One Christmas Knight

Chapter 3

“Boy, I got heartburn so bad I’d give five dollars for one Rolaid.”

1-40-New Mexico

His hand felt nice. Firm and warm and strong. Just the kind of hand you hoped would be there to reach for if you really needed one.

Which was precisely why Mirabella let go of it as quickly as she possibly could without being rude about it. She didn’t want a hand from anybody, especially a man. She was doing just fine without one, thank you.

But he was just so damned adorable. That Southern accent, that Robert Redford hair and smile, and that name…Jimmy Joe? Really, it was almost too cute.

“I can’t thank you enough,” she said, her relief so overwhelming she was unable to hold back a sigh. At least, tank God, she hadn’t burst into tears. But it had been close. Too close.

He mumbled, “No problem…my pleasure.”

Polite, thought Mirabella approvingly. Kind of distant, too, which she also happened to like; she despised men who presumed they’d earned the right to instant familiarity the minute they told you their names. Still, she found herself wondering about it; wondering if Jimmy Joe really was shy, or if this was an example of that Southern reserve she’d heard about, or if maybe the coolness she’d detected in his eyes was only the natural wariness of someone who wasn’t about to get involved with the problems of a total stranger.

Which was fine with her and just as well, because after all, here she was just four weeks away from becoming a middleaged, unmarried mother, and she ought to be ashamed of herself for even having such thoughts about a kid who probably couldn’t even buy beer without getting carded.

It was just awkward, that’s all. It was hard to get past the fact that she was sitting across from a man who was the walking-around-in-the-flesh spitting image of her unborn child.

And impossible to deny the secret delight she felt when she thought about the prospect of having a little towheaded toddler version of Jimmy Joe running around her house sometime soon-a version, of course, that would be possessed of both athletic and musical talent and an IQ in the “gifted” range. She was absolutely confident of that-those qualities having been even higher on her list of priorities than a tall, lean body and olive-toned skin. When Mirabella planned something, she left as little as possible to chance.

“You want somethin’ to eat?” Jimmy Joe asked, stretching around to look for a waitress. “Let me see if I can get somebody-”

“No, that’s okay,” said Mirabella. “I’m not really hungry. I just needed…to sit down for a while.” The miniature-genius version of Jimmy Joe in her belly chose that moment to execute an athletic maneuver closely resembling that of a frolicking dolphin, causing her to lean sharply backward in her seat and suck in air in an audible hiss.

“You okay, ma’am?”

Since she had her eyes closed, she couldn’t be sure whether it was alarm or compassion she heard in Jimmy Joe’s voice, although she thought it was probably a little of both.

She waited until the worst of the pains had gone shooting off down her legs, then nodded and let out along, slow breath. “Oh, yeah, it’s just too much sitting, I guess.” If I could just lie down, she thought. God, please…just let me lie down.

It suddenly occurred to her that she was teetering on the brink again. She recognized that weak, hollow feeling, the one she’d had earlier as she’d stood helplessly surveying the jam-packed restaurant dining room, just moments before she’d spotted Jimmy Joe sitting all alone in a booth big enough for two. She knew she was just one shaky step from the edge, one kind word away from tears.

Panic seized her. She couldn’t humiliate herself in front of him-she couldn’t. “Well-better go-thanks for the breather,” she chirped, not even caring how ungainly she looked, frantically hitching her beachball-shaped body along toward the edge of the bench. Or how crazy she sounded. leaving so abruptly when she’d only just sat down. All she could think about was getting out of there, away from people, away from him, before she made a complete fool of herself.

But before she could make good her escape, Jimmy Joe’s hand shot out and snagged her elbow. And there was nothing shy or reserved about the way he held on to it, or the tone of his voice when he demanded, “Hey-wait a minute. Where’re you off to?”

Ordinarily, Mirabella’s tolerance for being manhandled or questioned was just about zero. However, at the moment she was operating on sheer bravado, and the best she could come up with was a superior smile and a toss of her head meant to convey the impression that she was just bursting with selfconfidence.

