by Cait London
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Epilogue
MIRACLES AND MISTLETOE
By Cait London
~**~
Copyright
Copyright by Lois Kleinsasser
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.*
*This also pertains to uploading to free download sites, which is considered piracy and does not recognize the labor of this author or their livelihood from that work. Please discourage piracy and purchase works (other than those listed by the author or publisher as Free Books).
Publishing History: Miracles and Mistletoe
~**~
Chapter One
“Sweetheart, I don’t like talking to you any better than you like my company,” Jonah said to his dog. He spoke aloud, though he had been mentally conversing with her. “And no, I’m not exactly wallowing in Christmas cheer.”
Shrimp— the runt of the litter and now a four-year-old female collie— regally eyed him from her side of the pickup. Earlier in the cold December day, Shrimp had balked when Jonah had called her. He knew she preferred to be called Sylvia or anything elegant and feminine.
Had she balked because she resented her name? Or was it the desperation in his tone?
Jonah’s glove-clad hands tightened on the steering wheel of his battered pickup. Two weeks before Christmas found him chatting mentally with his dog. January might find him talking with his small herd of cattle or a passing bird, he realized grimly; they would all have a gay old time while he lost whatever sanity he now possessed.
He glanced at the snow-covered wheat fields surrounding Thorville, a small town in rural Montana. The snowfall had threatened for days and now promised to become a blizzard, wrapped in thirty below zero weather.
Shrimp continued to stare at him and Jonah said grimly, “Yes, sweetheart, I just might take June Fields up on her offer.”
He glared at the collie and stated flatly, “Of course I know sex isn’t love. And no, I’m not like some old Montana lone wolf howling at the moon.”
Jonah decided to ignore Shrimp’s righteous, condemning brown-eyed stare. When a man feared losing his mind, he took drastic action. June Fields, an amorous triple-divorced woman, represented the depth of Jonah’s desperation. She’d been flirting with him since his wife died thirteen years ago, and Jonah would try anything to stop the sliding of his mind—only he could hear the child crying….
Shrimp continued her condemning stare and Jonah understood perfectly. His dog’s thoughts ran through Jonah’s mind like a digital readout and set him off.
“‘Meaningless sex?’ Don’t think you’re a notch above me, Shrimp. You’ve been mooning over that statue of Roderegas since the town put it up. Magnificent? He’s only a statue of a faithful dog. At least I’m after a live body,” he muttered. “So we’re both nuts. And I am just desperate enough to spend the night in June’s bed. I’d do anything to have a full night’s sleep— or even a few hours.”
He glanced at his dog’s accusing stare and cursed. “Yes, sweetheart. Even sex with a woman who has been after me for years and has married twice between. And no, I don’t think I’ll be permanently injured. People have survived sex after forty.”
Jonah closed his eyes momentarily, then stated grimly, “Okay. You’re right. I am forty-five, not forty. And don’t tell me to have a Merry Christmas. Nothing good lasts, and Christmas cheer is for other people. Now, will you shut up, please, Shrimp?”
The narrow winding highway before him demanded all his attention. In constant repair, the road would take him past small alkali lakes and down into Thorville. Laden with blocks of concrete, his battered pickup passed over the four inches of new snow. A sudden gust of wind pushed at it and Jonah held his breath, controlling the vehicle around another winding curve.
The child’s sobs haunted, his waking hours now. The sounds lurked around him, quivering sadly on the harsh, howling winter wind.
Jonah swallowed the emotion tightening his throat.
He’d heard a child cry like that once— his daughter, Grace, crying for a dying newborn calf. Now Grace was lying beside her mother in the local cemetery. Maggie and he had waited eight long years for Grace….
Jonah glanced at the frozen alkali lakes where buffalo used to wallow. Grace would have been thirteen now, laughing at life and filled with an eagerness to meet it. Jonah would be facing her questions about boys and romance; he’d secretly studied about the changes a girl makes when she becomes a woman and try his best to understand her needs.
Another gust of wind thrust at his pickup and Jonah tumbled back into the past. Five years ago, on a late-winter afternoon just like this one— gray, freezing and windy— he’d been taking Grace to a Christmas party. The doll she had wanted so badly had been wrapped and hidden in the seat behind him. His pickup, shiny and new back then, had slid off the road and Jonah had fought to control it.
The pickup had tilted into a snowdrift, but they were safe and uninjured. Jonah had to get help; he had to take his daughter to warmth.
He glanced at the left front fender and the dent that had happened that night. The snow had begun falling heavily in the thirty-below-zero weather, the windchill lowering.
He’d had to leave his daughter alone. She was just eight—a laughing, loving child—she wouldn’t have survived out in the fierce, freezing temperatures. Grace had promised to stay bundled in the protection and blankets of the pickup’s cab while he tried to flag help.
Jonah had struggled up the incline to the highway and waited, freezing and praying for help. He’d returned to the pickup five times to find Grace safe. She had promised each time to stay huddled in the blankets and not leave the pickup.
The sixth trip back to check on her, Jonah had found the pickup door wide open, banging in the wind. Grace was gone.
