Christmas at Twilight (3 page)

“Ben, sit back down and put your seat belt on,” she cautioned. “Mommy's driving.”

But her son had already summoned Santa and he wasn't sitting down for anything. Resigned, Meredith put down the window so he could talk to Santa.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” Santa exclaimed, holding his plump belly and strolling up to Ben's side of the minivan. “And who do we have here?”

“It's me, Santa.” Ben's voice wobbled. “Dontcha 'member me? We moveded again.” He leaned over the seat to pat Meredith's shoulder. “Mommy, you said Santa would still remember me when we moveded.”

“Of course I remember you,” Santa recovered quickly. “But you've grown so big I almost didn't recognize you.”

Ben wriggled like a happy puppy. “Santa, pwease, pwease, pwease bring me a real Thomas the Train. The kind you ride on. Pwease, pwease, pwease.”

Meredith winced, prayed that Santa didn't make any promises she couldn't back up. The Thomas the Train riding toy Ben wanted cost a hundred dollars. Money she simply didn't have to spend.

“Have you been a good boy?” Santa asked.

Ben's head bobbed.

Kimmie undid the buckle of her car seat so that she could lean across Ben. “Where's my mommy? My mommy is suppossta to be with you. Where is she?”

Santa shot Meredith a helpless look.

“Kimmie, sweetie, you and Ben both get back in your car seats,” Meredith said, hoping to derail her.

“Canna have some candy?” Ben held out a hand.

“What do you say?” Meredith prompted.

“Pwease canna have some candy?” Ben pressed palms together like he was praying.

“Santa, where's my mommy?” Kimmie wailed.

“Isn't that your mommy driving the car?” Santa asked.

“No,” Ben said. “It's
my
mommy.”

“You two aren't brother and sister?” Santa teased. “You look so much alike.”

“No,” Ben said proudly, and hugged Kimmie around the neck. “But we're twins.”

Meredith smiled. Lately, they had taken to calling themselves twins and even asked to be dressed alike.

“Twins, huh?” Santa winked at Meredith. “Well, I think that calls for two pieces of candy apiece.” He produced four fun-sized chocolate bars from his pocket. “But let's give them to Mommy to keep them until after you've had supper.”

“She's not my mommy.” Kimmie sighed.

“But she's taking care of you, right?” Santa smiled.

Kimmie nodded.

“Thank you,” Meredith told Santa, and accepted the candy. The other drivers behind her had been very patient, but she was holding up traffic. “Get back in your car seats, kids. The sooner we get home, the sooner we can have dinner and the sooner you can have the chocolates for desserts.”

The kids climbed back into their car seats and they waved good-bye to Santa, and Meredith took off.

“He never did tell me where my mommy is,” Kimmie murmured sadly.

She studied the forlorn child in the rearview mirror. Her sweet blue eyes misted with tears, yanking Meredith's heart right out of her chest. This couldn't go on for much longer. She was going to have to do something about Ashley's disappearing act.

“Don't worry,” Ben told Kimmie. “I'll share my mommy with you.”

The children strained against their seat belts to hug each other.

Meredith made a fist and laid it across her chest. As soon as she got the kids to bed, she was going looking for Ashley's brother's contact information. She'd call Flynn first and ask what his name was and if she knew how to get in touch with him.

She took Highway 51 and drove north out of town. They lived in a middle-class community snuggled on the banks of the Brazos River. Stately oaks lined the streets, bare of leaves this time of year. The majority of houses were decked out for Christmas. Peppermint candy canes graced walkways. Nativity scenes sprawled across lawns. Painted plywood cutouts of gingerbread houses, snowmen, and Santa Clauses topped roofs

Ashley's home was the last house on a street that ended the development. Beyond the neighborhood's confines, fenced ranchland stretched to the right and the river to the left.

When Meredith first moved in, she'd been nervous about living on the waterfront with a four-year-old, especially since she had never learned to swim. But it was cold weather and Ben hadn't shown the slightest interest in the river. They would be gone before summer anyway. In the meantime, she'd lectured him on staying away from the water, and never allowed him to go outside without her.

The kids were chattering about Santa, and her thoughts wandered back to her dilemma. How would she explain the situation to Ashley's brother? Obviously, he wasn't very close to his sister. Ashley had never once mentioned him.

