Kathleen Creighton - One Christmas Knight

“Thanks for the advice,” said Mirabella, who wasn’t in the habit of taking advice from anybody, especially men-not even cute ones with big brown eyes and dimples. Especially not really young cute ones with big brown eyes and dimples. “But I think I’ll just push on.”

She was thinking, Hey, guy, if you can make it through on 1-40, so can I.

From the look on his face, the trucker obviously didn’t think so, but Mirabella was used to seeing that look on men’s faces and, if anything, it only made her more determined to prove him wrong.

“Well, good luck, ma’am.” He was giving her his halffrowning, concerned look, but with more intensity this time. Enough to make Mirabella’s heart do that little skip again, which she really wished it wouldn’t. “You have a safe trip now-drive carefully.”

“Thanks,” said Mirabella crisply. “I plan to.”

“Westbound, what’s it look like back your way?” “Eastbound your front door’s lookin‘ dry and dusty all way back to the Texas line. Hammer day-yown. ”

1-40-New Mexico

As she pulled out of the travel-stop parking lot and back onto 1-40, Mirabella’s thoughts didn’t dwell on the cute blond trucker with the heart-stopping dimples. She was thinking about what lay ahead of her, and feeling not nearly as confident about it as she would have liked.

Not about the weather or the road conditions in Texas-the way she figured it, people must drive around in snowstorms all the time; otherwise, life would pretty much come to a screeching halt for half the year in the northern half of the country. Besides, she had more than enough confidence in her Lexus and in her own driving skills, and if worse came to worst, she could always pull into another truck stop and pick up a set of tire chains. No way was she going to let a little old blizzard keep her from getting to Pensacola in time for Pop’s Christmas.

No, what was worrying Mirabella was something a. lot smaller than a blizzard and probably a lot more common, too. Although she never liked to admit to being afraid of anything, lately she’d begun to notice a queasy feeling in her stomach whenever she thought-really thought-about this business of having a baby.

She’d had no doubts about it before. None at all. After all, she’d planned this pregnancy down to the last detail, and it wasn’t in her nature to second-guess herself. Besides, it had been fun, at first. There’d been the exhilaration of knowing she’d succeeded-not that she was accustomed to settling for anything less, or had ever really doubted for a minute that she would; but still, she’d been warned that it could take as many as ten or twelve tries, and she’d managed it in only three.

For a while after that, she’d kept it her own delicious secret. Never much of a reader, she’d devoured every baby magazine in the doctor’s-office waiting room, then had gone out and bought every book she could find on pregnancy and child care. Mirabella never did anything by halves. Thus informed and prepared, she’d been fascinated rather than dismayed by the sequence of changes taking place in her body, for once not minding when her breasts suddenly grew three cup sizes. Hey, this was great-suddenly it was okay to gain weight!

The night she first felt movement, she’d called up Charly and they’d gone out for frozen-yogurt sundaes at two in the morning to celebrate.

She’d really loved putting her talent and training as an architectural interior designer to work turning her guest room into a nursery and redesigning the rest of the house to make it absolutely babyproof. She’d delighted in having an excuse to dress for comfort, which she preferred anyway. She’d enthusiastically enrolled in natural childbirth classes, having coerced a somewhat less-than-enthusiastic Charly into being her coach. After that, she’d felt confident and ready for whatever came next.

Nothing to it, she remembered thinking. This was going to be a breeze.

But lately, in the past week or so, things had begun to…well, change. Radiantly healthy up to now, she’d suddenly become extremely uncomfortable. That was because the baby had “dropped,” the doctor told her. Nothing to worry about; perfectly normal, she’d insisted. But to Mirabella it had an ominous sound. Plus, the pressure pains in her groin really did hurt. She wasn’t sleeping well at night. And in the past couple of days she’d noticed, to her horror, that she’d developed a tendency to waddle.

It was very hard, she’d discovered, to maintain your dignity when you were shaped like a Weeble.

And dignity was important to Mirabella, which was something few people seemed able to understand. For most of her adult life, people-her female friends and sisters, mostly-had been telling her how beautiful she was, and, they were sure to add, how much more appealing she would be to men if she would only let her guard down and lighten up more. But they’d never understood about the dignity thing. How could they? Eve, Mirabella’s younger sister, had been blessed with the face and body of Princess Grace, so who cared if she had all the dignity of Soupy Sales? And Sommer, the oldest, designed more along the lines of Princess Di, seemed to have been born with a shy and coltish awkwardness that somehow made the whole concept of dignity irrelevant.

