A Child for Christmas

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  Rather than take the stool next to Rebecca, Sawyer headed toward the other end, and propped his boot on the sturdy brass rail that ran the length of the bar a foot up from the ground. “What do you have on tap these days, Newt?”

  Newt’s round face split into even more wrinkles as he grinned. “Same thing’s always.” He reached for a beer mug with his peculiar grace. “Heard you was back in town.” He thumped the filled mug on the counter hard enough that if it had been anyone but Newt, Sawyer figured the beer would have sloshed right over the side. “Guess you had a real nasty accident, eh?”

  “Bad enough,” Sawyer answered. He had no desire to discuss the accident he couldn’t remember. He unfastened his coat and leaned his elbows on the bar. A sideways glance told him that Rebecca was studiously ignoring him. If she turned any farther away from him, she’d be kissing the wall beside her. “Looks like business is as good in here as it always was.”

  Newt nodded, his attention already turned to the glasses he was polishing and placing on a shelf behind him. “Always was a need for a watering hole ’round these parts. Always will be.” He slid a laminated, one-sided menu on the bar in front of Sawyer. “Got food now, too. Go on and order. On the house.”

  Sawyer tapped his hand idly on the menu, his attention straying once more toward Rebecca, and caught her peeking his way. Her shoulders went ramrod straight, and she knocked her knee against the wall beside her when she tried to act as if she hadn’t been looking his way.

  It would have been amusing, except there wasn’t anything amusing about the way he felt. Nothing humorous whatsoever about the pain in her eyes whenever she looked at him.

  He realized that Newt was still standing there, and ordered the first thing his eyes fell on. Newt nodded, and disappeared for a few minutes. Sawyer took his mug and turned away from his end of the bar, swallowing an oath when Rebecca stiffened even more. At this rate, she’d fall off the damned barstool. He continued on toward the empty booth that had been his original destination, no matter what Rebecca’s posture indicated she’d feared.

  He scooted the square table out from one side of the booth to give him more room, and shrugged out of his jacket, tossing it on the empty bench across from his. Then he sat, stretched his legs, and let his gaze wander once more around the bar, half-afraid of what he’d remember. Half-afraid of what he wouldn’t.

  Mostly, he watched Rebecca’s back. Watched her sit at the bar, not moving, not drinking, until after Newt had set a platter of French fries and an enormous hamburger in front of Sawyer. She sat there while Sawyer plowed through the food, surprising himself with his hunger, and she sat there while he finished off his first beer, and was well into the second.

  And then, she whirled around on her barstool, her color high, and marched over to his booth and slapped her palms down on his table. “Stop staring at me!” she hissed. “And stop following me!”

  He set his mug back on the table. “Hell, Becky, running into each other is pretty much a given, considering how small Weaver is. What did you expect me to do? Hole up in that motel room of yours and not come out again until the moon turns blue? And watching you seems to be something I just naturally want to do.”

  She straightened, her eyes as brittle as a frozen caramel. “I changed my mind,” she told him. “I don’t want you to go near my son. I don’t care what he talks to you about. You stay away from him!”

  Anger zipped along his veins, but he remained casually slouched in the booth. “As far as I know, I’m not known for kidnapping young boys.”

  Sitting at that darned bar, determined to act as if she didn’t care whether Sawyer was sitting behind her or not, had whittled Rebecca’s patience—what there was left of it—to ground zero. “Well, I do know what you’re capable of.”

  His hand wrapped around her wrist with such speed she hadn’t even been aware of him moving. But suddenly, he was standing, then she was sitting in the booth and he’d sat down, too. His wide shoulders thoroughly blocking her way to freedom.

  “And I’m sick of you holding it against me. So why don’t you just tell me what it is I did to you? Then you can nurse your hate just as much as you want to.”

  “I don’t hate you.” The words came out despite herself.

  “Maybe not. Except you don’t like me. And you don’t trust me. But you want me. So maybe that’s what you hate.”

