You Betrayed Me (The Cahills #3) - Lisa Jackson Page 0,108
waist, she speed-dialed her sister. Noticing the date on her phone, she smiled to herself. Only a couple of weeks until Christmas . . .
She felt a warm rush of anticipation, her fingers skimming the terry cloth over her abdomen.
Things were bound to change.
* * *
Willow made it home. Her ankle and shin throbbing, she climbed the creaking exterior stairs to her little apartment. The lower floor was empty, the once-upon-a-time bakery no longer there. Sweet Scents had closed over a year ago; the ovens, tables, chairs, and counter were all gathering dust, and a FOR LEASE sign was fading in the grimy window.
She should move.
Though the bakery had been noisy—the baker arriving hours before dawn and pans clattering, a radio playing some classical music, the sounds drifting upward through the vents—she’d liked it. With the aromas of freshly baked breads and sweet cakes, yeast, cinnamon, and coffee wafting into her sparsely furnished unit, she’d felt a part of something. At almost any hour, Willow had been able to walk through the back door of the bakery, where the baker, Mrs. Nottingham, greeted her. A chubby, round-faced widow, Elsa Nottingham had been forever wearing an apron dusted with flour and had never forgotten to save Willow a day-old muffin or scone, which she’d handed out happily, along with a bit of grandmotherly advice that Willow had always ignored.
But those days were long gone, and this winter, Willow’s studio was drab and cold, her blankets thin, the space heater inconsistent, the entire building feeling forsaken and empty.
Currently, she was the only occupant of the building as the only other apartment, most recently occupied by an elderly man, was now vacant and had been for over six months, which left Willow as the single tenant in over five thousand square feet of neglected building.
All in all, it was depressing.
But that was bound to change.
Once James realized . . .
Oh, God—what about the gun? If he found the Glock in the bedroom—
Angrily she pushed that thought aside and unlocked the apartment.
Inside, she turned on the space heater. As it clicked to life, she peeled off her clothes and dropped them into a bathroom hamper. Her ankle was already swollen and discoloring rapidly, and the scrape on her shin was crusted with blood. She cleaned the scrape, decided it wasn’t all that bad, and applied antiseptic lotion and a row of Band-Aids. In the medicine cabinet, she found a near-empty bottle of Tylenol and tossed back the last two capsules, taking them dry. Gingerly, she stepped into flannel pajamas she’d bought years before, the print of pink French poodles and gray Eiffel Towers nearly indistinguishable.
Paris.
The City of Light.
Would she ever really get there?
Of course! James would take her.
Maybe for their honeymoon!
Feeling slightly better, Willow turned on the lights on her tiny artificial tree, made a cup of herbal tea, and sipped it while surfing through the channels on her old TV. She settled on a movie channel playing some inane romantic comedy. Then she crawled into her bed, a twin she’d had since she was eight, and propped herself up on the pillows. When the movie ended, she switched to the channel that played heart-and-hearth-style Christmas movies, filled with glitter and hope, the bad guys always found out, the hero and heroine destined to find happiness and Christmas forever . . .
She let herself be drawn into one movie and then another, and finally clicked off the TV sometime after one. But sleep was elusive. Listening to the wind, she stared at the ceiling, twisted the ring she wore—her mother’s engagement ring, with its tiny winking diamond—and fantasized about being married to James, to sharing Christmas with him in the farmhouse that she would decorate from top to bottom.
Smiling at that thought, she started to drift off, to finally feel sleep embrace her. She would dream about James tonight and think about his big hands on her body. “Someday, my love,” she whispered and dozed, slumber taking her to a happy place, a safe place, so secure that she didn’t hear the footfall on the exterior steps, nor even rouse when her lock was gently pried open and the intruder slipped inside. So deep into her dream was she that she barely stirred as the barrel of the pistol was placed near her right temple.