The Lawman's Christmas Wish (10 page)

The engine revved with one quick yank of the pull cord.
Dexter slapped mittens over both ears and ducked behind the bulky police officer as Reed neatly sliced the tree trunk.

When the scrawny spruce toppled to the snow, more loud whoops went up with the spray of snow. Reed put the saw down, grinning at the exuberant little boy. Amy and Sammy joined them for high fives. Then her sons did a victory dance around the felled evergreen, hopping and clapping and whooping for all they were worth.

When the celebration ended, Amy began to sing “O Christmas Tree.”

After a few bars, Reed picked up the tune and added his baritone. A warm feeling flooded Amy's being. Without giving the action any thought, she did what came naturally and slipped one arm around Reed's back and another over Dexter's shoulders. She rocked back and forth, keeping rhythm as they sang.

Sammy, not to be left out, sidled up to Reed, who pulled the child against his leg.

“‘O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree….'”

A sweet emotion settled over the odd quartet singing at the top of its lungs to the ugly fallen Sitka spruce.

T
his was what Christmas was supposed to feel like.

Reed held one end of a hundred-bulb strand of multicolored lights while Amy twirled in a circle around the tree, looping and draping and humming along with a CD of Christmas carols.

Dexter and Sammy were piddling around, digging in plastic storage boxes Amy had insisted on bringing from her house.

The local chief of police, renowned for his aplomb in difficult situations, was still feeling a little shell-shocked by the morning's events. Shell-shocked and amazingly peaceful and happy. His tension, always present and pinching at the back of his neck, had dissipated as he'd sung Christmas carols, thrown snow at Amy and behaved like a kid out in the woods.

When had he ever done that? When had he ever felt like a kid? Now twice in the space of a week, Amy had reminded him of how good it felt to let go and enjoy himself.

He looked at Amy's boys, so cute and innocent, they made his heart squeeze. They were depending on him to keep them safe, and with God's help he would not fail.

He'd never considered God much, other than to appreciate
the stunning universe He'd created, but Amy was getting to him on that front, too.

Sammy had stuck a red bow on Cy's head and a blue one on his own. Now the pair lay side by side in front of the fireplace, watching the decorations go onto the tree. Sammy's little arm was looped over Cy's back as they snuggled close together. Both dog and boy looked ridiculously happy.

Amy was a fantastic mother, and her kids deserved an equally fantastic father.

Acid filled his stomach. Even if Amy agreed to marry him, he could never be that kind of father. The only father he'd ever known was harsh and hard, expecting too much. And his mother had been dead too long for him to remember any parenting he may have learned from her. He knew nothing about being a good dad like Ben. What if Amy married him and he was like his father? He'd snapped at Dexter out there in the woods. The reaction had been fear, but still, he'd hurt the boy's feelings. What if he was too hard on Dexter and Sammy? What if they grew up resenting him the way he resented Wes Truscott?

Sweat broke out on the back of his neck. Maybe marrying Amy wasn't for the best.

But he'd promised. He groaned.

“What did you do? Poke yourself?”

Amy's voice came from behind the tree. He could see her through the gaps of evergreen-scented green. He could also see her toe socks, a hilarious pair in bright red, with a silly black yarn face. The fringed eyebrows and googly eyes jiggled whenever she walked. He focused on them. Those were fun. His thoughts were not.

“Not enough branches here to hurt anyone,” he muttered, knowing the comment would bring a smile. It did. And he felt better.

“Dexter, are you about ready with those ornaments?”

“In a minute.” Sitting cross-legged beneath his chosen tree, Dexter was carefully sorting Christmas balls according to color. “I think Herbie should be all different colors. Okay?”

Amy poked her head from behind the tree. Silver glitter from somewhere sparkled on her red hair and forehead. “Herbie?”

“Yep. His name is Herbie. Herbie Christmas Tree.”

Amy's pretty mouth curved up in a peach-colored smile. Nobody smiled with as much real pleasure as Amy James. A man could get lost in a smile like that.

Reed squelched the errant, insistent thought. A man's mind could also drive him off the deep end.

“Herbie he shall be,” Amy announced.

“Do you always name your Christmas trees?”

Blue eyes twinkling beneath a Santa hat that quoted, “I believe,” Amy looked like a red-haired elf.

“Last year we had Angelina. She was a lovely, delicate girl that we draped with pink angel hair.”

