Read Online Lone Star Santa by Heather MacAllister - Free Book Online Page B

fairly popular in school, and had suffered no more than an expected amount of teenaged angst, so she wasn’t trying to escape anything or anyone. Still, she thought she had a talent for bringing characters to life.
    Or was she kidding herself?
    Maybe. Probably. But she had a feeling she wasn’t the only one.
    Kristen logged into yet another real estate site and stared at a screen with a whole lot of words and not any interesting pictures of properties. These names were beginning to sound familiar which meant she was due for a break. Too bad. No breaks when she was paying for access by the minute.
    Still reading, she stood up and stretched, stomped her feet and sat right back down again. She had definitely seen some of these names before. They’d been buried within the Russian nesting doll–like structure of companies that started with that personnel company that had queried about Mitch’s credit report.
    But was that something bad? It wasn’t illegal to have holding companies. And a credit query wasn’t illegal, either. And so what if some of those companies showed up more than once? And so what if Mitch’s partner’s name showed up, too? And so what if Mitch’s partner’s father’s construction company showed up, as well? Maybe Jeremy’s dad had thrown business their way. Nothing illegal about helping offspring. Look at Kristen.
    And yet she felt she was missing something. Which meant Mitch was missing something.
    Kristen added to her notes. She was using a cool fountain pen, which made the tedious work marginallybetter, and a yellow legal pad that turned the ink a funky greenish black. There was probably some software program for what she was doing, but Kristen was rusty on spreadsheets and now was not the time for a tutorial.
    She was so engrossed in her columns and arrows and patterns that she started when the door opened and her mother walked in.
    “You scared me!” A big drop of ink blotted Kristen’s notes.
    “I honked a couple of times.” Barbara hesitated.
    “Oh, don’t say it.”
    “What? That you should have locked the door?”
    “Yeah, that.”
    “Okay.” Her mother came to stand next to her and looked at the screen. “What have you got?”
    Kristen was using a tissue to soak up the ink blot. “Names and companies. I’m looking for a pattern.”
    “For what?”
    “I don’t know. It would help if I did. I mean, some of these companies are buying and selling property so fast. And what’s with all the different names? One guy has thirteen. Jeremy’s father has a bunch.”
    Her mother went still. “Really.”
    “Yeah—take a look while I wash the ink off my fingers.” Kristen curled them into claws around the tissue and hunched as she stood. “I’m merely an ink-stained wretch,” she said in a quavery voice while limping toward the bathroom. “Working for my daily crust of bread…”
    When she returned—was ink always that hard to wash off?—she found her mother sitting in front of thecomputer. She’d turned over the page with the inkblot and was writing on the one beneath. Writing a lot, Kristen noticed.
    “Turn around.”
    “Why?”
    “I’m typing in my password.”
    “Oh, Mom!”
    Barbara gave her a look—one Kristen had never seen before and one that had her turning around pronto.
    “What are you doing? Accessing some secret, legally iffy Web site you don’t want me to know about?” She tried to make it a joke, but it didn’t quite come off. Well, she’d never been a comedienne.
    “Yes,” her mother replied.
    Yes? “You’re kidding. Aren’t you? I was.”
    “No.”
    And that was the moment of Kristen’s parental epiphany. Her parents really had changed. Or more likely they’d shrugged off the parent role and were acting more like the people they were when they weren’t being her parents, if that made sense. Parents as people. What a concept.
    “That bastard.”
    Whoa, now she knew they’d changed. “Uh, Mom?” Kristen turned around.
    “I need to