Once Upon a Christmas (46 page)

“He’s in the Marines,” she blurted.

Nick’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “The Marines.”

“Sure. He was, um, called back to duty suddenly.”

“I don’t remember you dating any Marines.”

Aaack. He was right. Chloe crossed her fingers behind her back
and gave Nick her sweetest smile. “I didn’t tell you about him.”

She spun a more elaborate story in her imagination. Love
lost to duty, a brave soldier called back before his true love could tell him
about their baby…

Maybe it was crazy, but she was committed now.

“I just couldn’t tell you.” She added a sigh for
effect. “Bruno was too special to be shared.”

Chapter Five

Bruno.

The name haunted Nick night and day all summer long. Even
his work was affected. Who could concentrate with thoughts of Chloe’s mystery
Marine buzzing around in his head?

He could, dammit
. Scowling at the printout in his
hands, Nick tried to make sense of the scrawled notes he’d made past midnight last night—he’d resorted to working past dark most days, just to get something
done—and finally gave up in disgust. Something had to give. It just couldn’t be
his work.

It couldn’t be Chloe, either. She needed him, now more than
ever.

Hell. What a mess. Nick threw the printout on his desk and
swooshed his wheeled chair across his home office to gaze out the window. As it
was, he’d been dividing his time between taking care of Chloe and working on a
new version of his growth accelerator—and giving short shrift to both. He’d
dreamed since he was a boy about making a name for himself by inventing
miraculous things. Without a proposal and prototype, without an investor and
licensing, his dream would be impossible to achieve.

Without Chloe, his achievements would be pointless.

He didn’t buy her story about Bruno. Something about it rang
false, and Nick had operated on instinct and educated guesses long enough to
trust his gut. So far he hadn’t been able to find the mismatched element in her
story, but he would. The more important question was, why would she keep the
truth from him?

He had a feeling the answer hovered just on the edge of his
memory, like a misremembered name on the tip of his tongue. All he needed to
jog it to the forefront was the right stimulus. Whatever that was.

With a growl of frustration, Nick slapped his hand on the windowsill
beside him, ready to whirl back to his computer and try to get something done.
Instead, a flash of movement outside caught his eye and stilled his slide. A
second later, he realized what he’d seen.

A bird bobbing past the window.

Not flying. Not soaring or swooping or gliding. Bobbing.

It could only be Shemp, Chloe’s winged avenger. Where one of
her animals was, she couldn’t be far behind. Where Chloe went, trouble
followed. Nick decided to investigate.

Outside, he spotted her halfway down the block, power
walking through the shade of a feathery-leafed mesquite tree. Her orange
shorts, yellow T-shirt, and floral baseball cap glowed as brightly as the
Saguaro Vista summer sun overhead. Chloe added more vibrancy to their
small-town block than all the surrounding Fifties-era redbrick houses and their
water-thrifty desert landscaping put together. As he watched, she waved to an
elderly neighbor lady who was outside gathering her newspaper, then crooked her
elbows at her sides and picked up speed.

Just as he’d suspected, Shemp rode on her shoulder—which
explained the bobbing he’d seen earlier, if not the rest of what he saw now.
Her beagle, Larry, secured by an auto-winding leash attached makeshift-fashion
at Chloe’s waist, trotted along at her side with his tongue lolling. Moe the
cat slinked through the yards bordering the sidewalk, safe prowling distance
from the rest of the menagerie but keeping up, all the same. The only things
their troupe lacked were Chloe’s goldfish and her hamster, Curly.

Wait a minute
… Nick peered closer. If he didn’t
miss his guess, that hunk of round hot pink plastic spinning at Chloe’s heels
was Curly’s exercise ball. Powered by furiously pumping rodent feet inside.

He blinked. They were all still there. Only Chloe would think
to walk her hamster.

They turned the corner and disappeared from sight. He really
ought to take advantage of her absence and get some work done, Nick told
himself. Somehow, his feet started down the sidewalk anyway.

“Hiya, Nick!” Chloe yelled to him over her
shoulder as he approached, almost as though she’d sensed him coming up behind
her—or known he’d follow. Her breath panted out in measured whooshes, keeping
pace with her strides. “Whatsa matter? Can’t keep up with a girl with a
bun in the oven?”

