by Leslie Kelly
9
KNOX WOKE UP the morning after the Chrismoose finale. Christmas Eve. Today they’d head back to Anchorage. Trudie was still snoozing. Even though she’d turned down his official offer to spend the week with him, she’d wound up spending her nights with him. He grinned. He couldn’t think when he’d ever been happier...even without Mormor here. Neither had made any grand pronouncements, but he and Trudie had quietly gone to a couple of the events together. He’d had dinner with her folks a couple of nights. He hadn’t been totally sure how Eldon and Harriet would take Knox and Trudie being lovers, but everything had been good. They welcomed him back into their family as if he’d never strayed—with open arms and warmth—much like a prodigal son.
Before they’d headed back late yesterday, Trudie’s parents had invited him to join the family for Christmas dinner tomorrow. Knox had readily accepted. He did notice that Trudie remained quiet. She had, however, been a tigress in bed last night. They’d had very little sleep.
She blinked her eyes open.
“Morning.”
“Morning.” She sniffed delicately at the air. “I don’t smell any coffee.”
“You’re spoiled.”
“You created the monster, so it’s your obligation to feed it. Coffee, please.”
Laughing, he swung out of bed and padded naked into the kitchen. Jessup ran outside while he made the coffee. Their mornings had taken on a nice rhythm. He didn’t want to give that up. He didn’t want to give her up. Things were so good with them...surely she knew it, too. They were good together. He sensed—make that definitely felt—a reserve with Trudie that hadn’t been there before, but then again they hadn’t been lovers before.
Jessup whined at the door and he let the dog back in. Trudie climbed down the loft ladder, finally lured out of bed by the aroma of her morning brew.
“Thanks, Knox.”
“Monster.” He made a split decision, going with his gut. He reached under the tree and switched tags. He’d give her the earrings tomorrow.
He straightened, the small box in hand. “Today, I get mine first. Come on, hand it over.”
She laughed but handed him his eleventh-day gift then sat on the couch. “See,” he said, “I’ve obviously hung around you too much and your avarice for presents has rubbed off. You’ve created a monster as well.”
“Apparently.”
Knox opened the box. A miniature carving of a dog lay nestled in tissue. It easily fit in the palm of his hand and bore an incredible likeness to his pooch. “It’s beautiful, Trudie.”
“Well, now, even when you can’t take Jessup with you, you can take his mini-me with you.”
“Thanks, honey,” he said, sitting next to her and hugging her.
“I’m so glad you like it. You’re welcome.” She held out her hand. “So...”
“Grubber.”
“Am I a monster or a grubber? Make up your mind.”
“How about a grubbing monster? And I’d like to make you mine.”
A hint of wariness shadowed her eyes. “Mind.”
He took the coffee cup out of her hand and placed it on the end table. “No, mine.” He handed her the box but she simply sat and looked at it. “Open it.”
“Okay.” Her smile seemed strained. Instead of ripping off the bow and paper, this time she carefully dissected the wrapping job. He wasn’t sure if she was stalling or she sensed that this gift wasn’t like the others. Either way it didn’t matter. He was still going to do what he was going to do.
She lifted the box lid and gasped. “Oh, Knox, it’s absolutely exquisite.”
“It reminded me of you the moment I saw it.” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, pressing a kiss to his lips, but it was a chaste kiss.
“Let’s see how it looks on,” he said. He plucked the ring from the box and she handed him her right hand. Instead he took her left hand and slipped it onto her ring finger. “Perfect fit. And it looks great on you, too.”
She was totally flustered. “It’s very nice.”
He could feel her retreating even though she hadn’t moved but he was determined to stay his course. He’d lost his way once before and nearly lost her forever. He’d be damned if he’d risk that again.
He smoothed her hair back from her face and then cupped her cheek in his palm. “Marry me, Trudie. I love you. Jessup loves you. I’ve missed you. I don’t want to miss you again. I want to wake up to your crazy hair and make you coffee every morning. I want us to have a couple of kids together and grow old together, still fishing and camping and doing what we do. You’re not just my best friend, you’re the love of my life.”
Jessup, in a moment of good timing that made up for his bad timing earlier in the week, came and rested his head on Trudie’s knee and gazed up at her as if to add his plea as well.
Trudie looked away from both of them. “Knox...I... This is so hard.... I just can’t.”
“Make me understand why you can’t.”
She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin on them. “I think I finally understand what happened when Mormor died. You just couldn’t be with me. But what if something tragic happens after we’re married five, ten or even twenty years and once again you just can’t be with me? I can’t go through that again. And you and Elsa have only been broken up a couple of weeks. What if we don’t even get five or ten years under our belt? What if a couple of months from now you figure out I was a rebound? I just can’t, Knox.”
“I don’t know what to say to convince you, Trudie. You are definitely not a rebound and I will never walk away from you again.”
