Chapter Three

Ruby

“Lay down your purse and jewelry and you can walk away,” the man growled into my ear.

My heart plummeted at the gravelly voice. Inside my head, screams for help echoed, but I couldn’t make myself push them past my lips. As far as I could tell, he didn’t have a weapon on him. From the way I was pressed against him, and the strength of his grip around my waist, he was taller and a lot stronger than me. He wouldn’t need a weapon to hurt me. Badly. The alley he’d yanked me into was pitch black. No security lights or any other sounds. No one walking by on the street, just yards away, would be able to see me in distress.

I was alone with this bastard.

He still had a hand pressed over my nose and mouth. My eyes watered as my lungs screamed to suck in a full breath. It was like being underwater too long and suddenly panicking as your body realized it was nearly out of oxygen. “Got it?”

I nodded frantically, tears welling at the corners of my eyes.

“Good,” he said, a sickening smile audible in his tone. My stomach churned and my knees threatened to give way. “Now, put them down on the ground and don’t turn around. Then you can go. No crazy ideas, or—”

Something hard pressed into my side. A gun!

My heart hammered even more violently. I nodded again, even harder. I understand. Please, just let me go! Please…

The man released me and I nearly hit the ground. I forced my muscles to work—in slow motion—and bent to set my purse down on the ground. With trembling fingers, I reached up to remove the earrings I’d selected for the night. As I removed them, I silently said a prayer of thanks that I hadn’t worn my only pair of real diamonds—the only authentic piece of jewelry I’d kept back from the pawn shop. They were my grandmothers. I wouldn’t part with them under any circumstances.

I set the silver hoops on top of the purse and then fished the necklace from around my neck, cursing under my breath as it got snagged in my hair. My hair was cut into a long, angular bob and was shorter than I normally kept it, but still managed to get tangled and in the way all too often.

When the jewelry was sitting on my purse, I slowly rose from my bent position and squeezed my eyes tightly, hoping the mugger didn’t have any other plans in mind. A long duster concealed my short dress but it was fitted enough that my figure was on display for the monster lurking in the shadows. I just hoped he wasn’t interested. “That’s everything I have,” I said softly, my voice wavering. “Please, just let me go. I—I didn’t see your face. I—I won’t call the co—cops.”

“Good. It’s too bad I don’t have more time,” he said, chuckling under his breath.

I shuddered, knowing that I’d never forget the sound of the cruel laugh for the rest of my life.

“Go home, pretty little thing.”

My legs shook as I tottered forward, only managing two tiny steps. I opened my eyes again and hoped that the mouth of the alley wouldn’t be the last thing I’d ever see. Hopefully, this wasn’t a trick. From behind me, I heard him pick up my purse and jewelry and then he took off at a run in the opposite direction. I bolted, running as fast as I could go, and I didn’t stop until I reached the front of my apartment building.

“Shit!” I gasped, collapsing against the door. I didn’t have my keys. My phone. My wallet.

The asshole mugger had taken everything.

Hot tears spilled down my cheeks as I stood helplessly in front of my apartment building. The electric doorbells were posted but I didn’t know anyone else. I found the one that belonged to my neighbor and pressed it firmly.

“Hello? Who’s there?”

“Help! Please, I—” A sob tore free, cutting off my words. I swallowed hard and forced myself to get it together. “Please help me! I was just mugged and they took my keys. I live next door, in 92B. Can you buzz—”

The door unlatched with a loud click and a sob of relief broke free from my lips. “Thank you!”

I raced up the stairs and when I arrived at my floor, my neighbor—Ms. Lou, from the name on the doorbell panel—was standing in the hallway. “Are you okay, dear?” she asked, her eyes wide.

I nodded but then promptly broke down into tears.

She rushed toward me and wrapped an arm through mine, leading me into her apartment. “Oh, dear. Here, come inside and use my phone to report it to the police and I’ll put on some tea.”

I stared at the door to my own unit, thinking of Juniper in there, all alone. I sucked in another sob and nodded at Ms. Lou’s advice.

Two hours later, the police had been by to take a report and the building superintendent was on his way to let me into my apartment. Ms. Lou fed me cookies and tea until he arrived, chatting idly about her grandchildren who all lived in Minnesota.

The super arrived and I said goodnight to Ms. Lou, thanking her profusely for her help and the snack.

“Now, Ms. Westin, I’m afraid that I can’t get someone out to change the locks until tomorrow. Are you sure you don’t have anywhere else you can stay tonight?” the super, an older gentleman asked after letting me back into my unit.

I shook my head. “I don’t know anyone in the city. I’ve only been here a few months.”

He nodded. “Well, just be careful. If the mugger took your purse, they’ll have your keys.”

Fear struck my heart but I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to put on a brave face. “I’ll be all right.”

He nodded again, more reluctantly, but then shuffled out, closing the door firmly behind him.

Juniper raced to see me and as I gathered her into my arms, I started to cry all over again, still terrorized from the replay of the mugging racing through my mind.

“There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

* * * *

“I can’t believe there’s only four days until Christmas! There’s still so much to do!”

