Christmas Getaway (15 page)

 

T
HERE WERE COPS
everywhere, spreading out. People running. Someone screaming.

But the kids were okay. They'd been standing well to the side of the porch when Tommy had burst out, brandishing his gun. It was only Letitia and the bride who'd been in the line of fire. They were both okay. The bride was in the rose garden, where he'd shoved her. Letitia was crumpled on the tasteful imitation grass, hyperventilating.

Joe didn't have time for Letitia.

The kids were terrified. Their grandmother was trying to
comfort Letitia, leaving the kids alone. Their grandfather hadn't appeared out of the chapel yet. Great. He strode quickly across the pavers to reach them, knelt down and gathered them all against him. The three kids hugged as close as they could get, white-faced and trembling.

He made a decision right there.

“Right,” he said, “this is a mess, but it's a mess that's nothing to do with us. Let's go back to your grandparents' house, grab any clothes you need and go straight to the airport. Your grandmother's got your passports. We'll tell her what's going on and we're leaving.”

“But Molly…” Charlie whispered. “What's happening to Molly?”

The bride. He glanced back at Molly, who was carefully extricating herself from roses. There were three cops surrounding her. One of her bridesmaids had made a weak effort to help her and then decided to go into hysterics instead. People were barking questions at Molly already.

She looked beautiful, he thought suddenly. Not as in bride beautiful. Her dress was a ghastly confection of too many hoops, too much lace. But underneath it…her glossy, chestnut curls had escaped the carefully coiffed knot and were liberally sprinkled with rose petals and the odd twig or six. Her veil was ripped and askew. The sleeve of her dress was torn almost from the wrist to the shoulder.

There was a trace of blood on her cheek. While he watched she swiped it away with impatience. It smeared further.

She looked stunned. Lost. Bewildered. Angry, too, he thought with approval.

And, yes. Beautiful.

Maybe if he hadn't had the kids, he would have gone to her. Maybe he would have even told her about Erica; told her
that marriages with people like Vincent and Connor didn't work. That any sort of marriage didn't work, come to think of it. That whatever had happened to stop her marriage, it was for the best.

But he couldn't do what he wanted right now. The kids were hugging him tight.

Freckled, tousled-haired redheads, they all took after their mother. They looked like his baby sister, he thought as he hugged them back. Each one of them was a white-faced shadow of Erica.

They needed him.

“You're taking us away?” five-year-old Lily whispered, and he nodded.

“Yep. Right now.” He glanced back one more time at Molly, and thought he'd remember her. He'd remember this day.

But there was nothing more he could do here. There was nothing he could do for Molly.

He had his own responsibilities. A villain for a bridegroom seemed minor in comparison.

Kids. Care. Christmas.

How could he cope?

“Where will we go?” Charlie asked, voice quavering.

“To Australia. Maybe to my place.”

That wasn't going to work, he conceded, as he ushered the kids across the lawn to his hire car. His apartment in Sydney wouldn't fit them all. If he left now, he'd miss Ellie's wedding in Boston and he'd promised her he'd attend. But there was no time to think of anything but these needy kids. Ellie would understand.

“We could go to our holiday house in Queensland,” Charlie said, without much hope.

“To your parents' house?” Joe knew the house. It was a
monument to wealth, a tropical oasis set on ten acres of secluded beachfront. Erica and Vincent used it maybe once or twice a year.

The house represented all Joe hated about Vincent. Vincent was involved in seedy deals up to his neck. The police were saying there were bullet holes in his crashed car. There'd been a chase. Erica was dead because…

It didn't matter why she was dead, he told himself harshly. The facts were she was dead, and Joe had two nieces and one nephew who wanted to spend Christmas with him.

Before they went into foster homes?

That didn't bear thinking of. He and Erica had gone down that route and…

And the alternative was responsibility. His responsibility.

Christmas.

