The Lawman's Christmas Proposal

by Barbara White Daille

  Yes, they’d gotten carried away in the car, and yes, Mitch had gotten her blouse unbuttoned and her bra unhooked, and yes, she had loved every minute. Every touch. But that was as far as they’d gone. “We did not get arrested. We didn’t even come close.”

  “True. Where is the law in this town, anyway? Asleep at the wheel?” He smiled. “We sure weren’t. Although I have to admit to a crick in my hip from maneuvering around the steering column.”

  She laughed. “Stop. Please.”

  He did stop, probably only because the waitress came up to their booth. After she had left with their order, he reached across the tabletop and linked his fingers with hers, the way he had in the car.

  “All right, then. Let’s talk.”

  Instinctively, she began to pull away. He didn’t move. Of course, he wouldn’t argue. The decision to back off would be hers.

  Those words sounded so final...so familiar... The day she had met him near the corral, to shield herself, she had made her awful declaration about choosing to walk away. Years ago, her choice or not, she had walked away and left, too. And she had never reached out to him again.

  Now she tightened her grip on his fingers.

  Recalling the thoughts she’d had about him at Ginnie’s made her feel guiltier than ever.

  They sat there just holding hands until the waitress arrived with their drinks, accompanied by catcalls from a couple of men over near the bar. Mitch glanced in that direction, then focused on her again.

  She took a sip of her drink. A Virgin Mary this time. No more after-dinner cocktails. She wanted to have a clear head, although to tell the truth, she still felt a little light-headed—in the most wonderful kind of way—from their session in the front seat of the car. Her first time making out in a parking lot. With the first boy she had ever loved.

  She hoped this would be a night of many firsts.

  The thought of what he might start in their room left her hot all over. She would let him make the first move there. But here... Maybe if she opened up about her past, he would follow and tell her about his.

  “My relationship with my mother-in-law,” she said slowly. “You wanted to know. She’s always been so good to me, even when I first met her. She could never take my own mother’s place, but really, the timing between when my mother died and I met Grant was so close, Ginnie just naturally—eventually—became like a second mother to me.” She paused, then added, “With Grant, the timing for everything was so close.”

  “You mean kids?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “We were already married before I got pregnant with Trey. With the timing, I meant Grant and I got married very soon after we met. The proverbial whirlwind courtship, a short engagement and then the baby surprise while we were still newlyweds. We were so happy about Trey. And everything...everything helped so much to take my mind off my mom, too.”

  She took a quick sip of her drink to ease her dry throat. “We were still in college when we met and got married, but I quit school before graduation because I was already pregnant by then. It was a high-risk pregnancy, and I was sick for the first two trimesters, then on bed rest for the third.”

  Mitch took her hand again and squeezed her fingers gently. She nodded in thanks for his silent sympathy. She could have stopped talking, could have turned the focus of the conversation to him, but she wanted to go on. To tell him everything.

  “My father-in-law passed away not too long after we were married. Ginnie was alone in that big house and encouraged us to move in with her. We did, for a while. And we stayed close, buying a house in Fountain Hills, which is why I didn’t move away right after...after Grant was killed.”

  He sandwiched her hand between his. She could read the questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them. His restraint made it easier for her to go on.

  “Everyone, including Grant’s family, believed his job involved selling high-end computer systems to customers all over the world, which is why he traveled so much. That’s what we wanted them all to think.”

  Across the room, raucous shouts rose over the rest of the voices in the room.

  He looked that way again. His momentary distraction and the noise gave her the chance to take a deep breath and let it out in a gust of air.

  She was taking a chance now with Mitch. Taking a risk. But she trusted him.

  When he looked back, she said, “Very few people know this. Grant was with the CIA.”

  His fingers pressed hers tightly for a moment. “On an op when he was killed?”

  She swallowed hard. “Yes. I was pregnant with Missy. He never got to see her.” Her voice broke. “Never even got to see her ultrasound.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  After another deep breath, she nodded in acknowledgment again. “I’ve come to terms with losing him, Mitch. I loved Grant, but I accept that he’s gone. Only, sometimes...like remembering he never saw Missy, and knowing he missed Trey’s birthday party, and realizing he won’t ever share a Christmas with the kids...” Her voice broke. She forced herself to continue. “Times like those still hit me out of the blue.”

  “That’s understandable.” His voice sounded gruff, gravelly. But his hands around hers were gentle, his thumb stroking hers a tender caress.

  She sighed. “You know, my mom was there for most of my life—and for all of my childhood and teen years. But Trey and Missy won’t ever know their daddy.”

  “That’s not true. They will know him. Through pictures and conversations and your memories.” His eyes were dark and shining. He leaned forward and said earnestly, “People die, Andi, but that doesn’t mean they’re forgotten. You won’t let that happen. Neither will Ginnie.”

  His compassion helped ease her tension at telling this story so few people knew. At the same time, seeing how much he cared raised feelings she couldn’t...wouldn’t...deny. Feelings he deserved to know.