Preoccupied, she was almost to the house before she spotted the pickup truck parked in the driveway.

A pickup she did not recognize. It was big and black and shiny new, an aggressive Dodge Ram tandem axle. The silver ram's head emblem on the tailgate glared at her.

Meredith gasped and turned quickly, taking the circular road that led her back to the entrance of the housing development, blood sprinting through her veins.

Was it
him
?

She hated to even think
his
name for fear it would conjure him up, like Beetlejuice. She had been so careful. Moving every six months. Changing her hairstyle and color with every move. How had he found them again?

Meredith thought about the .40-caliber Colt Defender she kept stashed underneath her bed in a lockbox. Fat lot of good it did now.

Damn her. She thought she'd finally lost him in the move to Texas. How had she allowed herself to become so complacent? The son of a bitch was as persistent as Michael Myers and twice as mean. She should have killed him when she had the chance.

Ben whipped his head around. “Hey, Mommy, you passted our house.”

“We're taking a little detour, honey.” She struggled to keep the panic from her voice, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles numbed.

Calm down. She had to calm down. After everything they'd been through, Ben easily picked up on her distress. Thankfully, her son didn't question her, and he settled back in his car seat.

What now? Where was she going to go? Not the police. She couldn't go to the police. There was a warrant out for her arrest.

Maybe she was overreacting. She'd be the first to admit that her danger receptors were tuned high. What if it wasn't
him
? What if it was Ashley back from Acapulco and her boyfriend had given her a ride home? Or what if it was someone else entirely?

“Mommy, Mom, I'm hungry,” Ben whined.

“I have to tinkle,” Kimmie said in an urgent tone that meant,
Right now
.

Her mind spun in circles, going down the drain. Fight it. She had to fight the panic.

Mrs. Densmore was standing on the curb taking mail from her letterbox. Dotty Mae was at least eighty, but Meredith knew her from the book club, and she had to get the kids to safety. Now. She pulled up to the elderly woman, and rolled down her window.

“Good afternoon,” Dotty Mae said brightly.

“I hate to trouble you, Mrs. Densmore,” Meredith said, peering into the side-view mirrors to make sure the driver of the black Dodge Ram hadn't come after her. “But I've locked myself out of the house and Kimmie needs to go to the bathroom.”

“Why of course, sweetie, you come on in.” Dotty Mae beamed.

“Could I also trouble you to keep an eye on them while I wait for the locksmith?” she lied. Almost five years on the run had turned her into a pretty good liar.

“Absolutely.”

“Thank you, thank you so much.”

Meredith killed the engine and helped the kids out, all the while tossing furtive glances over her shoulder. “Go with Mrs. Densmore. She'll take you to the restroom.”

“But I'm hungry,” Ben protested.

Dotty Mae laid a comforting hand on Meredith's shoulder. “Don't you worry one bit about these little ones. I know what it's like to be a harried young mother. I'll give them a snack. Can they have peanut butter?”

“Peanut butter is fine, yes. Thank you again.”

Kimmie was hopping around with her knees pressed together. “Tinkle, tinkle!”

“Right this way.” Putting a palm to each small back, Dotty Mae ushered the children up the walkway into her house.

Meredith jumped into the minivan and drove around the neighborhood again. Her heart was pushing her blood through her ears so hot and fast she could barely hear. As she neared the house again, she slowed the van to a crawl.

The black pickup was still there.

An icy chill licked the back of her neck and her stomach pitched like a skiff in a squall.
License number. Memorize the license number.

And do what with the information?

She didn't know, but she had to do something proactive. Just as she passed the house a second time, the front door opened and her heart literally stopped for a full second.

Omigod, omigod. Same height. Same muscular build. Same dark brown hair.

But the man coming out onto the porch was not
him.

Instantly, spent adrenaline flooded her body, leaving her shaking so hard she wondered if she was having a seizure. Vaguely, she realized she was still in motion, her front tires had left the pavement, and a white, split-rail wooden fence lay directly in front of her.

She jammed on the brake just as she hit the fence.

The man looked startled, and came running toward her.