Maybe Charlie's thought about his parents' beach house was a good one. Erica had given him a key. “Use it all you want,” she'd said, but he never had.

It didn't matter. The decision as to where to stay could be made on the flight home.

He stared at the cops surrounding them. There'd be massive media attention. An appeal to the Australian embassy would surely get a reaction now. He'd find someone who could expedite getting them through customs and immigration.

He'd do it somehow.

Next stop, Australia.

 

S
OME WEDDING
…

A shoot-out in the Southfork Texas Wedding Chapel. Every newsman in the country was headed their way. The cameramen hired for the wedding were already phoning media outlets negotiating deals.

Letitia had been shepherded away, close to collapse. Three
of the groomsmen had been led away in handcuffs. A couple more groomsmen had escaped. They were saying Tommy had been shooting at Jean—her very own maid of honor. Luckily he'd missed, but Molly had lost Sam and Jean in the chaos.

Some leather-jacketed piece of beefcake had tossed her into the rosebushes.

For twenty minutes it had been chaos.

Now it was over and fear had given way to confusion. Sam had just phoned in—via the police—to say he had Jean safe. That practically blew her away. The police were saying they thought Jean had been targeted. Some of these men were trying to kill her and no one knew why.

“But the police are working on it,” Sam said. “Just accept that it's nasty and don't ask any more questions than you have to. And don't try to contact Connor.”

Contacting Connor was the last thing she wanted to do right now. At least no one was dead.

The only death, she thought numbly, was her pride. It seemed Connor was a criminal. Big-league. One of the groomsmen had said enough to her as he'd been hauled away to make her feel sick.

She sank onto the portico steps, her lace hoops forcing her skirts to billow around her, and she let her shoulders slump in despair.

“I should never, ever have agreed to this,” she muttered to the world in general. “I can't believe I was so stupid. But for Connor to maybe even be a murderer…”

She glanced out at the chaos surrounding her. A guy was ushering the ring bearer and flower girls into a car out in the parking lot, talking over his shoulder to Letitia's sister, the children's grandmother. He was the one who'd shoved her into
the rosebushes. A big guy, with burned-red hair. He was hugging little Zoe before he put her in the car, and the sight of that small gesture of care made her feel even more forlorn.

Who was he? Maybe he'd saved her life, she thought numbly. She didn't even know his name.

It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

“The cops are saying there's some diamond heist the boys are involved in.” A plump-faced woman in turquoise—a distant cousin of Connor's—had her arm around Molly's shoulders and was clearly intent on comforting her. Molly wanted her gone, but then someone else would come and support the devastated bride. Sam was off somewhere saving Jean. Supporting Jean. But
she
needed support. It might as well be this woman as anyone, she conceded, and didn't pull away.

“The cops are saying there's millions at stake,” the woman said, awed. “I heard one of them talking on his phone to some guy who took off with the maid of honor.”

“That would be Sam,” Molly said miserably. “My brother.”

“Oh.” The woman gave her a nervous glance as if she was expecting hysterics. But she wasn't going to pause in a good story for anything less. “The officer I heard was saying Connor framed some cop called Fitzpatrick for a murder. But he proved himself innocent, which leaves Connor and Tommy in the frame.” She shivered with ghoulish gusto. “It's awful. Just awful.”

“But…then why did he want to marry me?” Molly wailed, and the woman shrugged.

“I guess he loves you, honey.”

“Like hell he does,” Molly said through gritted teeth. “I have no idea what he's playing at but he's skipped out on our wedding.
Our wedding.
And we're supposed to be going to Australia for our honeymoon.” That one fact suddenly stood
out like a beacon, emerging from the horror as a huge regret. It was the one thought she'd held on to for these last frantic weeks. As soon as this wedding was over she was headed for a glorious month in the sun.

“I guess you still can,” the woman said, searching desperately for something comforting to say.