“Listen-thanks very much. It was nice of you to let me, uh, share your table for a moment,” she heard herself babble. All the while she was looking anywhere but at Jimmy Joe, at anything but the strong, masculine fingers curled around her arm, or the earnest young face leaning close, now, to hers.

“But…I’m pretty tired. So I think I’m going to go out to my car and lie down for a while.” Yes-oh, yes, that would do it. She could curl up on the back seat. That would be better than nothing. Or did the front seats recline? She had no idea; she’d never had occasion to test them. Just…please, God, let me get out of here. Please let me lie down.

She was standing now. So was he. Desperately, Mirabella focused her eyes on the picture of the ugly bulldog on his University of Georgia sweatshirt. She stuck out her hand, not an easy thing to do since he was still holding her elbow, and said, “Well. It was nice meeting you, Jimmy Joe.” And she was thinking, Please, God, don’t let me cry.

Jimmy Joe knew he was about to do something rash the minute he saw those big gray eyes of hers go wide and shiny, and realized she was about one blink away from spilling over. That panicked him; he never had been able to stand seeing a woman cry.

He coughed a little bit to loosen up the nervous knot in his chest, then said, “Look…ma‘am, I’ve got a sleeper in my truck. It’s pretty comfortable, and it’d be warm. I’m not usin’ it, so if you want it, well… What I mean is, you’re welcome to it.”

Well. He could see he’d surprised her as much as he had himself, saying that. Because her eyes, which had been staring a hole in the middle of his chest, suddenly flew right up and smacked into his in a way he wasn’t prepared to handle. Sort of made him wish he could have ducked.

Then she shook her head hard and said, “Oh, no, I couldn’t. Thanks, but…”

Just like that, he didn’t know why, but all of a sudden he was mad at her again. His voice got soft and polite, which, if she’d known him better, she would have known meant he was in no mood to be crossed.

“Excuse me, ma‘am, but you’re about out on your feet, far as I can see, and I got a perfectly good sleeper goin’ wantin’. Now, I’m gonna take you out to my truck and get you settled, and then I’m gonna leave you to rest as long as you need to, y’understand? Come on, now-you need anything from your car? No? Okay, let’s go, then. Come on…”

It was the tone of voice he mostly used to get J.J. to see things his way when the boy was feeling contrary and muleheaded about something, and he was glad to see it worked just as well on muleheaded pregnant women. Just when he thought he might have to tell her his personal views on women who were too selfish or too proud to do what was right for their babies, he felt her kind of relax and let out a shaky breath of surrender.

She whispered, “That’s…really nice of you,” then looked around like she’d maybe misplaced something, and mumbled, “I just…need to use the ladies’ room first, okay? ’Scuse me…” He let her go, and she turned and headed off in the direction of the rest rooms.

As she went. Jimmy Joe saw her duck her head and brush at her eyes, and he suddenly knew she was doing her best to hold on to her pride, and hide from him how tired and grateful she really was. And he felt a softening inside, a slow melting around his heart.

He flagged down a waitress and gave her his order, along with five bucks to make sure she held his table for him until he got back. Then he got his coat and keys and went to stake out the ladies’ room from a discreet distance, not really believing she would try to skip out on him, but not quite trusting that pride of hers, either. While he waited he fidgeted with his keys and paced a little, and tried to figure out why he was letting himself get so riled up over this woman.

Mirabella. What kind of name was that, anyway? Italian, that’s what it sounded like. But with a last name like-what was it? He couldn’t remember, except that it was hard to pronounce and definitely not Italian. Unless-well, of course, it was probably her married name. That would explain the last name, but not the Mirabella. If he’d had to guess he would have said she was Irish, with that red hair and those thick dark eyelashes, and pale as she was, in the good light in the restaurant he’d detected the faint ghosts of freckles.

Not that it was any of his business.

