A Very Merry Christmas

by Lori Foster, Gemma Bruce

  Lee tried the door. But a rusted padlock held it in place.

  The doors of the Watering Hole sagged on rusted hinges. A shutter lay half buried in the snow. Another banged against the clapboards each time a breeze ran past.

  Lee’s hand tightened around Allison’s, and they squeezed through the opening.

  It took a while for Allison’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, she could make out shadows of chairs turned upside down on tables. Several had fallen over and lay on the floor. She stepped on a rotted floorboard and was saved from falling only by Lee grabbing the back of her coat.

  Carefully, wordlessly, they made their way back to the street. Allison blinked against the sudden brilliance. Lee rubbed his eyes with both hands.

  They walked on until they came to their chalet. There was a hollowed-out space where the BMW had been parked. There were still footprints leading up the stairs to the porch. They climbed up and tried the door. It was locked. They’d left the key on the kitchen table as instructed. Lee crunched over the rime of ice on the porch and peered into the window. Allison came up beside him and put both hands to the glass to look inside.

  It was just as they had left it. The couch, the club chair. Too bad she couldn’t see into the kitchen, because if the key was there…

  “Wait a minute.” Allison slipped her way back across the porch and down the steps. She ran to the side of the house and called to Lee.

  “It’s here. Our Christmas tree.” Their ten-dollar Christmas tree lay on its side in the snow, just where they’d left it.

  Lee took a deep breath. “At least we were really here.”

  “Of course we were here.”

  “So where is everybody else?”

  Allison looked at him. He looked at her.

  “Hallucination?”

  Lee shook his head.

  “Group hysteria?”

  Lee shook his head. “I don’t know what it was, but let’s get out of here.”

  They backed away.

  Allison took a last fond look back at the chalet. “Well, it can’t be, couldn’t be, impossible that it was…”

  “That it was just us?”

  “It can’t be.”

  They walked back to the car looking right and left, looking for someone, anyone, to explain what this was about.

  “Fantasy Island,” said Allison halfway down the street.

  “What? Where?”

  “It was a TV show when we were kids. Don’t you remember? People would pay to come to this island to live out their fantasies. Remember? There was a dwarf and Ricardo Montalban.”

  “And who paid for our version of this fantasy? It would cost a fortune.”

  Allison sighed. “Not Marcie. She has to account to the husband for every penny.”

  “And not Greg. New-age medicine doesn’t exactly pay ‘fantasy’ wages.”

  They fell silent again and stopped only when they came to the mountain of snow that had been the avalanche.

  “At least this really happened,” said Allison with a shudder.

  Lee put his arm around her and they stood looking up to the black shelf of rock that had saved Allison and Jen and Jamie.

  She glanced at him as he frowned up at the mountain. When they’d left the apartment, he’d thrown his digital camera onto the backseat. He’d even stuck it in his pocket when they first got out of the car. But he hadn’t taken one picture. Hadn’t even reached for it.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  Without a word, he turned her around and they climbed down to the street. Near the bottom, Allison stopped.

  Lee held her tighter. “Careful.” He took her firmly by the elbow and moved her on.

  “Wait, there’s something caught on my boot.” She reached down. Sure enough something had snagged on the rhinestones. She pulled it off. A soggy red ribbon with a giant brass bell.

  “It’s Spanky’s collar. They were here and we aren’t crazy.”

  “Only about you,” said Lee. And kissed her.

  Then he took her arm and they walked back to the car, to their lives, to their future. And the only sound was the crunch of their boots on the ice-covered snow and the muffled tinkle of the bell that Allison held tightly in her hand.

  “Lee?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “Someone went to a lot of trouble to get us here.”

  They walked on.

  “Lee?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “You know that offer you made when we were here?”

  Lee hesitated. “Yeah.”

  “Is it still on the table?”

  Now he stopped and turned toward her. Her heart did a little flip-flop.

