by Lori Wilde
“Your husband has made a wise decision.”
Flynn snorted. Glared.
Reluctantly, Jesse undid his seat belt, kissed Flynn, got out of the car, and followed Penninger back to the cruiser. He hated sending her off in the dark alone, but sour feelings went much deeper than that. This incident drove home the fact that no matter how hard he tried, he could never really escape his past.
CHAPTER THREE
The perfect Christmas demands the perfect music . . .
Bing Crosby was wishing everyone a white Christmas as Flynn started the car with trembling fingers. Frustrated, she sat there letting the engine idle while she collected herself. She knew Jesse was right to cooperate, but knowing that didn’t make her feel any less awful.
In the rearview mirror, the taillights of the cruiser winked out in the darkness, taking Jesse from her. She closed her eyes, remembering when she was sixteen and a similar patrol car had whisked him away from her for ten long years.
It’s gonna be okay. You’ll get home. They’ll let him go. You can stay up late, have eggnog and cookies, and play some Christmas music. The whole evening isn’t ruined. Not yet. Not yet.
A soft sound pelted the windshield, an onrush of icy vibration. No, no. She opened her eyes. Oh no.
Sleet.
Buckets of it.
Home. She had to get home. Now. But home was eleven miles away.
Tightly gripping the wheel, she bit down on her bottom lip and pulled onto the empty highway. Was it a good thing or a bad thing that there were no other cars on the road?
That’s when she noticed the gas gauge read a quarter of a tank. It should be plenty to get her home, but it was just something else to make her antsy.
As she neared the Brazos, a thick mist rolled off the river, engulfing the car in a headlight-dousing fog. She inched along at twenty miles an hour, every muscle in her body tuned tight.
The baby, as if sensing her distress, kicked.
She spared a second to put a hand on her belly, even as she kept her gaze trained on the road. “Don’t worry, baby. Mommy isn’t going to let anything happen to you.”
The car skidded.
“Whoa!” She sucked in a startled breath, immediately clamped her hand back onto the wheel, and eased up on the accelerator. Concentrate, concentrate, you have a promise to keep. She had no idea if she was even on the bridge yet. She’d never seen a fog so dark and thick.
Bing was gone and Bruce Springsteen was telling her that Santa Claus was coming to town. Maybe so, but St. Nick better not be on this road. Not if he valued his sleigh.
The baby kicked again.
“I’m sorry, wee one. I know you want out, but you’ve got another week to go before it’s time to pop from this toaster.”
Even though she couldn’t see it, she knew the bridge lay just ahead. This was the hardest part of the drive home. Once she made it over the bridge, the fog would lessen and she’d be able to see again.
The tempo of sleet fall quickened until it sounded as if a hundred long-nailed typists were simultaneously keyboarding War and Peace. The wheels hung on a patch of black ice; the protesting engine revved a whining complaint.
Flynn’s heart galloped. Was it turn into a skid or turn away from it?
The car kept sliding in a perverse ballet, skating toward the right. If she was on the bridge, she’d soon whack into the guardrail, and if she wasn’t, she’d go off into a bar ditch. Please let me be on the bridge. Better to dent up the car and still be able to drive home than get stuck in a gully.
What to do? What to do?
Turning into a skid was counterintuitive, but she had to do something. She was going to do it, but what did turning into a skid mean? Did you turn the wheels in the direction you were sliding or the opposite direction?
No time to think. Act! She wrenched the steering wheel to the right.
The car stopped sliding, gained a little traction.
She blew out her breath. Whew. Now what?
The baby threw a punch.
“I know, I know, I’m trying my best to get you home, sweetheart.”
The daunting fog was a blanket, blocking any visibility. Nightmare. She was going to have nightmares about this for weeks to come. Oh, Jesse, where are you when I need you most? That wasn’t fair. None of this was his fault. He’d wanted her to stay home but she’d insisted on coming along. She’d put him in a no-win situation.
