One Snowy Night Before Christmas Read online

  One Snowy Night Before Christmas

  Published by Pamela Fryer

  Copyright 2011 Pamela Fryer

  All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction and may not be reproduced, resold, posted online or redistributed in any format or in any manner without exclusive permission from the author.

  Contains sexual content; this story is not intended for readers under the age of 18.

  Length: 35,000 words (approximately 100 pages)

  Chapter One

  December 22nd

  “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…”

  Jessie ground her teeth as Dean Martin crooned his famous song. She snapped off the tow truck’s crackling radio. It was the most horrible time of the year.

  The CD player was broken and the local station played nothing but sappy holiday music. It was just as well—she was nearly to the mountain pass and there wouldn’t be anything but snow on the radio anyway, just like the howling, whirling mass erasing the road in front of her.

  Christmas was two days and two hours away. She sighed, though it was more of a grumble as she peered through the white eddy. The holidays always made her cranky. All those whimpering, whining children, their parents hauling around armloads of shopping bags stuffed with gifts to spoil them rotten. But mostly, it was the memories of the Christmases she hadn’t had that made her turn green and furry, Welcome’s very own resident Grinch.

  The only good things about the holidays were the extra people on the road…and all the extra people broken down on the side of the road.

  She wrenched the wheel to avoid a snowdrift spilling into the lane. Fear prickled her scalp at the near miss. That was all she needed, to plant her truck in the snow and get stuck out here. She drove the biggest rig in town and there wasn’t anyone who could pull her out.

  “Why do I ask for ‘Holiday Duty’ every year?” she said loud enough to hear herself over the rumble of the engine. She glanced at the clock. Nearly eleven. By midnight, highway patrol would close the roads and she could go home.

  At noon the temperature had plummeted to twenty-eight degrees and brought with it another two feet of snow to the already choked town of Welcome, Oregon.

  All the happy, celebrating families would have a white Christmas. They’d be outside Christmas day, building snowmen and having snowball fights. She sighed again. Her partner Elmer—with his five kids, two sisters, three brothers and an unknown number of nieces and nephews—was always too happy to stick her with “Holiday Duty.”

  Jessie squinted into the ghostly beams her headlights created as they cut through the driving snow. Each time she rounded a corner, her glaring light hitting the high drifts ahead sent her judgment reeling.

  I can handle it. After all, this wasn’t her first holiday run. In the six years she’d been partners with Elmer’s Tow and Cradle, she’d taken the holiday run every year but one. Last year. What a mistake that had been.

  Still, this year seemed different. Maybe it was the growing intensity of the blizzard, or the unusually bright moon occasionally peeking through the clouds that turned the snowy mountainside into a mystical dreamscape, but it just felt different.

  The snow was coming down so hard now it more resembled sleet. The plow had been across the highway only an hour before, but already the blacktop and its orange lines had all but vanished under a slippery crust of snow.

  The radio on the dash barked. Snippets of Hazel’s voice crackled through. In her mind’s eye Jessie could almost see the silver-haired woman sitting in her den in front of her fireplace, sipping hot cocoa as she monitored the radio.

  Not only did Hazel answer the phone at any hour for Elmer’s Towing, she assisted every trucker to pass through Welcome, affectionately called “Hazel Nut, the Welcome welcome wagon.”

  Jessie grimaced as she picked up the microphone. She didn’t want to have to turn down another piteous invitation to Christmas dinner. Why couldn’t people accept that she just wanted to be alone, to shut the whole rotten holiday out of her mind and drift through it as though it didn’t exist?

  She slowed the truck to fifteen miles an hour as she rounded a sharp curve. She could hardly see five feet in front of the hood.

  “Bla’…‘urt…duck,” Hazel’s voice rattled across. “…‘ohman’s ‘eek. Jessie you there? …in.”

  “I’m here,” Jessie responded. “You got a sitting duck?” She’d just passed the fork in the road marking Horseshoe Lane and Blackwood, and should be coming up on Lohman’s Creek any minute.

