Christmas Countdown by Vicki Hinze

Author:Vicki Hinze
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

SIX

After dinner, Warny went upstairs to Paul’s room and within minutes was sawing logs. Jake hadn’t awakened long enough to eat, only to get a dog treat left for him on the floor near his bed, and he crashed again before he got half of it down. He was snoring, too, though not nearly as loud as Warny.

Ian and Maggie cleaned up the kitchen. She worked quickly, efficiently, and mindful of Dayton’s warning, Ian watched her for signs of PTSD but saw none. She seemed calm and, for all purposes, normal—far more normal than he. Every nerve in his body was raw and snapping. He was edgy and on full alert. The last time he’d felt like this he’d been in the zone in Afghanistan. But Maggie acted as if it were a normal day. She’d eaten well, talked with Paul and Della and then with Madison, and she’d even joked with them. How she did it, knowing Crawford was in North Bay or close by, Ian had no idea.

Now she had the tabletop covered with ingredients—powdered sugar, eggs, boxes of graham crackers and bags of gumdrops, candy canes and peppermint rounds. “What are you doing?”

“Making a gingerbread house.” She wrapped a tray in shiny foil and smoothed it down, crimping the edges around the tray. “I usually make the gingerbread, but it’s been a rough day. Graham crackers will have to do this year.” She stuffed icing in a Ziploc bag with a plastic tip punching through its bottom corner, and then beaded a line of it to glue together two crackers. “When I was little, Paul and I used graham crackers for the walls and roof all the time.” A hint of a smile curved her lips. “I wasn’t yet allowed to use the stove.” She glanced up at him. “Can you hold that wall up so I can put the roof on?”

Ian stretched over and held the wall crackers vertical. “Maggie, are you in denial?”

“About what?”

“Crawford.”

She paused, and then started buttering icing onto the next cracker, shingling the roof. “He’s impossible to deny, don’t you think?”

“I do, which is why I’m wondering how you’re managing to act so normal, when today has been anything but. First the connection with Beth and David Pace, then Brett Lund killing himself, and then Crawford or Blue Shoes—somebody—taking a shot at us. We could have been killed today but—”

“We weren’t.”

“But we could have been.”

“Ah, I see.” She bit into her lower lip, focusing on attaching the first of the roof crackers. “Dayton was wrong. I don’t have PTSD, Ian. After Utah, I had to get a psych evaluation before I returned to active duty.” She pressed the cracker down, reached into the package for another and then buttered it. “I guess it does seem odd to you that I can feel normal or do normal things, but it’s not odd to me.” She paused, the knife midair, and looked at him. “When you live like I’ve been living, you take the good whenever you can find it, and when a crisis is over, you let go of it.

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