Immediately, she put both of her hands into the back pockets of her designer low-rise jeans. Her intention was to have her hands out of the way. She didn’t want to touch him again, even by accident. Touching a man was not something she was ready to do, and that included a simple handshake. Martin McClain’s gaze drifted to her snug white t-shirt, which now, with her arms in that awkward pose, seemed too snug. Too sexy. She took her hands out of the pockets and crossed her arms over her chest, and immediately realized a drop of blood from the pin-wound had stained the shirt.
“Oh, great!” She stomped her black ankle boot on the pavement.
“Your…um, your shirt is bleeding,” he said, his eyes flicking to the red spot, then quickly away toward the street.
She looked up at him. From her five foot eight plus three-inch stiletto heels, it was still up. He was probably six foot two or three, she guessed. Tall, dark, handsome.
And just an idiot man. Your shirt is bleeding?
“Mr. McClain, is this the building? Can we go inside? Is the water turned on?” As she asked the questions, she scooped up her designer handbag and walked across the sidewalk from her car to the large oak-and-glass front door of her new building. The first building of any sort she had ever owned.
He followed, taking several rings of keys from his right front pants pocket. “Here we go,” he said, holding the one marked “M. Shelby” out to her. She extended her open hand and he dropped the keys into it. Heavy. It felt good.
“It’s the large brass one there for the front door.”
Midnight inserted it and the lock turned easily. She stepped inside, followed by the realtor, who reached behind her—too close—and flipped on the light switch. Large, round, moss-green glass globes suspended by pewter colored rods from a twelve-foot forest green tin ceiling filled the room with subtle light. It was a large, amazing room, full of nostalgia and potential.
Martin walked quickly behind the bar just a few feet to the left of the entry door, and turned on the faucet. Here was a good sign: no rumbling pipes, just immediate water.
“Great, thank you,” Midnight said, checking the water temperature. “But I’ll have to take off my shirt. Otherwise I’ll need to get into the sink myself, I guess. I hadn’t thought.” She turned off the water, tossed her handbag onto the walnut bar top and strode outside, pulling her car keys from her front jeans pocket as she walked. In a moment, she was back with a long-sleeve black t-shirt, and found the women’s bathroom at the back where she changed. She ran cold water over the area till the spot was gone.
Then she headed to the front of the building again, her stilettos making a gratifying no-nonsense sound on the hardwood floor.
“Nothing like making a lasting first impression. I don’t usually bleed from just a handshake.”
“You… what?” He looked down at his own hands, searching for a way he might have punctured her finger.
“Just kidding. I stuck it on a pin as you walked up. But not kidding about the first impression.” She looked up and around her at the bar. “Like this place. When I saw the virtual tour on your website, I knew I had to have it. Absolutely gorgeous.”
“It is a special place. Lots of history, lots of memories here. It’s a shame the family doesn’t want to keep it. I hate to see them sell out.”
“Especially to a newcomer, I’ll bet.”
“I didn’t say that.” There was that frown again, the two vertical lines between his dark brows marring an otherwise perfect face.
“No, you didn’t say it. Not in so many words. But of course, you’d rather someone local had purchased it and decided to continue the bar business as it always was. Right?” Men were so predictable. As long as you didn’t mess with their sports teams, their bars, or their underwear drawers, pretty much anything else was fair game.
Martin McClain heaved a heavy sigh, much as she had seen his son do a few minutes earlier. Except this sigh strained the front of his golf shirt a bit, in an interesting sort of way.
“Welcome to Legend, Tennessee, Miz Shelby. No reason for you and me to start off badly. We got along fine on the phone, now, didn’t we?”
Midnight hated being patronized, and so many men did it without even thinking.
“We got along fine, the deal closed, and here I am, owning this big beautiful building on Main Street, and enjoying status as Legend’s newest citizen. Now, do you have that list for me?”
“List?”
Of course, his wife had been the helpful one all through the process. Betsy is the person she really needed to talk to. “The one I’ve been talking to….”
Midnight’s question sank in.
“Oh, what Betsy was working on for you? Yeah. No. I mean, no, I didn’t get here with it. I left the dang thing on my desk. She told me… well, of course Betsy’s always right. She said I’d forget it. We can go over to the office and get it right now, though. Just take a minute. My office is just a couple blocks from here.”
He headed out the front door and Midnight followed, the sound of her boots’ heels bouncing off the empty bar’s walls and ceiling. She quickly turned off lights and locked the door behind her. I’ll be back, and soon.
“Oh, and you’ll want to park your car in the back,” the realtor was saying when she turned away from the door. “There’s a garage. It’s small, but it should be big enough for a little tiny car like this. I’ll show you.”
“No need for that. I’ll be able to find the back of the building on my own. Now, let’s go to your office and pick up the list. Get in and I’ll drive.”
She saw the look. He didn’t ride while a woman drove. Dear Lord, give me strength. Midnight walked around and got in, started the powerful engine. She saw his eyebrows rise when he heard it. He opened the passenger door and folded his tall frame into the seat, then let the door close with a quiet click.
