by Lisa Jackson
Amy went through her ablutions, standing on a stool while brushing her teeth, wiping her face and extra toothpaste onto a wet towel, then climbing the stairs to the loft. At her bed, she fell to her knees and began to pray, saying the usual “God Blesses” for Aunt Shelly, Uncle Vic, her twin cousins and Veronica. She paused a moment, then added, “And please, God, bring me a puppy for Christmas and a new daddy so my mommy won’t be so sad. Amen.” Scrambling off her knees, she climbed into bed and slid between the covers.
Veronica didn’t move. Her heart felt like lead in her chest. “Oh, honey,” she whispered around a lump of tears caught in her throat. “Mommy’s not sad. I’ve got you.”
“But you miss Daddy.”
“I’ll always miss him,” she said, kissing Amy’s crown of dark curls, “but that’s okay. Besides, you remind me of him every day. Aren’t we happy together?”
“Happy,” Amy repeated around a yawn as she threw an arm around her one-eyed stuffed tiger.
“I’ll see you in the morning.” Veronica smoothed a hair away from Amy’s face and sighed. It was time to stop grieving, time to let go. Hank was gone, his life lost on the slopes of Mount Echo, and for the past few years Ronni had held her grief and anger inside, blaming herself, blaming the mountain, blaming the company who’d sent him the new bindings and demo skis, trying to find a reason that her husband, not yet thirty years old, had been stolen from her.
Determined to start over and push the pain of losing Hank into a dark, locked part of her heart, she walked down the stairs from the loft and eyed the pile of paperwork on her desk. Letters to be answered, orders to be filled, invoices to be paid. She should be thrilled, she supposed; her cottage business was taking off. Ronni did most of the legwork finding new items, putting together the catalog, locating new outlets, while her sister Shelly handled the day-to-day business of boxing and filling orders. Between the business, her part-time job at the mountain and Amy, Ronni didn’t have time to house-train a new puppy, let alone search for a new man. Not that she needed one. She could be both mother and father to her little girl.
Then why was Amy praying for a new daddy?
* * *
“He’ll be okay,” Travis said, assuring his ex-wife that their son was still in one piece. He’d made the call from the first phone booth he’d found near the hamburger joint where they’d had dinner. “The doctor on the mountain thought the injury was more serious than it was, but the specialist we saw tonight in Portland is more optimistic. Bryan will be laid up a week or so because the tendons are stretched and there’s some damage to the ligament, but it’s hanging together and the cartilage damage doesn’t look as bad as was originally thought.”
“You’re not just trying to make me feel better?” Sylvia asked in her pouty, accusing voice.
Travis closed his eyes and didn’t give in to the urge to ask her why a woman who’d walked out on her son and husband years before would feel guilty or bad about the kid’s latest injury. “No. I just thought you’d want to know.” God, what time was it in France? Why was she still up?
“Why didn’t you call earlier? The accident happened, what—sometime yesterday?”
“I didn’t want to worry you. Besides, we didn’t really know how laid up he’d be.”
“So you wait until the middle of the night?” she said around a yawn.
“Sorry.” Travis glanced to the dark sky. He couldn’t explain that he’d been too busy to call. Things had changed since Bryan’s injury; the old “fixer-upper” lodge was no longer quaint. He’d spent hours with contractors and movers, making the house as livable as possible.
“Can I talk to him?” Sylvia asked.
Rain pounded on the small, open telephone booth. Travis gauged the distance to the Jeep and nearly laughed. “Not right now. I’m in a phone booth and he’s in the car, but I’ll have him call you as soon as the phones are installed at the house.”
“Tell him I love him,” Sylvia ordered.
