Long, Tall Christmas Read online

  “Keep your eyes open,” he told her. “Watch for tracks or anything else that might help.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I’ve been watching the whole time.”

  “Of course you have. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right. If you had children of your own, you’d understand.”

  “I’m trying to, Kylie.”

  There was a beat of silence. “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Me too.” Without taking his eyes off the road, Shane reached out with his free right hand, meaning to give her a comforting pat on the shoulder. But it was her soft, cool cheek his fingers brushed. He hadn’t meant his touch to be a caress, but that’s what it was. He felt her quiver, heard the slight catch of her breath before he moved his hand away.

  They stayed quiet a moment, both of them sharply aware of each other’s presence. “What if he isn’t there?” she asked.

  “Then we’ll keep looking, or call the sheriff if we have to. But don’t think about that now. We’ll find him.”

  They were coming into town now. It was barely eight o’clock, but Main Street was quiet. Most stores and shops were already closed. At the main intersection, colored Christmas lights, strung between the power poles, blinked on and off in the dark.

  Banks of plowed snow lined the street, spilling onto the sidewalks. Traffic was light, mostly headed out of town or toward the new strip mall on the outskirts. A wandering mutt lifted its leg on a half-buried fire hydrant and scampered out of sight.

  “Where’s the burger place?” Kylie asked.

  “At the end of the street, around the corner. They’re open till ten on weeknights, midnight on Friday and Saturday.”

  “Sounds like you might spend a little time there.”

  “I do, when I get tired of my own cooking. They make pretty good cheeseburgers.”

  Shane could feel the rise in tension as they rounded the corner. Light from the flashing blue neon sign—a cartoon cowboy on a bucking horse—flooded the cab as they pulled into the Buckaroo’s parking lot. Shane noticed at once that they weren’t there alone. A half-dozen big road bikes were lined up along the curb.

  He pulled into a spot and braked. Kylie gave him a wide-eyed glance. “Stay put. I’ll check this out,” he told her.

  “What if Hunter’s in there with those . . . bikers?”

  “Let’s hope he is. Whoever they are, those boys have their own rules of conduct. They’d never hurt a kid.”

  Leaving the heater running, Shane climbed out of the cab and walked into the café. The bikers, tough-looking men in thick leather coats, bandannas, and navy-style watch caps, were at the bar wolfing down burgers and fries. Slim, who owned the place, was behind the bar, refilling mugs of hot coffee. Shane glanced back toward the shadowed booths. There was no sign of Hunter.

  “Howdy.” The nearest biker, a burly man with a scruffy, carrot-colored beard, gave Shane a friendly nod. “There’s a spare stool at the far end if you need to sit.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t plan to be here long,” Shane said. “Mighty cold night for you boys to be on the road.”

  The biker swigged his coffee. “We need to make Amarillo by morning. Our good buddy up that way bought it when a semi driver changed lanes and didn’t see him. His funeral’s tomorrow. We aim to be there to carry out his coffin and ride behind it to the cemetery.”

  “You’ve got a long, cold ride ahead of you,” Shane said. “Here’s wishing you a safe trip. Sorry about your friend.”

  The big man shrugged. “Reckon it was his time. What brings you out on a night like this?”

  “I’m looking for a boy,” Shane said. “About thirteen, sandy hair, wearing an old plaid coat. Any of you seen him?”

  Slim glanced up from refilling the coffee machine. “A boy like that was here. A truck let him off in the parking lot a couple of hours ago. He came inside, bought a Coke and said he was waiting for his friends. I let him hang out in a booth. He was here for quite a spell, but I don’t see him now.”

  “I seen that kid.” One of the bikers spoke up. “He was here when we came in. The little mutt took one look at us, hightailed it into the men’s room, and locked himself in a stall. Far as I know, he’s still there.”

  “Thanks.” Shane strode down the hall to the men’s restroom. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. There were three stalls; two were open. One was closed, but there were no feet showing below the door.

  “Hunter, it’s Shane. Are you in here?” Shane kept his voice low and cautious.

