Beneath the Mistletoe: Make-Believe Mistletoe / Christmas Bonus, Strings Attached

Even as she spoke, another northbound car—this one a beige sedan—skidded into the driveway, gravel spewing as the driver brought the car to a sliding stop only inches from the tailgate of the pickup truck. There was just enough light for Lucy to see that the car held a woman and two children.

The man in the doorway let out a resigned sigh. “I guess you can all come inside.”

His enthusiasm was underwhelming, but Lucy forged on. “We’ll probably need your assistance getting everyone in safely. The ground is as slick as a skating rink, and that’s an elderly couple in the truck. Looks like two small children in the back seat of the sedan. It’s going to be tricky.”

He nodded morosely. “I’ll get my coat. You can come in, if you want. You’re hardly dressed to be traipsing around in an ice storm.”

“I have a hat and a heavier coat in the back of my car. You’ll need my help, I think.”

His eyes swept the length of her five-feet, two-inch, 105-pound frame, making it clear he didn’t know how much help she could offer. But he merely shrugged and turned to fetch his coat.

Lucy frowned at the man’s retreating back. The guy might have the looks of a Tom Cruise, but he apparently had the heart of an Ebenezer Scrooge.

Maybe Santa hadn’t been quite so generous to her this Christmas, after all.

When Banner had opened his front door in response to the completely unexpected chime of the doorbell, his first thought had been that a lost Christmas elf had somehow wandered onto his front porch. The top of her wet red head came barely to his chin. She had enormous green eyes set into a pixie face with a ridiculous excuse for a button nose, a full mouth that looked incongruously sexy in the center of all that cuteness, and a curvy little figure that made him rethink his former appreciation of tall, busty blondes.

When he had learned that she was the first wave of an invasion of strangers into his cherished privacy, he had been tempted to close the door in her cute little face. But even he wasn’t quite that mean, despite what some people might say to the contrary. His ex-wife, for example.

The weather was vicious. Gusts of wind slapped him across the face with icy hands. He pulled his Sherpa collar more snugly around his jaw. His wide-brimmed hat kept his hair dry, but the freezing rain blew sideways, getting him pretty wet everywhere else. He thought wistfully of his warm, dry, peaceful living room, where he had just been sitting with a crackling fire and a good book.

So much for the quiet, lazy winter evening he had been anticipating.

The elf seemed to be taking charge of the rescue. She stopped by her car, where she quickly swapped her stylish leather jacket for a heavier hooded parka. Then she slung the shoulder strap of a bulging duffel bag over one shoulder before slamming her trunk and stuffing her keys into her pocket.

“Dry clothes,” she shouted over the storm. “We’re all going to need them.”

He nodded and picked his way cautiously to the pickup. The driver’s door was already open and a skinny, rather frail-looking man climbed out. “My wife needs help walking,” he called out.

Banner nodded. “Hold on.”

He and the elf looked toward the beige sedan, in which the woman driver was stuffing two young children into coats, hats and mittens. “Can you give her a hand while I help the other couple in?” Banner asked the redhead.

“Yes,” she called back. “You go ahead. We’ll be fine.”

A hiss of air brakes, the skid of tires on ice, and the unmistakable sound of crumpling metal made Banner whirl toward the highway. A large, southbound delivery truck had missed the curve just before his driveway, the cab plowing into the shallow ditch.

Hissing a curse, Banner started to run toward the truck, but he slowed when he saw the driver climb out of the cab, obviously uninjured. Enveloped in a heavy coat, with a broad-brimmed oiled-leather hat pulled low over his face, the mountain of a man trudged toward them.

“You okay?” Banner called out.

A booming bass replied, “Disgusted but undamaged.”

Banner nodded. “I’m trying to get everyone inside,” he said as the large man drew nearer. “Got some women and kids and an old couple here. I could probably use your help with some of them.”

“You bet.” Banner caught a glimpse of sandy beard as the man moved closer, one big foot sliding on the ice but quickly regaining traction.

Turning back to the parked vehicles, Banner saw that the elf and the mother had the children out of the car. The redhead hovered protectively over the little ones while their mother dragged a couple of suitcases out of the sedan. The large man moved toward them to offer assistance.

Banner turned his attention to the elderly couple. The old man was standing inside the open passenger door of the pickup, helping his wife unfasten her seat belt. Moving closer, Banner saw that the woman was even more fragile than her husband. She had snowy-white hair and a wrinkled face that had faded to a soft caramel color. The shapeless cloth coat she wore wasn’t heavy enough for the weather, and Banner wasn’t sure how much her visible tremors were due to age and how much to the cold.

“She uses a walker,” the old man explained, nodding to the silver contraption folded and stowed behind the seat.

“That won’t do any good on rocks and ice.” Banner moved closer, noting that the woman probably didn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet. “Why don’t I just carry you in, ma’am? I won’t drop you.”