“Will do.” Travis hung up and sighed. Ducking his head against an icy gust of wind, he strode to the Jeep and climbed inside where the radio was blasting some bass-throbbing hard-rock song. Bryan sat slumped against the passenger window and was staring through the glass. Traffic roared by, splashing water and dirt into the parking lot of the fast-food restaurant where they’d stopped for burgers after a lengthy session with the orthopedic surgeon. Though he would have to take it easy for a few weeks, Bryan would heal quickly. Things were looking up—or should have been, though Bryan had slipped back into his sullen you-can’t-make-me-care-about-anything mood.
“Okay, cowboy, let’s go,” Travis said, turning the volume-control dial of the radio so that the riff of an electric guitar didn’t threaten to burst his eardrums. Twisting in his seat, he watched for other traffic as he backed the vehicle out of the lot. Shifting into first, he nosed the Jeep into the steady stream of cars, trucks and buses heading east toward the ridge of mountains that weren’t visible in the dark. “Your mom sends her love.”
Bryan made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat.
“She wants you to call her when the phone’s hooked up.”
“She can call me.”
“Bryan—”
“She took off. Not me,” he charged angrily.
“It’s ancient history,” Travis said, but didn’t add anything else. Obviously, Bryan still felt abandoned, though his perspective wasn’t quite on the money. True, Sylvia had packed up and moved to Paris, but she still cared about her son—in her own, odd way.
“And I’m not a cowboy,” Bryan grumbled.
Travis wasn’t about to argue as he concentrated on the drive. Red beams of taillights smeared through the wet windshield as the traffic cruised along, steadily climbing through the forested foothills and across bridges spanning icy rivers. They drove through several small towns along the way and eventually the rain turned to snow that stuck to the pavement and gave a white glow to the otherwise black night.
Traffic thinned as vehicles pulled off at two ski areas that were lit up like proverbial Christmas trees. Night skiers were racing down the slopes, one of which was visible from the highway.
Soon they were nearly alone on the road. The quiet, snow-blanketed hills were soothing to Travis and he wondered why he’d clung to big-city life for so long, why chasing the dollar had been so damned important to him? When, exactly, had he lost touch with what was really meaningful in life?
“Tell me about the woman who helped you down the mountain,” he said, wondering why he’d thought about her several times in the past couple of days.
“What about her?”
“Her name is Veronica, right?”
Bryan scowled. “Ronni.” He reached for the volume-control dial, but a sharp look from Travis caused him to settle back against the cushions. A permanent scowl was etched across his face. “Why do you want to know?”
“I think I owe her a thank-you.”
“So send her a card.”
“I’d like to talk to her.”
“Oh, brother. Why?”
Good question. One that had been bothering him ever since she’d flashed that blinding smile of hers in his direction. “Just curious, I guess.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a thing for her.”
“A thing?” Travis couldn’t help the amusement in his voice.
“She’s not your type,” Bryan muttered.
“My type?” Travis grinned in the darkness of the Jeep. “Who’s my type?”
Bryan glared through the glass, watching as snowflakes were batted away by the wipers. “You know, Dad, I don’t really think you have a type. Or maybe you shouldn’t. Your track record with women isn’t all that great.”
Travis couldn’t argue the point. The few dates he’d had since his divorce from Sylvia could only be de
scribed as nightmares. But then, he wasn’t looking for a woman to go out with. He just wanted to tell Ronni Whatever-her-name-was that he appreciated her helping his injured son. That was all there was to it. Nothing else and certainly nothing romantic.
He’d learned long ago that romance, if it existed at all, wasn’t for him. No woman, not even one as intriguing as Veronica with the thick rope of dark hair and a smile as warm as morning sunshine could change that one simple inalienable fact.
* * *
“So we can count on you and Amy for Christmas?” Shelly asked as she shoved the final box into the back of her battered old station wagon. She and Veronica had spent the past twelve hours packing the last of the orders to be shipped for Christmas, while Amy had “helped” stuff packing into boxes or sat coloring or played in the snow-covered yard between the house and garage-warehouse.
“Sure,” Veronica said. “Why not?”
