Keeping Christmas

“In my bag,” Katie mumbled as Jacob let her legs slide free of his grip. He kept his arms around her as her feet found the floor, but his touch was impersonal. Katie shivered again but not entirely from her fever. His hands were warm and strong, his touch sure and confident. He would be a skilled and demanding lover, or a formidable foe.

She sat on the firm, comfortable mattress as quickly as her aching muscles and spinning head would allow. She couldn’t imagine where such wayward thoughts were coming from.

“Your nightclothes?” Hazel was asking her again.

Katie wasn’t certain how to tell her hostess she’d be sleeping in an oversize T-shirt she’d bought in Gainesville their first night out but had never worn. She’d been afraid to stop for the night anywhere along the way. She’d slept—if that’s what you could call her restless catnaps with Kyle in her arms—on the bus.

“Here’s your tote,” Janet announced, appearing in the doorway. The room was large and high ceilinged but it now seemed filled to overflowing with people.

“Thank you,” Katie said. “If you’ll show me where the bathroom is, I’ll…change.” She couldn’t help but be aware of Jacob’s presence in the room. She was suddenly very reluctant to talk about nightclothes and bedtime rituals in front of him.

“It’s right next door, my dear. That’s why I had Jacob put you in this room.”

“There are only two bathrooms in this old pile,” Janet complained. “The other one’s downstairs, where Almeda sleeps. She can’t climb the stairs anymore.”

“This house is over a century old,” Hazel explained. “Bathrooms were a luxury when it was built, not a necessity.”

“I hate hiking down that damn freezing hallway in my bare feet in the middle of the night,” Janet went right on complaining.

“Wear your slippers,” Hazel threw over her shoulder. She frowned down at the sleep shirt Katie had fished out of the tote from beneath a stack of disposable diapers. “That doesn’t look very warm, my dear.”

“I’ll be fine,” Katie insisted. She was starting to shiver again.

“Perhaps I should get you one of my nightgowns. Or Almeda’s?”

“No, really.” Their kindness was limitless, and for that reason overwhelming. “All I need are a couple of aspirins and some sleep.” She glared at Dr. Jacob Owens briefly. Why hadn’t he suggested something to make her feel better?

“Here’s the little one,” Faye or Lois announced, sliding past Janet, still firmly anchored in the doorway. She was carrying a dry and sated but still-sniffling Kyle in her arms. “He’s all ready for bed,” she said, indicating the one-piece terry sleeper she’d obviously found in the tote, “but he still wants his mamma.”

Katie let the sleep shirt fall into her lap and held out her arms. “Come here, sweetheart.” She cuddled her son in her arms. He gave her the quick hard hug he’d just learned how to give and smiled brightly.

“Hi,” he said, hiccuping on a sob. “Hi,” he repeated, loudly and plainly. It was one of his favorite words.

“How old is he?” Hazel asked, closing the chest. It seemed she had decided not to press the matter of the nightgown.

“Fifteen months,” Katie said, holding her son close to her heart, absorbing his warmth and his unconditional baby love.

“What about his father?” Jacob asked.

This time Katie had no trouble meeting his hard, assessing gaze.

“He’s dead,” she said bluntly. “Kyle’s all I have left in the world.” She held the little boy out to him. “Please take a look at him. He seems fine, but considering we were involved in an accident, I think a doctor should examine him.”

Jacob’s arms remained stiffly at his sides. He made no attempt to take the baby from her. Katie’s arms began to tremble from a combination of fatigue and Kyle’s weight dragging on her shoulders. Her son was a strong, sturdy little boy. She sat him on her lap.

“What kind of a doctor are you, anyway? You won’t give me so much as an aspirin. And you won’t even touch my son?” Her indignation got the better of her tongue. “What are you, some kind of mad scientist or something?”

