Burke's Christmas Surprise

Lily hadn’t been a painfully shy woman who’d been voted “the girl most likely not to” by the boys in her graduating class. They’d thought it was funny, but it had hurt, just as a thousand other small things had hurt. Her shyness had been a handicap most of her life, one that Louetta had learned to endure, just as she’d learned to hold her head high. Lily had been all woman, sure of herself and her rightful place in the universe.

Oh, Burke. Why did you have to come back and remind me of everything I’ve been missing all these years?

“Lily, ” Burke had said tonight.

She lowered her head in shame, and wished with all her heart that she was half the woman Lily had been.

One second the cup was in Louetta’s hand, the next second it shattered on the floor. She saw it happening, yet she still jumped a mile.

“Slippery little buggers, aren’t they?” red-haired Jason Tucker, a twenty-three-year-old ranch hand who could blush as darkly as Louetta, said with a boyish grin.

Nodding, she scooted down to her haunches to pick up the pieces of the second item she’d broken that morning. She was a wreck, that was all there was to it. At this rate, she was going to need another set of dishes by suppertime.

Jed Harley had been very understanding about the milk she’d spilled in his lap, and Boomer Brown hadn’t said anything when he’d gotten a saucer full of coffee along with his refill, although his wife, DoraLee, the owner of the Crazy Horse Saloon and Louetta’s least likely friend, studied Louetta’s face and cast her an understanding smile. Cletus McCully ate without complaining about the eggs she’d scorched, although he did mention that she was as jumpy as a cat on hot bricks.

He was right. She nearly sprang straight into the air every time the bell jangled over the door.

She had no doubt that every one of the usual breakfast crowd noticed her skittishness. They probably attributed it to nerves at the thought of shy little Louetta Graham having two suitors. They had no way of knowing about the guilt sitting like a rock in the middle of her swirling stomach.

Leaving the diners to sip their coffee and mull over their gossip, she used extra care busing the rest of the tables. She felt a headache coming on as she carried the tub of dishes into the kitchen and promptly turned on the tap.

“Girl, ya got a minute?”

“Cletus!” Louetta nearly came out of her skin, the dishes in her hand splashing as she dropped them into the water. “Yes, yes, of course. What is it?”

The old man snapped his suspenders and did such a poor job of pretending to be interested in the fifty-year-old oven that Louetta would have smiled if she’d been physically able.

Choosing a different tack, he shook his craggy old head and glanced at the door. “I’m hiding from those...those manhandlers.

Dropping the clean forks and knives she’d just washed into the rinse water, Louetta heaved a big sigh, but at least she could manage a semblance of a smile. “Are Gussie and Addie Cunningham putting the moves on you again, Cletus?”

“The moves! Jumpin’ catfish, those two women are more wily than sailors and just as determined. What’s worse, they don’t know the meaning of the word no.”

Louetta lowered a stack of plates into the deep, stainless steel sink. Gussie Cunningham and her sister Addie had moved to town a couple of years ago, not long after they won the lottery in Wisconsin where they used to live. They were both eccentric, without a doubt. Slightly over sixty and still single, they claimed they were just good old gals who were looking for decent men to call their own.

Up to her elbows in soapsuds, Louetta said, “They’re lonely, Cletus. Neither of them means any harm.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t mean them any harm, either, but sometimes desperate situations call for desperate measures. And if you don’t mind, I think I’ll hide out in here for a while. I used to help Melody out now and again, you know. When she had to run an errand, or step out for a minute, I mean, or do something about whatever was causing her to lose sleep at night.”

Louetta stopped. Staring past the lines in Cletus’s face, into knowing brown eyes, she said, “What makes you think there’s someplace else I want to go?”

“Isn’t there?”

There was no use wondering how the man could have known. Cletus McCully wasn’t much taller than Louetta’s five feet seven inches. And yet he was a very big man. Swallowing the lump that came out of nowhere, Louetta closed her eyes and called for courage. Opening them again, she reached behind her back and untied her apron. She handed it to Cletus, and at the last minute kissed his lined cheek. “I know where Melody got her heart.”

“Don’t go gettin’ maudlin on me, girl. And if you slip out the back, nobody has to know you’re gone.”

Louetta dried her hands on a towel, slipped her coat from the peg by the door. Before she lost her nerve, she stepped into the back alley and headed for a certain doctor’s office on Custer Street.

