Free Together for Christmas by Lisa Plumley Page B

the force of her friends’ insistence, Kristen grabbed her purse. She slung it over her shoulder, offered another grateful smile, then bolted for the back door. She only hoped she could make it to her apartment—tucked upstairs above a shoe store-turned-coffee shop a few blocks away downtown—before the bank rep caught up with her.

Chapter 7
    Main Street, Kismet, Michigan
Christmas Takeover: Day 8½
     
    She couldn’t do it, Kristen realized a block and a half away. Because although she’d successfully ditched the bank rep who’d come to her diner, there was an unfamiliar car parked outside the coffee shop . . . and the suit-wearing guy loitering conspicuously next to it with his eagle-eyed gaze trained on the stairs leading to her apartment didn’t look like any espresso aficionado she’d ever met. He hadn’t even bothered to bolster his cover by buying a peppermint mocha to go. The two bank reps were very, very obviously working in tandem to flush her out.
    Why? Why? Kristen couldn’t help wailing to herself as she spied her theoretical banker/stalker. Why couldn’t the bank at least wait until after the holidays to hound her for her supposedly overdue mortgage payments? Especially since they weren’t even overdue?
    Caught, she wheeled to a stop, unsure what to do next.
    People passed by her on the sidewalk, most of them still out Christmas shopping and all of them bundled against the wintery weather. A few snowflakes drifted down from the steely skies, lightly piling up on the holiday lights strung across the streets and on the municipal gold and silver decorations affixed to the old-fashioned lampposts. The city’s official holiday music soundtrack—which included several Christmas songs from Heather’s new CD—filtered vaguely into Kristen’s hearing, but most of her attention was fixed on that menacing banker.
    She couldn’t go home. Not right now.
    She couldn’t stay near the bustling shops and other restaurants, either. It was only a matter of time before someone recognized her and called attention to her position.
    Kristen imagined someone calling out her name, pictured the Repo Man/Banker swiveling his head toward her like evil Agent Smith in The Matrix, saw herself trying to run away and instead being caught. Maybe even handcuffed and hauled into custody.
    She didn’t know if it was a crime to evade bankers. But if she couldn’t afford a lawyer to defend her record of spotless (if difficult-to-make) mortgage payments, she definitely couldn’t afford a lawyer to bail her out of jail.
    Decisively, Kristen turned. Clutching her purse, she strode in the opposite direction. For now, she just had to get away.
    A dark-colored Subaru pulled up beside her with its engine idling. Kristen darted a glance at it, then walked faster.
    The Subaru’s window rolled down with an electronic hum.
    “Hey!” a man shouted. “Kristen!”
    Oh God . There were three of them! How had she made the bank’s most-wanted list? She was just a girl-next-door turned struggling diner owner! She wasn’t exactly a criminal.
    The car crept forward, keeping pace with her. “Stop!”
    She couldn’t. Robotically, she kept walking. Maybe if she pretended to be engrossed in window shopping . . .
    “I don’t want a Sherpa. I want you!” the man called out.
    A Sherpa? Struck by that, Kristen stopped.
    Disbelievingly, she glanced to the side.
    Casey Jackson sat behind the wheel of that Subaru, idling beside a festive, candy-cane-style decorated fire hydrant, staring through the open passenger-side window at her.
    When he saw her looking back at him, he grinned.
    Idiotically, that grin of his felt completely comforting.
    “You look like you’re in a hurry,” he observed.
    She gestured up the street. “Sort of.”
    Another too-observant glance. “Is something wrong?”
    Yes . On the verge of admitting it, she gazed across the distance separating them. She caught the expression of concern on his face and longed to spill