That Christmas Feeling

by Catherine Palmer

  While Rob and Claire stalked a small yellow creature that looked as cute and innocent as a baby chick, Bill attempted to examine the handcuffed Flossie. His two compatriots held her gently but firmly in place while he looked into her ears, nose, mouth and hair, then studied her arms, fingers and toes. Aunt Flossie was busy calling the poor paramedic every name in the book when Claire and Rob finally nabbed the little yellow cat. Though it fought tooth and claw, they dropped it into the pet carrier and shut the metal door.

  “Animal rescue here!” a heavyset woman announced, barging into the room. She put her equipment on the floor and immediately began setting out traps. Baited with food, the small cages would capture the cats alive and unharmed.

  “About time we did this,” the woman offered as she worked. “Hey, Miss Ross, how you doin’ this morning? Gettin’ a medical exam, I see. Good, good. We’re gonna round up some of your spare kitties, take ’em over to the shelter and see that they get baths, tags, shots, worm medicine. It’s just one of those things we need to do. We’ll bring you back one or two, how’s that? Make sure they can’t start any new litters, and you can have a couple of ’em. There you go—I thought that’d cheer you up! Hey, Chief, looks like you caught one already. And is that Claire Ross? Well, I’ll be jiggered. You don’t look a thing like you did in high school. Remember me—Jane Henderson? I didn’t think so, ’cause I was a grade or two younger, but I do recall you giving your senior assembly speech about how Buffalo was important in the Civil War. That was a good speech, and I never forgot it. Okay, let’s get to work, how ’bout?”

  “Hey, I helped make that presentation,” Rob spoke up. “That was my project, too. Mine and Claire’s.”

  Jane eyed him for a moment. “You gave a speech about Buffalo?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “For your information, Miss Henderson, the town of Buffalo, Missouri, was founded in 1841 on Buffalo Head Prairie, which was named for a buffalo skull landmark erected by the first settler, Mark Reynolds. During the Civil War, Dallas County was pro-Union, which made it the target of many guerrilla raids. In October 1863, Confederate troops under the command of General Joseph O. Shelby burned down the county courthouse. And in July 1864, Confederate raiders burned the Methodist church, which was being used as the courthouse.”

  Claire began to clap. “Well done, Chief West. I award you an A plus for excellent memory skills.”

  “Told you I was smart,” he said. “And look at that.”

  They followed his pointing finger to a cat that had already ventured into one of the traps. As it leaned toward the bowl of food, the cage door fell shut.

  “Voilà!” Jane Henderson cried. “Cat number two is down for the count! Tell you what. You two head on outside and see if you can catch any of ’em in the yard. I spotted a few under the porch. I’ll work in here, me and Miss Ross. Huh, Miss Ross? You and me.”

  Flossie glared, red eyed and pinch lipped, at Jane Henderson. “You’re planning to kill my cats.”

  “No, I ain’t. Now, who’s this over here in the trap? This one got a name?”

  “Betsy.”

  Rob slipped his arm around Claire’s shoulders and bent down to whisper in her ear. “Betsy? Betsy and Oscar?”

  Momentarily disconcerted by the nearness of the man, Claire couldn’t come up with a witty response. All she could think was that to Aunt Flossie these creatures were not wild, stray cats. They were Betsy and Oscar and who knew who else? They were her friends, her companions. Her family. And because of Claire, the old woman was handcuffed in her own house, enduring the humiliation of a medical exam by a total stranger, forced to surrender her precious privacy.

  Those thoughts were running through Claire’s head at the same moment she was realizing that Rob West smelled just the way he had in high school—like shaving cream and leather and the fresh, wide outdoors. But he was closer to her now, closer than he’d ever been, and in spite of her heavy coat she could feel the steely strength in his arm around her. Near her cheek, his chest spread out like a flat plain that seemed to go on forever, and the geometric angle of his jaw grazed her temple as he hurried her out of the parlor and onto the porch.

