Once Upon a Christmas (54 page)

“You bet, Sweets.”

Red inhaled. The faint crackling of her ever-present burning
cigarette came over the line.
I’ve got to get that loan, get Red retired,
and get her a truckload of stop-smoking gum
. Maybe Nick could invent
something, some kind of non-smoking…

Stop it
, Chloe ordered herself. She had to quit
depending on Nick. Starting yesterday.

Red exhaled. “I’ll be there. You open up shop, though,
okay? I’m meeting with another one of those buyers at the Downtown Grill. Nine
o’clock. Maybe this one won’t be itching to tear down the place and build one
of those godawful tourist traps with sooouvenirs and pink suede cowboy boots.”

Chloe grimaced. “Red…I’ve got a pair of those boots.”

“You would, darlin’. You would.”

Her friend’s raucous laughter crackled over the line before
they said their good-byes. Chloe hung up the phone. The thought of bulldozers
rumbling over her beloved pet shop made her fingers turn to ice. What if she
never persuaded Griggs to give her the loan? What if Red got desperate and sold
out to a developer before she could make any headway with her plans?

It was time to settle her future, once and for all.

Or at least part of it.

The same left-hand turn that brought Nick onto Main Street
brought him his first view of the crowd. From the looks of it, a third of the
town had turned out. Men, women and children clumped around the town plaza’s
Christmas-decorated courtyard in bunches, talking, pointing, and peering in the
artificially snow-frosted windows of Saguaro Vista Cattleman’s Bank. Police
cars blocked the street, lights flashing. The town’s sole newspaper
photographer ducked behind one, aiming for a
Territorial
-worthy shot of
the fracas.

It’s Chloe
, his sister Naomi had told him on the
phone.
Chloe needs you at the bank
.

That’s all he’d heard before dropping the phone and sprinting
to his motorcycle. Now, steering between a woman wearing pink sponge curlers
and a sheriff’s deputy directing traffic, Nick wished he’d waited to hear more.
Was Chloe being arrested? Had she finally had a hormonal breakdown, snapped,
and assaulted Effram Griggs?

The town’s fire engine careened around the corner. Suited-up
firefighters piled out. Nick’s heart slammed harder. He wrenched his bike to a
stop at the curb and ran through the crowd. They surged along with him all the
way to the bank’s front door, where the first-comers spilled out along with
incongruously cheerful Christmas music.

Nick elbowed his way inside.

He spotted Chloe’s blond head first. She was near the
wagon-wheel table in the middle of the bank, the same one used to hold deposit
slips and pens on chains and—he looked closer—today, one very pregnant woman
wearing wild hot pink clothes and an expression he’d never seen before. While
Nick edged closer, Effram Griggs came in view, flapping a sheaf of paper toward
Chloe like a human ceiling fan. She bent forward in the breeze. Her head
disappeared from view.

Dear God
, Nick thought, realizing what all the
paramedic-packed fuss was about.
Chloe was in labor
.

Right on top of the glossy home-banking brochures.

She’d probably come to the bank to confront Griggs about her
loan—minus Nick, because he’d been too busy working on his growth accelerator
to help her, dammit—and his latest refusal had sent her over the edge. Those
lunatic hormones of hers could probably cause just about anything to happen.

“Chloe!” he yelled.

“Nick?”

He reached her and held her face in his hands, keeping her
still so he could make sure she was all right. She
felt
all right, silky
and warm beneath his palms. She looked okay, sort of pink and glowing…but
then again, that could have been the reflected glare from her clothes. Her hot
pink mini-dress looked vivid enough to peel paint.

“Hiya, brainiac,” Chloe said. “What are you
doing here?”

“Naomi called me. Danny’s bus driver was late because
she had to detour around the bank. The street’s completely blocked outside. You’re
the talk of the town, Chloe.”

Looking pleased, she sat up straighter. “The street’s
blocked?”

“The
Territorial’s
outside, too. You’ll probably
make the evening edition.”

She beamed. “That’s great!”

It was worse than he’d thought. She’d gone temporarily
crazy. Who knew pregnancy could do this to a person?

Nick rubbed his thumbs gently over her cheeks. This didn’t
look like the writhing, screaming childbirth they showed on TV—or the grueling
forty-eight hour laborathons his mother and sisters had moaned about—but he
couldn’t be sure. Chloe’s method of having babies was bound to be
one-hundred-and-eighty degrees different than anyone else’s.

