Christmas Lone-Star Style

by Linda Turner

  The overhead shower from the broken pipe had slowed to an occasional drip, but water covered the floor in the entrance hall and was slowly seeping toward the downstairs apartments. Mitch hardly noticed. The elderly woman had managed to move to the stairs, where she sat on the second step, but she was soaked to the skin and obviously in some pain. Pale and drawn, she sat hugging herself, shivering in spite of the fact that the heater vent was blowing almost directly on her.

  Quickly shrugging out of his jacket, Mitch slipped it around her shoulders, then, uncaring of the water on the floor, knelt down in front of her. “I’m Mitch Ryan, ma’am, the owner of the building. That was a nasty fall you took. Are you all right?”

  Sniffling, she nodded and told him her name was Elizabeth Randolph. “I feel like such an old fool,” she confided as she wiped at the tears that trailed down her wrinkled cheek. “One second I was trying to figure out what had happened, and the next, everyone was running like the devil himself was after them. My legs just seemed to go out from under me.”

  She sounded so mortified that Mitch couldn’t help but smile. “You’re lucky you weren’t trampled. I don’t think that anyone even noticed you. Everyone was pretty intent on clearing out of here.”

  “Just because of a little water.” She sniffed indignantly. “Did they think they were going to melt or something if they got a little wet? Lord save me from idiots—I never did have much use for them. Well, I need to go home and change out of these wet clothes. I must look a sight.”

  She started to rise, only to wince as she shifted to get her feet under her. What color there was in her cheeks drained away, and with a quickly stifled groan, she sank back down onto the stairs. “I’m all right,” she gasped, as Mitch frowned in concern and quickly moved to help her. “My old bones just get stiff when I sit too long in one position. Give me a second. I’m just fine.”

  “Yeah, and I’m the Good Fairy,” Mitch retorted, scowling. “You hurt your hip, didn’t you?”

  Her chin went up a notch. “I didn’t break it.”

  “Maybe not,” he replied, “but it’s obviously hurting you. I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “Oh, no! Really, it’s probably just a bruise. Please don’t go to a lot of fuss.”

  Taking her hand, he patted it consolingly and gave her a smile that had been winning him arguments with the opposite sex since he was old enough to talk. “Mrs. Randolph, you are a guest here at the Social Club, and it’s my responsibility to make sure that you don’t leave here injured.”

  “But I’m not!”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d feel better if a doctor verified that. Just so I’ll be able to sleep tonight without worrying about you. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for keeping me awake tonight, would you?”

  Flustered, she stuttered, “Well, no. Of course not, but it seems silly to waste good money on a doctor when I’m just a little shaken up.”

  Considering the fact that, at thirty-six, he had more than enough money to retire and live in luxury for the rest of his life, it was all he could do not to laugh at her objection. Instead, he only smiled and said, “Don’t worry about the money—I have insurance for just such situations, so I will, of course, pick up all your medical bills. The most important thing, though, is to make sure that you’re all right. Don’t you agree? You wouldn’t want to have problems with this as you get older because you didn’t have it checked out now, would you?”

  Put that way, she could do nothing but give in. “Well, no. Of course not.”

  “Good. Then I’ll call for an ambulance.” With no further argument, he pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket, which was still around her shoulders, and quickly punched in 911 before she could change her mind.

  The paramedics were there in record time, traipsing through the water in the foyer without so much as blinking an eye. After a quick examination, they expressed doubt that Mrs. Randolph was seriously hurt, but they did recommend a trip to the hospital for X rays just to be sure. So they strapped her to a stretcher and rolled her out through the now silent and respectful crowd on the porch, but not before Mitch got her address and phone number and promised to check on her later in the day.

