by Janet Dailey
“Picking up my dog,” he called back. “I’m not sure he wants to leave, though. Tough luck. I have things to do and places to go. You know how it is.”
It sounded like he expected the newcomer to understand what he meant. Annie’s jealousy—she had to admit to it—notched up.
“Got it. By the way, thanks for the ride the other day,” the redhead added with a wink. “Bye, Rowdy!”
Okay. That was proof enough. The redhead had to have been the person who’d opened the truck door when Annie had spotted the flash of pink from up on the mountain.
Stone nodded and rolled up the window before he drove away.
“Funny how she knew the dog’s name when you didn’t say it and he didn’t have a tag.”
A minute or so passed. She didn’t like how she felt or how she was acting, but she couldn’t help the reaction. Some people have real problems, she reminded herself sternly.
“Let me guess,” Stone finally spoke. “You don’t think it’s funny at all. You’d like to hit me with a brick, but we could end up in a ditch.”
“That’s about right. Also, I don’t have a brick. Remind me to bring one next time I help you find your poor little lost doggy.”
Rowdy gave her a soulful look. Annie half thought that Stone had put him up to this. Was it possible to train a dog to get lost? More to the point, could a man be trained to do the same thing?
“Nice girls, don’t you think?”
That was at the top of the list of Questions She Had No Intention of Ever Answering.
“I’m glad he found them. Or vice versa.” She could feel his quick sideways look at her. “Something on your mind?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“I take it you didn’t know any of them.”
She gave an indifferent shrug. “They’re not from Velde.”
He pondered that for a moment. “Probably just passing through. Like me.”
Annie had no comment.
“Okay, spit it out. Something is bugging you.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because you’re obviously upset.”
“Aww. Next you’ll be telling me that you care.”
Stone cleared his throat. But he didn’t say anything more. The tension between them stretched to the breaking point.
“Did I marry you and not remember it?” he asked in a low voice. “Because if I didn’t, I believe I have the right to do what I want.”
Annie stared straight ahead, fuming. “Who is that redhead?”
“I think her name is Bunny.”
“You think.” Annie didn’t need one more reason to be suspicious. Of course, he didn’t need to know a redhead’s full name to spend an afternoon with her. Or even her real name, which probably wasn’t Bunny.
“Her car broke down out at the subdivision. I gave her a lift to the service station. So what?”
He slowed down at an intersection of several country roads. They were in the middle of nowhere, but Annie reached for the door handle. She heard a click as he pushed a button that locked it.
“Don’t. It’s much too cold to walk by the side of the road. I’ll drop you off wherever you like.”
“In town. Anywhere on Main Street.”
“Will do.”
A headache-inducing silence prevailed until he pulled up into the first parking spot he saw. Annie got out and slammed the door hard enough to hurt her own eardrums. It rankled the hell out of her when she saw his handsome face through the windshield. She bent down to scoop up a handful of snow, which she packed into a ball and threw at him.
Stone turned on the wipers for a few seconds and grinned at her.
There hadn’t been any car out at the subdivision. Just his goddamned truck. The worst of it was, there wasn’t anyone she could tell about him being a heel. Even Darla would think she was stupid for believing him in the first place.
Annie headed away from his truck, not looking when she heard him drive past. She wasn’t sure where she wanted to go or what she ought to do with the rest of her day.
A misspelled cardboard sign outside the church social hall caught her eye.
XMAS PAJUNT REEHERSUL AT 4.
Annie looked at her watch. It was 3:30. She walked up to the sign and read the fine print.
P.S. WE NEED HEY FOR THE MANGER.
It looked like a kid had done the lettering. Annie’s bad mood started to fizzle out. She’d missed the pageant when she’d been working in Aspen and Vail. Not this year. And she wasn’t just going to watch it. She was going to volunteer. Right now. There were several bales of hay in the Bennetts’ barn that she could bring over later.
Just thinking about Stone’s self-satisfied grin made her do an especially good job of stomping the snow off her boots in the entryway to the social hall. She was somewhat calmer when she went in.
Kids were running around everywhere, doing more laughing than rehearsing. The chorus director, Opal Lawson, was trying to keep order, without too much success.
“Need some help?”
“Annie, how nice to see you! Yes. If you could get the shepherds on stage, that would be great.”
“Which ones are they?”
Opal looked around distractedly at the scampering kids. “Oh no. They took off their burlap robes. I only see two of them.”
Annie hollered so loudly the rafters rang. “Shepherds! Front and center!”
Seven little boys separated themselves from the pack and ran over to her.
“Line up, please.”
They obeyed. Opal collapsed in a chair. “How did you do that? Never mind. Thank you, Annie. I need all the help I can get.”
“I can see that. Let’s go, boys.” Annie brought up the rear as the shepherds marched up the rickety wooden stairs and, jostling each other, stopped under a painted canvas sky filled with stars.
“Are you in charge now?” a fair-haired boy asked.
“Only of you guys. I bet you don’t have any lines to rehearse. Shepherds usually don’t say anything.”
“I do,” said an older boy with a bristling brown crew cut. “But it’s just one word.” He stepped forward and made the most of it. “Behold!”
