Be Mine at Christmas

by Brenda Novak

  “That’s good enough for now,” Ken said so Brent wouldn’t waste time trying to put on the sheets. “Take off her shoes.”

  “What about her jacket?”

  “No, that’s okay. It hasn’t started snowing again, so just her feet are wet.”

  Brent removed her sneakers so Ken could put her on the bed. She was coming around. Moving her head from side to side, she muttered in Spanish. Then her eyes opened, and she gazed up at them with a sort of mute resignation that unsettled Ken. Wouldn’t most women be frightened if they woke to the sight of two large men—total strangers—while sequestered in a remote cabin?

  This girl didn’t seem to be scared. But if heading back outside into the weather was her only other option, he could understand that. Or maybe she was even closer to death than he’d thought.

  “We’ve got to get her warm.” He grabbed the blankets they’d dumped at the foot of the bed and waved for Brent to lie down on one side of her while he lay down on the other. Sandwiching her between them with the bedding piled on top was the quickest way he could think of to raise her body temperature. At least her clothes were pretty dry. Otherwise, she probably wouldn’t have lasted this long.

  She didn’t fight their proximity. Her eyes closed again and she remained perfectly still, cold as marble but malleable as a doll.

  “She going to be okay?” Brent whispered after several minutes had passed and she hadn’t spoken or moved.

  Ken pressed two fingers to the side of her throat. “Heart’s beating.”

  “That’s good.” Brent pulled back just enough to get a better look at her face. “Where do you think she came from?”

  “Mexico.”

  “Quit being a smart-ass. I mean today.”

  “How should I know?” Ken responded with a chuckle. Because of the age difference between them, they’d never been especially close but that was changing. Ken couldn’t wait until Brent graduated from Boise State. Already, they were talking about teaming up to run a series of football camps for kids in the summer.

  After a short pause, Brent spoke again. “This seems a little weird.”

  Ken raised his head. “Having a beautiful woman appear out of nowhere?”

  “Sleeping three to a bed…with you.”

  Ken might’ve laughed, but he couldn’t. He was too busy gasping as their visitor not only moved but slipped her frozen fingers under his shirt and right up against his skin. Her teeth chattered as she attempted to burrow so close he got the impression she’d climb inside his skin if she could.

  Brent arched his eyebrows, obviously demanding an explanation.

  “I’d say she’s doing better,” Ken said when he could bring his voice down an octave.

  This met with no small amount of suspicion on his brother’s part. “How much better?”

  “Don’t get excited. She’s figured out how, uh, to maximize the heat I’m offering, that’s all.”

  Brent sounded sulky when he answered. “I’m offering heat, too.”

  Because she’d pulled away at his initial reaction, Ken covered her hands with his to let her know it was fine to take what she needed. He’d survived worse. “Yeah, but I’m always the lucky one.”

  “You’re not supposed to get lucky. What about Isolde?” Brent challenged.

  Fascinated by the number of women who congregated around professional athletes, his brother always asked about his love life. Brent had been cut from the college team and would never experience the NFL for himself, so Ken usually indulged him. But he didn’t like talking about his former girlfriend. “I broke it off before I moved back here, and you know it.”

  “It’s for good, then?”

  Although Ken had spent two years with Isolde, even brought her to Dundee last Christmas, he’d given her up when he rejected the New York Jets’ offer to renew his contract. She dreamed of a life in the Big Apple and had aspirations in fashion design; he dreamed of raising a family while owning several businesses in his hometown, including a dude ranch in the mountains he loved. He was even toying with the idea of helping their stepfather coach football at the high school he’d attended, which would feed into his summer camps with Brent. “It’s over for good.”

  “No second thoughts?” Brent pressed.

  Ken had a million of them. Not just about Isolde but about football. He preferred to leave the game while he was still at his best, to go out on top and with both knees functioning properly. But every once in a while, he wondered if he’d acted prematurely. Did he have another year or two left in him?

  He’d watched quarterback Roger Liggett writhe on the field a year ago while the medics came running from the sidelines, only to learn Roger would never be able to play ball again. Maybe he’d let that spook him into quitting too soon.

  “No second thoughts,” he lied.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CIERRA’S FINGERS BURNED. So did her toes. When she was first carried into the cabin, she hadn’t cared what happened to her as long as she was able to get warm. But once her body temperature began to rise, so did her ability to think. Now she realized she’d put herself in a very tenuous, and potentially dangerous, situation. There didn’t seem to be anyone at the cabin except these two men….

  “Gracias, I— We can get up now. I am…better,” she said, but better was a relative term. She’d walked for hours in the cold, following the ribbon of road that was supposed to lead to the address on that paper. And she hadn’t eaten since yesterday morning. Arlene had said her brother would provide work but Cierra had to make her own way to Dundee. She’d done that; in the process, she’d lost the little she had left of what Charlie had given her before his death and was down to…nothing.

  The men shifted and sat up, allowing her to do the same. Hoping they might recognize the address she’d been looking for, so she could beat the worse of the storm that was already starting to batter the cabin walls, she dug through her pockets for the slip of paper that’d brought her this far. But she couldn’t find it.

