Demon, who had been crouched beside him through the whole thing, now leaned out the window barking wildly at the retreating pickup.

“Shut up!” Buck shouted. He pressed the button to talk. “Yeah, George, I’m okay. I just need an APB on a ninety-three Dodge pickup. License number -”

Hell, with everything going on he hadn’t gotten the license number!

“Pickup’s license number unknown,” he said. “But I would like to talk, in the worst kind of way, to the scrawny snotnose wearing a cowboy hat who was driving it. See what you can do.”

The idiot tried to kill me, he thought, signing off. It damned sure wasn’t anything else.

Anger pounded in his head. Now that he’d gotten a look at Scarlett Scraggs’s would-be bridegroom he had to wonder just how innocent she was after all. Having the side of the Blazer smashed in didn’t exactly put him in the most tolerant mood.

Buck stepped on the gas, feeling justifiably raw. By damn, he had a few questions he wanted to ask!

It took only a few minutes to whip through downtown and head for home. Buck had canceled the meeting with the Hare Krishnas through his dispatcher; there was no reason to stop at the office.

As he turned off the road into the driveway he drove through a spot of chill winter fog, then pulled the Blazer up to the front door. He watched while the dog vaulted out of the front seat and ran up on the porch.

Buck moved more slowly, taking time to circle the Blazer and assess the damage. He swore under his breath. He only hoped the pickup was just as banged up, because the department couldn’t afford the bodywork this was going to cost.

He mounted the front steps, favoring his aching right arm. Once inside the downstairs hallway, a smell of something heavenly greeted him.

Buck missed his mother’s presence in the house, her bustle of pre-Christmas activities with church and her friends, the amount of holiday baking she still managed to do. But miraculously, he saw, something just as good had come to take its place.

There was the odor of simmering, roasting, delectable food in the air. He sniffed, then drew in a long breath. He was practically frozen from standing out on U.S. 29 examining tire tracks. The warmth of the old house enveloped him, and the radio in the kitchen was playing. Buck made out the local station’s nonstop program of Christmas carols, not the secular stuff the Living Christmas Tree was struggling with, but regular old-fashioned carols. Someone was singing “O Holy Night.”

He started down the front hall. The door to the parlor was open. Inside, the tree, lights winking, stretched to the high ceiling.

He paused in the doorway to admire it. A beautiful tree, he thought somewhat grudgingly, even loaded down with all the Grissom family junk.

The dog scrambled down the hall ahead of him and Buck followed it. The old-fashioned swinging door to the kitchen opened to his push and he found the place blazing with lights. Something was boiling and steaming away on the stove. The first thing Buck saw was that the old wooden kitchen table was covered with more food than he’d seen in his life.

It seemed to be all vegetables. Dinner, fixed early.

There were casseroles of what looked like broccoli with melted cheese, and glass baking dishes with what appeared to be onions baked with a crusty cheese top. There were rows of baked potatoes in their skins decorated with bacon pieces and creamed spinach. Then grilled tomatoes, and more cheese. Whipped potatoes with lightly broiled, fluffy tops, french fries beside them. There were braised carrots and candied carrots, a dish of candied yams. A bowl of green peas mixed with slivers of mushrooms. Garbanzo beans with onions and tomatoes.

Buck’s eyes began to glaze over. Obviously Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs had been raiding the freezer again. He turned to look for her and found her there, sitting at the end of the table, her bent head propped in her hands. When she looked up he saw she’d been crying.

“Farrie’s gone,” she said tonelessly.

Twelve

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” buck said.

The girl before him held her head in her hands. “Farrie’s never done this before.” Her voice was rough with tears. “Ever since she was born, practically, my little sister’s never gotten mad with me. And she’s never, never run off.”

Buck looked around. The kitchen was littered with dirty dishes and pots and pans. Scarlett Scraggs was not a neat and orderly cook. After a moment’s hesitation he drew up a chair and cleared a space between the platter of french fries and the garbanzo beans with tomatoes.

“Scarlett, let’s take this from the beginning.” He couldn’t help noticing that in spite of her air of misery, she was wearing her dark hair pulled back with a blue ribbon again and looked adorable. “We’re talking about your sister Farrie?”

She nodded, eyes downcast.