The fact that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring wasn’t any of his business, either, but there was no use denying he’d noticed. Or that it bothered him a lot more than it should have. Jimmy Joe didn’t like to think of himself as being a judgmental person, but along with everything else he’d observed so far about this woman, the fact that she’d let herself get pregnant out of wedlock couldn’t help but have an effect on his opinion as to her basic good sense.

And it still wasn’t any of his business.

Except that now, by offering her his sleeper to rest up in, what he was doing was butting in and making her his business, wasn’t he? Which she hadn’t asked for. And doing her a kindness didn’t give him the right to pass judgment on her character. He hadn’t been brought up to behave that way, and he didn’t mean to start now. No, sir.

So here’s what you do, Jimmy Joe, he said to himself as he made one more pass around the rack of paperback books, which by this time had been pretty well picked over, so there were mostly Louis Lamours and maybe a few John Grishams left. Sue Grafton’s latest-but he’d already read that. What you do is, you’re gonna let the lady rest until they open up the road and then you‘re’gonna go on your way and forget about her. Ten-four.

When he came around the rack, there she was, just coming out of the door marked Women. She looked as though she might have washed her face and taken a brush to her hair, but as far as Jimmy Joe could see, all it had done was make her look like a lost little girl.

That was when he knew the last part of that vow he’d just made might not be so easy to live up to.

To Mirabella, the walk through the truck parking lot felt like the longest of her life. It was just so damn cold. There wasn’t any snow, but a bitter wind cut like a knife through her coat, which was a soft, lightweight leather designed for southern California winters. She wanted to hurry, but that was impossible, and for once she didn’t mind that Jimmy Joe kept a firm grip on her elbow, or resent the way he patiently adjusted his long, lanky stride to match her slow, side-to-side waddle.

“Sorry I can’t go any faster-I know I walk like an obese duck,” she said at one point, characteristically trying to mask her embarrassment with laughter.

Jimmy Joe glanced at her and drawled, straight-faced, “Naw…more like you sat on a horse too long.”

Mirabella gave a short, surprised laugh. Surprised, because he sounded so much less reserved when he said it, as if he really might have a sense of humor underneath all that politeness. And because all of a sudden she didn’t feel selfconscious about the way she walked anymore. And she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what it was about what he’d said or the way he’d said it that could have had that effect on her.

Then they were passing between the seemingly endless rows of idling trucks, hundreds of them, rumbling away with a sound like an oncoming stampede.

“They’re so big,” said Mirabella through her shivers, knowing it was an inane thing to say, which didn’t surprise her, being right on a par with her usual snappy social repartee. Considered a clown in her family and a wit among her female friends, and at the very least, concise and articulate in professional situations, when it came to a conversational one-on-one with an attractive member of the opposite sex, Mirabella was generally about as eloquent as…well, a duck.

But they were big. Huge. Awe-inspiring, especially up close like this. Having a very literal mind, she rarely thought in poetic analogies, but the trucks made her think of great slumbering beasts-domesticated, pampered beasts, to be sure, many of whose owners had decked them out for the holidays in tinsel garlands and Christmas lights, with wreaths and red bows tied to their front grills.

“This here’s the one,” said Jimmy Joe, and let go of her arm while he took out his keys. When he stepped in between two of the massive machines and unlocked the door of one of them, she noticed that his truck didn’t have any Christmas decorations on it. Then he pulled the door open and she could see the words Blue Starr Transport written in silver on shiny royal blue, along with a logo that looked like the star of Bethlehem, and she decided that with a name and a logo like that, he didn’t really need anything more.

Shivering even harder, she said, “I can see where the Blue comes from, but Starr, with two r’s?”

“That’s my name,” he said in an offhand way as he rejoined her, pocketing his keys. “Jimmy Joe Starr. And my daddy’s before me. Come on around here to the other side. That way you won’t have the steering wheel to fool with.”