  His thighs pressed against hers and Rebecca wanted to scoot away, but there was no more room in the booth. She didn’t want to look at him, but she did. Noticing the dark stubble on his hard jaw that nearly obscured that healing cut. The smudgy shadows beneath his dark blue eyes. The line across his forehead that seemed to have etched itself more deeply over the past few days. Even the silver tipping his hair seemed to be more apparent, though logic told her that was simply because his hair grew as rapidly now as it had in the past.

  You broke my heart.

  His eyes narrowed, and she realized she’d spoken the thought aloud. Fire swept up her throat to her ears and over her scalp until she was dying of it in the thick silence that followed.

  He cocked his head to the side, as if he were trying to see into his own mind, his own memories. Then his dark blue gaze met hers and she felt her chest tighten. “I’m sorry, Rebecca,” he said softly.

  A tear squeezed out of her eye, and his shoulders moved in a sigh. He lifted his hand, and she barely kept from flinching away from him when his thumb caught that tear. But another followed rapidly on its heels when she found herself yearning to press her cheek against his palm.

  “Sawyer, don’t—”

  A commotion sounded behind them, then Sheriff Hayes lumbered over to their booth. “Finally found you, Doc.” His color was high, and despite the cold night, sweat had formed on his forehead. “Tried calling your number, even went by your place, but you were gone.” He mopped his brow with his handkerchief. “Roy Blankenship’s done beat up Dylan Reese.”

  “My pager,” Rebecca realized aloud. She looked at Sawyer with horror. She’d forgotten her pager after she’d left Sawyer in her home. After she’d admitted they’d been lovers.

  She moved, and Sawyer moved, too, out of the booth where he retrieved her coat and pushed her arms into it as they headed for the door. “How bad is it,” she asked the sheriff as they hurried out into the night.

  “Bad enough for me to haul Roy into jail, as much to keep Dylan’s ma from taking a shotgun to him as anything,” the sheriff muttered. “Dylan’s at his house. You know, two doors down from the Blankenships’. I’ll drive.”

  “I have to get my bag,” Rebecca told him. “I’ll meet you there.” Ignoring Sawyer, she jogged to her truck and climbed in, gunning the engine. Before she could shift into drive, though, Sawyer had climbed in beside her.

  “If I remember correctly, Roy Blankenship always did have a temper,” was all he said.

  It would take too much time to evict him from the seat he’d claimed. She drove back home, got her bag and the pager that was buzzing merrily with the sheriff’s messages. They were at the Reeses’ house within minutes.

  Fortunately, Dylan’s black eye and split lips would heal with no lasting damage. She wasn’t so sure she could say the same about Taylor, who was standing out in the snowy yard, crying her heart out and begging Mrs. Reese to let her come in and see Dylan.

  Aware of Phyllis Reese’s angry eyes watching them from the front window as well as the curious attention of a couple other neighbors, Rebecca drew Taylor away from the house and walked up the sidewalk to the Blankenshups’ home, assuring Taylor that Dylan was going to be fine. “Where’s your mom?”

  “She drove over with Mr. Ludlow to get dad outta jail.” Taylor sank onto the nearest chair inside her house and hugged her arms around herself and started crying again.

  Rebecca set down her bag, fully aware that Sawyer had entered the house, too. That he’d closed the door and disappeared through to the kitchen. She scooted aside a stack of magazines on the cocktail table and sat
down across from the teenager, staying with her until she’d calmed down and Judy had returned. Then there was Judy’s fury to get through, because the sheriff wouldn’t release Roy, even though Roy had been an upstanding citizen in Weaver for a lifetime.

  Sawyer, amazingly enough, proved to be of help with Judy when Rebecca’s efforts weren’t successful. By the time he was through, sitting beside the woman, talking and listening much the same way Rebecca had done with Taylor, Judy was calm once more, and able to deal with Taylor’s tears when they predictably started up once again.

  It was well after midnight when Rebecca finally parked in her garage. She’d had to stop at the sheriffs office and check over Roy, and she was exhausted.

  Not because the injuries suffered by the two males had been severe. But because there had just been too many emotions flying. The Blankenships’. The Reeses’. Hers. Sawyer’s.

