AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jareth dug through the plastic tote he’d carried in and pulled out a snowglobe box. “What do we do with this? I thought we were decorating a tree.”
I moved closer, gently took the box from him, and gave him a pointed look. “I said decorate and that didn’t mean just the tree.”
His eyebrows drew together, and I wanted to laugh at the aggravation etched into the fast forming lines on his forehead. He opened his mouth, likely to tell me he didn’t have the time for such frivolity.
“You agreed,” I reminded him and carefully removed the snowglobe. One of the many I’d collected with my grandmother. When I dropped off the decorations I’d conveniently left out that they belonged to me.
I had so many at home I barely missed any of them. All except the snowglobes. I cherished each one. Yet it was more important for him to have something special to me in his home even if he didn’t know what it was.
I shook the globe, letting the snow gently fall back down over Santa’s cottage, with his sleigh packed full of toys and reindeer waiting outside. “Hey Jareth,” I bit my lip to hide my chuckle. “Do snowglobes ever get scared?”
His jaw tensed and I was about to continue when he asked after a resigned sigh. “I don’t know Hazel, do they?”
A grin now stretched across my face. “No, but occasionally they get shaken.”
I tilted the globe back and forth in my hand making the snow dance. At my movement his gaze shifted to watch the fluttering pieces of white. The motion under the glass was mesmerizing, and one of the reasons I’d loved snowglobes since I was a child. Everything inside the tiny glass object was perfect and safe.
“This is one of my favorites,” I said quietly, as I placed it on top of the fireplace mantel.
His head tilted as he silently regarded me.
“It reminds me of the innocence that children have and their belief in Santa.”
He took the next snowglobe box out of the bin, opened it, and handed it to me. “I thought you were going to say it reminded you of a time when you believed.”
I shrugged, my gaze firmly planted on the new scene in front of me, one with a happy family celebrating the holidays. It was kind of ironic this was the one he’d chosen. “I’m not sure I ever did believe.” I placed this one in the middle of the mantel. My finger traced over the glass. “You’ve never said anything, but I figure you know my family history.”
He took out another small box. His hands carefully opening up the top and sliding out the styrofoam that encased the final globe. “I know you were taken from your parents when you were six and sent to live with your grandmother.”
I nodded. When I talked about this part of my life, it was like I was a stranger looking in from the outside. There were days I could almost pretend it happened to someone else. “So you know about my parents.” I didn’t bother asking it as a question. Jareth was nothing if not thorough. He had to know how broken my home life had been.
I placed the last snowglobe on the end of the mantel.
“I do,” he said.
When he didn’t elaborate, I spun around, my heart in my throat. His face, chiseled to perfection, held that intense stare that told me he was considering his words carefully. I shifted my gaze to the floor, afraid of what he saw when he looked at me. Afraid that after he said the words out loud, he might treat me differently. Until now, I’d at least been able to pretend he didn’t know any of it.
Footsteps echoed in the room. I kept my gaze down until I saw his Ferragamo’s within view. His hand gently tucked a piece of my honey-blonde hair behind my ear. This tenderness was so unexpected it brought tears to my eyes. As he lightly traced my jaw from just under my ear to my chin, hope bloomed in my chest that this moment would mean something to us.
He tugged my chin up, so I had no other choice but to look into his dark black eyes. Ones that held a hint of compassion I wasn’t used to seeing. “I knew before I opened that file that what was in there wouldn’t matter and had no bearing on the job you held.”
I let out a shaky breath not able to tear my eyes from his even when his fingers tightened around my jaw.
“From the moment we met you were full of sunshine. It radiated from you and everything you touched.” He paused. “I also knew that your goodness and compassion far surpassed any I might still hold on to. That I couldn’t deal with them in the way I wanted only because it would hurt you too.”
I blinked, letting his words sink in. “Them? What did you do?” I whispered. My parents’ neglect shaped the person I was today. I had a childhood where I didn’t feel safe in my own home, never knew when I would be fed, and often slept curled in a ball inside a closet hiding behind whatever was in there to stay hidden from my parents and the low-lifes they allowed through the door.
I was self-aware enough to recognize that my need for lists and perfection combined with my ‘never say no’ attitude was a fail-safe in making sure people liked me. That if they liked me, they’d never toss me aside like my parents had. That I deserved their love and respect because I wasn’t any trouble.
He drew in a breath before responding as though his confession pained him. “I paid their debts and made sure their regular bookies and dealers wouldn’t supply them.”
“What?” I froze in place. Jareth’s words swirled around in my head. My eyes darted to this complicated man as I processed this un-Jareth like behavior. “How did I not know this?” I sputtered.
My parents only came around when they wanted money. It wasn’t until this moment I’d begun to realize why I’d seen less and less of them over the past three years. And not at all in the past twelve months.
Not waiting for him to answer my other question I jumped back in with the most important. “Why?”
“Someone had to look out for you.”
