Mistletoe Kisses by Sam Mariano
Chapter Eleven
Callan
The car ride is peaceful,even once it starts to snow. Ordinarily no one riding in the passenger seat of my car—save for Carla—would dare mess with my radio settings, but seeing as Noelle has been underneath me naked in my bed, she has a high enough level of comfort that she fiddles with the controls until she finds Christmas music.
I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world, driving through light fluffy snow while Noelle watches out the window and hums Silver Bells along with the radio.
By the time Michael Bublé starts telling us It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, we’re in Marymount. Noelle gives me the address for the bookstore I’m taking her to, then gets distracted when she happens upon pictures of the town’s winter festival online.
“Oh my God,” she says suddenly, causing my grip to tighten on the steering wheel. My initial thought is that she spotted something ahead of us on the road, but then she goes on, still looking at her phone. “They have carriage rides around the square! You can literally ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Why doesn’t Oak Grove have a cute winter festival like this?”
Turns out, the bookstore is right in the thick of it, too. We turn into the parking area behind the row of small-town storefronts. There’s an entrance to the bookstore back here, but Noelle is curious about the festival, so we walk around to the front entrance.
From the sidewalk, we can see the winter wonderland set up in the town square. Carolers are singing, there’s an ice skating rink in the center with a big Christmas tree behind it—likely inspired by Rockefeller Center, judging by the looks of it.
There are vendors set up, food trucks and concession stands, booths with carnival games, and Christmas lights twinkling all over the place. Noelle has a hard time tearing her gaze away, but I open the door for her and a bell jingles overhead, nabbing her attention.
“Oh, thank you,” she says absently before making her way inside.
The shop is quaint, a mix of new and used books in separate sections. Noelle stops to inspect the small tabletop tree decorated with miniature book cover ornaments.
Glancing at me over her shoulder, she says, “You need one of these.”
I shake my head. “I don’t do Christmas trees.”
“Scrooge. You have the perfect open space for one in the far corner of your living room, you should put one up there. Even if it’s just a small tabletop one like this. You could set presents around the table instead of under the tree.”
“I’m not getting any, remember?”
“You don’t deserve any, that’s for sure,” she mutters, moving past the Christmas tree and looking around for the lady she spoke to on the phone.
I wander around and look at books while Noelle handles the business side of things. I figure she’ll come find me if she needs help, but I’m sure she can handle it herself.
As I’m perusing the rare and unique books section, I stumble upon a nice red leather-bound edition of A Christmas Carol with gilded pages. It’s signed by the illustrator and underpriced at only $50. They could’ve priced it at double or triple that, if they really wanted to.
Given Noelle’s propensity for calling me Scrooge, I pluck it off the shelf and flip through to check out the illustrations. It’s in like-new condition, probably a collector item no one ever even cracked the spine on.
While I’m checking out the book, I overhear Noelle across the small shop saying, “Oh, excuse me.”
I glance back to see what she’s doing and see her fumbling awkwardly with her cell phone, looking around—for me?—in the wrong direction, then darting down an aisle as if she needs privacy to take her call.
I frown, closing the book and putting it back on the shelf, then I drift nearer to the aisle Noelle is in.
“Hi,” she says brightly. “I’m sorry I missed your texts, I promise I wasn’t blowing you off. I had an afterschool thing and I wasn’t paying attention to my phone.”
That’s a lie. She was on her phone in the car when she looked up the address for this shop and got distracted by Snowfest or whatever the hell it’s called.
“Yeah, we’re still on for tonight. We already dropped off the toy drive stuff at the fire station, we just had to make another stop and we’re there right now, so I should be on my way home within the next half hour. Um…” She pauses. “I’ll probably need like twenty minutes to get ready, so… pick me up at six?”
Pick her up at six?
“Okay, sounds great,” she enthuses. “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, too. I’ve been wanting to see this movie and I just haven’t had time. Did you see his last one? No, not that one. Oh, you liked that one?” She sounds at once surprised and disappointed. “Yeah, that one wasn’t for me, but I’m excited to—”
I stop being subtle and make my way into the aisle, flicking a glance at Noelle before returning my gaze to the rows of books.