  “Mi papel…my paper. Is gone!”

  The older of the two, the man with brown hair and brown eyes, reminded Cierra of a cowboy she’d seen in a western Charlie had played for her one night. But not because of his clothes. Dressed in a sweatshirt and tattered blue jeans, he wasn’t wearing cowboy boots or a hat. It was the way his hair lifted off his forehead and fell to the side, long on top but short everywhere else, and the contours of his lean face and body that suggested he could’ve stepped right out of High Noon—at least, she thought that was the name of the film. The movies she’d seen since coming to the States were beginning to run together. Charlie had played lots of them for her. He’d said they’d help with her English, reinforce what the tutor taught her during the day. But she knew he resorted to his movie collection when he didn’t want the burden of entertaining her.

  “That’s what you tried to hand me, isn’t it?” he said, and climbed off the bed as if he knew where it was and planned to get it.

  Seemingly eager to reassure her, the man who remained in the bedroom smiled. “Where you from?”

  Afraid to reveal the truth for fear it would result in a trip to the closest immigration office, she stuck with what she’d been telling everyone who’d given her a ride. “Las Vegas.”

  “That’s pretty far from here,” he said with a whistle. “How’d you get all the way to Idaho?”

  “It is a…very long story. You do not want to hear,” she added with a dismissive air meant to imply that it would only bore him.

  He opened his mouth to argue, but she interrupted him with a question of her own. “You two—” she waved to indicate the man who’d left the room “—you are brothers, yes?”

  “That’s right. I’m Brent. He’s Ken. What’s your name?”

  With strawberry blond hair and hazel eyes, Brent wasn’t quite as handsome as his darker sibling. But since she rarely saw light-colored hair in Guatemala, she liked it a lot. “Cierra Romero.”

  The man he’d called Ken ret
urned with the corners of his mouth tugged into a frown, but the memory of the tautly muscled stomach and chest she’d touched as she warmed her hands made Cierra feel a bit jittery inside—a sensation she’d never experienced before. Perhaps it was the hunger and the cold.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t find it,” he said. “It must’ve blown away when you fainted.”

  But…she’d put all her faith in that note, which included a personal note for her new employer, as well as the address where she was to go.

  In an effort to sustain this latest blow with some dignity, she covered her face but was simply too hungry and exhausted to stem the tears.

  An uneasy silence fell as she cried. She understood that these Americans had no idea how to react to so much negative emotion. The poorest person she’d met in this country would’ve been rich as a king in her village, so she felt quite confident that these two men had never been through anything remotely similar to what she had. They’d never been unwanted visitors in a foreign country, had never slept in the street or begged ride after ride with strangers. And they certainly had no idea what it was like to go without food for days at a time. They probably thought she was crazy. Or a lowly beggar, trying to swindle them by playing on their sympathy.

  But everything that had gone wrong since her parents died was her brother’s fault. If he’d kept the family in Todos Santos, where they’d been raised, they might have had a chance of subsisting off the land, like everyone else. But no… He’d believed he could get rich by moving to the city.

  Instead, he’d gotten into trouble and been sent to prison.

  She wasn’t her brother. So why was she humiliating herself in front of these Americans? Where was her pride? She would not represent her country or her family this way!

  Wiping her cheeks, she blinked to keep more tears from spilling over her lashes and looked up at their stricken faces. “I—I apologize for interrupting your afternoon.” She formed the words as precisely as she could, and got off the bed so she could put on her soaking shoes.

  The two brothers exchanged a glance that seemed to say, What do we do now? Then the older one, the one she found attractive, came toward her. “What was so important about that note?”

  “Nothing. Please, do not worry. I— It was my fault.” If she hadn’t gotten lost, this never would’ve happened. The last person she’d asked for directions had said to take a right at the fork in the road, but she’d never come across a fork, and she’d been walking all day. She must have missed it and needed to go back.

  “A storm’s moving in,” Brent said as she tied her shoes. “I don’t think you want to go back out, not without warmer clothes. How did you get here?”

  Wasn’t it obvious? “I walked.”

  “From where?”

  She looked up at him. “Dundee.”

  “No kidding? That’s a hike!”

  “If you could tell us where you’re trying to go, we could take you,” Ken volunteered. “I’ve got a four-wheel drive.”

  Of course he did. He had everything. Like every other American.

  But that was her brother and his anger talking. Cierra didn’t want to let Ricardo poison her mind, too. She was just so…scared. Since her parents died, nothing had been right.

  “That was on the note,” she said with a wry smile.

  The one called Ken blew out a sigh and scratched his neck. “I see. And you can’t remember the address?”

  She told them as much as she could recall, but it didn’t help.

  “That fork you mentioned—that could be anywhere between here and Dundee,” Ken said. “We’d need more information in order to find it.”

  Cierra couldn’t give them more information. She remembered some of the numbers on the note but not the words. They were too foreign to her. The English tutor Charlie had hired had focused on teaching her to speak. Writing was supposed to come later.

  No one knew there’d never be a later….