How could they ever understand Mirabella, who had had the misfortune to be born short, stocky, red-haired, freckle-faced and nearsighted, or know that there had been times when she was sure pride and dignity were all that had kept her from dying of humiliation?

It was just beginning to occur to her that giving birth might be a difficult thing to accomplish with one’s dignity intact.

It had also occurred to her recently that it wasn’t something she cared to go through alone. But Charly was…well, she was a dear and loyal friend, but she just wasn’t… For some reason she just didn’t have what Mirabella needed right now. Neither did her sisters, preoccupied as they were with their own busy lives. So when her mom had announced plans to fly out for Christmas and stay until after the baby was born to help out for the first weeks and get acquainted with her new grandchild, she’d been profoundly and unexpectedly relieved.

But then Pop had had his heart attack.

“Of course, you can’t leave him.” Mirabella had been astonished her mother would even think of it. And with characteristic decisiveness had promptly added, “I’ll go there instead.”

It was only later that she’d acknowledged the squeezing sensation in her chest that had prompted her to say it, and to recognize it for what it was: pure panic.

And it was only now that she could admit to herself that the real reason she was so anxious to get to Pensacola had nothing to do with Christmas, or even her father’s heart attack. She was having a baby, dammit. And like countless women before her, she wanted someone wise and nurturing to guide her through the experience. In short, she wanted her mother.

Jimmy Joe wasn’t dwelling on the problems ahead, the blizzard in Texas, or even a little boy in Georgia sulking about missing his daddy. Although it didn’t make him happy to have to admit it, he couldn’t seem to get the uppity red-haired pregnant woman from California out of his mind.

She had to be crazy, that’s what it was. Plumb crazy to think she could drive that pretty silver car of hers through a Panhandle blizzard all alone. And in her condition! What was she tryin’ to do?

He thought then about that little boy waiting for him to come home, and he thought about the sweet little daughter he’d never even gotten a chance to know; and in the depths of his easygoing soul he felt the stirrings of unaccustomed anger.

What in the name of heaven is she thinking of? he wondered as he pointed his big blue Kenworth down the I-40 on-ramp, pumping his way methodically through the gears. Didn’t she know how precious a gift she was carrying?

He tried hard to be fair, figuring she must have thought she had good reason to be doing what she was doing. But he could have told her it wasn’t worth it. As far as he was concerned, no reason was good enough to risk a child’s life. He wished he had told her when he had the chance. Now it was too late.

Once he was rolling along with the asphalt ribbon unfolding nice and smooth in front of him, Jimmy Joe picked up his mike, thumbed the button and said in his growly CB drawl, “Westbound, what’s it look like back your way? What’sa story on that Texas blizzard? Come on.”

He listened to static for a moment or two before he got an answer. It sure wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

“Uh…looks like they gonna be closin’ ’er down, here, pretty soon.”

Somebody else broke in with a groan. “Ah, hell, don’t tell me that.”

“That’s what they’re sayin’. Shuttin’ ‘er down at Tucumcari. Ain’t lettin’ nobody through.”

“Oh, man…”

“What I hear, ain’t nobody comin’ through the Panhandle.”

“I just come up twenty-five,” somebody else said. “Dry and dusty down that way.”

“Hell, that don’t do me good. I gotta get to Nashville!”

“That’s just a crime, you know it? Shuttin’ down a whole damn interstate for a little bit a’ snow.”

“Shoot, Texas don’t even know what a snowplow is.”

“Ain’t that the truth?”

The chatter went on, but Jimmy Joe didn’t join in. He hung up his mike and listened to all the bitching and complaining, which he mostly agreed with. But he was still thinking about that redhead in the Lexus, wishing he had some way to warn her. Wishing she had a CB so he could talk to her, at least let her know what she was driving into.

Mirabella couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. She’d rolled right through Albuquerque without any problems, if you didn’t count a couple of idiots in pickup trucks driving like kamikazis, and some bewildering lane changes in a construction zone. She did see a little bit of snow going through the mountains on the other side of the city-just a light dusting on the junipers, not even enough to look pretty. And she did feel a twinge of indecision as she came up on the turnoff to 1-25 south. Last chance. The thought flashed through her mind. Last chance to change your mind, Bella.