Chapter Three

My mother, loving flower child that she was, didn’t understand the depths of Susan’s depravity. Hell, the Titanic hadn’t sunk as deep as that bitch. She didn’t just kick ass and take names. Oh no, Susan always made sure to shoot the wounded, too.

Five minutes after I hung up with my love-blinded mom, I pulled into Aunt Zoe’s driveway. Inside, I grabbed the garbage bag full of Santa’s gifts for the kids and set it by the front door. Another smaller bag with other gifts, including Natalie’s, was already in the back seat of my SUV.

I took the stairs two at a time, swinging by my bedroom to change into jeans and a sweater before heading to my daughter’s room. I filled one bowl with cat food and two with water for Bogart, Addy’s vegetarian cat, who preferred to hide in her closet when not gifting me with living critters in my bed. A check on Duke the gerbil found him working out on his wheel with plenty of pellets and hay in his cage along with a full water bottle. I stood for a moment, watching him make the wheel spin. I should take a lesson from the rodent after all of the Christmas goodies I’d been gorging on lately. Shaking out of my daze, I grabbed Twister and Buck the unicorn before I headed downstairs.

A few minutes later, down in the basement, Elvis the chicken clucked at me from her roost inside her cage. I added a bit more feed to her bowl and wished her a Merry Christmas, leaving the basement light on so she didn’t have to spend the holiday in the dark.

That dang chicken was starting to make me soft.

After turning the thermostat down a few notches, I pulled on my blue wool coat and placed the overnight tote of clothes that I’d packed last night next to the bag of Santa’s gifts. Next came Doc’s gifts from where I’d hidden them in the bottom of Aunt Zoe’s china hutch.

I frowned unseeingly toward the kitchen, worrying about my gifts for Doc. This was the first Christmas with a man in my life other than my father, son, and brother. Choosing the perfect gift had inspired a lot of knuckle chewing, so I’d picked out several possibilities with the hope that I’d hit somewhere close to the bull’s-eye with one of them.

My cell phone rang as I grabbed my stocking hat and gloves from the dining room table.

“Not again, Mom,” I grumbled, fishing my phone from my pocket.

It wasn’t my mom. My heart pitter-pattered. “Bonjour, mon cher,” I purred.

“Ah, Tish, that’s French.” Doc’s deep voice warmed me through the line. “Hurry up and get over here so I can kiss my way up your arm,” he flirted, playing along in our Gomez and Morticia Addams game.

“You miss me already?” I teased.

He and I had the house to ourselves last night since Aunt Zoe and the kids were down in Rapid City. The fooling around had started on the couch after I crawled on his lap, flashed my bare sugarplums at him, and showed him exactly what I wanted for Christmas. We moved to the floor several moans and groans later where I worked my magic heating up his Yule log. The tree lights added a colorful glow to Doc’s skin as I kissed every inch of him, doing my darnedest to spread Christmas joy throughout his land.

“I miss your lips,” he said in a husky voice. “And your sugarplums.”

All of a sudden my wool coat felt like a goose-down parka made to withstand Antarctic winters. I fanned my collar. “Be careful, big boy. If you keep talking dirty to me, you’ll end up on the Naughty list.”

“Me? What about you?”

I faked a haughty scoff. “I’m a good girl.”

He chuckled. “That game you played with me and that red ribbon was very naughty.”

“A peppermint stick is meant to be licked. I was merely following proper etiquette.” I unplugged the Christmas lights in the living room, smiling down at the floor where I’d worked him into a lather while demonstrating exactly how one savored a peppermint stick.

“Your demonstrations of proper etiquette are going to be the death of me, woman.”

“What can I say? I enjoy jingling your bells.” I slipped the straps of my overnight tote over my shoulder. “I’m about to head out the door at Aunt Zoe’s. Do you need anything from here?”

“Just a sexy blonde with killer curves.”

“It’s your lucky day, then. One blonde coming up.”

“Good. Get those sweet lips over here. The snow is really starting to come down.”

I peeked out the window next to the door. The snowflakes were falling with purpose now. “I made sure the tire chains are in the back of my rig.”

“Keep your fingers crossed we don’t need them.”

“I need to swing by Nat’s apartment to drop off her gift, then I’ll be there to grab you.” I snickered. “When I’m done having my wicked way with you, we can hit the road.”