ABOUT MAGDALENA SCOTT
Magdalena Scott lives in her own fantasy world of Magdalenaville, Indiana, and spends her time writing stories with small town settings. As a lifelong citizen of small town America, Magdalena knows that life in a “burg” is seldom dull—if you’re paying attention. There is mystery, romance, scandal, and the occasional unexplained occurrence. Step into Magdalena’s world and find out what’s hidden just below the surface of those tiny dots you can barely see on the map.
Books by Magdalena Scott
The Blank Book
Ladies of Legend books:
Christmas Collision
Under the Mistletoe
The Holly and the Ivy
Where Her Heart Is
Home Sweet Legend
Short Story
“A Piece of Her Soul” in Something Spooky This Way Comes
The Christmas Gift
By Janet Eaves
Christina Montgomery dreads another Christmas with questions about her soldier husband, Johnny, hanging over her head. She believes he died with his small sniper squadron a little over two years earlier, even though his was the only body unaccounted for. The Marine Corps have all but called Johnny a defector. There are even a few Legend locals who believe it, too. This is something Christina refuses to consider.
Until one snowy evening two weeks before Christmas.
An injured man, looking like a slightly older version of the husband she remembers, arrives at her Tennessee farm with no idea of who he is. Even with a blizzard about to hit the area hard, she can’t focus on anything but the questions clouding her mind. Is his sudden appearance a Christmas miracle? Or has her worst nightmare just come true?
Prologue
Christina Montgomery hit the remote, effectively turning off the stereo, heartbroken she still couldn’t listen to the song she’d loved since her first memories of Christmas. The old Bing Crosby song, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, had been sung around her parents’ piano every year, their friends’ and neighbors’ voices raised, some lovely, some not so lovely, but all filled with the joy of the season.
She’d loved those Christmas
es, had looked forward to them as children do, with anticipation of both presents and communion with her friends. Friends who, like the generations before, stayed close even after graduations and marriages. Life had been so simple then, so fun.
Times had certainly changed.
Now the song brought tears to her eyes, shattered her heart all over again, reminding her of all she’d lost. Her friends had stopped coming around because they didn’t know how to deal with the situation of someone so young losing so much, nor the questions that hung over her head like a ton of steel beams precariously bound by cotton threads. Their lives were still filled with love and laughter, new babies, new homes, new everything.
Her life was at a standstill. And had been since that fateful day two years, one month, and twenty-nine days before when two uniformed Marines showed up at her door, the older of the pair with a white collar around his throat.
She’d known even before they spoke, had felt the very life drain from her soul. The tears started and didn’t stop for days. She hadn’t been able to function for weeks. Her sweet baby girl hadn’t understood, having already missed so much time with a father who had spent the better part of her life serving his country.
In some ways it was a blessing that Lisa barely remembered Johnny. She hadn’t suffered the loss as deeply as she would have if there had been more memories. At the same time, Christina felt Lisa had been cheated out of knowing a great man. A man who would have made a wonderful father if he hadn’t died only three weeks shy of the end of his final tour of duty.
Fury built, replacing sorrow. Her husband was dead. She knew it in her heart. She didn’t believe what was being said, what had been insinuated. She refused to believe that just because his body had never been found, it meant he may have deserted. She knew him. They all knew him, which made it all that much harder to know that they still wondered if he was capable of such a deed.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them to the deep concern clouding the eyes of her tow-headed seven-year old. A child who was every beat of her heart. “Hey, baby. Good morning.”
Lisa opened her arms to be lifted for a hug. “You’re sad again, Mommy.”
Christina embraced her tightly, hating that Lisa had caught her in low spirits—again. She was doing better. Had been for a while now. But that song had torn open the wound.
“Mommy just has something in her eyes,” she said, sitting her daughter back down. “You run on to your room and get dressed for school. I’ll fix you some breakfast so you have all kinds of energy for today’s fieldtrip.”
Lisa nodded, her blond curls flying. “Okay! We get to send letters to Santa today and I’m getting a miracle!”
Christina smiled through the lump in her throat, curious, but knowing better than to ask what Lisa was going to ask of Santa. She could wait for Miss Cameron, Lisa’s second grade teacher, to call her, as she would each parent who didn’t have internet capabilities, with the children’s lists.
Her spirits lifted with an all encompassing love as she watched her baby girl skip her way down the hall to her room. Life was so much easier when you believed in Santa Claus… when you still believed in miracles.
She headed for the kitchen, determined to put her tears away for good. To give Lisa the best Christmas she could. To bury her sorrow, and begin again.
Chapter One
Expected snowfall turned to blizzard faster than the weather forecaster had predicted that morning. Since there should have been nothing more than flurries until nightfall, he’d felt confident he could take care of the problem and get back to the solitude of his temporary home without difficulty. It was the only reason he’d agreed to take the call, then drove twenty miles up the mountain’s winding two lane road, and was now belted and boot-hooked to a utility pole his bucket-truck couldn’t manage to reach.
He shivered deliberately, knocking snow from his upper body, wondering if he’d be able to repair the damage to the television cable line that had sucked out at the pole before he’d have to pack it in.