I just wanted to see how she looked when she realized I was within hearing distance, and sure enough, she looks like a deer caught in headlights, her green eyes wide and startled. She completely stopped talking mid-sentence, but now that I’m in the aisle with her, she doesn’t even attempt to finish.
Turning away from me, she lowers her voice. “I have to go. I’ll text you when I’m home.”
Flicking a glance at her, I note her heated cheeks and murmur casually, “Mom?”
“No,” she says awkwardly, but doesn’t elaborate.
Interesting. Does Noelle have a date? It certainly sounded date-like.
I shouldn’t care; I gave her the freedom to go out with someone else when she offered herself to me last night and I gave her little but lies and cruelty, I guess I’m just surprised. She’s clearly not doing it out of spite, because I can see from the guilty look on her face she hadn’t wanted me to overhear that conversation. That means she’s actually trying this out for real.
I’m torn between wanting to know who the little asshole is and not caring. It doesn’t matter who it is; I don’t want Noelle going anywhere with him.
I tell myself it’s none of my business and I have to let it go. Noelle is too embarrassed to speak to me, so she flees the aisle in the other direction and goes back to the counter to talk to the lady who runs the book shop.
After a few minutes, they stop talking and Noelle—too tempted by being in a bookstore to resist looking around—begins wandering through the aisles.
Literally all I can think about is the date she’s planning to go on after I take her home. Try as I might, I can’t think of one of the spoiled brats I teach every day putting his hands on her without a spike of possessive rage obliterating half of my common sense.
I don’t want her to go on a date with anyone else.
I’ve made my way through the store aimlessly, looking at rows of books but seeing none. I find myself back in the rare and interesting section, so I pick up the Dickens book again.
I decide to buy it for Noelle, since I can’t very well give her the presents I bought for her at Daring Dolls after last night.
I make my way to the cash register to pay for her gift, then I spot the stack of books Noelle must have set aside to buy for her wishlist shoppers.
Nodding at the books, I ask the shopkeeper to be sure, “Are those hers?”
Since she saw us come in together—and since we’re the only two customers in the store—she knows who I’m talking about and nods her head.
“Put those on the bill as well,” I tell her. “I’m going to take them to the car while she finishes shopping.”
“Any gift wrapping?” she inquires.
I glance at the one I bought for Noelle. I don’t have wrapping supplies at home, so I probably should. “That one.”
She nods and adds a charge to my bill, then reads me the total. I start to slide my card, then change my mind and pay with cash since it’s a small business.
I follow the woman toward the back of the store and watch her carefully wrap A Christmas Carol, casting paranoid glances over my shoulder for Noelle. She doesn’t show up, though, so I make it out to the car with the wrapped gift for her and the stack of books she was going to pay for with her elf money.
I put the books in the trunk and close it quickly, not wanting the steadily falling snow to damage the books in the shopping bag. I look back at the shop, not even wanting to go back in. I can’t get Noelle’s phone conversation out of my head, can’t stop thinking about her telling the prick on the other end to pick her up at six.
An underhanded idea pops into my head, illustrating exactly why I’m on Noelle’s naughty list.
She can’t go on the date if I don’t get her home in time.
Of course, she probably knows I overheard some part of her conversation since I made my presence known, so I can’t just all of a sudden drag my feet and come up with excuses to make her late. She’ll see right through me.
No, it needs to be taken out of my hands.
Committing to the idea as it occurs to me, I walk to the passenger side of my car and pop open the glove compartment. I keep a good quality pocket knife in there in case of emergencies.
I draw it out and glance at the back door of the store to make sure Noelle hasn’t noticed me missing and wandered out to find me. Seeing she hasn’t, I walk back to the rear of the car on her side and squat down. I open the knife, locking the blade so I don’t cut my damn hand off, then I stab the tire.
Air begins hissing out of it immediately. I consider stabbing it a second time just to make sure it’s good and flat by the time we come back out, but on second thought, I recall Noelle telling me how hard it is to drag her out of a bookstore. I imagine we’ll be here a while, so it’ll be flat by the time we come back out.
I fold the knife up and store it back in the glove compartment, then, feeling much better about life, I head back inside the bookstore.