She didn’t even slow down. In fact, she sped up a little,
making her behind wiggle enticingly. Nick doubted she realized it—and wished
he
hadn’t. What was the matter with him? He was ogling his best friend like one of
her hapless lust-crazed Brunos.

Lucky
lust-crazed Brunos was more like it, some
aching part of him whispered.

Shut up
, Nick told himself, putting thoughts of Chloe’s
wiggle firmly out of his mind. It wasn’t easy. Somehow, since he’d learned
about her pregnancy, those…fantasy episodes…about Chloe had become more and
more frequent. It was becoming impossible to see his pal as just a pal, when
every glance at her gently curved belly reminded him she was a sensual woman,
too.

Frowning, Nick clamped the lid on his libido and caught up
with her in few jogged steps—it wasn’t for nothing he ran five miles around the
Saguaro Vista High track every morning—and matched her pace.

“I can keep up with you.” He couldn’t help but
grin at the exaggerated way she pumped her arms at Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robot
angles. “It’s Larry I’m worried about. He looks ready for a Milk-Bone and
a doggie Gatorade.”

She stopped and wiped a trickle of gleaming perspiration
from her neck. “Do you think so? It is pretty hot out here.”

Giving Larry a worried frown, Chloe crouched beside him and
stroked between his ears, working one-handed at the plastic squeeze bottle
strapped to her waist. “I didn’t mean to wear you out, boy. Maybe you do
need a sports drink to keep up your strength, if we’re going to keep up this
exercise routine.”

She aimed a squirt of bottled water between Larry’s sharp
canine teeth, then straightened while he licked his muzzle. “Doggie
Gatorade is a good idea,” she told Nick. “It would be better than
plain water, at least for long walks. For replacing electrolytes and things.”

“You’d be just crazy enough to try it.”

She frowned and stuck out her tongue at him.

Larry, apparently feeling refreshed, wagged and walked
circles around Chloe as they talked. The auto-wind leash spun out more and more
line, creating a frayed purple web around her white pom-pommed sweat socks and
sneakers.

“Crazy in a good way,” Nick elaborated with a grin
as she raised the bottle to her mouth and sucked down some water for herself.
He watched her lips pucker around the bottle top, then made himself look away.
He’d never envied a hunk of plastic before.

“I think you’d do almost anything to take care of your
menagerie here,” he said when she’d finished, mostly to distract himself
from the surprisingly erotic sight of her tongue depressing the bottle’s snap
top. “Even tote along Gatorade for Larry.”

“But a dog’s physiology is completely different from a
person’s, Nick.” Chloe stepped out of Larry’s twisted leash with a grace
that bespoke frequent practice. She straightened her flowery baseball cap, lassoed
the dog, and started walking again. “I’m afraid a sports drink formulated
for people wouldn’t be good for him. Too bad, though.”

Too bad he’d brought it up, that is. He hadn’t expected a
twenty-minute heart-to-heart about something that didn’t even exist. “Actually.
I was only kidding.”

She blushed and darted a glance at him.

“Oh. Oh—oh—oh!”

She stumbled as Larry yapped and took off at a barking run
more befitting a greyhound than a low-rider beagle, dragging Chloe behind him.

“Chloe!” Nick chased after her, cursing the stupid
leash that kept her attached to her maniac dog. She yanked on it, fighting for
control, but Larry just kept on running, tail low and claws clicking sharply on
the sidewalk as he gained ground. The object of his frenzy was in sight. He
scampered hard on his stubby legs to reach it.

The postal worker walking blithely toward them didn’t know
what was about to hit him, but Chloe did.

“Look out!” she screamed, pulling harder.

The carrier looked. His eyes bulged. His legs—bared and
extra vulnerable in his summertime uniform of jacket and dark shorts—churned to
get him on the nearest front porch. He scrambled on the porch rail, leaving his
legs to dangle like two enormous doggie treats. He dug in his mail bag for
something.

No letter delivery was that urgent. A sick feeling in Nick’s
stomach made him run faster, just as the mail carrier pulled a long slender
canister from his bag.

“Nooo!” Chloe shouted, recognizing what it was.

Nick recognized it, too. Pepper spray. He’d seen it used
once before, on a stray pit bull that had gone after the newspaper deliverer.
The ferocious dog had run off whimpering with its tail between its legs after
just one squirt. There was no telling what the stuff would do to poor runty
Larry.