Of course Cartwright Cable Company, the company he’d contracted with to upgrade their old, outdated system, would throw a hissy if he allowed their customers to miss the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Or, more importantly, the football games that would follow for the rest of the afternoon. Especially the contest between the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots. Hell, he couldn’t blame them. He’d be pissed if he missed that game himself. But, as the only contractor who’d stayed in town because he had no family to spend the holiday with, on this very family oriented holiday, if anybody got left out in the cold, literally and figuratively, it promised to be him.
Which meant he kept his freezing butt nearly thirty feet in the air, and his numb fingers functioning until he reconnected the three piece connector to the coax cable and tap, making it all ready to function once again for Cartwright’s customers. Then he’d use his meter to check the strength of the signal. And finally, if everything checked out, he’d have to interrupt one of CCC’s local customers to make sure his or her TV viewing needs were being met.
He hoped everything went off—or in this case on—without a hitch as there was no way he was climbing back up on a pole that was swaying in the howling wind. Given the current conditions, a whiteout was imminent, which took the choice out of his hands anyway. Once he climbed down, he’d be lucky to get himself and his bucket-truck back to his tiny rented cabin without incident.
Shivering for real this time, he tightened the last screw, knocked the additional inch of snow off his hardhat and shoulders, connected the meter and ran his test, and was eternally grateful the specs were within the required limits. Though not dead-on, it was as perfect a signal as he was going to get on a day like this, and if that wasn’t good enough for Cartwright, they could send one of their own out into the freezing cold to alter it. Not that that would ever happen. Those guys wouldn’t leave the office to see to a problem on a nice day. They sure wouldn’t leave the comforts of their homes on a holiday in weather like this.
After disconnecting the meter, he tried to latch it onto the old leather tool belt he’d bought at a pawn shop three years earlier. Without warning the belt snapped, stunning him all the more because replacing it has been on his mind only that morning. Like a juggler he held tightly to the nylon cover protecting the expensive meter that was his livelihood as he reached for the sliding, holstered set of pliers. He snatched at the pliers as his holstered drill slipped off the belt. He grabbed at it, caught it too, only to have his knife case slide from the belt past his groping fingers, fall the length of the pole, and sink into the snow that was deepening by the minute. Furious to lose his favorite knife, he snatched the belt, pulled off the remaining holster, which held his screwdrivers and the pack filled with an assortment of connectors, and then dropped the broken leather to the ground.
Shaking now from nerves as much as from the cold, he licked chapped lips and forced himself to take a moment to just breathe. It was a long way down the pole. The descent would be made harder still with hands filled with tools, in blinding snow, and the accompanying biting ice stinging his exposed face and hands. He had two options—just drop everything, pull the gloves he’d removed to do the more intricate work from his hip pocket and slide them on, and then belt and hook his way down the pole as usual. Or strap his tools to the belt holding him against the pole and trust the strength in his arms and the gaffs on his boots to get him to safety with his tools intact.
Too chilled to give it much thought, he loosened the belt as he hugged the pole with one arm. He slid the tool holsters onto the belt blindly using his rapidly depleting sense of touch. His fingers were starting to stiffen and crack and he couldn’t see what was where on the backside of the pole. Finally successful, he buckled the long belt, slung it over his head and under his free arm like an ammo belt, then leaned into the pole, exhausted. He took another tired, shaky breath, blowing steam into the air, before reaching for his gloves, which, when
touched with unbending, unfeeling fingers, followed the path of his knife. He wanted to shout in frustration, and though he didn’t want to admit it, perhaps even a little fear.
A step at a time.
A step at a time.
Shaking his leg to dislodge first one spiked boot, then the other, once he had re-spiked the first in the decent was a tedious, slow process, but necessary at the best of times, and these were not the best of times.
A step at a time.
A step at a time.
He repeated the mantra as he took one step down after another. Exhaustion was setting in, causing his body to feel heavier. Or perhaps it was hypothermia as he’d been out in the cold for well over an hour. The soaked material of his coveralls certainly added to the zapping weight, he realized. His strength nearly spent, his arms, heavy with snow and fatigue held tight to the pole, loosening only long enough to move one below the other as he inched his way down.
A step at a time.
A step at a time.
He smiled to himself, then hissed at the spearing pain, knowing he’d cracked open his bottom lip. What a way to spend Thanksgiving. He hadn’t expected much from the holiday. Just a man-sized turkey TV dinner, a pillow and blanket on the oversized, heavily stuffed couch. The remote at one hand, and a half dozen or so beers at the other. He’d even planned on sleeping in, taking a shower, maybe even jacking-off, since there wasn’t anyone currently available to give him that kind of release, and then he’d planned to spend the rest of the day watching men trying to kill each other on the football field.
Now all he wanted was a hot shower, a roaring fire, and a hot, hot, hot cup of coffee laced with a little Jim Beam.
A bright flash.A hard smack to the face.
He reached for the monster attacking him, fell backwards, and grasped the thin red line dangling before him. More fascinated than frightened, he realized that he was flying backwards through giant snowflakes as they spun and danced around him, while a large silver balloon chased him, until a hard, stunning jerk of breath exited his body, and all that was white, went black.
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