Carolina Christmas Read online

  “I’m Nick DiCaprio,” he told her, his somber expression far from the jolly persona usually expected from Santa.

  Her mouth dropped as the irony struck her. “St. Nick?”

  His face relaxed and a faint smile touched his lips, then vanished. “Hardly. Trish had a last-minute emergency and, after a lot of sisterly persuasion and blackmail, I agreed to fill in for Santa. Trust me, no one would confuse me with any kind of saint.”

  The young woman beside him nudged him in the ribs. “Don’t be modest, Nicky. You have a few saintly traits.” She smiled at Amy, then gave her an oddly speculative look. “For one thing, Nicky is one of the last genuine good guys. You can’t tell it now, but he’s really handsome. Hot, even. And he stays in great shape.”

  Santa—rather Nick—frowned and cut her off before she could cover any more of his masculine attributes. “I think maybe she’s more interested in my professional qualifications, Trish.”

  “I already told her you’re an excellent policeman,” she said quickly, then turned to Amy. “He has lots of commendations. If anyone can find your son—”

  “Why don’t you tell me about your son,” he interrupted, his tone gruff. He still seemed uncomfortable, even though his sister’s unsolicited praise had turned professional. “Trish, let me borrow your clipboard and notepad.” He glanced back at Amy. “What’s your name?”

  “Amy Riley.”

  “And the boy’s name?”

  “Josh Riley.”

  “Age?”

  “He’s five.”

  “Height? Hair color?”

  Amy rattled off the statistics, growing more impatient by the second. She knew he needed the basic information but why weren’t they looking already? By now Josh could have been swept along to the other end of the mall.

  “What’s he wearing?”

  Increasingly exasperated, she tersely described the bright red jacket, jeans and Spiderman T-shirt Josh had put on that morning and the red and green scarf he had around his neck.

  “I know you think we’re wasting time, Mrs. Riley,” Nick said as if he’d read her mind. “But with thousands of kids running around the mall today, it’s best to know exactly what your son looks like. Giving a good description to the security staff will save a lot of time in the long run.”

  “I have a picture,” Amy said, hurriedly pulling his last school picture from her purse. It had been taken just a couple of months before they’d left Michigan. She choked up at the sight of Josh’s precious gaping smile and that untamed cowlick of brown hair that refused to stay put no matter how much gel she used to slick it down.

  Handing the picture to Nick, she said, “He needs a haircut now, but this was taken not too long ago.”

  “Cute kid,” Nick said, then turned to his sister. “Trish, how far does the sound from that PA system travel?”

  “It’s just for the immediate vicinity,” she told him. “Some of the department stores have their own. I could write up an announcement and ask them to make it ASAP.”

  “Do that, and we’ll give this one a try, in the meantime. Keep it simple, Trish. Ask Josh Riley to come to see Santa.” He glanced at Amy. “Think that would get his attention?”

  “Oh, yes,” Amy said eagerly. “He was so anxious to see you, I mean Santa. That’s why he took off in the first place. I wasn’t moving fast enough to suit him. He wanted to see you up close, then get in line.”

  “Have you checked the line?” he asked.

  “Front to back,” Amy confirmed. “He’s not in it. I just don’t understand why he would have wandered away.”

  “Because that’s what little boys do,” Nick offered. “They’re easily distracted and often far too fearless for their own good. Trish, let’s try the PA and see what happens, then do whatever you have to do to get the cooperation of the stores.”

  But even after several announcements, there was still no sign of Josh. Amy gazed up at Santa. Despite the beard and makeup designed to give him a jolly look, there was no mistaking the fact that his expression was troubled.

  “He really is lost, isn’t he?” she whispered, her voice choked.

  Nick nodded, but he took her hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t you dare lose it on me now, Mrs. Riley.”

  “Amy,” she told him.

  “Okay, Amy. Hang in there. We’re going to find your boy.”

  “Of course, you will,” Maylene added.

  It was the first time she’d spoken since Nick’s arrival. Amy knew she’d stayed close by in case she was needed, but she hadn’t intruded. Amy was grateful for her presence. With Maylene around, she didn’t feel quite so alone.

  “I believe I know your mother, Nick,” Maylene continued. “We belong to the same Red Hat Society.” She beamed at Amy. “Laura DiCaprio is always bragging about her son the policeman.” She smiled at Nick. “Your mother is very proud of you.”

  Nick seemed as surprised by that as he’d been put off by his sister’s glowing comments.

  “Weren’t you involved in a high-profile case just recently?” Maylene asked, her brow furrowing as she apparently tried to recall the details.

  “Let’s not get into that,” Nick said curtly.

  Maylene looked taken aback by his sharp tone, but then something must have come to her because she nodded. “I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right,” she said hurriedly. “I don’t know what I was thinking. You need to be concentrating on finding Josh.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Nick said, his sympathetic gaze pinned on Amy. “You okay?”

  “I’ll be a lot better when we find Josh.”

