One Snowy Night Before Christmas (3 page)

Why did her luck turn as foul as the weather every
Christmas? Was she doomed to an eternity of rotten Christmases? Jessie let out
a long, defeated sigh. She was going to have to move to a country that just
didn’t celebrate Christmas. Better yet, one that had never even heard of it.

“Hey.” Tom Dunham appeared by her side and slipped an arm
around her shoulders. “He’s going to be all right.”

Her first instinct was to straighten her spine and say
something liberated to prove her feminine independence, but suddenly that
didn’t seem as important as it had always been. Jessie’s eyes welled with
tears. She covered her face with her hands as he pulled her into his arms.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said in a soothing voice. The
deep timbre of his words rumbled through his chest. “I didn’t even see him, and
I was watching.”

She choked out a sob. She had looked away from the road at
the wrong moment. It
was
her fault.

He chuckled. “That didn’t come out right.”

“I’m cursed. Dammit, I hate Christmas.”

He lifted her chin with a fingertip. She noticed for the
first time he had the most startling blue eyes, like a clear sky on the coldest
day of winter. He smiled, and those crystalline eyes danced with laughter.
“What does Christmas have to do with it?”

“Everything.”

Jessie suddenly realized a virtual stranger—a deliciously
handsome stranger but a stranger nonetheless—was holding her in a very sensual
embrace. She should pull herself out of his arms, wipe away her tears and
reclaim the independence that had always saved her, but she could do none of
those things. Instead, she felt her insides melting as she leaned back against
his chest.

Under that striped cotton shirt and silly sweater vest Tom
Dunham was surprisingly hard-bodied. His arms tightened around her but still he
held her gently, almost politely, as though he hadn’t forgotten she was a
stranger and his touch hovered at the line of inappropriate.

Still, his tenderness flowed into her with unmistakable,
undeniable force. She wished she had noticed if he wore a wedding ring. Somehow
she knew if she looked now, she would find he didn’t. Though she’d only just
met him, she sensed he was not the type of man to act this way if he was
married.

She leaned away and looked into his face. The mirth
disappeared from his eyes and they turned serious, searching. He leaned closer,
studying her lips. Was he going to kiss her? Heavens, she hoped so. Was she
crazy? Maybe so, but she didn’t care. This night was a total disaster already.

“It’s the season of joy. No more tears, all right?”

She stiffened and pulled away. Christmas was nothing more
than the season of misery, and there were a lot of people who would agree.
“Right.” From the corner of her eye she noticed a dark figure standing in the
wide doorway to the examination room.

“Jessie, I got the call on the radio.”

Highway Patrolman Mike Andrews, her ex fiancé, watched them
with a guarded expression. Jessie’s stomach clenched with a new knot.
Yep,
there’s my luck again
. She wondered how much of that he’d witnessed.

His wary glance skipped from her to Tom and back, a notch
more suspicious than it should be. “Everybody all right?”

Obviously he’d seen all of it. Jessie shook herself, finally
reclaiming her courage. He has no right to judge.

Taking a step back, she looked at Tom. “You should check on
Amy.”

His expression dimmed and his hand slipped away from the
small of her back. “All right.” He glanced at Mike. “Excuse me.”

She rubbed her arms, suddenly feeling cold. “I hit a man.”

“Kid seems to think you ran over Santa.”

Good old Mike and his spiteful habit of poking the bruise.
“Yeah, well…you and I both know he isn’t.”

“I have to take a report.”

“Of course.” She would show him that being dumped wouldn’t make
her crumble every time she saw him. She started out of the examination room.
Mike took her elbow, making her jump. He pulled her away from the waiting area.

“Let me buy you a cup of coffee,” he said, forcing a
friendly smile. “No sense upsetting the little girl with this.”

They drank bland coffee from a machine at the end of the
hall as Mike asked the necessary questions and recorded her answers. She
watched him as he wrote, wondering where his life had taken him since their
breakup. Though Welcome was a small town, she had seen him only once in the
last year, driving past in his patrol car. Probably because in all that time
she never went out for a beer, and pizza dinners always came home in a box.
Thank God no grisly traffic accidents had reunited them.

His pen went still on the report and an uncomfortable
silence dragged.