  “Two-eight…supreme, two… Can you…over.”

  Ahead on the road, orange flashers beat out an eerie SOS through the murk.

  “I’m there. I’ll fish them out. Over and out.” Jessie glanced at the glowing green digits of the dashboard clock. Five minutes to eleven.

  Christmas had one benefit, she thought wryly. The worse the weather and the later the hour, the bigger the tips.

  * * *

  Tom Dunham looked at the useless mobile phone in his lap. He’d tried twice more, unsuccessfully, to reconnect to the tow agency but now he couldn’t even get a signal. He hoped the woman at the office had gotten enough information before their call was cut off.

  Outside the wind howled fiercely, buffeting the car and sending the falling snow whipping sideways. The storm had seized the vehicle the minute the engine died, robbing it of its heat. If the tow truck didn’t come, they were doomed.

  He glanced at the little girl sitting next to him in the front seat. His daughter, but a virtual stranger nonetheless. She stared out the window, dwarfed under his leather coat. He didn’t even have a blanket to offer her if, God forbid, they were stuck here all night.

  “You warm enough, pumpkin?”

  She glanced at him, her wide, sad eyes possessing the intelligence of a child twice her age. “Don’t call me that.” Her voice revealed the fatigue she was too grown up to admit to. Six years old, going on sixteen.

  “Sorry.” Tom cringed. He couldn’t win. “I’ve got a candy bar in my pocket. Are you hungry?”

  She turned her attention back out the passenger window. “Uh-uh.”

  A long, uncomfortable silence stretched. Amy was smart, but still too young to understand her mother’s years of drug use had finally caught up with her. All she knew was she had been taken from her home and spent two months with her grandmother before being relocated yet again to him. Now, two days before Christmas, she was being shuffled to a new home by a father she had never met until today.

  He gave up trying to be casual as he stared at the little girl’s profile. She’d inherited her gleaming strawberry blond hair from her mother, but her pixie’s profile was the spitting image of his sister when she was that age. God, Hannah. How could you do this to your child? Tom shook his head. Our child. He was as much, if not more so, to blame. Legally he would still have to pay child support to Amy’s grandmother for her care, but Hannah had not wanted him to know she’d been arrested for fear he’d sue for custody.

  Damn right, he vowed silently. He looked at the small person in the seat next to him trying so hard to be a big girl. He knew absolutely nothing about his own daughter. What was her favorite color? Did she have a favorite toy? Was she allergic to any foods or medicines?

  “You looking for Santa Claus?” he finally asked.

  She leaned her head back against the seat without looking at him. “Mmm-hmm.”

  Headlights appeared in the rear-view mirror. Thank Saint Nick. He poised his hand on the door handle, prepared to jump out and flag down the car. He sighed with relief when the vehicle veered onto the shoulder behind him, slowed, then pulled around in front of his dead car.

  Bright gold, old fashione
d letters spelled out “Elmer’s Tow and Cradle” on the side of the gigantic red truck. Thank goodness that sweet dispatcher had gotten his location before the phone cut out. They weren’t going to freeze to death, after all.

  “Look, the tow truck is here. We’ll be home in time for Christmas.” He tried to sound cheerful, but failed miserably.

  “It doesn’t matter. Santa won’t know where to find me.”

  Amy’s sad expression turned worse. She’s just tired, he told himself. After a good night’s sleep, when she wakes up on Christmas morning to find Santa had indeed found her, she’ll be a new kid. He made a mental note to thank his secretary for the last minute shopping.

  “Stay here, okay sweetie?” He jumped out quickly and slammed the door as the frigid air rushed in. He’d dressed professionally for the custody hearing in Sacramento, and in slacks and loafers, he was unprepared for the biting cold that immediately seized him. His sweater vest hadn’t been enough in Sacramento—out here it was laughable.

  The fogged tow truck’s driver’s window slowly rolled down.