“Oh, right. We're booked into the Paradise Island Honeymoon Resort on the Great Barrier Reef. Can you imagine me going there now? Having a honeymoon all by myself? And it's Christmas.” She was trying hard not to indulge in a little hysterics herself but she was about as close to hysterics as she'd ever been in her life. Molly Broadbent, corporate lawyer, was way out of control.

“It's not Christmas for ten days,” the woman said, like that made it okay.

“I don't know what to do.”

“You could still go to Australia.” The woman took Molly's hand and patted it. “Maybe…maybe it might even be sensible to get away for a while.”

“I'm not going to any honeymoon resort.”

“I know a house you can use.”

“Sorry?”

“It belongs to friends of the family,” the woman said. “You know Connor's cousin and his wife were killed in a car crash six weeks ago? It was a terrible tragedy. It's left their little family orphaned. They had this house in Australia.”

“I know the kids. They were supposed to be my attendants. They've got nothing to do with this.” This was getting crazier and crazier. She should just pick up her hoops and hightail it out of here—only one of the escaping groomsmen had taken her Rolls-Royce. The bottom-feeding lowlife.
How was she going to escape?

“But the kids don't need the house,” the woman said, warming to her theme. “They're staying with their grandma here in Dallas. The house was only a holiday home anyway and it's vacant. My son…” She looked doubtfully at a retreating cop car. “My son was intending to take a trip out there to check it was okay. He has instructions to put it on the market, so I have the key.”

Molly's thoughts began to clear. Of course she knew the kids were in Dallas. They'd been staying with Letitia's sister since the accident. Having them in the bridal party was supposed to help cheer them up. Poor little things. “But your son…”

“He might have to stick around here for a while,” the woman said uneasily. “Some of these men are his friends. But this house…it's beautiful. I went there once. It's surrounded by ten acres of tropical rain forest right on the beach. It has every luxury you might want. And more than that, it's completely isolated. You'll be doing us a favor checking that it's okay, and it's just the place for a bride to go and lick… For a woman to think about things. You could let things clear up here before you return.”

Molly stared at her. “You think I should run away.”

“That's exactly what I mean,” the woman said bluntly. “If I was in your shoes, that's what I'd do.”

Go to Australia?

Molly looked around her. Wedding guests had scattered everywhere. There were cars arriving with media logos emblazoned on the side. A couple of cameramen were heading her way.

If she didn't leave…

She thought about going calmly back into the Boston office on Monday. Facing Christmas alone. Coping with sympathy and voyeuristic gossip. Trying to figure out what the hell Connor was playing at.

“Where did you say this house is?” she asked.

“Just south of Cairns in Northern Australia,” her supporter told her. “You don't have to tell anyone where you're going. You can just go.”

“Then what am I waiting for?” Molly snapped and rose, her hoops rising with her. “Australia can hardly be worse than this.”

 

I
T WAS A LONG WAY
to Australia. There was too much thinking time.

How the hell was he going to organize Christmas?

Joe stared out the plane window, trying to reassure himself for the thousandth time. Yes, he would go to the beach house. The house was over-the-top opulent but it was a place the kids knew. There was a beach and a swimming pool. Maybe they'd be self-sufficient. Maybe he could sit in the sun and read a book while they built sand castles.

They'd order in a tree and a Christmas ham and a bulk order of confectionary. That ought to cover it. How hard was it to look after three kids? People did it all the time.

“Uncle Joe, Zoe needs to go to the bathroom,” Charlie said from the opposite seat.

“Right.” Right? “Lily, can you go with her?”

“No,” Lily said uncompromisingly. “I don't feel very well. Uncle Joe, I think I'm going to be sick.”

People looked after three kids all the time?

Yeah, right.

I
T TOOK THREE DAYS
before investigators let her leave the country, and by the time they did Molly was feeling as bad as she'd ever felt in her life.

