Christmas Confidential (7 page)

“Pink is fine.” Pushing the visor back, she set the two bags in the backseat, then opened the third one. He’d grabbed two maple-frosted doughnuts, four sausage biscuits, two hash browns in greasy paper sleeves and two tortillas filled with scrambled eggs and sausage. “Hot food from a gas station? Do you have a death wish?”

“Hey, in some areas, gas-station food is as good as any restaurant. It’s not like getting it from a vending machine or anything.”

Predictably, after handing him a tortilla and a hash brown, she chose a doughnut for herself, practically moaning over the sugary-sweet flavor of the maple. Too intent on watching her, he almost rolled through a stop sign until a ground-shaking honk from a passing semi snapped him out of it.

“I love maple,” she murmured, oblivious to his stare.

“Yeah, I remember.” He remembered more than he wanted—and wished there had been more
to
remember. Like how she looked naked. How she felt beneath him. How she woke up after a long night of not sleeping. Tousled, drowsy, soft, sweet...

“Did you hear anything in there about the weather?”

He checked both mirrors before accelerating on to the interstate, heading east and hopefully to warmer weather, growing friendliness and some clue where Mr. Smith’s money was. “That was all I heard. ‘Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, there’s snow fifty miles west.’”

“I hope it stays there.” She finished the last bite of doughnut, licked the sugar from her fingers—
damn!
—then looked into the bag again. This time she chose a biscuit, folding back the paper, eyeing the bread and sausage cautiously before taking a small bite.

Dean concentrated on driving and eating until he was full and the coffee was cooled enough to drink. He glanced at Miri, fingers wrapped around her own coffee, and tried to inject casual interest into his voice. “Okay...Atlanta doesn’t get many white Christmases, so that’s not where you grew up. Maybe northern Georgia? There are mountains in that part, aren’t there?”

“There are a few hills,” she replied drily.

“Don’t make fun of my geography knowledge. I can take you anywhere you want to go in the Dallas area blindfolded. But the only place I’ve been in Georgia is the Atlanta airport on my way to or from elsewhere.” He paused. “You have family there?”

“At the Atlanta airport?”

“Miriam,” he chided.

She looked at him briefly before turning her attention to her coffee, taking a long drink. He fully expected her to ignore him or tell him it was none of his business, but she surprised him. “Why don’t you call me Miri?”

“Because I like Miriam. And I’m the only one who calls you that. Aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose I could try to call you Miri if you insisted.”

She gave him another look but didn’t insist before reaching across to turn on the radio. A staticky “O, Holy Night” came from the speakers. She pushed the scan button and brought up “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
After a few more tries with similar results, she punched the CD button and Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s symphonic/heavy metal “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24”
crashed out into the air. Scowling, she shut off the stereo. “What is it with you and Christmas music?”

“’Tis the season, and all that. Besides, I like it.” He waited an extra beat before asking, “What is it with
you
and Christmas music?”

“It’s just another day, one that millions of people don’t celebrate. Do we have to be bombarded with all the hype?”

He turned on his blinker to switch lanes and pass a slow-moving dually, the same one from the motel, it looked like. Once he was back in the outside lane, he glanced at her. “Is that what Christmas is to you? Just another day? Hype? You said your mother loved Christmas.”

“Yeah, well, she’s dead, and I don’t love it.”

The words she snapped out and the way she stiffened as soon as she realized she’d said them both made his gut tighten. He couldn’t imagine not having his mom around, especially during the holidays. Not that she was celebrating with the family this year, of course, but she was still celebrating, and everyone knew she would be home in a week and a half.

But to know she was gone, that there’d be no more decorating the house or singing carols or watching the Rudolph movie even if it did creep them out... No wonder Miri wasn’t wild about the season.

* * *

The miles passed in a leaden gray blur. Middle of the day, and everyone’s lights were on—headlamps, houses and businesses alongside the interstate, Christmas lights flashing on buildings and signs and even bales of hay in fields. The non-Christmas-celebrators couldn’t catch a break, Miri thought with a scowl.

