Mall You Need is Love: At the Mall Holiday Standalone Novella

  Mall You Need is Love

  At the Mall Holiday Standalone Novella

  Sarah Robinson

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

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  Excerpt from NUDES

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Excerpt from Misadventures in the Cage

  Chapter 1

  About the Author

  Also by Sarah Robinson

  Chapter One

  Amara

  Why am I not even surprised? Amara Hart scrunched up her nose as she stared at her ex-boyfriend's Tinder profile on her iPhone screen. She'd just been swiping to pass the time during her shift at work when she'd come across him, and now she found herself reading his bio with disgust.

  Aaron, 34: Looking for someone who can be discrete. DM for digits.

  She closed out of Tinder and opened Instagram, checking to make sure she hadn't completely lost her mind when she thought she'd seen he'd gotten married recently. Sure enough, when she got to his profile feed, there were tons of photos of him and a cute blonde wearing a giant engagement ring on their honeymoon. They'd literally gotten married last week, and he was already back on Tinder? Hell, it was Valentine's Day this weekend!

  Once a cheater, always a cheater. Man, she’d really dodged that bullet.

  Not that she really considered Aaron to be much of an outlier, though. After Aaron—and a slew of other short-term relationships that had all ended in heartbreak and disappointment—Amara had committed to staying single for the foreseeable future. Hell, maybe forever. Relationships were for people who were willing to settle for mediocre, and love was a Hallmark scam meant to pad the pockets of corporate bigwigs who preyed on lonely people on a commercialized holiday. Bah humbug, or whatever the Valentine's Day version of that was.

  At thirty-two years old, Amara knew she still had a lot of life left to live, though she couldn't help but feel like the dating years were behind her. Good riddance.

  "Frogger is on the fritz," Jean announced as she walked up to where Amara was standing, leaning against the cash-out counter. "Can you fix it again?"

  The young teenager was leaving for college in the fall and Amara wasn't sure what she was going to do without her. When Amara had first opened Rad Retro Arcade three years ago on the west end of Yule Heights Shopping Mall, she hadn't expected her small town in Michigan to respond so well to a room full of original video game consoles and tables. She had everything from Pac-Man to Donkey Kong and she valued her little business as a place to step back in time and leave all her current woes at the door, and thanks to being pleasantly single, she didn't have any woes to worry about right now.

  "Did you unplug it and then plug it back in?" Amara asked. That was always her first question, and half the time, it did solve the problem.

  Jean rolled her big blue eyes. "Yes. Twice. I think you have to do a system reset."

  "All right, all right," Amara agreed, heading over to find the Frogger machine by the SkeeBall ramps lining the back wall, currently packed with four different groups of teenagers all cheering one another on. She smiled at them, glad to see them here having fun with one another in person instead of on their cell phones ignoring the world from separate rooms. One of her regulars sank a high score ball, and she offered him a thumbs-up. "Good shot, Marco!"

  "Thanks, Mara!" the young boy called back, using her nickname. "Hey, can we get some cheese fries?"

  "Sure, kid." She had already asked the kitchen to prep an order when she'd seen them come in. Marco didn't often have enough money to play the games and order food, so usually he did one or the other. Sometimes she liked to make sure he was able to do both, so she'd send him some free fries from the restaurant down the hall. While she didn't have a kitchen of her own, she had worked out a partnership with The Big Cheese food truck parked in the courtyard, along with eight other food trucks that served all the mall patrons. They provided her customers with a small discount on food, and she let them use her storage room after-hours for supplies.

  After a few minutes of fiddling with the Frogger gaming system, she got it up and working again but had lost the last week of high scores data people had been accumulating. She frowned, hating when things like that happened, but thankful that it was only a week's worth. She glanced over at the Ms. Pac-Man game a few rows down, praying that never happened to her high score record there. In fact, she'd once been Michigan's highest scorer for the entire game and she’d been working on making a national title for herself before the championship league had been shut down for lack of funding…and interest.

  Story of her life.

  "It's working again," Mara told Jean as she returned to the counter. "Can you go check on the last two orders at The Big Cheese? They should be ready for pick up."

  Jean nodded, then pointed toward the receiver for the landline against the wall. "Yeah, but you just missed a call from the charmer next door. Don't worry, I got him to call his dogs off."

  Mara internally groaned. "Let me guess, he said the kids were being too loud and disturbing his fancy, rich customers?"

  She laughed, nodding her head. "I mean, not in those exact words, but I think that sums it up pretty well."