They said he went crazy that day, hunting for her in the blizzard.
They said that his wife’s death in childbirth had torn his heart deeply; they worried that Jonah would die without his daughter.
When they found her, Grace looked as if she were sleeping, holding the puppy she had left the pickup to rescue.
Now Jonah fought the desperate pain and guilt washing over him. The Bear Paw Mountains and Square Butte stood in the distance just as they had then, ancient landmarks.
Grace had never gotten his Christmas present, the doll she’d wanted so much.
Deep in his thoughts, Jonah glanced at the moving van, tilting off at an angle from the highway. Only a fool would drive tires with little tread in the winter. From the look of the deep snowdrift around it, the driver had already caught a ride into town.
If only the crying would stop.... Jonah fought to control his thoughts, forcing them away from the slanting, perilous abyss that scared the hell out of him.
He’d gone off the deep end a long time ago. He’d mourned and cursed and drank. Then he’d pulled himself together and settled in for a lonely life. Crop failures and falling cattle market prices hadn’t really mattered. By worki
ng for others, he’d kept the land his great-great-grandfather had homesteaded. Cy Fargo had left a heritage of western endurance and brilliant blue eyes. Jonah’s Blackfoot great-great-grandmother had given die Fargos raven hair, dark skin and the rumor that she’d had certain powers.
Jonah ran his glove along his jaw and realized that nothing had reached into him until six months ago.
When the child began to cry.... The sobs reached into his heart, tearing it apart.
“Yes, I see him,” Jonah said to Shrimp as he eased his pickup to a stop. His head was throbbing painfully now. Maybe that was the sign of a man’s last sane moments. “Only a fool would try to drive a rig like that in weather like this.”
Walking along the side of the road, the “fool” waved gaily. A curtain of snow shielded the figure running to him. Jonah sat in his pickup and waited. All he needed was some cowboy dumb enough to be out—
A woman’s cheery grin appeared at his window.
Jonah stared back at her. A fool woman, he corrected. She had “city” written all over her pale, happy face. A female stranger who didn’t know that Montana blizzards could kill... or that she could be smiling at a possible Montana strangler.
She rapped on his window, forcing him to roll it down.
“Yes, get in,” Jonah said grimly. “You can ride into town with me. You’ll have to come back for your rig tomorrow. If s too cold and too late to deal with that now.”
While the woman hurried around the front of his pickup, Jonah ordered Shrimp to scoot next to him. Shrimp refused and Jonah realized again that he had not spoken aloud to his dog. His mind was truly tilting—
He chewed on that discomforting tidbit while the woman opened the passenger side of the pickup and looked hopefully at him. Shrimp hopped out of the pickup and waited. Jonah sighed. “The dog likes the window side. You’ll have to sit in the middle.”
“Great! This is so nice of you. I really, really appreciate this. I was getting a bit cold.” The woman climbed in beside him, bringing with her feminine scents, a happy holiday air and the tinkling of tiny bells. She licked a snowflake from her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue.
Jonah edged away from her body as she settled close to him. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, and when she was finished adjusting herself, he set the pickup in gear.
He glanced down at her warm knitted scarf, spattered with holly, and flicked it from his sleeve.
He tensed, sensing the elements of the woman— caring, cuddling, strength... storms, lightning and melting heat Then he imagined a sweet spring wind riffling a calm lake and woodland flowers... He sensed walls and pain, and closed his eyes against the wash of impressions. He closed whatever was going on in his mind, uncomfortable with his thoughts. She was no more than a woman who didn’t know enough to stay put in dangerous weather.
His intruder swept off her knitted cap and gloves. Her honey-brown eyes, framed by bristling dark brown lashes, smiled up at him. Her hair, a blonde mass of long, spiraling curls, seemed to bounce with excitement and happiness. Jonah closed his eyes and wondered why the only passerby had to be himself; he wasn’t in the mood for contagious Christmas cheer.
The woman reeked of Christmas; she was saturated in it from her jumbled curls down to her uptown, neon-pink snow boots. Jonah eased down into his coat, hoping to discourage her from chitchat.
She pushed away a gleaming tendril from her cheek and nodded to the ditch. “That’s my moving truck back there. I waited for an hour after going off the road, then left it. That’s what they say to do, isn’t it? Stay in the protection of the vehicle until someone comes along? But I was just so excited about moving here. I’ll be sharing Christmas with my brother’s family. Imagine— Christmas morning and children exclaiming over their Santa Claus stocking goodies. I hope they get up early, so I can dig into my own stocking.”
Her tone was breathless and filled with excitement. Her pink lips curved with joyous expectation. She unbuttoned her bright yellow down coat and her body wiggled briefly, settling too close to him. Jonah grimly moved his worn shearling coat sleeve away from hers.
“Uh-huh,” Jonah muttered, concentrating on the road and hoping that his don’t-talk warning tone would stop her motor mouth. Here he was, concentrating on snow-covered roads, trapped with a grown woman— somewhere in her mid-thirties— who was excited about her Santa Claus stocking. The snow was falling heavily now. Just as heavily as that day five years ago—
“My name is Harmony Davis.” His intruder’s cheerful feminine voice ripped him back from the perilous edge where the child’s sobs lurked. Harmony chafed elegant, slender hands together and blew on them for warmth; Jonah turned up the heater a notch. While he preferred cold, he didn’t want to be responsible for her becoming ill. Her shoulder bumped his arm as she shivered and he eased stiffly away.
