Where Lindsey was all long blond curls and a face that was handsome more than pretty, Jack was short-cropped honey-colored curls with a face that was almost too pretty for a man. He had hit the genetic lottery with full lips and rich caramel-colored eyes, and Lindsey thought, not for the first time, how unfair it was. Paired with his muscular shoulders, lean hips and formidable height, Jack could have been a male model as easily as an economist, but where Lindsey’s world revolved around words, Jack’s passion had always been for numbers.

“What?” he asked, raising his hands in the air in a questioning gesture. “A brother can’t surprise his favorite sister for the holidays?”

“I’m your only sister, but nice try,” she said. “Of course, you can surprise me but why are you hiding in here?”

“Hiding? What hiding?” he asked. He turned away from her and surveyed the room. “I’m just trying to keep my arrival on the down low for a while.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Jack?” she asked. He could try and fool her all he wanted, but she knew that whenever he was hiding something, he started to pace just like he was doing now.

“Nothing,” he said. He crossed over to the bookshelves and then the fireplace. “I’ve just been doing the usual, you know, solving the business troubles of companies around the world.”

“Then how come I haven’t heard from you in a month, and why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Do Mom and Dad know you’re here? Where have you been anyway? Last I heard, you were in the Fiji Islands,” she said.

“Ugh, so many questions.” Jack groaned. “Can we do the catch-up thing later? Hey, is this a gas fireplace? Can I fire it up? It’s chilly in here. I thought maybe I could catch a nap since I had almost no sleep last night.” As if to prove his statement, he let out a jaw-popping yawn.

Lindsey fretted her lower lip between her teeth. There was only one person on the entire earth that she could never say no to, and that was Jack.

The building policy strictly stated that no one was to be in here without a staff member present, but he did look awfully tired and he was a responsible adult. Surely, Jack, a Cornell-educated economist, would be fine left to his own devices in the meeting room. Besides, she could keep checking on him as needed so she would sort of be in here with him.

“All right,” she said. “But I still want an explanation. How did you get in here anyway? Because I know the door was locked.”

“I am a man of many talents,” he said in a bogus Houdini voice while waving his hands in the air like a magician.

“You found an unlocked window, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.” He dropped his arms, looking deflated. “You should really be more careful, Linds. You never know what kind of bad guy might come in and steal all of your precious books.”

“Uh-huh.” Lindsey switched on the gas fireplace, which clicked three times before it ignited.

Jack launched himself onto the squashy leather couch that faced the fireplace. As he settled in, he looked like a very big cat, finding just the right spot for his nap.

“You know my crafternoon group is supposed to be meeting in here,” Lindsey said. “You owe me one for disrupting our meeting so you can have a nap.”

Jack grabbed her hand as she passed by the couch, stopping her from leaving.

“I do owe you one, Linds, more than you know,” he said. “It’s really good to see you. I’ve missed you.”

She could see the sincerity in his eyes, and she knew he felt the same way she did. The bond they shared, like an invisible cord, stretched as far as the globe could take them away from each other, but it never broke. They were always connected.

Lindsey bent down and kissed his head. “I’ve missed you, too, you big dope. We’ll talk, and I mean that, when you wake up.”

She checked her watch. She was going to be late for crafternoon, but that was okay. Her brother Jack was here, and suddenly the steely gray day outside seemed brimming with holiday cheer.

She couldn’t wait to spend some time with him and hear his latest adventures. Jack was like a crusty old penny with a heavy patina; he had lots of miles and lots of stories on him, and he always turned up when she least expected it.

*   *   *

“The Woman in White was not what I expected,” Nancy Peyton said while she arranged a tray of cookies on the end of the table. “Why do novels written in the eighteen hundreds always break up the happy couple? It’s annoying.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Violet La Rue said. “It seems to me many novels separate the couple, especially if it’s a series. I suppose we readers just have to read on, trusting the author and being committed to seeing it through.”

“Not unlike most relationships,” Lindsey said. “I suppose you have to decide if you’re the committing type before you start a book, which if you think about it, is a relationship of sorts.”

To Lindsey’s relief, today’s crafternoon actually worked out better in the smaller glassed-in conference room. Since they were recycling candles and were using little electric hot plates to do it, they had more access to outlets in the refurbished conference room than they would have had in the room she’d left to Jack.

“But that doesn’t answer the question,” Mary Murphy agreed. She added a bunch of half-spent candles to the pile in the center of the table. Then she looked pointedly at Lindsey and asked, “Why does the happy couple always break up?”

Lindsey shook her head. Captain Mike Sullivan, known to everyone one as Sully, was Mary Murphy’s older brother, and Lindsey knew Mary well enough to know that she was asking why she and Sully were still broken up. Mary never missed an opportunity to fish for information, and since they both belonged to the library’s crafternoon group, Mary always used it to work in an informal questioning, which felt like an inquisition, into the status of Lindsey’s relationship with Sully.

“Because it’s more dramatic that way,” Charlene La Rue answered for Lindsey. “Right, Mom?”

Charlene La Rue turned to her mother, Violet, a former Broadway actress and the reigning queen of the local community theater.

“Exactly,” Violet agreed. “The story would be over in twenty pages if Walter Hartwright won Laura Fairlie when they first met.”

“And the fact that he’s her poor drawing instructor makes it so much more romantic,” Beth cried.

