Home for the Holidays

by Leanne Banks

  It couldn’t be much past noon, yet it was almost too dark to see clearly. Her foot slipped and she flapped her arms to regain her balance, then glanced over her shoulder, noticing for the first time the oversized pickup that was slowly creeping through the flood, headed her way. Whoever he was, if he happened to have a rope she could beg, borrow or steal, she’d figure out what to do with it later.

  Stationing herself in the middle of the road, she waved both arms, trying not to think about the possibility that the driver might be a predator instead of a Good Samaritan. Several years ago she’d taken a course in women’s self-defense, but her rusty, untried skills might not be a match for an armed thug.

  Blinded by the headlights, she turned and pointed toward where the poor creature still clung to the branches, then gestured for the driver to roll down his window.

  On his way home from making a call, Joe had stopped off in town to pick up a prescription for his mom. While he was there he’d bought a few last-minute stocking stuffers. If he’d known the weather was going to worsen he might have left off shopping for extras.

  No, he wouldn’t. His mama needed her chocolate fix and his dad would enjoy putting a few hundred old snapshots into a new album. Their lives were restricted enough these days. He wasn’t about to deny them the few pleasures they could still appreciate.

  Seeing the flooded creek, he’d eased off the gas and touched the brakes, trailing a wake behind him as he inched forward. Some fool woman on the other side was standing in the middle of the highway waving her arms. Either she was out of gas, or she’d had a breakdown. The question was, was it mental or mechanical?

  Hell of a time for it, either way.

  And then his own mind started playing tricks on him. For a minute there she almost looked like…

  “Ann Elise?” He whispered the name, not really believing the tall, bedraggled creature looking up at his window could be the same woman he had held in his arms exactly once—kissed exactly once—and dreamed of for the past fourteen years.

  There couldn’t be two women with that face. Haunting eyes, elegant bones, girl-next-door freckles. Not even her two kid sisters had looked like Ann Elise. “Trouble?” he asked.

  She’s not out here sunbathing, jerk.

  Obviously she didn’t recognize him. Of course, he was wearing his hat, and it was dark inside the truck. Outside, too, for that matter. But if she hadn’t recognized him the day after their only date, there was no reason to think she would recognize him now.

  “There’s a dog—I think,” she said breathlessly. “It might be a coyote—whatever—it’s caught up in those bushes downstream. Do you have a rope?”

  God alive, it was her!

  Brushing aside any personal feelings, he nodded and said, “Let me pull off the road.”

  She stepped back as he negotiated space for another vehicle to pass, if anyone else was fool enough to be out in conditions like this. When he’d checked with the highway patrol before leaving town, they had already begun to set up roadblocks. Unless the rain stopped in the next half hour, flooding was going to be a problem throughout the county for the rest of the day, maybe even into Christmas.

  Opening his big aluminum toolbox behind the cab, he took out a coil of rope and a heavy-duty flashlight and thought, she hasn’t changed at all. Same cheekbones, same freckles, same big blue eyes, as guarded as ever. For one magic night he’d seen those eyes lose their wariness, and it had marked him for life.

  Her hair was clinging to her scalp now instead of dancing around her shoulders, and that rig she was wearing wouldn’t pass as prom dress by anyone’s standards.

  “Here we go,” he said, trying to sound more like twenty-nine than fifteen. At least his voice didn’t break. So far. “Now where’s this animal you spotted?”

  “Oh, my God—Joe?” For a moment she looked stunned, but then, recovering quickly, she turned and hurried to the edge of the pavement, pointing to a spot about a dozen yards downstream in what was normally a well-behaved, two-culvert creek.

  “Oh boy, we got trouble,” he muttered. Drenching a mean-tempered bull with the scours was nothing compared to rescuing a big, terrified dog from drowning in a rushing river of muddy water.

  Quickly, he peeled off his leather coat and shoved it back into the truck, then removed everything from the pockets of his jeans.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. Her boot slipped, she flailed her arms to regain her balance and sat down hard.

