Stolen Christmas, page 1
Contents
Stolen Christmas
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
A Note from Marie
Also by Marie Sexton
Stolen Christmas
By Marie Sexton
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.
Stolen Christmas
Copyright © 2022 by Marie Sexton
Cover Art: Darleen Dixon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Marie Sexton at mariesexton.management@gmail.com.
Chapter 1
There’s a moment as the sun rises over Lake Pend Oreille when the water becomes a mirror, reflecting the soft, silver glow of dawn back toward the heavens, and nothing seems to move. For the span of a few heartbeats, the clouds seem frozen. The birds fall silent. The details of the ancient mountains standing on all sides are lost to shadow, becoming nothing more than hulking, dark sentinels, forever keeping the lake in its place.
And in that moment, for some reason I can’t quite put into words, I always feel sorry for the lake.
On December 22, that strange flash of stillness happened around 7:35 in the morning. The weather app on my phone promised we’d reach forty degrees later in the day—unseasonably warm for winter in the Idaho panhandle—but this early in the morning, it was a crisp 24 degrees out. My breath formed steamy clouds in front of my face as I stood on the lake’s shore, insulated coffee cup in hand, squinting into the sun. I tried to focus on the calmness all around me, as if I could breathe it in and make it part of me. I didn’t want to think about why my stomach had been in knots since the moment I woke, nerves and excitement warring inside me like they had on the day of my parole hearing seven years earlier.
Of course, trying not to think about it meant I actually spent every single second thinking about it.
Max would arrive today.
I’d checked the reservation a hundred times over the preceding weeks, staring at his name on the computer screen, willing it to give me some kind of insight into his state of mind when he’d booked the room, but it didn’t. I was as clueless now as I’d always been. And no amount of standing there, staring at the lake, was going to change that.
“C’mon, Molly!” I called down the shore to the frolicking golden retriever. “Time to go, girl.”
Molly barked but came running, knowing the routine, and we headed back to Camp Bay Chalet, the sprawling, log cabin bed and breakfast that had been my residence and employer for the last seven years. From May through September, Camp Bay Chalet was open seven days a week, but through the winter, we were weekends and holidays only, which meant the entire inn full of Christmas guests would arrive this afternoon.
“There’s nothing special happening today,” I told Molly as we climbed the bank to the cobblestone patio at the back of the inn. “We’ll have a full house, but nobody you need to worry about, got it?”
She panted happily at me, cocking her head.
Molly didn’t believe me, and I couldn’t blame her. Even I knew I was full of shit. I could say Max’s arrival meant nothing to me, but I still found myself lingering in front of the mirror longer than usual, wanting to look as good as possible when I saw him. Wanting to somehow turn into somebody better. Somebody who didn’t have to obfuscate whenever their past came up.
Somebody who actually deserved Max’s attention.
It didn’t work, of course. I was still me, an ex-con wearing work pants and a brown work shirt, the little embroidered name tag telling everybody my name was Eric. Clean-shaven. Brown hair cropped short. Teeth brushed. Shirt ironed. But no matter how long I stood there, I still couldn’t manage to turn into a man good enough for Max.
“Fuck this,” I finally mumbled to myself. “Time to get to work.”
Still, I couldn’t help but stop by the front desk, just to reassure myself nothing had changed. Sal, our resident busybody, was on the phone, arguing over whether or not the Chalet would issue a refund for a last-minute cancelation, and I took advantage of that moment to sneak behind the desk and use his computer. My heart pounded as I pulled up the reservation.
What if it was Max who canceled? It had nothing to do with me, and yet my heart sank at the very thought. But no, there he was, still on the list.
Maxwell Jernigan.
Up until three years ago, it had always been Drs. Wilson and Maxwell Childing. Wilson was a cardiologist, tall and athletic, with an ego the size of a small house. Max was a pediatrician, affable and friendly, always brushing off his husband’s arrogance with a laugh. “Specialists,” he’d say, elbowing his husband playfully. “Can’t live with them, can’t have a heart attack without them.”
They spent every Christmas at the inn, just the two of them, trying their damnedest to be cheerful about it even though I suspected their lack of family bothered them both more than they liked to admit.
But then, Wilson died.
To my surprise, Max kept coming. For the last two years, the reservation had only said “Maxwell Childing.” And now, Childing had changed to Jernigan. I had no idea if Childing had been his married name or his given name. Did Jernigan mean he’d gone back to his birth name, or did it mean he’d re-married?
The thought was like a stone in my gut, but the reservation was for only one person.
Sal hung up the phone and turned to me with a dramatic sigh, one fist on his narrow hips. “You could have just asked me whether or not he’d canceled.”
“Who?”
“Check-in isn’t until this afternoon. He won’t be here for hours.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you don’t, lover boy.”
“I wish I’d never told you about it.”
He laughed. “No, you don’t.”