  “Whew, escaped!” he said, and his breath was warm on her skin. “Good ol’ Jane. She’s been wanting to catch those cats ever since she started working at the shelter, but I knew how much they meant to Miss Ross. I kept hoping I could somehow talk her into giving them up.”

  “Not a chance,” Claire said, rubbing her bare hands together for warmth. “Rob, I think it’s more than an obsession. She loves those cats.”

  “Maybe so, but she can’t take care of them. Look at that group huddled over there near the chimney.” He absently cupped Claire’s hands between his and blew on them. “Mangy little things. They’ll be better off with Jane. She’s been fairly successful at adopting out the animals she gets. And she said she’ll bring a couple of the cats back over here to keep Miss Ross company.”

  Claire tried to listen as he went on telling her about the local animal shelter, but somehow her mind was no longer on cats. It was on Rob West. Tall, handsome, brave, generous—and yes, even smart—Rob West. Rob West, who was holding her hands and smelled like heaven and had eyes that could make a woman quiver right down to her toes. Rob West, whom all the girls in school had had secret crushes on. Rob West, who’d quarterbacked the football team and won all those wrestling trophies. Rob West, who hated studying Missouri history and resented working with skinny Claire Ross and somehow still remembered every word of his senior assembly presentation.

  But it wasn’t really that Rob West, either. This one was ten years older and went to church and had lost his wife in a car accident. This one had become a police chief who helped plan the town Christmas parade and caught cats in a little old lady’s house. Somehow all the Rob Wests were woven into a single man who was standing here in front of Claire. She knew him. And didn’t know him. He was familiar. And a stranger. He was comfortably normal. And overwhelmingly, disconcertingly attractive.

  “So you think we can figure out how to use that lasso thing of Jane’s?” he asked, turning to Claire so that she was no longer looking at his profile but staring into his blue eyes. “If you came at the cats from one direction, and I came from the other…”

  He stopped speaking and swallowed. She blinked. Dropping her hands, he shoved his own into his pockets. She moistened her lips.

  “Uh, yes,” she said. “That would be good. Surround them.”

  For a moment he didn’t respond. “Did you always have those eyes? That color, I mean. Green.”

  “Hazel, I think.”

  “No, they’re green.”

  “Well, they’re the same ones I’ve always had. I don’t wear contacts, either. Just glasses for reading.” She nodded, trying to think of something else to say that made sense. “And grading papers.”

  “Okay.” He frowned. “Because I don’t remember those eyes from high school.”

  “You probably don’t remember anything from high school.” She managed the old teasing tone. “Except your speech, I guess. That was pretty impressive, by the way.”

  “I remember stuff, Claire. I told you I heard everything you said to me.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “And I remember your hands, too. Long, thin fingers. You had pretty hands. Still do.”

  “Thank you.” She pushed them deep into her coat pockets and wrapped them around her gloves. “Thanks for…warming them.”

  “Yeah, well…I guess I’d better go get that lasso thing.” As though suddenly remembering he had to be somewhere, Rob turned and barreled back into the house.

  Claire let out a breath. This was weird. Rob West was way out of her league. She could tease him. Scold him. Educate him. But she could not—absolutely not —desire him. And she knew the way her heart was beating at this moment had nothing to do with the exercise of chasing stray cats or battling Missouri’s winter wind. Definitely not.

&nb
sp; “That’s far enough!” Rob gritted his teeth in concern and frustration as Claire inched her way across a tree limb toward a shivering cat. Did the woman ever listen?

  “Hey, Claire, don’t go any farther!” He tried again. She had insisted on being the one to go after this cat. At six foot four and a hundred pounds heavier, Rob had reluctantly agreed. “That branch is too thin, Claire. It’s not safe.”

  “Shh!” She scowled down at him, her eyes flashing in the setting sun. They were not hazel. “Stop yelling at me, you nincompoop.”

  “Just try the lasso.”

  “All right, all right.” Spread full-length along the branch, she gripped it with one hand and both knees as she extended the metal pole toward the cat.