  “I tried to pull off when the engine died, and we slid into the bank,” Tom yelled over the howling winds. He stopped, stunned, when he saw a pretty face framed by red curls peering back from the hood of a fur-lined polar jacket.

  “Um, it’s stuck pretty good. Do you think you can get it out?”

  She frowned as though he’d insulted her. “No problem. I’m going to need you up here. Are you alone?”

  “I’ve got my daughter with me,” he told her.

  “Well I hope she was smart enough to wear her coat.”

  Tom ran back to the car to get Amy. As he came to the passenger door he slipped and went down, planting both knees and his right hand in the snow.

  By now his face was so frozen he could hardly form words. “Come on, Amy. We’ve got to ride up front in the truck,” he said through chattering teeth. He tasted blood, having bitten his tongue on “ride.”

  He gathered Amy up and made another mad dash to the gigantic tow truck. It was the kind used to pull big rigs, and he could hardly believe that dewy-faced girl could drive it, let alone hook up a broken-down car and drag it out of a snow bank.

  “Do you need any help?” he asked the figure coming towards him. She looked like an abominable snow monster in her red foul-weather suit. He’d seen enough catalogs to know her fur-topped boots were referred to as “negative degrees” protection. He wished he had known well enough to buy himself a pair.

  “Yeah,” she shouted above the wind. “I need you to get in my cab and get yourself warm. Pour the kid some hot chocolate from my thermos.”

  Even through the howling storm the sarcasm in her voice carried across, loud and clear.

  The gigantic cab was warm and toasty, its heater blowing full force. He held his frozen hands in front of a blower and rubbed them together. Delicious, prickly heat flowed over them.

  “This is better, isn’t it?” As usual, he got no answer. “Do you want some hot chocolate? That sounds great, doesn’t it?”

  He lifted a thermal picnic sac from the passenger side floor and unzipped it. Before he could stop himself, he’d digested the note taped on the front of the thermos: “I know you’re tired of my saying this, so I’ll write it. I won’t let you stay home alone on Christmas again. The invitation to dinner still stands. –Hazel.”

  A hydraulic motor whirred to life on the back of the truck. He thought of the pretty young woman out there in the cold. Most people were on their way to visit relatives for the holidays, and this woman wasn’t out here because someone else called in sick. Before he could convince himself it was smarter not to wonder, he was thinking about why she would rather be alone during the happiest time of the year.

  Tom poured the hot chocolate into the plastic top and replaced the thermos’s stopper. He offered it to Amy. She took a small sip before handing it back.

  “That’s better, hmm?” He took a mouthful himself. The little girl barely nodded, but he knew the sweet, chocolaty warmth felt as good in her stomach as in his.

  The rig shuddered as it took the weight of his car. Something clanged, and the whirring sound grew louder. Tom glanced out the back window to see the hood of his Cutlass slowly rising.

  The hydraulic motor shut off and a moment later the door to the cab opened, letting in a chilling rush of snowy air. The girl hopped in and slammed the door. “You really planted that front end.”

  She pulled off her hood, revealing an unruly mop of gorgeous red hair. It was like molten copper, and it made him warmer just looking at it. Vivid green eyes the color of Douglas fir twinkled as she smiled. Maybe she had forgiven his chauvinistic comment.

  “The power to the brakes and the steering went out when the engine quit. I wasn’t ready for it.”

  “That must have been some ride.” She glanced past him at Amy. “I’ll bet it rattled your teeth.”

  The little girl regarded her with those haunted eyes. Thankfully it was late; he could blame her silence on the hour.

  “I’m just grateful you came along. I don’t want to think what would have happened otherwise.”

  She pulled off a thick glove and offered her hand. “I’m Jessica Jeffries. You can call me Jessie.” She shook his with a capable grip. “You wouldn’t have been out here long. The highway patrol is going to shut down the road in about a half hour. They always clear it with the plow, just to make sure they don’t leave anyone stranded.”

  Her warm hand helped the life crawl back through him. “I’m Tom Dunham, this is my daughter, Amy.”

