Free A Christmas Kiss by Caroline Burnes Page A

retrial. Any other feelings will only get in the way of my job."
    "You can't help your heart, Joey." Jolene put her cup down and went to him. Her hand on his arm was light, comforting. "I've known you for four years. There was a time when I hoped you might look at me the way you look at her. Then I worried that you'd never look at any woman, that you'd chosen a life alone. You have feelings for this woman, and no matter what else you do, you shouldn't deny your heart.
    Love is a gift, Joey. Don't turn it aside when it's offered."
    He sipped his coffee. "Love is a gift only if it's returned. Cori is in love with a dead man."
    "There's a lot of guilt there. Perhaps she's begun to mistake guilt for love." Jolene hugged Joey lightly and stepped back. "Enough of a lecture, Joey Tio. You didn't come here for a lesson in love."
    "Sure enough, I did not," he answered, letting his speech fall into the natural patterns of his childhood. Growing up in New Iberia, he'd learned the easy rhythms of the French Acadians. Unlearning those patterns had been difficult, but a necessity to advance in the U.S. Marshals. At times, though, and with close friends and family, he allowed himself the luxury of drifting into the familiar ways. "Did you see anyone last night?"
    She heard the slight half note of hope. "No one. But dawn is breaking. We can look for tracks or some signs."
    Jolene was right. If Cori had seen something other than a shadow cast by the trees, there would be physical evidence.
    "I'll talk to her." Joey took his coffee and went into the den. He sat on the hassock facing Cori. "Can you tell me what you saw?"
    Without even looking up, Cori repeated the story exactly as it happened. As she talked, the sun rose, casting a slanting light into the room that touched the crystal ornaments on the Christmas tree and made them glitter. Jolene worked in the kitchen, humming audibly so that both Joey and Cori knew she was not listening.
    "He left again." Cori finally looked up, at the end of her tale. "Why did he leave? I tried to open the window but the lock was broken. I couldn't find the key to the door, but when I finally got it open and ran outside, he was gone. Why didn't he wait?"
    Joey touched her cheek with his palm and caught the tears in her lashes with his thumb. Very gently he brushed them away. He had no answers, and he felt an unpleasant ache in the region of his heart as he looked into her grief-stricken face. To be left over and over again by the one you loved, even if it was only in the imagination. It was a torture, and he felt pity for her and sorrow for himself. It was clear she loved Kit Wells, dead or alive. Whatever he felt for her, there was no soil for the seed to grow.
    "I'm going outside," he said. As he started to rise, he felt Cori's hand on his. She clung to his hand, and for a moment he felt his chest constrict with a band of hope. But when he looked down at her, he knew it was not him she reached for but Kit.
    "Find him, Joey. Please." Her voice broke.
    At a loss for words, Joey nodded as he disengaged his hand and walked out into the sunlight. How had he allowed himself to begin to care for Cori St. John? He had not planned it, had not even acknowledged it to himself until Jolene had forced the issue. But care for her he did. Whatever he could do for her, he would, though he knew his feelings for her were hopeless. Cori St. John was caught in a time warp. He might finally provide for her the evidence she needed to escape, but he wasn't certain she wanted to. Or had the strength to try.
    Pushing those thoughts aside, he went to the cottage and began to examine the ground, doing the job he did best. If only he could find evidence that someone had managed to tail him to Jolene's. And that someone was using the past in a very cruel way to push Cori over the brink into insanity— and to destroy her testimony. He had to believe that was the case, because the other alternative was that Cori had already slipped beyond