One Christmas Knight

And suddenly as if in response to his words, Amy’s eyes crinkled up and her mouth popped open and then stretched wide, and the corners tilted upward. “She’s smilin’,” he said, looking up at her mama, all but thunderstruck. He felt as if his heart was going to burst.

“She sure is,” Mirabella murmured, moving closer so she could see it, too. “That’s a first.” She looked oddly misty to him, like a flower in the rain.

“That’s no gas pain, either. Look at her-she just won’t quit.” He thought he could have drowned in that smile. Then he felt like maybe he was drowning, the way his chest hurt and it was so hard to breathe.

“Okay, now she’s got her priorities straight,” Mirabella said with a tender snort, as one of the baby’s waving fists found its way to her mouth and she began to suck avidly on it.

Jimmy Joe chuckled. “Looks like she’s hungry.”

“She’s always hungry. Which is another way she’s just like her mother. Yeah…funny, isn’t it?” Her smile was blurred and soft as she gazed down at her daughter and tickled her cheek with a finger. Mirabella’s eyes flicked up at him and her smile grew wry. “If you want to make God laugh, just make a plan-isn’t that what you told me? All I can say is, He must really be holding his sides right now. I mean, here I had it all planned, picked out the perfect set of genes. I was going to have a tall, slim, blond little boy with a sweet, beautiful smile and…” Her voice caught, and she looked quickly back down at her baby with her face so full of adoration, watching her was like looking into the sun. “Look what I got-a round, roly-poly redhead with an appetite like Pac- Man…”

“And just as pretty as a little wild rose,” said Jimmy Joe, in a voice so fierce and raspy he felt as if he might have swallowed a whole bush’s worth of those rose thorns himself. “And I wouldn’t mind…”

His breath ran dry, and he stared at her, realizing he was on the verge of blurting it all out, everything he’d come to say to her-that he not only wanted her and Amy to come and live with him and share the rest of his life with him, but that he would be tickled to death to have several more just like her, eventually, Lord willing. Just like that, without any warning or leading up to it, without telling her all the reasons he thought he could make her happy, without presenting any of the arguments he’d thought up to answer the doubts she was sure to have. Just clobber her with it, before he’d even had a chance to woo her-Lord, he hadn’t even given her the flowers yet! And then if she said no, then what?

He was staring down at her, with the baby held between them like a vow and his heart hammering in his throat, feeling as scared and helpless as he had the night Amy was born, and Mirabella was staring back at him, looking so beautiful he wondered if maybe he ought to chuck his whole game plan and just kiss her again, and go on kissing her until she didn’t have any breath left to say no.

He was about to embark on that new strategy when a voice behind him sang out, “Oops, home too soon!”

He turned, heart pounding like a guilty teenager’s, while Mirabella said, “Hi, Mom…Pop.” in a breathy, little-girt voice he didn’t recognize.

“Pete,” her mama was scolding as she bustled up the walk with her hands full of plastic grocery bags and a plastic rain-bonnet on her head, “I told you we should have eaten lunch first.”

“The hell with that,” growled the barrel-chested man beside her, waving around the umbrella he was holding so it wasn’t doing much to keep the rain off anybody. “I told you I want to meet the man-shake his hand. And that’s what I’m gonna do.”

He heaved himself up the steps, furling the umbrella as he came, his chin jutting out ahead of him in a way that reminded Jimmy Joe so much of Mirabella, he almost forgot his manners completely. He had to fight hard to contain his smile when he saw the traces of rust mixed in with the thick, straight, irongray hair.

Mirabella gamely murmured introductions, which her father mostly drowned out with his crisp and authoritative, “G‘momin’, son. I sure am glad to meet you…glad to meet the man that brought my granddaughter into the world. Come on in here, now. No sense in lettin’ all the warm air out.” He dragged Jimmy Joe into the house, pumping his hand.

Behind her husband’s back, Ginger caught Jimmy Joe’s eye and winked. “Ohh, look-roses!” she cried, spotting the bouquet he’d left on the table. “Aren’t they gorgeous? They need to go in some water. I’ll just take these groceries into the kitchen-”

“Let me carry those for you, ma’am.”

“Now, let me see, how’s my little ol’ baby girl?”

“She just woke up, Dad. She needs her diaper changed. She’s hungry again, too. I was just going to-I better go feed her…”

“You do that, honey. Son, you’re plannin’ on stayin’ and havin’ lunch with us, aren’t you?”

“Well, sir, ah…” With his hands already full of grocery bags, there wasn’t much Jimmy Joe could do but follow Mirabella with his eyes as she fled down the hallway with Amy in her arms.

In the kitchen with her parents, he had an attack of claustrophobia. The cheery room seemed too crowded with just the three of them in it, and yet he felt Mirabella’s absence so profoundly, it almost bordered on panic. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was losing her, that he was about to let everything he’d hoped for slip through his fingers, just when he’d had it in his grasp. Because he knew her. He knew exactly what she was doing right now, in there alone with her baby and her thoughts. Right now her rational, reasonable planner’s mind was telling her all the reasons why things wouldn’t ever work out between them; and in another minute, her stubborn, muleheaded, opinionated mind was going to set it all in concrete. And he knew that once Mirabella had made up her mind, there wasn’t anything on earth, short of a force of nature, that was going to change it. So if he was ever going to try to do it, he had better do it now.

He set the bags of groceries on the kitchen table as gently as he could, and with a muttered, “‘Scuse me, sir…ma’am,” dived through the doorway and headed off down the hall in the direction Mirabella had taken.

He found her in a back bedroom-the guest room, by the look of it, since he didn’t think Pete Waskowitz would have tolerated all those flowers, or the white priscilla curtains at the windows. There were a few of Mirabella’s clothes and lots of baby things lying around, a white bassinet beside the bed, and a baby blanket spread out on the comforter. The room smelled of baby powder and a just-changed diaper, which brought back all kinds of memories for him.

She was sitting in a chair near the windows, so engrossed in the baby at her breast, she didn’t notice him for a minute or two. He watched her-watched the play of rain shadows in her hair, the creamy-soft curve of her cheek as she bent over her child, the gentle smile no one else would ever see-and knew that he’d been right, and that he would love this woman and this child until he drew his last breath…and beyond that, until the end of time. It strengthened his resolve for what he had to do.

She gave a gasp of outraged modesty when she saw him, and yelped, “Jimmy Joe-go away!”

But he ignored her, and instead went to sit on the edge of the bed right opposite her, and leaned forward to watch her somberly with his hands clasped between his knees. Her eyes followed him, darkening with wariness, at first. But once she knew he wasn’t going to run blushing at the sight of her naked breast, she relaxed and accepted his presence, it seemed to him, with a kind of quiet pride. They sat like that in silence for a while, listening to Amy’s squeaky gulps and the whisper of the rain on the windowpane.

Then she shook her head, just slightly, and he saw her eyes fill with tears. “Jimmy Joe,” she said in a broken whisper, “what are you doing here?”

He’d had a thousand miles to prepare for this. He’d probably thought of a thousand different ways to say what he wanted to say-clever. intelligent ways. Every one of them went right out the window. With his heart in his throat and in his eyes, he finally looked at her and said it: “Marybell, I’ve come to take you home with me.”

Chapter 15

“That home cookin’s smellin’ awful good right now.”

I-40-Texas

He knew from her silence and sadness that she’d probably expected it, that she’d already guessed what he wanted to ask her. And that the tears in her eyes were there because she’d already convinced herself it wasn’t going to work.