“Because you hate the holidays,” her sister said as she searched in her purse and pulled out a heavy ring of keys. Three inches shorter and twenty pounds heavier than her sister, Shelly was blessed with the same dark hair and eyes, but a more rounded, softer face, larger breasts and more than the start of a belly that she’d never lost after her pregnancy with the twins, who were now six and hell on wheels.
“I love Christmas,” Ronni argued.
“Sure you do. That’s why you’re always vowing to go to Mexico or Brazil or the Bahamas every year.”
“Idle threats.”
“I know, but I just wanted to make sure you’d be around. Vic and I are counting on you, and the boys would die if Amy wasn’t coming.”
“Sure. I’ll bring the rum cake and spiced cider and molded salad.”
Shelly grinned. “Just bring Amy. And maybe a date.”
“A date?” Veronica laughed at the absurdity of it. Just like Shelly to suggest something so silly. “On Christmas Eve? Oh, sure. Just let me check my little black book.”
“Come on, Ronni.” Shelly slammed the tailgate and climbed into the front seat. “You must meet lots of cute, eligible bachelor types up on the mountain.”
“I do. But they’re usually wearing casts and using crutches,” Veronica teased.
“Think about it.”
“Oh, right. Long and hard,” Veronica said as Shelly buckled her seat belt and closed the door.
Shelly twisted the key in the ignition. The old car wheezed, sputtered and died. Pumping the gas several times, Shelly winked at her sister and tried again. A plume of blue smoke shot from the exhaust and Shelly rolled down the window. She patted the dashboard fondly. “Hasn’t let me down yet.”
“Knock on wood.”
“See ya tomorrow.” Shelly shifted into first and was off, the station wagon gently coasting along the lane that wound through the trees.
A date? Trust Shelly to come up with some lamebrained idea. Veronica smiled as she watched the blue car disappear past a thicket of fir trees. No matter what her troubles, Shelly always looked on the bright side of life. Though her husband, Victor, who had been a sawyer for a mill that had shut down last winter, was still unemployed, Shelly refused to worry. Victor managed to make a little money doing odd jobs. He chopped and hauled firewood or helped out at the gas station in town when the crew was shorthanded. Right now he spent his time down at the D&E Christmas Tree Lot, helping Delmer and Edwin Reese sell natural, flocked and even some artificial trees. Shelly just wasn’t one to dwell on her troubles. “As long as there’s bread on the table and gas in the tank, we don’t need much more,” Shelly was fond of saying. “The Lord has a way of providing for everyone.”
Ronni crossed her fingers and hoped Shelly was right. She spied Amy drawing in the snow with a stick. “Come on, let’s go feed Lucy and Sam,” she said, motioning in the direction of the barn. Both horses were standing outside, their winter coats thick and shaggy, their ears turned back as they stood beneath one of the fir trees in the paddock.
“Can’t we make a snowman first?” Amy said, her little face crumpling in disappointment. “You promised.”
“That I did,” Veronica said, even though she was dead-tired.
“And put up the tree?”
“Another promise that won’t be broken.” If only she had her daughter’s seemingly endless supply of energy. “Come on, we’d better get started.”
They spent the next half hour rolling snowballs, piling them on top of each other and sculpting Mr. Snowman’s face and belly. The result was a decent enough Frosty, especially when he was given a stocking cap, carrot nose and stones for eyes.
Setting up the tree proved more difficult. After the horses were locked into the barn and fed and watered, Ronni and Amy struggled with the little fir tree. Veronica had to keep biting her tongue to keep from swearing as she tried to adjust the trunk in the stand while attempting to keep the tree standing as close to straight as possible. “You know, when Uncle Vic sold us this tree, I thought it was straight,” she grumbled. “I don’t know what happened.” When she was finally finished, she decided to prop the tree in a corner so that it wasn’t so obvious that it still listed.