“Nick, help!” Chloe looked back at him, both hands
pulling her rasping, choking dog away from the postman’s perch. Larry might
have been a two-foot beagle, but he had the heart and soul of a Doberman
pinscher.

Nick left the sidewalk and headed for the house’s walk where
Chloe struggled with her dog. Landscape gravel crunched beneath his feet. At
the same time, a curious whine reached him. It sounded like…the ping of a
tuneless guitar string pulled and released, or a tight-stretched clothesline
about to break.

Or a dog’s leash about to snap.

A glance at Larry’s frayed leash confirmed his guess.
Another few seconds, and he’d be free to commit a doggie death leap. Chloe
wouldn’t be able to do a thing to stop him.

She stared with horror at something just behind Nick. She
pointed. “No, wait! Get Curly!”

Nick looked where she pointed. Curly’s exercise ball plunked
off the sloped sidewalk into the street, spinning like mad. Inside, the hamster’s
furry shape was just distinguishable. Deprived of his focus on Chloe’s heels,
he’d steered himself right off their route—and straight into the path of an
oncoming pickup truck.

Larry barked. Nick glanced his way and saw the beagle lunge
forward. His leash, still intact, slithered through Chloe’s hands. She jerked
forward like a puppet, held by the leash holder attached to her waist.

The pickup truck revved closer, gaining ground on Curly’s
hot pink exercise ball.

Nick lunged sideways. Gravel spewed beneath his feet. The
world jogged up and down as he left the smooth sidewalk for the street below. Hot
asphalt rose to meet him, smelling of tar and engine oil. A flash of pink
rolled just past his fingertips—Curly’s exercise ball. He’d be damned if the
stupid hamster wasn’t trying to get himself squished on purpose, just to avoid
walking the equivalent of a million more hamster miles with Chloe.

“Niiiiiick,” she cried. “Hurry!”

He scooped up the ball, cradling it like a running back
going for the game-ending touchdown. The pickup truck rumbled past in a blast
of hot air and exhaust fumes, then kept on down the road, its driver plainly
oblivious to the man and hamster he’d almost flattened.

Heart pounding, Nick straightened. “Good thing I got
you,” he told Curly between breaths. “Next time you want to go AWOL,
just roll in the bushes and hide, okay?”

Curly stuck his furry hamster snout to the air vents carved
into his exercise ball and sniffed. Nick could almost understand the little
runt’s appeal…until Curly bit him.

“Ouch!”

“Niiiiick! I can’t hold on much longer!”

He turned. Chloe sprawled facedown, half across their
neighbor’s sidewalk and half across the artfully graveled yard. Her arm
stretched forward, her hand maintaining a desperate, wobbly clench on Larry’s
leash as she tried to pull him back.

The mail carrier squinted down at them both, pepper spray at
the ready, poised to shoot from his porch railing if need be. It looked like a
stand-off—unless Larry managed to break his leash.

And all of it with Chloe in the middle.

Nick didn’t remember getting there, but the next thing he
knew, he was hunkered down beside Larry’s growling, stiff-spined body, trying
to talk him down. Paying no heed, the dog went on staring at his postal quarry,
his white- and black-spotted fur bristling straight up. It was enough to make
the hair stand at the nape of Nick’s neck, too. Stark, unreasoning terror made
his gut clench. It didn’t take a veterinary genius to spot the signs of a
pissed-off, territorial doggie defender.

Only a lunatic would get in Cujo’s way.
Guess what that
makes me?
Nick thought as Larry’s rumbling growl got louder. The dog’s lip
lifted to expose several pointy, vicious teeth. Nick’s gaze met Chloe’s—only
briefly, but it was enough to tell him what he needed to know. She was
depending on him.

He put Curly down in the gravel, where he couldn’t roll far,
and edged closer. “Don’t try anything stupid,” he warned Larry as he
scooped up all fifty squirming pounds of him. “I’m way too tough to make a
good doggie treat.”

In his arms, Larry’s body vibrated with a fresh growl.
Luckily, it was still aimed at the postman, not at him.

“Go on,” Nick yelled to the mail carrier. Groaning
beneath the dog’s weight, he stepped back to let some slack in the leash. He
looked Mr. Pepper Spray in the eye. “I’ve got him. You can put that stuff
away now.”