“You sure you’re not going to need a crane to get me up there?” she asked, laughing uneasily as she followed him to the passenger side. The truck had shiny chrome steps up to the cab, but it still looked like a climb, considering her limitations.

He didn’t even chuckle, although she did catch a glimpse of that sweet grin before he turned away from her to open the door. “Naw, you’ll do fine. Okay, here you go, now-upsy-daisy.”

And before she had time to be worried about it he’d stepped around behind her and put his hands under her elbows and boosted her right up onto the first step. One more good boost and she was where she’d never in a million years thought she would ever be-sitting in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler.

“Wow,” she said, looking around, “I’m impressed.” She hoped he would know she wasn’t just saying it, that she really meant it. She wasn’t sure exactly what she’d thought he meant when Jimmy Joe mentioned a “sleeper,” but she hadn’t expected anything like this. The control panel just looked bewildering, complicated enough to operate a 747, but behind the seats it was like a tiny little RV, with a wide, comfortable-looking bed, no wasted space and a place for everything. Designing space for maximum use and efficiency was what Mirabella did, and she could appreciate a masterpiece when she saw it.

“It’s comfortable,” Jimmy Joe said with a diffident shrug. He showed her how to turn off the lights in the cab and where to turn them on in the sleeper, and how to adjust the heater in case she got too warm. Then he seemed to hesitate, as if he wasn’t sure what to do next.

“I really appreciate this,” Mirabella said with bemused sincerity. “Thanks.”

He nodded and muttered, “Okay, then.” He started to back out of the cab before pausing to add, “Might want to lock your doors.” And then he was gone and the door slammed shut on the cold, mean wind.

Mirabella waited for a moment, then locked the doors and turned off the cab lights the way he’d told her to. She went into the sleeper and drew the curtain across the opening, then stood for a moment or two just looking, trying to orient herself to the strangeness of being in a man’s private space.

She was surprised at how tidy it was. The bed was neatly made, and except for a pair of boots standing upright and together on the floor, everything seemed to be stowed away in its proper place. There was a tiny closet for hanging clothes, and drawers she didn’t look in. An overnight bag, some folded towels and a baseball cap occupied a shelf above the bed; compartments at its head held paperback books, a pack of gum and a plastic bag with some change in it. He wasn’t a smoker, thank God.

No bathroom, though; not even a potty. Which was too bad, because she already felt the need for one, although it had only been a few minutes since she’d left the truck-stop rest room. No way she was going back there now, though. It was just one more discomfort she would have to ignore.

She turned off the light and sank onto the bed with a sigh, curling carefully onto her side, which was the only position left that could even remotely be considered comfortable. And as the darkness and the vibration of several hundred truck engines folded in around her, it occurred to Mirabella that it felt a little like being in a womb herself…safe, warm, rocked by the throbbing of a massive diesel heartbeat.

Walking back to the restaurant, Jimmy Joe caught himself looking around to see if anybody had noticed what he’d just done, as if it was something he ought to be ashamed of. It was a first for him, no doubt about that. He’d had the Kenworth almost five years now, put more than half a million miles on her, and this was the first time a woman had ever set foot inside her sleeper.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t had those kinds of opportunities come knocking-sometimes literally-on his door. And he hadn’t said no to them when they did because he was some kind of prude, or had a religious thing about it-nothing like that. He just didn’t believe in mixing recreation with work, was all. Of course, nowadays most of the better truck stops, including this one, had pretty much put a stop to the lot-lizard nonsense, which did cut down on the temptations considerably.

Not that Mirabella was anywhere near being in the same category. This was a different thing altogether. But he still felt weird about it.

Back in the restaurant he found his booth still vacant and a mug of hot coffee waiting for him. He’d just about sat down when his hot roast-beef sandwich arrived, and he was hungry enough that he put off calling J.J. while he gave his dinner his full attention. After he’d gotten that put away and his coffee mug refilled, he picked up the phone and punched in the endless string of numbers it took to connect him via calling card to his mama’s house, then settled back to listen to the rings.