  "Go get the cheese fries." Amara ushered her off, chuckling. Complaints from the neighbors weren't entirely uncommon, especially when she'd first opened and had stolen half the mall’s customer base, who now spent hours in her arcade instead of purchasing trinkets from other mall vendors. But these days, the complaints all seemed to be coming from one place—Kisses and Karats Jewelry. She didn't know the store owner well, except for the rumors circulating around the other shop owners at the mall that he was a ladies’ man. In fact, the owner of Tequila Mockingbird on the south end swore he’d broken her heart when he didn’t returned her text messages after a date. One of the hairdressers at Barber Streisand said he saw him making out in the parking lot with the wife of the owner of Son of a Bun Bakery. All that to say, she had no interest in getting to know the reckless Casanova, nor was she interested in keeping her store quieter so that he could sell more diamonds to misguided saps who had too much money and not enough imagination.

  Her luck was short-lasting as the entire arcade suddenly went dark.

  "What the hell?" Amara stood up straighter, trying to adjust her eyes to the sudden blackout.

  "Hey, what's going on? The game turned off!" A kid from one end of the arcade complained loudly.

  "Sorry, folks. The power will be back on in a minute," Amara announced, quickly making her way to the back room to find the circuit breaker. The rest of the mall still looked completely illuminated; only her store had gone off. What the heck was happening? She'd never had an outage in here before.

  When she arrived at the circuit breaker, it took all her might to pry the metal panel apart, and when it released, it flew open so hard that it hit the wall behind it with a clang. She had never had to look in here before, and none of the switches in front of her were labeled as to where they went as she held her cell phone's flashlight up to the box. She examined it for a few seconds before deciding to just flip all of them and hope for the best.

  Thankfully, that seemed to do the trick.

  The back room lit up with the familiar fluorescent glare, and Amara sighed at the stack of video games that had toppled over against one wall. She went to p
ile them back up, not even sure why they'd been left here in the first place, when she realized the back door was ajar. Every store in the mall was connected by a small, dingy corridor that ran the length of the mall and allowed store owners to take out trash or receive shipments without walking it past the customers through the front door. Aside from the nightly trash run, she always kept the door locked, because the retro games she carried at her arcade were expensive, and she wasn't willing to see one of them walk off and end up on eBay for a collector to snatch up.

  Amara pulled the door firmly closed, ensuring the bolt settled into place. She turned the lock, frowning as she made a mental note to remind Jean to be more careful when coming and going. As she returned to the floor, she passed out extra tokens as a courtesy to the customers who'd lost their gaming streaks with the outage, and everyone was appeased and happily playing again within minutes.

  Jean walked in with a large tray full of cheese fries and other cheesy items. "Who ordered these again?"

  Amara handed her the order slip with the names and locations of the customers. "Hey, did you leave the back door open earlier? All the power went out in here."

  "Really?" Jean's brows lifted. "No, I haven't used the back door today."

  "It was definitely weird, but I was able to get it back on pretty quickly," she confirmed. "But yeah, just make sure you keep that door locked."

  The rest of the shift went by with no incident until Jean was putting on her jacket and getting ready to clock out. "Uh…Amara?"

  "What?" She turned to look at the young girl, then followed her gaze to the three police officers walking through the front entrance of the arcade. "Uh oh."

  "Should I stay?" Jean asked.

  "Did you commit a crime?" Amara joked. "No, go on home. I'll talk to them. I'm sure it's just a complaint from Kisses and Karats again."

  Jean rolled her eyes and gave a small chuckle before clocking out on the payroll app on her phone and then waving goodbye.

  "Can I help you folks?" Amara asked as the police officers reached the counter where she was standing.

  A tall man with a thick mustache tipped his hat to her. "Ma'am, we're here about the incident next door."

  "Okay, we told him that we'd try to be quieter, but we can't control our customers. They're not being rambunctious or disorderly or anything. They are just playing." Amara waved her hand toward the room, indicating her gaming customers. "He didn't need to call the police on us."

  A female officer standing to the mustachioed man's right frowned. "No, ma'am. This is about the robbery earlier today. We need to ask you a few questions."

  What? "Wait…there was a robbery?" Amara's mind immediately went to the open back door, and she quickly scanned the arcade, trying to see if she could spot anything missing. Her stomach sank at the idea of having to make a report to insurance. Her rates were already insanely high, and this was just going to skyrocket them. "What was taken?"

  "Not here, ma'am," the woman continued. "Next door. Over fifty thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry was stolen from the back room at Kisses and Karats earlier today. Were you not aware of that?"

  Her eyes went wide. "No! That's terrible. Is everyone okay?"

  Despite her feelings toward her obstinate neighbor, she would never wish something like that on any small business owner.

  The officer pulled out a notepad and a pen. "No one was injured, but we'd like to see any security footage you have from today, as well as anything suspicious you might have witnessed."

  "Oh, uhm…I don't actually have any security cameras in here. The mall does in the main hallways, so, you know, I figured why double up on that expense?" Heat rose to her face, and she wondered if her explanation sounded as stupid out loud as it did in her head. In trying to minimize her monthly expenses, that hadn't seemed like the most important thing to focus on, but now she was second-guessing that decision. "I did find the back door unlocked earlier, though. That was strange. It's never unlocked or left open, and my employee said she hadn't used it all day. Nothing was missing from our back room.” She frowned. “I guess I could double check more thoroughly."