“Are you all right? Is the pain bad? Is the baby—”

“The baby’s fine.” She smiled against his hands,
making him realize how much he’d missed the feel of her. Then she slipped her
fingers around his wrists and tugged downward. “So am I. You’re acting as
if I’m going to pop out the kid right here, or something.”

If she was, she was being pretty blasé about it. Nick
frowned, casting his arm toward the noisy crowd. “You’re not? But there
are paramedics outside, police and firefighters and—” Something else
occurred to him. He gave her a stern look. “Are you still mad about our
argument? Because if you’re just saying this to make me go away, I—”

“No, I’m not. Not mad, not in labor, and not fibbing.
The crowd’s here because of the sit-down strike, the police are probably here
for crowd control, and the firefighters are probably here in case Griggs locks
me in the bank vault after all.” She peered closely at him. “You’re
looking a little woozy, Nick. You want to sit?”

“Uhhh—”

Scooting over the table’s thick wagon-wheel rungs, Chloe
flashed her knee-high boots and made room for him. “Come on. Hop aboard.
You probably need some of the Christmas-blend coffee they’re serving today,
too. Griggs?” She put her hand on Nick’s shoulder and gazed through the
murmuring crowd like a queen calling her court jester. “Oh, Griggs!”

She
had
snapped. “Another sit-down strike?
Chloe, come down from there. I’ll take you home.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I—oh, there you are.”

Effram Griggs appeared beside Nick, looking as though he’d
just emerged from a sauna. His forehead looked shiny with sweat, and his
western shirt had twin wet spots under the arms. Clearly, having Chloe hold
court in the middle of his bank wasn’t his usual Monday afternoon routine.

She inclined her head regally toward him. “Would you
bring Mr. Steadman a cup of your complimentary Ho Ho Ho blend, please? I think
the crowd’s too much for him.”

“Right away. Have you finished the, ahh—”

“When you bring the check.” Chloe tucked a pen in
the top of one boot. The motion called attention to the rolled-up sheaf of
papers stuck partway beneath her thigh. They looked like the ones Griggs had
been waving around earlier. “And the coffee.”

“I don’t want any coffee,” Nick put in.

Too late. Griggs had already left.

He swiveled toward Chloe, who, having dispensed with both
her pen and the pesky Mr. Griggs, cheerfully tapped the papers against her
boot.

“The check?” Nick asked. “A payoff for not
causing a bigger riot?”

“For my loan.” She rubbed her other hand over her
round, round belly and smiled at him. “My loan for my pet shop.”

“You got it?”

“
Yes
!” She patted the table. “Come on
up. Celebrate my victory, Nick.”

“I can’t believe you got it.”

Griggs returned, a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a
slip of paper in the other. Solicitously, Chloe set the Ho Ho Ho blend on the
table within Nick’s reach, then snatched the paper. She held it up for the
crowd to see.

“The check!”

Bedlam erupted. Shouts of “Hurray!” mixed with
clapping and whistling, then mellowed into a chant. It sounded like…

“No more Neanderthals?” Nick asked.

She laughed and flipped over a homemade poster from the
table beside her. It showed a club-toting caveman’s body encircled by an “O”
with a diagonal slash through it. Effram Griggs’ head, sour-faced in an old
newspaper photo, was pasted on the caveman above the words:
No More
Neanderthals. Say Yes to Loans for Ladies.

“Turns out,” Chloe said, shoving the poster
through the wagon-wheel slats, “that Griggs has a policy of refusing loans
to women. He’s turned down half the ladies in my childbirth class. Most of whom
were forced to get loans in their husbands’ names.”

She frowned at the injustice of it all. Nick tried not to
wonder if she’d have married him for her loan’s sake, if he’d asked.

“So,” she went on, reaching behind her for the
fuzzy white jacket she’d left there and smoothing it over her lap, “I came
in and told him I wasn’t leaving until he changed his stupid throwback policy.
I can’t believe the old protest ploy worked! I didn’t exactly have a good track
record with that one, you know.”

“The only thing you’re missing is that Brownie uniform
of yours.” Nick put his arms around her waist. “Now there’s something
I’d like to see.”

