The room was littered with scraps of wrapping paper and snips of gold and red ribbon. More ribbon twirled slowly as it dangled from the low ceiling where several of the girls had taken advantage of the holiday and taped yards and yards of the stuff throughout the room. The door to the game room, and every other door in the building, was covered in cheerful wrapping paper: reindeer in little red sweaters with presents on their backs, snow-covered Christmas trees, nutcrackers, and long, festive trains. A wooden ornament hung over the wrapping on Cassie’s door depicting baby Jesus in a manger. Christmas music played loudly—and being December 1, quite proudly—over the speakers.
Every possible chair in the place was in use.
“We’re going to need more shoeboxes over here, Keely.” Cassie spoke as she hurriedly opened another bulk box of donated deodorants and set them beside one of the girls’ chairs.
This was the biggest event of the season for the girls, and today was the culmination of all their hard work. It had been months since Girls Leadership Club, a subset of Girls Haven, had made the unanimous goal to collect supplies and assemble Christmas shoeboxes for that year. And they had worked tirelessly. Several Mondays Cassie had chauffeured them throughout town, letting them take the wheel as they charged like the businesswomen they were destined to become into stores and organizations, giving their well-prepared speeches (and poster-board diagrams). And what an incredible turnout. United, they had managed to gather enough supplies for a whopping total of 346 boxes to send to those in less fortunate circumstances overseas.
The pride in Cassie’s eyes was so thick she practically needed glasses.
“Van’s full. Where should I put these?” Star stood behind Cassie, an armful of colorfully wrapped boxes stacked to her chin.
“Just start making a pile by the door. This is going to take multiple trips.”
“I’m running out of soap,” one of the girls called out from her station. The girl dropped a bar of soap into a box and pushed it in front of Bailey’s area.
Like little elves in a Ford factory, they had two extremely efficient assembly lines going. Four girls wrapped the boxes as quickly as their Scotch Tape fingers would allow, two girls ran completed stacks of boxes to the van, and the rest dropped their designated items into the boxes before pushing them along the line: a toothbrush, comb, deodorant, toy, coloring book, pencils, stickers, woodwind recorder (their pride point, for which the girls had received over four hundred donations), a Girls Haven shirt, underwear, and a sturdy three-pack of socks.
Cassie moved down the hall to her office, where cardboard boxes took up nearly every square inch of floor space. She squeezed inside and began rummaging for the soap. As she did, her eyes trailed over the blooms on her bouquet, and for the zillionth time what should have been a feeling of pleasure at seeing the festive display was overcome by a deep sense of regret.
Why on earth had she not given that guy a chance?
Sure, Cassie had never been good at spontaneous things. Despite what her currently cluttered office might say, her personality leaned on the side of precision and organization, and with those qualities naturally came a resistance to such messy and potentially chaotic things as meet-a-guy-on-a-sidewalk-at-night dates. Too much could have gone wrong. In fact, too much that day had already gone wrong.
Rachel, one of the DCS staff, had come by unannounced that afternoon, leading her to scramble for replacement staff so she could take the private meeting in her office. She was familiar with the questions, but discovering that Cam had been moved with her mother to a women and children’s shelter for protection was shocking and heart wearying. Cam—cheetah-print-wearing, sassy Cam—had been tagging along with Star at Girls Haven for over a year and never said a word about the abuse she’d been facing, sexually or physically. It was Cassie’s job to protect and empower these girls, and yet for all the training and all the careful watching, she hadn’t had a clue. She ached over that fact.
So, there Cassie had stood outside, waiting on Bree to pick her up, holding it together until she could slide inside the car with her friend and share every emotion—including the guilt—that simmered. She’d known Cam was resistant to getting too close at the Haven. Why hadn’t Cassie taken her resistance as a silent cry for help? Why had she let the busyness of the business—the programs, the reports, even the Christmas-box program—occupy more attention? And if she was really honest with herself, why had she gone with the flow and focused her attention on the other girls, like Star, like Bailey, who wanted to be loved? The ones who were easy to love. The ones who rewarded Cassie’s time and attention with responses of affection. But Cam? If she had only pushed harder past her exterior walls, spent more time making Cam a priority . . .
Her nondate couldn’t have stepped out of his truck, holding a bouquet of flowers, at a worse moment.
Her mood had lifted with the sun the following morning, enough that she brought the bouquet to work to be a cheerful companion. And through eleven long days, the relentless, apparently immortal, bouquet had kept its bloom. Eleven long days remembering the conversation with Jett Bentley, his purposeful stride, his nervous smile. Eleven long days kicking herself for not giving him a shot.
She’d logged back onto her hijacked account and read his message, thoroughly this time, feeling that weasel of regret stir in her stomach the deeper into his message she got. He mentioned he’d gone to school with her, and sure enough, when she’d pulled out her old yearbook, there he was. The contrast between her senior picture and his freshman one was seismic in proportion. Her in pearls, cap, and gown, her confident seventeen-year-old smile ready to take on the world. Him a tall, skinny boy with a long, thin neck and bowl-cut hair, bearing small resemblance to the man he had grown into. He awkwardly held a basketball on his hip on the JV basketball page. And that’s when his face had flashed across her memory—a face in the stands out of the corner of her eye as she dribbled the ball down the court, a face as she squeezed through the halls on the way to class. To some degree, she really believed she could remember him. But then, at one point in her life she had also convinced herself she could fly.
Even so, his wobbly, freshman smile—just six pages from her own—soothed her and set him apart from the rest.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to message him again. After what both she and Bree had put him through, she knew the last message he’d ever want to receive was from her.