Desperately, Meredith slammed the minivan into reverse, but he was standing directly behind her. If she backed up, she'd run over him.

What if he was a hired gun? He looked as if he could be a hired gun. She had to get out of here.

Back over him if you have to.

But what if he wasn't a hired killer? Odds were that he wasn't.

She could keep driving forward and crash through the fence, but then she'd end up in the river.

He was coming up fast on her side of the minivan. Self-preservation warred with common sense. What to do? What to do?

Meredith slung the van into park, grabbed her purse from the passenger seat, dug through it, and found the canister of pepper spray at the same time he opened her car door.

She was so jacked up on adrenaline that she couldn't think straight and there he was, big and looming and dangerous, not saying a single word.

Without hesitating, she pointed the nozzle in his face and sprayed.

F
or a fraction of a second, Hutch took the pepper spray in the face like the Delta Force operator he was. He grunted mildly, blinked, and planted his feet. After all, he had been through the Confidence Chamber in basic training, where a solider went into the chamber with his classmates and they put on gas masks, and then the drill instructor unleashed a tear-gas tablet. In order to pass the drill, he'd been required to rip off his mask, throw it in a trash can, and recite his full name, rank, and service number.

But that was tear gas. Compared to this, tear gas was easy as a hot shower. This was something else entirely.

The inflammatory agent hit him full bore.

Brilliant pain exploded in his nostrils, singeing his mucous membranes. Vivid red agony stabbed his eyes, instantly swelling them shut. His throat—which he only thought was pretty damn useless lately—seized up. His skin burned as if a million fire ants were stinging him in unison. An overwhelming urge to rub his face gripped him, but he knew that doing so would only make things worse.

He dropped to his knees, and through the pain was barely aware of voices, and people surrounding him. They were talking, but his ears rang so loudly he couldn't understand what they were saying.

First mute, now blind and deaf. Move over, Helen Keller.

His chest heaved and he made a noise like a wounded wildebeest. Tears poured from his puffed-up eyes, a torrent of liquid streamed down his cheeks. He coughed, gagged, and inhaled a big mouthful of pepper-tainted air that triggered more coughing.

“Water,” a man said. “We need to get him inside and get his eyes rinsed out with water, immediately.”

Hands went around him, helping him up. His muscles twitched and quivered, marshalling to fight the potent chemicals flaming through his nerve endings. He staggered, stumbled, slumped heavily against someone.

A female someone. Soft and pliant.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered in his right ear. “I thought you were trying to harm me.”

Aw, this must be the driver of the minivan that had crashed into his fence. He wanted to ask her if she was okay, but he couldn't speak, and even if he could, he was too busy trying to catch his breath to forgive her for pepper-spraying him.

“This way.” Her slender arm went around his waist.

Someone else had hold of Hutch's left hand—the hand missing an index finger—and was guiding him forward. Was it the man who'd suggested washing his eyes out with water? The ringing in his ears lessened and he could hear other voices. He recognized some of them. Friends and neighbors he hadn't spoken to since he'd left on his last deployment.

His final deployment, as it turned out.

“Lift your feet up if you can,” the woman said, one of her hands on his right elbow, the other still pressed against his lower back. “We're going over the curb.”

Blindly, he lifted his leg, pawing at the ground like a high-stepping pony until he made contact with the curb. The trip to the house seemed like a thousand miles, each step jarring painfully.

How long did this shit last? He felt as if a heavyweight-boxing champ fist-clutching Morgua Scorpions had beat the hell out of him in a back alley.

The woman guided him up onto the porch and he heard the door creak open. She had the softest voice and a gentle touch that conflicted with the aggressive way she pepper-sprayed him.

No shrinking violet. This gal was tough.

The aching in his lungs lessened and he was finally able to suck in a full breath of air. Bad idea. A fresh burn seared all the way down.

“I'll help you get him into the bathroom,” the man said.

Hutch tried to pry his eyes open to see who was talking, but nothing doing. The second he opened his eyes, the stinging intensified and his eyelids involuntarily shuttered back down.

A bumping noise, the scrape of chair legs against hardwood.

He was weaker than he should be. That damn two-month hospital stay had sucked the wind right out of his sails. Maybe it was the medication. He'd stopped the benzos cold turkey even though Gupta had told him to taper off slowly. He wanted that crap out of his system.