“Actually, hot pink is more attention-getting.”

“I’ll say.” He waggled his eyebrows as he looked
her over.

“But it was probably the baby. An extra sympathy measure
I didn’t have when I was seven.”

“Maybe.”
Or maybe
Mrs. Griggs
had been
pregnant once, too, and her husband had learned his lesson
. It was better
to roll with the lunacy than to fight it.

Or maybe that just described life with women in hot pink and
triumphant grins. Nick smiled back amid the chants and stomping feet and draped
Chloe’s puffy jacket over her shoulders, then tugged her into his arms. The
crowd cheered.

“Let’s go home and celebrate.” God, she felt good
against him. “I know just the kind of party you need.”

She hugged him closer and raised on tiptoes to whisper in
his ear. “A party of two?”

“Something like that.”

The crowd bumped and jostled them, milling toward the exit
now that the excitement was over with. Effram Griggs, muttering and wringing
the loan papers he’d taken from Chloe in exchange for the check, passed by on
his way to the vault—probably planning to lock
himself
in until his
personal nightmare had passed. Police officers loomed closer, probably wanting
to make sure the poor pregnant women in Nick’s arms was all right.

Or not. A sound at the back of Nick’s head, where Chloe had
her arms wrapped around his neck, killed his poor pregnant woman theory in a
hurry. Nothing else sounded quite like the metallic snick of handcuffs closing.

“Chloe Carmichal?” one of the officers asked.

“Hey!” She snared Nick as she tried to tug her
bound wrists over his head. “Hey! I’m—I’m—”

Stuck
. Gently, Nick lifted her forearms past his
nose. He hugged her against his side, turning them both to face a pair of
Saguaro Vista’s finest.

The men in blue smirked. “You’re in trouble, is what
you are,” one said. “Disturbing the peace, harassment, destruction of
property—”

“Unlawful assembly, fire code violation,” the
other officer continued, going on with a description of her rights.

“But—but—” Chloe protested. “But I’m—”

“Under arrest,” they finished in unison.

“I still can’t believe you staged a sit-down strike to
make Griggs give you your loan,” Nick said, squinting into the sun as it
set over downtown plaza.

“You can’t argue with success.” Smiling, Chloe
slipped the loan check the police had returned to her in her white pillbox
handbag and struggled to fasten the vintage latch. The stubborn old thing never
had operated properly—just like Effram Griggs. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“To the tune of five hundred dollars in fines and bail.
It would have been cheaper to marry for the money, like your friends in Baby
Birthing 101 did.”

“They didn’t! They just couldn’t get credit in their
own names, that’s all, and—and you’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

His sparkling eyes told her he was. The rat.

“I would have helped you, you know,” Nick said. “Red
and Jerry would have, too. You only had to ask.”

“I know.” Chloe snuggled deeper in her warm, fuzzy
jacket. “I just…thought I had time. I thought my way would work, if I
only stuck with it long enough.”

The town’s annual Christmas banners—red and green and
gold—sparkled overhead as she and Nick headed for the curb where his motorcycle
was parked. She took his arm as they passed the courtyard fountain. Its wintery
spray misted them both, making Chloe shiver—but not with cold. Losing her pet
store dream had come too close. All because she’d refused to try getting her
loan another way.

If I only stuck with it long enough.

Maybe sometimes it was smarter to recognize what wasn’t
working. Maybe dogged dedication to a plan
wasn’t
always a surefire
tactic.

Maybe not telling Nick the truth was exactly the same
problem in different clothes, Chloe decided later as they zipped into Nick’s driveway.
Maybe her Bruno alibi had outlived its usefulness. Maybe Nick
could
handle the truth.

He’d been interested enough to critique her father and
Tabitha’s choice of baby gifts, interested enough to set up the nursery and
pack her refrigerator with milk for a crowd, interested enough to hound her
about Twinkies and volunteer for hospital duty on junior’s birthday.

She eased off his motorcycle—no easy task, now that she
couldn’t see her toes anymore—and handed her purple helmet to Nick, still
thinking. What if she’d been wrong about him all along? The evidence, when
viewed in a certain light, pointed to a different Nick than the no-kids,
none-of-the-time, marriage-as-obligation type she’d pegged him as.