He was right. While I got along well enough with the rest of the staff, there were only two people I might have counted as friends—Sal and Rhonda. But Rhonda was my boss, and although she was always warm and convivial toward me, I didn’t consider her a confidante. Not when it came to sexual matters, at any rate. And so, in one of my weaker moments, I’d told Sal all about what happened on Christmas Eve the year before. It’d been a relief to get it off my chest, at the time. Now, I floundered for a way to dismiss it.
“He was drunk. He might not even remember.”
“Puh-lease, Eric. I’ve never had the pleasure, but I’m quite sure nobody would forget a night in your arms.”
Sal only said shit like this to make me blush. Unfortunately, it worked. I kept my eyes on the screen so I didn’t have to see the grin on his face, and noticed something I hadn’t seen the previous times I’d looked.
“Wait. You have him in the wrong room.”
“Of course I don’t.”
I pointed at the screen. “He always requests a room on the second floor, with a view of the lake.”
“Not this year. This year, he specifically said he wanted a room on the front side of the inn, so I put him on the third floor in room nine.”
“Did he say why?”
Sal rolled his eyes like a fifteen-year-old asked to put down their phone. “Honey, I don’t get paid to ask questions.”
New name. New room.
New husband, too?
I hoped like hell that wasn’t the case.
Chapter 2
Camp Bay Chalet was a three-story log structure built in the thirties from the standing dead of a forest fire. The top two floors were where guests stayed, eight rooms per floor. Most of the ground floor was communal. The main room served as both lobby and sitting room, with several couches around the fireplace, which would have a roaring fire in it all weekend. To the left of the lobby was the library. Beyond that, our event room. From there, doors led onto the cobblestone patio overlooking the lake. To the right of the lobby lay the dining room and kitchen. A door in the corner of the kitchen led me to the basement, where my small room was located, along with the housekeeping department, and the owner’s living quarters and offices.
Technically, I had two bosses at Camp Bay Chalet. The first was Suzanne, who’d inherited the bed and breakfast from her parents when they retired seven years earlier. Suzanne mostly handled all things involving food. The second of my bosses, and the one I dealt with the most, was her partner Rhonda.
I found her at her desk, which seemed to be where she spent most of her time. She could have been a model with her tall, slender build and her silky black curls, except she hated that shit. She lived in jeans and cowboy boots and wore her hair in a stereotypically butch-short cut. I detected a faint tinge of cigarette smoke. If anybody ask
“Eric, come in. It’s gonna be a busy weekend.”
Rhonda had been my foster sister years earlier, and she’d been kind enough to give me a job after my parole. Suzanne had been skeptical at first, but only for a few months. They always treated me like family rather than an underling, which I appreciated, but to me, they’d always be the bosses who took pity on me. I’d spent every single day since my release trying not to disappoint them.
“Sounds like somebody canceled?” I said, as I took the seat across from her. Her desk was a study in organized chaos—piles of paper everywhere, although she always knew right where to find what she needed.
“The Johnsons, but whatever. The rest of the rooms will be full.”
“Anybody special coming?”
We had our regulars who returned annually, like Max. But over the last few years, Camp Bay Chalet had also earned a reputation for being a cozy but discreet getaway for certain semi-celebrities, especially of the LGBT variety. The trick was to know which ones wanted to be recognized, and which ones wanted to be left alone.
“Let’s see who we’ve got this year,” Rhonda said, hitting the space bar to bring her computer to life. “As far as regulars, there’s your buddy Max—”
“Not my buddy.”
“—plus the Tottenhams.”
I groaned. The Tottenhams were in their seventies and always wanted to meet famous people. The problem was, they were too out of touch to know when they actually bumped right into one.
“That anesthesiologist, Felicity Powers, and her daughter.”
“They’re cool.”
“Rick and Stacy Ingram.”
Rick owned an excavation company and was one of the most blue-collar guys we ever saw in the Chalet. “He’s a good tipper.”
“Agatha and Agnes. This will be their second Christmas here, so I guess they count as regulars now. Sal says, ‘Agatha still won’t tell me which celebrities are her patients. Let’s hope some mimosas will loosen her tongue.’”
I laughed. “Not a chance.” Agatha was a psychiatrist who worked in Hollywood, but she seemed way too professional to give away any secrets.
“Last but not least, the horse breeders from Montana.”
“You mean John and Teri? Oh my god, why do they still come?”
“They’re holdovers from when Suzanne’s parents owned the Chalet.”
“I know, but they need to move on. Last year, Teri asked me why ‘all the gays’ come here now.”
Rhonda snorted. “She asked me when you and I would finally tie the knot.”
I could tell the thought was as disturbing to her as it was to me. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
“I wish.” She turned back to her computer screen. “Okay. Newbies. Let’s see who they are, assuming Sal put notes on the accounts, like he usually does.”
