I was betting on Saint.
I wondered idly how Saint knew him, or the man knew Saint.
“Thank you so much,” I said as I walked him to the door.
He reached for the doorknob but froze in the open doorway.
“Take care now, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t want to see you back there.”
I didn’t want to be back there.
I didn’t say anything to his pronouncement, though. Instead, I just nodded my head, smiled a weird smile that likely looked just as forced as it felt, and waited for him to leave enough that I could close the door.
Eventually he did, and I was left with a sinking feeling that something about that man didn’t sit well with me.CHAPTER 12All I want for Christmas is a blow job.-T-shirtSAINTChristmas parties had never really been my thing.
Despite my name being quite festive, that was really all that I had going for me.
When I was younger, Christmas at whatever house we happened to be in, whether it be one of the random houses that we’d lived in for the year or the White House, had always been for show.
There’d been too fucking much posturing for me to ever really get into the Christmas spirit.
I remembered our first Christmas at the White House.
I hadn’t realized just how fucking big Christmas was there, but after leaving one day for school, and coming back beaten to a pulp, the last thing I’d expected was to walk into a Winter Wonderland.
My mother had transformed the damn place. She’d had over seven hundred Christmas trees added while I was at school and don’t even get me started on the damn lights that were strung up in such a copious quantity that I had to cover my face with a pillow for a month.
Needless to say, when I rolled up at the Kilgore Police Department’s annual Christmas party, the very last thing I had on my mind was being festive.
I’d spent the day planning my mother’s funeral.
President Thurgood, the current man in charge of the United States, had loaned me Air Force One to get my mother home to Galveston—the place that they’d settled after losing the presidency reelection.
That’d been where I was over the last few days, preparing my mother’s funeral, having a very small ceremony despite everyone and their brother urging me to have something more. I’d then flown a couple of hours to the opposite side of Texas, the place where my mother and father had their cabin, to visit my father.
He was in critical condition.
Phillipe and Daniel had him in round-the-clock protection and gave me hourly updates on his welfare.
So far, Brad hadn’t shown back up. But that wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t.
I just hoped him not showing up there didn’t mean that he was here, paying attention to how much I sat outside a particular someone’s house for hours on end making sure she was safe.
The thought that Brad had anything to do with my mother’s death and my father’s shooting had me freaking the fuck out.
I mean, Brad had been there for us since the first day we’d stepped into the White House.
That’d been ten years now.
That was a long time to pretend that you liked someone when you really didn’t.
Honestly, the whole damn thing didn’t make the least bit of sense at all.
My father had to be confused.
I was so lost in thought, as I’d been for the last couple of days, that I didn’t realize that I wasn’t alone until I heard her speak.
I instantly froze at the entrance to the banquet hall, my attention lasering in on the woman that occupied all my thoughts lately.
She was talking about her fish to Dax’s wife, Rowen. Rowen was holding their newborn son against her chest as Carolina talked away.
I slowly pushed farther into the shadows, my ears on the conversation, and made myself comfortable against a large pillar that was close to them but didn’t make it look like I was joining in on their conversation.
To torture myself, I turned my back to them and stared out over the rest of the party, keeping my eyes on the room but my ears on the two women behind me.
“…they’re all dead.” Carolina sighed. “I spent months finding the perfect fish. I spent hundreds of dollars on them. I should’ve just gotten the cat like I wanted.”
“They would’ve killed the cat just as easily as they killed the fish,” Rowen countered. “And weren’t those fish supposed to go to your office? You can’t have a cat at your office.”
Carolina sighed, her voice sending shivers down the length of my spine.
“I need to go look for a dog,” Carolina continued. “One that’ll keep me company and warm my feet up. My house is cold.”
“Your house is a shit hole,” Rowen countered. “You should probably move. I can’t believe you won’t fix your heat. That seems really ludicrous to me. Especially since it’s been so cold lately.”