Her fiancé was on the take. More than that. The allegations were that Connor and a couple of fellow officers had discovered a plan to steal a consignment of diamonds from the mines in South Africa. It was a small pouch of uncut stones, bound for the best cutters in America. It was worth millions.

They'd let the heist go ahead. Then there'd been a shoot-out—the guy who'd stolen the stones was dead and his accomplice was missing with the goods.

Only now the cops were saying there'd been no accomplice. They were saying that Connor, his cousin Vincent, his workmate Tommy and a couple of others had cooked the scheme up between them. The setup was simple. As police attempting to thwart a robbery they'd killed the thief, pinned the missing diamonds onto a nonexistent accomplice and taken the stones for themselves.

Only their plan had started unraveling. Vincent was supposed to be in charge of the stones. Whether he was or he wasn't, all Molly knew was that Vincent and his wife, Erica, had been run off the road and killed six weeks ago. The homicide operation to find their killer had uncovered the plot within
the police force. Tommy and Connor had swung blame onto another cop—a guy called Fitzpatrick—and that had deflected the search for a while. But too many people were in the know now. Fitzpatrick had been cleared, and the tight-knit gang of corruption was beginning to turn on each other.

On the night of the rehearsal Jean overheard threats being made against Vincent's children—seemingly the result of vindictive fury that Vincent had taken the stones. Jean hadn't told anyone at the time—she'd thought she must have been mistaken. Who could believe such things of her best friend's bridegroom? But Connor had noticed her listening. It must have been the catalyst for the drama the next day.

Humiliation
was too mild a word for it.
Gutted
was a better description, but that didn't work, either. Now that both Connor and Tommy, his accomplice, were on the run, the authorities had decided the kids would be safe. Killing the kids at this point, when their own necks were at risk, would be crazy. Jean was in witness protection. Sam was with her.

Molly was on her own.

Christmas. Ha!

Four days after the wedding she sat on a plane heading for Australia and she felt smaller and smaller and smaller. Australia wasn't far enough away. Nowhere was far enough away.

“Are you okay, dear?” The woman sitting next to her had been watching her with concern for hours. “You seem…upset.”

“Upset?” She summoned a weary smile. “Why should I be upset? I'm going to the holiday of a lifetime.”

“That's nice, dear. Whereabouts?”

“It's a private house.” That was a problem, too. The house had belonged to Vincent, and just the knowledge that Vincent was Connor's cousin had her unwilling to go anywhere near
it. However, the weeks over Christmas were Australia's busiest period. Apart from the honeymoon resort, there was nowhere else to go.

Sun, solitude and peace to lick her wounds. That's all she cared about.

“It's on the beach in Queensland,” she said, trying her hardest to sound perky. “It sounds fabulous. I'm going to have a ball.”

“You do that, dear,” the woman said. “If you don't mind me saying so, you look like you need it.”

 

A
LL
I
WANT FOR
Christmas is help. All I want for Christmas is a smile.

These words became a mantra, said over and over in his head a hundred times a day.

These kids were traumatized. Six weeks ago their parents had been killed. Sure, Vincent and Erica hadn't exactly been hands-on parents. In fact, Joe suspected most of the time the kids were left with hired help. They clung together, they helped each other, they didn't look to an adult for comfort when things went wrong.

But their parents' deaths must have shocked them, and moving into their grandparents' sterile mansion had seemed to overwhelm them. The shoot-out at the wedding had rocked their foundations even more.

They now seemed like they didn't have any sense of security at all. They sat in a huddle on Erica's white-on-white settees and watched television hour after hour. They didn't want to do anything else. They looked totally miserable.

“Shall we set up a Christmas tree?” he asked, and they looked at him as if he'd spoken Swahili.

“If you like,” Charlie said at last.

“Did you have a Christmas tree last year?”

“There's a big white one in a box in the attic,” Lily ventured. “Back home.”

“No, the white one was in the hotel in Vegas,” Charlie said. “Don't you remember? Dad made room service take it away on Christmas night because the lights kept flashing and his head hurt. The one in the attic is purple and silver.”