Annie was impressed. The kid would be heard in the back row.
“Then we all point to the Star of Wonder when Miss Opal gives us our cue.”
“That’s a very important part of the show.”
“We only have one wooden sheep. She said there might be real sheep for the parade, though,” another boy said.
“There’s going to be a parade?”
He nodded eagerly. “The stores on Main Street sponsor it. They give out candy and stuff to all the kids and we get to ride on the floats.”
“That’s something new,” Annie said. “When I was a kid it was just the pageant.”
“Were you ever in it?” The seven boys looked at her with interest.
“Yes. I stood in the back. I didn’t have any lines either.”
“Why not?”
Annie ruffled the hair of the boy who’d asked the question. “Because I could never remember them. But I loved being on stage. Until I looked out and saw my parents and my brothers in the front row.”
“Miss Opal told us not to stare at our folks.”
“Good idea. When I saw my mom and dad, I froze. One of the shepherds used his crook to get me to move. Say, do you guys have crooks?”
“Yeah.” The crew-cut boy scrambled to his feet. “I know where they are.”
By the time he returned with the props, Annie had found the sheep, a plywood cutout with a plank in back to keep it standing up. The other six boys clustered around it, patting its soft side.
“We glued on the cotton puffs last week,” the smallest boy told her proudly. “It looks pretty real.”
“It looks great,” she reassured him. “Okay, everything seems to be under control. You might as well take a short break.”
“Can we run around again?” the oldest boy asked hopefully.
“Just don’t bump into people. And keep the noise down. And tell me your names before you go—no, wait. I have a better idea. Let’s see if we can find stick-on badges for all of you so I don’t forget who’s who.”
Boys did better when they had something useful to do. They scattered and came back with peel-and-stick labels.
“Good enough.” Annie lined them up and badged them one by one. The task was completed in less than half an hour. “Don’t leave the social hall,” she told them.
“They won’t. I’ll make sure of it,” said her crew-cut lieutenant.
She smiled at him. “Okay. Thanks.”
Annie moved away, spotting Jenny and Zoe amid the town kids. They were heading for Cilla and Ed Rivers. By the time Annie reached them, all four were clustered around an open laptop.
“What’s up?”
“Shh,” Zoe whispered. “We’re going to talk to Mommy.”
As the older of the two, Jenny got to hold the laptop, gazing into the screen as her baby sister leaned against her.
Annie looked at the screen and caught a glimpse of a woman with dark curly hair tucked under a white cap that concealed most of it. She was doing her best to be heard over the racket of an industrial-style kitchen going full tilt behind her.
“It’s so good to see you girls,” their mother said brightly. “I can’t chat too long tonight, though. I only have a fifteen-minute break. The swing shift is coming in.”
The girls either knew what a swing shift was or they didn’t care.
“Can you read us a story later?” Jenny begged.
“I sure wish I could. But I have to work late.”
“I’ll do it, Bree,” Cilla quickly assured her.
Though she was young, the careworn expression on Bree’s face was a poignant reminder of what some parents had to do to provide for their kids. Taking a temporary job far away was part of the deal for this young mom.
Jenny looked up at Annie as if seeing her for the first time. She rotated the laptop to introduce her. “Mommy, this is Annie. She took us to the movies.”
“Right. The lollipop one. Hi, Annie. Thanks so much.”
“My pleasure. Your girls are a delight.”
“Good to know. I can’t wait to take them to the movies myself.” There wasn’t anything competitive in the statement, just the resignation of a mother who had to be away from those she loved most. “I really do appreciate it. They seem very happy in Velde.”
“Mommy, when are you coming to get us?” Zoe’s plaintive question was from the heart.
“As soon as I can, baby.”
The moment was too personal. Annie stepped back, well out of range of the camera lens in the laptop’s frame.
She headed toward a new source of commotion: There was scenery being banged together in a roped-off section of the hall. Power tools were in use or waiting to be used.
Annie shooed away a few curious kids who got too close. “You can watch if you want,” she told them. “But stay over here.” She dragged over a few folding chairs to set a boundary. “And don’t distract the carpenters.”
The children seemed inclined to cooperate, but she stayed with them just in case. A church aide came along and took over guard duty, freeing Annie to be with her seven shepherds, who came barreling toward her. The oldest held a tablet with the glowing graphics of a video game.
“I got to Level Nine,” he boasted. “I slew a dragon and stuck a troll lord in the dungeon.”
“Yeah, but I got to Level Ten,” the youngest bragged. “It’s way harder than Nine.”
“You cheated.”
“Stop it,” Annie said, and laughed.
“It’s only a game,” another boy protested.
“I grew up with two older brothers,” she informed him. “There was never any such thing as only a game.”
They handed her the tablet. “Okay. You play it.”
“Some other time. Here comes Miss Opal.”
The chorus director gave her a weary smile. “I still have to rehearse the leads. They disappeared on me.”
Annie looked over her head and saw a sweet-faced young girl and an older boy who hadn’t taken off their rustic costumes. They walked side by side with solemn expressions. “There they are.”
