A Child for Christmas

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  “They’ll be here for Christmas Day. Well, not here.” Squire thumped the table again. “At Gloria’s place down in Casper, seeing as she’s being so contrary.”

  “How come you haven’t just moved down there?”

  “This is my home.”

  “Why doesn’t she come up here, then?”

  Squire shifted. His boots scraped softly against the wood planked floor. “She visits.”

  Sawyer’s lips twisted. “Nice arrangements if you can swing ’em.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Sawyer shrugged. “Just an observation.”

  “Of what?”

  “You’ve got a good thing going. Why change it? Visit your lady friend when you feel like a little romance. But she’s far enough away that she doesn’t mess with the order of things.”

  Squire’s jaw ticked. “Helluva thing to say, boy, when you admit you don’t remember anything about the situation.”

  “I’ve got eyes.”

  “Yeah. And they’re as judgmental as they always were,” Squire said evenly.

  Sawyer wasn’t sure why he was pursuing this. But the urge was too strong to deny. “How would you describe the ‘situation,’ then? Is she your mistress or not?”

  “Dammitall, Sawyer, what kind of a thing is that to ask? Gloria’s got her life in Casper. She’s a nurse.”

  “Does she expect you to move to Casper?”

  “She knows better’n that. Gloria’s a fine nurse. Doc Morehouse has said she’d love to have Gloria at the practice with her in Weaver.”

  “So she’s willing to come here. But you probably haven’t asked her to because you’re obviously content with the ‘situation’ as it is.”

  “Judgmental,” Squire muttered. “Gloria’s free to come here, or not. It’s her choice. She’s got a bee in her bonnet right now, ’cause her daughters are coming for Christmas. And for some confounded reason, she’s decided she wants my wedding ring on her finger.” Squire pushed impatiently to his feet. “Confounded woman,” he said again.

  Sawyer didn’t have an answer for that. He was too busy wondering how he’d earned a “judgmental label” from Squire. Then he realized that Squire’s attention had focused on him once more.

  “You in pain?”

  He realized he’d still been rubbing his side and dropped his hand. “No.”

  “If you were, you wouldn’t tell me,” Squire said, sounding neither amused nor angry about it. “Any more than you would have told us about the car accident if Jefferson hadn’t found out about it.”

  There seemed to be no point in answering.

  Squire pushed his chair into the table and walked past Sawyer. He stopped long enough to drop his big hand on Sawyer’s shoulder, and squeeze for a brief moment. “You never liked it much here, son, particularly after your mama died. And we didn’t always see eye to eye. But I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m glad you’re home.” He headed back through the dining room. “Even if you are a judgmental chip off the block.”

  Sawyer sat in the kitchen, feeling the cold night slowly seep into his bones. He rinsed out the mug and went back downstairs. The cordless phone sat on the coffee table in front of the couch and he eyed it. The desire to call Rebecca, to have her voice fill his head whether she was berating him or asking him to talk to her son about his late father, was strong. So strong that he deliberately turned his back on the phone and went into one of the bedrooms and shut the door.

  Dawn was breaking as Rebecca drove past the high school. It had been a long night. A call from Judy Blankenship about her daughter, Taylor, had startled Rebecca out of a restless sleep, and she’d just spent the past two hours with the teen, who had been inexplicably hysterical and making herself violently ill in the process. Judy and Roy had been at their wits’ end, which was why they’d called Rebecca.

  Now, everyone was calm again—as calm as they could be, anyway, after learning seventeen-year-old Taylor was quite likely pregnant and more scared than her parents had been. The Blankenships would bring Taylor by her office later that afternoon. Even though it was Saturday, Rebecca felt it would be better for everyone concerned to have the pregnancy verified right away, rather than wait until Monday. The sooner they could concentrate on Taylor’s health and the health of her pregnancy, the sooner Roy Blankenship would have something to concentrate on other than his livid anger at the boy who’d gotten his precious girl in the family way.

  The gold light spilling from Ruby’s Café beckoned appealingly as Rebecca turned into the parking lot that was already half filled with vehicles. She’d get some of Ruby’s famous cinnamon rolls to take home to Ryan.

