A Merry Little Christmas

by Catherine Palmer

  She felt a flash of light roll through her, as if lightning had forked down from heaven and buzzed her side of the truck. But no thunder followed. As if blinded by a sudden brightness, the colors around her faded away, the howl of the wind, the hum of the engine and the fan from the defroster silenced. Her heartbeat slowed, as if time stilled.

  It lasted only for a second. Then the brightness vanished, her pulse double beat and there was Colt, unaffected, steering the rig onto the shoulder, to avoid the SUV barreling down the middle of the narrow country road at them.

  Whatever that was, it was proof she was way too sleep deprived. She gave Jessie another snuggle. Not that she minded the long nights watching over her baby.

  “That was close.” Colt shook his head. “Guess they own the road.”

  “They probably do. I take it you haven’t met the Cowins?”

  “I haven’t met anyone yet. Only my second day here.”

  “But rumor has it that you bought the house sometime in the summer.”

  “August. Been busy working. Where do I let you off at?”

  “You know the first mailbox you come to along this road, the one shaped like a moose?”

  “You belong to that moose?”

  “Not original I know, seeing as how we border Moose Lake. It’s my uncle’s cabin. And his choice of mailbox.”

  “Why are you living in your uncle’s cabin?”

  “He offered it to us after my divorce.”

  He felt her sorrow like the weight of his own. He flicked his attention from the road just enough to see the last snowflakes gleam as they melted on the soft riotous curls falling around her sweetheart face.

  There was sure something about her. It was like a bolt of lightning that hooked straight into his chest. He felt his notorious heart of ice crack a little, and he jerked back, senses reeling as he focused on the road again.

  Chapter Two

  “You need help getting in?”

  Amanda finished the bow on Jessie’s hood and made sure it wasn’t too tight beneath her chin. “No, but I should at least wipe our snow off your leather seats. I’m guessing that having us drip all over your new upholstery isn’t the best thing for it.”

  “Forget the seats. What about you?” Colt cut the engine and turned to face her. “Looks like your only car is back there in the snowbank. Am I going to leave you stranded here?”

  “I have an aunt and uncle in town I can call. Besides, Trusty Rusty’s bum radiator is not your problem.”

  “Radiator? I’m impressed. Not too many women you come across know what’s under a car’s hood.”

  “You’re looking at a mechanic’s daughter. Not only can I change my own oil, but there isn’t a mechanic in the western states that can pull one over on me.”

  “Then why the broken-down car?”

  “Oh, I knew you were going to get to that. Not my fault.”

  “When it comes to women, it never is. At least, in my experience.”

  “Hey, that sounds a little bitter. You don’t come across as a bitter guy.”

  “Just goes to show appearances can be deceiving.”

  He’d been hurt. Well, hadn’t everybody? Life was like that. She considered their rescuer. For a man over six foot, he wasn’t rough looking or intimidating. His jet-black hair was a bit long and tousled, almost out of place with his designer garments and top-of-the-line hiking boots. He looked as out of place parked in front of her modest log cabin as she’d look in the luxury million-dollar homes at the north shore of the lake.

  He pocketed his keys, the sure sign of a city boy. Every one here just left the keys in the ignition. “I’ll make sure you and your kids get in okay. That there haven’t been any more disasters before I leave you stuck here without a vehicle.”

  “I have—”

  “An uncle, I know. What if the phone’s out?”

  “I have my cell.”

  “What if there’s another dead spot?”

  Funny. On one of the worst days of her life, she had to get a ride with a comedian. She gave her Jessie another gentle squeeze. Life was a bittersweet proposition, she was learning. You lived even knowing that one day you would be dying. You loved those you would lose, sooner or later. And the loving and living both had to be done in full brazen knowledge of the loss to come. The trouble was, you never knew how much time you had.

  It was even worse when you did.

  Don’t think about the doctor’s prognosis. Amanda was done dealing with bad news—for the day, at least. She forced her mind into a blank so she wouldn’t have to face the devastating diagnosis. If she kept moving and didn’t do much thinking, maybe she could stay one step ahead of the truth. Denial. It was becoming her favorite state of existence.