  “Your bidding, ma’am,” he said grimly, and gave her a hand up.

  “But what—you can’t—!”

  “Got a better idea?”

  “Can you— Can’t we—?”

  “Here’s the way it works. I’ll tie one end of this line onto the front bumper, patch on a loop for me, and then another one for your friend. Once I get hold of your critter, I’ll secure him and then overhand back to shore, pulling the dog along with me. If the current’s too strong, you might have to start the truck and back up, real slow, but watch for my hand signals. If I get tangled up in something down there, you need to stop instantly, you got it?”

  “Then what?” Her face was the color of wet marble. Even her freckles were pale.

  “Then we’ll figure out how to get me untangled. Chances are, we’ll be back on dry land in less time than it takes to worry about it.”

  “There’s no such thing as dry land,” she replied, watching the flood victim as Joe hurriedly rigged the rescue line. “Hang on, honey, help’s on the way,” she called.

  Standing up, he tested the knots, attached one end to the bumper, then tightened one of the loops around his chest. “Honey?” he repeated quizzically.

  She looked startled for a moment, then shook her head. “I’m pretty sure she’s female.”

  He shucked off his boots and socks and tossed them into the back of the truck. They couldn’t get any wetter. And then he edged out into the rushing stream. Grinning over his shoulder, he said, “Not even sure what species we’ve got here, but you’re positive of the gender, right? Wish me luck. Remember the drill. If I get into trouble I’ll signal. Whatever you do, don’t try to pull me out with the truck unless I tell you to, okay?”

  Joe could think of several things he’d rather be doing than wading out into muddy floodwaters after an animal that might or might not be wild, or even rabid, but that would sure as hell be scared, and therefore dangerous.

  Funny thing, but he trusted Ann Elise not to panic. She might look like an ice princess, but she had what it took to get through vet school and set up a fancy practice in Dallas.

  Oh, yeah, he knew all about that. She hadn’t been hard to track once they’d both gone into practice, her a couple of years earlier, as she’d had a head start. He’d occasionally seen her listed in various professional publications. She’d attended a conference down in Orlando last fall that he’d missed.

  Something—a piece of brush—struck him on the hip, but rushed by without snagging his jeans.

  It was a dog, all right. “Easy, sport, I’m coming,” he called softly to the terrified animal from some ten feet away. Golden retriever, from what he could see, which wasn’t much. Head, shoulders, one forepaw. God, if she was caught in a steel trap down under there…

  The animal whimpered, and Joe risked a glance over his shoulder to see how much slack he still had. The line wasn’t taut yet. With any luck, he’d have enough, as long as the bitch didn’t fight him.

  And even if she did. “Smart girl, we’re almost there, hang on another minute for me, will you?” Like Ann Elise, he was assuming the gender. Something about her eyes…

  His mama still teased him about what she called his romantic streak, claiming it was going to land him in trouble. Course, Mama was still hoping for grandkids.

  A dog’s eyes, for cripe’s sake.

  “Take it easy now, sweetheart, we’re going to get you out of here in short order.” As he neared his target, he widened the end loop and held it high over the bitch’s head. So
mehow he had to work it over her shoulders and under her forelegs, else she’d strangle. Any way he did it she was probably going to leave her mark on him.

  “Smart lady,” he muttered, working the loop over one foreleg and at the same time trying to keep her from climbing all over him. The good thing was, he could touch bottom here. Bad thing was, it was too muddy to gain any real traction, which meant that he and the princess here were doing a clumsy water ballet.

  “There you go,” he said, holding the big, half-drowned animal an arm’s length away. She tried to clamber up onto his shoulders again but the current separated them as he began hauling them both upstream. It occurred to him that he might have worked his way to the shore and slogged through the flooded field back to the highway, but once ashore, she’d have taken off. He had a feeling she needed attention before she was turned loose again.

