Kathleen Creighton - One Christmas Knight

“That’s good.” His frown eased into something else-something she couldn’t read. Then he reached unexpectedly to touch her face, rubbing his thumb over the place between her brows where tension gathered. “We want to be ready for the next one so it doesn’t sneak up on us again. Get you relaxin’… breathin’ right.”

“Right,” Mirabella whispered. His eyes were so dark and warm…as bracing as coffee on a cold morning. She wanted to hold on to them, wrap herself around them and drink in their strength and certainty.

His smile blossomed slowly, almost without her noticing… until, like a finger of sunlight reaching into a dark corner, it touched something deep within her, and she felt stirrings like the fine tremblings of a moth’s wings-like the first tiny movements of the new life inside her.

“We’re gonna do okay, you and me,” he said in a husky voice, drawing a feathery line across her forehead with his fingertips like someone leaving stroke marks in velvet. “Don’t you worry now, y’hear? Everything’s gonna be just fine.”

She nodded, and her hand rose unguided to touch his where it cradled her cheek-touch, then catch and hold it there. She made what was for her an unprecedented sound, a laugh so saturated with emotion it sounded almost like a sob. Embarrassed by it, she closed her eyes…and felt the soft brush of his mouth on hers. Just that, there and then gone, so quickly she might have imagined it, if his next words hadn’t blown like a whisper of breath across her lips.

“You’d best go now…get outta those clothes while you can.”

Dazed and disoriented, she let him turn her and guide her into the sleeper.

“I got that out of your car for you,” he said, pointing to the navy blue overnighter that she’d somehow failed to notice sitting in the far corner of the bed compartment. “Don’t know what all you got in there-hope it’s somethin’ you can use. If you need anything of mine, just go on and help yourself.”

She murmured her thanks, and heard the curtain slide across the opening. A moment later she heard the crackle of radio static, and his growly CB drawl saying, “Mayday, Mayday, we got us an emergency here…anybody out there listenin’? Come on…”

My overnight bag. She reached for it and pulled it toward her, smiling mistily and shaking her head even though she knew she ought to be used to Jimmy Joe’s ways by now. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t think she would ever get over being a little bit awed by him-and grateful. At least she hoped not. People like him shouldn’t ever be taken for granted, she thought. Like roses and robins, and the Grand Canyon.

Mostly her overnight case held cosmetics and toiletries, her hair dryer and changes of underwear, none of which she was likely to be needing anytime soon. This trip, however, she had thrown in a nightgown, for convenience during one-night motel stops. It was her favorite, an enormous T-shirt with a picture of a glowering cat on the front and the words, I Don’t Do Mornings. Made for comfort rather than modesty or style, it did absolutely nothing to camouflage her swollen breasts and bulging belly. It wasn’t very warm, either, but it was long enough to cover her legs to mid-calf, and since she wasn’t going to be wearing any bottoms, that seemed a big plus. For warmth and modesty she could always wear one of Jimmy Joe’s shirts on top of it.

No bottoms… A little spasm of queasiness gripped her. I feel like a virgin preparing for my wedding night, she thought. And then the irony of that struck her and she had to sit down, holding her stomach and hiccuping with silent laughter.

“How you doin’ in there?” Jimmy Joe called from the front.

She jumped guiltily and began to shuck off clothing as fast as she could, managing to answer with a muffled, “Fine…just about done.”

After a pause, his voice rode in on a ripple of laughter. “Hey, I thought of a good water song.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah…how ‘bout ’The River’? Garth Brooks.”

Preoccupied with peeling off her wet pants, she had to confess she’d never heard of either the song or, “Garth…who?”

Which clearly appalled Jimmy Joe. “Come on, now. You don’t mean to tell me you never heard of Garth Brooks? One of the biggest country singers the last couple years. Songs’ve been at the tops of the charts-Where you been, woman?”

Mirabella sniffed. “Oh…well. I told you, I don’t listen to much country music.”

“Huh.” There was a little silence, then, on a note of curiosity, “What’ve you got against country music, anyway?”

“I don’t have anything against country music. I just consider it a contradiction in terms, is all.” But she was smiling, exhilarated by the prospect of a new battle. Arguing with Jimmy Joe was such fun.

