A Miracle For Christmas

‘And the Warmest Fuzzies Toy Store?’

‘Joyce’s going to look after the store, and her daughter Gina’s going to help out. Apparently Gina’s expecting a baby in June, and she and her boyfriend are saving to get married, so the extra cash will come in handy.’

‘You seem to have everything under control.’ Janey took charge of two of the orange bags and led the way out to the corridor. ‘How long will you be on the road?’ she asked over her shoulder as Stephanie had a last look around.

‘Four or five hours.’ Trailing the remaining bags behind her, Stephanie followed her friend along the lobby of the triple decker building. ‘Since it’s the day before Christmas Eve, the traffic will in all likelihood be busy, but there’s been no new snow for the last few days so the roads should be okay...

‘With luck, I should reach Rockfield before dark.’

The day was bright when Stephanie left Boston, but by the time she reached Montpelier, where she stopped at an Esso station to fill her gas tank, the sky had changed ominously from its previous milky blue to a bruised charcoal gray.

‘Darkness is settin’ in early today.‘ The strawhaired attendant squinted heavenward as he returned her Visa card. ‘And a bad storm forecast for tonight. Goin’ far?’

‘Rockfield.’

‘Rockfield, huh? Watch out for them narrow mountain roads once you leave the highway. They can be right tricky this time of year.’

She gave him a wry smile as she agreed with him. And as he jogged away to attend a waiting truck, Stephanie promised herself she would indeed be very careful as she tackled those ‘right tricky’ mountain roads.

But when she turned the key in the ignition and a foreboding silence greeted her, she had to ask herself if she would be driving those roads that day at all. And after six increasingly frantic attempts to start the engine, she surrendered to the inevitable. Getting out, she clutched her coat around herself and made for the service bay, her nostrils prickling as they were exposed to the frosty air.

A mechanic came out and inspected the van’s innards. ‘Yup,’ he said, ‘we can fix ’er, but we won’t get to ‘er till tonight. You can pick ’er up after we close at nine.’

Nine! Good Lord, how was she going to fill in the time till then!

The mechanic directed her to a nearby mall, where she browsed aimlessly for a couple of hours, had a burger and then lingered for a long while over several cups of coffee, before taking in a movie. When she came out of the mall at quarter to nine, a gusty wind was whipping along the dark street—an icy cold wind, with the smell of fresh snow in it. Chin tucked into her coat collar, she hurried along to the gas station.

The van was ready and the repair cost a bundle. But as she headed out to Route 89, she decided that by the time her Visa bill came in, she should be able to meet it.

At least she had her van... and it was now reliable.

The blizzard struck after she’d left the highway.

She was on a side road, and emerging from the shelter of a covered bridge, when it hit with sudden savage force. Snow billowed down over the windshield, blinding her for a few unnerving seconds till she got the wipers going.

Oh, Lord, she thought, slowing as she peered into the porridge-thick mass and concentrated on keeping to her own side of the road, what have I let myself in for? If only Tony were here—

Scrub that thought! Anthony Howard Gould III was a fake—all style, and no substance. She needed him like she needed a hole in her head!

She had been driving for the best part of an hour when she realized to her dismay that somewhere along the way—disoriented by the storm—she had taken a wrong turning.

She knew that by this time she should have been climbing up the gentle mountain slope leading to Rockfield, not, as she was doing now, going downhill, leading to...?

With a feeling of growing horror, she noted that the gradient here was fast becoming dangerously steep. She braked, but the van gathered speed, continued to gather speed. Damn! She pressed her foot down on the pedal more firmly, praying the van would slow its pace. It didn’t.

She panicked. Rammed her foot to the boards.

The van slewed into a sideways skid.

With her fingers clawed around the steering wheel, she peered desperately into the dark and swirling storm.

And didn’t even see the snowbank till she was in it.

CHAPTER TWO

DAMIAN MCALLISTER groaned, and with a feeling of utter despair, buried his stubbled face deep into his pillow.

‘Go away.’ His muffled entreaty came out hoarsely. ‘For God’s sake...go away and leave me alone...’

The hammering and the bell-ringing—loud, persistent, demanding—continued unabated... perhaps even with renewed vigor...and the bell shrill enough to waken the dead. Which was exactly what he wished he was...

At first he’d thought the sounds existed only in his head, another torture inflicted on him by the flu that had grabbed him by the throat the day he left Boston and had brought him to his knees, literally, when he reached his destination and staggered from his car to the front door.

And now that door, he surmised with another, deeper groan, was going to crash in at any moment. Whatever his visitor wanted, it was patently obvious he had no intention of leaving till he got it.

Better get up and get it over with.

It took him a few minutes to crawl out of bed, find a pair of jeans, drag them on, zip them up, with curses erupting all the while. Keeping himself vertical by grabbing one piece of furniture after the next, he stumbled to the bedroom door. Descending the stairs might present more of a challenge, he acknowledged grimly. But he made it, though by the time he got to the last step, he was more than ready to call it a day. Or a night? He’d left all the lights on when he arrived on Tuesday, and now he could see blackness pressing in through the ground-floor windows.

He lurched across the hall and fell against the front door, hitting it with his shoulder. As he dragged back the dead bolt, the bell shrilled again, paining his eardrums.

‘Hang on,’ he croaked. ‘Don’t be so damned impatient.’

He flung open the door.

And two things happened at once.

Firstly, an arctic wind blasted his naked chest with a brutality that sucked the air from his lungs.

And secondly, he saw that his visitor was not a man.

He stared disbelievingly at the woman gazing back at him with eyes that were as wide and startled as his own. Her clothes were partially snow-encrusted, but in the light from the overhead lamp, even with the snowflakes whirling around her, he could see her coat was bright red; her boots were black; her rakishly tilted toque was red with white trim...

And the small sack slung over her shoulder was leather. Creamy white leather. Butter soft. Crammed full. And in it...dear God, over her shoulder, from the top of the sack, peered a...teddy bear?

The stranger said, in a husky voice, breathless and more than a bit shaky, ‘Oh, thank heavens!’ She swung die sack down and rested it on the stoop. ‘I was beginning to think there was no one home!’

Santa Claus...

Female version.

Ho, ho, ho!

But shouldn’t she have come down the chimney?

Damian shuddered. His legs wobbled and he grabbed the edge of the door to keep himself upright. He felt every inch of his bare flesh shrink from the icy air.

‘Go away,’ he croaked. ‘You’ve come to the wrong place. I don’t do Christmas.’