“So how’ve you been? Other than tonight, I mean.” He stared
at something on the wall, unable or just unwilling to meet her eyes.

“Fine.” The question sounded suspiciously innocent, but she
wasn’t fooled. Let him feel guilty, the bastard. “You?”

He paused. “Fine.” Mike swallowed. “I’m getting married in
the spring.”

Before she could control it, her entire body went stiff.
Everything inside her screamed
get up and walk away
, but somehow she’d
lost control of her limbs.

While she knew she should act like she didn’t care, her lips
were moving anyway. “Ellen?” Why was he telling her this? Did he want to
torture her?
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. It’s Christmas, and I’m cursed to
eternal misery
.

“It’s Elaine.”

“Oh, right.”

It still hurt. Realizing that infuriated her. She had tried
so hard to convince herself she didn’t care. Last year, after they’d been
living together since February, she’d finally decided it couldn’t possibly be
the holiday feeding her bad luck and decided to prepare a nice Christmas dinner
for the two of them. Mike hadn’t shown up. At first she’d thought it might be
police duty keeping him away, then he’d come home the next day to explain he’d
had Christmas dinner with Elaine’s family, and he was going to be moving in
with her. He’d been dating them both at the same time.

Long after the fact, she’d stopped feeling stupid for not
realizing it, and wondered if Elaine had known.

“Congratulations.” She stood. “Are we done here?”

“Jessie.” He stood and stepped close. “I was hoping you
would come.”

“No you weren’t.” A flush of heat crawled over Jessie’s
face. She suddenly remembered the arrogant cop always did have a lot of nerve.

An uncomfortable moment passed.  Mike made a production
out of slotting his pen into his clipboard’s hinge. “Well, it was good seeing
you. Sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

She stared at him.

“You look good, Jessie. Real good.”

“It’s the magic of the holiday,” she snapped.

“I guess this hasn’t done anything to improve your outlook
of Christmas.” He finished his lame statement with a stiff chuckle.

“It changed it all right,” she ground out, lost for
patience. What right did he have to sit there acting pitiful after what he’d
done to her last year? “From bad to worse. Last year was so-so, my fiancé
dumped me. This year, I flattened Santa Claus. Yep, I love the freakin’
holidays.”

She turned and started away. The conversation had been
unpleasant at best. But instead of the familiar burning sensation in her gut
whenever she used to think about Mike, it was gone, replaced instead by the
heavy sourness of deep dread. She’d hit a man tonight. Suddenly all her other
problems seemed trite.

“Jessie—”

She whirled around. “What? What are you going to say? Merry Christmas?
Happy New Year? Stuff it, Mike.”

Her voice must have carried. At the end of the hall, Tom
glanced up from the bank of phones in the reception area.

“Everything all right?” he asked as she stormed over.

“Fine,” she bit out. She glanced at Amy. The little girl lay
across three chairs, rolled up in her jacket. Jessie pulled the flap over to
cover an exposed foot.

Mike’s rubber soled shoes squeaked as he followed her down
the hall. “Jessie…”

There it was, that whiney tone she remembered all too well.
She closed her eyes for a moment before turning around. “Am I under arrest?”

Mike glanced at his clipboard. “You’ll need to make an
appearance. That is, if the old man presses charges.”

Tom hung up the phone. “I’m an attorney. I saw the whole
thing. Ms. Jeffries should not be held negligent for what happened tonight.”

Normally she wouldn’t want any man rushing in to her rescue,
but she liked finally seeing someone throw superior bravado back in Mike’s
face.

“And you are…?”

“Tom Dunham.”

“Mommy?” A tousle of blond hair spilled from the neck of
Jessie’s coat as the little girl peeked out. “I’m tired. I want to go to bed.”

“I know, sweetie,” he said. The phone book slipped off the
shelf and swung below the phone. “I’m trying to get us a hotel room.”

“Good luck.” The nurse at the registration desk stepped up
to the counter. A Christmas tree pin with tiny flashing lights glittered from
the lapel of her crisp uniform. She shook her head as she clucked to herself.
“There isn’t a spare room in town. A snow slide knocked in the back of the
Brambury and all the guests were moved to the last rooms in the other hotels.”

