Carolyn Greene - Her Mistletoe Man

Brooke giggled, but Ruth wasn’t amused. “You two may think it’s funny, but something about that guy bugs me.” He seemed to her like a man on a quest, but she wasn’t sure what he wanted from them. She glanced up the stairs, wondering what would motivate a perfect stranger to insinuate himself into their home for the holidays. Well, the others might be willing to swallow the notion that he was a family member, but Ruth knew otherwise. And she was determined to get to the bottom of it. “I’m going up there and see exactly what he’s doing.”

Vivian laughed. “Probably changing his clothes, if you’re lucky.”

Ignoring the laughter of her sister and young cousin, Ruth mounted the steps, taking care to avoid the creaky ones. If Tucker Maddock was truly up to no good, she doubted he’d be so careless as to let her catch him at it. Even so, the least she could do was confront him about his identity and his intentions. She hadn’t wanted to do so downstairs in front of the others, partly to keep from putting him on the spot in case he actually was related in a way she had overlooked, and partly because she knew her gullible family would rise to his defense even if he was an imposter as she suspected. After he’d charmed his way into her family members’ hearts, joking and laughing while decorating the tree, they were convinced he could do no wrong.

As she climbed the last few steps to the third floor—the same level her room was on—she heard what sounded like something being scraped across the floor. Quietly, she made her way down the hall, glancing at the room numbers that remained from the house’s brief bed-and-breakfast days. Ruth tapped lightly at the door of number nine. When no answer came, she turned the knob and peeked inside.

The room was empty.

Closing the door, Ruth went to her own room and checked to see if anything had been disturbed, but it looked the same as she’d left it earlier today. A glance around the empty hallway revealed that the attic door stood ajar several inches.

Ruth walked closer and saw that the attic light was on. Then she heard the sound again…a bump and a dragging scrape. Somebody was up there, and she had a good idea who it might be.

Moving quietly up the rickety stairs, she was at once shocked and yet not quite surprised to find their dark-haired houseguest running his hands over the loose floorboards where Aunt Shirley’s trunk once sat. It was obvious he was searching for something.

Ruth placed her hands on her hips, enraged by the stranger’s audacity.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

It was common knowledge in Willow Glen that Aunt Shirley had recently bought a new car with moldy money—cash that had apparently been buried somewhere on the property and retrieved when her dotty aunt was ready to make her purchase. Judging from the way Tucker had moved stuff around up here, it appeared as though he had heard about Aunt Shirley’s odd banking habits and decided to make a withdrawal for himself. Just as she had suspected, he was not only a fraud, but an opportunist as well.

Tucker stood abruptly and cracked his head against the low attic ceiling. Rubbing the tender spot, he rumpled his hair, which made him look even more devilish.

Humph! The others might be swayed by his charm and good looks, but Ruth had learned to develop an immunity to such virtues, especially after Aunt Shirley had been taken to the cleaners by the fly-by-night roofing repairman and the so-called investment counselor. Besides, she had seen it all and heard it all, from adorable fourth-grade boys and girls who were adept at manipulating their parents and other adults into giving them what they wanted.

Ruth had a sixth sense about knowing when her students were up to mischief, but it didn’t take a psychic to see that something was definitely off-kilter here.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, putting a hand up to the exposed beam he’d cracked his head against a moment before. He seemed to consider something for a moment, then asked, “Do you work here?”

“Do I work here? What kind of question is that?” Sure, she was working—especially this year as she sought to relieve her aunt of the burden of being hostess to so many houseguests. But he had asked as if he thought she were being paid to do her labors of love. Ruth climbed the remaining steps into the attic, but she didn’t have to stoop as he did. “What I want to know is what you’re looking for.”

“Well, it’s a long story, actually.” Tucker wondered if he should go into the drawn-out course of events that had brought him here. When she hollered downstairs for Aunt Shirley to call the sheriff, he decided it would be prudent to start explaining. He paused, wondering how to begin.

“I’m waiting.” Her toe tapped the rough board beneath her feet. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and he tried not to notice how that simple action enhanced an already admirable feature of hers.

Before he could begin, Eldon came galloping up the stairs with Brooke hot on his heels. “Stay behind me, Brooke. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

He brandished a small pearl-handled pistol and scanned the close confines of the attic, his gaze skipping past Ruth and Tucker. He turned his back to Tucker, who was grateful to be out of range of the waving pistol, and faced the woman who had called for help.

“What’s the matter, Ruthie? Did you see a mouse again?”

“No, I saw a rat,” she said, pointing past Eldon, “and he’s standing right behind you.”

Brooke did an about-face and returned to the stairs. “Gross! I’m outta here.”

Curious onlookers blocked her retreat. Tucker peered down the stairs as Eldon aimed the gun at Aunt Shirley’s trunk. Sure enough, there in the hall stood Aunt Shirley and the rest of the guests.