Reed shook his head. A strange feeling brewed in his chest. He didn't understand the feeling, but it was like thawing fingers and toes—both hot and cold, comforting and painful. “My family never did anything like this.”

“Really? Never? No Christmas memories?” She handed him one of the Christmas balls she'd plastered with lace.

He looked at his distorted reflection in the green ball. “I spent most Christmases on a fishing boat, working with my father.”

“Even when you were small?” The way she asked touched him.

“My father said Christmas was just a bunch of people making money off God.”

She went up on tiptoes, stretching up to hang a sparkly bell. “Do you believe that way, too?”

He shrugged. “I hadn't given it much thought.” But he did today. He stuck the green ball on one of Herbie's limbs.

“That's why we cut our own tree and make a big deal out of decorations and church and singing carols. None of those things costs much, but the memories we make last forever. I want that for my boys. I want the real meaning of Christmas, of family love and giving to others and worshipping Jesus to be the focus. Not stuff. Never stuff.”

Well, what had he expected from a woman barely in her thirties who mothered an entire town?

He chewed on her response for a while, mentally agreeing that her way was far better than his. Maybe less comfortable, considering how little emphasis he'd put on God or Christmas or family for that matter. He had Granny and Cy and a great job. When had they stopped being enough?

 

A half hour later the early Alaskan darkness took over. Reed tossed another log into the fireplace while waiting for Amy and the kids to put the final touches on Herbie. The living room had grown dim, but Amy had refused to turn on the lamp, working by the shadowy light from the dining room instead.

“I'm waiting for the big moment,” she said, meaning the lighting of the tree.

“Better than a trip to Rockefeller Center.”

“Cheaper, too.”

“Smaller crowd.”

They both laughed over that one. For an Alaskan, ten people was a crowd.

Granny wandered in with mulled cider and popcorn—an action that stunned Reed and delighted the rest. Once the goodies were passed, she took a seat in her bentwood rocker to observe the festivities.

“Reed, do you mind?” Amy asked.

“Mind what?” He dusted the wood chips from his hands.

“Hold Sammy up so he can put the star on top.” She extended a lighted silver star. “I can't reach that high.”

“This is my year, Chief Weed. I'm big now.” Sammy's tiny teeth gleamed. The little boy was sweet as sugar.

“I'd be honored.”

Reed lifted the boy easily, holding him steady while Sammy jammed the star onto one of Herbie's branches.

“You're strong, Chief Weed.”

A soft place opened inside Reed's chest.

“Looks like we're ready for the finale,” he said, holding Sammy against his shoulder a second longer.

Amy took up the light plug, a jumble of connected strands she promised were not a fire hazard. “Drum roll, please.”

Dexter and Sammy pretended to drum. Reed did the countdown. “Three, two, one.”

Amy pushed the plug into the wall socket. A multicolored light display illuminated the living room and the spruce.

“Herbie's beautiful,” Dexter exclaimed, breathing in four-year-old awe.

Amy clapped her hands once, eyes sparkling. “All he needed was love.”

“And lots of tinsel,” Reed muttered next to her ear.

She spun toward him, grinning. “The secret of a beautiful tree. Lots of decorations.”

He wouldn't exactly call the tree beautiful, but Herbie did look a lot better. Respectable. Almost proud.

Reed gave an internal laugh at his fanciful thoughts. Amy and her little family were affecting him in more ways than he'd ever imagined. Some good. Some downright painful.

He moved to the couch and sat, taking up a handful of popcorn and a warm cup of cider.

“We're not finished yet, Chief,” Sammy said. “We gots to
hang the weaths and the misting toe and the stockings. Santa puts stuff in our stockings.”

While the adults grinned at Sammy's cute butchering of the word
mistletoe,
a solemn Dexter carefully smoothed wrinkles from a huge, quilted stocking embossed with his name.

“Mama,” he said in a voice that said he was thinking about something important.

Amy had moved to the front door where she was busy hanging a snow-flocked wreath. She glanced back over one shoulder. “What, Dexter?”

The boy stopped smoothing, reached into the box and lifted out a fur-lined stocking.

Reed's chest clutched. The stocking bore Ben's name.

“What about Daddy's stocking?”

Amy's eyes widened. Her lips parted in an intake of air. She didn't cry or anything crazy like that, but Reed could tell she'd forgotten about the stocking, wasn't quite prepared to see it, and wasn't sure how to answer her son. This time last year, Ben had been here, hanging his stocking beside theirs, being the dad these boys deserved and the husband Amy needed.

