The Winter Man

by Diana Palmer

  When she left Frank’s mother’s house, Millie was still getting over the trauma. She wasn’t looking forward to having to live where a man had died. But when she got inside, she was surprised. The bedroom had been rearranged. It was spotlessly clean. There were new curtains, a new bedspread. It looked brand-new.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have done this!” she exclaimed, smiling up at Frank.

  He shrugged and grinned. “We’re friends. It’s for old times’ sake. I won’t be around for much longer.”

  “I know.” She looked sad. “You’ll like Dallas. My mother was from there. We used to go visit my grandmother, until she died.”

  “I’ll like it,” he agreed.

  “This is great.” She looked around, touching the curtains, smoothing the bed. Her eyes were sad. “Tony saved my life, and I barely thanked him,” she said in a subdued tone. She looked at Frank, worried. “You know, he never blinked an eye. Tony was ice-cold. He never needed a second shot.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I’ve never seen anybody shot before.”

  “It’s upsetting, the first time,” Frank, a combat veteran, replied.

  She cocked her head. “You’ve shot people.”

  He nodded. “I was in Iraq, in the early nineties,” he reminded her.

  She managed a smile. “It’s not like they show it on TV and in the movies,” she said. “Or in those spy films, either. This guy didn’t have a metal silencer. He’d made one from a soft drink bottle and duct tape.”

  “Homemade ones still do the job,” Frank told her. “He didn’t want to attract attention.”

  “That gun of Tony’s sounded like a cannon,” she recalled. “The hall was full of people when we left, all trying to get in to see the crime-scene examiners work. I wish I’d paid attention. I was too shaken.”

  “So was Tony,” Frank replied. “Regardless of the contract killer’s background, he’s still a human being. Tony used to go through some sort of purification thing. He won’t go near the res in North Carolina, but he has cousins from his clan in Oklahoma. He hangs out with a couple of them. They build a sweat lodge and help him get through the emotional pangs.”

  She was fascinated. “I never knew that. Neither did his foster mother, I guess, because she didn’t say anything about it.”

  “She didn’t know,” he said simply. “He didn’t want her to know what his job actually involved. He told her he worked for the government, and she figured that meant he was a desk jockey.”

  “He protected her,” she said.

  “Exactly.”

  She went back into the living room silently, her eyes on the sofa where Tony had placed her so gently after the shooting. He’d been supportive, nurturing, and she’d backed away from him. That must have hurt, especially when he’d shot a man to save her life.

  “He said to tell you he was sorry,” Frank told her.

  She glanced at him. “He didn’t need to be.”

  “About Angel,” he emphasized.

  She flushed. “Oh. The glittery woman.”

  He scowled. “Excuse me?”

  She drew in a long, resigned breath. “You were always introducing him to girls who worked at the club,” she recalled with a sad smile. “Those were his sort of women. He told me so. He didn’t want ties, ever.”

  “He may want them someday.”

  “Not my business,” she said quietly. “He brought her to his room to show me how little I meant to him. It wasn’t necessary. I already knew that.” She turned to Frank and laughed shortly. “I’m a librarian. Doesn’t that just say it all?”

  He scowled. “If you’ll recall, that girl in the mummy movie was a librarian. She was a two-fisted heroine as well.”

  “Not me,” Millie sighed. “Thanks for everything, Frank,” she added, tiptoeing to kiss his tanned cheek. “I’ll miss you.”

  He looked at her with anguished longing that he quickly concealed. He grinned. “I’ll miss you, too, kid.”

  Weeks passed. Thanksgiving went by in a flash, and suddenly it was almost Christmas. Millie stopped by the window of a department store when she got off the city bus at her stop. It was beautifully decorated in an old-fashioned sort of way, with artificial snow and trees and mountains, and a classic Lionel train set running through the scenery. Millie loved electric trains. One day, if she could ever afford a bigger apartment, she promised herself she was going to buy one and run it every Christmas.

  It was cold, even in San Antonio. She tugged her coat closer. It was a new coat, an extravagance, but she couldn’t bear to wear the old one ever again, even with the blood spatters removed. She’d given the coat to a charity drive.

  She wondered how Frank was doing. He’d already moved up to Dallas. He phoned her and said he liked his new colleagues, and thought he was going to enjoy the job. He did miss San Antonio, though, he added. Dallas was brassy and cosmopolitan, a sprawling city with odd, futuristic architecture. San Antonio still retained its historic charm. It was also smaller. But what he really meant was that he missed Millie. She was sorry she couldn’t care for him as he cared for her. Despite everything, even after his cruel behavior, it was still Tony who lived in her heart.

  Tony. She pulled the coat closer as she walked down the sidewalk toward her apartment building. She imagined he was off in some exotic place with some new glittery woman, having a ball. It was a modern sort of life for most women these days, rushing around from one sex partner to the next with no feeling of obligation or permanence. The movies reflected it. So did television and books. But Millie was a romantic. She lived in a past where men and women both abstained before marriage, where family mattered, where two people got to know each other as individual human beings long before they got to know each other physically. In that world, Millie lived. She devoured romance novels with characters who shared her old-fashioned views on life and society. So what if it was only make-believe. The carnal quality of relationships in real life was as empty as an office trash can on Sunday. Empty and sad. Like Tony’s life.