“He looks like a strapping young man, Mother,” the woman’s husband said. “Let him carry you inside where it’s warm.”

“All right.” Her voice was thin yet surprisingly strong. “But don’t you go throwing your back out, son.”

As if she weighed enough to make that a concern, Banner thought, moving in to slide his arms beneath her. He’d hauled bags of dog food that weighed more. She put her arms around his neck and held tightly as he lifted her, his feet solidly planted beneath him.

The older man pulled a blanket out of the cab and draped it over his wife’s head, providing some protection from the falling ice. Banner tucked it snugly around her. The old man reached for the walker. “I’ll bring this. And we have suitcases under the tarp in the back.”

“Leave it. I’ll come back for those things,” Banner said, worried that the man wouldn’t be able to keep his balance if he tried carrying anything. It was going to be a tricky enough walk as it was. “Let’s just get inside.”

He could feel the wind biting through the blanket and into the woman’s coat and thin, knit pantsuit as he moved carefully toward the house. She shivered when the downpour gained strength again, and Banner instinctively hunched around her, trying to protect her as much as he could.

He worried that she would catch pneumonia on the way in, and he worried that her husband would fall and break a leg or a hip or something. He was relieved when the big truck driver rejoined them halfway to the house, having already deposited the others inside. The truck driver took the old man’s arm, supporting him for the rest of the walk.

With the couple safely inside, Banner and the truck driver made a second hasty trip outside for more bags and the walker. It was almost completely dark now, and the ice was building thickly on every surface. The woods echoed with the sharp cracks of breaking tree limbs, and Banner cast a frowning glance at the overhead power lines. He figured it was just a matter of time before they were brought down by a falling branch, cutting off the electricity. Fortunately he had laid in a good supply of firewood, candles and batteries.

By the time he finally closed his front door against the storm, he was wet, cold, tired and grouchy. At least no more cars or trucks had arrived. He assumed the roads were so bad now that anyone who had been on them had found shelter elsewhere. He would be willing to bet the state police had closed the mountainous highway by now.

He only hoped the temperature would warm during the night, melting the ice and letting his stranded travelers be on their way. In the meantime, he seemed to have a houseful of unexpected guests.

He stood in the doorway of his big, wood-paneled living room, gazing rather helplessly at the chaos taking place there. Once again the young woman he had dubbed the elf seemed to be in charge. She had found his linen closet and distributed towels and was busily making sure everyone was getting dry and warm. As her hair dried, it curled even more riotously around her face, the red-gold color mimicking the fire crackling in the big stone fireplace.

The mother and two children were close to the hearth. Mom was a somewhat mousy-looking, average-size brunette with purple-shadowed brown eyes and nervous hands. Banner guessed her age to be midthirties, a few years older than himself. She was towel drying the hair of a little girl of maybe five years, a brown-eyed, pink-nosed duplicate of her mother.

A brown-haired boy whom Banner guessed to be around seven stood nearby, staring in fascination at Banner’s enormous, dumb lump of a dog. The multicolored mutt sat on his favorite scrap of rug, studying the roomful of strangers with his usual unflappable acceptance of circumstances.

The truck driver had shed his big coat, but that hadn’t reduced his overall size by much. Broad-faced, bearded and barrel-chested, he might have been forty, and he looked as though he’d have been as at home panning for gold in the Old West as behind the wheel of a big truck. He rubbed a towel over his bushy, sandy hair, leaving it standing in spikes around his ruddy face.

The older woman Banner had carried inside huddled beneath a thick, dry blanket also retrieved from his linen closet. She sat in a Windsor rocker pulled close to the fire, and the firelight flickered over her lined face, highlighting the fine bone structure that was still beautiful. She looked so fragile it scared him now to think he had carried her in; what if he’d dropped her or fallen?

Her husband hovered around her chair, his wispy gray hair already dry, his bent hands patting his wife as if to assure himself that she was all right. Banner doubted that either of them was younger than eighty.

What on earth was he going to do with all these people?

Lucy noticed that their host was standing in the doorway, looking rather dazed. She supposed she couldn’t blame him. Judging by the nice fire and the mystery novel sitting open beside a cooling cup of coffee on the table next to a big recliner, he had just settled down to ride out the storm in comfortable solitude. Except, of course, for the company of his dog—the shaggiest, oddest-colored, laziest-looking mutt Lucy had ever seen.

At least the dog didn’t seem to mind the company—which was more than she could say for its owner, who was definitely showing signs of stress.

Someone needed to do something to put him more at ease. Never one to wait around for others to take care of things she could handle herself, she gave him a big smile. “Thank you so much for taking us in. You’ve been very kind, Mr…?”

“Just call me Banner,” he said, lifting a hand to massage the back of his neck.

She nodded. “Mr. Banner.”