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “In that case…” Allison gripped Spanky’s ribbon and looked up to the man she loved. “I do.”

  Lee took her in his arms and they hugged each other, alone in a ghost town in the middle of nowhere. And Allison could swear she heard Chris chuckle, wherever he was.

  By Firelight

  Janice Maynard

  For Anna and Chris:

  God bless and keep you as you celebrate

  your second anniversary.

  May your marriage always be as bright

  and beautiful as your Christmas wedding.

  One

  The Irish setter dozing on the rag rug in front of the hearth lifted her head and whined. Grant looked up from his book. The shrieking of the wind was nothing new. The weather had worsened progressively during the past two hours, and the gusts of blowing snow buffeting the small cabin were increasingly loud. The howling storm wasn’t entirely unprecedented for late December in central Virginia, and on his sky-high mountaintop the inches of white stuff were piling up fast.

  But the dog had slept through most of it. Why was she uneasy now? She growled low in her throat, rising and lumbering toward the door. Her age and accompanying arthritis made her slow. The dog sniffed the door.

  He stood and followed her. “What is it, girl?” Automatically he checked for the rifle standing to the left of the doorframe, just out of sight of any intruders. He enjoyed his self-imposed isolation, but he wasn’t immune to its dangers.

  The dog barked, a sharp, quick sound filled with knowledge denied to the inferior hearing of humans. Grant felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as his pulse picked up. What was out there? A bear? A bobcat? Either was a possibility.

  Something hit the door, and the dog went wild, scratching and pawing at the sturdy oak. Grant hesitated for a split second, and then a sound, almost surely human, made the decision for him. He unlocked the door and jerked it open, jumping back in surprise when a bundle of snow-covered cloth tumbled in and literally landed on his feet.

  The next few minutes were chaotic. The dog jumped and barked at the lump on the floor while Grant struggled to close the door against the force of the wind. When he finally managed that and quieted the frantic dog, the resulting silence resonated with unanswered questions. He knelt cautiously and put a hand on what he now could see was a person’s shoulder. Gently, he turned him/her over.

  He sucked in a shocked breath. His visitor was definitely a woman, but for one heart-stopping second he thought she might be dead. Carefully, he edged the hood back from her face, brushing aside the layers of caked snow and ice. Her hair, once freed, was a red-dish-gold, lighter at the back of her head where it was still dry.

  Her skin was so white and her lips so blue, she looked like the ice princess he remembered from a childhood fairy tale. He stripped away her sodden gloves and felt for a pulse, sighing shakily when he found one. But it was by no means steady.

  He removed her damp outer garments, including her pants that were wet to the knee, then raced to a hall closet and retrieved a heavy wool blanket. Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her closer to the fireplace and snagged a couple of sofa cushions to make her a nest. The dog curled up beside their unexpected guest, offering her own warmth as well.

  He tugged
off the woman’s shoes, grimacing when he saw they were cloth sneakers rather than boots. The socks were wet through, so he tossed them aside and began rubbing his charge’s delicate feet. She was slender all over, including a pair of spectacular legs, which he’d been hard-pressed not to notice as he wrapped her up. Nor did he spend an inordinate amount of time admiring the lacy pink panties that were now safely hidden.

  When it seemed as if the blood was finally flowing back into her extremities, he checked her pulse once again and grunted with satisfaction. It felt markedly stronger.

  Without warning, her eyes opened.

  He released her wrist, feeling strangely guilty. He watched her warily.

  One hand gripped the blanket, pulling it toward her chin. Her eyes were amber, an unusual color a few shades lighter than his dog’s soft coat. Her lips moved but no sound emerged.

  Grant leaned closer, smiling to reassure her. “You’re okay. I’m Grant Monroe. This is my cabin.”

  Her free hand reached out and grabbed his arm, her slender fingers gripping him so tightly her nails left crescent-shaped marks on his skin. Her voice was a hoarse whisper. “My bag. Please get my bag.”

