Mistletoe Miracles Read online

  He’d never thought about marriage before. It was just something in the far future. Usually by the fourth date, he was making a list of why he’d never want to spend the rest of his life with a woman. He’d had a few serious girlfriends from time to time. The kind where he’d had to remember birthdays and get Christmas presents, but the ladies always drifted away.

  Maybe it would be easier to come up with what he didn’t want. It usually took him about three months to add a never-want-to-marry-this-kind-of-woman to his list.

  Griff wrote likes children. The Franklin sisters might like that. And tall. Short women made him nervous.

  Glancing up, he saw them both waiting, so he handed over his list. He had the essentials. That should get them started.

  Rose finally stood and glared down at him. “We’ll think it over, Mr. Holloway, but don’t get your hopes up. Women have careers today. They don’t always want to live on a ranch half an hour from town. You three men are good-looking enough, but I’m guessing none of you knows the first thing about how to treat a woman.”

  Griffin stood and grabbed his hat. Hell, she was right. Even if they hooked one bride, she probably wouldn’t stay. The only woman on the ranch was Mamie, and she only stayed because they paid her.

  But if a bride did stay, until spring anyway, the ranch would have survived another winter. He’d settle for that. Even help her pack if the marriage didn’t work out. After all, marriage was a percentage game. The odds were low on finding a keeper, but he was willing to roll the dice.

  He raised his head and stared at the two women twice his age. “You’re right. I don’t know much about women. But I’m willing to learn.”

  Rose stared at him a full minute, then nodded once. “All right, we will do our best. First, all three of you make a list of the last five women you’ve dated and text it to us. We’ll get the whiteboards out and start our list. We’ll expect you all three back at eight.”

  Daisy nodded her agreement to Rose’s plan. “It won’t be easy, but we’ll give you a crash course.” She giggled. “And tell Cooper to be sure and wear clothes. That afternoon he streaked past the ladies book club still haunts me.”

  “He was five,” Griffin commented.

  Neither sister acted as if they’d heard him, so he nodded and stood to leave, more confused than when he’d walked in. The sisters seemed to have forgotten about him. They were busy pulling a six-foot-wide whiteboard out of the closet.

  As he walked out, Charlie Brown squeaked, “Trick or treat.”

  Griffin knocked the stuffed toy backward, but Charlie didn’t tumble. He just rocked and settled back into place. Swearing, Griffin fought down the urge to take another swing. If he couldn’t put up with a stuffed Charlie Brown, what hope did he have at tolerating a real wife?

  As he turned into the foyer, he heard Rose order, “Eight o’clock sharp. And tell your brothers to bring a detailed list of exactly what they’re looking for.”

  Daisy giggled and added, “There will be homework after our first session.”

  He stepped into the autumn air and took a deep breath. How was it possible to fall into hell without dying? If there was going to be homework, the chances were good that there would also be more sessions. Great.

  There had to be an easier way. Maybe he should drive over to Lubbock and sell all nine pints of his blood. That and both kidneys might be enough.

  No, that wouldn’t work. The Franklins would follow him into the afterlife and kill him for standing them up. He’d heard rumors that they barely tolerated men. If he crossed them, there was no telling what trouble the two might cause.

  All the Holloway men would show up tonight even if he had to drag Elliot and Cooper. Griffin grinned. The sisters would probably be surprised when they discovered he was the easiest one to get along with.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Midnight Crossing

  JAXSON O’GRADY LEANED FORWARD, his head resting on his arm atop the workbench. He wasn’t asleep. He couldn’t sleep until he knew the dog was going to make it.

  His fingers lightly stroked Buddy’s neck. The collie hadn’t moved for hours, but they were both covered by a wool blanket. Buddy’s breathing seemed fast and shallow. Jaxson figured the pup was about half-grown. Paws too big for his legs right now. But, if he lived, Buddy would be a beautiful dog, scars and all.