When the snow started, she tamped down a deep sigh. Watching it land on the windshield, the first flakes melting quickly before they slowly started to accumulate, the only thing she could think was—

“At least it isn’t sleeting.” Dean shifted, flexing his shoulders, then his fingers before switching on the wipers. “If it was ice, we’d have to pull over somewhere and wait it out. I couldn’t risk this baby on ice.” He gave the dash a comforting pat.

Miri snorted. “It wasn’t even half a car when your parents gave it to you. Surely you could fix one more little ding.”

His look feigned horror. “How about I rip that bear’s arm off and give you a chance to sew it back on?” Without pausing for her response, he went on. “You don’t ‘ding’ a treasure like this car. You don’t even take chances on it.”

“You drive in Dallas traffic every day. You park it in
unattended lots. You take chances with it all the time.”

He gave her a sidelong look, his mouth thinned. He’d taken the knitted cap off some miles back, when the car was warm enough, and his dark hair stood on end in places. It gave him a charming unpolished look. “You just don’t understand the relationship between a man and his car.”

She thought of her father and his cars. Any one of them would have supported her family for two years or more, and
his
baby, the big silver Bentley, could have kept them until they were grown. “Don’t get it, don’t want to.”

He shook his head with chagrin. “How did I end up with a woman who refuses to recognize the importance of a vehicle in a man’s life?”

Miri’s first thought was to remind him—caustically—that he wasn’t
with
her, not in any real sense. But some part that she’d thought had died from hopelessness and resignation twenty years ago wondered what it would be like to be
with
a man—and not just any man, but Dean. Would it be like her early years, when her mother was still healthy and her father had still loved them? There had been a lot of laughter then, a lot of kisses and a whole lot of “playing” in their room that she and Sophy, and later the younger kids, had been excluded from. They had sat side by side and held hands when they walked and snuggled on the couch.

In the ten-year run of the Smiths as a family, those times had been so much more common than the bad times, but Miri hardly ever remembered them. The bad times, the sad times, the crying times were so much stronger in her mind.

“What
do
you appreciate besides ragged old bears?”

She blinked rapidly to clear her eyes. Must be fatigue from staring at the snow without blinking. Definitely not tears. She hadn’t cried since the day her mother had died.

But something had shorted in her brain, and she answered honestly. “Second chances.” Didn’t that sound like something a newly released felon should say? Quickly, before her nerve failed her, she went on. “You giving me this ride. I know you’re hoping I’ll lead you to the money, and that’s not going to happen, but...I appreciate it just the same.”

His gaze was steady enough to make hers waver. After a long moment, he said, “You’re welcome.”

Was she disappointed he hadn’t denied wanting to recover the money for his client? A few sweet words from him about just seeing her safely to her destination would have felt good, for about as long as it took her to remember that all his sweet words and actions last year had just been part of his job.

No, she preferred honesty, even if his lack of denial did send a bit of regret shivering through her. She already had so many regrets—though not about taking the money. Her father owed them that, down to the last penny. Nothing she’d done to protect her mother or herself niggled at her conscience, either. They’d had to survive in a world that didn’t offer much help, so she made no apologies.

She did regret the life she hadn’t lived. Once Social Services had come around, she never had another real friend. She’d learned to not even open herself to the possibility. She’d kept everyone at an emotional distance, and when she was old enough, she’d fixated on finding Sophy, Oliver, Chloe and their father and getting the money he owed them.

And she regretted that the first person she’d chosen to trust since her mother’s death had been Dean. Sweet, charming, sexy, stubborn Dean. She’d opened herself to that possibility, all right, and look what it had gotten her.

Learn from your mistakes.
That had been a common refrain in prison.

Men were put here to break our hearts, baby.
Mom’s best advice.

She wouldn’t start wanting anything sweet from Dean. She would prove she’d learned from that mistake.