  “Mitch, I—”

  A loud crash from the other side of the room startled her into silence. They both turned to look just as a man sprawled on the floor beside a toppled bar stool scrambled to his feet with both arms swinging. A second man spun him around, pinning his hands behind his back. From an adjacent bar stool, a restaurant patron threw a punch at the attacker. Yet another man grabbed the patron and put him in a similar armlock, but his captive quickly bent at the waist and lifted him from the floor.

  Mitch rose from his seat.

  “Mitch—no!” A sudden flash of him in danger made her grab his wrist. She’d lost her husband. She couldn’t lose Mitch, too.

  “I’m just going to check things out.”

  “No!” Knowing she was overreacting, she took a quick calming breath. “Why do you need to get involved? Whatever’s going on doesn’t concern us.”

  “Those guys over there need a hand.”

  So much for just checking things out. “You could get hurt again. Think about your knee.”

  Mitch loosened her hold on his arm and lightly pressed her hand flat beneath his on the tabletop. “I can’t be a bystander, Andi. This is what I do.”

  He kissed her forehead, then was gone.

  * * *

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND.”

  Mitch didn’t need to hear Andi’s words. In the halo of light from the lamp nearest their rental car, he saw her confusion.

  “Why do you need to go to the police station?”

  “I told you,” he said evenly, “to make a report.”

  “But what is there to say? All you did was walk outside with those guys for a few minutes and then come right back in to our booth.”

  No. That wasn’t all he’d done.

  His first look at the intoxicated pair at the bar had put his senses on alert. Not for danger or serious trouble at that point, just the usual scan for any signs indicating a rowdy conversation would become a drunken brawl.

  A later glance had told him the situation could get far worse.

  By the time the bar stool toppled, he had known the setup was much more compli
cated than it looked on the surface.

  And when the apparent onlookers joined the fray, he had gone to lend assistance to a pair of his fellow officers.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s get inside.” He held the passenger door of the rental open until she entered the car.

  As he walked around to the driver’s door, he thought of what they had done in this car just a short while ago. Then he locked the memory into a separate compartment in his mind and focused on what he would do now.

  Once he’d left the key in the ignition, he turned to her. “I walked outside to talk to two of those guys,” he clarified, “because they were undercover narcs involved in an op gone wrong.” He tried not to wince as he said those all-too-familiar words.

  She sucked in a breath. He waited. “You couldn’t know they were cops,” she said finally.

  “I could. As soon as I saw them in action.”

  She shook her head, puzzled. “I still don’t understand why you’d need to make a statement. You walked over there after everything had ended. You didn’t see anything.”

  He took her hand and held it between his palms. “I did see.”

  She frowned. “You barely glanced over at the bar the entire time we were in there.”

  “Andi, I’m a well-trained cop.” Her fingers twitched against his. “We’re taught to register in a glance more than most people see after a long, steady look. Before the narcs arrived, I saw an exchange go down and a guy leave the bar. Could have been money that changed hands, could have been drugs, could have been the key to a bus station locker containing a murder weapon.”

  “And it could have been a business card.”

  “Yeah, that, too. But it wasn’t. It was drugs.”

  “Then you could have been taking your life in your hands by going over there.”

  She sounded full of concern for him...

  Or distraught over yet another situation hitting her out of the blue. A situation hitting too close to home and family.

  He released her hand and cranked the car’s engine. “Taking risks is part of the job.”

  Taking hits.

  Taking bullets.

  Taking lives.

  “I told you,” he said flatly, “this is what I do.”

  * * *

  “WHAT DID YOU say to that?”

  Startled, Andi wrapped her arms more tightly around her upraised knees and stared at Cara.

  She had almost forgotten she was sitting on her best friend’s couch wrapped in her best friend’s afghan. It wasn’t so much warmth as comfort she was seeking from the crocheted wool and from the cup of tea on the table in front of her and from explaining the events of the evening to Cara. The events that had finally, sadly proven to her how dedicated Mitch was to his job.

  She’d had to volunteer something to justify her late text and even later appearance on Cara’s doorstep. And once she had begun, the words had poured out, just like the water Cara was pouring to reheat her tea.

  “There wasn’t much I could say to him after that,” she admitted. “I could tell his mind wasn’t on our conversation. He wanted to get to the police station to fill out his report. So since it was on his way, I just asked him to drop me off at the hotel.”

  He seemed distracted yet reluctant to go, until she reminded him the sooner he left, the sooner he could return.

  At the time, it had seemed the right thing to say.

  Alone in the room, she had felt the walls closing in.

  “And then I texted you,” she told Cara, forcing a smile. “I’m just glad you were here and didn’t decide to go into work tonight, after all.”

  “I wasn’t about to give up a night off. But you know I looked forward to it a lot more when you were planning to stay.”

  “Sorry. I must seem like a Ping-Pong ball, bouncing back and forth with our plans.”

  Cara shook her head. “No, not a Ping-Pong ball so much. More like a woman who can’t make up her mind. Are you going to regret this?” she asked softly.

  “Spending the night here with you? How could I? You bought the cupcakes, didn’t you?”

  “And the ice cream.”

  Truthfully, she didn’t want to think about cake or ice cream. They only reminded her about the party tonight and her conversation with Mitch at the Big Dipper. Maybe if she hadn’t pushed for the where and when of their talk about what had happened in Los Angeles, she wouldn’t be sitting here now.

