The Sergeant's Christmas Mission

“I’m not sure what to do with him.” Rebecca tried, unsuccessfully, to soothe the kitten. “I can’t just lock him up in the house. I don’t have a kitty box or food. Is there a shelter in town? Do you know?”

She talked so fast that Shane couldn’t figure out when he was supposed to respond. That high-pitched crying noise was making his headache worse. While he was trying to figure out a solution to the problem, the kitten finally managed to twist out of Rebecca’s hands; the moment it hit the ground, the kitten bolted through the crack in his front door, into his house.

“Oh!” Rebecca exclaimed. “I’m so sorry! I’ll go get him.”

The last thing he wanted was for his new landlady, who held the fate of his address in her hands, to venture into his dungeon. No one went in there and that’s how he liked it.

“No.” Shane blocked her path. “You’re late. Get your boys to school. I’ll catch the kitten.”

“Catch?” She had turned away, paused and turned halfway back to him, the expression on her face concerned.

“Not in a mean way. I’m allergic.” He tried to reassure her. “But I love all animals.”

Rebecca hesitated for a moment longer, appearing to be conflicted. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” He frowned at her, not liking how distrustful she was of him. “I’ve got this.”

She thanked him, seemingly relieved to have a solution for the kitten, and without glancing back at him, jogged toward the carport on the other side of the house.

Shane scratched his long beard with a yawn as he shut the front door of his house.

“Damn.” The soldier stood in his galley kitchen, noticing, as if for the first time, how truly messy his small garage apartment had become. It was a dump. And it smelled.

On his way to the living room, Shane picked up the clothing and trash on the floor. If the kitten wanted to remain hidden in this disaster zone, he could do it. The first thing he really needed to do was get some light into the place. So Shane did something that he hadn’t done in months—he opened the curtains and let the sunlight in.

Balls of dust were kicked up into the air when he yanked open the curtains. Coughing, Shane waved the air in front of his face. Dust was going up his nose and into his throat. After he got his coughing under control, Shane began the task of finding the kitten.

He’d always had horrible allergies, and now, with the dust stirred up and a kitten on the loose, he was sneezing one sneeze after another.

“Quit it!” Shane snapped, frustrated at his own nose. He grabbed a roll of toilet paper out of the bathroom, knowing that a box of tissues hadn’t entered his apartment ever, and blew his nose every couple of minutes while he tried to find the kitten.

He searched the living room, picking up the trash as he went. The kitten wasn’t there. Shane made a second cursory inspection of the tiny bathroom before he headed into his cramped bedroom. He tried to flip on the single overhead light, but then realized that the bulb had burned out sometime last month. Or maybe it was the month before that.

“Recon.” He spoke to his companion. “You haven’t seen a renegade kitten, have you?”

Shane tried to open the curtain covering the window in the bedroom. When it didn’t move, he yanked a little too hard and the entire structure, curtain and curtain rod, crashed onto the ground at his feet.

More dust sprayed into the air, making Shane cough and sputter. “Damn it!”

This day was not going according to his usual plan. He should still be sleeping off his hangover, not worrying about a stowaway kitten.

Shane used a dirty T-shirt he found on the floor to wipe his eyes and his face. Then he balled up the T-shirt and threw it back down on the floor. Recon had lifted his head and was watching him curiously. That was when Shane noticed that his canine companion was harboring the kitten.

“Recon.” The ex-soldier walked over to the side of the bed he rarely used. “Didn’t I just ask you about this kitten?”

The kitten was curled up tightly in a ball between Recon’s legs. The only way the kitten could have gotten up onto the bed was if Recon had put the kitten in his mouth like a chew toy and lifted him.

“Look, buddy. Don’t get attached. You hear me?” Shane stared at the odd pair. “That kitten’s not staying.”

But, when he reached his hands out to the take the kitten from the safe haven, Recon growled. Recon never growled at him.

“What was that?” Shane asked, surprised. He pulled his hands back.

Recon rested his head on his paws, providing complete cover for the sleeping kitten.

The soldier stood by the bed, stumped by his dog’s behavior. Recon was acting as if he was protecting a favored toy. Recon had always been friendly to cats and kids; he looked big and scary, but he was a sweet dog. But he’d never adopted a kitten before.

“Listen to me, Recon. I’m going to clean up and then I’m coming back for that kitten. So be prepared.” Shane pointed his finger at Recon with a sneeze. “You can’t keep him.”