  Funny, he couldn’t think of a single person he’d worried about as much as he’d worried over this tossed-away pup. He’d thought of starting up the Jeep and taking him into town to the vet, but he had no claim to the dog. What if whoever threw him away tried to take him back so they could finish the job?

  Jax sat up for the tenth time and checked Buddy’s wounds. The bleeding had stopped. He’d made a splint for the leg and it didn’t seemed to be bothering the dog. If he lived, it would be a while before he’d heal and there was no guarantee he wouldn’t have a limp.

  As the sun came up, Jax stood, thinking he’d fry up bacon for breakfast. If the dog would eat a little, that would be a good sign.

  When he turned to leave, Buddy whimpered and opened his sad eyes.

  “All right, boy, you’re coming with me.”

  Jax wrapped the blanket he’d covered Buddy with and carefully carried the dog into the two-room cabin. “You’re my first guest that isn’t related to me. Sometimes I think the O’Grady clan has a raffle every month to see which one will come out here to check on me. They bring the mail, like I care, and more food than I could ever eat, even though I tell them every month that I can drive into town to buy groceries.”

  He lowered the dog to the floor beside a fireplace still warmed by dying coals. “If I see them coming, I act like I’m not home. I’d appreciate if you’d do the same.”

  As Jax cooked breakfast for two, he told Buddy about every one of his relatives. The dog just watched him moving around, showing far more interest in the bacon than the cousins.

  When Jax sat down on the hearth with two plates, Buddy managed to raise his head.

  “Join me for breakfast, boy. I seem to have cooked far more than I can eat.”

  Buddy leaned his head just a little to the right.

  “You’ve figured me out, haven’t you?” Jax smiled. “I guess it’s about time I had a little company. As long as you don’t snore, you’re welcome to stay.” Looking around the open room, he added, “I can kind of see why no one visits. I tossed out the old furniture. All I needed was a desk for my computer and a bed in the other room to sleep.”

  One desk. One chair. No place for company to sit. Simple living made for one. He liked his basic decorating. He’d built shelves on every bit of wall space. Paperbacks, magazines and thick manuals mixed in with the books he’d used in every online course he’d taken.

  An hour after breakfast, Jax had read last week’s Crossroads paper to the dog. He slept through most of it but did seem to show some interest in the weather report.

  Jax patted Buddy and silently decided after two years of being alone, he was finally cracking up. Without much thought, he spread out on the floor next to the dog and was sound asleep in minutes.

  The dog laid his nose atop Jaxson’s hand and did the same.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Johnsons

  CAPTAIN JAMES WYATT JOHNSON walked away from the cargo plane at Sheppard Air Force Base near Wichita Falls, Texas. For once he didn’t look up to study the sky. He was too tired. He knew it would be dark soon, and he needed to find a hotel before the storm rumbling above hit.

  He wondered why the only part of his body still working seemed to be his legs. His brain was mush. He’d been on patrol three days without more than a few fifteen-minute naps when he should have been eating. Then he boarded a plane, thinking he’d sleep for twenty hours or so and let a few of the bruises he’d collected heal on the way back to the States.

  No chance. Bad weather, terrible food
and the fear of nightmares haunting him kept him awake. Now he was in the center of the US. He was safe. No one was after him. He’d done his job. Now all he had to do was find a bed and spend the next two weeks alternating between sleeping and eating.

  He picked up his rental car and heard the attendant say he should stay on the farm-to-market roads. There was a bad wreck on the interstate heading into Wichita Falls.

  If he’d been smart, he would have asked for directions to the nearest hotel. But within a few miles, the local roads would cross Interstate 287. Hotels along a major highway were probably within sight of one another.

  Wyatt didn’t bother to change into civilian clothes. He’d strip as soon as he got to the hotel, put the Do Not Disturb sign out and sleep around the clock. Ten minutes. That was about all he had to stay awake. Surely he’d find a hotel by then.

