Page 56 of The Mistletoe Kisser

“You expect me to dig through decades of a man’s personal finances when you could have an employee hit email or print?” The woman was diabolical.

Her smile was Machiavellian. “Unfortunately for you, the bank’s system is offline for maintenance for the next twenty-four hours. But Carson already has all of it. Still insists on paper statements. The man never throws anything away. A smart accountant like you should find exactly what he’s looking for in no time.”

She clamped the cigarette in her teeth like a bad guy with a cigar.

He thought of the leaning stack of shoeboxes on the couch. The note.Everything you need is here.

“You mean to tell me that not only are you refusing to take a meeting with me, no one else in your bank has room on their calendars to talk to me, and the ‘system’ is down so you can’t prove that there is a debt to be paid?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Rainbow said smugly.

“I’m not buying it.”

She shrugged. “Prove it.”

He kissed #5 on his list goodbye. There would be no plane ticket tonight. He had a small-town bank to destroy.

“Fine. But be warned, I’m not going to allow you to foreclose on the man the day before Christmas,” Ryan said darkly.

“Then I suppose you’d better get busy,” she said, with an unsettling wink and a cloud of blue smoke in his face.

Ryan coughed.

“You’ll be hearing from me very soon,” he promised.

“Looking forward to it,” she said. Her cackling laugh turned to a fit of coughing behind him as he followed the alley to the street.

Rainbow Berkowicz had no idea who she was dealing with. If anyone was up to the challenge of finding the loophole in four hundred pounds of garbage, it was Ryan Freaking Sosa.

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Pete McDougall: New-in-town nephew of Carson Shufflebottom makes a public appearance without gal pal Sammy Ames. Is there trouble in paradise? Was there never any paradise in the first place?

15

“Did you rob a craft store?” Ryan asked in horror when he climbed into Sammy’s SUV.

She glanced in the rearview mirror. Her back seat was filled with ribbons, bows, reels of fine wire, festive tablecloths, and a host of other items buried beneath the rest. “Har har. It’s for the wreaths.”

“I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed the glitter really was craft-related,” he said.

She punched him in the arm. “Stop picturing me in pasties!”

“You’re the one who was all, ‘Hey, let’s have some hot sex tonight.’”

“That wasafteryou almost impaled me with your hard-on andbeforeyou declined my invitation.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about that,” Ryan reminded her.

“Oh, shut up. Did you find Rainbow and book your flight home?” she asked, pulling away from the curb.

She had just enough time to dump the man back at his uncle’s place before hitting her last stop of the day. Then if she neglected her paperwork and stayed up until midnight, she might feasibly finish some of the wreaths.

“I found her,” he said, sounding annoyed. “But the situation is more complicated than I thought. So no flight home tonight.”

“Great! I’ll drop you off at Carson’s. And you can feed the chickens and the sheep tonight.”

“You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it,” he complained.