A Miracle For Christmas

The creature swayed toward him as he started to close the door. Her eyes were pleading. And as she cried ‘Wait!’ he noticed something else. Those eyes—as green as pine and exquisitely fringed with silky brown lashes—were dark with exhaustion...and redrimmed, as if she’d been crying.

He hesitated. A voice of caution whispered in some sane but distant part of his brain—

‘May I please come in and use your phone?’ she begged. ‘You see I’ve had an accident. My van’s stuck in a snowbank at the end of your drive—’

‘Are you hurt?’

‘Bumped. Winded. Shocked. But thankfully not hurt. I just need to call for a tow truck for my van. Then I’ll be out of your way...honestly...as soon as I possibly can.’

Van? Shouldn’t it have been...reindeer? Damian tried to hold onto the voice of caution but in the face of the stranger’s desperate pleading, it faded away.

With a sigh of surrender, he swept a hand sideways.

She kicked the snow off her boots and walked past him, bringing in with her a flurry of snowflakes, and the faint scent of French perfume.

He slammed the door, and with a tilting gait, followed her into the living room.

‘Your phone?’ she asked.

‘Over there.’ He cleared his raspy throat, gestured vaguely toward the massive oak coffee table, shivered and wrapped his muscled arms around his chest. ‘Help yourself.’

She put the sack down; it hovered, and fell over. The bear looked up unblinkingly as the stranger whisked off her toque and shook out a tumbled mass of glorious curls that were the same rich silky brown as Belgian chocolates. Her brow was sweet, her nose pert, her chin dimpled. She unbuttoned the coat and glancing at him, she murmured, ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll take this off otherwise I’ll feel the cold terribly when I go out again.’ She crossed to the fireplace, shook the snow into the empty hearth and draped the garment over a wing chair adjacent to the fire. She was wearing a ribbed red sweater, he noted vaguely, and—tucked into her boots—a pair of neatly fitting cream slacks that revealed a very attractive—

‘Where am I?’ She looked around at him, and he saw that her lips were curved in a wry smile. ‘When I tell the tow truck people to come, I’ll have to tell them where.’

The fever was burning him up. The chills were making him shiver. Her words were echoing in his head in a diminishing spiral. Suddenly all he could think of was getting back to bed, burying himself under the covers.

‘Tell them it’s the McAllister place on the Tarlity side road,’ he growled. ‘Look, I’ve got this damned flu and I’m not in any state to entertain. Make yourself at home till the truck comes—phone book’s under the table. Call Grantham Towing—Bob’s the only game in town, but he’s reliable.’ Groggily he tipped two fingers to his brow in a salute, and wheeling around in a quick move that made his head swim, he made his way unsteadily to the stairs.

When he was halfway up, he heard the riffle of pages and guessed she was hunting the phone book for the number. By the time he reached the landing, she was talking to someone.

He swung the bedroom door shut behind him, and it closed with a loud click. Reeling across the room, he plunged into bed, fumbled for the duvet and pulled it up over his marble-cold shoulders.

But even as he told himself he’d never sleep nor ever in this life get warmed up again, he went out like a light.

‘I’m sorry, miss. We can’t possibly make it tonight.’

‘Are you absolutely sure? Thing is, Mr. Grantham, I’m stranded at the back of beyond with a complete stranger.’ Stephanie lowered her voice and went on, in little more than a whisper, as she glanced furtively at the stairs. ‘For all I know, the man might be a serial killer—’

A hearty laugh came across the line, making her jump. ‘You said you were calling from the McAllister place?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Hell, I’ve known McAllister for years. The man’s a loner but he’s no more a serial killer than I am—’

‘But—’

‘Take my word for it. Gotta go—the switchboard’s lit up like a Christmas tree! I’ll send somebody out tomorrow for sure...depending, of course, on the weather.’

And with that, the owner of Grantham Towing hung up.

At her end, Stephanie dropped the telephone onto the cradle. Well, she challenged herself, what am I to do now!

There was only one answer to that. She would have to ask the growly McAllister man if she could spend the night. No, not ask. She would have to tell him she was going to have to spend the night.

Tugging off her boots, she made for the stairs with reluctant steps, shivering though the house was quite warm.

Certainly Mr. Grantham of Grantham Towing had vouched for her host, but after all, she had no proof that the man upstairs was McAllister. The tall stranger wearing nothing but a scowl and a pair of tight blue jeans—her shiver intensified—could, of course, be McAllister. Or—and she felt her heartbeat take a flying leap into space—he could be an ax murderer who had already slain McAllister and was at this moment lying in wait upstairs for his next victim.

When she reached the upstairs landing, she saw four doors. Three were open. Feeling like Goldilocks, she tiptoed around the landing and peeked in the open doors. The rooms were unoccupied. She moved to the fourth door.

Turning the handle quietly, she pushed, inch by silent inch. In the dim light filtering in from the landing, she could make out a king-size bed, with a puffy plaid duvet. Under the duvet she saw the sprawled shape of a man, whose black hair formed a dark shadow against a white pillow.

‘Mr. McAllister—’ she addressed him in a hiss, from just inside the door ‘—are you awake?’

There was no answer.

Biting her lip, she took six tentative steps forward, and heard a rhythmic snoring, half-muffled by the pillow. She took another six steps, and was now close enough to touch him. Which she did. A light pressure, with the tips of her fingers, on what looked to be his rump. ‘Mr. McAll—’

The figure jerked spasmodically, erupted in a groan and croaked, ‘Go away!’ and burrowed deeper under the duvet.

‘I have to stay the night.’ Stephanie said the words clearly, but the hammering of her heart made them vibrate. ‘I just thought I ought to let you know. Is it all right?’

She thought he hadn’t heard her. She waited for a long moment. Then, as she was about to turn away uncertainly, his right arm came flailing out. The thumb, she saw in the glimpse she got before his arm dropped limply over the edge of the bed, was turned up.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and crept away, closing the door softly behind her.

Going into the nearest bedroom, she dragged the duvet off the bed, and along with a pillow, took it downstairs to the living area.

A quick reconnaissance of the main floor in search of a bathroom revealed a modern kitchen; a dining room adjacent to the living area; an invitingly cosy TV room; and—she was just about to give up hope when she found it—a powder room.

It took her only a few minutes to get washed and ready to turn in. Then, clad in her red T-shirt nightie, with her hair in a ponytail, she turned off all the lights save the one on the table by the sofa she’d chosen for her bed.

Before she cuddled down under the duvet, she reached out to switch off the lamp—and paused nervously as she noticed how the lone light cast eerie shadows around the room... over the Oriental rugs, over the tall bookcases, over the plump cushions on the low-slung seating...and over a massive oil painting whose spooky atmosphere gave her the creeps. Gothic, she thought with a shiver, very Gothic!

And as she fell into a fitful sleep, her last conscious thought...more of an apprehensive prayer, actually, than a thought...was that if the man upstairs was not McAllister but an ax murderer, his weapon would be sharp and her end mercifully quick.

What a helluva night it had been!

Damian McAllister rolled over onto his back, and stared bleary-eyed at the ceiling. Hallucinations were one thing—he’d had them a few times before when a bad flu had driven his temperature to abnormally high levels—but hallucinations like those he’d experienced over the past few hours were something else. They’d seemed as real to him as the mattress under his back.

Of course he was used to having nightmares around Christmas time—he’d been tormented by them since he was a kid...though they had, of course, become much worse during the past five years, since—

He swiped a shaky hand over his eyes.

Don’t think about that.

With an effort, he dragged his thoughts from the past.