Jacob laughed, but the harsh grating sound only sent more shivers racing down Katie’s spine. “Closer than you think. My aunts are very fond of introducing me by my title. The ‘Doctor’ is academic, not medical. I have a Ph.D. in microbiology.”

“Jacob was an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee.”

“Now I’m the science teacher at Owenburg High. But I’m not so far beyond redemption that I’d begrudge you two aspirins. And if I was,” he said with what might have been the beginning of a very reluctant smile, “my aunts would have my hide.”

Maybe it was her fever? Maybe it was that phantom smile? Katie wasn’t sure afterward what made her say it, but she had to know. “And who was Katherine?”

The curl of a smile turned into a sneer, then disappeared completely. “She was my wife.” He turned on his heel and left the room.

“Oh, dear.” Hazel watched him go.

“I thought he was getting better,” Faye—or Lois?—said with a sigh. “It’s a good thing school’s back in session tomorrow or he’d be shut up in his cabin for days.”

“Grief is a dreadful thing when it turns inward,” Hazel said very softly. “I’ll get you aspirin and a glass of water.”

“How long has Katherine been dead?”

“Three and a half years.” Janet took three steps into the room. “We don’t talk about it.”

“I see. I’ll apologize before I leave.”

“Best not mention it again,” Janet said flatly. “We have a baby bed.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the doorway. “But it’s in the attic. The twins and I will bring it down tomorrow.”

“Please, don’t bother. We won’t be imposing on you any longer than necessary. If we push a chair or something against the edge of the bed so he doesn’t roll off, he can sleep with me,” Katie said hurriedly. She didn’t want to think about Jacob Owens or his dead wife any more that night. It would be hard enough finding the courage to face him in the morning before she left this place.

If she ever saw him again. The prospect of never laying eyes on Jacob Owens again in her life was not quite as appealing as it should have been but she felt too miserable to analyze her feelings.

“We can arrange that.” Janet went off in search of furniture to act as a guardrail for Kyle. Hazel went to get the aspirin and a glass of water. Faye—or was it Lois?—smiled a good-night and left the room, as well. Katie and Kyle were alone.

“I feel a little like Alice down the rabbit hole,” Katie confessed to her son as she nuzzled the soft, warm skin at the nape of his neck. “Except I don’t think there’s a tall, dark, very handsome ogre in Alice in Wonderland.”

She considered what she’d just said. “Handsome?” The word came out more of a snort than a question. “The man is not handsome. He’s a monster. A son of a…gun,” she finished hastily, remembering how quickly Kyle picked up new words these days. “But,” she said thoughtfully, sitting her son in the middle of the bed as she started to undress. “I think he’s an ogre with a broken heart.”

“Is she asleep?” Jacob asked his aunt Hazel as she came through the swinging door that separated the dining room from the kitchen.

“Yes. She’s exhausted, poor thing, but I don’t think she’s seriously ill.”

“Great-grandmother’s cherry bark tea will fix her right up,” Almeda said from her customary place at the head of the oblong hickory table that had stood in the window alcove since his father’s father was a boy.

Janet followed her sister into the kitchen. She was trailed closely by the twins. “Jacob. We thought you’d gone back to your cabin.” The younger Owens sisters exchanged speaking looks.

“I wanted to check on the furnace before I turn in for the night,” he said, not quite truthfully. He didn’t want his aunts alone in the house with that woman, although he didn’t want to say so and bring their combined wrath down on his head. He didn’t trust Kate Smith’s story, or her intentions, even though she did look sick and tired and terrified beneath her know-it-all facade. He wondered, briefly, what she was really running away from.

Kyle’s father? He wasn’t altogether certain he believed her statement that he was dead. The information had come too easily to her lips. After three and a half years he could barely speak the words aloud.

Was she fleeing a lover? That was more likely.

Or the law? Possible, but for some reason he didn’t think so.

“Jacob, I’m speaking to you.” Almeda’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Seeing you’re so worried about us having a stranger under our roof, do you wish to spend the night in the house?”