Tentatively, she pressed down on the accelerator. The car jumped and instantly fishtailed. Adrenaline raced through her body, hot and jittery. Stop! Stop!
Tires whisked against the ice, a spine-curdling, glassy whoosh. Panicked, she jammed on the brakes.
Mistake. Big mistake.
The wheels completely locked up and the car spun a one-eighty, shot sideways, and glided downward. To the river? Was she going into the water? Dear God, please help!
The car crashed into something with a brain-rattling jolt, pinballed off that something, and spun again.
Powerless, she clung to the steering wheel, a whimper of despair seeping past her clenched teeth.
The front fender bit into hard ground. Thankfully, not water. But in the process, the passenger door flew open and her purse, which contained her cell phone, bounced out into the pea-soup fog. She heard a splash. Gulped.
As she sat there contemplating what to do next, Josh Groban crooned softly, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Well good for him, at least somebody would.
The Jubilee police dropped Jesse off at his house around eleven. It had taken a call to Warden Neusbaum at Huntsville prison to fully convince them that Jesse was not involved in any drug deal, and Neusbaum had been a hard man to locate on a holiday weekend. If Hondo hadn’t been on a plane to Hawaii, the misunderstanding could have been cleared up in a matter of minutes. As it was, Jesse struggled not to be resentful. Penninger had apologized to him, after all.
The Christmas lights on the house twinkled gaily, but the inside of the house was dark. He’d expected Flynn to be waiting up for him. The uneasiness that had started when he’d tried to call her and kept getting her voice mail crept over him again. To cut costs, they’d gotten rid of their landline. He hoped she’d simply forgotten to plug in her cell phone. The pregnancy had made her a little forgetful lately. Maybe she was exhausted and had gone on to bed. It had been a long day, what with Patsy and Hondo’s wedding, but if that was the case, why hadn’t she at least texted him when she’d gotten home okay?
He trudged up the icy steps trying not to let worry do him in. Don’t borrow trouble. She was most likely sound asleep. He couldn’t wait to slide under the covers and snuggle up beside her.
That’s when he saw the dog.
A blue merle Australian shepherd lay curled up on the welcome mat. He stopped, and an uncontrollable smile crossed his face. He’d always wanted a dog. Had Flynn surprised him for Christmas? No. She wouldn’t have left a dog outside in the cold.
The Aussie jumped to his feet, tail wagging madly as if he’d been waiting for Jesse his entire life, and rushed over to him.
“Any other time, dog, and I’d be over the moon.” Jesse bent to scratch the pooch’s head. No collar. Fur matted. Skinny. He looked homeless. “You remind me a bit of myself before I came to Twilight.”
He opened the door and flicked on the light. The dog waited at the threshold, looked at Jesse expectantly. “It’s Christmas Eve, you really think I wouldn’t say c’mon in?”
The dog trotted inside.
“Flynnie,” Jesse called, opening up the pantry for a can of tuna. “You awake? We’ve got company. Come see.”
He peeled off the pull top on the tuna can and set it on the floor. Immediately, the Aussie devoured it. He moved to throw away the pull top, spied a library book on the hutch beside the trash can. How to Host the Perfect Christmas. Aw, Flynnie.
Always trying to be perfect. Didn’t she realize that in his eyes she could do no wrong? Not ever. No matter what.
Shaking his head, he stepped on the lever that opened the trash can, and red glass shards from Flynn’s mother’s Christmas ornament glittered up at him from the garbage. Dammit. He’d forgotten about that. Flynn really had had a rough day.
“Flynn,” he called her again.
No answer.
The uneasiness that had abated when he’d seen the dog turned to dread. Jesse rushed down the hall, his pulse spurting hot blood through his veins.
He flung open the door. The bed was neatly made up. Flynn had never arrived home, that meant she was stranded out there somewhere in the ice. He spun on his heel, ran for the door. The dog kept step with him.