“That’s it, Boots. No more spiked eggnog for you.”

Au contraire, mon cher. I had a feeling I was going to need to keep hitting the hard liquor hourly to get through the next two days without tackling Susan and rubbing gum in her hair. Her history of stealing my boyfriends had me wanting to lock Doc away in a sarcophagus and feed him red and green Jell-O via a straw through a hole in the lid.

“Why isn’t Natalie coming with us?” Doc asked.

“She’s going to hang out with Freesia tomorrow. Nat doesn’t want to leave her alone.”

Freesia was Natalie’s landlady. Her parents had moved to Nevada, leaving Freesia the boarding house, her family’s legacy. But the Galena House had turned into more work than Freesia could handle and afford, so she’d traded free rent in exchange for Natalie’s handywoman help fixing up the place to sell.

“You’d better make your visit brief,” Doc said. “We don’t want to get caught in this storm. The forecast is calling for up to three feet of snow by tomorrow morning in some areas of the hills.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Doubt away, sweetheart, but there’s a Colorado low front that has formed on the eastern slope of the Rockies, and it’s flowing north right into that frigid air blast coming down from Alberta. That’s a guaranteed recipe for major snow.”

I paused with my hand on the doorknob. “Are you moonlighting as a meteorologist in between planning what people should do with their money?”

He chuckled. “Growing up in the Rockies where blizzards hit in the blink of an eye turned me into a bit of a weather geek.”

I opened the door. The snow was falling even faster than moments ago. Crud. There’d be no living with my mother if this truly were a blizzard. “I’ll hurry with Natalie.”

“Harvey’s making cookies for us to take down to your parents,” Doc said as I shut the door behind me.

“What’s he doing home? I thought he was going to his sister’s with Cooper this morning.”

Besides being Detective Cooper’s uncle, Harvey and the Deadwood detective shared a streak of orneriness and a love of guns. Both had turned down my invitation to join us at Aunt Zoe’s Christmas Eve back before our plans had changed thanks to this stupid snowstorm.

“Cooper’s still at work, and Harvey doesn’t want to get stuck at his sister’s due to the blizzard, so he’s staying here. He said something about a movie marathon on the Old West channel.”

Harvey and Cooper were both living at Doc’s place while I tried to sell the former’s ranch and help the latter buy a new house.

“He’s staying home on Christmas?” The idea of Harvey all alone knotted up my heartstrings.

“I invited him to join us, but he says he has a duty to watch Addy’s pets and turned me down.”

Addy’s pets could go a few days on their own—well, maybe not the chicken.

I hefted the bag of Santa’s presents. “I’ll deal with Harvey when I get to your place.”

“Okay. Call me when you’re leaving Natalie’s.”

“Will do. See you soon, Candy Cane.”

Doc groaned at my new pet name for him and hung up.

I loaded the presents and my overnight tote into my Honda and rolled down the street toward Natalie’s place. The side streets were coated in white but not slippery yet.

Natalie was coming down the stairs when I rushed inside the boarding house. Her smile was big—a little too big. Her eyes dipped at the edges, a sad glint in their depths. One strap of her green overalls was unlatched, her red sweater only half-tucked.

“Merry almost Christmas,” she said, sitting down a few steps from the bottom. She patted the step next to her.

“Merry Christmas back at ya.” I dropped next to her, holding out her Christmas gift.

She smelled like a tropical drink, something with pineapple. Her brown hair was damp and hanging loose around her shoulders, curling slightly at the ends. She must be fresh from the shower.

“You okay, Nat?”

“Yeah, sure, why wouldn’t I be?” She sounded cheery enough, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

I had an idea what was haunting her, and it wasn’t any of the boarding house’s ghosts. It was more of a case of who, and he was very much alive and a major pain in the ass for both Natalie and me.

“Cooper didn’t stop by, did he?”

Her cheeks darkened, her gaze still averted. “Of course not. Why would he?”

Uh, maybe because he was one hundred percent nutcrackers over Natalie. Unfortunately for Cooper, Natalie was on sabbatical from men in an effort to rebuild her self-esteem and patch up her heart after multiple attempts to blast both to smithereens.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “Doc said he’s still at work, so I thought he might be doing rounds or something.”

She scowled at me. “Your nose is twitching.”

I covered my tattletale appendage. “It’s itchy.”