  Except for this wily black-and-white tomcat, the group gathered at the mansion had finally captured all the felines. Earlier in the day Rob made the welcome discovery that Florence Ross had locked all the doors to the basement and upstairs rooms, confining her living area mainly to the front parlor, the foyer and a single bathroom. After combing the house for weapons, he located the pistol and several caches of ammunition, which he confiscated. Though concerned about her reaction to the cat roundup, he removed Flossie’s handcuffs.

  Despite the old woman’s every effort to deter them, Jane Henderson—along with Bill Gaines and the two firemen—eventually trapped all the indoor cats. About midafternoon, Jane and her crew stacked the humane shelter’s van with ten cages. After promising to make regular checks on Flossie until they could return a couple of her cats, Jane drove away. The men begged off, saying they needed to go take showers.

  That left Claire and Rob to continue the nearly impossible job of cornering the strays that lurked around the perimeter of the mansion. Climbing trees, falling through the rotting porch floor, negotiating the roof, and racing back and forth, they’d managed to nab six cats. The two indoor ones that Jane’s shelter couldn’t take made eight. This final tom in the old oak tree would complete their mission.

  “The pole isn’t long enough,” Claire called down from the tree limb. “I can’t reach him.”

  “Just come on down, then. We can leave him.”

  “Leave him? After all this, you want to leave him here?”

  “Claire, it’s one cat. Please come down. You’re making me nervous.”

  “Rob, I’m fine—just good ol’ Clarence up a tree. What do you care anyway?”

  “I care, okay?”

  Her face appeared over the limb a second time. Green eyes pinned him, and he felt again an unexpected jolt that zinged down his spine and settled in the pit of his stomach. What was that all about? She was right—it was just dorky Claire Ross up in the tree. Skinny ol’ Clarence…whose curls cascaded downward like a flow of red-hot lava. Whose lips transfixed him every time she spoke. Whose peach-soft skin just about begged him to caress it.

  He couldn’t be looking at her this way, Rob cautioned himself. After his wife’s death, he had made a conscious decision not to date again, and certainly never to remarry. The painful experience had taught him that he wasn’t cut out for the job. Like the Apostle Paul, he had a God-ordained mission that transcended marriage. Rob West belonged to the people of Buffalo. He was their servant, their caretaker, their protector. In a strange sense he was wedded to a town. And quite content with the relationship, too.

  Besides, women were a lot of trouble. Sherry had been unhappy with just about everything Rob did. Despite all his triumphs in high school, he learned that in his wife’s eyes he appeared a total failure. Sherry hadn’t wanted Rob to become a policeman. She disliked the size and condition of the only house they were able to afford after their wedding. She hated the church he had joined, and refused to attend. Most of all, she resented being married.

  Though he had dated the vivacious blonde through much of high school and had believed they were in love, he belatedly discovered that Sherry had goals that went far beyond the little town of Buffalo. After graduation, she packed up and headed for college as a theater major, planning one day to move to Hollywood and try for her big break as an actress. When she found out she was pregnant with Rob’s child, she reluctantly agreed to marry him, and even though she miscarried the baby, they stayed together through seven unhappy years. Sherry had regularly reminded her husband that he had killed her dreams and ruined her life. He never wanted to do that to anyone again.

  “I care because I’m the police chief,” he called up to the green eyes that were currently hypnotizing him into a jelly-kneed trance.

  “I see,” she said, still staring.

  Absolutely, he could not let Claire know the effect she was having on him. He squared his shoulders. “I can’t have the newspaper printing a story about me letting the high school history teacher fall out of a tree while chasing a cat. It wouldn’t look good.”

  “Oh, right,” she said. “Well, excuse me for not caring about your precious reputation.”

  Turning away, she edged farther along the branch toward the cat. Rob swallowed as the slender limb dipped downward. The cat growled, a long guttural emanation that reverberated through the chill air. Claire stretched out the aluminum pole. The noose on its far end slipped over the cat’s head. Claire tightened the loop, and the cat leaped.