Nancy snorted. “My grandmother always said, ‘It’s just as easy to love a rich man as a poor one.’”

“True,” Beth agreed. She was still wearing her steampunk cap and goggles, but had taken off the jacket and scarf. “But it just seems like there are so many more poor ones to choose from. You know, the unemployed, underachieving, living in his parents’ basement population has really exploded.”

“And thus, we remain single,” Lindsey said.

“An actor is not unemployed,” Violet said. “Their job prospects are just more eclectic than most.”

Both Violet and Charlene hit Lindsey with their matching mother and daughter dazzling smiles. While Violet was retired from the stage and lived in Briar Creek, Charlene was a newscaster on the local station in New Haven. Both women were tall and thin with rich cocoa skin and warm brown eyes. Together they were a force to be reckoned with, but Lindsey was wise to their game.

The La Rue women were close friends with Robbie Vine, a famous British actor who had recently come to Briar Creek to star in a production of Violet’s while getting reacquainted with his son. He had made no secret of his interest in Lindsey, but even though Robbie charmed her senseless, her heart was still knotted up over Sully, who had dumped her to give her space she had not requested. In a word, it was complicated.

“Pffthbt.” Beth made a scoffing noise. “You know, instead of pushing the head librarian with two beaus to make her choice—yes, I’m sure it’s brutal, Lindsey, really—you all might consider canvassing the area for an available guy for me.”

As one, they all turned to look at Beth in surprise.

“What?” she asked. “Just because my last boyfriend was stabbed to death doesn’t mean I’ve sworn off men forever. Surely, there has to be a man out there who would like a short curvy gal who can recite Shel Silverstein from memory and knows every Mother Goose poem ever written by heart. I mean, honestly, is that asking so much?”

They all blinked at her. Beth was rarely anything but sunny in disposition, which was one of the many reasons why all the children in town adored her.

“She’s right,” Lindsey said. She smiled at Beth. “I’m taking up more than my share; you want one?”

“Sloppy seconds?” Beth asked with a grin. “No, thank you. But I’m sure the collective talent in this room can find me a guy that I won’t be embarrassed to bring home to my mother. She’s getting positively naggy on the subject of a husband and children. I’m going to have to make up an imaginary boyfriend soon if I can’t manage a real one.”

The others all exchanged a look, and Nancy said, “We’ll get right on that.”

“Absolutely,” Charlene said. “Maybe there’s someone at the station.”

“Ian might know someone,” Mary said, referring to her husband, with whom she owned the Blue Anchor, a café known locally as the Anchor.

“I can ask my nephew Charlie if he knows anyone,” Nancy said. She and Lindsey glanced at each other and they both shook their heads.

In Nancy’s three-story captain’s house, Charlie lived in the second-floor apartment between Nancy and Lindsey. He worked for Sully seasonally, but was doggedly pursuing his dream of rock and roll stardom in his downtime. His musician friends, while interesting, were not exactly the bring home to Mom and show off type, as most of them slept all day, played out all night and didn’t have a lock on the concept of regular pay as yet.

“Or not,” Nancy said.

She finished putting out the food she had brought, and the group went back to discussing Wilkie Collins’s novel while they continued melting the wax for their craft project. It was agreed that the novel was a worthy read, and they debated what exactly made it one of the original “sensation” novels.

The time sped past and Lindsey managed to make only two new candles. Using old canning jars, they had tied wicks to hang off a pencil into the jar and then melted the remnants of all their old candles by heating the bits in a small aluminum pan on a hot pot. Lastly, they poured the melted wax into the canning jar up to the top, leaving just enough space for the lid.

Lindsey was quite pleased to have created her candles in alternating red and green recycled wax, giving them a festive holiday look. She had thought to give them away as gifts, but now she wasn’t so sure. They’d look nice on her dining table for the holidays.

As they packed up the room, leaving the candles to cool, Lindsey waved good-bye to the others before hurrying back to where Jack was snoozing. She hoped he’d had a good enough power nap, because she was itching to hear what had brought him to town earlier than expected and how long he was staying.

She really hoped he planned to be here for the entire holiday. With her parents coming down from New Hampshire, this would be the first holiday they had all been together in three years, and she found she was really looking forward to it.

Lindsey slipped the key into the lock and turned it. She didn’t want to startle her brother, so she pushed the door open quietly.

Two things hit her immediately—a bitterly cold draft was blowing in from an open window, and it was dark. She stepped into the room. Maybe the lights had kept him awake and he’d gotten overheated because of the fireplace. It seemed unlikely, but she couldn’t figure why else it was so cold and dark.

“Jack?” she called.

There was no answer. She hurried forward to see over the back of the couch where she’d left him. It was empty. The fire in the fireplace was off, and she shivered as the cold seeped through her sweater to her skin.

She glanced down at the floor in front of the hearth and gasped. A man was lying facedown on the floor. Lindsey raced forward.

“Jack! Are you all right?” she cried.

The gloomy midafternoon light made it hard to see, but Lindsey knew immediately from the bald head, the heavier build and the corduroy coat that this was not Jack.

She rolled the man over onto his back, trying to see what was wrong. His vacant brown eyes stared past her at the ceiling, and Lindsey felt a fist of dread clutch her insides in its meaty fist. The angry red marks around his neck, the lack of a rise and fall from his chest and the cold touch of his skin made it clear. The man was dead.