  He frowned. Surely she didn’t expect him to go out in the storm for a few personal possessions.

  She must have seen his instinctive refusal. Her eyes welled with tears. “Please. It’s important.”

  He wasn’t immune to such naked entreaty. He tucked her arm beneath the blanket and rose to his feet. “Okay. But don’t move. You need to stay by the fire until you thaw out.” Her eyes drifted shut, and he didn’t know if she heard him or not. Her skin was regaining a bit of color, but she still looked infinitely fragile.

  He dressed quickly in his coat and snow boots and wrapped a heavy scarf around his head. He had a high-powered flashlight that should give him enough illumination, despite the gathering gloom of dusk. When he opened the door, a swirl of snow entered the room, and he exited quickly, unwilling to sacrifice any of the cabin’s precious heat. The cold and wind took his breath away.

  He brushed flakes from his eyes and stumbled down the steps, shining a beam of light in front of him. Her small footprints were still visible, but just barely. The heavy snow was filling them rapidly. He followed the narrow indentations, stopping now and again to make sure he was on the right track. About thirty yards from the cabin he found what he was looking for.

  A large, black backpack lay in the snow, its bulky outline softened by a thin blanket of white. He picked it up by one strap and cursed as he realized how heavy it was. That slip of a female had been carrying this? Impossible.

  He trudged back to the house, pausing on the porch to stomp his feet and brush the worst of the snow from his clothing. Inside, the dog barked a greeting but didn’t move from her post. She seemed to understand the gravity of the situation. Grant dumped the pack in a chair and knelt beside the dozing woman. When he touched her cheek, her eyes flew open. “Did you find it?”

  He motioned across the room. “It’s over there.” The relief in her eyes made him glad he’d done as she asked.

  He detoured to the bedroom and rummaged in a drawer for the heaviest socks he could find. When he returned and put them on her feet, she barely moved. He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone. “I’m going to heat up some soup and hot chocolate. Won’t take but a minute.”

  Maddy peeked from beneath her eyelashes and watched as he left the room. Her pulse beat with rapid jerks that had as much to do with her rescuer’s almost-overpowering presence as it did with her recent ordeal. He was a huge man, broad through the chest and shoulders, and tall enough to tower over her even if she was standing.

  But the kindness in his deep blue eyes and the gentle touch of his hands erased any qualms she might have felt about her safety.

  In hindsight, entering a strange man’s cabin in the middle of nowhere was not the smartest move she’d ever made, but at the time her options had been limited. Even if Grant Monroe had been a card-carrying member of an antigovernment survivalist militia group, she would probably have kissed his feet and thanked him for bringing her in out of the cold. Seeing the light in his window had literally saved her life.

  There had been a brief half hour when she faced the very real possibility that she was going to die. The knowledge had been sobering. She hadn’t been scared, not really, but she remembered feeling a searing regret that she was going to exit this earth without ever experiencing the kind of love the poets wrote about.

  She snorted, causing the dog to lift her head and whine. “Sorry, girl.” Maddy stroked the canine’s silky ears and blinked back a rush of tears. Love. Hah! Judging by her parents’ recent antics, love was a myth, a pretty illusion invented to dress up the sex drives of men and the emotional needs of women.

  Her own brief experiences with male relationships were nothing to write home about. After three abortive tries at the love/sex dance, she had given up on men, and when her own physical needs demanded attention, she found release with a phallic toy and a couple of AA batteries.

  Sex was messy, and love…if it existed…was impossible to control. Who needed the aggravation? Her self-imposed celibacy suited her just fine—at least until she came face-to-face with death and then was rescued by a man who made her rethink the virtues of plastic.

  She pulled the blanket more closely around her shoulders and stared into the fire, mesmerized by the pop and crackle of the dancing flames. The heat was so delicious she wanted to purr. She understood now why primitive man worshipped fire. It was life-giving.