  She put the mighty truck in gear and slowly pulled away. “Dunham, as in Dunham Law in Chester?”

  “Yeah, you’ve heard of me?”

  “Nope. Just driven past your building. I love Victorian houses and that one is hard to miss.”

  For some reason he felt disappointed by that explanation and he didn’t volunteer that he only rented the place. She kept her eyes on the road and her conversation sounded like she was only half talking to him.

  “This is some night,” he said, struggling for small talk. Why did the presence of a beautiful woman always leave him tongue-tied? He could handle himself with the ruthlessness and precision of an attacking general in the courtroom, but put him alone in a confined space with a beautiful woman and he turned into a clown. And not one of those witty, cute clowns that could make balloon animals, but one of those clumsy, funny looking ones that were always the butt-end of the joke.

  “Caught you unaware, did it?” she asked.

  He watched her profile as she stared at the road ahead. She was a tall girl, yet delicate at the same time. With full lips, flawless skin and the well-defined bone structure of a Victoria’s Secret model, she was the last person he expected to find driving a tow truck.

  “What has you out so late in a snowstorm?” Her words faltered near the end of her question, as though she decided too late it was a personal question.

  “We’re on our way home from Sacramento. There was an accident on I-5 and I thought cutting off the main highway would save some time.”

  “Ah well, don’t worry. This weather can surprise the best of us.”

  “The ‘best of us’ are smart enough to buy this stuff.” He fingered a wrinkle in her heavy polar jacket. “Right after Christmas, I’m going to buy a suit of armor like this for us both.”

  Apparently Amy didn’t know he was talking about her, or simply didn’t care.

  Jessie skillfully steered the massive truck around a hairpin turn. The wind pounded them, making the truck shudder. The dark night was consuming, murky. “How long have you been driving a tow truck?” he asked.

  What a stupid question. Do you come here often? Dhur.

  “Six years.” She didn’t take her eyes from the road to answer.

  “Wow, I’m impressed.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jessie glanced at him. The smile was gone, her expression hard. “Why?”

  Note to self: open mouth only to insert foot
.

  “I…it just seems like a big job.” Criminy.

  The sardonic smile returned. She patted his hand. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about that.”

  Touché.

  Now he felt like a real idiot, but Jessie laughed at her own jibe, cutting his tension in half, and he chuckled along with her.

  She picked up her radio and called in, to Hazel no doubt, telling her she’d picked up “the ducks.” The radio crackled in response, but Tom couldn’t make out any of the words. Jessie dropped the microphone back in its holder and looked past him at Amy again. “That hot chocolate getting you warmed up?”

  Amy nodded. “Uh huh.”

  Glory be, a response. Followed by another uncomfortable silence. Jessie slowed the truck for a tight S-turn.

  “How’d you get stuck working through the holidays?” Even before he finished asking the question, he knew it was a mistake. He was intrigued by this delightful contradiction of beauty and strength and had lost control of his mouth.

  “Don’t celebrate Christmas,” she answered simply.

  “Are you Jewish?” Shut up, Dunham.

  She glanced at him. All the sarcasm was gone, as was the glimmer in those vivid green eyes. Now they were cool, like the ocean under a stormy sky. “No, I just hate Christmas.”

  Amy shot her a surprised look. “How can you hate Christmas?” Her already shrill voice hit a high-note, as though it were the most outrageous thing she’d ever heard.

  For a moment Jessie’s hardness faltered. Her eyes were almost sad. No…hurt was a better way to describe them. “I’ve just had a lot of bad luck at Christmas, that’s all.”

  As she looked at the road again, her face suddenly registered shock. “Oh my God!” She hit the brakes, sending the truck sliding to a stop, but not fast enough. Whatever was in the road, it made a sickening thud as it impacted the front grille.

  Chapter Two

  “Tell me that was a deer,” Tom said.

  Ice cold horror rendered her numb. “In a red snowsuit?”

  “You killed Santa Claus!” the little girl shrieked.