  "Why don't you go do that," the officer agreed. "Officer Powell will come with you and we'll take a look around, if that’s okay."

  "Sure, help yourself." She gestured to the store floor. "Just don't try to beat my Ms. Pac Man record."

  Her joke fell flat as the hairy-lipped officer frowned at her. "We're working, ma'am."

  "Right, uh…okay, well, this way." Amara headed toward the back room as the female police officer followed close behind. The room was pretty small, and not exactly the picture of organization, but it was pretty easy to see that everything that was supposed to be there was there. "Nothing seems to be missing."

  "What happened there?" Officer Powell pointed to the circuit breaker that she'd left open to remind herself to test each switch later and label them.

  "Oh, the power went off earlier. I guess the fuse box blew, but I flipped the switches, and it came back on pretty quickly. I just need to label them, because that's never happened before."

  "The power went off?" The officer's brows raised, and she pulled out her notepad and a pen. "What time was this?"

  Of course, that was something that they would have wanted to know about. She couldn't believe she hadn't already mentioned that. "Uh, around one o'clock, I guess? Lunch time, for sure. But it was very quick."

  "I'm going to need you to write a statement about all of this." Officer Powell handed her a form. "Do you have a pen, or do you need one?"

  "I have one," Amara said, grabbing one off the back table. "Uh, sure. I'll just fill this out now."

  The officer stood stoically and watched as she began writing.

  She didn't have much to say, but she repeated the information she'd given the officers and then included her contact information before handing the form back to her. "Here you go."

  "The store owner next door would like to talk with you as well," the officer commented as they headed out of the back office.

  Great. She secretly groaned but gave a tight-lipped smile. "Sure thing."

  Dealing with the Hallmark playboy was the last thing she wanted to do today.

  Chapter Two

  Valentino

  "Mr. Rossi?" A female police officer walked through the front entrance of Kisses and Karats Jewelry store with a shorter woman tailing behind her.

  He looked up from his laptop, which was sitting out on the glass display case as he worked on filing a claim with insurance for today's robbery. Valentino Rossi had been the owner of this franchise location for six years, and never once had there been a break-in until today—three days before his biggest money-making day of the year, Valentine's Day.

  "Any news?" he asked the officer. "Insurance says I need a case number from you guys."

  Officer Powell handed him a document with the information he needed. "We're still conducting interviews of potential witnesses. This is Amara Hart, owner of Rad Retro Arcade next door."

  Val's eyes lifted to the woman standing slightly behind Officer Powell. He hadn't paid much attention to her before. The name was super familiar given how many times he'd called over there and asked her to keep the noise to a minimum, but not once had he actually met her in person, and she was nothing like who he'd pictured.

  Not that he'd really spent much time picturing her at all, but the woman in front of him was wearing a sleeveless sheath dress that stopped right above her knees and a flannel sweater was tied around her waist. She wore black and white sneakers, and her hair was multiple shades of pink, purple, and red streaking through platinum white, falling across her shoulders and down her back just enough to partially obstruct the colorful tattoos covering the upper half of one of her arms.

  "Amara Hart?" he asked again, then stepped out from behind the counter and extended a hand. "Uh, well, it's nice to finally meet you in person."

  "Is it?" She cocked her head to the side, a sly smile pulling at her lips.
>
  She didn't bother to take his hand, and he dropped it after an awkward moment. "Well, I'm sure you heard about what happened earlier today. The robbery and all that."

  "Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about that, but I'm not sure how I can be of much help," she replied. Despite the fact that she was at least a full foot shorter than him, she stood with so much power that he found himself stepping back slightly. "We're not missing anything over at the arcade, and aside from the power outage, everything has been pretty routine today."

  "The power went out?" His attention caught on that detail, and he turned to look at the officer. "Did we know this? Could that have turned off the security system at the back door?"

  "That's the current operating theory," the officer confirmed. "We think whoever broke in did so first to the arcade to shut off the power, and then easily made it inside after that was disabled."

  "Was your security system not on?" Valentino returned his gaze to the arcade owner who looked like a deer in headlights. He crossed his arms over his chest, the sleeves of his thick burgundy sweater pushed up on his forearms. Thanks to spending four days a week at the gym, he was proud of the muscles clearly prominent in his arms…and everywhere else. It gave him a formidable look that made him unapproachable to some and even more enticing to others. But he wasn't focused on that right now, because this woman had cost him a lot of business over the last year, and if she'd also been partially responsible for him losing almost his entire inventory, he might actually blow a gasket.

  "Uh, we don't have a security system. But there's a lock on the back door. I have the key right here." She held up a key hanging at the end of a lanyard around her neck. "We've never had an issue before this. This is a really safe area."