  Ryan. Her parents had been working at a small mission hospital in Ethiopia when she’d become pregnant with him.

  Once they’d gotten the news, they’d sent a cable exclaiming their love and support, even over the distance separating them. If they’d ever wrung their hands together and fretted over her, she’d never known about it. It was more likely that they’d simply expected her to handle her life as she’d always done.

  Nor had they returned to the United States when she’d married or when she’d buried her husband. Rebecca didn’t blame them. They were so totally devoted to bringing health care to impoverished areas that she’d have felt wholly selfish if she weren’t proud of their work.

  She parked the Jeep and sat behind the steering wheel for a moment. Despite her pride, however, she couldn’t help thinking that seventeen-year-old Taylor didn’t know how truly lucky she was. Some hands-on parental support might have made several periods in Rebecca’s life easier to bear.

  A thump on the hood of her vehicle distracted her and she looked up to see Sheriff Bobby Ray Hayes standing on the other side of her door. She pocketed her keys and climbed out into the bitingly cold morning. “Good morning, Sheriff,” she smiled.

  The man took her arm and escorted her across the uneven parking lot. “Doc. You’re out mighty early.”

  “House call.” She preceded him into the cozy warmth of the bustling café. “I was on my way home and decided that I couldn’t resist some of Ruby’s rolls for breakfast.”

  The sheriff doffed his hat and absently returned the greetings that rounded the café when they’d entered. He swept his hand over his nearly bald head and headed for the counter where a few stools were available. “They are irresistible,” he agreed.

  Rebecca joined him at the counter, waving off the offer of coffee from Hope Leoni, who was helping her grandmother over the school holidays the way she always did, and placed her order for some rolls to go. She cast a glance toward the sheriff. She still had a hard time thinking of him as Bobby Ray, even though he’d invited her to call him that when she’d first arrived in Weaver. She couldn’t help it. The man was old enough to be her father, and “Sheriff” fit him so much better than “Bobby Ray.” It was what most people called him, anyway, considering that he’d held the office as long as anybody could remember.

  “Sheriff, are you taking your blood-pressure medication like I told you to?”

  The man shrugged, nodded and shrugged again. Rebecca wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But considering the man’s flushed face, she suspected he’d been more than a little lax.

  Then Hope set a heaping plate of biscuits, sausage and creamy gravy in front of the man before scooting away shyly. “Sheriff,” Rebecca chided softly.

  “I can’t help it, Doc. I been eating this every Saturday morning for as long as I can remember.”

  And changing some habits were nigh impossible. Rebecca just shook her head. Minutes later, she paid for her foil-wrapped package, and headed home. She saw the big black pickup truck the moment she drove around the end of her building. Sawyer sat on the back step, his breath creating rings around his unprotected head.

  Despite the fact that she’d swallowed her pride and every protective feminine instinct she possessed when she’d asked him to return—begged, really—the reality of having him on her back step
made her light-headed. She parked in the garage with inordinate care, then headed toward the back door, her black bag in one hand and the package of fragrant rolls in the other.

  Sawyer rose to his feet when she neared. “Out on an emergency?”

  She handed over her medical bag when he reached for it. “Nothing life threatening,” she murmured, unlocking the door and going inside to the kitchen.

  “Of course, some might say a morning without a batch of Ruby’s cinnamon rolls is a dire emergency.”

  Rebecca’s breath stalled. She glanced over her shoulder at Sawyer, who looked as startled as she felt.

  He smiled without humor and pushed a silver-tipped hank of hair off his forehead. “I don’t get it,” he muttered. “The things that come back to me.” He set her bag on the round oak kitchen table. “The things that don’t.”

  Rebecca placed the rolls on the counter and unwound the ivory-colored knit scarf from her neck. She unfastened her coat, stiffening slightly when Sawyer went behind her and slid it from her shoulders. He laid it over the back of one of the table chairs, then did the same with his own.

  As if she’d invited him to stay for rolls and coffee. Panic rose in her throat and she focused instead on what he’d said. But the sympathy that rose in her went beyond professional interest, unsettling her even more than his unexpected visit. “Don’t force it, Captain,” she said, her voice, at least, calm. “There is no reason to suspect that your memory won’t fully return in time.”