  For all his adventures, he would never know the joy of holding a baby in his arms and reading to his child at bedtime; watching him grow and learn and laugh. Millie wanted children so badly that it was almost painful to see them with their parents in stores and know that she would never experience that singular delight. She thought back often to the night in Tony’s hotel room when she’d chosen virtue over experience, and she wondered what might have been if she hadn’t stopped him. Perhaps there would have been a child, and she could have had it in secret and he’d never have known. It made her sad to think about that. She could have loved the child, even if Tony wouldn’t let her love him.

  She did enjoy her job. She got to read to children there. In fact, on Christmas Eve the library opened up for an orphan’s home. Volunteers gathered to give presents to the children. The volunteers also read stories to the children. It was a new program that the library had only just instituted, and they were hoping that it would be a success. Millie was looking forward to it. She’d wear her red Santa Claus hat and a red dress, and for one night she could pretend that she was a mother. It was the only way, she thought wistfully, that she’d ever be one.

  * * *

  A newspaper reporter had shown up with a camera and a notebook computer to cover the event. Several other people were snapping photos with their cell phone cameras and movie cameras, probably to post on the Web. Millie was having the time of her life with two little girls in her lap. She was reading the story of The Littlest Angel to them. It had been her favorite as a child. Judging by the expressions on their faces of these small children, it was becoming a favorite of theirs as well.

  She wasn’t aware of a movement in the entrance of the library. A big man in a tan cashmere coat and a suit was standing there, watching the activity. The sight of Millie with those little girls only reinforced a thought he’d been harboring for some time now—that she would be a wonderful mother.

  “Is it okay for me to be here?” he asked a
woman wearing a name tag who was standing next to him.

  She looked way up into large black eyes in a darkly tanned face, surrounded by wavy black hair in a ponytail. She smiled. “Of course,” she said. “Do you know one of the children?”

  He shook his head. “I know the lady who’s reading to them,” he corrected. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

  “Miss Evans, you mean.” She nodded. She smiled sadly. “She’s had a very bad time in recent years, you know, especially when that man tried to kill her. She’s much better now, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “You can go in, if you like,” she added. “We’ve invited the public to participate. Actually,” she added, “we’re hoping that the children may form some attachments here that will benefit them. Donors are always welcomed. And there might be an opportunity for adoptions as well.”

  He frowned. “I hope you’ve screened the men.”

  She grimaced. “I know what you mean,” she said softly. “No, that wouldn’t have been possible, I’m afraid. But there are two undercover police officers in there,” she added with a chuckle. “So if anybody has uncomfortable intentions, they’ll be in for a big surprise.”

  He smiled broadly. “Nice thinking!”

  She laughed. He was a very pleasant man. “Why don’t you go and speak to Miss Evans? She’s been very sad the past few weeks. I found her crying in the ladies’ room, just after she came back to work. After the shooting, you know. She said she’d been so wrapped up in herself that she’d failed someone who was very close to her.” She looked up at his expression. “That wouldn’t be you, would it?”

  His broad chest rose and fell. “I failed her,” he said quietly.

  She patted his big arm. “Life is all about redemption,” she said softly. “Go make up.”

  He grinned at her. “You wouldn’t be in the market for a husband, I guess?” he teased.

  She laughed merrily. She was seventy if she was a day. Her white hair sparkled in the overhead light. “Get out of here, you varmint.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He reached Millie just as she ended the story and kissed little cheeks.

  “Go get some cake and punch now,” she told them, easing them back on their feet.

  They laughed and kissed her back. They were pretty little girls. One had jet-black hair and eyes, the other was a redhead. They held hands on the way to the treat table.

  Millie was smiling after them when a shadow fell over her. She looked up into Tony’s face and caught her breath.

  He knelt in front of her chair. “Yeah,” he said deeply, searching her green eyes through the lenses of her glasses. She wasn’t wearing contacts tonight. “That’s how I feel when I see you, too. It takes my breath away.”

  She didn’t have enough time to guard her response. She was so happy to see him that she began to glow. “I didn’t expect to see you,” she said.

  “Didn’t you?” His dark eyes smiled. “I stayed away until I thought I’d given you enough time to get over what I did.”

  “You saved my life,” she protested. “I barely thanked you for it.”

  “You look good with little kids in your lap,” he said quietly. “Natural.”

  “I like children.”

  “Me, too.”

  She searched for something to say. “Why are you here?”

  “Because you’re here, and it’s Christmas Eve,” he said.

  She didn’t understand. “But how did you find me?”

  “I work for the government,” he pointed out. “I know how to find anybody.”

  That reminded her of the shooting, which brought back disturbing images.

  “I’m mostly administrative these days,” he said quickly. “I don’t have to use a gun. That night…” He looked tormented. “I didn’t have a choice,” he began.

  She put her hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry!” she said huskily. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty over what you did. If you’d hesitated, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation!”

  He caught her wrist and kissed the palm hungrily.

  Her breath caught again at the hunger his touch ignited in her.