That was when he looked up and felt a catch in his chest as if a big bite of roast beef had gotten stuck there. Darned if it wasn’t her, standing there same as before except maybe looking even more pale and peaked. He wasn’t glad to see her. He especially wasn’t glad about the way his stomach jumped up underneath his ribs and made his heart beat faster, kind of like the way it did sitting on top of a forty-ton load when he knew a four-wheeler was about to cut him off and he had no place else to go.

He told himself he really had hoped to have seen the last of the uppity woman with the red hair, Madonna eyes, Italian name and no good sense, except maybe for helping her out of his truck tomorrow morning and into her own car and waving her on her way. Lord, didn’t he have enough to worry about, what with the weather screwing up his schedule, and wondering how he was going to make it home for Christmas in time to keep from breaking a promise, not to mention J.J.’s heart?

He sure didn’t need to be thinking about whether or not it was normal for a beautiful pregnant woman from California to have dark circles underneath her eyes, a little wrinkle of a frown in her forehead and a white look around her mouth even when she smiled.

“Hi,” she said sort of shy and sheepishly, reminding him of J.J. when he was little and used to come pit-patting down the stairs on some excuse or other after he’d been all tucked in snug for the night.

Jimmy Joe put the phone up quickly-he hoped before anybody had picked it up on the other end, because he didn’t want to have to hang up on his son twice in one evening. “Hey,” he sang out, “how you doin’? Everything all right? Somethin’ you need?”

She shook her head and mumbled, “Gouldn’t sleep,” as she eased in across from him, moving like she was made of blown glass. She put her elbows on the tabletop and pushed her hair back from the sides of her face with both hands, then left them there and used them for props. “I had to come in to use the rest room anyway. Thought I might as well see if you wanted to take the bed. No sense in it going to waste.”

It was a true mystery to Jimmy Joe why she couldn’t sleep, because she looked and sounded to him like she was in danger of dozing off where she sat. A terrible thought occurred to him. Trying not to sound as worried as he felt, he said, “Ma‘am, if you don’t mind my askin’, when’s that baby of yours due?”

She made a vague waving motion with one hand and in the midst of a great big yawn, mumbled, “Oh, not for a month yet.” Then she kind of straightened herself, making a real effort to lift up her chin. “No, I’m okay, really. It’s just hard to get comfortable, you know? I get these pressure pains in my legs…”

Jimmy Joe nodded in sympathy. J.J.’s mama had had those pains, both times. He could remember times when she’d shot up out of bed like she’d been hit with a cattle prod, cussin’ like nobody’s mama should. He said with relief, “Maybe you ought to eat something. Might make you feel better.”

She finished up another yawn, then shook her head. “I’m not hungry.”

“You got other reasons to eat besides feelin’ hungry,” said Jimmy Joe sternly, nodding toward the part of her that was pushing up against the edge of the table. “Got to keep your strength up.” He was fed up with the way she kept ignoring the needs of that baby of hers, so he didn’t wait to see if she agreed with him, but just started looking around for a waitress.

Things having settled down some by that time, he was able to spot one right away. She came ambling on over and brought the coffeepot with her, probably assuming he was wanting a refill. The waitress was one he didn’t know-a skinny woman with frizzy gray hair and deep lines on her face from smoking-but she looked cheerful and sort of motherly, so he checked the name tag pinned to her uniform blouse and turned on the charm.

“Hey, Dottie, what kind of soup you got today?”

Dottie looked up at the ceiling like she expected to see the menu written up there and gave it some thought. “Let’s see. Tonight we got…I b’lieve it’s cream of broccoli and chicken noodle.”

“Well, okay. You can bring the lady a bowl of that chicken noodle, if you would. And a big glass a’ milk.” He grinned, flirting just a little bit, and added, “And I’ll take some of that coffee, since you brought it.”

Looking pleased, Dottie sang out, “Chicken noodle, comin’ right up.” She splashed coffee into his mug and went on her way.