  She realized Sawyer had opened her door and was waiting for her to climb out of the vehicle. She didn’t know why he’d stuck like glue with her from Colbys right on through the visit to the jail. It unsettled her, because it wasn’t the behavior of the Sawyer she’d known. The Sawyer she thought she knew now. He’d let her do her work, but she’d been highly aware of his silent, yet tangible, support. And even though she recognized the irony of it, she did know, however, that the urge to lean exhaustedly against him when she slipped out from behind the wheel was strong.

  Too strong to ignore. Too strong to submit to.

  So she held her black bag protectively to her stomach and sidled past him, across the yard to the back door, which she’d left unlocked.

  When she turned to look, Sawyer was walking away toward the end of the building and his room around the corner.

  There was no earthly reason to sense the loneliness that surrounded him like a heavy cloak. But she did. She saw it. Recognized it.

  Heaven help her, she felt it, too.

  Chapter Nine

  A full week had passed since Sawyer moved into the end unit of her motel. A full week during which the Reeses and Blankenships had observed a tentative cease-fire. A full week during which Rebecca had managed to bake the rest of the promised cookies for the dance and failed to get her son to the barber.

  A full week since she’d spoken more than two words to Sawyer. Even if she did spend far too long standing in the darkness of her reception area, watching the end of the building. Watching him trudge across the parking lot, his hands tucked in the pockets of his leather jacket as he walked across the street, and down to Colbys. Watching, waiting for him to return later, either on foot, or being dropped off by the sheriff or someone else. Then watching, waiting some more until the rim of light around the drapes of his room was doused.

  And now, here it was, Saturday again, and she was supposed to be at the high-school gymnasium, decorating it for that evening’s community dance along with the rest of the planning committee. And what was she doing? Carrying her boxes of cookies and beribboned garland out to her vehicle so she could get her rear over to the high school?

  No. She was peeking out the window of her office, looking at that end unit again.

  Resolute, she turned away, patting her pager where it was tucked against her waist. And after telling Ryan where she was going, she gathered up her boxes in the kitchen and carried them out to her truck.

  Ten minutes later, she was sitting in the middle of the yawning gymnasium, surrounded by miles of Christmas-light strands. “Anatomy was easier than this,” she muttered, as she tried to figure out how to remove the knots from the convoluted strands.

  Sitting beside her, doing exactly the same thing, Maggie Clay laughed. “You’re just cranky because you wanted to be the one to climb that extension ladder over there and hang the garland instead of untangle these lights.”

  Rebecca snorted. When she’d seen that ladder, she’d stated unequivocally that she had no intention of climbing such a thing. She gave up on the hopelessly tangled section and worked her way along the strand. “What in heaven’s name possessed me to volunteer for the planning committee for this thing, anyway?”

  Maggie chuckled. “I think it had something to do with avoiding Bennett Ludlow,” she reminded softly. “You used the excuse of being on the planning committee to turn down his invitation to the dance.”

  Rebecca grimaced. Bennett was becoming a bit of a problem, true. “Fat lot of good that did,” she murmured back to her friend. “Seeing how he volunteered for the committee, too. Everyone knows he’d close down the elementary school given the least opportunity, yet he’s on the committee for an event that is raising funds to keep it open.”

  “That’s what you get for not just telling the man a flat-out no.”

  “I did,” Rebecca muttered. “More than once.” She tossed up her hands again at the impossible mess of lights. “This is hopeless. I could have just bought new strands for all the effort this is taking us.”

  Maggie scooted around and exchanged strands with Rebecca. “But then Vivian Porter wouldn’t have been able to crow to the entire county how she donated all these wonderful lights to the dance. Here, these are ready to hang,” she said easily.

  Rebecca pushed to her feet, carrying the strands over to Bennett who was standing at the base of the extension ladder that Maggie’s husband, Daniel, had scaled to the high beams of the gymnasium. She left the lights with Bennett, hurriedly excused herself before he could say a word, and returned to Maggie and the rest of the lights.

  She sat down once again and attacked the knots anew. “So, how are you feeling?”