  “Do you have any other options?” Brent asked. Other options? She wasn’t familiar with that particular word but the context helped her understand. She’d been right about these two. They had no sense of what it was like to live with no safety net. She was tempted to tell them her only other “option” was to go back to Guatemala City and sell herself on the streets. But she wasn’t sure they’d believe her. And if they did, they’d pity her—or think she was a whore they could use themselves. Maybe she was breaking the law by staying in this country, but she’d come here legally. She hadn’t wanted Charlie to die.

  She had a right to survival, didn’t she? She also had the right to protect her sisters from what they’d become if she couldn’t send money….

  Even if she didn’t have that right, she would answer to God. Or the immigration office, if they caught her. Not these strangers who, by virtue of where they’d been born, were so much luckier than she.

  “Yes, I do have another…option,” she lied. “Thank you. I will go.”

  Ken and Brent followed her out of the room. “Can’t we take you?” Ken asked.

  She didn’t have the strength to walk back to Dundee. And yet it was her best hope of finding an alternative position. Maybe she could be a maid, or a dishwasher, or a cook for one of the businesses she’d seen. Despite all the anti-immigration sentiment, Americans still hired illegals because they worked so cheap. And no one could cook as well as she could. Her brother had told her that a million times. “Yes, por favor. If you would be so kind. I will go to Dundee.”

  The good looking one, Ken, seemed vastly relieved that they’d found a solution. “No problem. Take this.” Grabbing a heavy coat from where it had been tossed over a stack of boxes, he shoved it at her.

  She hesitated. “This belongs to you, no?”

  “Yes, but I’m fine. I won’t need it.”

  When she still made no move to accept the coat, he took her hand and insisted she grab hold. “We’re not leaving until you put it on.”

  Thinking she could give it back when she got out of the truck, she did as he said. It hung on her, came almost to her knees, but she was so grateful for the added warmth she ducked her head to zip it up just so they wouldn’t see the depth of her relief.

  “Let’s go before the storm gets any worse,” Brent said, and she hitched her purse over one shoulder as Ken led them out through a garage that, like the cabin, was stuffed with boxes.

  “You are moving away?” If so, he had a lot of belongings. What could possibly be inside so many boxes? “Moving in. I just bought this place from my stepfather,” Ken explained. “I’ll be staying here until I decide where I really want to live.”

  “It is nice,” she said, but her response was absentminded. She was no longer thinking about the cabin or the boxes. She was thinking about Ken’s scent on the coat and how it made her pulse race. But that was childish. He wasn’t the movie star from High Noon she admired so much. He lived in a completely different world and, after he dropped her off, wouldn’t give her a second thought. He didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was what she’d find once she reached Dundee.

  It was getting late, almost dinnertime. The valley was already buried in snow. And—she looked up in the sky—more was on the way….

  CHAPTER THREE

  WITH SO MUCH SNOW hurtling down, it wasn’t easy to get off the mountain, even in an SUV. Had Cierra attempted her walk from Dundee any later in the day, she would’ve frozen to death—and wouldn’t have been found until the snow began to melt. Ken couldn’t believe she’d survived so long as it was.

  While he drove, she sat rigidly in the passenger seat.

  Sensing his attention when he glanced at her, she offered him another of her formal smiles, the kind that hid every thought behind it. He and Brent had both tried to talk to her, but she either pretended not to understand the question or she answered in vague terms. After an hour in the car, time spent creeping around each hairpin turn, they knew no more about her than they had at the cabin.

  “Where do yo
u want me to drop you off?” he asked as they finally rolled into town. He’d decided he wouldn’t worry about her. He had his hands full with Russ and the changes going on in his own life. And she wasn’t his problem. They didn’t even know her.

  Nibbling at her lip, she eyed the buildings they passed until she noticed the drugstore. When she pointed halfheartedly, he had the impression that she’d picked a totally random location, which was crazy. Something or someone had brought her, or coaxed her, to Dundee. Surely she couldn’t be as friendless and destitute as she seemed. As soon as her friend, or whoever she’d been hoping to see, realized she hadn’t shown up, they’d come looking for her, and all would end well, right?

  “Here?” He pulled to the curb.

  “Sí. Gracias.”

  When she unzipped his coat, apparently to return it, he caught her arm. “No. Keep it. I insist.”

  “But…I have no…” Blushing furiously, she raised her hands as if to say she couldn’t compensate him for it, but no way would he let her take off that coat. He wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he did.

  “I don’t want it. Really. It’s extra. I was going to throw it away.”

  She stared at him. “In the garbage?”

  The shock in her voice told him how wasteful she found that, but if it made her accept the damn coat, he didn’t care about her opinion of him. “Right, in the garbage. You might as well take it.”

  With a brief nod, and a determined tilt of her chin, she got out and waved. When he didn’t drive off as she expected, she lost some of her false confidence and stepped into the drugstore.

  “What do you think?” Brent asked above the steady swish of the windshield wipers.

  Letting the engine idle, Ken watched the entrance to the drugstore. “I don’t think she knows a soul at the store or anywhere else in town.”

  “I don’t, either. She’s trying to make us believe she belongs here, but she doesn’t. What’s going on?”