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CHAPTER ONE
Christmas music blared overhead, and Gabriel Tilki sighed, pulling a sleek gray stingray from the bin of stuffed animals in the airport gift shop. He added it to his pile of assorted, overpriced things on the counter. Hopefully, his employees at the hotel would like these silly little gifts. The storm was making an already unbearable holiday weekend even worse, and they could all use some cheer that didn’t come from the never-ending loop of sugary Christmas songs assaulting them from every direction.
“Do you have bras?” A silky voice cut through the din of grumpy, grounded travelers clearing the shelves of everything they could carry.
He shook his head at the odd question and picked up a snow globe from a glass display. He stared into it, a stone in his stomach. There was a black family inside. Parents. Children, putting haphazard decorations on a spindly, crooked tree, boxes of ornaments overflowing behind them, and a kitten batting at a droopy pine bough.
The usual rush of melancholy that now came with the season tightened around him, and he put it back on the shelf.
“Is there any chance that you’ve got, say… underwear at least?” That same smooth voice asked. “I’ll take anything at this point. Boxers even.”
“Afraid not,” a perkily uninterested worker responded. “But there’s some leggings and sweaters on the rack back there if you wanna take a look.”
The silky voice murmured a thanks, and Gabriel found himself searching through the throng for the owner. Maybe it had just been far too long since he’d felt a pique of interest in anyone, but that voice had sent a satisfying shiver through him, like the first sip of hot cocoa on an icy day. Sweet and decadent and warm. He wanted to see who it belonged to.
It didn’t belong to the little old white ladies sifting through the scented soaps. Nor the exhausted-looking woman in a hijab, pulling on a huge floral rolling suitcase while she also wrestled two boisterous children from the porcelain knick knacks and the “Detroit Strong” t-shirts.
He left his stuff on the counter and wove his way between the customers. At first all he could see was a head full of intricate hair. He wasn’t well-versed in the hairstyles of black women, but he was sure they were called locs or something. The night manager at the hotel had the same style of hair. Only this woman’s was decorated with little gold hoops and strands of thread here and there, like golden tinsel. She was holding up a pair of green leggings with grinning snowmen on the knees.
“How desperate am I?” she said to no one.
He really should have just walked on, his curiosity reasonably assuaged, but he stepped forward instead. “No idea, but I think the shop on the other side of the airport has a better selection of clothes,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound like a creep.
A pair of warm amber eyes slid his way. “Are you saying that this isn’t the perfect ensemble?” She held up the ugly leggings and a matching sweater. She pressed something on the sweater and the whole front lit up, red and green flashing like a gaudy holiday traffic light, illuminating her dark skin and the simple gold hoop in her nose.
“I take it back. You’re not gonna do better than that.”
She snorted. “Don’t make me laugh. I’m mad at the world.”
He ran his hands over the hangers, making them clack. He met people all day every day working in security. Drunk. Sober. Belligerent. Kind. People didn’t make him nervous. But for some reason, this woman did. “My apologies,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to make your day better.”
“Thank you for understanding,” she said, a bright smile winking in and out of existence, along with a pair of dimples that mesmerized him.
He stared down at the clothes in front of him and plucked an outfit out and held it up. “This is...not as bad.”
“Is that a onesie?” She rounded the rack and took it from him. At 6’3”, he was used to women being a lot shorter than he was, but she was fairly tall, coming up to his chin. But she was also bundled up in a bulky winter coat, so everything else was a mystery.
“It has a hood,” he said, as if that mattered.
“They lost my luggage, so....” She studied the red and white candy cane striped onesie. “It’s better than the snowmen,” she declared, tossing it over her arm. “It’s almost my size, and I’ve heard horizontal stripes are very flattering.” She grabbed another onesie from the rack and eyed his fur-lined leather jacket. “Is your flight delayed too?”
“Oh, no. I work security at the hotel across the street. I’m just picking up some stuff.”
“Don’t you have a gift shop there?”
“Not right now. They’re doing renovations.”
She grabbed a few other things from the shelf beside the clothing and turned toward the counter. “No chance that you’ve got a room available at that hotel, is there?”
“Not a one,” he said. “With the renovations, we’ve got a bunch of rooms unavailable on the garden level, so we were already booked solid before the flights were even grounded.”
“Worth a shot,” she said with a sigh. “Fuck this storm and fuck the holidays.”
“Agreed.”
He followed her to the line, which was snaking nearly out the door. He gathered up his pile of cheesy gifts and she glanced back at it. “Aw, is that a manta ray?”
“Stingray.”
