Page 50 of The Christmas Eve Delivery

“But him, Lydia?”

I was confused. “What do you know about him that I don’t? What’s wrong with him?”

“Lydia!” Evie exclaimed. She was really upset, and I was getting even more confused.

“How could you? You’ve been sleeping with the man who wants to buy up Brookdale.”

I blinked a couple of times. “What? No. Evie, you must be confused. The man who wants to buy up Brookdale is middle-aged and shaves his head bald so that we don’t notice that he’sbalding.” I described the snake who had ambushed me that day the previous winter.

“No. Lydia, JM Carlisle, that’s who I’m talking about,” Evie said.

“Right, Jackson Carlisle. The guy you saw me with, his name is Miles, James Miles.”

“No. Lydia, the man I saw you with is JM Carlisle. You said his name was James Miles. I bet if we look him up, we’ll find out that JM stands for James Miles,” she said.

“Then who the hell is Jackson?” I practically cried. “I remember a bald man named Jackson who wanted to buy the Sweet Mountain Inn.”

“But we met with him, remember?” Evie asked.

I shook my head, more confused and very uncertain of what she was talking about. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I wanted to throw up, but I hadn’t had morning sickness for a couple of months. I put a hand protectively against my baby bump.

“I don’t remember meeting him,” I admitted.

“Oh,” Evie said suddenly. “You weren’t at that meeting.”

“What meeting?” I asked.

Evie pushed her glasses up and ran her hands over her face. “It was a meeting with the Historical Society and the mayor and the JM Carlisle people. He was there and so was that bald man, Jackson, who you seem to think is Carlisle. But no, it was him, the man I saw you with, tall with dark hair.”

Suddenly, I was very shaky. I reached out and grabbed hold of the shelves.

“That can’t be right,” I said. “The developer wants to tear down the Sweet Mountain Inn. Miles has been helping me every time he’s in town. He fixes stuff and helps with painting or cleaning up. He moved everything out of Aunt Ruth’s old room for the baby.”

I started crying. Earth shattering, devouring me whole tears streamed down my face. This couldn’t be happening. Miles? My Miles?

“You honestly didn’t know?” Evie asked.

I shook my head. I didn’t know. How didn’t I know? “I thought he might have worked with them after Mayor Dan mentioned that the developer suggested that Brookdale focus on an industry to bring into town.” I gasped for air. The lump forming in my throat made it hard to speak. “The last time I saw Miles, I had shown him the gazebo and talked—oh, my God, I talked like some kind of romantic fool about how the gazebo, if surrounded with roses, and the trellises on the library were perfect for wedding pictures, and how Brookdale was so pretty, and how I thought other people would see it that way if we could just get them here. And so when Dan mentioned that the developers suggested becoming a wedding destination, I stupidly thought Miles could possibly… Oh, my God, he lied to me.”

My mind jumped from one place to another, barely letting me finish the thought, let alone finish the sentence.

“He lied to me. He told me he wasn’t a spy for the JM Carlisle Group. And you’re telling me heisJM Carlisle. He’s the ultimate spy. He had me convinced that he was somebody else. Evie, what am I supposed to do now?”

“What do you want to do now?”

I curled over my stomach, wrapping my arms around the growing baby bump. This was his baby. JM Carlisle, that lying scum. But Miles was not that man. Miles was sweet and helpful and caring.

“Maybe they’re twins?” I asked in a desperate attempt to not be as stupid As I had been. I had let that man seduce me multiple times. He asked me about the inn as if he cared about it because I did. He was only trying to get information he could leverage against me, leverage against the town.

I reached out and grabbed onto Evie’s arms.

“Please tell me you haven’t let some handsome stranger from out of town seduce you.”

She laughed. “What are you talking about?”

“If he could do this to me, would he have sent someone else to try the same thing with you, to get the library?”

Evie patted the backs of my hands. “Nobody’s trying to seduce the library out from under me.”

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