  A pair of rubber boots appeared below the edge of the door and descended to the concrete floor. The lock on the stall clicked open. Hunter, looking scared and sheepish, stepped out. “Are those bikers gone?” he asked.

  “They’re still here, but they won’t bother you. Come on, your mother’s waiting outside in the truck. She’s been worried about you. We all have.”

  He took a step; then he hesitated. “Shane?”

  “What is it?”

  “Could you please not tell Mom that I got scared and hid? I don’t want her to know her son’s a coward.”

  Shane gave him a smile. “You’re not a coward. Hey, those guys do look pretty scary.”

  “Promise you won’t tell her?”

  “I promise. Now let’s go.”

  The bikers were still at the bar. As Shane and Hunter emerged from the hall, the man with the orange beard rose and lumbered toward them. He was built like a bear; his smile showed a gap where a tooth had been. “Howdy, son,” he boomed, addressing Hunter. “Bill’s the name. Pleased to meet you. I’ve got a boy about your age, but he’s with his mother. I haven’t seen him in a long time. How’s about a high five?” He extended his huge paw of a hand, fingers raised and spread. After a second’s hesitation, Hunter gave him a hand smack. By then, the boy was grinning, no longer scared.

  “It’s a cold night to be out,” Bill said. “You ought to be mighty glad your dad came and found you.”

  “He’s not . . . ,” Hunter began, but then broke off. “Let’s go, Dad,” he said, motioning Shane toward the door.

  Dad. Nobody had ever called Shane that. Even if it wasn’t true, the word warmed a hidden spot he’d been unaware of until now. As he followed Hunter out the door, he glanced back at Bill. “You boys have a safe trip.”

  “Thanks,” the big biker said. “And you take good care of your boy. He’s a fine one, and kids are mighty precious. Believe me, I know.”

  With a farewell nod, Shane followed his temporary son outside into the freezing dark. As soon as she saw them, Kylie flung open the door, sprang out of the truck, and snatched her errant boy into her arms.

  “You are in so much trouble, Hunter Wayne!” she said. But there was no mistaking the fierce mother love in her voice. “Do you want to talk about this now or in the morning?”

  “In the morning, please.” He yawned. “I’m so tired.”

  Shane opened the door to the bench seat in the back of the cab. “There’s an old quilt in here. Cover up and get some rest if you want.”

  Without a word, Hunter crawled onto the seat, found the quilt, and made a cocoon of it. By the time Shane had closed Kylie’s door and gone around to climb into the driver’s seat, he was already asleep.

  Kylie glanced back at her slumbering son. Filling her eyes with the sight of him, she breathed a prayer of thanks. If the worst had happened tonight, she could have lost him. But he was here. He was safe.

  How could she have managed without Shane, whose help had made all the difference? It would be so easy to fall into his arms and weep with relief. But even if he hadn’t been driving, that would be a bad idea. Shane Taggart was a one-way ticket to heartbreak. The sooner she got that through her head, the better.

  Her nerves were still wound tight. As Shane turned off Main Street onto the road for home, she leaned back in the seat and tried to relax. Falling into her old habit, she went to twist her gold wedding ring.

  Her heart dropped. Where the ring had be
en for fourteen years, she felt nothing except a band of smooth-worn skin.

  “Oh . . .” She gave a little moan.

  Shane glanced at her. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” Her heart was pounding. “My wedding ring—it’s gone.”

  There was a beat of startled silence. “You’re saying you’ve lost it?”

  “I never take it off, day or night. But after all the things I’ve done today”—she paused, going down her mental list—“making cookies, shoveling snow, peeling potatoes, washing dishes . . . somehow it must’ve slipped off. And now it’s—it’s gone.”

  “It isn’t gone, Kylie. Your ring has to be somewhere. With any luck at all, it’ll turn up.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. My luck’s been running pretty low lately.” Heartsick, Kylie fought back waves of senseless emotion. The ring wasn’t just a piece of jewelry. It was her protection, a symbol of who she’d been and who she was. But she couldn’t expect Shane to understand that.

  “Think. Where’s the last place you remember having it?”

