How the Hitman Stole Christmas - Sam Mariano Page 0,47
grins and nods enthusiastically. “So, that’s that and I never expect to see him again. But then the following year, he’s on my flight again. He’s taking Amira home to see his family again. And now it’s a little less random. Now it’s starting to feel like fate.”
Autumn elbows me in the side. “Fate. This belief must run in your family.”
I slide Autumn a dry look before frowning at my sister. “I’m a little confused. You worked two Christmases in a row? I thought you usually insisted on time off so you could come home for Christmas.”
“Oh, I do. I was already back to work.” She glances over at Tarek, then back at me, “Tarek’s family is from Egypt, they’re Coptic Christians. So they do celebrate Christmas, but their calendar is different. They celebrate Christmas in early January, not the end of December. It works out perfectly for us. We’ll always be able to visit my family for our Christmas celebration, then go see his family for theirs. There’s no schedule conflict. I love it. My airline doesn’t, I asked for a lot more vacation time and they were not impressed, but…”
“Hopefully you won’t have to work there much longer, anyway,” Tarek remarks, triggering a nod of agreement from my sister.
“Were you planning to get a different job?”
She nods. “When I was single, my job made sense. I enjoyed traveling and I didn’t need to be tied down anywhere. But… well, Tarek and I are planning to move in together in the new year, and I think it would be hard on Amira and her sense of stability to have her mother jetting off to different places all the time. That’s just not what we want, so I’m going to look for something close to home, maybe even something part-time.” She glances at Tarek again, seeming to consider adding something else, but she must decide not to. With an unconvincing smile, she says, “What about you two? How did you meet?”
“Her car broke down on the side of the road, I stopped to help her,” I say brusquely, but I’m not about to let her change the subject so quickly, so I don’t give her a chance to respond. “And what about Amira’s mom?”
Nora’s smile melts and she starts looking a little wary. “What about her?”
“Amira’s spending Christmas with her father, she’s calling you mom—where’s her actual mom?” My gaze shifts to the boyfriend. “Is she in the picture? What happened? Why’d you break up?”
Tarek lets go of my sister and sits forward, realizing the interrogation is about to begin. “She’s not in the picture anymore, no. I realize that’s unusual. Um…” He sighs, then he says, “So, we didn’t get to this yet, but I imagine you were on your way there.”
He smiles wryly, letting me know he’s not offended, but I wouldn’t care if it offended him. If the guy wants me to trust him with my little sister, he better be willing to answer some questions.
“I work as a freelance photographer. I have an office job that pays the bills, but I take gigs every now and then to build my portfolio, get some experience, make contacts… just so I can make money doing what I enjoy. Someday I hope to make my living that way.”
“All right.”
“That’s how I met Amira’s mom. She was a model on a shoot that I worked. She flirted with me the whole way through and when the shoot was finished, I invited her to dinner. We started seeing each other and it was going pretty well… until she introduced me to her parents. They were country club people and they hated me immediately. Didn’t think I was good enough for their daughter. We kept seeing each other anyway. I think that might’ve even been part of the appeal for her.”
Barely tamping down her annoyance at the possibility of the woman before her using Tarek to annoy her parents, Nora leans her head on his shoulder and rubs his back.
Unperturbed, he goes on. “But then she got pregnant. It was definitely not planned. Her parents were livid, they didn’t want her to go through with it. We did, but… she was under their thumb a lot. Modeling was her only job and she wasn’t big-time or anything, so she mostly relied on them financially. She tried to brush off their disapproval and get into the idea of becoming a mom. In the beginning she thought it was fun, but as it got