“So, you’re sayin’, every year you’re gonna go Christmas crazy?” he asked when Jonas hit the garage carrying the shiny red and green Christmas bag with a big gold, glitter star on it, satin ribbon handles and big tufts of gold, glittered tissue paper spiking out of it.

“Yes,” I answered.

He grinned then murmured, “Good to know.” Jonas jumped into the cab, slammed the door and Tate announced, “Just had the talk with Laurie, Bub, she gets this way at Christmas. Get ready, every December we’re gonna be neck deep in Christmas until the day we die. But, good news is, next year we’ll know to brace.”

Jonas chuckled then said, “Gotcha.”

I jabbed a finger at Tate and snapped, “Scrooge One!” And then twisted in my seat and snapped, “Scrooge Two!”

Jonas burst out laughing.

Tate put the SUV in reverse and backed out of the garage. He was turned in his seat to look out the back window and his smile was wide.

I crossed my arms on my chest, looked out the front window and harrumphed.

* * * * *

I walked out of the office at Bubba’s, turned and locked the door.

I’d just finished the schedule for the next three weeks and finished payroll as well as wrote out the Christmas bonus checks that I’d talked Tate and Krys into giving the staff. They weren’t huge but anything at Christmas was welcome.

A Christmas miracle had happened and Tate had talked Krys into letting Bubba take shifts while we were away. Krys had hired Izzy, a new bartender, and he was good but she also stayed open throughout Christmas, every day just like normal, and with Tate and me both gone, and ski season upon the mountains, she needed an extra pair of hands.

Not to mention, for Tate’s peace of mind, he wanted that extra pair of hands to be the big, bad Bubba.

Bubba had got a job working for Tate’s attorney, Nina Maxwell’s husband Holden Maxwell. It was construction, the job they were doing just finished and Maxwell was giving his crew until the New Year off.

Bubba was already burning the candle at both ends, working construction during the day, sitting on his Harley at three thirty waiting to follow Krys home at night if it wasn’t snowing, that was. If it was snowing or the roads weren’t clear, Bubba sat in a pickup truck that was more beat up even than Jim-Billy’s, but he sat in it every night Krys was on. Still, taking shifts through Christmas would probably seem like a break after the schedule he was keeping.

I walked down the hall and into the bar to see Krys standing inside the bar, bent over it, head close to Jim-Billy who looked, even though it wasn’t even two in the afternoon, like he was drunk as a skunk. She was murmuring to him and Jim-Billy was staring into his beer. This was the third day in a row this had happened.

This was also surprising. Jim-Billy liked his beer and he drank a lot of it but he was no drunk.

The bar was pretty empty, too early for people to be off the slopes and looking for a different kind of fun. It was also a weekday prior to a Christmas where the bar would not close. This meant, to give them some kind of break, I scheduled lots of time off for our staff and only Tate, Krys and me were on and Tate, I suspected, was only there because I was.

I walked around the bar to where Tate was standing, his h*ps against the back bar, his eyes on Krys and Jim-Billy.

I stopped where he was, got close and put my forearms on the bar. Tate saw me, pushed away and came in close, putting his forearms on either side of mine.

“What’s that all about?” I whispered with a barely there tilt of my head toward Krys and Jim-Billy.

“Christmas,” Tate replied.

“What?”

Tate’s eyes got funny and not in a good way before he explained, “Jim-Billy used to be married to a woman named Elise. Pretty thing, reminded me of Betty. Lots of energy, f**kin’ sweet. They were tight, always tight. Jim-Billy was a trucker but, he was in town, you wouldn’t see them apart.”

“And?” I prompted when he stopped and I did this even though I wasn’t certain, with the way his story had started, that I wanted to know.

“Christmas, ‘bout seven years back, faulty lights on the tree, tree caught fire, house caught fire, smoke detector didn’t go off and Elise was burned alive.”

Even though I wasn’t guessing Tate’s story was a jolly one full of Christmas cheer, this wasn’t what I expected to hear or wanted to hear. Not about anybody but especially not about Jim-Billy’s wife. Jim-Billy was a barfly but he was also a good guy straight to the core.

I closed my eyes tight and whispered, “Oh my God.”

“Yeah, babe,” Tate whispered back and I opened my eyes.

“Was Jim-Billy on the road?”

“Yep, Billy was on the road. Billy was also the guy who didn’t change the batteries in his smoke detector.” Tate shook his head and glanced at Jim-Billy before his eyes came back to me. “Blamed himself and then unraveled. Remember it. It was difficult to witness.”

Feeling my heart break, I peeked at Jim-Billy and Krys then looked back at Tate and said, “I bet.”

“He went off the rails. Took him a few years to get it out of his system. A few more to clean up his shit. He never went back to work. Managed somehow to get Disability and lives off that and the insurance payout.”

“Poor Jim-Billy,” I whispered and I did this with feeling.

“For obvious reasons, he ain’t good at Christmas. Krys takes care of him and I’m thinkin’ she agreed to Bubba takin’ shifts because Bubba is good with him. They’ll see him through.”

I looked at Jim-Billy and said, “Maybe I can, I don’t know…” My mind was shifting through all my fix-it strategies and coming up with zilch when my eyes went back to Tate and I tossed out a long shot. “Captain, I think maybe Nadine’s sweet on him.”

Tate shook his head. “Don’t go there.”

“Well, I don’t know if she is but she comes in a lot and she almost always sits with him. I can talk to her first, feel her out, see if –”

“Yeah, Ace, she’s into him. He ain’t much to look at but he’s a good guy and she saw his devotion to Elise. Her first husband was an ass**le, her second one a drunk and an ass**le and her third one a drunk ass**le who beat her. She knows Jim-Billy likes his beer but he can also hold it and he’s so far from an ass**le, it ain’t funny.”