Abby's Christmas Read online

  “Of course he did. I saw his motorcycle over there not ten minutes before the fire truck showed up. So why is he back now?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “And why did you go to his mother’s house? Did he forget the address?”

  Abby bit her tongue. “He thought he would…surprise her. But I thought Mrs. Blake might need a little support, since she’s been sick so much. So I went along to…smooth the way.”

  “Did you?”

  Trust Charlie to ask the really hard question. “I…don’t know.” Bitter and sick, Mrs. Blake was never easy to get along with. But her reaction to Noah’s arrival hadn’t been anything like Abby expected. “Noah brought a dog with him, a stray he rescued on his way here.”

  Charlie snorted in disbelief.

  “And the dog got loose in the flower beds—”

  “And Marian Blake started squealing.”

  Abby sighed. “Something like that.” With belated guilt, she realized she should probably warn Charlie about the dog.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” her dad said, starting on the salads for dinner. “Bad enough the boy didn’t let her know he was coming. Showing up with some mutt has to be the stupidest thing he’s done in a while. I was there the day in third grade when Marian got chased across the playground by a dog. German shepherd, it was.”

  He shook his head. “Dog just wanted to play and when Marian ran away screaming, it thought she’d invented a new game. By the time the rest of us kids got there, the shepherd had her flat on her back under the pine trees and was licking her face off. She didn’t come back to school for a week, she was so hysterical.”

  “That’s horrible.” Abby stirred the stew and then went to the pantry for cans of green beans. Noah couldn’t know his mother’s story, or he wouldn’t have brought the dog home with him. But there was obviously no hope of convincing his mother to take the poor animal into her house. Which meant…

  “So you chased the dog off, and then what?”

  “We didn’t exactly chase him away.”

  “Well, Marian didn’t change her mind after all this time.”

  “N-no.”

  Charlie glared at her. “Don’t tell me that.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell me you kept the stupid dog.”

  “You don’t know it’s a stupid dog. You’ve never even seen it.”

  “I don’t have to see a stray to know I don’t want it.”

  “He’s sweet, and scared to death.”

  “If he’s in my house, he’s got a good reason to be scared.”

  Hands on her hips, Abby glared at her dad. “I live there, too. And I’ll put my dog on the sunporch with a blanket and a bowl of water and some food.”

  “It’s not your dog, it’s Noah Blake’s dog.”

  “I’m keeping it.” She’d had no intention of doing any such thing when she took the dog home, of course.

  Charlie pinned her with his drill-sergeant glare. “Abigail Ann Brannon, I will not—”

  Out front, the bell on the door jingled once, and again, and yet again. The dinner rush was starting.

  “We’ll discuss this later,” he promised, and left the kitchen. Abby heard his brusque voice out in the dining room, greeting familiar customers. She stood still for a few seconds longer, recovering from the argument with her dad. When was the last time she and Charlie had seriously disagreed?

  Never, was the first answer that came to mind. Sure, they argued a lot. And he could be hard to get along with sometimes. But she hadn’t seriously defied her dad since she was fifteen and wanted to attend a summer camp in Wyoming. Her parents had said no—they needed her to work in the diner. She’d given them the silent treatment and sulked through the entire summer until she went back to school and saw Noah again. They hadn’t talked much, except when she passed him a few sheets of paper if he needed them, or a pen when he didn’t have one. Just seeing him had always made a major improvement in her day.

  And she hadn’t seen him in fifteen years.

  “Fried chicken, stew and meat loaf,” Charlie announced as he came into the kitchen. “Hamburger, cheeseburger, tuna sub, grilled cheese and soup. Two more stews.”

  Abby shook herself from head to toe. Time to get to work. “Right. I’ve got the grill. Two burgers and a grilled cheese, coming up.”

  NOAH FOUND IT AMAZING that his mother still watched the same roulette-wheel spelling show and supply-the-question quiz program after dinner as she had when he’d been in high school. The sitcoms that came afterward had changed actors, if not story lines, but after half an hour of watching, he felt sick to his stomach. Or maybe that was the hamburger.