  They made it at approximately the same time, the dog lunging ahead to drag herself up onto the bank. From the looks of her he figured she was mostly golden retriever. She shook herself off just as Ann Elise knelt in front of her, making soft noises that were probably meant to be reassuring.

  “Better give her some space,” he said. “You two haven’t been formally introduced yet.”

  “Oh…my…goodness,” she said softly, “Do you see what I see?”

  Oh, yeah. He saw, all right. Talk about complications.

  Chapter 4

  Ann Elise was experienced in dealing with distressed animals, but never before had she been confronted with one that was both half-drowned and in the first stage of labor. “We have to get her in out of the rain.”

  Joe shot a speculative glance at his truck. “Crew cab,” he said. “It’ll be a close fit, but I can shift enough gear to make room.” Then he looked back. “Mind telling me what the hell you’re doing out on a day like this?”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going shopping. This is Christmas Eve, remember? Children expect to find presents under the tree, right?”

  “Yeah, well—kids don’t always get what they want.”

  The bitch shook herself again, sat and then sprawled over onto her side, gazing up at them through patient, pain-filled eyes. “The back seat’s not going to work,” Ann Elise murmured, picturing the two of them on their knees in the front seats, ministering to the patient.

  “Alternative?” Joe collected his boots, emptied them and then shoved them on to his bare feet, bracing his lean butt against the grill of the 4x4 pickup.

  “Aunt Beth’s car’s awfully small. The trunk’s roomy, but…”

  “Right,” he said. “But.”

  She couldn’t believe she was standing here on the side of a flooded highway in the pouring rain, talking to Joe Halloran for the first time in fourteen years about, of all things, a dog. How many times had she pictured such a reunion? In her daydreams she’d always been wearing something elegant, understated and wildly flattering, her hair freshly styled to make the most of her ordinary features.

  Instead, she was soaked to the skin, her makeup a victim of the rain, wearing a soggy sweater that was stretched almost to her knees, and a pair of mud-caked boots. As for her hair, the less said, the better.

  “If you’ll help me get her inside the car I’ll take her back to Aunt Beth’s,” she said, thinking that at least there she could work in a dry garage. It was still Aunt Beth’s place, even though Beth Baker was gone now. “I hate to close her up in the trunk in case she panics, but if you have a tarp, I could spread it over the back seat.”

  “I have a tarp and you’re welcome to it, but the Baker place is out of the question.”

  She had never dealt well with ultimatums, but this was no time to take offense. The dog whimpered, and she knelt and rested one hand on its head, meanwhile easing her bedraggled tail aside. “Oh, Lordy,” she murmured. “This can’t wait much longer.”

  “My bag’s in the truck. We could slow things down, but I don’t recommend it.”

  Under the circumstances, neither did Ann Elise. The poor creature had been through enough without interfering with her labor. She stood, glanced at the car parked on the shoulder some fifty feet away, then at the nearby pickup. “It’ll have to be the car, then. At least it’s dry.”

  Joe shook his head. “Out of the question. Look, don’t even think about getting her back to your place. Before I left town I checked with Highway Patrol. So far, this is the worst spot, but half the road between here and your place is under water now. North of here there’re already two washouts. I’m surprised you made it this far in that little thing.”

  Ann Elise could have taken offense on behalf of her aunt’s compact car, but she only nodded. Flash floods weren’t called that for nothing. There was a good reason why so many people in this part of the country drove SUVs or pickups. Already the water had risen several inches closer to where they’d parked and the rain showed no sign of letting up. Within the next hour—maybe sooner—every creek south of San Antonio could be out of bank.

  Ann Elise laid a hand on the retriever’s head, sliding her other hand along her distended side. The bitch struggled to her feet and tried vainly to reach around her swollen belly and sniff out the state of affairs. Then, with an apologetic look over her shoulder, she limped away and tried to crawl under the pickup.

