Kathleen Creighton - One Christmas Knight

He knew she was waiting for him to go. He knew he ought to. But that new voice inside him had other ideas, and he wasn’t all that surprised to hear himself say, with a firm, no-nonsense shake of his head, “I’m gonna just stay and make sure you’re settled before I go.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Her voice sounded breathy. “I’ll be all right now. Honest.”

Honest… She sounded just like a little girl when she said that, which made him smile. “Ma‘am,” he said as he put his hands on her shoulders, “I don’t intend on goin’ anywhere until I know you’re resting, y’hear? Just lie right on down there, now.” And as gently as he knew how, he eased her over so she was lying on her side with her knees pulled up against her belly and her head resting on her folded-up arm. “That’s the way. There you go. How’s that?”

She flashed him one bright, angry look that cheered him considerably, then closed her eyes without answering. He could tell by the way she was breathing through her nose-in slow, deep breaths-that she was hurting.

It came to him suddenly, gleaned from memories of suffering through two pregnancies with J.J.’s mama, what her problem might be. “Your back achin’?” he asked, sitting beside her on the very edge of the bed. She nodded, just too plain miserable to talk. “Yeah…” he said softly. “That’s what I thought.”

He put his hand on her shoulder, overcoming a powerful urge to reach beyond it, just to smooth the hair back from her face. With that tenderness simmering inside him, he said, “Ma‘am, why don’t you turn over on your other side? What I’m gon’ do is rub your back a little. Make you feel a whole lot better, help you relax. Okay? Come on, now… Roll on over.”

Instead of doing what he’d told her, she suddenly squinched up her face without opening her eyes, as if she’d felt a sharp pain, and said in a sulky voice, “Do you have to keep calling me ma’am?”

That made him grin, but her eyes were closed so he didn’t have to worry about her seeing it, and thanks to all those phone conversations with J.J. he knew how to keep it from showing up in his voice. “Sorry about that,” he said, solemn as a judge. “I don’t mean anythin’ personal by it. It’s just a habit-shoot, it’s probably in my genes.”

“Well, it makes me feel really old.”

Now he did chuckle, resisting again the urge to touch her face, just to run his fingertips lightly across the ivory curve of her forehead, which, as far as he could see, in spite of her concern, was completely unmarred by any wrinkles. “You have to understand, it’s got nothin’ to do with how old you are, just the fact that you’re female.”

Opening her eyes about halfway, she studied him from under her lashes. “You call your mom ma’am?”

“Oh, you bet.”

“Uh-hmm. Your sister?”

“Well, now…”

“Girlfriend?”

He wanted to laugh, now that he thought he knew where she was headed. “No, don’t believe I would-if I had one.”

She chewed on that for a moment or two, then said slowly, “The waitress in there-you called her ma’am. Would you have done that if she was nineteen?”

“Sure would. Yes, ma’am.”

“So…it’s a matter of respect.” She said it like, “Aha!”

“That’s right.” But he was beginning to feel just a little uneasy, wondering if he knew after all what she was getting at.

“So…you don’t respect your sister or your girlfriend?”

Well, she had him there. He rubbed the back of his neck while he thought about it, then said, “It’s kind of hard to explain-especially since I don’t believe I was ever called upon to try to before. You grow up in the South, it’s just somethin’ you take for granted, like grits for breakfast. But I guess what it is, it’s respect. But it’s more like-it’s formal, you know? You don’t use it when it’s personal, like with your friends, or your close kin-” he paused to smile before he said it “-unless they’re older.”

“Let me get this straight.” A little pleat of concentration puckered the skin between her eyebrows, but her voice had grown drowsy and he could see that the warmth in the truck, the lateness of the hour and her tiredness were beginning to have their way with her. “You can’t stop calling me ma’am because you don’t know me well enough.”

“Yeah, I guess that’d be about right.”

“But you know me well enough to rub my back?”

So that was it. Again that tenderness wafted through him like a warm breeze over damp skin, stirring shivers of laughter that felt like goose bumps inside. Keeping it soft so as not to rile her he murmured, “Okay, Marybell, I’ll make you a deat-you quit arguin’ and roll on over there, and I’ll quit callin’ you ma’am. How’s that? Deal?”

“Deal,” she whispered.

It was only after he’d helped her through the ponderous process of rolling over and she was once more settled on her side, this time facing away from him, that a tiny echo in her head said incredulously, Marybell?

But then she felt the warm weight of his hand on her lower back, on the exact spot that ached so awfully, and a firm, circling pressure that felt so wonderful she forgot everything else; so wonderful she almost wept with the sheer relief it brought her.