  “I’m gonna go see a couple of people,” he told his mother during a commercial break. “I still have my key, unless you changed the locks.”

  She stared up at him for a long minute. “No, I didn’t change the locks.” As he crossed to the front door, she said, “Do you want breakfast?”

  He looked back over his shoulder. “Sure.” He hadn’t been given the choice for years. “That’d be good.”

  “You better show up in the kitchen at eight, then.”

  “I’ll be there. ’Night.” If she responded, he didn’t hear her.

  Standing outside the chain-link fence, he stopped to take a deep breath of cold, dry air. He hadn’t remembered the house being so small, so…so tight. On the other hand, he must have had some reason for running away, right? Besides knowing that if he stayed, his life would be over before it began.

  With the Harley rumbling underneath him, Noah admitted to himself that he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Most of the guys he’d hung with in high school were probably in jail. Even if they weren’t in the joint right now, they surely had been, and seeing them could constitute a violation of his parole. Not a smart move for his first week of freedom.

  The nightly rituals in the neighborhoods south of Boundary Street hadn’t changed in fifteen years, either. And they differed not at all from the usual agenda on the “bad” side of most towns he’d ever been in. The bars did a booming business. Working girls lingered on street corners and beside alleys. He fielded a couple of waves as he waited at a stoplight, remembered how long it had been since the last time, and gave the possibility a second’s consideration—until Abby’s sweet face appeared in his mind’s eye.

  Suddenly, a hooker in black leather and chains didn’t seem to be what he needed. With a shake of his head and a lift of his hand, Noah rolled on down the hill, to another light and through an intersection, then into the gravel parking lot of the Carolina Diner.

  The lights were still on and half a dozen cars sat in the parking lot. He’d be safe enough going in for a cup of coffee, maybe a piece of pie. He remembered liking Charlie Brannon’s chocolate pie.

  As the door shut behind him, he realized he’d made a mistake. Every table in the room was empty except for a few square ones pushed together in the center, where people sat with papers spread out in front of them, working.

  Working, that is, until they all stopped and turned to stare at him. Noah felt his cheeks heat up at the same time as he started to recognize the faces. The names popped into his head a second or two later.

  Abby got out of her chair and came toward him, one hand extended. “Noah! It’s good to see you again.” Before he could back out, she caught his wrist in her cool fingertips. “I’m sure you’ll remember almost everybody here.”

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt….”

  “You’re not.” The tall, brown-haired guy at the end of the table got to his feet, offering a handshake and a grin. “Welcome back, Noah.”

  “Dixon.” Noah gripped Dixon Bell’s hand. “Thanks.”

  Dixon turned to the woman in the chair next to him, who was standing as well. “You remember Kate Bowdrey? She’s now Kate Bell.”

  “I remember she was the smartest person in the class.” He smiled at the slender and beautiful Mrs. Bell. “How are you?”

  �
�Glad to see you again.” To his surprise, she gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You’ve been gone too long.”

  All of a sudden, he was surrounded by people he’d gone to high school with, returning handshakes and hugs, trying to catch up with a lot of changes very fast. Kate’s sister Mary Rose, as blond as her sister was dark, had married Pete Mitchell. Adam DeVries, who didn’t seem to stutter anymore, was the mayor of New Skye and married to a woman named Phoebe. Jacquie Lennon was now Jacquie Lewellyn and shoeing horses for a living, which meant she must still be horse crazy.

  And Abby was still Abby. “What can I get you to drink?” With her hands on his shoulders, she leaned forward as he sat in the chair she’d just left. “More hot chocolate? Iced tea? Coffee?”

  “I came for coffee. And—” He glanced around the table to see that most of the others had enjoyed some kind of dessert. “And some chocolate pie?”

  “You got it.” Her hands tightened for a second before she let go. Noah noted a sudden hollow in his chest where his breath used to be. He turned to Adam, on his right. “Looks like there’s some serious planning going on tonight.”

