All Through the Night: A Troubleshooter Christmas by Suzanne Brockmann Read Free Book Online Page A

beautiful bird’s eye maple floors refinished. “Sweetie, your shoes.”
    â€œIt wasn’t raining when we left.” Robin stepped out of the shoes in question and started pulling his sodden sweater over his head. “Jesus, my jeans are soaked.”
    â€œBy all means,” Jules said, laughing, “strip right in the foyer, in front of Dolphina.”
    â€œDolphina doesn’t mind,” Robin pointed out, shedding his pants as Jules looked at her and rolled his eyes in mock despair.
    The two men were like a living, breathing advertisement for the joy that came with finding true love. They brought a sense of togetherness and lighthearted fun to everything they did. Even when the sewer line in their new home had backed up into the first floor bathtubs, there had been an excessive amount of laughter echoing through the then-furniture-free rooms. Dolphina had gone home early that day, not wanting to bring her two bosses down with her teeth-clenchingly negative reaction to what Jules had insisted was “no biggie.”
    Only slightly less funny had been the bat colony that had come with the house. Yes,
colony.
As in forty bats—give or take a few dozen—living beneath the roof and in the walls of the 150-year-old dwelling.
    Occasionally, before Eddie the Bat Guy, bless his soul, had come and saved the day by putting one-way bat doors on every entrance and egress along the roofline, a flying rodent would wander out and wing its way through the humans-only part of the house, creating no small amount of hysteria—mostly from Dolphina—and a great deal of laughter.
    And the comedy show that was the master bathroom renovation? Starting with the hysterically funny broken pipe and the laugh-riot of a waterfall that went
through
the kitchen ceiling, and continuing to what was now day twenty-eight in what had been estimated as a four-day project—four days, at
most…
    â€œWe’re looking at it as an opportunity,” Jules had told Dolphina around day eighteen—when they’d given up on all hope of a quick repair. “We’re just going to tear everything out and create the master bath of our dreams. It’ll be done by the end of October—Thanksgiving at the very latest.”
    Although she supposed that, compared to getting shot at—and occasionally wounded as Jules had been while working for the FBI—sewage in the bathtub, thirty to forty bats in the attic, and a waterfall through the kitchen ceiling
was
no big deal.
    Robin, too, had followed Jules’s example and rolled with it all quite easily.
    Dolphina had worked for the actor back during the dark time she thought of as “Before Jules.” She adored Robin, truly she did, but back then his method of coping with the slightest amount of stress had included consuming copious amounts of alcohol. But he was clean and sober now, and working hard to stay that way.
    And she had never seen him so thoroughly, joyfully happy as he’d been these past few weeks, despite bats and bathroom crap and even bat crap.
    Robin was working here in Boston, acting in a high quality cable TV series that was critically acclaimed, living in this gorgeous, sunlit antique of a home, and planning his impending Christmas-season wedding with the man of his dreams.
    A man who probably wouldn’t mind a whit if Robin walked around in only his boxer shorts, 24/7. Jules was looking at Robin right now as if he could not believe his good luck.
    â€œDolph, grab a laundry basket, will you?” Robin asked.
    Um…
    The laundry room was off the kitchen, which was on the other side of the living room. If she opened that door…“Why don’t you run upstairs and get some clothes on?” she suggested. “I’ll take care of this.”
    But Jules had finally sat down on the rug in order to undo the laces of his boots. “Dagnabit, my fingers are frozen.”
    â€œIt’s starting to slush