  The second the ambulance drove away, the people began pressing forward again, reminding Mitch that he still had several problems to deal with. No one in the house could have their water turned back on until a plumber was called and the broken pipe repaired. Damage from the break was all around him. The antique rug was soaked and the cherrywood grandfather clock, which had been in the family longer than anyone could remember, was standing in an inch of water. When everything dried out, the wallpaper in the entrance hall and stairwell would no doubt have to be replaced, as would the old pine flooring if it warped. Silently sending up a prayer, he thanked God that Alice wasn’t there to see it. She would have been in tears.

  The most immediate problem, however, was the sale going on in apartment 2C. That was something he could put a stop to in ten seconds flat. With his steel-blue eyes shining in a way that would have had his business associates quaking in their shoes, he started up the stairs.

  Drawing up to the curb, Phoebe Smith put the transmission of her old, cranky Ford in park and turned with a smile to the two kids who sat beside her on the bench seat. Everything they possessed was crammed into the U-Haul trailer hitched to the back. “This is it, kids,” she said, motioning to the huge Victorian house that sat before them like a well-dressed old lady in all her finery. “What do you think?”

  His eyes as round as silver dollars, her nephew, Robby, gasped, “For real, Aunt Phoebe? This is where we’re going to live? Wow!”

  “It looks like a castle,” Becky, too, was admiring. “Does it have a fairy godmother like in Cinderella?”

  Chuckling, Phoebe reached over and hugged her niece. Lord, the girl was a child after her own heart! At the age of six, in spite of everything that had happened to her, Becky still believed in fairy tales, and if Phoebe had her way, she still would when she was forty. The world needed people who believed in the magic of happily-ever-after.

  “I don’t know, honey,” she replied. “I didn’t see one when I rented the apartment, but fairy godmothers are kind of shy—they don’t show themselves too often. That doesn’t mean they’re not around and doing their good deeds,” she quickly assured her. “I like to think that ours led us to this house.”

  Robby rolled his eyes. A year older than his sister, he considered himself far too mature to believe in such baby stuff. “Yeah, right. So where’s Prince Charming?”

  That was a question Phoebe had long since stopped asking herself. Grinning, she shut off the motor. “Princes, charming or otherwise, are in notoriously short supply right now, but fairy godmothers are another matter. Trust me, big guy, they’re out there. You just can’t see them.” Pushing open her door, she turned to grab one of the boxes stuffed into the back seat. “C’mon, let’s check the place out. Everybody grab something.”

  She didn’t have to tell them twice. Excited, they both snatched their duffel bags from the back seat, then raced for the wide, inviting veranda that wrapped all the way around the Social Club. “I get first dibs on which bedroom we get!”

  “You can’t! Aunt Phoebe said we have to share the biggest one.”

  “Then I get to pick where my bed goes before you do because I’m the oldest.”

  “That’s not fair! I can’t help it if I’m the baby.”

  Arguing good-naturedly, they disappeared through the mansion’s front door, which was standing wide open, before Phoebe could even lock the car. “Hey, guys, wait up!” she called after them. “You don’t even know which apartment it is.”

  Eager to explore, they weren’t concerned about a detail like that. By the time Phoebe stepped into the entrance hall, they’d already reached the top of the stairs and darted down the hall, oohing and ahhing over everything they saw.

  Following them, Phoebe couldn’t help but smile. God, she loved them!
They were her brother Frank’s kids and all she had left of him now. When he and his wife were killed in a car accident early last year, it was decided that the children would stay with their maternal grandparents in New Orleans, since that was where their home and roots were. Phoebe would have loved to have them, but the kids’ security was more important than her wishes, so she hadn’t considered asking for custody. Then, just last week, the kids’ grandmother, Louise Mallory, had called to tell Phoebe that her husband had had a heart attack and she could no longer care for the children. Phoebe had exactly five hours’ notice before she picked the kids up at the airport.

  She’d never thought to turn them away. They were blood, family, a last link with Frank, and she welcomed them with open arms. She was an aunt, however, not a mother, and not equipped to take care of kids on a full-time basis. Their unexpected arrival in her life, with virtually no warning, created a whole host of problems, not the least of which was a place to live. Her old apartment had certainly been big enough, but it was restricted to adults only. The second day she’d had the children, the apartment manager showed up on her doorstep asking questions. By the end of the day, she was served with an eviction notice.

