Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Doubled

Ironvale doubles Lawler's order, Spence takes the credit, Alana calls Deena a thief at breakfast, a kiss in a narrow bed nearly goes too far, and at dawn Grandma is gone.

I didn't sleep.

Bennet slept on the floor of my childhood room on two quilts and a couch cushion, because my bed was a double and I'd told him the floor was his.

He didn't complain once.

At seven my phone buzzed on the nightstand.

An email from Ironvale procurement.

I read it sitting up in my old flannel pajamas with my heart going like a hammer.

Then I read it again.

"Bennet."

He opened one eye from the floor.

"They're not suspending us." My voice cracked. "They renewed. For three years. At double the volume."

"Congratulations."

"Double, Bennet."

"I heard."

He sat up and stretched, and his T-shirt rode up over a flat stomach I had no business looking at.

"Your aunt's going to hate this," he said.

She didn't, at first.

She didn't get the chance.

Spence was already in the kitchen when we came down, drinking coffee out of my grandfather's mug.

"There she is," he said. "Did you check your email, Alana?"

My stomach dropped.

"You did this."

"I made a call to the very top last night." He spread his hands. "For Carolyn's sake. I'm not a monster."

Deena pressed a hand to her chest.

"Spence, you're a saint."

"Double the volume," Celine told her phone. "Because of Spence."

Deena turned on me.

"Well? Thank him."

The whole kitchen waited.

Bennet leaned on the doorframe with his coffee and didn't say anything at all.

He looked quietly amused.

"I'm not thanking him," I said.

"Alana."

"I'm going to say something else instead."

I pulled out the chair beside my grandmother and put my hand on her back.

"You stole this house from her, Deena. At this table."

Deena went still.

"Go get the deed," I said. "Read it out loud to her. Let her hear what she signed."

The cousins at the table stopped chewing.

Spence set the mug down.

Deena laughed, too high.

"Mother forgets things." She took a folded paper out of the drawer by the stove like it had been waiting there. "That's why I have her power of attorney. Since October."

She held it up so everyone could see the notary stamp.

"She forgets where she puts her glasses. She forgets what day the trash goes out. She forgot what she signed."

My grandmother's face went red.

She looked down at her hands and didn't answer.

I had never once seen her look small.

"Carolyn," Bennet said.

Everyone turned.

He was still leaning in the doorway.

"What's the click spring in a mantel clock for?"

My grandmother blinked at him.

"It stops the ratchet wheel from turning backwards when you wind it," she said. "My husband taught me that in 1971."

"That's right," Bennet said.

He looked at Deena.

"She's the sharpest person at this table. I'd be careful telling a room otherwise."

Deena opened her mouth.

Spence got there first.

"Careful," he said to Bennet, smiling. "You don't want to be the man who upset Carolyn at Christmas."

"I'm not the one who upset her."

Nobody laughed this time.

My grandmother straightened her back and asked Celine to pass the eggs.

That night Bennet stopped me in the upstairs hall before I could open my door.

He took something out of his shirt pocket.

A thin gold band, worn smooth.

"You can't go to a Christmas Eve party with nothing on your hand," he said.

"Whose is this?"

"My mother's."

"Bennet, I can't wear your mother's ring for a fake marriage."

"It isn't fake," he said. "It's short."

He slid it onto my finger.

It fit.

I stood there looking at it in the hall light.

"Get in the bed," I said. "You're not sleeping on the floor again. You're six foot two."

"Is that an order?"

"It's a fact about the floor."

So we lay in my double bed under my grandmother's wedding-ring quilt with six inches between us.

The house creaked.

The clock downstairs ticked, very faintly, through the floor.

"You fixed her clock," I whispered.

"It was a small thing."

"It wasn't."

He turned his head on the pillow.

I don't know which of us moved.

His mouth was warm and slow, and I heard myself make a sound I'd never made in this room.

His hand slid under my flannel top and spread across my bare back.

I pulled him closer by his shirt.

He rolled me under him and kissed my neck, and I arched into him and felt how hard he was through his sweatpants.

My fingers were in his hair.

His thumb found the underside of my breast and stopped there.

I caught his wrist.

"Wait."

He stopped instantly.

I was breathing like I'd run up the stairs.

"Not while I'm paying you," I said.

He laughed against my collarbone, low.

"You're not paying me."

"Christmas dinner."

"Then I'll wait for dinner."

He rolled onto his back.

We lay there in the dark, not touching, both wide awake.

I fell asleep sometime after three with his arm under my head.

At six I woke up because the house was too quiet.

The clock was still ticking.

But my grandmother always ran the kettle at six, and the kettle wasn't running.

I went down the hall in my socks.

Her bedroom door was open.

Her bed was made, tight and square, the way she never made it.

Her slippers were gone.

Deena was at the bottom of the stairs in her bathrobe, holding a coffee cup.

"Where is she?" I said.

"Pine Hollow Manor." Deena took a sip. "For her safety. She's confused, Alana. You saw it yourself."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend