Holiday Heat: Heartwarming and Bottomwarming Stories for the Festive Season

by April Hill

  “Let me out of the fucking car!” she shouted. (The “F” word, in all its variations and permutations, had been Abigail’s favorite word since the age of eight.) Later, she couldn’t be absolutely sure of all the details of their last argument, but she seemed to remember having whacked Edward over the head at some point with a folded map of the Western United States. She exited the air-conditioned Mercedes still screaming, and stepped into a trackless desert.

  Edward responded by doing what he usually did at times like this, by using his favorite word—ridiculous.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Abigail. Please get back in the car. We’re in the middle of nowhere, and you’re acting like a child.”

  He was right, of course—again. Edward was always right. Always being right was what was basically wrong with Edward, but this time, he was especially right. Abigail was acting like a child, and they were in the middle of nowhere. They were still a good forty miles from their final destination, on a road strewn with potholes, in a godforsaken wilderness full of prairie dogs and tarantulas, and Abigail was demanding to be let out of the car at a Greyhound Bus Stop that had probably been built fifty years before they started making bricks for the Alamo.

  “How do you even know there’s still a bus?” Edward demanded. “Or that it’ll take you to Hogwash or Nerdville, or whatever the hell this place is called?” (To Abigail’s knowledge, there was no town in Texas called Nerdville. Nerdville was what Edward always called places that didn’t have a Starbuck’s and a Bloomingdale’s.)

  “It’s called Hockworth, nitwit,” she replied smugly. “And where else would a damned bus be going on this road? There’s nothing for miles in either direction, except for that revolting motel we passed a few miles back. According to that overpriced GPS thingy you’re so crazy about, you can rejoin the main highway ten miles ahead. I’ll go on to Hockworth on the bus, and check out the house.”

  “And then, what?” Edward pleaded. “You’re planning to break off our engagement, aren’t you?”

  “I need time to think,” she said, sidestepping what had become an uncomfortable and frequent question in the last day or two. “We’ll talk about everything when I get back to New York. If you hurry, maybe you probably get a plane into JFK tonight, and I’ll be there in a few days, as soon as I get the house up for sale.”

  “I’m not leaving you out here. You could die of thirst, or from exposure, or be bitten by a snake, or…”

  “I’ll hitchhike into town, then,” she said firmly, knowing it would annoy him. Edward thought that all hitchhikers were serial killers, and that the ones who weren’t serial killers carried germs.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, “ Edward said, again.

  Strike three. Abigail pulled her small blue suitcase from the back seat, and slammed the back door as hard as she could, then marched over to the rickety wooden hut marked Bus Stop. The wooden bench provided didn’t look especially trustworthy, but she sat down cautiously, trying not to gag on the odor that seemed to ooze from every splintered board. A printed schedule tacked to the wall promised that the next bus to Hockworth would arrive in one hour and eight minutes.

  Edward hit the button and rolled down the passenger side window. “I’ll wait here with you,” he offered gallantly. “Just in case.”

  Abigail shook her head. “It’s only a little over an hour,” she called back. “If you don’t leave right now, I swear to God I’m going to walk out into the fucking desert and find a scorpion to step on. My horrific demise will be on your hands, and you can explain it to my father.”

  “Well, that’s very intelligent,” he shot back. “If I were a different kind of person, Abigail—a less patient man, I swear to God I’d…”

  “What is it you’d do, Edward?” she inquired sweetly. “Spank me soundly? Cancel my credit cards?” (Please make a note of these remarks. Both will become important at a later point in the story.)

  Actually, Abigail had already begun to regret her decision. It was December, but in the glare of the afternoon sun, it felt more like summer, and when Edward leaned over and opened to car door to try to talk to her, she felt a wonderfully cool rush of chilled air.

  “Stop being ridiculous, and get back in the car,” Edward ordered, a bit wearily, now.

  Strike four. Abigail pulled a paperback mystery from her purse and began reading.

  “I have my cell phone,” she said coolly, without looking up. “I’ll call you tonight, from a hotel in town.”

  Ten minutes later, Edward finally gave up, and drove away, swearing. The stench inside the bus stop was overpowering, so Abigail promptly abandoned her book and scrambled outside, where she stepped in a rut and twisted her ankle. A few moments later, as she leaned against the side of the hut to ease the pain in her leg, the wind changed direction slightly, and she realized that in her brief stay inside, she had sat down in, or on, something truly disgusting.

  Abigail’s stubbornness tended to make her a slow learner, even on her best days, but when two hours had passed without the appearance of a bus—or any other vehicle, for that matter, it occurred to her that the chances were excellent that Edward had been right, yet again. There was no bus going to Nerdville. Not since the fall of the Alamo, anyway.

  It was late afternoon before a cloud of dust on the horizon finally announced the arrival of a lone vehicle, and by the time it appeared, Abigail was more than willing to take her chances on thumbing a ride with a carload of potential serial killers, germs and all.

  Not a serial anything, apparently, but a cowboy, in an elderly pickup truck. Abigail waved to the driver.

  The truck wasn’t moving fast along the badly rutted road, but it didn’t stop, or even slow down, and when she was enveloped in a choking cloud of dust, Abigail responded with several shrieked obscenities, and by hurling two large rocks at the battered vehicle as it passed by.

  The first rock went wild, but the second one barely missed the open window, bounced off the passenger side of the truck with a bang, and landed in the ditch. When the driver slammed on the brakes and looked back over his shoulder, Abigail thought briefly of trying to hide in the malodorous hut. Later, she would swear that when the driver first stepped from his paint-skinned pickup, her life had flashed before her eyes. Over the years, Abigail had occasionally wondered if she suffered from a mysterious and undiagnosed brain cloud, or from multiple personality disorder. There had to some reason why she did the stupid things she did. She was a left-wing liberal, stranded in redneck country and needing help, and she’d just thrown a rock at some illiterate hick who probably had horseshit on his boots, a Confederate flag on his rear bumper, and a loaded shotgun in a rack behind the front seat.

  The truck had obviously seen better days, but there was a very large, very visible fresh dent on the side where the rock had hit. Abigail was about to launch into a groveling apology when the cowpoke opened the door and stepped out.

  Not exactly what she’d expected. To begin with, he appeared to have all his teeth, and no visible tattoos. He was tall and slender, but solidly built. A man accustomed to hard, physical work, with broad shoulders and muscles in his forearms that suggested he did a lot of heavy lifting. His light brown hair was a little too long to be fashionable, but overall—Abigail had always detested women who used words like this—the guy was frankly gorgeous. It appeared that she was about to get punched in the nose by the Marlboro man, complete with a white Stetson, and skin-tight jeans.

  But when he approached, he took off his hat, and she could see that he was smiling.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened just now, ma’am. About the dust, I mean. I didn’t see you standing there until it was too late to slow down. Guess I was daydreaming. You looking for a ride into town?”

  Now that it seemed she wasn’t going to get punched, or even reprimanded for the rock assault, Abigail started feeling miffed, again. About what, she couldn’t have said, but it may have had something to do with the fact that she hated being wrong about people.
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  “No,” she said curtly. “I’m waiting for the bus.”

  The Marlboro man chuckled. “You’ll have a long wait,” he said. “There hasn’t been a bus along here in more’n three years. Since the army base shut down.”

  “Actually, I’m waiting for my fiancé,” she lied. “I just called him. He’s coming to pick me up.”

  “You sure you want to wait out here? You can call your fiancé from town, if you need to. It’s pretty warm for this time of the year.”

  “I don’t need a weather report, either, thank you,” she answered. “I’m quite comfortable.”

  “Your car break down around here, somewhere?”

  Abigail rolled her eyes. “Let me guess,” she snapped. “Your brother-in-law just happens to operate a tow truck.”

  The man shook his head. “No, ma’am. I was just trying to be helpful, after what I did. If there’s anything at all I can…” At that moment, Abigail’s ankle gave way, and she stumbled, but when the tall cowboy grabbed her elbow to steady her, she pulled away.

  “Sorry, again,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…”

  “Oh, for God’s sake!” she yelled. “Would you just go the fuck away and leave me alone?”

  He gave her a slightly curious look, but he didn’t seem angry. “Whatever you say, ma’am. Good day to you, now. I’d keep a sharp eye out for rattlers, though. They generally hang around sheds like that one, where it’s cooler.”

  “Thank you for all your unwanted advice,” she said coolly. “Now, if that’s all, I’d like to finish my book.”

  He paused for a moment, as is debating something with himself.

  “Well, there is one more thing, since you ask,” he said finally. “You might want to watch that mouth of yours, and maybe your manners. Talk like that to the wrong fella, and you’re as likely as not to find yourself across the man’s knee, gettin’ your behind warmed.”

  Abigail stared. “Is that what you people out here call cowboy wisdom?”

  “Nope. It’s what people out here call good advice. Not that I approve of paddling strangers, mind you. But folks around here tend to take bad manners and ingratitude real personal. The old ones, in particular.” He grinned. “Last chance. You sure you don’t want a ride into town?”

  “And risk the sort of cowboy justice you just described?” she inquired sweetly.

  He smiled. “We’ll get along fine, so long as you don’t keep callin’ me what you did when I blew dust all over you.”

  Abigail swallowed hard. “You heard that?”

  “Even over my shot muffler. Not that some of our local ladies can’t cuss pretty good, when they get their feathers up, but they generally save that kind of language for friends and family, not total strangers. Of course, they sometimes get their backsides set on fire, too. Cussing seems to be a powerful habit to break.”

  Worried that the promised ride might disappear if she kept up the unfriendly banter, Abigail decided to make a strategic retreat. “All right, then,” she said stiffly. “I apologize. Will you accept my apology, or…?”

  “I haven’t heard an apology, yet,” he interrupted, “but if that’s what passes for telling a man you’re sorry for being rude as hell in your part of the world, I guess it’ll have to be good enough. I’m not about to leave a woman out here, alone. Get in the truck.” He picked up her bag in one hand, and tossed it in the back of the pickup. It was left to Abigail to open the passenger door and climb up onto the patched bench seat. For the first time in her life, she had been told off.

  The bumpy ride into “town” took half an hour, during which Abigail said a silent prayer of thanks that the nameless cowpoke had come by. It was close to forty miles, yet she didn’t see another vehicle on the road. She had promised herself to remain cool and distant, but before long, she had somehow volunteered her name, that she lived in New York, and that she owned a house in the vicinity. By the time they reached their destination, she knew that the man’s name was Luke McLaughlin, and that he owned a small ranch on the other side of town.

  “Nerdville?” he repeated, when she slipped up and used Edward’s insulting term.

  Abigail groaned. “Sorry, it’s kind of a joke. Not funny, I guess?”

  He grinned. “I’ve heard it called worse things.”

  “My God,” she muttered moments later, as they drove past a tall, spindly Christmas tree and into what she took to be the town square. “I had no idea it was so… How do people make a living?”

  “Cattle, mostly,” he replied. “Some small farms, and there’s a big turkey processing plant just outside town. And the stores in town, of course.”

  “Which way would I go to find the theatre district?” she asked sweetly, forgetting for the moment that she was trying to be pleasant.

  If he was angry, again, he didn’t show it, but simply pointed over his shoulder. “Back that way around eighteen hundred miles, unless you’re a big Bruce Willis fan. And John Wayne, naturally. I hear there’s a double feature this Saturday night. Rio Bravo and Big Jake. They usually show them on a sheet, downstairs at the Methodist Church. Tickets are a quarter, kids are free, and there’s free popcorn and Hawaiian Punch. You look beat. How about a hamburger over at Wilma’s? And, if I were you, I wouldn’t be too quick about declining my invitation. Wilma’s is the only place in town to eat.”

  “Where’s the nearest ATM ?” she asked.

  “No ATM, but the bank opens tomorrow at nine. You need a little cash to tide you over?”

  “No,” she lied. She had less than two dollars in cash, a wallet full of credit cards, and she was starving. With the bank closed, declining the handsome cowpoke’s invitation to dinner wasn’t going to be an option.

  * * * *

  Wilma’s Café was ablaze with blinking Christmas lights, and decorated in the worst possible holiday taste, but her hamburgers were excellent. Her fries were even better, and the chocolate malt was amazing. Two scoops of pure vanilla ice cream, whole milk, several generous squirts of heavy chocolate syrup, and genuine malted milk powder scooped from a labeled glass container. All whipped together in a big steel shaker for exactly the right amount of time, and delivered to their table in the frosted shaker, along with a tall ice-cream soda glass and a long straw. If there was one thing Abigail knew about, and truly appreciated, it was the lost art of making a real malt.

  When she realized that Luke was watching her with curiosity, though, Abigail felt her female defenses going up.

  “I don’t usually pig out like this,” she apologized. “It’s just that I haven’t had a real malt for a very long time.”

  “They don’t have malts in New York City?”

  She made a face. “Liquid malt,” she explained. “If you’re lucky, that is. In most places, you get a shake, made with vegetable oil.”

  He chuckled. “Now, who’d have thought that Nerdville had a cultural advantage over the Big Apple? How’s the burger?”

  “Perfect.”

  “I’ll tell Wilma you said so. She doesn’t get many compliments. Most of the cowhands who come in here generally just belch in appreciation, or undo the top button of their jeans.”

  He poured the melting remains of Abigail’s chocolate malt into the tall glass.

  “You mind tellin’ me about this house of yours, Abby? I know pretty much every place around here, for miles.” Abigail winced at his use of the familiar diminutive she’d always hated, but let it pass. When in Rome, she thought.

  “It’s supposed to be about five miles outside of town, actually.”

  He nodded. “That’d be the old Bailey place. It’s just across the river. I’ll drive you out there, if you want. Maybe tomorrow morning?”

  “Thanks. It’s probably not much to look at, after all these years, is it?”

  “I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s nothing to look at, at all. The town council ordered it torn it down three years ago.”

  “Torn down!” she wailed. “Why in the name of G
od would they tear down my house?”

  “It fell on some people. The roof, anyway. Collapsed on a couple of newlyweds, hitchhiking across country. They figured on crashing there for a couple of days while they earned a little traveling money.”

  Abby banged the table with her fist. “Shit! Just my luck. No house, and I may get sued, as well. Was anyone badly injured?”

  “Not a scratch. They’re guests of the county, now, awaiting trial.”

  “For vagrancy?”

  “For selling a variety of controlled substances, in plastic sandwich bags. They lost most of their merchandise when the roof caved in, though. Turns out there’s not a lot of call for pot laced with bat guano and squirrel droppings.”

  “So, they’re not likely to sue?” she asked anxiously.

  “I think you’re safe. They built a fire in one of the upstairs bedrooms, so you might even try suing them.”

  “Well, I’m sorry for their troubles, but meanwhile, I’ve lost a family heirloom.”

  “Not completely. You still owe the county back taxes on the place, and the cost of demolition.”

  “I thought you said it fell down.”

  “Someone had to clear the junk away. All that rotting lumber was a fire hazard, and what the mayor called an attractive nuisance. Kids crawling up and down the heap, and all. You’re lucky, though. The town mitigated the damages by selling what was left. Some guy from Denver bought the whole pile for three hundred bucks. Four truckloads.”

  “So, some asshole’s using my great-grandmother’s Victorian mansion for kindling, or a humongous weeny roast?”

  “I talked to the guy while he was loading. He sells the stuff by the board foot, and calls it ‘antique barn siding.’ Seems that city people line their kitchens with it to get an authentic country look—after they fumigate for termites and earwigs, anyway. Funny world, isn’t it?”