“I don’t have time for you,” Jesse muttered, but Aussie stayed glued to his side. He couldn’t leave the poor thing in the house alone, but neither could he leave it shut out in the cold. “All right, you can go with me.”
Walking as quickly as he dared on the icy ground, he headed toward the detached garage. Nope, her car was not there, confirming his fear that she had not made it home. After what seemed like an eternity, he was on the road with the dog riding shotgun. As he drove, he used his hands-free device to try and call Flynn again. When that failed, he called relatives and friends. No one had seen or heard from her that evening.
He cursed himself up one side and down the other. Cursed the Jubilee police and the drug dealer. For good measure he cursed Beau Trainer, the man who’d framed him in the first place and had stolen ten years of his life.
When the police had brought him home, they’d taken the straighter route down 171 from Jubilee to Twilight, instead of Highway 51 which he and Flynn had been on, so he wouldn’t have seen her if she’d been stuck on the side of the road.
Jesse fisted his hand on his thigh. If any harm came to Flynn there was going to be hell to pay.
Picking up on his mood, the dog whined and pawed the dashboard. The radio came on, playing “Merry Christmas Darling” by the Carpenters. A song about a loving couple forced to spend the holiday apart.
Ah hell, ah damn. No way. He was going to find Flynn and she was going to be okay. Determined, Jesse snapped off the radio before he lost it completely.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ultimately, the perfect Christmas
is about those we love . . .
Flynn tried for what seemed like a solid month to find her purse. Inching to the icy water’s edge in the deep, dark fog, forever aware that one slip could potentially end the life of both her and her baby. But the phone was her only salvation. Essential.
She’d felt blindly along the icy ground, touching tree branches, sharp rocks, and brittle patches of grass until the relentless damp, treacherous ice and bone-deep cold had forced her back inside the car. Now, she huddled in the passenger seat, wrapped in Jesse’s new leather jacket, teeth chattering, boots wet, toes Popsicles, engine idling, heat cranked up to the max, and praying the car didn’t run out of gas.
The first labor pain hit her with the force of a lightning bolt—hot, hard, and burning bright. She cried out, grasped her abdomen. No, no, no. This could not be happening now. The baby wasn’t due for another week.
“Babies come on their own timetable,” Dr. Butler had said.
She closed her eyes. Maybe it was just those Braxton-Hicks contractions the nurse educator talked about in childbirth classes. False labor. Yes, that was it. Had to be it. The baby was definitely not coming. Not while she was stranded by herself in the ice, on Christmas Eve. N.O.T. Not happening.
The second pain ripped through her. She gritted her teeth to keep from screaming. It had been less than two minutes since the first contraction. This was not good. Not good at all. Damn the Jubilee police all to hell for taking Jesse away from her. He was a good man. He didn’t deserve the stigma.
Be calm. Calm down. Think of the baby.
The baby hadn’t moved in awhile. She stroked her belly, cooed sweet nothings. Okay, she had to make another attempt to find her purse, get to her cell phone, and call for help, but the thought of going back out into that freezing, foggy night weighed on her as heavily as lead boots.
Tears pushed at the backs of her eyelids, but she couldn’t give in to self-pity. Despair was not an option. Jesse would come looking for her; that was a certainty. That was unless the police decided to detain him overnight.
No. Can’t think like that. He will come looking for you. He is probably already looking for you.
At night. In the fog. During an ice storm. Not to mention that she’d clearly crashed into some kind of ravine near the river bridge. What were the odds that he would find her before she had the baby?
Whenever she imagined her first child’s birth, this scenario had never come to mind; so much for expectations.
The third pain clamped down on her and wouldn’t let go. It wrenched the air from her lungs, left her gasping and grasping. Oh Jesse, hurry, hurry.
When the fourth pain hit shortly on the heels on the third one, she realized she’d better get in the back while she still could, use that cloth bag they’d had the Angel Tree presents in to protect the seats. Unless something changed soon, it was looking more and more like she was going to have to deliver this baby herself.