She put her hand over her heart and tears glimmered in her eyes. “There’s this reserve in here. It’s not that I necessarily want it to be a part of me...of us...but it is. I can’t love you body and soul, Knox.”
She deliberately moved his ring to her right hand.
He felt as if she’d just ripped out his soul. And he could argue with her all day, but he’d known Trudie a long time and she had a stubborn streak a mile wide. They were at an impasse and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
“Then I will wait. I’ll wait until your soul comes out of lockdown. Hopefully, that’s not years and years because I’d like for us to talk about a couple of rugrats before I’m too old to teach them to fish and cross-country ski and all the things we like to do together.”
She pushed her hand uncertainly through her hair. “Knox, don’t do this to me.”
“Honey, the only thing I’m doing is giving you time...and asking you not to burn it all up before we’re too old. Now, for the second order of business, are you going to help me take down this tree or what?”
She latched on to the subject change like a drowning man to a life raft. “I’ll help with the tree.”
An hour later the tree had been packed away, the cabin tidied and their luggage was in their respective vehicles. He walked her to her car. “Drive safe. And hey, do you mind if I still show up for Christmas dinner tomorrow?”
She wrapped her arms around him and leaned her head against his shoulder for a moment. “Of course not.”
“I love you, Trudie.”
She hesitated and then with a nod got in her SUV and was gone.
* * *
TRUDIE WALKED the last part of the trail with hope swirling through her. Christmas Day. She’d texted Knox, asking him to meet her at the park. She hadn’t planned to head over to her parents’ place until early afternoon so here she was. Snow crunched in the distance and she looked up.
Jessup and Knox crested the horizon. Love the man, love his dog. And she did. Both of them.
Silently they walked toward one another until they met halfway.
“Merry Christmas,” she said.
“Merry Christmas,” Knox said.
She handed Jessup a dental chew, which he promptly took and curled up with. He hated the snow, but he loved the green bones. She figured she owed her favorite pooch that much for dragging him out
in the cold.
“Suck-up.”
She shrugged. “I figured I owed him...ya know...the snow.” She put her gloved hands in her coat pockets. It was a darn cold Christmas Day but she’d needed privacy and a neutral place to say what needed to be said and she’d rather foolishly and romantically always considered this to be their place. She fisted her hands in her pockets, fingering the ring through her gloves.
“I...uh...did a lot of thinking on the way home...”
“For goodness sake, Trudie, it’s freezing...well, it’s even more freezing than it usually is and you always just spit things out so just spit it out.”
“I changed my mind. Well, my mind was convinced. I changed my heart. Well, I guess my heart was—”
“Trudie,” he interrupted her. “Are you saying you will marry me?”
“Yes. Exactly. It’s just you were rushing me.”
He swept her up and pressed a hard kiss of promise on her lips and then released her. “I am one happy man, but let’s walk and talk at the same time and carry this to the truck.”
Her teeth were beginning to chatter in her head. She’d just wanted, needed, to tell him on this spot and she kind of sort of had.
Hand in hand they jogged lightly down the path back to where he’d parked his truck next to her SUV. They climbed into his cab and he started the engine.
“Say it,” he demanded.
She thought about teasing him by saying how cold it was out there, but hearts on the line weren’t teasing matters. “I love you, Knox. I think I’ve always loved you. I’m sure I always will.”
“Body and soul?”
“Body and soul.”
The dog between them, they kissed until they kissed the cold right out of their lips.
Jessup bumped them apart.
“I’m going to have to work with that dog,” Knox said with a happy grin. “I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth, but what happened on that drive home yesterday that brought you around to my way of thinking?”
“I was just outside of Anchorage when the car ahead of me skidded out of control and hit a telephone pole. Luckily they weren’t going too fast, and no one was hurt, but I thought it could’ve been me. Then I thought about the way I get in the car and drive almost every day but the odds are that I’m not going to skid out of control. Then I thought what if that driver never drove again because he was afraid he might get in an accident because it did happen to him once. You know what I mean?”
“I think I do. I hurt you but it would be pretty dumb to miss out on something that was wonderful because you were worrying about something that might, but probably won’t, happen in the future.”
He knew her, understood her in a way she didn’t think anyone else ever would.
“I love you so much, it frightens me, Knox.”
“I know, Trudie. I feel the same way.”
She sighed and leaned in for a kiss. “On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...”
He cupped her face. “Everything that’s mine to give. All of me.”
Joy, peace and goodwill flowed through her. So did desire. “We’ve got a little bit of time before we have to head to my folks’. If I trade places with Jessup, we could fog up your windows.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt of Just One Night by Nancy Warren.
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1
“SICK LEAVE?” Rob Klassen yelled, unable to believe what he was hearing from the editor of World Week, the international current affairs magazine he’d worked for as a photojournalist for twelve years. “I’m not sick!”