Buck had come into the kitchen wanting an explanation. After all, some Scraggs-appointed boyfriend had tried to kill him. Now, at the sight of Scarlett’s tear-stained face, he found all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and comfort her, kiss that luscious, downturned mouth, the tousled gypsy hair. It was a feeling that slightly amazed him.

He cleared his throat. “Your little sister’s gone somewhere,” he said, “without telling you?”

She shook her head. “Not ‘gone somewhere,’” she corrected him, “she’s run away.” Her voice dropped even lower. “Farrie hates me.”

He found that hard to believe. Not the way Scarlett hovered over her. Besides, the goblin child couldn’t have gone far; it was raining.

“Hates you? How could anybody hate you, Scarlett? Didn’t you say you’ve practically dedicated your life to her? What did you fight about?”

Her eyes slid away. “It was just something to do about us. Talking about where we belong.”

He was seeing Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs being devious. Buck wondered what they had really talked about. He opened his mouth to find out more but the wall telephone in the kitchen rang. With a groan, he got up to answer it.

Scarlett lifted her head to watch Buck lean up against the kitchen wall with his head bent, frowning, as the voice on the other end said something at length.

Buck Grissom was young, but you could just tell by looking at him how powerful he was as sheriff; people jumped when he spoke. And he nearly always scared Farrie half to death. He was a big man, crisp and neat in his tan uniform. His shoulders stretched his shirt tight, and below, his trousers stretched just as tightly across his muscular backside.

It had taken a lot out of Scarlett to explain to Farrie about Devil Anse, how he wanted Scarlett to be friendly with Buck Grissom the way he’d wanted her to be with Loy Potter’s son. Only this time it wasn’t just a ’93 customized six-cylinder Dodge pickup Devil Anse was aiming for, but the sheriff himself.

In return for doing what he said, Devil Anse expected to get a lot, like the sheriff’s looking the other way as far as Scraggs family businesses were concerned.

Watching Buck now, Scarlett couldn’t help wondering if Buck had made up his mind about Devil Anse’s offer. He was hunched against the wall, his hand on the back of his neck, rubbing it as he talked. For a moment she almost felt dizzy. Why not, a little devil in her head whispered, pick up from where they had left off? That is, letting him kiss her?

She was so taken with this idea that she jumped when Buck suddenly roared: “Television crew? George, are these people out of their minds?”

Scarlett’s heated, forbidden thoughts faded and she gave herself a shake. What she had told her little sister was right, that in the end what Devil Anse wanted her to do would bring only trouble not only to Buck Grissom, but to all of them. The only thing to do was leave Nancyville. Since the sheriff’s department still had their money they would have to hitchhike, and even Scarlett didn’t like to think about how they would manage.

When she’d told all this to Farrie, her sister cried, “Sheriff Buck wasn’t being good to us just because of Grandpa’s idea – he likes you, Scarlett! He doesn’t act like Devil Anse!”

“Well, he’s thinking about it.” Even while she said it Scarlett remembered his arms tight around her, the strange mystery of his kiss. “Grandpa made his offer, and he says Buck’s thinking it over.”

Farrie had jumped to her feet. “I don’t care what you say, we’re not leaving! I won’t listen to you! Mr. Ravenwood told me I’m going to be the Spirit of Mistletoe on the Living Christmas Tree, I’m going to sing a part all by myself!”

Farrie was working herself up to be sick, Scarlett knew. She reached out for her, but her sister backed away.

“We can’t leave!” Farrie wailed. “Do like Devil Anse says, Scarlett! If the sheriff wants you to be nice to him – do it!”

Scarlett’s mouth fell open in surprise. But before she could stop her, Farrie had stormed out of the kitchen.

In the upstairs hall she leaned over the banister to yell, “If you make me leave, Scarlett, you’ll be sorry!”

It was what children always said, Scarlett told herself, when they were mad. She left it at that and went back to her cooking. All afternoon she’d thought Farrie was in the front part of the house, sitting by the tree she’d finished decorating, watching the lights.

But when Scarlett looked for her some time later, Farrie was gone.

Buck hung up the telephone. “We’ve got to hurry, if we’re going to look for your sister,” he told her.

What he didn’t say was that in just a few short minutes, according to the department dispatcher, the delegation of Hare Krishnas along with a television news crew from an Atlanta television station would be arriving at the house.