Ruth tugged Eldon’s sleeve in an effort to regain his attention. “I wasn’t talking about a rat rat. I was referring to a person rat.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”

Once again, Eldon looked past Tucker as he searched for an intruder.

“Him!” Ruth stepped closer and patted Tucker’s arm. “This rat.”

Obviously confused now, Eldon stuffed the gun into his waistband. “Cousin Tucker? What’d he do?”

“Good grief, Ruth,” piped in her older sister, “if you go with a guy to the attic, you really can’t complain if he gets fresh with you.”

Ruth sighed a huge breath of exasperation. “He didn’t get fresh.”

“Sounds like they need some mesh,” said Boris from his vantage point in the hall.

Aunt Shirley patted his hand. “Turn up your hearing aid, dear.”

By now, Ruth’s face had turned a becoming shade of pink. Tucker wasn’t sure whether that was from the cold or from her anger at having found him here. He rather liked Vivian’s interpretation of the current scenario and briefly wondered if Ruth would consider an invitation to come back up here with him later. He looked over at her and saw that the sleepy expression in her eyes had been replaced by barely suppressed fury. Maybe now wouldn’t be a good time to suggest such a rendezvous.

“I didn’t come with him to the attic, I found him here.” She pointed an accusing finger at Tucker’s chest. “This man is an imposter. He came here, pretending to be a part of the family, just so he could rip us off.”

“Family? What family?” Tucker took a step toward Ruth, ducking to avoid the noggin-hazard beam. When Eldon touched a hand to his waistband, Tucker figured he’d better start talking. Fast. “Look, I can explain everything.”

“Great,” said Ruth. “Then you can begin by explaining exactly where you fit into the Babcock family reunion.”

“I don’t know who the Babcocks are, or anything about their family reunion. I just came here for some peace and quiet.”

“Ha!” Ruth whirled to face the others. “See, I told you he wasn’t our cousin.”

“You’re right,” said Vivian. “If he knew anything at all about our family, he wouldn’t have come here for peace and quiet.”

Tucker scratched his head and took a seat on the old trunk. “You folks are all family?” At their affirmative nods, he asked, “Then what are you doing here at a bed-and-breakfast inn?”

The fiercely determined expression on Ruth’s face dissolved into confusion. “This place hasn’t been a bed-and-breakfast inn for almost eight years.”

“But the Newlands, they sold it…”

“Right,” said Ruth, “and when the inn went broke three years later, Aunt Shirley bought it. We’ve been having our Christmas reunions here ever since.”

“You mean you’re not our cousin after all?” Vivian asked. Ruth could have sworn she saw an interested gleam in her sister’s eyes.

Tucker shook his head. Now that Chris Newland and his parents were gone… “I don’t have any family.”

“And you’re spending Christmas alone?” Ruth asked, temporarily forgetting about his being a potential thief as she imagined him spending the holiday by himself.

“That was the plan.” He rose from his perch on the trunk. “I’m really sorry about crashing your reunion. I’ll go gather my things and get out of your way.”

Aunt Shirley hollered up into the attic. “Where will you go? The motels around here must be full.”

He leaned forward to peer down at the speaker. “Yes, ma’am, they are. I’ll just go back to my apartment in the city.”

“And who would you spend Christmas with?” Ruth asked.

Tucker shrugged. “I’ll probably just go to work at the office. It’s amazing how much you can get done when no one else is around.”

“You’re not going to spend Christmas alone.” Aunt Shirley’s words were an order. “You’re going to stay right here and celebrate the season with us.”

“That’s very kind of you, ma’am, but I really don’t belong here.”

Ruth rubbed her arms to ward off the chill as she forced herself to remember that this stranger was an unwanted intruder. “You’re right about that. And you still haven’t explained why you were snooping through Aunt Shirley’s attic.”

“We’re letting all the heat from the house up here,” he said. “Why don’t we go downstairs, and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.”

As the family members moved down the stairs, Ruth said to Eldon, “I think you should frisk him before he leaves this attic. There’s no telling what he may have found before I caught him.”

Tucker couldn’t blame her for feeling this way. He’d be suspicious, too, if some stranger showed up on his doorstep and rummaged through his belongings.

“I ain’t friskin’ Cousin Tucker!”

Downstairs in the parlor, ten pairs of eyes studied the stranger who sat in their midst. They had just finished telling him about their initial assumption that he was a long-lost cousin. Now they were waiting for his explanation.

They were nice people. He doubted he’d be as understanding if someone had infiltrated his home. Ruth’s reaction was closer to what his own would be, except that she didn’t have the strength to pick him up and literally throw him out of the house. Instead, she sat there throwing daggers with her eyes. She was skeptical, and he didn’t blame her. He plucked a strand of tinsel off the tree and toyed with it as he collected his thoughts.

“I started coming to Willow Glen Plantation when I was ten,” he began. In the next few minutes, he explained how he’d come to consider the Newlands his family and this big old house his own. He’d thought that by returning here he could relive some happy memories.