  The rain warped his view as he drove off base. The few streetlights fused like huge balls and then faded. He saw a gas station but didn’t recognize the tiny hotels until he’d passed them.

  No problem. The places near the bases were never quiet. He’d be in Wichita Falls in a few minutes. Dozens of hotels there.

  Following the attendant’s suggestion, Wyatt took a county road. Drive. Just drive. It didn’t matter if he turned right or left. He’d stop soon. How far apart could towns be? He was in Texas, not in the middle of nowhere.

  “Texas,” he said aloud. “Why the hell am I in Texas?”

  Talking to himself seemed as good an idea as any. No one was around and he couldn’t sing.

  Laughing at his poor attempt at humor, he answered his own question. “You’re in Texas because neither coast wants you home.”

  His words stung a bit, but he never hid from the truth. His folks in California hadn’t spoken to him since he dropped out of college ten years ago to join the army. They’d been divorcing; both had met a second, younger, soul mate. Neither wanted him around to remind them they were getting older and that they had been married once before.

  When he’d called from London twelve hours ago, his latest girlfriend told him she was engaged to a guy who dropped by more than once every six months. She added that her fiancé planned to beat him up, if he ever came to Maryland, for making her cry.

  Funny, when he was overseas, all he’d thought of was getting home. Now it looked safer to go back. He couldn’t think of one old friend that would put up with him for two weeks, and the thought of staying at a hotel the whole time was the definition of purgatory, but it was starting to look like his only choice.

  The last time he suggested staying over with his high school buddy Ryan in Tennessee, Ryan had said his wife was gunning for Wyatt because he’d broken her sister’s heart.

  Hell, Wyatt couldn’t even remember the sister’s name. She’d been a bridesmaid at Ryan’s wedding, Wyatt was pretty sure, and she’d stripped for him between the wedding dinner and the champagne toast. Then she left with one of the groomsmen before Wyatt had time to introduce himself.

  Wyatt rubbed his eyes, trying to make anything out in the rain besides a ribbon of black highway. If he didn’t find a hotel soon, he’d start remembering other states he didn’t need to stop in. Like Georgia and Washington. He made a great boyfriend, even fiancé, but once he was gone, women were not his priority and emails or letters or even a call seemed a waste of time. All he had to say was the same thing over and over again. Basically nothing.

  By the time he landed back stateside, the woman he’d left crying usually had a list of what was wrong with him, if she answered the door at all.

  Now and then, when he let himself, he pictured having a wife to come home to. Someone waiting. Someone who cared. Someone who’d smile when she saw him walk through the door. He’d step into a simple ordinary life. She’d cook the big meals his mother had never had time to. He’d mow the lawn and fix things around the house. They’d watch movies together and try restaurants with funny-sounding names. They would laugh and talk and watch sunsets, like that was something important to do. She’d be his calm in the storm.

  Fat chance of that ever happening. He kept driving, pushing through the rain.

  If possible, the storm got worse, and Wyatt swore he was the only one on the road. An hour passed, maybe more. He hit the steering wheel with his forehead, fighting sleep.

  He had to get home soon, and tonight home was any hotel with a vacancy sign still on. From the looks of it, there were no shoulders or rest stops. Nowhere to pull over. No sign of stations to swing into for directions.

  He pulled out his cell. No signal.

  The possibility of having to pretzel his body onto the back seat wasn’t appealing, but it was starting to look like his only choice.

  He shook his cell as if a few jolts might wake it up. Still nothing. Where was he? Maybe he’d finally found the one place he’d feared going. Nowhere. Deep down, he knew that was why he’d studied the stars as a kid, learned to map his way by the constellations. No matter what continent, what state, he always liked to know exactly where he was.

  Only tonight he had no map, no cell service, no stars.

  He had to push on. “Home,” he said as if that was a place to him. “Home.”

  Wyatt nodded off for only a few seconds and slid his car off the road into a line of poles holding up a barbed-wire fence. His forehead slammed hard into the steering wheel this time, but he barely felt the blow when his car bumped to a stop against a short tree with branches ten feet wide.