“I’ve got one more hotel to try,” Tom said, hoisting the
phone book up onto the shelf again.

Jessie thought this a good time to slip away. “If you don’t
mind, I’ll tow your car over to McPherson’s Garage in the morning. No sense
taking it tonight.” She glanced at the little girl curled up on the waiting
room chairs. Amy still had her coat, but Jessie couldn’t bear asking for it
back.

It broke her heart to see such a small child feeling sad at
Christmas. No person deserved the misery she’d endured for so many years.
Jessie’s Christmases, too, had started to turn miserable in childhood. Poor
kid, Jessie hated to imagine that the adorable little pixie would be exactly
like her in twenty years.

She stiffened her spine and shook away her misgivings.
Christmas was nothing more than a rotten letdown capitalized upon by the
marketing departments of any organization that stood to make a buck, and the
sooner the kid learned that, the better.

Mike paced the floor while speaking into the radio
microphone hooked to his shoulder. Jessie groaned. She hadn’t been lying. This
holiday, like all others, had gone from bad to worse. She turned and started
away.

“Mrs. Dunham,” the nurse called. Jessie didn’t think
anything of it until the woman repeated it, louder.

“Oh, no, I’m not—”

“I’ll need a phone number. Your husband left it blank.”

“He’s not my husband.” Too late, she realized she should
have kept moving. The woman’s stern face had a paralyzing effect. Jessie
shuffled up to the counter and took the clipboard.

“I need here…” The nurse, Brenda her nametag read, ticked
off four lines with her red pen. “Here, here, and here.”

When her gaze rose to Nurse Brenda, the expression had grown
severe. “You checked him in, you have to check him out. Come back tomorrow at
ten for an update on his condition.”

Rather than debate the issue, Jessie started filling out the
missing fields. Her stomach tightened another notch as Mike sidled up beside
her at the counter.

“Jessie, don’t go away mad.”

“Who’s mad?” She stopped writing and faced him.

“Jessie, you have to understand. I wasn’t ready to get
married. I’m…maybe I’m still not.” He glanced nervously at Nurse Brenda. She
fixed her censorious stare on him. One eyebrow slid a notch up her forehead. He
waited, expecting privacy, but she didn’t move. Maybe Nurse Brenda wasn’t so
bad, after all.

Jessie could hardly believe what she was hearing. “You were
a coward. Sounds like you still are.”

Mike continued with a guilty voice. “The holidays were
coming and you were already starting to get upset about it. You have to admit,
you’re a bit fanatical about it.”

“Don’t try to blame it on me.” Jessie slid the clipboard
across the desk to Nurse Brenda. “You didn’t show up for Christmas dinner
because you were shacked up at Ellen’s.”

“Elaine’s.”

She grumbled and turned away.

“Jessie,” Mike pleaded in that annoyingly whiney voice. He stopped
her with a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. You did me a favor.”

At the time, it had hurt—a deep cut all the way to the bone.
Now Jessie understood it hadn’t been so bad being dumped by him, just being
dumped in general.

She pulled free and turned all the way to face him. “Did you
have any other questions?”

Tom moved up behind her and placed a hand on her shoulder.
It was a subtle acknowledgement from a total stranger who somehow understood
her pain. His presence brought her instant warmth, as though in their mutual
bad luck she and this stranded man possessed some sort of camaraderie. Misery
truly did love company.

“You were right, there isn’t a hotel room to be had in
town,” he said to the nurse. “There has to be some place I can stay. I can’t
let my little girl sleep on the waiting room chairs.”

“They turn the high school gymnasium into a homeless shelter
over the holidays.” Nurse Brenda took the clipboard and rummaged through a desk
tray for a flyer. “You can get a turkey dinner there with all the trimmings.
You might even find your John Doe joining you there tomorrow.”

“You can stay with me.” Jessie blurted it out before she
thought it through. While Mike’s shocked expression pleased her, her stomach
jumped with a surge of regret. What on earth was she thinking? “I’ve got plenty
of room,” she added in a softer voice, even as she hoped he would decline.

“You don’t even know this guy, you said so yourself.” Mike
flipped open his notebook. “‘I had just picked up a stranded motorist.’ He
could be an axe murderer or something.”