Page 140 of The Holiday Heartbreaker

“I’m Shayna,” she said.

“Pastor Clarke’s girl, right?”

She looked a little surprised. “Yes. And you’re Zane Fox.”

He grinned. A warning, not a welcome. “Guilty as charged. On more than one count, in fact.”

“I know who you are,” she said. “I remember you getting arrested in front of the church.”

That stuck in his gut. He didn’t like it. He’d come to terms with a lot of the things in his life, from the indignant to the criminal, but he didn’t like she’d seen him bent over a cop car.

“You must have been knee high to a flea back then,” he said, stepping out of the doorway and sweeping his arm to the side so she’d go in.

“I was eight.”

“I see.”

“But I remember it. And I remember feeling so sorry...”

He cut her off. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Little Red. I did the crime.”

She seemed to ponder that. “I wondered.”

“I did. I held up a liquor store with my father. I held a gun the same as he did.”

“You were what...eighteen?”

He didn’t see the point in following her down that path. She was looking to absolve him because of his age. But that wasn’t an excuse. “When you were eight did you know bad men got arrested?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know stealing was wrong and robbing liquor stores was bad?”

“Yes,” she said.

“So there you have it. No excuses.”

She shrugged his words right off. “My dad is a pastor, right and wrong are kind of his thing. Wasn’t yours a career criminal?”

“He was. Emphasis on was. He’s dead now.”

She nodded slowly. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m mostly sorry for the worms he’s poisoning while he goes back to the dust. The man was toxic, through and through.”

If she was shocked by his crass statement, she didn’t show it. “I’ve heard about him.”

“I imagine in the same breath you heard about me.”

She didn’t deny it. “Do you have my backpack?”

“Just a second.”

He went out of the living room, back into the bedroom. There were only two rooms in the cabin. The living room and kitchen area, and the bedroom. And he took her backpack off the chair in the bedroom and walked back out into the tiny living space.

“Here you go, Little Red.”

“Thank you,” she said.

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