How the Hitman Stole Christmas - Sam Mariano Page 0,4
I can’t help smiling as I march through the snow toward my savior.
“Hi,” I call out, hugging my white coat tightly against my body. “Thank you so much for stopping.”
The man eyes my car as he walks toward me, apparently trying to assess what’s wrong. “Having a little car trouble?”
“Yes. The tire… it blew up or something, I don’t know what happened. I tried to call my boyfriend to come help me, but I don’t seem to have service.”
He nods, unsurprised. “It’s a dead zone for about a mile around here.” His gaze moves away from the car and lands on my face. “You have a spare in the trunk?”
His voice is deep and masculine with an effortless kind of confidence that tells me as long as I have a tire in the trunk, he’ll be able to help me.
I am so relieved.
“I’m not sure,” I confess, feeling myself flush. I know he doesn’t notice since the weather has already made my face rosy, but now that he’s asked, I feel like that is something I should have thought to check on my own. “Apparently I’m useless when my car breaks down.”
The corners of his mouth tug up. “Tell that boyfriend of yours he needs to teach you how to change a tire.”
“I don’t even know if he can change a tire,” I mutter.
“Every man should be able to change a tire,” he says dismissively, like it’s not even worth considering.
“He hasn’t been my boyfriend for long,” I explain. “It’s kind of a new relationship, so we don’t know everything about one another yet.”
“Does anyone ever know everything about someone else?” he returns casually.
I stop and look back at him, frowning. “I certainly hope so.”
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 Three
Jasper
There’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