“Hank.”
“Yeah.”
“Shut up. I have to take responsibility for my actions. I’m okay with that, and I appreciate all you did and for…for Mason. Please don’t think I’m ungrateful, but right now I have to find those bells. Oh, God! Here they are. Look! Look! Listen!” Alice shook the bells, and suddenly Hank shivered at the pure melodious sound. The silver bells themselves were tarnished, the red ribbon holding them together was tattered and faded.
“Do you mind telling me what it is with the bells, Alice?” he asked gently.
Alice sat down on an old trunk. “Three or four months ago Albert talked me out of filing for a divorce. I was packed and ready to leave. I had taken him for his chemo treatment that day, and he was so sick, Hank. I mean really sick, but he sat me down and read me the riot act. He told me stories about his own up-and-down marriage. He said you have to work at it to make it worthwhile. He told me other stories about you guys when you were kids. He told me how Mandy was suddenly gone from your lives. He never judged me, never told me not to leave. Somehow or other he convinced me to stay without saying the words. He kept me sane, Hank.”
“I see.” And he did indeed see what she was talking about.
“I’m going over to that porch at midnight and ringing these bells.”
“I wish I knew where I put mine.”
“They’re over there under the window in the box marked ‘Hank.’ Ben packed up your stuff after your parents…He said it was stuff you didn’t want anymore.”
Hank thought his heart was going to explode right out of his chest. He ran over to the box, popped the lid. He saw all kinds of junk he couldn’t ever remember owning. The string of silver bells was wrapped in bubble wrap and tissue. They were just as tarnished, the ribbon just as tattered as the one Alice was holding in her hand. He shook them gently. Tears blurred his vision at the pure tone.
If Mandy had her set, all would be right with his world now that he understood what Alice was talking about. If she didn’t, two out of three would be okay, too.
Down on the second floor, Mason was carrying the twins into their bedroom. They smelled like warm sunshine as Hank bent down to kiss each one of them. They reached out to Alice, who took them both into their room. She settled them in their beds, covered them, then sat down to read a story they didn’t even hear; they were sound asleep. He watched her as she kept reading till the end of the story. She looked so motherly, so suddenly at peace he suddenly felt the same way.
Later on, downstairs, the bells in her hand, Alice sat down in the kitchen. She looked at the slice of homemade blueberry pie and the glass of milk waiting for her. She looked over at Mason and smiled.
“While you’re eating, Mason and I will set up the gifts under the tree. This way you can enjoy the quiet evening. I’m going next door to see Mandy. If you need me, just call my cell phone.”
Alice nodded. “Thanks, Hank, for everything.”
Hank pointed to the laptop on the little desk. She nodded sweetly. “Just so you know, Hank, I love Ben with all my heart and soul.”
“I know that, Alice. I’ll see you later.”
When Amy opened the door, she was holding a string of bells in her hand. “Oh, Hank, you aren’t going to believe what I found. Look!” She held up a set of silver bells and shook them. Hank laughed and pulled his set of bells out of his pocket.
“Alice came home. She wants us to go over to Albert’s porch and ring the bells at midnight. You up for it?”
“Oh, yes. I never decorated my tree, and I didn’t set out any decorations,” Amy said, pointing to the huge evergreen sitting in her living room in the middle of the floor. “I’m not sure what I was trying to…to find, to recapture. That time in my life is gone. This is a new beginning for me. I think for all of us. That in itself is a miracle as far as I’m concerned.”
“I love you, Mandy Leigh. Always have and always will.”
“And I love you, Hank Anders. I always have and always will.”
When the clock struck midnight, three people stood on the Carpenter front porch. Silver bells rang, the sound clear, pure, and rich. High above, a kindly old gentleman ruffled his wings.
“Merry Christmas,” he whispered above the sound of the bells that seemed to be ringing all about him.