He gave a loud disdainful snort and to her delight countered with, “Don’t know why that surprises me, comin’ from a woman who thinks Pinocchio was Walt Disney’s best movie.”

“What?” She swept back the curtain with a grand gesture. “Oh, not again. How can you even argue that? It’s common knowledge Pinocchio was Disney’s masterpiece. All you have to do is look at the artistry, the animation, the characterizations, the themes… What?” Jimmy Joe was solemnly shaking his head. “Okay, why not? Just give me one good reason.”

“One’s all I need,” he said, watching her with his soft, unreadable eyes, smiling a quirky half-embarrassed smile she’d never seen before. “And I’ll tell you what it is. It hasn’t got a romance in it.”

“What?” Mirabella blinked, then laughed. “Romance? What’s that got to do with anything?”

He shrugged, then got up and came around the seat. Disconcerted, she took a step backward. “It has to do with everything, that’s what. Don’t you know that? Pretty near every great story’s about love. You notice every other Disney movie has one? Cinderella has one, Snow White has one-even Bambi has one. Only Pinocchio doesn’t. Shoot, the only female in it’s that fairy.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him. “I can’t believe it. You’re a romantic.”

He accepted that with that same half-serious, half-embarrassed little smile. “And you’re not,” he said thoughtfully.

The sleeper felt crowded and too warm, and she didn’t know whether it was because of his presence in it, or the subject under discussion. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said tightly, “the whole business is overrated. I’ve never met anybody in love who was happy about it. It just seems to make everybody miserable.”

“You ever been in love?”

She just looked at him; opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again and gripped the edge of the mattress with both hands.

Another one. He’d been half expecting it. He was puzzled, though, and a little disappointed because now he didn’t know whether it had been the contraction coming on or the mention of love and romance-particutarly the question he’d asked-that had made her tense up like that.

If it had been the latter, that might explain a lot, he thought as he thumbed his stopwatch, glanced at it, then set it again. Say she’d got her heart broken, the baby’s father had run out on her-now that was a possibility that hadn’t even occurred to him, but it sure would explain her being where she was and the situation she was in. Not to mention the attitude.

Hard to imagine any man doing that, though. Especially to her. If she’d been his…

He squelched the thought, but it lingered in his voice as he coached her with a fierce kind of tenderness. “Don’t tense up on me, now. Breathe…”

“How you doin’ back there?” “I’m droppin’ back a little, but I’ll make it.”

I-40-New Mexico

“Why do you always say that?” she asked in a strained and testy voice. “You and Charly-always the same thing: Breathe. I am breathing, dammit. Otherwise I’d be dead. Oh-ow. That hurts.”

“It hurts,” Jimmy Joe scolded, “because you’re not breathin’ right. And you’re all tensed up. Look at you.” Although he couldn’t exactly blame her, considering the knot his own insides were in. “You gotta relax, now.”

He peeled one of her hands off the mattress and sat down beside her. Holding it with both of his, he began to delicately manipulate the small bones in her palm, gently bending each finger, lightly stroking along the tendons in the back of her hand as if he were fine-tuning a musical instrument or an intricate piece of machinery.

And all the while his jaw was clenched tight and his mind was screaming, Charlie? Who’s Charlie?

“Charlie-that your husband?” he casually asked as he watched his fingers work their way from the base of her palm to the incredibly fragile bones of her wrist. He told himself it was to get her mind chewing on something else besides the pain she was in.

But it was hard to overlook the way he felt when she replied, with a funny little snort of laughter, “She’s my coach.” He felt light-headed and sort of goofy, like he wanted to smile but knew he shouldn’t.

“Well, she’s right. You should listen to your coach.” He crooned the words with a perfectly straight face. But inside, his heart was singing like a set of jakes on a downhill grade. She. Not a husband. Not even a boyfriend. She. “Here, why don’t you lie over there, now. Let me rub your back…get that breathin’ goin’ right.”

She shook her head rapidly, emphatically. Her eyes were closed and he could see that she was in that other place now, the place he couldn’t go, concentrating hard on the breath she was taking. The hand he was holding had gone limp and boneless and the other appeared to have relaxed its grip on the edge of the mattress, so he kept his mouth shut and rode it out with her. Which was all he could do.