Gary Wallanger pulled off his glasses and tossed them onto his desktop cluttered with Rob’s proof sheets documenting a skirmish in a small town near the Ras Ajdir border between Tunisia and Libya. “What do you suggest I call it? Shot-in-the-ass leave? You damned near got yourself killed. Again.”
Gary didn’t like his people getting too close to the action they were reporting on and his glare was fierce.
Rob put all his weight on his good leg, but even so, the throbbing in his left thigh was hard to ignore. “I was running away as fast as I could.”
“I saw the hospital report. You were running toward the shooter. Bad luck for you. They can tell those things from the entry and exit wounds.” In the uncomfortable silence that followed Rob heard the roar of traffic, honking cabs and sirens on the Manhattan streets far below. He hadn’t counted on Gary finding out the details he’d have rather kept to himself.
“You want to be a war hero,” his editor snapped, “join the forces. We report news. We don’t make it.”
Another beat ticked by.
“There were bullets flying everywhere. I got disoriented.”
“Bull. You were playing hero again, weren’t you?”
Rob could still picture the toddler cowering behind an oil drum. Yeah, his boss would have been happier if he’d left her scared and crying in the line of gunfire. But he was the one who had to wake up every morning and look himself in the mirror. Truth was he hadn’t thought at all. He’d merely dashed over to the girl and hauled her to safety. Getting shot hadn’t been in his plan.
Would he have acted any differently if he’d known what the outcome would be? He sure as hell hoped not.
He knew better than to tell Gary any of that. “You don’t win Pulitzers with a telephoto lens. I needed to get close enough to capture the real story.”
“Close enough to take a bullet in the leg.”
“That was unfortunate,” Rob admitted. “I can still handle a camera though. I can still walk.” He made a big show of stalking across the carpeted office, scooting around the obstacle course of stacked back issues, piled newspapers and a leaning tower of reference books. If he concentrated he could manage to stride without a limp or a wince though he could feel sweat begin to break out from the effort.
“No.” The single word stopped him in his tracks.
He turned. “I’m the best you’ve got. You have to send me back out on assignment.”
“I will. As soon as you can run a mile in six.”
“A mile in six minutes? Why so fast?”
Gary’s voice was as dry as the North African desert. “So the next time you have to run for your life you can make it.”
Rob paused for breath and grabbed a chair back for support. He and Gary had been friends for a long time and he knew the guy was making the right decision even if it did piss him off. “It was pure bad luck. If I’d dodged right instead of left...”
“You know most people would be pretty happy to be alive if they were you. And they’d be thrilled to get a paid vacation.” Gary picked up his glasses and settled himself behind his desk.
“They patched me up at the closest military hospital. It was nothing but a flesh wound.”
“The bullet nicked your femur. I do know how to read a hospital report.”
Damn.
“Go home. Rest up. The world will continue to be full of trouble when you get back.” Rob knew Gary was still aggravated by the fact that he didn’t compliment him on his photos, which they both knew to be superb. Instead of getting the praise he deserved, he was being sent home like a kid who’d screwed up.
He scowled.
Home.
He’d been on the road so much in the past few years that home was usually wherever he stashed his b
ackpack.
If he’d ever had a home, it was in Fremont, Washington, a suburb of Seattle that prided itself on celebrating counterculture, considering itself the center of the universe and officially endorsing the right to be peculiar. Fremont seemed a fitting destination for him right now that he was feeling both self-centered and peculiar. Besides, it was the only place he could think of to go even though everything that had made the place home was now gone.
“All right. But I heal fast. I’ll be running six-minute miles in a couple weeks. Tops.”
“You’ll be under a doctor’s care and I’ll be needing the physician’s report before I can reinstate you for any assignments in the field.”
“Oh, come on, Gary. Give me a freakin’ break.”
Once more the glasses came off and he was regarded by tired hazel eyes. “I am giving you a break. I could assign you to a desk right here in New York. That’s your other option.”
He shook his head. No way he was being trapped in a small space. He didn’t like feeling trapped. Not ever. “See you in a couple of weeks.”
Once he was out of Gary’s office and in the hallway Rob gave up the manly act and tried to put as little weight on his injured leg as possible.
“Rob, you should be on crutches,” a female voice called out.
He turned, recognizing the voice and mustering a happy-to-see-you smile. “Romona, hi.”
A print business reporter making the transition to television, Romona had the looks of a South American runway model and the brains of Hillary Clinton. They got together whenever they were both in New York. Neither had any interest in commitment but enjoyed each other’s company and bodies. “I heard you were hurt. How are you doing?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Okay.”
Even though they’d never do anything as obvious as hug in public, the glance she sent him from tilted green eyes steamed around the edges. She dropped her voice. “Why don’t you come over later and I’ll kiss you all better?”
“I’m filthy. Haven’t shaved in days, had a haircut in weeks, my—”
“I like you scruffy. You look like a sunburned pirate.”