Hutch reached out a hand, touched the wall, the wainscoting. He wanted to sit, but the woman put her knee against the back of his leg and nudged him forward. “Bathroom,” she explained.

Another door hinge creaked, the scuffling of feet. His. Hers. Theirs.

“How you doin', buddy?” the man asked, and clamped a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

Hell, no.
He nodded.

The woman released him.

Aw, where did she go?

Hutch heard the shower come on and he slumped against the wall, concentrated on pulling air into his lungs and tasted the oily heat of pepper.

“Bathroom isn't big enough for all three of us,” the man said.

“I've got it from here, Jesse. Thank you.” The woman's voice sounded as shaky as Hutch's kneecaps.

The man must be Jesse Calloway. Jesse had been released from Huntsville penitentiary four years ago, after serving ten years for a crime he had not committed, and had married Hutch's next-door neighbor, Flynn MacGregor. Hutch had even attended their wedding. When he was on leave last Christmas, Jesse and Flynn had been renting a small house in downtown Twilight, and they'd been expecting their first child. They must have moved into Flynn's family home across the street.

But Hutch was too knotted up with misery to give his neighbors more than a fleeting thought.

“You sure?” Jesse asked the woman. “Can you handle him?”

“I've got him, if you could just check on Ben and Kimmie for me. I left them with Dotty Mae and I know two four-year-olds can be a handful for me, much less a senior citizen.”

“Sure thing,” Jesse said. “I'll get the kids and bring them over to our house. Flynn is picking Grace up from day care, but she'll be home any minute.”

Kimmie. His niece.

But who was Ben? And who was this woman? And where in the devil was Ashley?

The door clicked shut and Hutch could only assume that Jesse had closed it, leaving him alone in the small front bathroom with the woman he did not know and could not communicate with.

He forced his eyes open, blinked hard against the zinging sting. Everything was blurry, fuzzy. She was moving around, opening drawers, digging around underneath the cabinet for something. He could barely make out her silhouette before pain forced him to snap his eyes closed again. Underneath his boots the floor tiles seemed to shift.

Shit. Don't faint. You're Delta Force.

Was. He
was
Delta Force. Emphasis on past tense.

Still, that was no call to faint like a girl.

The woman came closer. He could feel her body heat. Feel her nervousness too.

She touched his left forearm with a gloved hand. But of course, she had to protect herself. That's what she'd been looking for in the cabinet. Medical gloves.

Through the blistering stench of peppery chemicals, his nose finally caught her scent. It was a lovely smell, talcum powder and sugar cookies and raspberry shampoo, and her sweet fragrance instantly soothed his excoriated senses.

She took him by the shoulders, maneuvered him around until his back was flat against the wall. He hated being backed into a corner, but he was in no position to protest or resist. One blast of that canister and she'd effectively rendered him helpless.

Dammit. He hated being helpless.

It had come to this. Would he ever be whole again?

He felt her hands at his chest. Unbuttoning. She was unbuttoning his shirt. He stiffened, pulled away from her.

“I don't like this any more than you do,” she said in the no-nonsense tone of voice that reminded him of military nurses. “But we have to get this contaminated clothing off you.”

He wanted to tell her that he could do it, but hey, he couldn't talk. And for another thing, it was all he could do not to topple over.

“I'm sorry I sprayed you,” she said. “But you did come storming out of my house.”

Your house? Lady, this is my house.
Who was she and what was she doing laying claim to his home?

“How was I to know you were Ashley's brother? For all I knew you were a burglar.”

She was just trying to justify her edgy trigger finger. Why did she have such an edgy trigger finger?

“To tell you the truth, I didn't even know Ashley had a brother until a few days ago.” She had already undone his second button, was working on to the third. “It's Brian, right? That's what Jesse told me your name was when you were out of it.”

Not since he was a kid. Hutch. Everyone called him Hutch.

“Jesse also said you're a captain in the Army and a war hero. Is that what happened to your finger and your . . .” Her voice hitched. “Throat? The wounds still look fresh.”

