Christmas of the Red Chiefs by Linda Lael Miller

Author:Linda Lael Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Star Books

Chapter Five

I was asleep on the living room couch when I felt a hand touch my shoulder. I opened my eyes and blinked. Joe came slowly into focus, looking tired.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I answered, stretching.

His eyes seemed to darken, but that was probably a trick of the light.

I sat up and Joe dropped beside me with a sigh.

“Everything okay at the hospital?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer.

He grinned wearily, interlaced his fingers—the fingers of a musician, long and deft. “Yeah,” he said. “Mike will be okay. In traction for a few weeks, though. He was lucky as hell, and he might even come to realize it by the time he’s forty or so. Right now, he’s grousing because he won’t be able to play basketball this year.”

I smiled, wanting to touch him, but not quite daring. “Mike’s lucky in another way. He has you.”

For a moment, Joe looked sad. “Life is tough for Mike, and a lot of kids like him. His dad ran off with a flight attendant he met on an airplane a few months ago and his mother is still reeling from the shock. I called Mike Senior to tell him about the accident, and he said to say hi for him.” Joe’s mouth tightened at the memory. “That was all. Just, ‘say hi.’ ”

“What was your reply to that?”

Joe grinned and shoved a hand through his hair. “I can’t repeat it in the presence of a lady,” he said. “Were the boys good tonight, or was it a normal evening?”

I laughed. “They were great. Presuming, of course, that wearing Indian headdresses to bed fits in with the house rules.”

“I’m just grateful there wasn’t an uprising,” Joe replied.

I stretched, looked at my watch. After midnight. “Yikes,” I said. “I’d better get home. Lots to do tomorrow.”

Like the appointment with Betty Dorrance. It was going to be hard, sharing family secrets with Joe’s ex—or not-so-ex—girlfriend.

He caught hold of my hand when I would have risen to my feet. “There’s something else I need to say,” he told me with mischievous portent. “Two things, actually.”

I got a nervous feeling, oddly festive. “What?”

“Thanks, for one,” he replied. He paused, studying me with a sort of benign solemnity. He drew a deep breath and huffed it out, like a weight lifter about to hoist a very large barbell. “And ‘I’m sorry,’ for another. I shouldn’t have given you a hard time about Delores. Would you consider letting me buy you dinner to make up for it?”

I swallowed. My heart fluttered and I barely stopped myself from putting a hand to my chest, a clear indication that I was rattled. “You don’t have to do that,” I said. “You’re Delores’s friend. It’s natural that you’d be protective of her.”

He got up, threw more wood on the fire, ambled to the piano.

Played the first few bars of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

My heart ached.

I wouldn’t be home for Christmas, and neither would Marlie, because we didn’t have a home. We were indigent relatives, camping out in guest rooms.

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