carried the heavy garbage bag through the back door of the pool hall. She set the trash down on the icy ground next to the already heaping bin, making a mental note to call the disposal company in the morning to come empty it. When she’d taken over running the bar from Melody Myers eleven months ago she a) hadn’t expected it to be so hard and b) hadn’t expected to be running it longer than six months.
“You still there?” her older sister said on the other end of the line.
“Barely,” she mumbled, glancing at the seconds ticking away on her phone. Cameron had left her on hold for almost nine minutes.
“Sorry... I’m working, you know,” she said distractedly.
Heather shivered in the late November air as she made her way back inside. “So am I.”
“Yeah, at some crappy pool hall in the middle of nowhere. Heather, you have an MBA.”
“I know,” she said, tugging the heavy metal door closed behind her and locking it. She hadn’t forgotten how hard she’d worked for the life and career she’d once had in New York; she was just struggling to figure out how to get back there, to all of that. “That’s why I’m asking you for this favor.”
“Heather, this is Highstone Acquisitions in Manhattan. Not some rinky-dink firm.”
She sighed, suppressing the urge to remind her sister that she had worked at Clarke and Johnston for over ten years. They weren’t a rinky-dink firm, either. “That’s why I want to apply for a job there.”
“Heather, you know I love you and I want nothing more than to have you back here in the city, but this is Rob’s employer. Asking him to stick his neck on the line for you is...”
Heather gaped. Sticking his neck on the line? Seriously? “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cam,” she said. “You know what? Never mind.” She’d look up the firm herself and apply for the acquisitions agent position without Rob’s help. It would be the fourth one she’d applied for in a year. She’d yet to even be called for an interview. And it baffled her. Her résumé was solid. She had the MBA Cameron had just mentioned. It was as though her previous employer had blackballed her somehow, she thought bitterly.
Calling in the favor to her sister’s husband had meant swallowing her pride, but she was getting desperate. She had exactly five hundred and seventy-two dollars left in her bank account, after depleting her savings for the past year while she searched for a job.
“I’m sorry,” Cameron said, sounding sincere. “That’s not what I meant.” She sighed. “Okay, Rob’s direct boss is Mike Ainsley. He owns the company. His phone number...”
Going to the register behind the bar, Heather ripped off a piece of receipt paper. “Can’t I just email him?”
“He’ll probably want you to email a résumé, but Rob always says he likes to have a chat with potential candidates first.”
That made sense, and she wasn’t opposed to calling him, she was just hoping for more time to prepare for a discussion with the man. She wanted to make sure she got a shot at this position. “How old is he?”
“Old. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You’re looking for a new employer this time, not a potential boyfriend, remember?”
Heather cringed. Her sister would throw that in her face again. “Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson about that,” she mumbled. Three years in a relationship with her boss at Clarke and Johnston, only to lose him as both employer and boyfriend, had taught her to diversify.
Workplace relationships were not an option anymore.
“Good. So, just put away your sarcasm and resist every urge to be funny, and get through a short telephone call. We really do want you back here in the city.”
She wanted to get back to her old life, too. She’d been away and out of the game long enough. Her career as an acquisitions agent, buying out smaller companies on behalf of million-dollar clients—usually box stores and hotel chains—had come to a halt after she’d been fired and dumped in the same week. She’d hightailed it to Brookhollow for her friend Victoria’s wedding and a mini-vacation. She hadn’t planned to stay for two years. The reminder of her friend momentarily gave her pause. “Look, Cam, I’ll be there as soon as I can, but Victoria is depending on me now, too.” Victoria ran a B and B in town. Her business partner and best friend had died months before in a car accident, and Heather had stepped in to help as much as possible. Days at the Brookhollow Inn’s front desk and evenings at the pool hall were starting to take their toll, but leaving both her friend and the bar shorthanded made her feel guilty.
Yet every time she checked her bank account, she was reminded of how much she needed to get a job and get back to the city. She was volunteering her time at the B and B in exchange for a room, and the bar paid minimum wage and was never busy enough for her to make much in tips. “Victoria never expected you stay, and she’s a good friend—she’ll understand your decision. Just like you supported hers to move back to Brookview.”
“Brookhollow.”
“Sure, whatever. Call Mike Ainsley and secure this position before Christmas. We really want you to spend the holidays with us this year. Last year wasn’t the same without you.”
Guilt washed over her. Without their parents, she and her sister had always spent the holidays together, but the year before she’d decided to stay in Brookhollow, knowing that Christmas in the city—her first one single and alone—might be too depressing. But the holiday hadn’t been the same for her, either. And the truth was, she wasn’t happy in the small town anymore. It was time to move on. “I’ll call him in the morning.”
* * *
JACOB UNLOCKED THE back door of the three-story house on Pine Street where he was renting the attic-turned-bachelor-suite from Mrs. Kelly, a retired schoolteacher. Despite the late hour, all of the lights were on. He suspected she waited up for him every evening, and he sighed when he heard the sound of her slippers shuffling down the hallway.
“Jake, that you?” she called.
So much for sneaking upstairs unnoticed. “Yeah, Mrs. Kelly, it’s just me.”
“Hi, dear,” she said as she entered the back porch off of the kitchen. “I was hoping you’d be home sooner.”
Home? Hardly. Home was a two-bedroom apartment in the city that he hadn’t seen in three years, first living undercover in a dive motel in Brooklyn, where he slept with his clothes on and his gun under his pillow, and then hiding out here in Brookhollow, where the only danger—for now—was this woman’s nosiness.
Home was such a distant memory, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize it even if he ever did see it again.
He sighed. “Why? What did you need help with?” In addition to paying three hundred dollars in rent for the twenty by twenty, six-foot high space that had given him a permanent neck cramp from stooping, he’d also become her jar opener, her sidewalk clearer and, most recently, her plumber.
“Well, I wanted to start my holiday decorating...”
“Isn’t it a little soon?” Heather could argue that businesses needed to get an early push on the season, but individuals? Was that really necessary?
Mrs. Kelly’s expression revealed that she thought he was crazy for even making the suggestion. “Of course not.”
“Right. Okay, so what do you need?” Because he knew that’s where this was headed.
“Well, my nephew used to come and help me get my things out of the storage space...but he’s away at the police academy in Boston.”
That’s right, her nephew was Cody Kelly, the young man who’d been counting on the sheriff’s position here in Brookhollow once he graduated in a few weeks. Well, the kid could have it...as soon as Jacob didn’t need it anymore.
“He’ll be here during the holidays of course,