  At that point, she panicked. If she hadn’t had the responsibility of the kids, she’d have been more levelheaded—at least, she hoped so. But then again, she wouldn’t have been in the predicament if it hadn’t been for the kids. Haunted with terrible images of the three of them being thrown out on the street, she’d raced over to the apartment office and explained the situation, but nothing she’d said had mattered. Rules were rules, and children weren’t allowed in the complex.

  Financially, she hadn’t been in any position to move. That’s when her own fairy godmother had stepped in. She’d stopped at the grocery store the following morning on the way to work, and there on the bulletin board was a sign for an apartment to let. She called about it the second she got to work, explained the situation to Mr. Percy, the landlord, and was thrilled when he told her that considering the circumstances, he would be willing to let her slide on the security deposit, if she could come up with the first and last month’s rent when she signed the lease. Skipping lunch to check out the apartment, she’d taken one look at the place and fallen in love with it. By the time she returned to work, she had a signed lease in her pocket and Mr. Percy had the last of her savings.

  Eventually, she hoped to be able to get a house so the kids would have a yard to play in, but for now, watching their excited faces as she caught up with them and unlocked the door to the apartment, she knew she’d done the right thing. There was a magic to the Lone Star Social Club that would take their minds off the loss of their parents and the upheaval in their lives. They’d already smiled and laughed more in the last few minutes than they had in the five days she’d had them, and for that, she was heartily grateful. If they could find happiness here, she was prepared to stay forever.

  “Wow!” Robby exclaimed suddenly from the bedroom he’d darted into. “This room is round! Come look, Aunt Phoebe.”

  Grinning, she stepped into the open doorway. “It’s called the tower bedroom, sweetie. I thought you and Becky might like to share it.”

  His face lit up like a Christmas tree. “You mean it? It’s really ours? We can move our stuff in and everything? Right now?”

  “Right this very minute,” she laughed.

  “All right!” Taking off like a shot, he ran for the stairs. “Let’s get my dinosaur collection first. I know right where I want to put it!”

  It had been a hell of a day. With a groan, Mitch sank into the chair behind Alice’s desk in her office. Lindsay’s heirs had been more than a little antagonistic when he shut down their estate sale and gave them exactly two hours to get the rest of the old man’s things out of the apartment. They’d tried to argue, but since they’d taken advantage of Alice’s easygoing nature and hadn’t bothered to pay the rent when it ran out last week, they were technically trespassing and they knew it. They’d finally, grudgingly, left an hour ago, taking everything that wasn’t bolted down with them.

  The apartment would still have to be cleaned, of course, before the new tenants, a middle-aged couple from Houston, moved in next week, but that was the least of his problems at the moment. While the Lindsay heirs were stomping up and down the stairs, carrying out furniture, the plumber finally arrived to repair the broken pipe. He’d pried up the floor in the kitchen of apartment 2B, taken one look at the old fixtures, and started shaking his head. He could, he’d told Mitch, repair the break, but it would only be a stopgap measure. The pipes were old and should have been replaced years ago. Until they were, there would be more breaks, not to mention a heck of a lot of water damage.

  Too late, Mitch knew he should have bitten the bullet and replaced the pipes when he’d bought the place ten years ago and renovated it, but he was assured the plumbing would hold up another fifty years. So much for promises, he thought wryly. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. He didn’t want to start any major renovations unless he or Alice was present, and he’d never intended his stay in San Antonio to be anything but temporary. He’d only planned to stay a couple of days, just until he found someone he—and Alice—could trust to oversee the Social Club while she was in L.A. Back in Dallas, Applebee was no doubt having a field day, taking advantage of his absence to cause all sorts of headaches for him, businesswise. The quicker he got back, the better.