Lesson learned. If she wrote a how-to manual for dating, this would be a bullet point: be prepared in season and out of season to get into cars with good-looking strangers so long as they provide flowers. And you have pepper spray.
It would be a bestseller.
“Keely says she’s out of toothbrushes.” Star spoke to Cassie from the hall, her arms loaded with yet another stack of boxes. “I’m going to start putting these by the bathroom.”
“No, don’t do that,” Cassie replied. She’d forever rue the day she told the team they didn’t need to come in to work for this. “Here, can you take these back to Finn and find the toothbrushes? I’m going to run a load over to the church.”
As Cassie handed Star a box of soap, she heard a sound mingling with, and soon overpowering, the voracious chatter, heavy wrapping, and Christmas jingles floating from the game room. The sirens grew louder, and Cassie starting striding down the hall. Star left her box and followed behind. Cassie picked up speed when red flashes blinked through the windows, the roaring of sirens hitting peak volume.
She pushed open the double doors.
What in the world?
“Ho-ho-ho!” Santa bellowed as he wiggled his large body out of the fire truck. Evidently Santa was a fireman as well, because peeking from under the large red coat and golden buttons were firefighter suspenders. He grabbed his helmet, evidently thought better of it, then reached for the Santa hat and stuffed it on his head before grabbing a large black trash bag from the back door. Classy.
With jolly confidence he walked down the sidewalk with a sort of half stride, half Irish jig, straight to Cassie as a group of girls grew behind her. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he drew out a crumpled piece of paper and stretched it out as though about to read an imperial speech. He began talking, but the sirens overpowered his words.
Cassie furrowed her brows. Several of the girls behind her covered their ears.
Santa stopped and flapped his hand at the truck. The sirens stopped.
“As I was saying,” he began again, “Meeeeeeerrrrrryyyy Christmas to the lovely ladies of Girls Haven! Ho-ho-ho!” The bell on the top of his head jingled as he used his free hand to grab his belly. When the bell fell over his face, he stopped and adjusted it. “A little elf told me about all of the work you have been doing for little girls and little boys around the world. And on a Saturday too! You work harder than we do!” He grabbed at his belly again. “Ho-ho-ho!”
A chuckle escaped from a couple of girls, and Cassie turned, halfway in disbelief, to see several of them smiling.
Normally, a guy like this wouldn’t last ten seconds with this crowd.
But then, normally, people didn’t roll in wearing Santa suits in fire trucks.
“And we,” Santa continued loudly, “at the North Pole decided to take a trip down to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on our official fire engine. A few of my men here have volunteered to help you girls out with the delivery. That is if your fearless leader approves?”
Cassie looked closer at the dear, old Santa before them, trying to peer beyond the white beard and thick hat to the face underneath. That voice . . . Those eyes . . . She vaguely recalled that same voice in the aquarium, those same sunny, clueless brown eyes. Sunny. Number 24. Not the worst guy she’d been on a date with. Not the best of the bad lot, either.
If he recognized her, he didn’t show it. Which meant he didn’t remember her. Based on her aquarium experience, she didn’t think he had the intellectual capabilities not to show it.
Cassie saw the girls’ eyes drift to her. “Delivery. Sure. That’d be . . . great.”
“Excellent.” Sunny-turned-Santa clapped his oversized black gloves. “Liberty Church is what my little elf tells me?”
Cassie’s surprise grew even more as she nodded. Who had put the fire department up to this? She hadn’t e-mailed Jim at the paper, hadn’t requested crews come in to see how successful the Leadership Club had been. But the girls had gone into just about every organization in town over the past two months, and there was no denying about half of the people in this mega city of 4,097 had heard of what was going on. Still, to know about helping with delivery? To know about such details . . .
“We’ll get right to it, then.” He fumbled with the knot on the trash bag. After a minute of struggling and saying a few words under his breath, he finally threw his gloves on the ground. “But first,” he continued, ripping the bag open and standing ceremoniously again, “do you know what I do every Christmas season before even thinking about putting any toys into my sleigh? I give each of my hardworking elves a very special present. And I’d venture to say that you girls have been very elfish lately. So—” He went back to the crumbled paper. “—would Rayne please step forward?”
Rayne’s eyes widened as she heard her name and stepped timidly out from the cluster.
Cassie crossed her arms, cracking a grin as she watched the crazy, gleeful man hand out presents to each of the twenty-two girls. Twenty-two presents. Her cheeks began to burn, both from the frigid air and the continuous smile, as she watched the girls rip open their gifts.
Whoever had been in charge had nailed it. Each and every one of them received a coffeeshop gift card. Cheap but shimmering lip balm smelling of cotton candy. Fuzzy socks. As Cassie watched Star pull a silver frame out of her bag, Santa spoke up, and Cassie realized he had his phone uplifted.
“Now, if you don’t mind, squeeze together for a photo, and my elf will make sure you each get a copy for your pretty frames.”
The girls only too eagerly agreed, several having already popped on the lip balm for shining smiles. And after some pleading, Santa himself jumped in the photo.
Three of Santa’s firemen helpers followed the starry-eyed girls inside, and as Cassie took up the rear, she felt a glove on her shoulder.
“Of course, Santa wouldn’t forget you.”
He winked, and left Cassie with a simple white envelope, following the group inside.
Cassie slit it open. She unfolded the papers, revealing the document stapled together. The header read: Complete Background Check: Timothy Jett Bentley.