Jimmy Joe sat back in his seat prepared for an argument, but he could see right away he wasn’t going to get one. He was glad to see the woman wasn’t stubborn to the point of being plain stupid, and at least had the sense to recognize a lost fight when she saw it.

But…now what was she doing? She had her big pocketbook open on the seat beside her and was digging through it and dragging out bottle after bottle of some kind of pills.

He put his hands on the table and laced his fingers together and watched her, watched the slick, shiny red curtain of her hair swing back and forth across her face, catching the light, and tried to think whether he’d ever seen anything in his life before that was exactly that color.

Finally he cleared his throat, shifted around in his seat, and came out with, “I know it’s none of my business, but…”

Her eyes flicked at him like a dog after a fly. “Vitamins,” she explained shortly, and went back to rummaging.

“Ah,” said Jimmy Joe, nodding. He felt unreasonably pleased. And at the same time, bothered by the notion that it did seem to matter to him whether or not this woman he wasn’t ever going to see again after tonight did or did not care about her baby’s well-being. It gave him a case of the restless fidgets, and after watching a moment or two longer, he reached out and snagged one of the bottles. “Vitamin K,” he read off the label. “That’s one I never heard of. What’s it supposed to do?”

“That’s for blood clotting,” she said without looking up from what she was doing, which was making a neat little pile of the pills on the table in front of her. “That’s to prevent excessive bleeding during childbirth.”

Jimmy Joe put the bottle down in a hurry. He hadn’t been present during the actual births of either of his children, through no fault of his own, and there were some images associated with the whole process he preferred not to dwell on.

“How ’bout these?” he asked, poking at some brown pills that looked big enough to choke a goat.

“Those? That’s brewer’s yeast. B vitamins and protein.”

“Uh-huh…and this one here?”

“Let’s see. That’s the antioxidant combo, I think. C, E and-what else? Shoot, I can’t remember-”

“What in blue blazes are anti-what did you call ’em?”

She looked shocked. “I can’t believe you’ve never heard of antioxidants.”

Well, as a matter of fact he had, but he couldn’t recall exactly what it was he’d read or heard about the blamed things, and it seemed as good a topic of conversation as anything he could think of right off the bat. So he shrugged and told her half a lie. “No, ma’am, can’t say’s I have.”

“Okay,” said Mirabella, taking a breath and squaring her shoulders as if it had just become her sacred duty to educate him on the subject. Then she launched herself into a detailed explanation of what antioxidants did, which as far as he could tell involved keeping her cells’ neurons from flying off to look for mates somewhere else. “In other words, oxidizing,” she concluded.

“Oxidizing… Well, now I know what that is,” said Jimmy Joe humbly. “I reckon that’s pretty much the same as rusting, isn’t it?”

To his great surprise and extreme pleasure, she burst out laughing. “Doesn’t seem to be working too well in my case,” she remarked, fingering a strand of hair that had fallen across her face and having to make her eyes go crossed in order to focus on it.

“Well, now, ma‘am, I wouldn’t say that,” Jimmy Joe murmured, studying her somberly. “Looks to me like it’s workin’ just fine.”

He was thinking about what a powerful difference a little thing like laughter could make in the way one person looked at another. For such a beautiful woman to make fun of herself like that, even crossing her eyes… Well for one thing it made him ashamed of himself. Here, just because she had a face that would tie Don Juan up in knots and happened to drive a fancy new car, he’d been judging her to be just another spoiled rich airhead from La-la Land. And hadn’t his mama taught him better than to judge people by their looks? Now he was beginning to see that there might be a lot more to this Mirabella than met the eye. That for starters, she wasn’t just pretty; it was turning out that she was also intelligent, funny and, doggone it, nice.

And that made him wonder all the more what she was doing out here in the middle of New Mexico, pregnant and alone, and why she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But. he was a Southern boy, and way too well-brought-up to ask.