Page 19 of Sinful Santa
“There he is. I’ll go fetch him,” she said, already half-jogging back down the sidewalk. Ophelia said something Tahlia didn’t catch fully, but she heard ‘children’ and ‘cocoa.’
She slowed as she approached Matt, eyeing him curiously. His hands were in his coat pockets and he was scowling into the shop’s window. When she peered around him to see what the object of his ire was, she found it was a pretty, whimsical little cuckoo clock with blue birds and a snow-capped, shingled roof.
“Don’t like cuckoo clocks?” she asked and he jumped, one hand flying to his heart.
“Shit, you scared me!”
“Sorry.” Tahlia pressed her lips together to hide her amused smile; imagine, her scaring a man that big. “I should remember people your age need to be careful.”
He blinked at her. “Was that…was that an old joke?”
“Maybe.” Tahlia grinned at him, her nose wrinkling just a little. “Why are you staring at that clock like you want it to burst into flames?”
“Is that how I looked?” he asked with a deeper scowl. “I didn’t realize…I actually like it."
The man was an enigma wrapped in an extremely complicated cipher.
“You like cuckoo clocks?” Tahlia’s smile softened and she gave the clock a closer look. “Itisnice.”
“It’s from my home country.” When Tahlia shook her head he explained. “My family’s heritage is there. I’ve only been once, when I was a kid,” he murmured and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat as he once again eyed the clock. “I’ve always wanted to go back.”
“Why haven’t you?” Tahlia ventured, though she had an inkling from the way his face clouded the reason wasn’t pleasant. At first, she didn’t think he was going to answer. A musclebeneath his eye twitched and he worked his jaw like he was chewing the world’s hardest piece of gum.
“I wanted to,” he finally admitted, “for my honeymoon. She didn’t. We ended up going to Southmead.”
“The casino city?” Tahlia knew Matt well enough now to also know he would have hated that. Southmead was noisy, bright, and swarming with equally bright and noisy people looking to get rich quick.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I didn’t want to argue. Figured we could go to your home country some other time, but the kids came along and then…” he shrugged. Tahlia nodded, understanding.
“Southmead is an awful place for a honeymoon. It must be lovely, to make such a beautiful thing like that clock.”
Matt lips twitched upward. “Yeah. From what I remember it’s beautiful. Mountains take up most of the north, but south is the lake country, where my family is from. I wanted to show her…” he trailed off with a shake of his head. “…eh, it doesn’t matter now. Come on. I can hear my mother chastise us from here.”
He walked off but Tahlia stared at the clock for a few seconds more, chewing her lip as she thought about what Matt had told her. His marriage sounded awful; it seemed like he had done all the compromising. Maybe his ex-wife would have a different version, but choosing Southmead over a tour of the beautiful country where your husband’s family is from? Didn’t strike Tahlia as right.
Of course, that could be her own family issues interpreting things in a certain way, but she thought she was able to keep a fairly clear head about others.
“Tahlia!” Ophelia beckoned.
“Coming!” she called, her feet moving before her head fully turned away from the clock. That cuckoo clock wasn’t staying in the shop window.
16
Quinn’s Fine Findswas the definition of a flea market. The sweet shop was piled from floor to ceiling with antiques, kitschy curios, knick knacks of all kinds, and obscure pop culture items from every decade. As Tahlia took everything in she was transported back to her foster care days. She’d spend hours rummaging through bins and racks at the local Goodwill, scavenging for the best things she could.
Sometimes she’d find something really nice and was able to sell it for a good bit of cash. Cash she would have to hide or risk it being used for something other than food.
She was glad those days were over.
“Why are we here, Tahlia?” Maddy asked, picking up a plastic cup printed with a cartoon bird flapping its wings erratically at a cartoon cat. “It’s smelly.”
“We’re shopping for your dad, remember? For Christmas?” Tahlia led the kids through the stacks of shelves toward where she thought the register was, clutching the cuckoo clock in her arms like a precious heirloom.
“But me and Maddy already have gifts for him,” Kaiden said. “Why’d you tell Daddy we didn’t?”
“Okay, I fibbed a little,” Tahlia admitted, stopping in the middle of the aisle to face her young wards. They peered at her with the same curious gaze. “I needed an excuse to come back here.”
“Why?”
