A Dixie Christmas (23 page)

“I am not going to discuss this.”

“This?”

“Us,” she said. “It’s over . . . done with.”

“No, it’s not, Reba. God, I hate that song. I can’t think when I hear that song. Can’t you make them stop?”

“Huh?” Reba glanced up, realizing that her Santa crew had started caroling, as they often did, not just to practice for their homeless shelter events, but because they were, frankly, a cheerful group. It was the holiday season, for goodness sake. “What do you have against Christmas songs, Mr. Grinch?”

He poked her playfully in the arm, but the playfulness never reached his somber eyes. “I don’t hate all Christmas songs, just that one,” he grumbled.

She narrowed her eyes at him, interested, despite herself. “And why would that be? Too lower class for a hoity-toity celebrity pilot?”

At first, it appeared as if he wouldn’t answer her, but then he disclosed something he hadn’t shared with her in all the eight years she’d known him.

“My mother gave me up two days before Christmas when I was ten years old. Just walked into a police station, said she needed to find a home for me, plopped down a paltry little cardboard box with all my worldly belongings, and left. Just like that. In the background, that stinkin’ `Jingle Bells’ song was playing. I’ll never forget it. Me screaming like a banshee for my mother to come back, and Bing Crosby crooning away with those cheerful cornball lyrics.”

Suddenly, a look of horror spread over his face as he realized how much he’d revealed. “Forget I said that. God above! Here I am trying to charm you into talking with me. Instead, you must think I’m downright pitiful.”

Reba didn’t think he was pitiful, at all. In fact, she was deeply touched. “You’ve certainly come a long way since then, Sam. Your mother would be so proud of you.”

“My mother could have cared less.”

Reba would have liked to argue that point. After all, she held a masters degree in psychology. Here was a man with major unresolved issues . . . and not just dealing with his mother. But it was none of her business, really.

He ran the fingertips of one hand over his forehead, an unconscious effort to smooth out the creases.

Reba had to make a fist to keep herself from reaching out and doing the smoothing herself.

“Tell me about The Santa Brigade . . . and Winter Haven. I never thought you’d follow in your Dad’s footsteps with a nursing home.”

“It just happened. I was in private practice . . . working for a Bangor psychological clinic when Dad got cancer. I took a leave to come home and care for him, which meant taking over directorship of the retirement community on a temporary basis. It hasn’t been a nursing home for years, by the way. Dad was in hospice for a year before he died. By then I discovered that I liked the work, and I took over.” She shrugged. What she left out was the agony of that year, caring for a loved one through that horrendous disease.

“It appears as if you’ve made the retirement community your own, though. Lots of modern ideas.”

She tilted her head in question. “Oh, you mean The Santa Brigade?”

“That and the mandatory volunteer program and physical fitness regime you instituted. Maudeen told me about them while I was showing her how to reorganize some of her files this afternoon.”

“You’re a computer expert, too?”

He laughed. “Not quite a computer geek. Jets are all high tech today, though, and pilots are required to have advanced computer training.”

“You? The person who took algebra twice?”

“Hey, I just wanted to be with you. I liked the way you tutored me.” Reba had been a year younger than Sam, thus taking the same courses the year following him. She chose to ignore the eyebrow jiggling trick that accompanied his latter statement.

Now would be a good time to change the subject. “How about you? Do you intend to make the military a career?”

“If you’d asked me that a year ago, I probably would have said I’m destined to be a lifer. But I’m not sure now. At the least, this is my third and last year with the Blues. It’s a policy to rotate squadron members every few years on a staggered basis, so there are always familiar faces. The Blues have never been a permanent career option. At the same time, I’m feeling burned out with the Navy these days. I’ve already served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is enough, but I have no idea what else I could do . . . in civilian life.”

My goodness, Sam was opening up a lot today. He always used to keep his personal doubts inside, as if they signified weakness. It was probably a ploy, though she didn’t think he’d go that far. “You could do anything you wanted, Sam.”

“I don’t know about that. I wish you could have seen me perform with the Blues, though, Reba. I’m a screw-up in lots of ways, but I’m a really good pilot. Hot damn, but I would have showed off for you.”

“You always showed off for me, Sam. Whether it was skiing down Suicide Run, or diving off the high board.” She shouldn’t tell him, she really shouldn’t. Oh, heck! “Actually, I did see you, Sam.”

“You did? As a Blue Angel? When?”

“Two years ago, in Boston. You . . . the team . . . were great.”

He took her hand in his and held tight this time. “You came to a Blue Angels show, and never contacted me? Why not?”

“What was the point?”

“The point? I’ll tell you the point,” he said hotly, squeezing her hand painfully. “We were friends. Good friends. Whatever else we might have been, friendship demands common courtesy. I can’t believe you were so close and didn’t even talk to me.”

“I intended to, but there were lots of people surrounding you after the show.”

“And you couldn’t wait? Or yell out my name to get my attention?”

“There were girls there, Sam, and women. I wasn’t about to become one of your groupies.”

“Groupies again?” he muttered.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing, babe. Nothing.”

“And stop calling me babe and honey and sweetheart.”

He grinned, as if—yep—he was getting to her.

He was, but that was irrelevant.