  He saw it. His dark eyes began to glow.

  For long seconds, they just stared at each other, blind to amused looks and muffled conversation.

  “Can you come outside and sit in the car with me for a minute?” he asked, clearing his throat.

  “I guess so.”

  He got up and pulled her up with him. He waited while she got into her coat and spoke to the white-haired lady Tony had been flirting with. The elderly woman gave Tony a thumbs-up sign behind Millie’s back and he laughed.

  “What was that all about?” Millie asked as they went out the front door.

  “I’m thinking of having an affair with that lady you were just talking to,” he said with a blatant grin. “She’s a hoot.”

  “Mrs. Mims, you mean?” She laughed. “Isn’t she, just! She’s president of our ‘friends of the library.’ Before she retired, she was an investigative reporter.”

  “Well!” He saw something in Millie’s face that made him curious. “What does she do now?”

  “She writes mystery novels,” she told him. “Very successful ones.”

  “I should talk to her. I know a lot of mysteries.” He frowned. “Well, most of them are classified. But I could give her a few hints.”

  “She’d love that.”

  He unlocked the door of his rental car, a luxury one, and helped Millie into the passenger seat. She was smoothing the wooden dash when he got in on the other side.

  “You do travel in style,” she mused.

  “I can afford to.” He turned on the dome light and pulled something out of his pocket. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, about my life,” he said as he faced her, with one arm over the back of her bucket seat. “I’ve been alone and I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve had brief liaisons, and I’ve enjoyed those, too. But I’m getting older. I’m tired of living alone.”

  She was hardly breathing as she sat, entranced, staring into his black eyes with breathless hope.

  He reached out and touched her soft mouth with his fingertips, loving the way her eyes closed and her breath jerked out when he did it.

  “Oh, hell, the rest can wait a minute. Come here!”

  He dragged her over the console into his big arms and kissed her so hungrily that she actually whimpered with smoldering desire.

  His breath caught at the sound. His arms contracted. His mouth opened on her lips, his tongue penetrating, his own moan overwhelming hers in the hot, urgent silence that followed.

  After a minute, he shuddered and caught her arms. He put her back into her own seat with visible reluctance. He was almost shaking with the force of his need. She was so unsteady that she fell back against the door, her mouth swollen, her eyes wild and soft, all at once.

  “My foster mother was like you,” he managed. “Oldfashioned and bristling with principles that seem to be a joke in the modern world. But I happen to like it.” He fumbled in his pocket for a gray jeweler’s box. He put it into Millie’s hands and closed them around it. “Open it.”

  She fumbled trying to get the spring lid to work. Finally he had to help her—not that his hands were much steadier.

  There, in the box, was a set of rings. There was a yellow-gold emerald solitaire with diamond accents, and a gold wedding band with alternating diamonds and emeralds.

  “They’re beautiful,” she whispered. Maybe she was dreaming. Yes. That was probably it. She pinched her own arm and jumped.

  “You’re not dreaming,” he said, amused. “But I’ve done my share of that, since I messed up things in my hotel room.” He made a whistling sound. “That was a closer call than you’ll ever know, girl. If you hadn’t started protesting, I couldn’t have stopped. I’d never lost control like that in my whole life, even when I was in my teens.”

  Everything went over her head except the la
st sentence. “Really?”

  “Really. You are one hot experience.”

  “Me?” she asked, surprised. “But I don’t know anything.”

  He grinned slowly. “Yeah. That’s the exciting thing.”

  She blushed. He laughed when he saw the color in her cheeks. He was thinking how rare a thing that was. He couldn’t stop thinking about how it had been with her, on that hotel bed. Even in memory, it made his blood run hot. “I’ve done bad things in my life,” he said then, very solemnly. “I like to think I did them in the service of my country, to protect our way of life. It was exciting work, and profitable. But I’ve put a lot of money away, and I’ve gotten the wild streak in me tamed somewhat.” He hesitated. It was hard work, putting this into words. “What I’m trying to say…I mean, what I’m trying to ask…”

  “I’d marry you if we had to live in a mud hut in a swamp with ten million mosquitos!” she interrupted.

  He caught his breath. “Millie!”

  He scooped her up again and kissed her so long, and so hard, that the windows all fogged up. Which was probably a good thing. Because when the tap at the window came, they weren’t in any condition to be seen.

  They scrambled apart, rearranging clothing, trying to look normal.

  Tony buzzed the window down, with a carefully calm expression that didn’t go well at all with the smear of lipstick across his mouth and face, and his hopelessly stained white shirt and half-undone tie and unbuttoned shirt. “Yes?” he said politely.

  The white-haired woman doubled up laughing.

  He scowled, trying to neaten himself up. In future years, the story would be told and retold by both partners.

  “I just wanted to say…” she choked, trying to stop laughing long enough to be coherent, “that we’re opening the presents, and the little girls…would like Millie to help them open theirs.”

  “We’ll be right in. We were just getting rings out of boxes and stuff,” he said, ruffled.

  She murmured that it looked to her that it was a good idea to get the rings on and the words said in some legal fashion, and pretty quickly. Then she laughed some more and left.