  “It won’t be much longer,” Nick reassured her. “I can see some of the security guys coming now. We want to get this search organized the right way. Once security fans out through the mall, it shouldn’t take any time at all.”

  Oddly enough, Amy believed him. There was something solid and reassuring about a detective who would be willing to take the time to play Santa in a mall filled with last-minute shoppers and hyperactive children. It said a lot about his character that he’d helped out his sister, when most men wouldn’t have wanted to be within a hundred miles of the mall today. Of course, he had mentioned something about Trish needing to blackmail him to get his cooperation, but still…

  With his warm, comforting hand wrapped around hers, Amy finally let herself start to relax. Nick might be a reluctant substitute for the real Santa Claus, but perhaps he was capable of performing at least one minor miracle and reuniting her with her little boy.

  * * *

  By the time Nick accepted the fact that Josh Riley was nowhere near Santa’s village, a dozen mall security officers including the less experienced extras hired during the holidays, had arrived. Familiar with the mall’s various wings, Nick hastily organized them into an efficient search party, showed them the picture of the boy, gave them a description of his clothes, and sent them to the areas of the mall most likely to draw an adventurous five-year-old.

  All the while, he was aware of Amy regarding him with her big, soulful eyes that were shadowed by fear. Tyler Hamilton’s mom had looked at him exactly like that, trusted him to bring back her boy. Nick shuddered at the memory of those harrowing hours, which Maylene Kinney had almost revealed at a most inopportune moment. Thank goodness the woman’s memory had temporarily failed her. When the incident had come back to her, she’d covered well. Meanwhile, Amy seemed too distracted to notice the byplay between them. He didn’t want her to start asking a lot of questions about why Nick had been in the news recently.

  None of them could afford to go back and think about that tragedy right now. Amy needed to believe in him. And he had to stay focused on this mom and this boy. He refused to consider the possibility that this was anything more than a missing child. Anything else took him down a road he couldn’t b
ring himself to travel.

  That didn’t mean that he didn’t understand the urgency of finding Josh before his mom freaked out completely or before the situation turned into something worse. Any location that attracted a lot of children also had the potential to draw those who preyed on them.

  With the security staff fanning out, he turned back to Amy.

  “Let me take the baby, okay? Then we can leave the stroller here with Trish,” he said lightly. The little sweetheart with her blond curls and pink bow in her hair immediately beamed at him in a way that made his heart ache.

  “Who’s this angel?” he asked, responding to that smile with one of his own.

  “Her name’s Emma,” Amy said. “She’s eleven months old. Are you sure you want to hold her? I can keep her.”

  “I don’t mind. I have a niece who’s not much older,” he told her.

  He gently patted the baby’s back till she settled down again. She felt good in his arms. There was something about holding an innocent baby, smelling that powdery scent, feeling that weight relax against his chest, that always affected him and made him yearn for something that he rarely acknowledged was missing from his life.

  Feeling the start of that yearning somewhere deep inside, he snapped his attention back to the current crisis.

  “Is there any store in the mall that your son especially likes?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “We’ve never been here before. We just moved to town a couple of weeks ago and we’re getting settled. I wasn’t even sure exactly where the mall was. I got lost getting here. We probably shouldn’t have come, but it’s been a family tradition to see Santa on Christmas Eve and I didn’t want to disappoint Josh. It’s hard enough on him since his dad’s back in Michigan.”

  “You’re divorced?” A glance at her ring finger confirmed the absence of a wedding band.

  She nodded and Nick’s sense of dread magnified.

  “You’re absolutely sure your husband’s in Michigan?” he asked, his voice filled with tension.

  Amy regarded him with confusion. “Of course. Why?”

  “What were the terms of custody?”

  “I have full custody. Josh will spend summers with his dad. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “And your husband agreed to that willingly?”

  “He was eager to have us leave,” Amy explained. “Why are you asking all these questions about my ex-husband? He has nothing to do with this.”

  Nick regarded her with a penetrating look. “Are you sure about that? He wouldn’t try to snatch Josh away from you?”

  “No. Never,” she said fiercely. “I told you, he was glad we were leaving, so he could move on with his new wife. I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at.”

  Nick recalled that Mitzi Hamilton hadn’t believed her ex-husband was capable of taking their son, either. They’d wasted precious time searching for a stranger, only to determine that Tyler had been taken by his own dad, a man intent on revenge. How the hell was Nick supposed to know if Amy Riley was telling him the truth about this situation?

  He looked into her eyes and tried to read her expression. She looked a bit confused, maybe even troubled by his questions, but she seemed totally sincere.

  “You’re absolutely certain your ex-husband wouldn’t change his mind, come looking for Josh?”

  “Not a chance,” Amy said. She pulled a cell phone from her purse. “I could call him, if you want.”

  “Do it,” Nick commanded. “At home, not on his cell phone.”

  “Why?”

  “If you call his cell phone, he could be anywhere. I want to know for a fact he’s in Michigan.”