  “We’re the committee for the big Christmas Dance. Or maybe it’s called the Reunion Dance.”

  “Holiday Reunion Dance,” Jacquie put in from across the table. “Our fifteen-year high school class reunion is gonna be a holiday bash.”

  “Fifteen years?” Noah said. “Hard to believe it’s been so long.”

  “Or that we’re so old.” Abby set a mug down by his left hand. “I still feel eighteen.”

  “I usually feel like I’m eighteen when I get up in the morning,” Pete said with a grin. “But by the time I get home, it’s a lot closer to thirty-three.”

  After more than two years in prison, Noah felt as if he was closer to fifty. “Uh…sounds like a good time. Do you expect a big crowd?”

  The question did what he’d hoped, which was to get all of them talking, explaining the plans for the dance, the guest list, the decorations and music. All he had to do was nod and listen and try to make sense of this unfamiliar world he’d stumbled into.

  Abby brought him his pie and then sat in an empty chair across the table. Between bites—the pie was every bit as good as he remembered—Noah took the opportunity to watch her with her friends. She’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail, so he could see the long column of her throat and her delicate pink ears, dusted with the same freckles that sprinkled her face. Her hazel eyes glowed as she talked, and a smile always hovered around her sweet, full lips. She was the most alive woman he’d ever seen. And the most desirable.

  Not in this life. He gave himself a mental punch and refocused his attention on the discussion.

  “What we need to decide is how to decorate the gym,” Jacquie said. “People will feel like they’re supposed to play basketball if we don’t do something.”

  “We can hang mistletoe from the hoops.” Dixon winked at his wife, who blushed.

  “It’s drafty in there, too.” Mary Rose pretended to shiver. “My dress has short sleeves and a low back.”

  Pete put an arm around his wife and gave her a squeeze. “That’s why we’re going to do lots of dancing. Slow dancing.” Noah noticed for the first time that Pete’s left arm was in a sling, under which he wore a cast from shoulder to fingertips.

  Abby rolled her eyes. “After two years, you two still act like newlyweds. Consider the rest of us who aren’t so besotted, why don’t you? Noah, what do you think?”

  He put his hands up in defense. “I don’t have a clue about stuff like this.”

  She frowned at him. “You’re not helping.”

  That was supposed to bother him? He started to shrug, then realized he didn’t like disappointing Abby. “Well, you could make a smaller space within the gym, if you used dividers of some kind.”

  “Dividers? Like screens?”

  Noah nodded. “Yeah, or curtains. I think there are curtains on stands you can rent for that kind of thing.”

  “Or we could build something easily enough,” Adam said. “Plywood sheets and two-by-fours would do the job. Paint them whatever color you want and make a room within a room. Good idea, Noah.”

  “Red and green for the season?” Pete suggested.

  “We could do holiday designs.” Mary Rose sat forward to look at her sister down the table. “Or use wallpaper.”

  “Or wrapping paper. Or…” Kate thought for a second. “Or we could paint a whole scene on the boards. A party scene, with Christmas decorations and trees and people—”

  “A snowy landscape,” Jacquie said, “with horses and sleighs and lighted houses.”

  “We could do a street scene—downtown New Skye all decorated for a white Christmas.” Abby’s face shone with pleasure. “We haven’t had snow at Christmas here since I was six. But we could paint one, and maybe even scatter snowflakes on the floor and hang them from the ceiling. Coach Layman is making us put mats over the floor as it is, so piles of fake snow shouldn’t be a problem. And we could dance in the snow without getting cold!”

  By the time the meeting broke up at almost eleven o’clock, a contest had been decided on. Individuals or groups could register to paint a Christmas-scene panel. The entry fees would add to the budget for the dance, Abby pointed out, and prizes would be awarded to each participant.

  “Some can be gag gifts, like ‘Most Glitter.’” Abby grinned at Noah. “I love glitter.”