  Jessie fidgeted against the layers of wool and down. “Don’t like the hood, Mama.”

  “I know, baby. Just a moment longer.” She rewrapped the blanket snug and tight, holding her child with care, aware of Colt’s gaze on her as tangible as the melted snow cool against her skin. She intentionally avoided his gaze. “Jeremy, zip your coat. All the way up.”

  The kid lurched forward, bumping the backs of the forward seats, as he zipped. “Colt? You know what?”

  “What, kid.”

  “Wonder Boy lives in Los Angeles, too. Do you know him?”

  Colt took in the excitement glittering in the boy’s eyes. He couldn’t remember, had he ever been that believing? “Not anymore.”

  “Mom, did you hear that?” The boy leaned forward to whisper in his mom’s ear, although his words carried above the muted roar of the storm. “He knows superheroes.”

  “I heard.”

  That wasn’t what he’d meant. Colt opened his mouth to say so when he caught her gaze. It was as if he could see into her heart through those eyes of hers. See into a sadness that left his soul bleak.

  He felt her sorrow like the wind beating against the sides of the truck. This wasn’t in his comfort zone, but he let the emotion settle. And he wondered. She’d pulled the scarf over her face again, so only her eyes were exposed. It was as if he could see all of her, right down to her spirit.

  This was way too intimate. Much too close. But he didn’t blink. Didn’t move away. What was it about her that made him see so much? Most people went around with masks firmly in place, right?

  “Ready, Jeremy?” She popped open the door, and the blizzard roared into the warm cab.

  When he looked next, she was gone.

  He followed her into the gale-force winds driving icy pellets against him. Disoriented, he stumbled along the truck toward the faint, twilight shadow of the house.

  Where had she gone? He swiped snow from his eyes. There she was, the small child still in her arms, tromping up a narrow walkway toward a wan porch light. The vicious curtain of the storm eased inexplicably around her, as if an angel had reached down to block the worst of the cold from the mother and her children.

  He blinked again, sure he was seeing things, but the swirling gray did seem lighter and thinner and the driven snow less cruel when he reached her side. But shrouded in white snow and shadow, Amanda whisked away from him, following her son into the shelter of their home.

  This was not a luxury house. Colt took in the details in a flash—the honeyed log walls, the woodstove in the living room, the small rooms, the secondhand furniture. The modest TV in the corner. His heart tugged as Amanda delicately transferred her daughter onto the middle cushion of the decades-old couch, unwrapping her with care. First the coat’s hood, then untying the fuzzy hat beneath and tugging off mittens from those small dainty hands.

  Colt turned to go, and out of the corner of his eye he saw the muffler come spiraling off…and the mask covering the little girl’s mouth and nose. The kind to filter out germs. The kind that very sick people wore.

  In the glow of the overhead light, her round button face was ashen and shadowed. Amanda knelt to lift the wool cap from those soft curls, exposing hand-size bald spots between those thin, fine
curls.

  Air rushed from his lungs. Okay, that was not what he expected. He’d never been around serious illness, but even he could guess at the cause of little Jessie’s hair loss. Cancer treatment.

  “Would you like some hot chocolate?” Only unmeasured love resonated in Amanda’s words as she brushed a hand, tenderly, over her little one’s head.

  In that moment, gazing down at her daughter, her heart was exposed. He was too far away to hear her words, but he could read her lips. “I love you, baby.” And she pressed a kiss to her daughter’s cheek.

  Unnamed emotion rose in his throat. Colton tore his gaze away to study the cruel tangle of swirling snow outside. The storm beat at the paned glass and scoured the thick log walls, and the wolf’s howl of the wind echoed in the icy chambers of his heart.

  Okay, new perspective here. He’d been unhappy with his fast-paced, highly successful life. He’d retreated to this corner of God’s Country for some R & R.