Before she could decide exactly how she would prove it, Dean muttered, “Damn.” She looked at him, then followed his tense gaze to the road. There was plenty of distance between him and the next vehicle—he was careful about that—but in front of it, traffic was slowing, brake lights flashing like a Christmas display gone wild. As she watched, far ahead a tractor-trailer jackknifed and slid as if in slow motion to block both lanes. She imagined she could hear the crumpling of metal and shattering of glass as the vehicles immediately behind it crashed into each other. At the same time she muttered a silent curse, Dean whispered a soft prayer.

He braked, three quick taps, and began to steer the car toward the shoulder. Her fingers knotting in Boo’s fur, she glanced in the rearview mirror and gasped. “Dean!”

A white pickup was bearing down on them, the vehicle high enough off the ground that all she could see was grille and one headlight. Breath catching in her lungs, she whispered in her head—
please, please, please
—and waited for the collision, the force that would whip them forward within their seat belts, that would crumple the trunk and fenders and probably a good part of the car’s interior if the damn giant truck didn’t just roll over them like a dozer.

Dean jerked the wheel hard to the right, across the shoulder and into the grass, and the truck sailed past with no more than a few inches’ clearance. The Charger skidded sideways a few feet before stopping near the edge of a culvert. As far as Miri could see, the occupants of the truck didn’t even glance back, and the driver didn’t stop to make sure they were all right.

The snow dampened the traffic sounds and collected in fragile blobs on the passenger windows while the wipers still worked to clear the windshield. Her breathing was audible over the rush of the heater, and suddenly she was so cold she couldn’t register the warm air blowing over her.

“Are you okay?”

She breathed. “Yeah. More importantly, no dings on the car.”

The sound he made was derisive. “Don’t you love the Christmas spirit in all these good Samaritans stopping to see if we need help?”

“We didn’t actually hit anything, and it’s probably all they can do to concentrate on not winding up here themselves.”

He gave her an incredulous look. “Miriam Scrooge defending the common holiday traveler?”

“I’m not a Scrooge.” She paused a moment. “I prefer Grinch.”

His chuckle had a startled quality to it, then the humor passed and he exhaled deeply, blowing out the tension of the past few minutes, she figured. If she’d been overcome with the sick fear that they were going to be in a wreck, he must have had double the anxiety for the danger to his car.

“There’s an exit just up ahead. We’re gonna have to get off the interstate at least for a while. It’ll take ’em a long time to clean this up.” Rolling down his window, he swiped the snow from the rearview mirror, looked, then slowly eased back on to the pavement. He didn’t try to merge but stayed on the shoulder the few hundred yards to the exit.

The exit took them to a crossroad with two gas stations, one rundown diner and a shabby motel. Dean pulled into a parking lot. “Do you know where the atlas is?”

“I put it—” She reached into the backseat at the same time he did, bumping heads with him, looking up to find him far too close. For an instant, a moment, all they did was stare. His blue eyes were dark, grim, then slowly something else seeped in.
A memory,
she thought. A kiss. A taste. Heaven help her,
she
still remembered. If she wasn’t careful, she could still want, still need—

Nothing sweet. Not from Dean.

The reminder should have made her straighten, putting as much space between them as possible. She should have let him know beyond a doubt that she wasn’t interested in resurrecting
anything
with him. Once he delivered her to Atlanta, she would never see him again.

But she didn’t straighten, didn’t move away so much as a breath. Her skin was hot, her fingers nerveless, her breathing shallow and as unsteady as the beat of her heart.
One small resurrection,
the sly voice inside her coaxed.
One kiss,
the loneliness inside her pleaded.

“Miriam.” His voice was husky, her plain, nothing-special name sounding very special. His eyes darkened, and he moved closer, even though they were already intimately close. She thought he was going to kiss her and didn’t know if she could be strong enough to push him away. She’d been the strong one her whole life, and just once, just for two minutes, she wanted someone else to take that role. Just once she wanted—

“I’ve got it,” he murmured.

Got what?

Then he sat back, pulling the road atlas with him. A grin spread across his face, appealing for all its smugness. “You thought I was going to kiss you.”