Driving in the ice was slow going, but Jesse had no other option. Going fast could end him up in a ditch and he simply could not take that risk, even though plodding along went against everything he had inside him. He wanted Flynn and he wanted her now.
Patience. His patience was what won her in the first place. Ten years he’d waited for her, and she’d been worth every tick of the clock.
As he neared the Brazos River, a thick fog rolled toward him. Flynn was out in this? His bones ached and his stomach roiled. Hang on, sweetheart, I’m coming.
By the time he got to the bridge, his hands were shaking. How was he going to find her when he couldn’t see beyond the hood of his truck? He’d scanned the bar ditches since he’d started down 51, but no sign of her. She had to be somewhere between the Hood County side of the bridge and Post Oak Shores. Where to start?
Retrace your steps. Go back to where you left her and start from there.
The bridge was icier than the highway. No sand trucks had been out here. The pickup fishtailed and it took every bit of concentration he could muster to focus on driving across the frozen bridge. By the time he reached the other side, he was as wrung out as if he’d sprinted five miles. If he was this worn down, what had Flynn been through?
The Aussie whined, sounding a lot like Lassie did when little Timmy got into some scrape or another.
“You sure you want to hang out with me, boy?”
The dog licked the back of his hand.
“We’re going to have to search on foot. In this pea soup, it’s the only way.” Jesse didn’t know whether to pull over to the side of the road and risk getting stuck or leave the truck in the middle of the road and take a chance that no one would come along. Better to get stuck than to cause an accident.
He pulled over onto the shoulder as far as he dared with zero visibility and got out of the pickup. Before he could shut the door, the dog bolted out of the truck and ran off, the mist gobbling him up. So much for loyal companion.
Which way was north? He stood in the fog, trying to get his bearings and feeling utterly alone. Finally, he pulled out his phone and in a Hail Mary, called her again.
Voice mail.
“Flynn, where are you?”
Far off in the distance, Flynn thought she heard the faint ring of her cell phone, but maybe it was just her ears ringing. Labor pains could make you see sounds, taste textures, and smell colors. Son of a biscuit, it hurt. She’d chewed her bottom lip raw and sweat drenched her clothes.
“Looks like it’s just me and you, kid,” she mumbled, and ma
ssaged her belly. Even that small effort was too much and her hand flopped limply to her side.
Conserve your strength. You’ve got a big job ahead of you.
Contraction after contraction rolled through her. No one had told her it was going to hurt like this. She thought she’d deliver in a nice hospital, with an epidural. Life had a way of mucking up the best-laid plans.
When the urge to push came it was so unrelenting, she felt kidnapped. It was the strongest impulse she’d ever experienced. She tried to remember what she’d learned in prenatal classes, but her brain was numb, every bit of energy given over to childbirth. She closed her eyes, barely able to draw in air.
“Flynn!”
Her eyes flew open. Was she hallucinating or was someone calling her name? The voice sounded muffled, distant.
“Flynn!”
Yes, someone was definitely calling her name. She opened her mouth to answer, but another contraction grabbed her with such force all she could do was grunt.
“Flynn! Can you hear me?”
It was a man’s voice, but still too far away to hear clearly. Could it be Jesse?
Her pulse quickened and a rush of adrenaline swept through her. She raised her head and for a second, she was Superwoman. “Here, I’m he—”
Pain cut her in two.
A dog barked, but she was so engulfed in her toil that the sound barely registered. She clenched her fists, gave in to the overwhelming urge to push. She had to get this baby out.
The barking grew louder, more insistent. Whose dog was that? What was it barking at? What—
The baby’s head was crowning. She could feel it. No stopping now.
She squeezed her eyes closed and poured every ounce of attention into the biggest job of her life.
The barking stopped.
The car door wrenched open. “Flynn.”
Jesse!
She opened her eyes and there stood her husband, his jaw hanging open, his face the color of paste, but he was the most beautiful sight in the world.