“Oh…God,” she groaned, “how did you know?”

Jimmy Joe’s voice was soft and oddly muffled, as if she were hearing him through a layer of fur. “Oh, I’ve done this for J.J.’s mama a time or two. It’s been awhile, but I guess you don’t forget how.”

“Lucky,” Mirabella muttered with a sigh. “How’d I get through eight months without you?”

A chuckle undulated along her auditory nerves like ripples in black velvet.

“You got one of those new anteaters? Man, that is one ugly truck. ” “Bet you wish you had one as ugly. ”

I-40-New Mexico

Mirabella was hearing voices. Mostly men’s voices, but now and then a woman’s, too-strange voices, mumbly and scratchy at the same time, sometimes far away and crackly, other times loud and clear, as if whoever it was talking was standing right next to her. At first she ignored them, hearing but not really registering the sounds, the way you do when you fall asleep with the TV or radio on. Gradually, though, words began to filter into her consciousness, then string together in a way that made some kind of sense.

“East a’ Tucumcari.”

“Couple a‘ county mounties come through here ’while ago with their lights on. Don‘ know where they was goin, but they was hurryin’. ”

“Dry and dusty to the Texas line.”

“They gonna open ‘er up sometime fore Christmas, or what?”

“Uh…they’re sayin‘ maybe noon, that’s what I heard.”

“One helluva mess. Got more’n a hunnerd accidents ‘tween here and Amarillo. Got rigs off to the side, four-wheelers ever’where… ”

“Where’n hell they keepin‘ the snowplows?”

“Ah, hell, Texas don’t waste snowplows on the Panhandle…”

Along with a return of familiar discomforts, full awareness brought the realization that, yes, she was in a bed in an honest-to-God truck, a huge blue eighteen-wheeler belonging to one Jimmy Joe Starr, a genuine Georgia redneck who happened to have healing hands and dimples and a smile like an angel’s, assuming the angel spoke with a Southern accent and looked like a young Robert Redford.

And what she was listening to wasn’t a TV, but a CB radio. Which meant, since she hadn’t heard a peep out of it last night, that Jimmy Joe must have turned it on. And since she couldn’t imagine he would turn it on without a reason, that meant he must be listening to it. Out there, right now. He was here in the truck with her, just beyond the curtain.

That thought zapped through her with a tingle that must have been adrenaline, because she felt the way you do when you’ve been jolted awake too suddenly-weak and trembly, heart beating way too fast. She was lying there blinking, thinking about that, trying to make sense of it and feeling scared and disoriented, when the reason for all her inner turmoil stuck his hand through the crack at the edge of the curtain and knocked on the side of the sleeper.

“Hey,” he called softly, “you awake in there?”

“Yeah, I’m up,” she called back in a husky, too-eager voice that betrayed that for the lie it was, struggling to get her feet around so she could at least make a stab at sitting up.

“Mornin’.” The curtain was pulled back and Jimmy Joe’s face appeared like a ray of sunshine. “How you doin’?”

“Okay,” she responded airlessly; in her present position even sarcasm was beyond her.

He drew a small plastic bottle from a pocket in the sleeveless, down-filled nylon vest he was wearing over his Georgia Bulldogs sweatshirt and held it out to her. “Thought you could do with an eye-opener. Get your blood sugar pumpin’.” He was wearing his heart-melting smile, which Mirabella, not being a morning person even at the best of times, was in no mood to appreciate.

“I don’t know where I’d put it,” she muttered, eyeing the orange juice with revulsion. She felt like a dead whale that had lain out in the sun too long-in other words just about ready to explode. Plus she’d slept with her contacts in, so her eyes felt like two tennis balls, and her tongue was so furry she knew she must have a horrendous case of morning breath. The last thing she wanted was a sexy, adorable guy anywhere within ten yards of her, so she was not thrilled when Jimmy Joe plunked himself down beside her, completely ignoring warning signs that were usually sufficient to send close family members diving for the nearest cover.

“Just a sip,” he said, as if he were addressing a three-year old. “Then I’ll walk you in so you can wash up, if you want. Come on, now-upsy-daisy.”

How does he do it? she wondered as, groaning, she allowed him to hoist her upright. Why do I let him do it-treat me like a contrary child, or worse, a helpless female? In her former life she would have flayed alive any man, no matter how attractive and charming, who’d dared to try such tactics with her. She’d spent most of her life perfecting the defenses and signals to ensure that those who did try were few and far between. So what was it about this man?