Yakety-yak. Was that all people in Twilight ever did? Talk. Gossip. Chat. Tittle-tattle. Chew the fat. Shoot the breeze. Open their gobs and spew?

“Jesse also said you were the nicest guy he ever met.”

Sorry, sweet cheeks, things change.
Hutch's shirt gaped open and he welcomed the hit of air against his chest.

She inhaled sharply, and her hand tensed on his arm before she dropped it to her side.

Ah. That was why she was gabbing. She was nervous. He scared her.

Scared maybe, but apparently undaunted. She reached underneath the waistband of his jeans to pluck out his shirttail, and in the process her fingers brushed against his skin.

Holy shit.

Despite that just a couple of minutes ago, he'd taken pepper spray to the face. Despite that he'd been through hell and back these last few months, losing his finger, his voice, his career, and his entire team. Despite that he had no idea what the woman looked like other than that split-second glimpse of a short, black, wavy hair and a startled, wide-eyed face when he'd peered into the window of her minivan before she'd brought the hammer down on him. The ludicrous happened.

Hutch got hard.

M
eredith tried not to look at him. For one thing, it hurt clean to her bones to see how badly she'd messed him up. His face was violent crimson, his eyes swollen, his breathing shallow and jagged.

For another thing, he was more magnificently built than any man she'd ever seen, and she'd seen a lot of people naked. There was no softness to him. Not a morsel of fat. He was rock sinew, hard bone. Every muscle was honed and delineated. Where was he when she was in nursing school learning the musculoskeletal system? What a gorgeous teaching aid he would have made.

No time for admiration. She had to get these clothes off, get him in the shower and that pepper spray washed off him. Immediately.

Besides, she had zero desire to check him out. She'd written off sex five years ago and hadn't been the slightest bit interested in rekindling those primitive and unwanted urges.

Her body, however, disagreed. When she peeled off his shirt and got a good look at his hard, masculine form, something stupidly feminine inside her whispered,
Woo-whew.

Alarmed by her response, she dropped her hand and her gaze.

He had an erection.

For a fraction of a second pure panic swept through her, and her mind, alert and trained for danger, thought of the pepper spray and the gun underneath her bed. But then the inner calmness she'd spent the last five years cultivating through yoga and meditation and time spent in nature, the inner calmness that had escaped her when this man had lumbered up to her minivan, whispered in her ear.

Listen to your instincts. Hear your intuition. Ignore the chattering monkey mind.

She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, felt her muscles loosen.

Instinct told her that he was not going to harm her. She knew it in her core. If she hadn't, she would never have come in here with him. It surprised her, this knowing, because he was rather frightening to look at. But if the past had taught her anything it was that looks could be deceiving.

But the brain was hard to ignore or defy, even if she had learned that intellectual reasoning could lead her astray when her heart and gut never had. Unfortunately, she didn't always know how to listen.

Meredith swallowed and stepped back.

Honestly, his hard-on wasn't the real issue. She understood that men couldn't always control their erections. She had been undressing him. It was a normal biological response. She got that. It might even be some kind of bizarre physiological reaction to the pepper spray.

No, it wasn't the involuntary erection that shocked her as much as it was his potent virility and her unexpected attraction to him. Five years. She hadn't wanted a man in five years.

Vulnerable. She was so damn vulnerable right now.

Then again, so was he. Debilitated not only by her pepper spray, but by combat as well. The index finger of his left hand was missing and his neck was puckered with dark pink scars.

Guilt took hold of her. He was in pain because she was hypervigilant, consumed by fear, and had overreacted. But what else could she have done? She'd seen a stranger coming out of the place where she lived.

Overkill.

Blasting him with the pepper spray had been overkill. She'd seen it on the wary faces of her neighbors as they'd gathered around identifying and vouching for him. She'd worked herself into a panic when she'd seen the black pickup truck, imagining that her stalker had found them again, and primal fear had eclipsed everything else.

He didn't apologize for the erection, but he did place a strategic hand over his crotch and turn his face from her, clearly embarrassed.

“Most of the pepper spray went on your shirt,” she said. “You can probably leave your pants on for the shower. Can you get out of your shoes?”

He nodded, bent over to untie his shoelaces, but immediately lost his balance and crashed heavily against the wall.