  “‘Colored Inside the Lines,’” Noah suggested. “That’s the best some of us can hope for.” Abby and her friends burst out laughing, and he stared at them in surprise. His reputation did not include being funny.

  Folks said good-night as Abby gathered up the dishes from the table and walked them into the kitchen. Before leaving, Dixon put a hand on Noah’s shoulder. “Speaking of basketball, we have a friendly game going on Saturday mornings about seven, over at the school. Pete usually plays with us, but he got hurt on the job a couple of weeks ago, so we’re short a man. Want to join us?”

  More surprises. “I’m not sure—”

  Dixon nodded. “Give me a call, let me know. Or just show up. Good to see you.”

  “You, too.” He stared after the Bells for a minute, then followed Abby into the kitchen with the glasses and mugs from the table. “You don’t have to stay and wash up, do you? It’s late.”

  “There’s a dishwasher.” She nodded toward the contraption in the back of the kitchen. “Load and run.”

  Once she’d flipped the washer switch and locked the back door, Abby turned off the lights. With the only illumination coming from the dining room, the shadowed kitchen felt small. Intimate.

  One-track mind. Noah leaned his hips back against the stainless-steel counter, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I haven’t seen your dad. He still work here?”

  “He does, but I make him go home for a couple of hours in the afternoon and for good about eight o’clock. He’s just not as young as he was.” She pulled the dark red coat he’d seen her in earlier out of the nearby closet, then turned to smile at him. “None of us are, I guess.”

  “You work by yourself all the rest of the time?” He made a conscious decision not to help her with the coat, though she was struggling with the inside-out sleeves.

  “I have help until about three in the afternoon. Billie Underwood comes in to cook up vegetables, pot roasts and stuff while I make the desserts. She goes home to take care of her grandkids after school, but still does a lot of baking and cooking for us then, too.” Still fighting with the coat, she blew a frustrated breath off her lower lip. “Would you please come over here and untangle this stupid cloth from my arm?”

  Warily, Noah straightened up and stepped close enough to catch the collar of the coat and the end of the sleeve. “Why don’t you just stopping wiggling for a minute?”

  Abby dropped her hands and was still. She’d gotten him where she wanted him, finally—alone in a dark room. This was the moment she’d been dreaming
about for most of her life, at least since the first time she thought kissing a boy didn’t sound like the grossest idea on the planet.

  But now she wasn’t sure what to do next. She’d never seduced a man before. As he dragged the coat off her shoulders and arm, she turned to face him, without stepping back.

  He did, though, holding out the coat to the side and pulling the arms straight. “There.” He pushed the coat toward her. “Now you can put it on.”

  Abby turned her back to him, extending her arms in a demand for help. After a pause, Noah sighed very loudly, slipped the sleeves over her hands and pulled the coat up. She didn’t take any responsibility for getting the collar up to her neck, and he huffed again as he settled the wool over her shoulders.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Abby feared she’d lost.

  Then she felt the lightest of touches in her hair. A slight tug told her he’d wrapped a strand around his finger. She could hear his breathing, rough in the dark. When she didn’t move away, he stroked his knuckles over her head, just above her ear, then his fingertips. His shaking fingertips.

  Now she could turn, and did, setting her palms on his chest. She’d always wondered how far she would have to look up to see his face when they were this close. He was taller than she remembered. Taller than he looked. The perfect height for kissing, her head just level with his shoulder.

  One of his hands had tangled in her hair. The other traveled down her arm to cup her elbow. His dark eyes were narrowed, suspicious. “What are you doing?”

  “Welcoming you home,” she whispered back. Then she went up on tiptoe and pressed her mouth against Noah’s.

  For a few miraculous seconds, he took everything. She offered comfort and he seized it all. Desire and his need flamed over them both. His mouth was firm, agile, demanding. Abby sank into the kiss, sank into Noah until his hands, his body were all that kept her upright. She would have given him whatever he wanted.

  Abruptly, he shoved her away, with enough force that she stumbled backward and probably would have fallen if she hadn’t backed into the wall.