Dear Santa
JoAnn Ross
Chapter One
The deer came flying out of nowhere, a flash of dark brown in a swirling white-on-white world.
At least it seemed that way.
One minute Holly Berry was driving on the winding, two-lane road that snaked through Washington’s Cascade Mountains at a crawl, straining her eyes to see through the wall of white snow piling up too fast for even her furiously working windshield wipers to handle. The next minute she was fishtailing into a series of dizzying spins that a gold-medalist Olympic skater would’ve envied, sliding helplessly toward the edge of the cliff.
That’s when she realized that it was true—your life really did flash before your eyes just before you died.
“You’re not going to die,” she insisted, as if saying it out-loud could make it true.
After what seemed a lifetime, but in real time was only a few seconds, her SUV slammed into an ice-encrusted snowbank.
Then pow!
While her heart was pounding like an angry fist against her ribs, the airbag exploded from the center of her steering wheel in her face.
Which wasn’t exactly like getting hit by a marshmallow.
Actually, it hurt. A lot.
It also filled the car with acrid smoke and a fine powder she’d managed to suck into her lungs as she’d shouted out a string of curses that turned the smoky air even bluer and would’ve made a sailor on shore leave proud.
Unfortunately, as soon as she’d opened her mouth, she’d sucked the stuff in, which triggered a coughing fit as she fought against the bag that was—thank you God!—quickly deflating.
That, and the fact she was alive, was the good news.
Once the huge white bag was out of her face, she could see that not only had it cracked the windshield, her dashboard looked as if a maniac had attacked it with a sledgehammer. And steam was rising from beneath the snowbank, hinting at a burst radiator.
Which was, she feared, just the beginning of even more bad news.
“And wow, isn’t this just what you need?”
The rain that had been falling when she’d left her downtown Seattle apartment had turned to sleet as she’d crossed the bridge into east King County. She’d thought things were looking up as she began driving into the mountains and the sleet was replaced by a scattering of downy white flakes.
Unfortunately, by the time that deer had leaped in front of her, the damn snow had escalated into something close to a blizzard.
Dammit, she never should’ve swerved. Then again, if she’d continued to drive straight ahead, she would’ve risked hitting the deer, which could’ve resulted in it flying through her windshield onto her lap.
And wouldn’t have that just been fun?
Since her electrical system seemed to have been killed, the windows wouldn’t go down, so, shoving the deflated nylon bag out of her way, she cracked open the driver’s door to let out some of the smoke. Which, in turn, let wind-driven snow come swirling in.
Retrieving her purse from where it had fallen onto the floor, she took out her cell phone and flipped it open. Unsurprisingly, given her remote location in these mountains, her screen showed no signal bars.
“And isn’t this a fine mess you’ve gotten yourself into,” she muttered as she wiped the air bag talc off her face with one of the wet wipes she always carried with her and tried to decide what to do next.
Holly had always prided herself on her practicality. Oh, she was aware that creative people were considered by many to be flighty. Unpredictable. Impulsive. Even undependable.
But just because she told stories for a living didn’t mean that she didn’t plan every single detail of her bo
oks. She’d plot the stories for weeks, even months beforehand, each and every scene carefully detailed on Post-its, color coded by character, and stuck onto the huge board that took up a major portion of her office wall. She never wrote so much as a first line without first knowing her characters’ goals, motivation, and conflict. And each and every scene in each and every chapter was totally completed to her satisfaction before she moved on to the next.
Real life, to her mind, was no different. Which meant that her goal was to get herself out of this mess and her motivation was to do so before she froze to death—which was, needless to say, the ultimate conflict of man (or in her case, woman) against nature.
She knew the conventional wisdom was to stay with the vehicle so search teams could find her. The problem was that it could take several days for anyone to even realize she was missing. Oh, sure, the hotel in Leavenworth was expecting her this evening, but if she didn’t show up, the desk clerk would undoubtedly just shrug it off as yet another undependable guest, and, since she’d given them her AMEX number to guarantee the room, they’d just run her card and not give her another thought.