Burke was wandering. Pacing was more like it. The furnished apartment attached to the doctor’s office was part of the deal he’d worked out with Doc Masey before agreeing to move to Jasper Gulch. It wasn’t the rain that had made his decision to leave Seattle so easy. He’d been feeling dissatisfied, at loose ends, unconnected to his life there for a long time. A thirty-five-year-old doctor in a prestigious city hospital, he’d felt more like a paper shuffler than a physician. Ever since he’d been stranded in this quaint, one-horse town, the idea. of treating the same patients for years on end, of making house calls and delivering babies who would grow up and bring their babies to him had become a fantasy. Of course, in his fantasy Lily had welcomed him back with open arms.

There was no woman named Lily. She’d been a daydream, a myth. Louetta was real. And Louetta was a lot more stubborn than he’d expected. Hell, she acted as if his soul was darkened by sins, stained by mistakes.

Oh, he’d made his share of mistakes in his life, there was no doubt about that. He wondered what measure God used to gauge a person’s wrongs. Was a sin a sin? Or did good intentions balance difficult decisions? Because he’d had the best of intentions. Look where they’d gotten him.

Once he’d arrived back in Seattle two and a half years ago, and he’d faced the fact that he couldn’t return to Jasper Gulch, he’d done everything he could to put thoughts of Lily out of his mind. They’d returned when he’d least expected them, unbidden, real enough to touch.

Hell, it was happening right now. He was thirty-five years old. Way too old to be paralyzed by sexual impulses in the middle of the morning. Pacing to the desk, he yanked on the lid of a box filled with books and immediately began placing them on a high shelf. A knock sounded on the door behind him. Continuing his task, he called, “Come on in, Doc. The door’s open.”

The doorknob jiggled, and the door creaked open.

“Back from your house call so soon?” Burke called without looking.

The room, all at once, was very quiet. Turning, he found Lily standing in the open doorway, the light of a gray November morning behind her, the purse in her hands clutched so tightly her knuckles were white.

“Come in,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the still room.

She wet her lips nervously. “I can’t stay. I wanted you to know that my name is Louetta. But my father always called me Lily.”

During the time they’d been apart, Burke had remembered everything about Lily with a clarity that had surprised him. He saw inside her with that same clarity right now. She was scared. Why shouldn’t she be? He’d hurt her. The fact that he couldn’t have lived with himself if he’d chosen any other way didn’t matter. He’d hurt her, and she was none too sure he wouldn’t hurt her again.

“I should have known you wouldn’t lie,” he said, placing a medical book back in the cardboard box.

Her lips parted and she blinked. God, he loved disconcerting her, loved the heat in her eyes and the blush on her cheeks. Something powerful took hold inside him, something elemental, earthy and a lot more pleasant than his earlier frustration. With one hand on his hip and the other in his pocket, he took a step toward her.

The backward step Louetta took was automatic. Good grief. She’d said what she’d come here to say. Now what?

“Well. Er. Um.” She nearly groaned out loud. What in tarnation had happened to her good sense? “I should be going.”

“So soon?”

The fact that Burke was steadily moving closer wasn’t helping her equilibrium. As one moment stretched to two, she grasped the first excuse that popped into her head. “Isabell usually stops in at the diner about this time of the morning. She’s been lonely since Mother died, and she’ll worry if I’m not there.”

“Does Isabell know about us, Louetta?” he said as if trying the name out on his tongue.

Louetta was accustomed to the ever-changing sounds of the breezes that blew here in South Dakota, but she doubted she’d ever be able to hear the sound of the wind after midnight again without being reminded of Burke. His voice was like that wind, a deep sigh, a gentle moaning, a slow sweep across her senses.

“Does she?” he asked again, more quietly than before.

Although it required a conscious effort to pull herself together, she straightened her back and raised her chin a fraction of an inch. Meeting Burke’s steady gaze, she said, “Don’t worry, Burke. I didn’t broadcast our little tryst.”

“Is that how you would describe what happened between us? As a tryst?”

A dozen possibilities scrambled through her mind, confusing her even more. “How would you describe it?” she asked.

There was an inherent determination in the set of his chin and a hungry light in his eyes as he said, “It was a damn sight more than that.”

His arms were around her before she could take another backward step, and she knew, even before his lips covered hers, that he was going to kiss her.