“And now your pants are on fire.” She shook her head. “You really need to learn how to lie without twitching like a mouse or Susan the snake is going to swallow you whole.”

Natalie knew all about my sister’s forked tongue. She’d grown up with me, stepping in to fight my battles for me when I was too worn down to stand on my own.

She shook the present I’d given her. “It’s heavy. Don’t tell me you bought me another Ming vase?”

“Nothing but the best for you, girlfriend.”

“Ahh, you’re the best-est bestie around.” She tore off the paper and opened the box. “Holy holly berries! Where did you find a pink hammer?”

“None of your beeswax. Look at the inscription.” I pointed at the words etched into the hammer’s head.

“ ‘To Natalie, ‘til death do us part. Love, Vi,’ “ she read aloud. “Creepy and sweet, just like your love.” She grinned, gripping it in her right hand. “So, do I get to use this to knock some sense into you the next time you try to ditch me for a man?”

“In a heartbeat.”

She looped her arm around my shoulders and hugged me, and then handed me a gift the size of a shoebox.

It was sort of heavy. I shook it. Something metal sounding clanked inside. “Is it bars of gold?”

“Even better.”

I ripped off the paper and sliced through the tape with my car keys. Inside the box were two small chrome discs with jaguars etched into them and three prongs sticking out from around the center hubs.

“Is this the newest trend in friendship charms?”

She picked one up from the box. “They’re a little too heavy to wear around our wrists, but we could hang them from our rearview mirrors. However, since they’re the wheel knockoffs from your ex’s fancy-schmancy Jaguar, you might want to keep them hidden from a certain Deadwood detective for a few months.”

My ex, Rex Conner, aka the piece-of-shit sperm donor, had recently returned to the Black Hills to mess with my life for shits and giggles. He denied his return was meant to thwart me, insisting he merely wanted to use me and my children for a career advancement. The dickhead was leading a team of scientists at the research lab in Lead down in what used to be the one and only vast Homestake Gold Mine.

“What are wheel knockoffs?”

“The decorative covers for the lug nuts.”

“Rex’s wheels aren’t going to fall off without these, right?” As much as I loathed the man and wanted to have him relocated to one of Saturn’s moons, I didn’t want to be responsible for his death. At least not at Christmastime. Valentine’s Day might be more appropriate for the big jerk.

“Unfortunately, no,” Natalie said.

“That’s too bad. Are these expensive?”

“They’re only about fifty bucks, but on the annoyance scale, I think this will make Rex’s sphincter squeeze up good and tight.”

A Christmas present centered around revenge. Natalie knew my hopes and dreams so well. I giggled with a good dose of evil and hugged her. “You’re the best friend ever.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Speaking of friends, I glanced up the stairs. “Where’s Freesia?”

Natalie set the wheel knockoffs back in the shoebox. “She went to Nevada.”

“What?” I frowned at her. “I thought you were going to spend Christmas watching Bogart movies and pigging out on pie together.”

“Her dad hasn’t been feeling well lately. When she heard about the snowstorm, she decided to head out before she got stuck here and help her mom take care of him.”

“So you’re coming with Doc and me.” It wasn’t a question.

“Nah. I’ll just stay here and keep fixing up the place.” She held up the hammer. “And now I have a new tool to help me.”

“No, you won’t.” I stood, pointing up the stairs. “Go pack a couple of nights’ worth of clothes.”

She clasped her hands between her knees. “Vi, this Christmas is about Doc spending time with you and your family.”

“I know. You’re part of my family, fruitcake. Besides, Doc will insist we come get you when he hears you’re going to be alone, and we don’t have a lot of time with this storm moving in, so go get your shit and let’s haul ass.”

“But …” She hesitated.

I reached down and pulled her up by the elbow. “The kids and my parents will love having you there, too.”

“I don’t—”

“And I’ll need your help terrorizing the Wicked Witch of the West.” Natalie had long ago made it her mission in life to fuck with Susan’s mental well-being every chance she could as payback for the tramp’s many crimes against my heart. “You don’t want to miss this special holiday opportunity, do you?”

She cocked one eyebrow. “So Susan is definitely going to be there?” At my nod, she smiled banana-wide. Her eyes sparkled with mischief, her blues long gone. “Well, then let’s go have us some rootin’-tootin’ Christmas fun.”