Since the crash and subsequent air bag explosion had also disabled her dashboard GPS, Holly had no idea of exactly where she was. Actually, she’d begun to suspect that the calm female voice directing her over the mountains may have made a mistake, because although she’d never driven this way before, it seemed the highway should be four lanes, not the two that had, because of snowplows, narrowed down to about one and a half.
Unfortunately, the Washington state road map she’d bought as a backup was still sitting on her kitchen counter. The totally uncharacteristic oversight had her grinding her teeth even as she assured herself that just as she’d gotten her last heroine away from that serial killer, she could plot her way out of this predicament.
Holly’s idea of exercise might be walking to Starbucks down the street from her apartment, but surely she could hike to wherever the next town was. And wouldn’t movement keep her warmer than if she stayed here, shivering inside her disabled vehicle, like a damsel in distress waiting for a white knight in a shiny suit of armor to show up?
Of course, the flip side of that was that trudging through the snow could expend energy. Which wouldn’t be good. Also, the sun was sinking lower and lower behind the mountains and no way did she want to risk becoming dinner for a mountain lion or bear.
Since this was, after all, supposedly a major road, surely the state would have the snow plows out working to stay ahead of the storm. A storm that hadn’t even shown up on the weather channel. She’d checked the forecast before leaving her apartment.
Forty-five minutes later, as the snow kept falling and the sky darkened to a deep purplish blue, and her fingertips, even inside her leather gloves, had begun turning to ice, and Holly was beginning to get seriously concerned, she thought she heard the low drone of a car engine.
Of course, that could just be a hallucination.
Or a dream.
Didn’t people fall asleep as they were freezing to death? She was sure she’d read that somewhere.
Using her gloved hand to wipe the steam off the window, she saw a fire engine red Ford Expedition, which dwarfed her stuck Highlander, come chugging out of the storm and pull to a stop.
Even as she could have sworn she heard a chorus of angels singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah, the Expedition’s door opened and a pair of long legs, clad in jeans and a pair of heavy PAK boots, swiveled out.
The rest of him, wearing a dark blue parka, followed. Despite those angel voices of joyous relief ringing in her mind, all the research over the years she’d done for her mystery novels had left Holly more distrustful than the average woman.
Still, while it was difficult to tell through the swirling snow, he didn’t look like a serial killer.
Of course, neither had Ted Bundy. Who, now that she thought about it, just happened to have been from Washington state. As had the Green River Killer, along with several others, including the never apprehended Snohomish County dismemberment killer she’d used as a model for the villain in her first novel.
He was getting closer, his stride long and purposeful as he crunched through the snow.
Feeling as if she was in some woman-in-jeopardy movie, Holly retrieved her Zeus Lightning Bolt stun pen from her bag and slipped it into her jacket pocket.
Chapter Two
It was amazing how much a guy’s life could change in twelve months, Gabriel O’Halloran considered as he cautiously made his way around the twisting switchbacks of the icy mountain road. This time last year, he’d been in Iraq, patrolling streets, dodging insurgent gunfire, praying like hell that he and his fellow Marines wouldn’t get blown to pieces by an IED.
On a sixty-five-degree Christmas morning, while on patrol, his team had nearly walked into an ambush. Fortunately, one of the bad guys had gotten trigger-happy and begun to shoot as the first Marine entered the alley. Even better was that his “pray and spray” gunfire hadn’t managed to hit anyone.
The battle, which was a long way from the peace the season was supposed to celebrate, lasted less than five minutes. The insurgents, knowing when they were outgunned, faded away, undoubtedly to fight another day.
As leader of the patrol, Gabe could have ordered the team to go after them. Deciding he didn’t want to be responsible for any deaths on Christmas Day, they’d returned to camp in time for a traditional feast of prime rib, turkey with cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, served up by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound master sergeant wearing a red, white, and blue Santa Claus hat.