  “All right, little mama, let’s get you out of this rain,” Joe said softly. Moving quickly to bar her way, he lowered the tailgate, shoved a block and tackle aside and carefully scooped up the desperate creature. Arms full of roughly eighty pounds of wet retriever, he grunted, “Once you start launching cargo, girl, we’re stuck here for the duration, so try to hold back, y’hear?”

  Ann Elise hoisted herself up onto the side of the truck bed and shifted a crowbar and a length of chain farther out of the way just as Joe arched his back in an effort to clear the tailgate with the animal’s paws. “No good place to hold on to her,” he grunted, easing her onto the truck bed.

  Balanced on her midsection on the side panel with one toe hooked onto the rear tire, Ann Elise leaned over to help ease the dog down onto her side. “Next time we’ll try for a beagle, they’re easier to handle,” she said. “Shh, you’re all right now, sugar, you got lucky.”

  “Damned right,” Joe affirmed as he stepped back and wiped his hands on the legs of his jeans. “Two vets, what’re the odds? Go lock your car, Al. You want to drive, or you want to ride with the patient? I don’t think she needs to be left alone in case she panics and tries to jump out.”

  Al? As in “Hey, Al, good buddy, do me a favor, will ya?”

  “I’ll ride back here,” she said. “I just hope this truck bed of yours has scuppers, else we both might end up afloat.” The rain was still coming down in a solid deluge.

  Al? In her wildest dreams, he had never called her Al.

  “We’re not going far. She’ll do better with as little handling as possible.”

  Ann Elise had to agree, still it seemed heartless. “You’re going to run the roadblocks?”

  “Nope. No creeks between here and the old Camden place. Remember it?”

  She remembered it. The local haunted house. “Whatever,” she said, “Just get us out of this rain.”

  She hurried over to lock the car, her mind racing over a dozen possibilities. She didn’t have a single instrument to deal with a situation like this. Who would have expected—

  “Let’s move!” Joe yelled.

  “I’m moving!” To someplace warm, hopefully. The temperature was plummeting, and frozen slush would be disastrous. They needed shelter, needed it soon. Call Faith, she reminded herself as she reached inside the door and automatically punched the button that locked both doors.

  Joe was waiting to help her up into the high truck bed. He swung her up in his arms and for one brief moment before he set her down beside the dog, she felt his warmth, inhaled the unique scent of warm, healthy male and cold, muddy water.

  Oh, lawsy, I’m plum crazy. Just plain certifiable.

  Half
a mile down the road Joe stopped to clear away a branch that had blown down across the highway. Before climbing back into the cab, he checked his two passengers. Ann Elise—was this a wild dream, or what?

  He’d called her Al in an effort to defuse the old familiar spell she’d cast on him so long ago. It hadn’t worked. She was leaning against the tool compartment, legs spread wide, the retriever lying between them with its muzzle on her thigh. She was crooning to the animal.

  Joe had been known to try a few unorthodox treatments in his career, but singing to a patient—that was a new one. Back inside the cab, it occurred to him that she might be cold. Soaking wet, sitting in rain fit to strangle a catfish with the temperature dropping steadily? Hell, of course she was cold.

  Climbing out again, he dug his coat out from behind the passenger seat and draped it around her shoulders. She thanked him without looking away from the patient.

  “How much farther?” she asked.

  “Not far now. Don’t take that coat off, y’hear?” he warned, guessing that as soon as he turned his back she’d take it off and spread it over the dog.

  Funny thing, he mused, downshifting to creep through a patch of bumper-deep water—he didn’t really know her. And yet, on a deeper level, he did. Knew her well enough for her to have busted his heart wide open before he was even old enough to get his driver’s license.

  Calling her Al in an effort to break the spell of all that cool, enticing femininity wasn’t going to work any more than dating half the women in Lone Star County had helped. Fourteen years. Nearly half a lifetime, and there was still something about her that got to him. Back then, most of the kids had considered her a real snob. He was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. Hell, she’d gone out with him, hadn’t she?