  While he’d had his head down working hard, making money and calling meetings, worrying about stockholders, and profit-and-loss margins and investing more money than any one person ought to have, he’d forgotten a few things that he’d learned long ago.

  He watched Amanda step away from the ill child as if her soul was being ripped out of her. The wave of anguish he felt, he realized, was hers, as tangible as the cold rolling from the outside walls of the room. He read the truth on Amanda’s face as she kept her gaze from the little girl.

  He hung his head. By the grace of God.

  It was simple to take for granted the blessings in life. Life was busy and demanding, problem after problem, a hundred things needing to be done in an afternoon.

  But it could make a man blind to how he’d been blessed. Through no fault or goodness of his own doing, mostly, but by divine grace. Amanda deserved to have a critically ill child no more than he deserved to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

  “Where did Jeremy disappear to?” With the microwave beeping in the background, she braced her hands on the scarred Formica counter and looked around. “He opened the door for me. And then what? That kid can disappear in a blink of an eye.”

  “You need to be careful not to blink, huh?” That had her smiling. “If it helps, there are snowy boot marks tracking through the house.”

  “Oh, the back door. What on earth did he go back outside for?” If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.

  Okay, Amanda, start counting. Come back down off the ledge. That’s what her mom always said, when she was majorly stressed. Nothing is so bad that it can’t get worse.

  That wasn’t helping. She pressed her fingers to her throat but couldn’t feel the gold cross through the layers of turtleneck and wool, but knowing it was there made all the difference. Jeremy hadn’t gone far. The car could be fixed. Jessie was still here. Colt had happened upon them at the perfect moment.

  She had to take that on faith. No matter how tough things were, someone was watching over them all. That’s what she would cling to, anyway, despite any and all evidence to the contrary.

  “Would you mind keeping an eye on Jessie while I track down my son?”

  The big man standing awkwardly in the middle of the living room looked more like a bear. He was still wearing his parka, unzipped, and the bulky coat added to his already powerful stature. He appeared startled by her request, but he didn’t run. “Go ahead. We’ll be just fine.”

  Some men would bolt for the door. Heaven knew that her husband had. But Colt knelt next to the battered end table, switched on a lamp and began sorting through the tall stack of picture books. He chose The Velveteen Rabbit. “You like bunnies?”

  Jessie nodded once, her big eyes wary.

  Okay, now I have to like him. Amanda headed straight for the kitchen and back door to the wintry blast. As snow battered her, she developed a theory where her firstborn had gone off to.

  Sure enough, she could see a superhero wrestling with split pieces of firewood he’d taken from the stack in the carport. “Jeremy, leave the wood. You’re such a helpful boy, but that’s my job.”

  “I’m Wonder Boy.”

  “You are a wonder, sweetie, but leave the wood and come inside. I was going to make hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows just for you.”

  “But we gotta keep the house real warm for Jessie.”

  “I know. That’s why we have the modern invention of electric heat. C’mon, kiddo.”

  “I’m still carryin’ this, though. I’m not puttin’ it back.” He puffed his chest out, determined to do good.

  “Okay. Forward march.” She laid a hand on his shoulder and didn’t let go until she had him safely in the kitchen.

  She hadn’t been outside more than two minutes, but she was already shivering. The storm was worsening with each passing minute, so much so that the warmth breezing up from the baseboard heaters felt like paradise.

  Don’t even think about what would have happened if Colt hadn’t come along, she thought as she hurried to zap cups of water in the microwave. Jeremy, of course, was already stomping through the house, carrying the two pieces of wood to the box in the living room, leaving enough snow to build two snowmen in his wake.

  A masculine baritone rumbled, warm and wonderful. Colt. “That’s quite a load you got there.”

  “Yep. I got this really big sliver. See? It’s bleeding and everything.”

  “Cool.”

  Male bonding, Amanda supposed. Ice crinkled to the floor as she unzipped her coat and hung it over the back of a chair to thaw. The ear-ringing clatter of wood tumbling into the metal wood bin crashed through the house. Jeremy’s announcement, “There. Now I’m gonna make the fire,” had her bolting into action, making sure the matches were high out of reach, where they belonged.