  “Oh, Rob!” Her arm jerked downward as the big tom’s white paws and black tail flailed in midair, and she clung to the branch with one hand and her knees. “Rob, he’s going to hang. I’m killing the cat.”

  “Let him go! Drop the pole!” Rob pulled himself onto a lower branch and started climbing the tree. “Just don’t fall. Let the cat go.”

  “But he’s caught in the noose! If I drop him, he won’t be able to land on his feet. He’ll get hurt.”

  “Forget the cat, Claire. You’re the one who’s going to get hurt!”

  She was trying to lower herself to another branch as the cat squirmed and yowled on the end of the pole. “Help him, Rob! Move him onto a branch, and I’ll try to loosen the—”

  She lost her grip and toppled downward right into a large empty squirrel’s nest that had been built in the crossed branches of the tree. Dead leaves flew outward in a puff of brown dust. The cat dropped to the ground and took off running with the aluminum pole still attached to the noose around his neck.

  “Claire, are you okay?” Rob reached for her. The branch under him cracked. “Hang on!”

  “You hang on!” She scrambled through the leaves to grab him. The branch snapped, and they both went down, sliding through bare limbs and snapping off twigs on their way to the ground.

  “Ha! Ha!” Flossie Ross crowed through an open window as Rob rolled off Claire, who was squealing in pain. “Serves you both right! I hope you broke all your arms and legs! And your heads, too!”

  Rob caught Claire’s shoulders and lifted her into his lap. “Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”

  “Where’s the cat?”

  “He’s fine. I can see the pole sticking out from under the porch.”

  She let out a breath. “I’m okay, too. You?”

  “Other than you just about scaring me to death, I’m fine.”

  Looking up into his eyes, she smiled. “Well, Rob West. It seems we’ve just completed our second project together.”

  He couldn’t resist stroking his hand down the side of her face. “That is the last time I ever let you climb a tree.”

  “You can’t keep me from climbing trees.”

  “I’m pretty good at getting what I want.”

  “Are you, now? Well, I certainly know what I want.”

  Her words rushed through him with all the force of a dam breaking. When he spoke, his voice came out husky and breathless. “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  Hesitating, she closed her eyes for a moment. When they opened again, he saw that they had gone soft and dark. “Not much, really,” she whispered. Her lower lip trembled, and she cleared her throat. “Actually, I was thinking about pizza.”

  He laughed. “Pizza?”

  “Over at
Dandy’s in Bolivar.” She sat up and tugged her cap back down over her ears. “They make the best mushroom-and-onion pizza I’ve ever tasted.”

  “Mushroom and onion? Whatever happened to good ol’ pepperoni?”

  “Fine, we’ll order two.” Standing, she took his hand and pulled him to his feet. “Go haul that poor cat out from under the porch, and I’ll meet you at your car.”

  Claire was going with him to Bolivar. Rob stared after her as she headed for the open window through which her great-aunt continued to heckle them. Claire Ross was going with him to Bolivar. They would drop the cats at the shelter, and then they would drive to Dandy’s and eat pizza. Just the two of them.

  It would be like a date. Only, he had vowed not to date again. This was only geeky Clarence, he reminded himself. So it didn’t count. Not really.

  He watched her standing at the window talking to the older woman, assuring Flossie that she would drop by to check on her tomorrow and that she’d return a couple of cats to the mansion within the week. Claire’s auburn curls covered her shoulders, tumbling over her green coat and down her back. Her slim hips and long legs looked just about too good to be true. As she turned to face Rob again, the setting sun flashed in her green eyes.

  Maybe just one sort-of date wouldn’t matter too much. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. Just two old friends having pizza together and talking. What was the harm in that?

  Chapter Three

  Claire wiped her fingers on a napkin and sighed as she settled back in the restaurant booth. Nothing like warm toes and a full stomach on a cold winter night. Three hours earlier, she had left Aunt Flossie still hurling insults through the open window of Ross Mansion and had driven home to shower and change out of her filthy duds into clean jeans and a forest-green sweater. Half an hour after that, Rob had picked her up in his squad car.