  He’d reached the breaking point. Without any thought, he grabbed his pack and climbed out. As long as he could hear the tap of his boots on the blacktop, he was heading somewhere, and that had to be better than the nowhere he was right now.

  The nights in boot camp when he’d been in training had prepared him for this. March, soldier. March. Numbness blanketed him. He didn’t feel the rain or the cold.

  March, soldier. March.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, the bright lights of Sheriff Jerry Cline’s patrol car passed beside the figure of a man walking down the center of a deserted county road.

  Sheriff Cline pulled alongside the soldier who looked more like a ghost from an old World War II movie than real. The vision didn’t stop moving or even look over; he just kept going, in slow motion, straight into the storm. The guy was big, over six feet and looked solid as a rock. The pack he carried had to weigh fifty or more pounds dry.

  The sheriff moved closer beside the soldier, taking in every detail, but the man ignored him.

  “You all right, Captain?” Cline yelled as he made out the bars on his collar.

  The stranger kept stomping, one boot in front of the other, seemingly unaware that he splashed mud with each step.

  The sheriff radioed in. “Thatcher, you close to the Holloway spread?”

  “Maverick Ranch?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a few miles out. You need help? Got a wreck?”

  “No,” Cline answered. “I got a man in an army uniform marching down the center of the road.”

  “He armed?”

  “Not that I can see, but from the size and look of him, if he fights, I wouldn’t come out the winner, and there’s no way I’m pulling a weapon on a soldier.”

  “I’ll be there in five.”

  The radio went dead, and Cline climbed out of the patrol car. He fell into step with the soldier. There was no law against walking down a road twenty miles from town, in the middle of a storm, carrying a full load of wet gear.

  “Where you heading, Captain?”

  “Home,” the soldier answered, without even looking toward the sheriff. “I got a wife waiting for me. I got to get home tonight. I missed watching the sunset with her.”

  Cline had a feeling the captain was talking to himself.

  A white pickup with the county sheriff’s seal on the driver’s door pulled up. Before th
e deputy could reach him, Sheriff Cline watched the soldier deflate like a huge blowup toy. He had no idea where the man had come from, but he knew the captain had given all he had trying to make it home.

  “Who is he?” the younger patrolman yelled as he ran toward Cline.

  “Captain Johnson, according to his name tag. He must have pushed as hard as he could, then passed out cold. That’s all I know. From the looks of it, he ran off the road about an hour ago, and he’s been walking through this rain ever since. Even with the pack and the storm, he’s crossed more ground than most joggers could have.”

  “Captain Johnson.” Thatcher smiled. “That could be the new drama teacher’s husband, I’m guessing. Her name’s Jamie Johnson, and she told the whole church last Sunday that her husband was off on assignments for the government. I reckon the army is part of the government. She said she never knows when he’ll be coming in. He’s got a top-secret job, and the few days she gets to be with him are usually times when she flies to meet him.” Thatcher looked down at the soldier. “He must be coming home to surprise her.”

  “You know a lot about the new teacher.” Sheriff Cline liked to stay out of people’s business if they weren’t breaking a law. Thatcher, on the other hand, seemed determined to know everyone in the county. Still in his twenties, he was on his way to serving first as a highway patrolman and then a Texas Ranger. At the rate he was going, he’d know everyone in the county before he got transferred to Austin.

  “I didn’t plan to know about him, Sheriff, but info just seems to fall into my lap.”

  “Could be because you talk to everyone.”

  Thatcher straightened and continued, “I was sitting next to Rose Franklin at the church supper. The old lady does like to talk.”

  The sheriff leaned down over the soldier’s crumpled body. One of his hands looked to be professionally bandaged, and a long dark bruise ran the length of his jaw. “Help me lift him in the back of your truck, and we’ll take him the last few miles to his home. It’s the least we can do.”