For dinner they ate home-baked pizza and after the dishes were done, Ronni took a quick shower. Amy helped her string lights, popcorn and ornaments. The red tinsel that Amy had used as a boa a few nights earlier was draped in the appropriate places. But there was no star or angel for the top of the tree. “We’ll find one at the bazaar.” Veronica promised as she turned out all the overhead lights. Amy was sitting in the big wooden rocker—the one Hank had built before his daughter was born—and staring at the tree as Veronica plugged in the electrical cord. Hundreds of miniature lights sparked to life.
“Oooh,” Amy breathed, clapping her hands together. “It’s sooo pretty.” Her face glowed in the reflection of the tree lights.
“That it is. You did a good job.”
The doorbell chimed and Veronica nearly jumped out of her skin. “Who in the world…?” she asked, glancing out the window to the porch. Travis Keegan, holding a bag, one shoulder propped against the door frame stood under the porch light. Snowflakes clung to his hair and the shoulders of his battered aviator jacket, and his expression was set, grim and determined, no hint of a smile in his beard-shadowed jaw. For a second she thought that something was wrong, that something must have happened to his injured son and her heart leaped to her throat. That poor kid—then Keegan’s gaze touched hers through the glass and her heart jolted. His eyes were intense and bright and his expression softened a bit.
“Who is it, Mommy?”
“A man I met last Sunday.”
Amy scampered across the room but Ronni barely paid attention. She was struck by the same feeling of power in him that she’d recognized in the clinic. His features were large, chiseled, all male, and the tiny lines near the corners of his mouth indicated he’d frowned too many times in the past few years and a deep-seated harshness had developed. Yet there was something in his eyes that suggested a kinder man who wanted to learn how to smile again. Never, since Hank’s death had she been attracted to another man. Travis Keegan seemed about to change all that. She couldn’t help but notice the way his faded jeans hugged his hips, the wayward lock of hair that fell forward over his forehead or the tiny scar near the corner of one eye.
So what was he doing on her porch?
There was only one way to find out. Bracing herself, she yanked open the door. Wind, cold and raw, swept into the room.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong? No.” Black eyebrows slanted together.
“But—” She sounded like a ninny. “Then why are you here?”
For the first time, a hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Everything’s fine, it’s just that I thought I owed you a thank-you…or something for seeing that Bryan got down the mountain safely. E
verything happened so quickly, I didn’t have a chance earlier.” He hesitated, shook his head and smiled.
So he did have a kinder side.
A blush climbed up his neck and Ronni swallowed a smile of her own. Keegan didn’t look like the kind of man to show any kind of embarrassment. “Now, to tell you the truth, I feel like a damned fool,” he said.
“That makes two of us. No one ever stops by here at night, and when I saw you, I thought that something might have happened to your son, though why you’d be on my porch—” She tossed back her head and laughed. “Forgive me. I’ve been accused of being a pessimist, worrywart, you name it.” She stepped out of the doorway, “Come in, we were just admiring our work.” Still holding the door, she motioned to the little tree with her chin. “And before you say anything, the Christmas tree is straight, it’s the house that’s crooked.”
By this time, Amy, curiosity being one of her primary personality traits, was hiding behind her mother like a skittish foal, while peeking around her legs and sizing up Travis, who was still standing on the other side of the threshold.
“So who are you?” Keegan said, bending a knee so that he could look Amy square in the eye.
“Who are you?” Amy repeated, refusing to answer.
“I guess it’s time for formal introductions,” Ronni said. “Travis Keegan, this is my daughter, Amy. And Amy, this is Mr. Keegan. He has a son, Bryan, who was hurt on the mountain a couple of days ago. I helped take Bryan to the clinic.”
“You can call me Travis.”
Amy’s eyebrows drew together in concentration and cold air swirled into the house. “Where’s Bryan?”
“At home,” Travis replied as he straightened and his gaze touched Ronni’s again.
“Come on in before we all freeze.” She stood aside to let him pass, only then noticing that there was no truck or car parked anywhere nearby, though the snow was broken by a steady path of footprints leading into the woods. For the first time, she felt a drip of fear slide down her spine.