* * *

Rebecca had dropped her boys off at their new school, relieved that she got them there, with only minutes to spare, on time for the start of class. She had accidentally set her alarm for 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:00 a.m., and she would probably still be asleep if Carson hadn’t awakened her. She had kicked a large box of books in her rush to the kitchen—her toe was still throbbing—and then she’d dropped Cheerios all over the kitchen, and in her hair, when she couldn’t get the new box open and overcompensated by yanking on the plastic too hard. She had managed to wrangle the boys, get them fed, make sure they were dressed and then trip on the way out the door, only to be greeted by a stray kitten problem.

In the school parking lot, Rebecca sat in her car, engine off, window rolled up, overcome with a feeling of emotional numbness and exhaustion. It had cost her a huge chunk of her profit of the sale of her house to move them from New Hampshire to Montana. She had adored Aunt Ginny, and her childhood memories of one magical summer spent at the Bozeman house had made her romanticize Montana for most of her adult life. So, when she learned that she had inherited the house, and things in New Hampshire had already unraveled after her divorce, a new start in Bozeman seemed like a promising idea. She had fantasized about how wonderful it would be while she packed her belongings and turned her early model Camry westward. But the reality of the house, which had fallen into disrepair, and the small college town that didn’t seem to have many job openings for a hairstylist, made the move seem like a fool’s errand. And so far, the boys hadn’t come around to the idea that they were on a big adventure. They missed their home. They missed their school. They missed their friends. Most important, they missed their dad. What if she had just made a real mess of all of their lives by chasing a childhood dream?

One ding after another on her phone snapped her out of her thoughts and back into the present. The rapid-fire texts were from her younger sister, Kelly.

“Great,” Rebecca muttered as she quickly read her sister’s texts. Before she could respond, her sister called.

“Hey, Kell.”

Her sister was a well-known Bozeman Realtor, owned her own company and genuinely believed that her sister was incapable of accomplishing anything in her life without guidance from her. Basically, Kelly thought that she was a screw-up and that moving her boys to Bozeman was yet another example of her bad judgment. Not that it was the only reason Rebecca wanted to succeed, but proving her sister wrong would be a bonus to making Bozeman work.

“Where have you been?” Kelly had her on speakerphone. “I’ve been texting all morning. Did you get the boys to school?”

“Yes, Mother,” Rebecca said sarcastically.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Kelly said after a moment of silence. “I was just trying to make sure you got them to school on time. We both know you’ve always had a problem with being late.”

Kelly had always been the “good daughter” and their mother had never let Rebecca forget it. She had been an A student, always on the honor roll, went straight to college after high school, married a sensible man after she graduated and then started her own business.

“Well.” Rebecca turned the key to start the car. “The boys are in school and I have a ton of stuff to do, Kell. Thanks for checking on me.”

Another pause.

“You’re welcome,” her sister said flatly.

They hung up and Rebecca headed home. As she always seemed to do after a conversation with Kelly, she litigated the conversation all over again, saying the things she could have said if only she had thought about it in the moment. She felt like she never really won a conversation with her sister. Kelly had been one of the major “cons” on the list when she had been contemplating living in her inheritance versus selling it and buying a little farm with some land in Manchester. It was a short drive back to the house that didn’t feel at all like home.

Rebecca walked past her front door and headed to the garage apartment instead. All that was inside of the house was a bunch of unpacked boxes and wayward Cheerios; just thinking about unpacking all of those boxes and cleaning up the kitchen made her feel tired. Better to find a place for the kitten first and get that task off her mind.

Aunt Ginny’s attorney, who had handled her aunt’s estate, had only mentioned the positives of keeping Shane as a tenant—he always paid his rent on time, kept to himself, didn’t have company always coming and going, and he helped out with the yard work and light maintenance of the home. She had never wanted to be a landlord—she didn’t like confrontation, discussing money or dealing with fixing stuff that might go wrong. But the idea of having some extra income to handle monthly expenses made her realize that she didn’t have a choice but to give the whole landlady thing a try.

The attorney did not mention that Shane Brand was a veteran with what appeared to be a shipload of issues. Right off the bat, she was going to have to address the elephant in the room: the garage apartment smelled like a marijuana factory. Why couldn’t Shane Brand have been easy to handle?

With a sigh, Rebecca knocked on her tenant’s door. First she would help the kitten, and then she would deal with the tenant problem. She wished she could make Caleb happy and keep the kitten. She just couldn’t take responsibility for one more life. Not right now. Maybe later.

“Hey.” Shane opened the door. He looked different—he’d taken a shower, and he was wearing clean clothes and shoes. His blue eyes, so much brighter than she remembered, were worried. “There’s something wrong with the kitten.”