  As it turned out, she had done all the talking. And she might never hear Mitch’s story.

  “Andi, you know what I meant. You waited a long time for tonight.”

  Cara had known about her crush on Mitch from the beginning. Her first letter to Cara from Garland Ranch that summer had been filled with details about Grandpa’s new stable hand.

  “I don’t know what I’ll regret.” She glanced away and sighed. “No, that’s not true. I do know I’ll wish I’d had tonight with Mitch.”

  She couldn’t worry about regrets.

  “Everything doesn’t have to be over with him,” Cara said, “just because your plans for this trip didn’t work out.”

  “Yes, it does. I can’t have a relationship with him. Missy and Trey have already lost one father to a dangerous career. I can’t risk having them lose another one.”

  “Nothing may ever happen to Mitch.”

  “He’s already been injured. And I told you what he said—this is what he does.” Her chest tightened at the memory of how finally he’d said those words. “Seeing him in action tonight, and then later hearing how he had kept track of what was going on—while I didn’t have a clue—just proved it to me. Mitch may be lucky and never get hurt again. But he’s all cop, all the time, and he always will be.”

  Alone in the hotel room, she’d had to face that truth.

  Now she tried to deny the truth she had been about to share with him at the restaurant.

  Mitch’s compassion had eased her tension the way nothing else could have. His understanding set off feelings she couldn’t deny. Out in the parking lot, she had reacted like a crazy, hormone-driven teen, but no matter what she tried to tell herself, it wasn’t adolescent lust pushing her to make out with him. It wasn’t fond memories or unfulfilled dreams.

  She loved Mitch, more now than she ever had. She loved that he helped at the Hitching Post without a word of complaint. Loved the way he talked with Trey and Robbie and included them in everything he did. Loved how he held her gently and kissed her till her head spun and, yes, how he never stopped trying to find out what worried her.

  She loved everything about Mitch.

  Just as she had begun to tell him, the fight had broken out, he had run into battle, and she had lost the chance to share her feelings.

  But she had to be grateful for that fight. It had saved her from herself. Her feelings for Mitch had almost caused her to make one of the biggest mistakes of her life—putting her own desires ahead of her children’s needs.

  Chapter Twelve

  After a nod at the clerk, Mitch made his way through the hotel lobby.

  He’d spent more time than he’d expected to at the station. First had come his official questioning, then an off-the-books session. Some officers wouldn’t have opened up or taken the help, but the narcs he’d worked with tonight were a couple of good men who didn’t mind an assist from an out-of-town cop.

  After that, they’d stood around shooting the bull. But tonight, the usual lure of sharing war stories couldn’t keep him from edging toward the door after only a few minutes.

  His thoughts had been with Andi, and that’s exactly where he wanted to be now.

  A stay in a fleabag motel would have done him just fine, but no way would that have been right for her. He hoped while he’d been gone she had taken advantage of the hotel’s amenities.

  He hoped she was ready for an eventful night.

  As he punched the elevator button for their floor, his hand shook. Fatigue, possibly. Eagerness, for sure. He spent the ride up envisioning
her in a plush hotel towel and nothing else, smelling like fancy soap and looking like his long-ago dreams come true.

  When he reached out with his key, he had no doubt what made his hand shake.

  The door swung open silently. The room was spotless and spacious, with oversize Southwestern-style furniture and a king-size bed.

  An empty bed. With the covers still tucked up around the pillows.

  He thought of towels and soap and muscle-soothing hot water. His gaze went to the open doorway on the far side of the room, but though his mind had already registered the dark bathroom beyond it, his subconscious had also picked up something along the way. Something he’d have noted immediately if his cop sense hadn’t been dulled by dreams of satisfying a few other senses.

  A stiff paper rectangle sat propped up on the dresser. A sheet of notepaper, folded in half and turned the color of whipped butter by the glow from the adjacent lamp. At least she hadn’t left him in the dark. So to speak.

  He stared at the notepaper, considering.

  If he hadn’t spent so much time at the station tonight...if he hadn’t heeded the feeling in his gut at the restaurant...if he hadn’t insisted on coming along on this trip...

  Hell.

  If he hadn’t let things ride years ago instead of finding out why Andi had gone away.

  The reminder pushed him across the room to snatch up the note. His hand shook just as it had in the elevator and outside the door. Not from fatigue or eagerness or the need he had finally admitted to himself, but from dread.

  His instincts were talking again, telling him history had come back to bite him. He looked down at the handwritten note. Simple. Short. Sweet. No greeting. No goodbye.

  I’ll stay with a friend and pick up the kids tomorrow.

  History had repeated itself—with a twist. The girl he’d once loved, now his one-night lover, had left him.

  He crumpled the note in his fist.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Mitch dropped off the rental car and made his way to the departure gate.

  He’d had to drive a ways, but he’d found a greasy spoon for breakfast to make up for the fancy hotel with the big, lonely bed. The sight of the oil slick on his platter didn’t diminish his appetite. After twenty-four-hour stakeouts, he’d seen and eaten worse.