“Oh, thank goodness. All right, children.” Opal waved all the participants onto the stage. “Let’s take it from the top.”
There was a piano in the shadows beyond the stage. Annie just made out a white-haired old lady waiting for a signal from Opal. At the downward motion of the chorus director’s hand, she began to play the opening bars of “Silent Night.”
It was Mrs. Pearson. Annie realized that she must have found someone to stay with Jack.
She caught Annie’s eye and gave her a nod and a tiny smile.
When the cast had rehearsed the song twice, Opal dismissed them all, telling them to wait where she could see them until their parents arrived. The kids were too tuckered out to run around the way they had when Annie entered. Most found their jackets and flopped on top of them in various places on the varnished floor. A few took out books and sat cross-legged to read.
The chorus director took the opportunity to check her list. “Oh. I almost forgot. Can you keep an eye on the herd for a second?”
“You bet.”
The kids lolled around, looking at the ceiling or talking to each other, but they stayed where they were. Opal returned, holding a white-wire lawn reindeer, the kind that nodded, in her arms.
“Would you mind taking this thing back to Nell? I don’t think we’ll be able to use it for the pageant.” She handed it over.
Annie took the reindeer from her a little awkwardly. “What should I tell her? Is it broken?”
“No. It nods just fine. But it gets me off the beat.”
“Oh. I guess you have enough to worry about.” Annie glanced sideways when her seven shepherds thundered by.
Opal clapped her hands. “Line up, please.”
They slowed their pace, but ran into each other nonetheless, shrieking with laughter. The choir director put a finger to her lips and they miraculously fell silent.
“Be good now,” Annie told them. “And, Opal, let me know if you need help with anything else.”
“I most certainly will,” Opal said fervently. “Thanks for stopping in.”
“Bye, Annie.” The crew-cut boy made a scout’s salute, which she returned with a smile, doing her best to hang on to the reindeer.
“Bye, guys. Be good.”
Chapter 12
Once inside the saloon, Annie set the reindeer down in a booth, propping its front legs on the table as if it were waiting to be served.
She moved to the boxes Nell had hauled out of the closet and looked into a few. There were still a lot of decorations left. Someone else had helped her hang most of the colored lights, somewhat haphazardly. But that was how Nell liked to do things.
Whatever. Annie wasn’t going to volunteer to do it perfectly, not if it meant risking a fall off a stepladder. The doctor’s advice had stuck with her.
The empty boxes were stacked in size order, the small box with the question mark on it on top again. Annie picked it up, about to open it, when Nell appeared.
“What’s in this one?” Annie asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you keeping it?”
“Well, it used to have something in it; I forget what. But I can’t throw it away. What if the something shows up? Then I wouldn’t have anything to put it in.”
Annie laughed. “I see.”
“Do you think you could help me get these tinsel garlands around the jukebox?” Nell asked. “You wouldn’t have to get up on a chair or anything.”
“Believe me, I wasn’t planning to.”
Nell searched through a glittering heap of garlands piled onto a booth table. “I only need you to hold one end. If I can find it.”
Annie came over. “There it is.” She reached in and held up a red tab.
&
nbsp; “Excellent. Hold on to that.” Nell located the other end and began to walk away, pulling one of the garlands free of the others. On her way to the jukebox she grabbed a roll of duct tape and slid it over her wrist like a bracelet.
Annie followed slowly.
Nell draped her end of the garland around her neck while she stopped to rip off pieces of tape, positioning them around the back of the jukebox. It only took a few minutes for her to do the job once the tape was in place. Nell took the red tab from Annie and let it dangle, stepping back to admire the effect. “Let’s make magic,” she said thoughtfully. She slipped a metal disc into the slot and punched the big plastic keys.
The first notes of a country-style Christmas carol triggered a display of light and color from the old-fashioned console that bounced off the tinsel and brightened the darkened saloon.
“Now isn’t that pretty?” Nell sighed with happiness as she turned to Annie.
“It sure is. Good idea.”
Nell removed the duct tape bracelet and went behind the bar. “So can I get you anything?”
“No. Thanks though.”
“Why’d you come in, anyway?” Nell used a glass to scoop up ice cubes from the reservoir below the bar and pumped club soda into it from the bar nozzle. “Not that I mind seeing you.”
“Opal asked me to return Rudolph.” Annie pointed to the white-wire critter. “She said he nods the wrong way.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t suppose there were lawn reindeer in Bethlehem anyway. He looks right at home in that booth. Maybe I’ll leave him there.”
Annie shrugged. She went back to the other booth and untangled the rest of the tinsel garlands, looping them around her arm before she set them down in a loose circle.
“So how did you convince Mrs. Pearson to play piano for the Christmas pageant? I’m assuming that was your doing.”
“Yes, it was. I tell you, she was glad to get out when I promised to stay with Jack. She’s only been leaving him to run quick errands, and not often. It’s not good for her to be in the house so much. Or to have sole responsibility for his care.”
Annie gave her an inquiring look.
“I put in a call to social services about getting a home health-care aide for Jack. She was overwhelmed.”
“Did she say anything about her financial problems?”