  Her eyelids were heavy, but she blinked drowsily, determined to stay awake. She surveyed the room with interest, noting the large leather chairs and sofa as well as the brightly colored rag rug partially covering the hardwood floors. Some kind of antler chandelier hung overhead, casting a warm circle of light. A coffee table, littered with books and magazines, occupied the center of the room. The bottom shelf of the table held an assortment of childhood games—Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Monopoly. To the left of the fireplace, in the corner, stood a brightly decorated Christmas tree.

  Seeing the tree made her heart squeeze with a now-familiar ache. She’d done her best to forget that today was December twenty-second. And she was a bit surprised to find that a single man living alone had gone to the trouble of putting up a tree. Well…She assumed he was single. But that might be wishful thinking. As far as she could see, there were no signs of anyone else occupying the cabin.

  Which brought her to the picture. Over the mantel hung a large oil painting, probably four feet wide and at least two feet high. The subject was a nude woman, reclining on a patchwork quilt in a field of daisies. Her hair was black, her skin olive. She had a lush, sensual beauty that riveted the viewer. Her breasts were full, and the curve of her hip was nothing like the stick-thin Hollywood version of beauty. The picture was striking, the artist’s vision pure and full of joy.

  Maddy wondered who the woman was and if Grant knew her or had simply purchased a beautiful picture.

  She got to her feet, swaying as her head swam and the room spun dizzily. She sucked in several deep breaths and concentrated on not throwing up. Her hands and feet tingled painfully. She took a tentative step toward the kitchen, stumbling slightly in the overlarge socks. The blanket made a modest, if cumbersome, skirt.

  She paused in the doorway and studied her surroundings. The cabin might be rustic, but it was far from primitive. The appliances were top of the line, brushed aluminum with black trim. The walls were rough wood, the windows covered with simple muslin curtains, edged in hunter green.

  A rectangular oak table with bench seats was set with navy and green plaid placemats and plain ivory dishes. A loaf of bread, still steaming, rested in the center of the table. Her stomach clenched with sudden, fierce hunger.

  She steadied the blanket with one hand and swept her hair away from her face. “Can I help?”

  He looked up, his expression etched with sharp concern. “Sit down,” he barked. �
�You look like you’re going to pass out.”

  She didn’t argue. He supported her elbow as she took the few steps toward the bench and slid in awkwardly, hampered by the blanket. Fatigue threatened to overtake her, but hunger won out, barely.

  Grant was torn between concern and amusement. She looked like a lost child. He handed her a mug of hot chocolate and watched as she sipped it cautiously. Her hands trembled and dark smudges beneath her eyes emphasized her exhaustion.

  He turned back to the stove, making his voice deliberately casual. “My brother-in-law is a police chief in a D.C. precinct. You can call him and he’ll vouch for me. If it would make you feel safer.”

  When she remained silent, he kept talking, keeping his voice matter of fact. “You know my name. How about returning the favor? I promise I’m not an ax murderer. My worst sins are leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube and occasionally washing my whites and my darks together.”

  Her eyes were large and expressive, and he hadn’t missed the wariness hidden in their depths nor her defensive posture.

  She responded to his teasing with a faint smile. Her voice was soft but clear. “I’m Madison. Madison Tierney. Most people call me Maddy.”

  He ladled vegetable soup into two bowls and carried them to the table. Before sitting down, he grabbed a beer from the fridge for himself. He settled across from her and smiled. “So…Miss Maddy Tierney. Want to tell me why you were wandering alone in the woods in a snowstorm?”

  Her cheeks flushed under his steady regard. She took another sip of her chocolate, bending her head and allowing a riot of ginger-red curls to obscure her delicate profile. “No.”

  He chuckled, charmed by her obstinate honesty. “Don’t you think I deserve an explanation?” He leaned forward and tucked her hair behind her ear, his fingers brushing her neck for a brief second.

  She flinched and he removed his hand. He took a spoonful of soup and watched as she did the same. She ate with ladylike manners, but the fact that she was starving couldn’t be missed.