  “I remember sitting at the table with Amy and Muriel. We were icing cookies—that’s all I remember except that things got hectic after that, and I didn’t miss the ring till now.”

  “Well, it’s not going anywhere. Get a good night’s rest and look in the morning. Maybe you’ll remember then.”

  “What if I dropped it in the snow?”

  “Then it’ll be there when the snow melts.”

  “How can you be so . . . so . . .” So, what? Callous? Unfeeling? Kylie groped for the right word and failed to find it.

  “You were saying?”

  “Never mind.” She exhaled, settling back in the seat. Shane wouldn’t understand. He probably thought she was being a sentimental ninny. After all, a ring was only a piece of metal; he’d just helped her find the most precious thing of all—her son. But it wasn’t the ring itself that mattered. It was everything that simple gold band stood for. Now it was lost, and most likely for good.

  A tear drizzled down her cheek, then another. Before she knew it, she was sobbing. It was not just for the ring, but for all the rest: losing Brad, losing their home, and failing to provide her children with the perfect lives they deserved. She couldn’t even give them a decent Christmas. So many failures for the girl whom classmates at Branding Iron High School had voted “Most Likely to Succeed.”

  With a muted curse, Shane swung the truck onto the snow-piled shoulder of the road, shifted into neutral, and pulled the hand brake. Unfastening his seat belt, he turned and gathered her against his coat.

  Resistance fading, Kylie nestled against him. He smelled of snow, fresh hay, and damp leather. His arms were even stronger than she’d imagined in her teenage dreams. “Go ahead and cry, girl,” he murmured against her hair. “Heaven knows you’ve got your reasons. But things will come around in their own time. You’ll see.”

  Kylie made a feeble effort to answer him, but her throat choked off the words. No one had put his arms around her since the day of Brad’s funeral. The rare times she’d cried, she’d shed her tears alone, to spare her children. How could Shane have known this was what she needed? Until now, she hadn’t even known it herself.

  Driven by a hunger too deep to understand, she tilted her face upward. For the space of a breath, his hooded gaze held hers in the darkness of the cab. Then he lowered his head and captured her lips—not in a tender nibble like he’d given her the night before, but in a deep, sensual, soul-melting kiss.

  Kylie’s pulse slammed, pumping heat through her body. Buried hungers she’d tried to forget stirred and awakened like budding flowers. She found herself responding, arching upward to deepen that intoxicating kiss. Stars spun in her head. Comets trailed swirls of light.

  Heaven help me, I want him.

  Abruptly he pulled away. “Enough of that for now.” His breathing was edgy, and his voice thick. “We’ve got a sleeping boy in the back and we need to get both of you home. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Let’s get going.” Feeling foolish now, Kylie settled into place. As Shane pulled back onto the road, she glanced over the seat at Hunter. Her son was sleeping like a tired puppy.

  Would it have upset Hunter if he’d seen Shane kissing her? Maybe not. He liked Shane, maybe even had secret hopes that they might get together. But it wasn’t going to happen. Delicious as that kiss had been, she’d be a fool to lose her heart to a man bent on wandering. Her long-distance marriage to Brad had been difficult enough. If she ever settled on a man again, it would be someone who’d stay with her and be a full partner in raising their family—not “Love ’em and Leave ’em” Shane Taggart.

  They drove the last mile in silence, with Shane keeping his eyes on the snow-slicked road. He couldn’t help but wonder what Kylie was thinking. Best guess? She was already beating herself up for letting him kiss her—and for kissing him back. Shane Taggart, town bad boy and bad influence on young children.

  But a pretty good kisser.

  Damn!

  For the second time, he’d broken his vow not to mess with a woman wearing a wedding ring. That she’d lost the ring, and was crying about it, was just a technicality. As far as Kylie was concerned, she was still married to a hero husband buried in Arlington. How could he measure up to that?

  But what was he thinking? Why should he care if he measured up or not? If the prospective buyers closed on the ranch, he could be out of here in the next few weeks. Kylie and her little family would be history.