“Would you like a purple-and-silver one?”

“No,” Zoe said. “I don't like purple.”

They didn't like anything. They were polite, quiet and withdrawn.

Maybe he should have got trauma counseling for them before they came out here, he thought. Maybe they were damaged for life.

Hell, how would he know? He knew zip about kids. All he knew was that somehow he ought to make Christmas less than the ball of misery it promised.

He took them to the supermarket. They held hands as if the outside world was dangerous. They agreed to all of his suggestions as to what to put in the trolley.

“Isn't there anything you'd like for Christmas?” he said in desperation.

“We don't want to go back to Grandma's,” Lily whispered, and he thought great, he could grant that wish, but he had to do better.

Patience. It was all he could think of. Time heals all wounds. It was a dumb platitude but when all else failed, what else was a guy to fall back on?

At least he was filling in time in style. The house was just plain fabulous. There was a staff but they were silent, ghost-like figures trained to arrive at dawn, do their work in stealth and then leave again. By the time he and the kids woke, the
place felt totally isolated. The vast kitchen-living room opened right up to an enormous lagoon-style swimming pool. The water in the pool was raised to the brim, slopping over the edge. Backdrop to the pool was the sea, so gazing out the living-room windows they saw lagoon melting into the turquoise waters of the ocean beyond.

It was better than great. He watched the sea. Sailboards. Kayakers. Swimmers.

He took the kids there and they were miserable.

Home to the television. Reruns of the Road Runner.

He was going out of his mind.

He checked his watch for the tenth time since lunch. It was four o'clock. Another hour before he could reasonably be expected to cook up the macaroni and cheese that seemed to be the only thing the kids would eat. Another two hours before he could put them to bed and at least stop watching cartoons….

There was a resounding thump from the lower level. From the entrance hall.

“Scumbag suitcase. Bust for all I care. Stupid designer luggage. Take that!”

Another thump.

He looked at the kids. The kids looked at him.

“Is it a burglar?” Lily whispered, and Zoe crept closer to her sister.

“I don't think burglars bring designer suitcases,” Joe said cautiously. “I'll check.”

“Take a gun,” Charlie advised, and he stared at his nephew in astonishment. It was a female voice swearing at a suitcase. What sort of background did these kids come from, where visitors were met with guns.

“We don't have many guns in Australia,” he said in what
he hoped was a voice of authority. “They're against the law and I don't have one. But I'll check.”

There was no need. Whoever it was was stumping up the stairs, swearing at each step.

“Dumb taxi drivers. Dumb luggage. Dumb stupid fiancés.”

She reached the top of the step and stopped dead.

Molly.

 

H
E WAS HERE
. The guy who'd shoved her into the roses. She'd pick out that red hair anywhere. And those eyes. He was wearing faded jeans and an old T-shirt, but it was the same guy.

She glanced behind him. Sitting on the settee like stuffed toys were three kids.

“Charlie,” she said faintly. “Lily. Zoe.”

“Molly!” Zoe cried, and abandoned the settee and raced across the room. She grabbed Molly around the knees and held with such ferocity that Molly staggered backward and had to catch the balustrade or she would have toppled down the stairs.

“Hey.” She stooped and hugged the little girl, her mind racing. What the…

These were Vincent's kids. Connor's cousin's kids.

Of course. This was Vincent's house.

“You're not supposed to be here,” she managed to say. “They said your uncle was looking after you.”

“He is,” Zoe said, burying her face in Molly's shoulder. “Uncle Joe's here. He's trying to look after us.”

Molly's gaze flew to Joe. He was staring at her like he was seeing a ghost.

“The bride,” he said.

“Yep, this is my honeymoon,” she ventured, trying to take it all in. She stood up again but Zoe clung to her legs and didn't let go. “What are you doing here?”

“This is the kids' house.”

