One Christmas Knight

something. Anything.

Her heart was hammering so loudly she could hear it. Or was it his?

But he’d suddenly gone still, listening as she was. And she knew it wasn’t thundering pulses she heard. They both closed their eyes and their bodies relaxed together as the silent beauty of the morning, and that fragile and precious moment, were shattered forever by the clatter of a helicopter’s rotors.

Chapter 12

“Attention, K man shoppers, there’s a blue-light special at mile marker…” “We got a bear convention goin‘ on-bears in the bushes, bears ever’where!”

I-4U-Tennessee

The helicopter threw a long blue shadow across a sheet of unblemished white as it hovered above the rest-stop parking lot. The snow was frozen so solid even the chopper’s rotors couldn’t stir it up, and it set down like a dragonfly alighting on a sheet of frosted crystal.

Jimmy Joe watched it from the wind-sheltered side of his truck, squinting into the just-risen sun and puffing out clouds of vapor. Being a Southern boy through and through, he was convinced air that cold could kill you, and he was trying his best to figure out how to extract enough oxygen from it to live on without actually letting it into his lungs.

When the chopper’s rotors had slowed to a lazy thunk-thunk beat, the door opened. Two men-one of them the pilot, wearing orange coveralls and a knit ski cap and carrying a paramedic’s kit, and the other an older guy in a fur- lined parka, a Stetson hat and earmuffs-jumped out and headed for the truck with their heads down, walking fast, half jogging. Both were wearing sunglasses. Jimmy Joe stepped forward to meet them, wishing he’d thought to put his on. The cold and the glare were making his eyes water.

The guy in the parka stuck out a mittened hand. He had a large cold-reddened nose and a thick brown mustache that seemed to spread across his face when he grinned. “Howdy. Mr. Starr-it sure is a pleasure to talk to you face-to-face for a change.” He laughed at the “Beg your pardon?” look on Jimmy Joe’s face. “Dr. Austin-I was on the other end of that phone relay last night. How’s ever‘body doin’ this mornin’?”

“Good-doin’ just fine,” Jimmy Joe mumbled. He nodded at the paramedic, who told him his name was Travis, shook his hand, then gestured toward his truck. “Been waitin’ for ya.”

He went to the passenger side and opened the door, stepped up and called softly, “Marybell? You ready for company?”

She was sitting up, swaddled from the waist down in his mother’s old quilt, the baby cradled in her arms. He saw that she’d brushed her hair and fastened the top and sides back from her face with a clip of some kind. She looked about sixteen years old, radiant and a little apprehensive, like a little girl getting ready to take her first trip on an airplane.

“Okay,” she said breathlessly. But her eyes clung to him as if for reassurance, pleading with him-for what, he didn’t know.

He stepped down and gestured for the doc and the EMT to go on in, wondering as he politely held the door for them why it was resentment he felt more than relief. As if they weren’t rescuers, but intruders. He felt like there was a primitive being inside him that wanted to be standing in front of that door snapping and snarling. Like a wolf, guarding his mate and their young in his den. His mate. His woman.

He heard the doctor sing out, “Well, hello there, little lady, how are you doin’ this mornin’? Let’s have a look at this pretty girl, here. You two all ready to go for a ride?” Then he slammed the door shut and turned away with his chest aching and his heart pounding.

He was pacing up and down alongside his truck, grinding his teeth and swinging his arms, too cold to think about anything except how to keep from freezing to death, when the door opened up again and Travis, the EMT, hopped out.

“You wanna give me a hand with the stretcher?” he called out as he loped off toward the chopper.

Jimmy Joe grunted, “Sure thing,” and took off after him.

“That’s one tough little ol’ gal,” Travis said as they were wrestling the basket stretcher out of the helicopter. “Sure is pretty, too.”

Jimmy Joe grunted. “Yeah, she is.”

“This your first baby?”

Jimmy Joe didn’t know quite how to answer that. He stammered around and finally decided it wasn’t worth explaining, so he mumbled, “Uh…no, I got a little boy-”

“No, I mean first one you ever delivered.”

Then he felt a little sheepish and had to grin. “Oh. Yeah, it sure is.”

“Yeah, well…it’s always a thrill. Always a miracle.” Travis bent down and picked up one end of the stretcher and Jimmy Joe got a grip on the other and they headed back to the truck at a jog-trot. Travis threw a look over his shoulder. “Must’ve been quite a night for you.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy Joe panted, “it sure was.” Quite a night. One he wondered if he was ever going to be able to get over. One he sure as heck knew he would never forget.

The cab of Jimmy Joe’s truck had suddenly gotten terribly crowded-full of noise and way too many strangers. Mirabella felt lost in all the confusion. She longed for the soft sounds of Christmas songs on the radio, Jimmy Joe’s snoring, the tiny squeaks Amy made when she nursed. She wished they could go back to the way it had been; just the three of them together, cocooned in the truck, isolated from the world and swaddled in intimacy and warmth, magic and-daringly her heart whispered it-love.

Now all of that had been lost, the peace shattered, the cocoon stripped away. She felt jangled and panicky, lonely and unprepared. The world seemed to be spinning too fast, out of her control. She was bundled and lifted and settled and strapped, more like a parcel than a person. People talked around her and over and about her, never to her. She found herself retreating into dazed isolation, cloaked and protected by the paranoia of her newly awakened maternal instincts, clinging to her baby with primal ferocity, her eyes daring anyone to take her from her. Perhaps understanding, no one tried.

She looked for Jimmy Joe, desperately needing the reassurance of his sweet smile and kind eyes, his soft Georgia drawl saying, “There now…everything’s gonna be fine.” He was there, or at least his body was, helping to wrap her in layers of blankets and tuck her into the stretcher, bustling around collecting her belongings, making sure she had everything-her purse, her clothes, her shoes and overnight bag. She followed him with her eyes, silently begging him to look at her, to touch her, to reach out to her in some way that would let her know that the bond that had grown between them through that long, miraculous night was still there.

But he wouldn’t look at her. She couldn’t find him-the Jimmy Joe who’d held and stroked her, guided and sustained her, laughed and cried with her as he’d placed her newborn daughter in her arms. Where was he? Oh, God. Please, Jimmy Joe, I need you.

They were taking her to the waiting helicopter, Jimmy Joe at her head where she couldn’t see him, the man in the orange coveralls at her feet, the big man in the cowboy hat alongside. It was cold, so cold, but Mirabella hardly felt it. Amy was safe and warm, snug in her arms in a thick nest of blankets, and Jimmy Joe was there with her. She knew as long as he was there, she and her baby would be safe.

She felt the stretcher tilt as it was lifted into the helicopter. The doctor climbed in beside her, the man in the coveralls moved up to the pilot’s seat, and the air filled with wind and noise. Jimmy Joe was backing out of the open doorway.

Panic seized her. Struggling frantically, she managed to free a hand from the straps and blankets and fastenings and grab his shirtsleeve. “Jimmy Joe-”

“Yeah, I’m right here.” He wrapped her hand in both of his and she held on to him with all the strength in her body, as if she were dangling over a void and he was the rope. “Everything’s gonna be fine. You’ll be in Amarillo in a little bit.”

“Please-” she gasped. “You’re coming with me, aren’t you?”

His inverted face hovered above hers, lined with strain and pinched and reddened with cold. But for the eyes,