Reed didn't figure anyone could fill the void, least of all him, but he suddenly wanted the James family to have the best Christmas possible.

“I think you should hang it right up there with everyone else's.” He glanced at Amy, hoping he hadn't overstepped his bounds.

Her worried expression changed to wonder and then to pleasure in the blink of an eye.

“Reed,” she said in a grateful tone that made him gulp. He was no hero. No use in her thinking he was.

Dexter's face lit up. “For real?”

“Sure. Come on, I'll help you find a tack.”

“No tacks required, Reed,” Amy said. “Use the special mantel holders in the box.”

“Oh.” How was he supposed to know there were special holders?

“These, Chief.” With holders in hand, Dexter scrambled to his feet, eager now. “But what can we put in it? People in Heaven can't eat candy. Can they? Or open presents.”

Great. Questions about Heaven.
As if he was an expert. He glanced at Amy, who still had that misty-eyed, funny look on her face. She offered no sage bits of advice.

He was on his own—and in over his head.

“Well.” Reed rubbed his chin, thinking hard and fast. If he messed this up, Dexter could be scarred for life. “I don't know, Dexter. Maybe they can. But not in the way we do.”

Dexter's face screwed up in thought. “How?”

Reed sorted through the handful of Bible stories he knew and came up empty. Stalling for time, he figured out how to attach the holders to the mantel and allowed the boy to hook his father's stocking into place. Then Dexter turned to him, expectant.

“How, Chief?”

Reed went down on one knee beside the boy and his brother, who had come to join them. The slide show of tree lights swept over the pair—blue, green, red and speckled. His pulse drummed in his head, uncertain, awkward, painfully aware that he had no experience with grieving children.

“The way I see it,” he said, “people in Heaven don't need things the way we do.”

“Mama said Daddy would never be sick or sad ever again.”

He ventured a glance toward Amy, who had perched, listening, on the edge of the brick hearth. She nodded, encouraging but silent and pensive.

“I figure your daddy only needs one thing up there in Heaven.”

“What is it, Chief?” Dexter's voice was hushed.

“A stocking filled with love from his two favorite people.”

Dexter touched an index finger to his chest. “Me and Sammy?”

Reed swallowed. “His two best buddies in the whole world.”

“How do we put it in there?”

“Well, let's see. Three smart dudes like us should be able to come up with something.” But he couldn't think of a thing.
Come on, Amy. Help a guy out.

“I know, Chief. We can color Daddy a picture and put it in his stocking. When he looks down from Heaven, he'll see it.”

Relief dried the sweat on Reed's forehead.
Thank You, Lord.
“Great idea, Dexter.”

“And kisses. Kisses are invisible.”

“Every time you think about your dad, you can put a kiss in the stocking.”

“Yeah,” Dexter breathed, his face lit with happiness at the idea of doing something nice for his daddy. “Thank you, Chief.”

And then the innocent little boy went one step further and melted Reed into a puddle of mush. He looped one small hand over Reed's shoulder, looked earnestly into his eyes and said, “Since I can't have Daddy this year, I'm glad we gots you.”

Amy thought her heart would burst right out of her chest. Without knowing it, Reed had intuitively given Dexter exactly what he needed.

How could she not care for a man like that?

The thought froze in her brain. Okay, she cared for him. He was a good man. He was amazing with the boys, though sometimes awkward and gruff, but they had figured him out.

Sammy, with his big eyes and baby ways, had the police
chief wrapped around his little finger. And Dexter needed the influence of a strong man.

This was exactly what Ben had been talking about in his letter. He wanted his boys to have a strong father to teach them how to be men. A father to hang stockings and cut down ugly Christmas trees. A father to love them.

She studied the side of Reed's ruggedly handsome face. He was deep in conversation with Dexter, the curve of his mouth and chiseled jawline strong and manly.

She could care for Reed Truscott. Maybe she already did, a suspicion that made her nervous. But what about Reed?

She wanted what was best for her boys, but was it fair to Reed to accept his offer of marriage, simply to give her children a father? Worse, how could she live with a man, knowing he'd married her out of loyalty instead of love?

Amy closed her eyes against the scene being played out in front of the fireplace and did the only thing she could. She prayed.