic light was on. Then she heard the sound again…a bump and a dragging scrape. Somebody was up there, and she had a good idea who it might be.
Moving quietly up the rickety stairs, she was at once shocked and yet not quite surprised to find their dark-haired houseguest running his hands over the loose floorboards where Aunt Shirley’s trunk once sat. It was obvious he was searching for something.
Ruth placed her hands on her hips, enraged by the stranger’s audacity.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Chapter Two
It was common knowledge in Willow Glen that Aunt Shirley had recently bought a new car with moldy money—cash that had apparently been buried somewhere on the property and retrieved when her dotty aunt was ready to make her purchase. Judging from the way Tucker had moved stuff around up here, it appeared as though he had heard about Aunt Shirley’s odd banking habits and decided to make a withdrawal for himself. Just as she had suspected, he was not only a fraud, but an opportunist as well.
Tucker stood abruptly and cracked his head against the low attic ceiling. Rubbing the tender spot, he rumpled his hair, which made him look even more devilish.
Humph! The others might be swayed by his charm and good looks, but Ruth had learned to develop an immunity to such virtues, especially after Aunt Shirley had been taken to the cleaners by the fly-by-night roofing repairman and the so-called investment counselor. Besides, she had seen it all and heard it all, from adorable fourth-grade boys and girls who were adept at manipulating their parents and other adults into giving them what they wanted.
Ruth had a sixth sense about knowing when her students were up to mischief, but it didn’t take a psychic to see that something was definitely off-kilter here.
“It’s not what you think,” he said, putting a hand up to the exposed beam he’d cracked his head against a moment before. He seemed to consider something for a moment, then asked, “Do you work here?”
“Do I work here? What kind of question is that?” Sure, she was working—especially this year as she sought to relieve her aunt of the burden of being hostess to so many houseguests. But he had asked as if he thought she were being paid to do her labors of love. Ruth climbed the remaining steps into the attic, but she didn’t have to stoop as he did. “What I want to know is what you’re looking for.”
“Well, it’s a long story, actually.” Tucker wondered if he should go into the drawn-out course of events that had brought him here. When she hollered downstairs for Aunt Shirley to call the sheriff, he decided it would be prudent to start explaining. He paused, wondering how to begin.
“I’m waiting.” Her toe tapped the rough board beneath her feet. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and he tried not to notice how that simple action enhanced an already admirable feature of hers.
Before he could begin, Eldon came galloping up the stairs with Brooke hot on his heels. “Stay behind me, Brooke. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
He brandished a small pearl-handled pistol and scanned the close confines of the attic, his gaze skipping past Ruth and Tucker. He turned his back to Tucker, who was grateful to be out of range of the waving pistol, and faced the woman who had called for help.
“What’s the matter, Ruthie? Did you see a mouse again?”
“No, I saw a rat,” she said, pointing past Eldon, “and he’s standing right behind you.”
Brooke did an about-face and returned to the stairs. “Gross! I’m outta here.”
Curious onlookers blocked her retreat. Tucker peered down the stairs as Eldon aimed the gun at Aunt Shirley’s trunk. Sure enough, there in the hall stood Aunt Shirley and the rest of the guests.
Ruth tugged Eldon’s sleeve in an effort to regain his attention. “I wasn’t talking about a rat rat. I was referring to a person rat.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
Once again, Eldon looked past Tucker as he searched for an intruder.
“Him!” Ruth stepped closer and patted Tucker’s arm. “This rat.”
Obviously confused now, Eldon stuffed the gun into his waistband. “Cousin Tucker? What’d he do?”
“Good grief, Ruth,” piped in her older sister, “if you go with a guy to the attic, you really can’t complain if he gets fresh with you.”
Ruth sighed a huge breath of exasperation. “He didn’t get fresh.”
“Sounds like they need some mesh,” said Boris from his vantage point in the hall.
Aunt Shirley patted his hand. “Turn up your hearing aid, dear.”
By now, Ruth’s face had turned a becoming shade of pink. Tucker wasn’t sure whether that was from the cold or from her anger at having found him here. He rather liked Vivian’s interpretation of the current scenario and briefly wondered if Ruth would consider an invitation to come back up here with him later. He looked over at her and saw that the sleepy expression in her eyes had been replaced by barely suppressed fury. Maybe now wouldn’t be a good time to suggest such a rendezvous.
“I didn’t come with him to the attic, I found him here.” She pointed an accusing finger at Tucker’s chest. “This man is an imposter. He came here, pretending to be a part of the family, just so he could rip us off.”
“Family? What family?” Tucker took a step toward Ruth, ducking to avoid the noggin-hazard beam. When Eldon touched a hand to his waistband, Tucker figured he’d better start talking. Fast. “Look, I can explain everything.”
“Great,” said Ruth. “Then you can begin by explaining exactly where you fit into the Babcock family reunion.”
“I don’t know who the Babcocks are, or anything about their family reunion. I just came here for some peace and quiet.”
“Ha!” Ruth whirled to face the others. “See, I told you he wasn’t our cousin.”
“You’re right,” said Vivian. “If he knew anything at all about our family, he wouldn’t have come here for peace and quiet.”
Tucker scratched his head and took a seat on the old trunk. “You folks are all family?” At their affirmative nods, he asked, “Then what are you doing here at a bed-and-breakfast inn?”
The fiercely determined expression on Ruth’s face dissolved into confusion. “This place hasn’t been a bed-and-breakfast inn for almost eight years.”
“But the Newlands, they sold it…”
“Right,” said Ruth, “and when the inn went broke three years later, Aunt Shirley bought it. We’ve been having our Christmas reunions here ever since.”