“You may know my brother, Pax,” she said. “He and his wife just moved here three years ago. They bought the old Sayers place. I’ve only seen the children on their brief visits to Des Moines. I can’t wait until Christmas, when his children open their presents from me. I love giving gifts more than opening them myself.”
He noted the bright gold sweater beneath her coat. Her clothing was expensive and new.
He noted her breasts and inhaled sharply. He frowned at the surge of raw hunger gripping his body.
Harmony frowned slightly as if something disturbed her, then she continued in that happy, excited tone, “Pax loves it here. That’s why I decided to move closer to my brother. I adore his three little urchins, and with Christmas coming, I wanted us all to be together. Then I thought, ‘What about Valentine’s Day? And Easter?’ So I decided to move near them, just like that.”
She moved restlessly, nestling close to him as if she were his best girl out on a Sunday drive. Jonah didn’t want her Christmas cheer or best girls or attachments of the heart; he couldn’t take a third round of pain.
Jonah’s heart clenched painfully. Each year, he dreaded the holiday season and he promised for the hundredth time that he would not be “hunkering” on the outskirts of someone else’s family on Christmas Eve.
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t want her cheerful, excited tone intruding upon his dark thoughts. She had the look and the sound of a do-gooder. He’d had a bellyful of them when his wife died suddenly and when Grace—
He also didn’t like the vision of her face that remained with him, though he was staring at the snow-covered highway. The color of her eyes had jarred him: tawny, the shade of old gold, with dark flecks in their depths. He’d glimpsed the angular set of her jaw, softened by that jumbled mass of shiny light gold curls and an expressive mouth meant for kissing.
That mouth was mobile, soft and glossy pink, and reminded him of a rosebud about to flower.
While she shared Pax’s tawny shades, he was darker with a wild, fierce angular look that settled well into Montana. Pax could be imposing— a man filled with pride, love for his family and an obstinate talent for trying to be Jonah’s friend.
Harmony’s face was striking, not pretty or classic, and the summer sun might sprinkle tiny freckles and honey-gold on her skin. Harmony was a bold, Celtic-looking woman, and one who apparently didn’t know when welcome doors had slammed shut in her face.
Jonah thought he heard Shrimp snickering about his “kissing” thought. He stealthily blew away a clinging curl from his shoulder and glanced at Shrimp. From the passenger side of the pickup, the dog looked at him innocently.
“What’s your name?” the woman asked in a tone that was warm and husky as she draped her arm around Shrimp. She hugged the dog and the tiny gold bells on her bracelet jingled merrily. She nuzzled Shrimp’s warm fur and said, “You’re beautiful.”
Shrimp smirked at Jonah and the woman looked at Jonah and repeated, “Your name?”
“Fargo. Jonah Fargo. That’s Shrimp.” He disliked being sucked into holiday-cheer chitchat.
Harmony turned to him, her amber-shaded eyes wide and warm. The dim
light caught the thin gold hoops in her ears. “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you. Pax said you helped him harvest his wheat crops and taught him about raising cows. He thinks highly of you.”
Because everything was chipper in her world and nothing was going well in his life, Jonah resented her intrusion. He resented the slight bumping of her body against his, the woman scents swirling around his pickup. “Cattle,” he corrected grimly. “Not cows... cattle.”
He ignored her bright grin up at him. He sank his jaw deeper in his turned-up coat collar and hoped that the woman would take his hint and be quiet. The long spiraling curl resting on his shoulder glistened, nudging his dark mood. He shrugged gently and the curl was joined by others. He forced his attention to the road.
“You like quiet, don’t you?” Harmony asked, peering out into heavy snowfall and the dying light.
Jonah didn’t respond. Pax had said he had a sister in Iowa; he didn’t say how much she talked. Her fresh spring scents and an elusive, exotic musk invaded Jonah’s privacy. He preferred leather and smoke and animal scents. He could trust them just as he trusted the sense of solitude that she was also invading.
“I will see that you’re repaid for this kindness. But please, I don’t want to take you out of your way,” Harmony was saying.
Jonah inhaled. On his way to where? Where was his life going? Six more months of listening to the child cry would be unbearable. “You won’t take me out of my way. I’m headed right past Pax’s place on my way to town.”
Harmony frowned slightly and peered into the snow flurries. “Pax said your place was next to his. We must be miles from there in the opposite direction of town. Or maybe I’ve made a mistake while reading my map. I didn’t have any problem on the interstate, but these back roads—”
“Could be.” Jonah had begun the day just driving in the opposite direction from town— going anyplace to escape his house, where a dish had just inexplicably lifted from the table and smashed against the wall.
He cursed mentally; Shrimp looked dismayed, as if her master was making a poor first impression and embarrassing her. Harmony straightened in her seat.