  Maggie tsked. “You’re not on duty now, Rebecca.” But she smiled. “And I’m feeling just fine. My morning sickness is all gone, finally.”

  Rebecca was glad. She really liked Maggie, whom she’d gotten to know better since they’d both been involved in the planning committee for the dance.

  “Is Sawyer coming tonight?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve hardly talked to the man in a week. Really,” she added when she caught the sideways look Maggie gave her.

  “That’s interesting. Since Daniel says that whenever he talks to him, all Sawyer does is talk about you or Ryan.”

  “He wants his past returned to him,” Rebecca said carefully. She finally freed a knot, and held it up, triumphantly. “Success. So what did Daniel think about the dress you chose for tonight?”

  Fortunately, Maggie followed Rebecca’s less-than-subtle change of subject, and the two women spent the rest of the time it took to untangle the lights discussing the much-safer topic of clothing.

  Rebecca remained behind in the gym to finish tying the last few red bows in place after everyone else had already left. It took just a few minutes, then she put on her coat and dumped her scissors and tape back in the box she’d brought with her before letting herself out the automatically locking double doors.

  “Let me help you with that box, my dear.”

  She nearly dropped the box in question at the voice behind her and whirled around to see Bennett smiling his big-toothed smile at her. “It’s not heavy.” She started past him toward the sidewalk that led around the building to the parking lot. “What are you still doing here?”

  Bennett sidestepped, blocking her path. “It’s the holidays, Rebecca.”

  Couldn’t the man take a hint? “I’m aware of that, Bennett. If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get home to Ryan.”

  “I just wanted to be sure you’ll save a dance this evening for me.”

  She wanted to tell him to take a flying leap. But persistent or not, Bennett was a member of the community. So she swallowed her irritation. “Of course. If there’s time,” she couldn’t help tacking on. She started walking again, hoping he’d move out of the way. He did. But only far enough to let her brush by as he walked along with her.

  Her forced smile withered around the edges and she quickened her pace around the building, grateful beyond belief when the parking lot came into view. And the sight of Sawyer leaning indolently against the hoo
d was such a relief that she overlooked the shock of surprise that came with it.

  She strode across the pavement, the scissors and unused Christmas-tree ornaments rattling inside the box. “Sawyer,” she greeted brightly. “Have you been waiting long?”

  Fortunately, he didn’t vocalize the curiosity sharpening his gaze and just stepped forward, taking the box from her. Rebecca automatically introduced the two men as she unlocked the back gate and waited for Sawyer to stow the box inside.

  “Rebecca, my dear, Sawyer and I know each other, of course,” Bennett said.

  She turned just in time to see Sawyer’s lip curl, mocking. “Guess not everybody in town is memorable,” he said mildly.

  Beneath the shoulders of his tidy wool coat, Bennett’s shoulders stiffened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see more trouble brewing, but it wasn’t her place to tell Bennett of Sawyer’s memory loss. Rebecca latched onto the sleeve of Sawyer’s scuffed and scarred bomber jacket and pulled him toward the passenger side. “Got to get back to Ryan,” she said to Bennett across the seat of the vehicle. “See you tonight.”

  Bennett sniffed and held the collar of his coat together with his manicured hand. She knew they were manicured, because Taylor-who worked part-time at Sally’s Beauty Salon as well as for Rebecca at the motel—had told her he was a regular customer.

  She unlocked the door and climbed in, pushing her keys into Sawyer’s hands. “You can drive,” she muttered. She simply didn’t want to go back around to the other side of the truck, where Bennett stood.

  Sawyer rattled the keys for a moment between his fingers that most assuredly had never seen a professional manicurist. Rebecca glanced at him, and sagged weakly against the seat when he walked around the vehicle and climbed behind the wheel. Bennett was heading for his own car.

  Once behind the wheel, Sawyer started the engine and drove out of the parking lot. “You okay?”

  At least he hadn’t broached what had happened the week before at Newt’s bar. “Of course.” She adjusted the ends of her long, knitted scarf. “What were you doing at the school?”