I nodded absently at my mother’s fussing. She’d been racing around the house all afternoon in what could only be described as a Christmas tizzy. She went on endlessly about how many packages she had left to wrap, the decorations that had yet to be excavated from the storage boxes in the garage, and the number of people coming over for dinner.

“Ruby? Are you even listening to me?”

I snapped to attention, looking up from the listing of job posts I’d been sifting through online from my perch at the large marble topped island in the middle of my parents’ kitchen. “I’m listening. Did you want me to wrap anything for you while you go out to the grocery store?”

She eyed me, acting like she was debating my offer, when in reality we both knew there was no way she’d let me anywhere near her precious wrapping station. I loved my mother dearly, but she could be a bit of a nut case. Case in point, she had an entire wrapping station set up inside one of the spare bedrooms upstairs. A table folded down like a murphy bed to provide a workspace and then bins and bins of paper, bows, and ribbons were settled behind. Sorted by color. Obviously.

After a moment, she waved her hand and smiled. “That’s okay, honey. I’ll get to it. Santa’s little helper might just need to pull an all-nighter.”

“I’ll bring the wine.”

She laughed. “Perfect. What have you been working on over there? You’re supposed to be on vacation!”

I lowered the lid of my laptop. “Well, you know, money never sleeps. Or something like that. My boss just had a few things he wanted me to look over.”

I force myself not to blink too rapidly. I felt like a complete idiot, but I hadn’t found a way to tell my parents about the lay-off. I’d meant to. But after telling them about the mugging—which I’d been forced to do since I needed an emergency copy of my driver’s license made two days before my flight left and they’d had to overnight me my birth certificate—they were on edge and I didn’t know if they could take any more bad news.

So, instead, I’d bring it up after Christmas.

But definitely before the boxes of my belongings arrived on a freight truck.

The morning after the mugging, the building super had come back to find me propped against the inside of my door, frying pan limply hanging from one hand, as I nodded off, chin against my chest. After he’d left the night before, I worked myself into a full-blown panic that the mugger would have my keys and license and would come looking for more things to steal. Or…to do other things. Unspeakable things. I’d hunkered down with a frying pan for defense and ended up crashing out there in the hallway when my body physically couldn’t stay awake another moment.

So when the super found me, I was at the end of a tether. Paranoid, sleep deprived, and stressed out beyond my capacity. He’d started a conversation as he went to work on changing the locks and my entire sob story bubbled out before I could rein the crazy back in. At one point in my ramblings about how terrible my life was, he offered me an escape route. Apparently, the building had a wait list stacked up, and he told me if I wanted—or needed—to leave before my lease was up, he’d be happy to pick from those candidates and sublet it out. He even said it was okay to leave behind my paltry furniture and he’d pay cash because he could fetch a higher price tag with a furnished apartment.

In a moment of insanity, I jumped at the deal, and by the time I was in a cab going to the airport less than a week later, my personal belongings were on a slow cross-country truck and should arrive sometime after Christmas. Right to my parents’ driveway.

Which meant I had less than a week to tell them I’d lost my job and given up my apartment and had less than a months’ worth of expenses saved in my bank account, nowhere to live, and no job prospects.

Yeah. That was going to be fun.

“Are you sure you’re all right, sweetheart?” my mother asked, drawing me from my thoughts.

It was the tenth time she’d asked since I’d arrived.

“I’m sure, Mom. Just lost in thought there for a minute. I’ll vacuum and get everything ready for Rick and fam. I’ll even do the little toilet paper triangles how you like them.”

“Already done,” she replied, grinning at me as she wandered from the kitchen. “But the vacuum sounds like a good idea. I haven’t gotten around to it yet today.”

A few minutes later, she said goodbye and went out to bravely face the hordes of last minute shoppers at the grocery store. I chuckled as I imagined it something like a scene from a zombie movie. Everyone scavenging and fighting over the last bag of potatoes or apple pie.

I finished my job application, a position in San Diego. It was only a couple of hours south of my parents’ house. Just far enough away I could have my own life—but close enough I could come visit for a weekend. And I could reconnect with some of the friends I’d lost touch with when I’d gone off to grad school in Chicago.

By the time I got the vacuum cord untangled and plugged in, the doorbell rang. I abandoned the vacuum cleaner, grinning ear-to-ear, more than ready to scoop up my new baby niece and shower her with kisses and all the little pink gifts I’d already purchased for her—thankfully before I’d gotten the axe—but when I pulled the door open, it wasn’t Rick and Vanessa waiting on the other side with little baby Kayla.

Apparently my parents had won some kind of “drop by visit from a movie star” because the Spartan on the front porch was tall, devilishly handsome, with a half-cocked smile that made my heart drop and my thighs clench at the slightest flicker of the naughty glance he gave me.

“Wait a minute. I know you!” I forced myself to stop staring at his impressive body and my eyes made their way back to his face at his comment. My cheeks warmed as I realized he caught me giving him the once—more like the thrice—over. He gave me a crooked smile. You’re Ruby Brace Face.”

My eyes went wide. “Max?”

My cheeks flushed even more at the sudden lurch in my stomach as I realized the hotter-than-sin man standing on my parents’ front porch was none other than my brother’s best friend, Steven “Max” Maxwell. And from the brief glimpse I’d gotten, he was all grown up!