  They were. Phew.

  “That’s a man’s job, all right. I’m guessing your mom would rather do that,” Colt said, calmly, rising from his kneeling position on the floor. All six foot plus of him. “Amanda. We have a problem.”

  She wasn’t exactly sure why her mind had disengaged when that handsome man said her name, but it was as dead as poor Trusty Rusty. “P-problem?”

  “Something about a bunny.”

  “A bunny.” It wasn’t ringing any bells. Her mind was a total blank. Maybe a total loss. That’s it, she’d run over her limit in the ability-to-handle-things department. Plus, it certainly didn’t help that for the first time she was getting a really good look at Colt, this new neighbor of theirs, in full light.

  In the glow of the truck’s dash lights, he’d been shadowed, with the twilight of the storm closing in on them. But there was no getting around the fact that he didn’t only give the impression of being handsome. He was drop-dead gorgeous. From his tousled midnight-black locks to his high, chiseled cheekbones and all the rest of him.

  Not that she was noticing. That couldn’t be why her brain was stuck in neutral.

  It took the desolation of tears filling her daughter’s eyes for her mind to kick back into gear. “Oh, her bunny. She always has it with her. Where—” She looked around, lifted a blanket and cast off coats and scarves and mittens.

  No bunny.

  A vision of the limp-eared pink bunny flashed into her mind. Last seen on Trusty Rusty’s backseat. And just how had she forgotten Jessie’s toy? Absolute proof that she was losing it. That she was beyond hope of holding it together.

  “Let me guess. The car.” Colt took an anxious step toward the door.

  Not that she blamed him. She was surprised he’d stayed this long. For a bachelor who lived a much faster, more glamorous urban life far from here, he’d done pretty good. Jessie’s father had left so fast that he’d been a blur through the back door.

  Oops, she’d moved from hopeless to bitter. How had that happened? She definitely needed chocolate. The sooner, the better. “Thanks for the ride, Colt. I—”

  “I’ll be back.” Chocolate-rich, that voice of his.

  That just proved she was out o
n that metaphorical ledge again. Deep down, she so wished for someone strong to lean on—no, that was the wrong word—to lean against. A strong, good man who would shelter her while she closed her eyes and leaned against his chest and gathered enough strength from his love to go on.

  Fairy-tale wishes, she figured, because the man she’d needed had vanished like smoke.

  Now, it wasn’t Todd she wanted. It wasn’t any man, not even Colt. She closed the door with a final sound that was like a vault’s lock clicking shut on her heart.

  She was utterly alone. And all out of dreams, too.

  Call him temporarily insane. Call it a multiple personality. Call him ashamed. That had to be the reason he had ventured back out into the blizzard. The radio had announced the weather and road advisory—only emergency driving allowed. He’d never seen a blizzard before, much less driven in one.

  The truth was, that little girl had gotten to him. And, even more, Amanda. Her sorrow clung to him like the shadows beneath the cedars lining the country road. Not even the gusts battering the side of the truck seemed strong enough to dislodge that sorrow.

  Her sweet vanilla fragrance of hand lotion and shampoo faintly circulated with the heater’s current in the cab. Maybe that’s why she was hard to forget, he reasoned, avoiding thinking of any other possibilities.

  He pulled up to the cozy log home mantled in snow and nestled beneath the snow-draped limbs of cedars and fir. Why did his gaze search for her in the window? It was impossible to see anything, except for the blurry haze of light through the torrential snow. Not until he was much closer, standing in the relative shelter of the narrow front porch, could he see her, cuddled on the couch with a child tucked on either side, reading aloud out of a book held open on her lap.

  Lamplight haloed them, ringing them with pure golden light, but it was the lovely woman who captivated him. Who made his soul still. He liked how she looked, so genuine and bright.

  When she glanced up from her book and their gazes locked, unexplained tenderness came out of nowhere and lit him up from the inside out.