“I was told it'd be empty.”

“It's not.”

“Right.” She couldn't think of where to go from here.

“Are you here for Christmas?” Zoe asked her, and she shook her head.

“Nope.” Definitely not. Not now.

The faces of the three children drooped.

“It'd be good if you could stay for Christmas,” Lily whispered, and Joe looked at her sharply.

“How do you know the kids?” he asked, and Molly glanced across the room at Charlie and Lily and her heart gave a sudden lurch. She'd spent only a little time with these children, but even in that time…she'd realized just how lost they were.

“They were supposed to be my ring bearer and flower girls,” she said.

“Because they were Connor's relations. Not yours.”

“What's his was supposed to be mine,” she said, striving for lightness. “Connor and Vincent were friends, as well as cousins. Connor and I have been…together…for three years. So the kids and I have seen each other on family occasions.”

“Connor and Molly had Christmas with us last year,” Lily volunteered. “Molly didn't like our white Christmas tree, either. When the grownups started arguing, she took us for a walk and we looked in all the shop windows and decided what we'd buy if we had all the money in the world.”

Molly swallowed. She'd hated it. They'd been at an opulent hotel in New York. “Let's abandon the family for Christmas,” Connor had said, and even though Molly had known how hurt Letitia would be, she hadn't been able to resist. She had no family of her own apart from Sam, who was off doing his own thing as he always was. The thought of a Christmas in Man
hattan with just the two of them sounded great. Only, of course, Vincent and Erica had been there with their kids. Connor hadn't told her they would be.

He hadn't told her lots of things. The relationship had been all surface, she thought. It had been a convenience. She'd never really bothered peering under the veneer.

Like last Christmas. She'd been surprised when she'd discovered Vincent and Erica were in the same hotel as they were. Her idea of an intimate Christmas dinner had turned into a much bigger occasion, a dozen or more people in the vast hotel dining room. The men had seemed…somehow grim. Talking in undertones. Arguing. Disappearing from the table.

The women were a type—accessory wives. They tittered and gossiped. At the end of the table a pale-faced nanny called Mandy had sat with the kids. Her job was to keep the children silent. Still in her teens, white-faced and lonely, she seemed almost to be one of the kids herself. She was surely just as miserable.

Finally Molly could bear it no longer. She'd excused herself, but the kids and Mandy had looked at her with such desperation as she left the table that she'd had little choice.

“We'll walk off some of our turkey,” she'd said, but no one had listened. She'd taken the kids and Mandy away, and Erica hadn't so much as asked where they were going.

“We had fun,” Lily remembered, in a tight little voice that said she hoped desperately it was true. “Only then Dad sacked Mandy and then…and then…”

Then their parents had died. “But this is still Christmas,” Molly said gently. “You must be looking forward to it. Your cousin Betty had the key to this house and she told me it'd be empty. She said it'd be good if I could check up on it. But now you guys are here… I'll leave you to it.”

“Where will you go?” Joe asked. He'd been watching her as if she were a genie who had suddenly appeared from a bottle and he didn't quite believe she was real.

“To a hotel,” she said, and backed away from that look. The last thing she needed was a needy male.

“You can stay if you like.”

“I don't like,” she said flatly, and then winced at the look on three kids' faces. She regrouped. “Sorry, guys, but I'm feeling a bit sad at the moment. Because of what happened at my wedding.”

“What happened to Connor?” Charlie asked.

“I don't know,” Molly said. “The police are still looking for him. They think he might have done something bad.” How to tell kids that not only was he suspected of stealing the diamonds, but he was also implicated in three murders—two of which were these kids' parents.

“He did a bad thing not marrying you,” Lily said stoutly, and Zoe hugged Molly's legs tighter as if it was astounding that anyone could be so stupid.

Strangely it helped. She hadn't wept—not for the entire time since her abandoned wedding—but now she found herself suddenly blinking away tears.