Now, here Gabe was, plowing his way through a frigging blizzard, tires crunching beneath the snow, the radio reporting road closures and accidents throughout the mountains, his eyes burning from trying to focus on the road as he doggedly made his way in near whiteout conditions home to a town that had boasted the teeming population of six hundred and twenty-five.
Six hundred and twenty-seven now that he and Emma had settled in.
Having spent his teenage years trying to escape his hometown, then intending to be career military, becoming a Christmas tree farmer and running an inn and bar wasn’t the future he’d planned. Not by a long shot. But having seen a great deal of the world, despite the twists and turns his personal road had taken over the last few months, he had begun to enjoy himself.
Hell, he even had a dog, who was currently curled up in the backseat, snoring away like a souped-up chainsaw.
Couldn’t get much more damn domesticated than that.
He’d just cautiously maneuvered around a particularly nasty S-curve, his studded tires crunching on the icy pavement, when he viewed an SUV partly buried in a snowbank. Pulling as far as he could off the road, he set the emergency brake.
The dog, having been born into a war zone, immediately sensed trouble. Choosing flight over fight, he scrambled off the seat onto the floor, where he somehow managed to curl up into a remarkably small ball, considering that the last time he’d been weighed at the vet, he’d come in at one hundred and thirty pounds.
“Stay,” he told the dog as he retrieved the first aid kit—just in case—from the floor.
The dog looked conflicted. On one hand, or, more accurately, paw, he obviously wanted to stay hunkered down out of danger. On the other, he’d spent nine months of Gabe’s thirteen-month second tour on patrol loyally sticking close to the squad of Marines who’d adopted him.
“Stay,” Gabe repeated, holding up a hand. “Everything’ll be okay.”
Gabe hoped.
He’d no sooner jumped out of the Expedition when a woman stumbled out of the disabled Highlander. She was tall, leggy, and wearing a scarlet ski jacket, snug black jeans, and sheepskin-lined boots that rose nearly to her knees.
“Looks like you’ve gotten yourself in a little trouble,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Well, mostly,” she allowed as his gaze swept over her, looking for in
juries. “I swerved to miss hitting a deer.” Before he could respond to that, she held up a hand. The red leather glove was thin, fitting her hand, well, like a glove, and while a nice look with the coat, wasn’t all that practical for this kind of weather. “I know you’re not supposed to do that, but it was all so sudden, and…”
She paused, as if picturing the moment he figured had been indelibly scorched into her mind. Emotions—especially fear—could do that to you. God knows he had memories that still, even after a year stateside, occasionally, when he least expected it, played in his mind.
Her hair—which fell in a trendy, expensive-looking cut that just skimmed her shoulders beneath a red knitted cap—was a strawberry blond, more gold than red. Her slightly slanted catlike eyes were moss green, her complexion, the part of it that wasn’t already turning red and splotchy, which he suspected was the beginning of what could be some serious bruising, was as smooth and pale as top cream.
A sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of a cold-reddened nose, and a mouth that was a bit too wide, but eminently kissable, along with the way her diamond face came to a point in a slightly stubborn chin kept her from being perfect.
“And?” he prompted.
“This is going to sound crazy, but although I’m admittedly no expert, it didn’t look like an ordinary deer. More like a—”
“Reindeer?”
“Exactly.”
Which was, of course, ridiculous, Holly told herself. Adrenaline, caused by the stress of the moment, must have caused her brain to fritz out, overlaying the actual event with other pictures in her memory. Pictures from the storybooks her father had read her so long ago.
He nodded. “That’d be Blitzen.”
Leaving her staring after him, he strolled around to the front of the car and studied the hood buried deep in the snowdrift. The steam had quit rising from the radiator several minutes ago, but it didn’t take a mechanic to know the poor Highlander wasn’t going to be driving anywhere soon.
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