“You mean you’re not our cousin after all?” Vivian asked. Ruth could have sworn she saw an interested gleam in her sister’s eyes.
Tucker shook his head. Now that Chris Newland and his parents were gone… “I don’t have any family.”
“And you’re spending Christmas alone?” Ruth asked, temporarily forgetting about his being a potential thief as she imagined him spending the holiday by himself.
“That was the plan.” He rose from his perch on the trunk. “I’m really sorry about crashing your reunion. I’ll go gather my things and get out of your way.”
Aunt Shirley hollered up into the attic. “Where will you go? The motels around here must be full.”
He leaned forward to peer down at the speaker. “Yes, ma’am, they are. I’ll just go back to my apartment in the city.”
“And who would you spend Christmas with?” Ruth asked.
Tucker shrugged. “I’ll probably just go to work at the office. It’s amazing how much you can get done when no one else is around.”
“You’re not going to spend Christmas alone.” Aunt Shirley’s words were an order. “You’re going to stay right here and celebrate the season with us.”
“That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but I really don’t belong here.”
Ruth rubbed her arms to ward off the chill as she forced herself to remember that this stranger was an unwanted intruder. “You’re right about that. And you still haven’t explained why you were snooping through Aunt Shirley’s attic.”
“We’re letting all the heat from the house up here,” he said. “Why don’t we go downstairs, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”
As the family members moved down the stairs, Ruth said to Eldon, “I think you should frisk him before he leaves this attic. There’s no telling what he may have found before I caught him.”
Tucker couldn’t blame her for feeling this way. He’d be suspicious, too, if some stranger showed up on his doorstep and rummaged through his belongings.
“I ain’t friskin’ Cousin Tucker!”
Downstairs in the parlor, ten pairs of eyes studied the stranger who sat in their midst. They had just finished telling him about their initial assumption that he was a long-lost cousin. Now they were waiting for his explanation.
They were nice people. He doubted he’d be as understanding if someone had infiltrated his home. Ruth’s reaction was closer to what his own would be, except that she didn’t have the strength to pick him up and literally throw him out of the house. Instead, she sat there throwing daggers with her eyes. She was skeptical, and he didn’t blame her. He plucked a strand of tinsel off the tree and toyed with it as he collected his thoughts.
“I started coming to Willow Glen Plantation when I was ten,” he began. In the next few minutes, he explained how he’d come to consider the Newlands his family and this big old house his own. He’d thought that by returning here he could relive some happy memories.
Ruth still wasn’t convinced. The others were hanging on his every word, but she’d learned not to take everything at face value. For instance, his claim of being a high-ranking corporate executive clashed sharply with the leather- and jeans-clad interloper who had barged uninvited into their home. What she couldn’t understand was why the rest of her family couldn’t see what she saw. And why hadn’t they learned from Aunt Shirley’s earlier bad experiences? “What about the attic?”
“I’m getting to that.”
That piece of tinsel was getting wound around his fingers, weaving and curving in just the way she suspected the speaker was winding her own trusting family around those same fingers.
“Chris Newland was my best friend,” he said. “He was like a brother to me. The year we turned eleven, we decided to make it official by becoming blood brothers. We signed a pact, put it in an envelope and sealed it with our blood.” He turned to Ruth. “That’s what I was looking for in the attic. We hid it under a loose board.”
He seemed shaken. For a moment, Ruth’s heart went out to him. But then she remembered that scam artists could be very convincing.
“So why, after all these years, did you finally decide to come looking for the envelope?”
“Ease up on the boy,” said Aunt Shirley. “Can’t you see he’s upset?”
And couldn’t they see she was only trying to be prudent? Couldn’t they see that someone needed to look out for the best interests of the family?
“That’s okay,” said Tucker. Although his words were directed to Aunt Shirley, his gaze met Ruth’s and held it. “If I were in her shoes, I’d be asking the same questions.” Then, to Ruth, he said, “I didn’t come here looking for the envelope. As I said before, I came for some peace and quiet.”
He sighed deeply before continuing.
“Chris and his parents were killed in a traffic accident last Christmas. Seeing this big old house again brought back lots of memories, one of them being the pact Chris and I signed.”
Aunt Shirley stood, signaling an end to the interrogation. “If you want peace and quiet, honey, then that’s exactly what you’ll get. You go on back up to your room. I’ll give everybody strict orders not to disturb you. If you don’t feel like coming downstairs for meals, just let me know and I’ll bring ’em up to you.”
“Aunt Shirley!” Ruth couldn’t believe her ears. “You can’t let a complete stranger live in our house. You don’t even know if he’s telling the truth. He could have a criminal record or…or mental problems.” Realizing, after the words were out, how they must have sounded, she said to Tucker, “No offense, but we’ve been burned before.”
Oren took the sting out of her words by adding cheerfully, “You’ll know he has mental problems if he chooses to stay in this house.”
Tucker grinned. The bickering, the teasing, the noise and commotion…it all reminded him of the happy times he had spent with the Newlands in this house.
“I can’t send him back to the city to work through the holidays,” Aunt Shirley insisted. “Everybody’s got to be somewhere at Christmas…he may as well be here. Besides, we have plenty of room.”
“Yeah, Ruth,” said Vivian. “Don’t be such a wet blanket.”
Judging from the look Ruth threw her sister, he doubted Vivian’s words helped his case. Not that it mattered. No matter how enticing Aunt Shirley’s offer might sound, he couldn’t accept. It wouldn’t be right.
On the other hand, his only other option—working through the holidays—was less appealing than remaining here. At home, he’d be miserable. He’d be miserable no matter where he was, but at least this was a change of scenery. And the best part of the scenery was the lovely young woman who was watching him as if he might steal the silverware.