“Are you kidding? That’s his favorite part of the job.”
“Looks like a retired quarterback and his wife. Sal says, ‘He had one good season, but don’t even mention that AFC championship loss.’ A retired professional golfer. ‘He’s single but too old, too straight, and too boring.’ An actress, Kayleigh Brooks. ‘Not even B-list, honey, and her husband just left her so she’s sad AF.’”
“Nothing says ‘Merry Christmas’ like getting dumped.”
“Gail Storm—”
“The mayor of Sandpoint?”
Rhonda nodded. “Along with her husband. I’m sure she’s just trying to rub elbows with as many important people as possible. Sam Lions, mystery author. Sal’s note says, ‘He told me four times about being a New York Times bestselling author, so I guess we should pretend to care.’ Walker Ronson and Ashton Sellers. They own an advertising firm in Tennessee, and they’re celebrating an anniversary. Ah, that’s sweet. I’ll have Suzanne put together a little basket of goodies for them.”
“What did Sal say about them?”
“‘They sound hot; hope they’re into threesomes.’ Thanks, Sal. That’s super helpful. Stan and Laura Smith. ‘Laura sounds snooty,’ is our only info there. Bill Lawson, the weatherman from Boise, and his husband Chad. Their note says, ‘Chad deserves better, but there’s no accounting for taste.’ And finally, Pierce Hunter and Haven Sage.”
“Oh, wait! Sal already told me about them. They’re ghost hunters or something?”
“Pierce is. I think Haven’s an author.”
“And what did Sal have to say?”
“‘TV hottie and his boyfriend scouting locations for future episodes; too bad his twin isn’t coming with them, I think I could turn him. Asked for the most haunted room.’”
“So they’re in room eight.”
“You got it.”
I didn’t put much stock in the tales of our resident ghost. I’d never seen him myself, but Suzanne swore the ghost was real, and having at least one supposedly haunted room was a good selling point for any B&B.
“Anything special you need me to do today?” I asked.
“That new girl in housekeeping called in sick—”
“Again?”
“Again. So if you could help us get the rooms ready for check-in this afternoon, it’d be a huge help.”
“No problem.”
“And touch base with Suzanne. Weather report shows a snowstorm blowing in tomorrow, so if there’s anything they need in the kitchen, you might want to get it sooner rather than later.”
Winter snow in the Idaho panhandle wasn’t exactly news, but she was right—the less I had to drive in it, the better.
The stairs from the basement led me straight to the inn’s enormous kitchen, where I found Suzanne and Jerome bent over the weekend’s menu. Suzanne was barely five-foot-two, with a pert little nose, and golden blond hair cut in a pixie-like bob. Her assistant Jerome was her opposite in every way—nearly six feet tall with broad shoulders and a swarthy complexion. Jerome was the only person other than Max I’d had sex with in years, but it was nothing serious. He had at least five other lovers in the Lake Pend Oreille area that I knew of—three women and two men—and that wasn’t counting the various hotel guests he seduced along the way. Every once in a while, he got bored and graced me with his presence for an hour or two, but it was more a sad exchange of orgasms than a relationship.
Both of them looked up as I entered the room.
“I hear you may need me to make a grocery run?” I asked.
“Not groceries,” Suzanne said. “Jerome will do that later. But we do need somebody to run to the Pantry. We placed an order last week, and it should be ready for pickup by now.”
We bought all our pastries, pies, and breakfast breads from Clark Fork Pantry, a locally owned lunch stop and bakery on the other side of Lake Pend Oreille. As the crow flies, it was only seven miles away, but the drive around the twisting shoreline took an hour each way. On the bright side, it gave me something to do besides obsessing over Max, and Molly loved nothing more than riding in the truck with me, head out the window and tongue lolling in typical doggy fashion. By the time I returned with a case full of pastries and fresh-baked yumminess, it was lunchtime and I still had hours to wait.
I helped get the rooms ready for guests, then ran through my chores on autopilot—hot tub levels good, wood stocked and ready by the giant fireplace, the cobblestone patio overlooking the lake brushed clear of snow, the standing outdoor heaters all with full propane tanks, ready to be turned on for any guests who wanted to brave the Idaho winter in their quest for the perfect mountain lodge Christmas. The inn had three Christmas trees—one in the dining room, one in the library, and one in the event room overlooking the lake. I plugged them all in, making sure every string of lights was still working.
Now what? I was sure this had to be the longest afternoon I’d ever lived through. Maybe even worse than waiting for my parole hearing all those years ago. I resisted the urge to check Max’s reservation again, but only because Sal watched me like a hawk every time I entered the lobby and I didn’t want him hassling me again. Instead, I found myself in the maintenance closet, rearranging shit and taking inventory. At least, that’s what I told myself I was doing. In reality, it was more a matter of imagining a thousand different ways Max could tell me last year had been a mistake.