  He exhaled, blowing off the tension as the lights of Muriel’s place came into view around the bend. He and Kylie were already behaving as if that torrid kiss had never happened. When they got to the house, the charade would continue. But forgetting the hungry heat that had passed between them would be easier said than done. Lying in bed tonight, he’d be remembering every searing second of it. And something told him Kylie would be remembering, too.

  By the time the truck pulled up to the house, Muriel, Henry, and Amy had come out onto the back porch. “Did you find him?” Amy called out as Kylie opened the door and jumped to the ground.

  “He’s right here in the back,” Kylie said. “He’s fine, just tired.”

  Shane had come around the truck to open the rear door of the cab. “Come on, sleepyhead, you’re home.”

  Still groggy, Hunter sat up, blinking in the porch light. Shane untangled him from the quilt and boosted him to the ground.

  “Where was he?” Amy asked.

  “At a place called Buckaroo’s,” Shane said. “Our boy’s had quite an adventure. I’ll let him tell you about it.”

  The frigid air had shocked Hunter awake. “I hitched a ride with this old lady driving a pickup,” he said. “She let me off at Buckaroo’s. I thought maybe I could meet some new friends there. But there was nobody my age, just this really mean-looking gang of bikers.”

  Amy’s eyes widened. “Were you scared?”

  “Me? Heck, no. They were cool. Even gave me high fives.”

  “Wow!” Amy said.

  “For heaven’s sake, it’s freezing out here!” Muriel pulled her woolen afghan tighter around her shoulders. “Come on inside. There’s hot cocoa on the stove.”

  She ushered the children back inside. Henry followed, closing the door and leaving Kylie and Shane alone on the back porch.

  Kylie looked up at him, ignoring the slight tremor that rippled all the way to her toes. The faint moonlight, reflecting on the snow, cast his eyes in shadow and highlighted the chiseled planes of his face. The urge to stretch on tiptoe and kiss those gorgeous lips again was almost too powerful to resist. But resist she did.

  “Are you coming in?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s getting late. I’ll be heading home to a hot shower and a soft bed.”

  The mental image conjured by his words triggered a flush of heat to her face. Kylie tried the old trick of imagining an eraser wiping out the pictures in her head. It didn’t work.

 
“I hope you know how grateful I am,” she said. “Without you, I would never have known where to find Hunter.”

  “No need to thank me,” he said. “Hunter’s a good kid. I was concerned about him, too. I just hope he’s learned a few lessons.”

  “Anyway . . .” She hesitated, expecting him to turn and go. Was he waiting for her to say something about the kiss, or even for some sign that he should kiss her again? “About what happened—”

  “I know. It was nothing. A weak moment that’s best forgotten.”

  The back door creaked open again. Muriel stood framed by light from the kitchen. “Are you two coming in? I’ve poured the cocoa, and it’s getting cold.”

  “I was about to leave,” Shane said.

  “Nonsense, Cowboy. You’ve got time for a hot mug. It’ll warm your belly for the drive home.”

  Still, he hesitated. “I’d—”

  “Oh, come on in,” Muriel said. “The mugs are on the table. I even squirted whipped cream on top.”

  “Can’t say no to that.” Shane surrendered, holding the door for Kylie as they followed Muriel into the kitchen, where the others were already seated. The chocolate was hot and sweet. The cream made white mustaches on the children’s upper lips. Looking at each other across the table, they giggled.

  “So I guess all’s well that ends well,” Muriel said.

  “Not quite, I’m afraid.” Kylie held up her left hand. “I’ve lost my ring. I hope you’ll all keep your eyes open for it.”

  “Oh, dear,” Muriel said. “Of course we will.”

  “Does that mean you’re not married to Daddy anymore?” Amy asked.

  An awkward silence hung over the table. Kylie felt Shane’s eyes on her.

  “All it means is that the ring’s not on my finger,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow you can help me look for it, Amy.”

  Henry emptied his mug and rose from his chair. “I’ll be turning in,” he said. “There’s a good college game on TV. It should be starting about now. Thanks for the cocoa, Muriel. That was right nice of you.” With a good-night nod to the others, he ambled out the back door.