“Are you involved with anyone? A relationship, I mean?” Another of those disarming, out-of-the-blue questions.

“No. Nothing steady.”

“Good.”

Good? What did that mean? It was not good with regard to him. Whether she had a boyfriend, or lover, shouldn’t concern him in any way.

“And you?” she asked. Jeesh! Her brain must be splintering apart to be continuing this line of conversation.

He shook his head.

And she thought, “good.”

“I’ve had lots of women—”

“No kidding.”

“Would you let me finish, Ms. Smart-ass? I’ve had lots of women . . . well, not lots . . . but enough.”

She barely restrained a sarcastic remark.

“But none of them ever lasted more than a few months. I never even lived with a woman. I certainly never loved any of them . . . not like I . . .”

He let his words trail off, and Reba just knew that the reason was because he wasn’t sure what tense to use. Was it “not like I loved you?” Or “not like I love you?”

Not that it mattered.

“I told you that I wasn’t going to discuss this, and I meant it.” She stood up abruptly and yanked her hand out of his. “Golly, it’s hot in here. Move, so I can take off my blasted Santa suit.” Enough of hiding behind this disguise. If she didn’t cool down soon, she was going to have a stroke, or something. Probably a hormone meltdown.

Sam stared at Reba for several long moments. He was about to resist her order, but then, a good soldier knew how to pick his battles.

“Act calm. Be in control. Never show emotion,” he murmured the mantra under his breath.

He’d made some progress with Reba tonight. Best he step back and let her assimilate everything that had been said and the emotions that still sizzled between them. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stop . . . for now. But I’m not going away, Reba. We have things that need to be cleared up.”

“Like what, Sam?”

“Like why I never came back? Like why you got married? Like where we go from here?”

Before she had a chance to make some wiseacre comment about there being a snowball’s chance in hell that they were going anywhere together, he stood up next to her, gave her a quick peck on the mouth before she had a chance to belt him a good one, then moved to the half-empty bench seat across the aisle. The window side of the seat was piled high with boxes of candy canes. All around him he heard people speaking in the deep Maine burr that was at once familiar, and oddly soothing to him.

Reba was already peeling off the Santa suit, as if it were on fire. He felt a little hot himself, but his body heat emanated from an entirely different source. Hey, maybe Reba’s heat was the same as his. Hmmmm. How to capitalize on that?

“Would you like a little refreshment?” an elderly voice asked him. Actually, the offer was made by two elderly voices. One held a tray filled with paper cups of egg nog, and the other a tray of sliced fruitcake. It was the spinster twins, Maggie and Meg MacClaren. Their matching, perfectly coifed pinkish blond hairdos never seemed to lose their old-fashioned deep waves. They reminded everyone of those two elderly Baldwin sisters on
The Waltons
.

Since neither fruitcake or eggnog were his personal favorite, and besides, they’d just eaten dinner, if it could be called that, at the homeless shelter in Burlington, he shook his head, hard.

“That was a great show you ladies put on today.”

Both sisters beamed.

“Well, thank you, Sam. I was most pleased by the reception Sister and I got for our reading of
A Christmas Carol
. I swear I saw a tear in the eye of that incorrigible lad . . . the one with orange spiked hair,” Maggie said in her refined, soft-spoken voice. She leaned down and pressed her parchment-like skin next to his for a quick air-kiss.

Maggie and Meg were about five-foot tall, and tiny . . . and smart as whips. At their advanced age, they were better known to the general public as Dr. Maggie and Dr. Meg. Former Harvard professors of anthropology, they had developed a reputation late in life with their outrageous non-fiction books related to sex and aging . . . sort of a combination Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Margaret Mead. Although retired from teaching and the talk show circuits, they were still amazingly active. In fact, their most recent effort,
Super Sex After Seventy
, hit the NYT list for several weeks last year. The year before they had a runaway bestseller with,
Viagra: Why Is Grandma Smiling
?

“Would you like a little advice?” Dr. Meg offered then.

“About sex?” he choked out.

Reba, who was tossing pillows into a storage bin behind her seat, made a choking sound as well.

“No, dear, not about sex,” Dr. Meg said with a soft laugh. “About love.” But then, she quickly added, “Unless you need advice about sex.”

“I could recommend a book,” Dr. Maggie offered.

“Uh, I think I’ll pass for now,” he said, well aware that his face was flaming. “Maybe later.”

“Maybe later,” Reba scoffed, once the sisters moved back up the aisle, offering their refreshments to others on the bus.

He was about to tell Reba to be careful, or he would sic the elderly sex experts on her, but the words died in his throat.

Because now—
Holy hell, now
—Reba in a black turtleneck and a pair of tight black jeans was in the aisle, bent over at the waist, tying a pair of athletic shoes.

There were some things a woman should never do in front of a full-blooded male. At the top of the list was bending over in tight black jeans.

He wouldn’t even bother trying to resist the temptation. Nosiree! He snaked a hand out and pinched her on the ass.

“Eeekkk!” Reba shrieked, jerking upright and pivoting on her heels to confront her attacker. “You jerk! I could have had a heart attack, you scared me so bad.”

“Not to worry, sweetheart, I’m a certified EMT. You oughta see my killer technique for cardiovascular resuscitation?”