  But could he actually walk away from the Social Club knowing the pipes could explode any minute?

  Trapped, he knew he couldn’t. Aside from the fact that he’d never hear the end of it from Alice, the house wasn’t just another business venture that made him money. It was a legacy of the past that had a personality all its own, and the day he’d bought it, protecting the family heritage became his responsibility. He couldn’t turn his back on that now just because Applebee was causing problems for him in Dallas. Somehow, for the next little while, he’d have to divide his time between the two cities. He hoped that none of his business ventures suffered because of it.

  Which meant he would still need someone to take over Alice’s duties and oversee things whenever he was called away to Dallas, he thought as he pulled the phone book from the bottom drawer of Alice’s desk. He’d call one of the employment services and see if they could send over a few candidates tomorrow.

  Flipping through the yellow pages, he was just deciding which employment agency to use when he heard someone in the entrance hall. Normally, he would have figured it was one of the tenants, but he had left the front door open so the hall could dry out, and anyone could walk in. Especially since the ad for that damn estate sale was still in the paper.

  Swearing, he dropped the phone book back on the desk and strode over to the front door of Alice’s apartment. Jerking it open, he stepped into the hall just as a woman and two children started up the stairs, the three of them struggling to maneuver a twin-bed frame around the bend of the landing.

  “Do you think the place is haunted, Aunt Phoebe?” the boy was asking in excited whispers that seemed to echo eerily in the hall. “It’s an old house. There could be ghosts—”

  “In our room?” the little girl squeaked, horrified. “Will they hurt us?”

  “No, honey,” the woman quickly assured her. “There’re no ghosts in your room or anything else that will hurt you. We’re all going to be very happy here.” Suddenly shifting her attention to the boy, she said, “Watch the wallpaper, honey. We don’t want to tear it.”

  Frowning, Mitch watched them proceed up the stairs and couldn’t believe his eyes. They were moving in! he thought, stunned. But the only empty apartment in the house was 2C, and that had already been leased to the Johnsons, who were moving in next week. And from what Alice had told him, the couple was middle-aged and had no children. That, in no way, shape or form described the woman on the stairs. Young and pretty, she wasn’t even close to middle-aged. In fact, he doubted that she was even thirty.

  H
is rugged face set in stern lines, he stepped to the foot of the stairs and scowled up at her. “I don’t know who you are, lady, but you’ve got some explaining to do. What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

  Chapter 2

  Startled, Phoebe nearly dropped her end of the bed frame. Glancing over the banister down at the foyer below, she quickly took in the unexpected sight of the man glaring up at her like some kind of fierce gatekeeper at the entrance to a castle. Tall and rangy, his blue eyes as sharp as lasers, he was, she was sure, a good-looking man when he wasn’t scowling like an ogre. And all his anger seemed to be directed solely at her, which made no sense. All she was doing was moving in, and she couldn’t see how that was any concern of his. After all, it wasn’t like she and the kids were hauling furniture up the stairs in the middle of the night and waking everyone in the house. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, for heaven’s sake!

  So maybe he works the graveyard shift and this is the middle of the night for him, her conscience pointed out reasonably. He’s a neighbor, Phoebe. Granted, he’s not the best welcoming party you’ve ever had, but cut him some slack and try to get along. Remember—you have to set an example for the children.

  Wide-eyed, Robby and Becky turned to her expectantly, waiting to see how she was going to handle the situation. Forcing a reassuring smile, she carefully set down her end of the bed frame and glanced down at the man who still glowered suspiciously at them from the foyer down below. “We’re moving in, of course,” she said lightly. “I’m Phoebe Smith and this is my niece and nephew, Becky and Robby. We’re the new tenants in 2C.”

  Whatever response Phoebe was expecting, it wasn’t the low curse he bit out. “I don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, lady, but you can just haul your stuff back down the stairs and get out of here before you find yourself in more trouble than you can handle.”