  “It was Sawyer last night.”

  She continued filling the automatic coffeemaker with filter, coffee and water. He stepped up to the counter beside her, bringing with him the sharp cold scent of the snow-filled dawn combined with the clean scent of whatever soap he’d used that morning in the shower.

  Coffee scattered across the counter when her hand shook. Thoughts of Sawyer and showers were completely unacceptable. She flipped on the appliance and dusted the mess she’d made into the sink. “I need to check on Ryan,” she said hurriedly. “Have a roll if you want.” Oh, now, you’ve gone and done it, she chastised herself as she hustled down the hall to her son’s room. Invite the man to stay and share rolls. Smart.

  Ryan was still sound asleep. She left him undisturbed and went into her own bedroom. Rebecca nearly groaned at her reflection in the mirror over her dresser. She’d pulled her hair up in a ponytail after she’d received Judy Blankenship’s phone call, and now it listed to one side. She didn’t have on a speck of makeup and her sweatshirt and sweatpants had once been a bright cherry-tomato red, but were now more like diluted tomato soup, and—

  What was she doing?

  She didn’t care how she appeared to Capt. Sawyer Clay. Her only interest in him was how he could help her son.

  Turning away from her reflection, she left the haven of her bedroom. Her feet dragged as she neared the kitchen. The coffee was still dripping into the glass pot and Sawyer sat at her table, yesterday’s newspaper spread across the table. He’d unwrapped the rolls and as she watched, he finished off the one he held in a satisfying bite.

  She turned blindly to her cupboard and drew out two mugs. She didn’t want to acknowledge how easily he’d made himself at home in her kitchen. So instead, she filled the coffee mugs and plunked one down beside his elbow. “What are you doing here this early?” Dammit, that sounded like she’d expected him, only later.

  “You asked me to come back,” he pointed out. His dark blue eyes glanced at the selection of rolls.

  Rebecca huffed impatiently and pulled off another sticky section and plopped it on the napkin by his coffee. “You know that’s not what I mean.”

  “I do?”

  “Don’t play obtuse with me, Captain. I know you too well.” Too late, she realized her error.

  He’d leaned back in his chair, leisurely stretching his long legs across half of her kitchen floor. To get past him, she’d have to step over those legs. It was either that, or sit down at the table. She chose neither; just stood there like a ninny in her own kitchen.

  “Everybody knows me too well, except me,” he commented. “Squire says I’m judgmental.”

  Surprise buffeted her. “‘Judgmental’?” Stubborn, opinionated, driven, yes. “Why did he say that?”

  He picked a slice of pecan off the top of the roll. “Who the hell knows,” he growled.

  Which reminded Rebecca unexpectedly of the Sawyer she’d once known. The one who, despite his demanding career and the oddball hours of coming and going that went with it, was as grouchy in the early mornings as a lion with a thorn in his paw. At least until he’d had a couple of cups of coffee.

  Or her, she remembered painfully. He’d told her once that making love to her when he awakened was better than any amount of coffee. At the time, she’d been absurdly charmed.

  Now, it just made her cheeks hot. She turned away from the seat opposite him and faced the sink with the bowl and beaters he’d washed the night before.

  She flipped on the water and rinsed everything, then filled the sink with hot, soapy water. She tried pretending that Sawyer wasn’t sitting behind her, less than six feet away. She tried pretending that she always washed perfectly clean dishes at this hour of the morning. She tried pretending that she didn’t remember, exactly, how she’d behaved in her examining room with him

  But when she heard a familiar door creak, followed by footsteps and her son’s sleepy greeting, she couldn’t pretend anymore. Sawyer was there. He was. And no amount of wishing on her part would change that.

  She rinsed the bowl and beaters and opened the sink drain, turning to see Ryan’s expression when he found Sawyer sitting at their table.

  Her son lit up like the Christmas tree they had yet to pick out for the living room.

  She caught the speculative glances her son kept casting between Sawyer and her and wanted to groan all over again. Controlling the impulse—putting it off, anyway—she poured Ryan a glass of milk and plopped two rolls on a small plate for him. She dropped a banana beside the plate and said to the room in general that she was going to take a shower.

