How the Hitman Stole Christmas

He shrugs, apparently unconvinced. “Pop the trunk and I’ll see if there’s a spare back there.”

“Thank you so much,” I say again, dropping into the driver’s seat and searching the dashboard for the trunk button. “You’re a life saver.”

He laughs shortly but doesn’t say anything else until he sees me struggling to locate the button.

Bracing his arm on the top of my car, he leans in and takes a look, as if to see if I’m driving a spaceship and that’s why I don’t know how to do anything. “Having more trouble?”

Embarrassment creeps up my neck again. “Sorry, this isn’t my car. It’s a rental and it’s brand-new; I don’t know where anything is. The stupid thing doesn’t even use a key, there’s just a button. My car back home is a lot older than this one, so I’m not really used to all the… bells and whistles,” I explain, but I’m no less embarrassed. If Brady were here, he’d be so annoyed with me.

The man reaches inside and presses a button on the dashboard. “Found it,” he says simply.

I sigh, deflating a little. “Thank you. Again.”

“We all have off nights,” he says, kindly dismissing how I can’t seem to do anything right tonight.

“Thank you,” I murmur again, quietly, but he has already walked away, so he doesn’t hear me.Chapter ThreeJasperThere’s no tire in the trunk of this car.

I feel bad for the girl. Woman? I can’t tell how old she is. She’s all bundled up in a puffy white belted coat with a white scarf around her neck, white fur-trimmed gloves on her hands, and a matching hat on her mass of dark brown hair. She’s pretty, but I haven’t looked at her long enough to notice much else.

I head back to the driver’s side to deliver the bad news. On my way, I casually look into the backseat to make sure she doesn’t have a kid back there. She doesn’t, but she does have a shitload of shopping bags. I’m still looking at them when I get to her window.

“Doing some Christmas shopping tonight?”

The girl looks up at me in surprise, then nods her head. “Yeah. For my boyfriend’s family. We flew in for Christmas, so it was just easier to go out and buy gifts for them once we landed.”

“And he didn’t bother to come with you?”

Surprise flits across her face. I guess she didn’t expect me to call out her boyfriend’s less than gallant behavior, but I can’t help thinking if she flew all the way out here to have Christmas with his family, the least he could do is go with her to buy them presents.

The flush of her cheeks deepens. “He would’ve, but he wanted to spend time with everybody. Which I understand. He doesn’t get to see his family much and they don’t even know me, so…” She looks at the steering wheel a little awkwardly. I think she’s trying to convince herself as much as me. Looking back at me with a deliberately bright smile, she concludes, “He gave me his credit card, though, so at least I didn’t have to foot the bill.”

I ignore her light-hearted attempt to excuse her boyfriend for being a selfish prick. “Well, better get that credit card out because there’s no spare in the trunk. You’re gonna have to have the car towed.”

Her face falls. It’s not my fault, but I still feel like an asshole. “Oh, no. Seriously? Brady’s going to kill me.”

She mutters that last part to herself as she covers her face with her gloved hands, but I pick it up and it makes me dislike her boyfriend that much more.

Thinking over everything she’s said, I glance at the bags full of Christmas gifts in the backseat—at the evidence of how hard she’s trying. Every bag is overflowing. A couple different tubes of wrapping paper are poking out of one shopping bag, and I see a bag of bows, too.

An idea occurs to me. A fucking crazy one, but that’s never stopped me before.

This woman is all set to go home for the holidays to meet her boyfriend’s family—maybe she’s just got the wrong guy.

I have a family expecting me for Christmas. I need bags full of presents to give them. I need festive paper to wrap those presents in, and I guess it couldn’t hurt to throw on a few bows.

Hell, I could even use a girlfriend to bring home with me.

This girlfriend is technically already spoken for, I guess, but the guy she’s with sounds like a dick.

I shift my gaze back to her just as she uncovers her face. She’ll never have to worry about me getting pissy with her for breaking down by the side of the road. There’s no reason he should, except that he’s an asshole—it’s not like it was her fault.