Harlequin Holiday Collection - Four Classic Seasonal Novellas

first night together. By Christmas Eve, she knew she’d tumbled the rest of the way.
    And the best of it was that they still had another week together! Clint had extended his leave right through until the fourth of January.
    Her head was full of plans for the coming week as they crunched through the snow to Dublin’s medieval Christ Church Cathedral for a Christmas Eve concert. The gray-stone church stood bathed in light, its square tower and turrets dusted with fresh white snow.
    “Vikings built the first church on this site around 1030,” Sophie told Clint, hugging his side for warmth. “The present structure is predominantly Norman. Henry II attended the Christmas service here in 1171.”
    The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled down at her. “Nothing like hobnobbing with the ghosts of royalty.”
    “The concert tonight will thrill you,” she promised, “but the real treat comes New Year’s Eve. Dubliners all gather outside the cathedral at midnight to hear the change ringers do their thing.”
    “Okay, I’ll bite. Who or what are change ringers?”
    “It a four-hundred-year-old society of bell ringers. They pull the ropes on sets of bells in mathematical patterns called ‘changes’.”
    Caught up in the history and her joy in the season, Sophie bubbled on happily. “Christ Church Cathedral has a total of nineteen bells used for change ringing—the greatest number in the world in one tower. The only time they ring all nineteen together is New Year’s Eve.”
    Eyes twinkling, she laid on the brogue. “T’be sure, it’s great craic . Y’ll have culchies and jackeens all rubbin’ shoulders ’n—”
    She broke off and came to a dead stop.
    “Clint! There it is! That’s the hat the man who hit me was wearing!”
    He jerked his chin up. Following her pointing finger, he zeroed in on a figure about fifty yards ahead.
    The slim, elegant woman wore a cape draped dramatically over one shoulder. A round-brimmed wool hat capped her head of shining auburn hair.
    “That’s probably a popular unisex-style hat,” he said, following the woman’s progress.
    “No, it’s not! I only caught a glimpse before I was attacked, but I remember now noticing that distinctive herringbone pattern. It’s not an Irish or English design. I’ve never seen it in any store in Dublin.”
    That was enough for Clint. Shoving through the crowd, he planted himself in front of the woman and reached into his back pocket for his credentials.
    “Excuse me, ma’am, I’m Special Agent Clint Walker with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’d like to ask you— Hey!”
    The woman whirled around and took off at a run. Thrusting through the crowd, she raced straight toward Sophie.
    Their glances met for no more than a second. Just long enough for a flash of surprised recognition to leap into the redhead’s eyes. Barely long enough for Sophie to thrust out her foot.

Chapter Eight
    When the redhead went down, Sophie’s dreams of a cozy Christmas snuggled in front of a fire with Clint bit the dust as well.
    She spent the rest of Christmas Eve at the police station, and most of Christmas day alone while Clint and Inspector Fitzgerald worked the case. Warrant in hand, they searched the woman’s hotel room and found not only the Newgrange stone, but a Bronze Age ax blade reported stolen some weeks ago from a museum in Cobh and a tiny clay fertility figure at least four thousand years old. As Clint had speculated, the thief—who used Nola Atwood as just one of her aliases—had been waiting for the heat to die down before attempting to smuggle her prizes out of Ireland.
    Faced with the evidence, Atwood admitted to a long history of well-planned and brilliantly executed heists. She also agreed to provide the FBI with information about her wealthy Miami-based client in exchange for immunity from prosecution. As a consequence, Clint rushed through an extradition request, and made travel arrangements to leave Ireland late Christmas afternoon.
    “I need to hustle her back to the States and into interrogation before Mendoza hears she’s been arrested,” he told Sophie during a hurried farewell at her flat. “If nothing else, we’ll get the bastard on at least three or four felony counts of commissioning and financing traffic in stolen goods. I want more, though.” His voice vibrated with raw intensity. “Much more.”
    If Sophie had needed proof of how much his job meant to him, he’d just handed it