  She looked shaken by his persistence, but she dialed. “Ned,” she said eventually. “It’s Amy.” Her gaze locked with Nick’s. “I…” Her voice trailed off, as if she’d suddenly realized that she needed an excuse for calling. Clearly she wasn’t anxious to tell her ex-husband the truth, that their son was missing. After a noticeable hesitation, she said, “I was just wondering if you’d sent a gift for Josh. Nothing’s come yet.”

  Nick sagged with relief at the evidence that Josh’s dad wasn’t involved in his disappearance. He barely listened to the rest of Amy’s brief conversation.

  When she’d hung up, she frowned at him. “Satisfied?”

  He nodded. “Sorry. I had to be sure, Amy.”

  “Something tells me I need to know why all of this mattered so much.”

  He shook his head. “Just covering all the bases.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” she said, studying him intently.

  Nick hated seeing the doubts in her eyes, but he knew there would only be more if he explained. “Just trust me, okay?”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?” she muttered wearily. She met his gaze. “Now what?”

  Nick tried to think like a five-year-old boy on the day before Christmas. “Would Josh go to a store to buy a present for his dad?”

  Amy frowned. “I don’t think so. We sent a present last week.”

  “What about you? Would he want to find a last-

  minute gift for you?”

  Her eyes, an unusual shade of amber, shimmered with unshed tears. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he has any money. All he wanted to do today was see Santa. He didn’t even want to waste time looking in the windows at the toy store. He was so upset this morning when I didn’t feel well and said we couldn’t come. I felt so awful about letting him down that I got dressed and came anyway.” The tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. “We should have stayed at home. I should have known something bad would happen.”

  “Come on now, Amy. You couldn’t predict something like that. Stop beating yourself up. This isn’t your fault.”

  “I just don’t understand why he didn’t come straight here. I swear to you that he’s never done anything like this before.”

  “With kids, it seems as if there’s a first time for everything,” Nick said. “My nieces and nephews are always catching their parents off guard.”

  “That’s what Maylene said.” She glanced around. “Where is she?” Regret clouded her eyes. “She must have left. I should have wished her a merry Christmas. She was so kind to me.”

  Nick regarded her with wonder. What kind of woman worried about wishing someone a merry Christmas in the middle of her own crisis? “I imagine she knew you had other things on your mind. And you know her name. You can always give her a call tonight and let her know Josh is home safe and sound.”

  “Do you think he will be?” she asked.

  “I know it,” he assured her, because he couldn’t very well tell her anything else. There would be time enough for a reality check if the boy didn’t turn up in the next few minutes.

  Suddenly her expression turned frantic again. “You don’t think he’d go outside and try to find the car, do you?”

  Nick sure as hell hoped not. The parking lot would make a kidnapping a thousand times easier, to say nothing of the other dangers from careless drivers trying to snag a parking place in their rush to finish up last-minute shopping. “What do you think?” he countered.

  “No,” she admitted. “He was totally focused on Santa, but where on earth could he be? He saw where you were.”

  “It’s one thing to see the whole Santa’s workshop thing from a distance,” Nick explained. “But the closer he got, probably all he could really see were people. That’s what happens with kids. They’re intrepid. They rush off and the next thing you know they’re lost in a sea of legs.”

  “I should have held on to him,” she lamented, looking miserable. “I tried. I told him not to let go of my hand.”

  “I’m sure you did,” he soothed. “Tell you what. Why don’t you and I take a walk?”

  She regarded him wi
th bemusement. “A walk? Why? He’ll come here first. I told you all he cares about is seeing Santa.”

  “Which is why we’re going for a walk,” Nick told her. “We’ll see if we can help him spot Santa a little more easily. When I came out here this morning, I was like some sort of kid-magnet walking through the mall. If Josh is anxious to see Santa, maybe he’ll see the commotion and find us.”

  “But what if he comes back here, thinking you’ll be in the workshop seeing kids?” she asked worriedly. “He was in such a rush to get in line.”

  “But he didn’t, did he? Which means something else caught his attention,” Nick suggested, then turned to his sister who’d rejoined them after making her announcements and contacting the stores in the mall to get them to make the same announcement. “Trish will watch for him, just in case, though, right, Trish?”

  “Of course, I will,” Trish said at once. “I’ll keep his picture with me, so he won’t be scared if I approach him. Nicky, you have your cell phone?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I’ll call you the second he shows up here,” Trish volunteered, giving Amy a sympathetic look.

  Nick studied his sister. She was a warm and generous woman and she seemed okay with his plan, but it had to be throwing her whole Santa photo-op thing off-kilter. As frantic as she’d been this morning over finding a Santa replacement, he couldn’t help wondering if she was holding back her own emotions over this turn of events.

  “Is me taking off for a little while longer going to be a problem?” he asked her.

  She looked at Amy’s pale face and immediately shook her head. “This is more important. I’ll manage. If anyone complains I’ll tell ’em Santa got stuck in the workshop elevator.”

  Nick grinned at her quick thinking. Her inventiveness was one of the traits that had made her perfect for this job.