  Sawyer watched Rebecca practically race from the kitchen. Pity. He definitely liked that soft, somewhat rumpled person. Even if he’d just spent five minutes wondering what she’d been wearing under that soft sweatsuit that clung to her curves in a thoroughly distracting way.

  “Did you spend the night last night?”

  Sawyer nearly spit his coffee across the day-old newspaper. “What?” Ryan casually picked up his banana and started peeling it. He didn’t repeat the question and Sawyer couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard. “Ryan, you were still awake when I left last night.”

  The bill of Ryan’s ever-present cap shaded the boy’s eyes. “Then why are you here so early?”

  Sawyer looked at the boy. Ryan glanced up then, his eyes steady and far too grown-up for someone so young. “I have a hard time sleeping,” he admitted after a minute. Truthfully.

  Ryan nodded, as if it was something he fully understood. Perhaps he did. He’d had more grief in his life than some adults five times his age.

  “I didn’t sleep good at our apartment in New York,” Ryan said. He set aside his banana peel, and bit off a chunk. “I got into, uh, some stuff at school, too,” he said around his mouthful. He swallowed. “So Mom moved us here.”

  Sawyer wondered for a moment what kind of ‘stuff’ Ryan had gotten into. “You like it in Weaver, though, don’t you? I know you’ve got some friends. Eric, right? And Melanie.”

  Ryan flushed at the mention of the girl they’d seen at the pizza parlor. “I like it here okay. Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Like it here. In Weaver, I mean.” Ryan grinned slyly. “I know you like it here. You know.”

  Sawyer thought about it. He had nothing against Weaver. The small town had its own measure of charm. But then, considering the limited experience he had at his command...

  “Maybe you’re not sleeping good ’cause you don’t like the hou
se you live in,” Ryan suggested, finishing off his banana in a wolfish gulp. “Our apartment was real big and nice and all, but—”

  “You missed your dad.”

  Ryan nodded after a moment. “That’s what Dr. Delaney said. She’s a psychiatrist who’s friends with my mom,” he muttered. His shoulders wiggled impatiently and he reached for his rolls, diligently picking off each and every pecan. “Wanna help us pick out our Christmas tree today?” His eyes sparkled when he suddenly changed the subject. “Mom promised we’d get it today, ’cause if we don’t, all the best ones’ll be picked out. The Christmas dance is next weekend, and Eric says that his dad—he owns the Christmas-tree lot next to the feed store—is gonna donate whatever is left to the dance.”

  Rebecca walked into the kitchen on the tail end of Ryan’s invitation. She watched Sawyer reach over to Ryan’s plate and snitch the pecans that her son had picked off his roll. She hid her smile when Ryan gasped. “Hey, those are mine,” Ryan defended.

  “You picked ’em all off,” Sawyer countered.

  “So I can eat ‘em separately,” Ryan explained. “I only eat the roll ’cause—”

  “—I like the pecans more,” Sawyer finished on a chuckle. “Me, too.”

  Rebecca yanked up the zipper of her hooded fleece overshirt with excessive force. “Ryan, finish up. We’ve got a lot of stuff to get done today. And I’ve got a patient coming in this afternoon.”

  “But it’s Saturday.”

  “Right. And if you don’t hustle your buns, we won’t get our Christmas tree today.”

  Her son made a face, but he scooped up the rest of his pecans and walked out of the kitchen, happily crunching the nuts in his mouth.

  She considered it the height of irony that she wished Ryan was still in the kitchen once he was gone and she could hear the hiss of the shower from the hall bathroom. Fiddling with the zipper tab on her blue-and-pink-plaid overshirt, Rebecca looked at Sawyer, then away. But his image, sitting there at her table, was clearly reflected in the gleaming black door of her wall oven.

  He’d turned up the cuffs of his dark blue denim shirt and as he flipped a page of the newspaper, she couldn’t help looking away from the reflection to the real thing. His wrists were long and surprisingly narrow to support such broad, square-tipped fingers. Golden-brown hair dusted his forearms and—