Mistletoe Bride. Linda Varner

like a club. In truth, she was fully prepared to trounce whatever she found, should it prove dangerous.

      Her ring full of keys jangled against the car when she inserted the right one in the lock—

       “Thank God!”

      Dani squealed and leaped back at the sound of the muffled masculine voice coming from inside her trunk.

      “Hey!” Thump! Thump! “I’m dying in here! Let me out!”

      She could not move. She could not think. For the first time, fear shimmied up her spine. How could this be? Had Kyle somehow fallen in…?

      Or was one of the escaped convicts hiding in her trunk?

       “Hel-looo? Anybody there?”

      Heart hammering, Dani eased the key out of the lock. Not for anything was she going to open this trunk now.

      “I know you’re out there. Open up, dammit.” Thump! Thump! “Open up now!”

      With a gasp, Dani spun on her heel and lunged for the driver’s side of the car. In a heartbeat, she was behind the steering wheel. In another, she was speeding back to Clearwater. Destination: the police station. More than once, Dani glanced fearfully in the rearview mirror, half expecting to find a man in a bright orange jumpsuit with a number stenciled on it sitting in the back seat.

      But he was in the trunk, not the back seat.

      “Omigosh!”

      What seemed an eternity later, but was really only forty minutes, Dani turned on two wheels into the parking lot adjacent to the Clearwater police station.

      She greeted the officer on duty, Cliff Meeks, by name-they went back a long way—then spilled her story in a rush of words. Without comment, Cliff rose from the crackedvinyl swivel chair and headed straight down the hall to the exit that opened onto the parking lot.

      “You don’t even seem surprised,” Dani commented, hurrying after him.

      “Nothing could surprise me tonight,” drawled the relocated Texan, an old friend of Dani’s father. She didn’t have time to question the cryptic comment before they reached her car. Silently, Dani handed him the key. Then she took cover behind his considerable girth.

      Instead of opening the trunk, Cliff slapped his hand down hard on the lid. “Hey in there! Chief Cliff Meeks, Clearwater Police, speaking. I want your name, and I want it now.”

      “Ryan Given. Let me out.”

      “Okay, Mr. Given, I will. But you should know that I’m armed, so don’t try anything funny.”

      “I swear I won’t,” came the muffled reply. “Just let me outta here.”

      His expression unreadable, Cliff pulled his gun, unlocked the trunk and tossed back the lid. Inside lay a man, as expected—a wide-shouldered, broad-chested, long-legged man. Dani took quick note of his clothing—western from head to toe—before dragging her gaze away.

      A cowboy. A sweet-talking, good-looking, don’t-worryyore-pretty-li’l-head-about-it cowboy. She’d be safer with an escaped convict.

      This cowboy’s groan of agony drew Dani’s gaze back to him. Without sympathy, she watched as the blue-eyed wrangler untangled his feet from a length of rope and unfolded himself from the trunk. It took an assist from Cliff, who for some reason had reholstered his weapon, to get the stranger fully on his feet. Then the man sat right back down on the rim of the open trunk, touching his fingertips to the back of his head. Dani saw blood on them.

      “It’s about damn time,” the ungrateful stowaway commented, glancing at his blood-smeared hand. He looked accusingly from Cliff to her and then back to Cliff. “Are we really still in Clearwater after driving around for so long?”

      “That’s right,” Cliff said, coolly adding, “ID, please.”

      The man, clearly in a temper, shook his head. “Stolen by whoever locked me in here. I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma, staying at the Garrett Motel. My eight-year-old son is with me…back at the motel, I mean. I told him I’d just be gone a minute—”

      “You left an eight-year-old child alone in a motel room?” Dani blurted out in horror. If that wasn’t typical cowboy logic!

      Ryan Given never wasted so much as a glance on her. “He’s probably wondering where I—”

      “Sawyer is inside the station, Mr. Given. We picked him up two hours ago at the Garrett when the clerk called to report your disappearance.”

      Ryan’s jaw dropped. “Two hours ago!” He glanced at the back of his wrist as though he usually wore a watch, which he didn’t now. “What the hell time is it?”

      “Ten o’clock.”

      “Damn!” Ryan leaped to his feet and immediately stumbled forward as if his legs were asleep. Or was he just dazed from his head wound? Dani wondered as both she and Cliff made a grab for him.

      “Whoa, fella. Better take it easy,” Cliff said.

      “But Sawyer—”

      “Is just finishing two quarter-pound burgers, double fries, a large cola, and a fried pie. That boy can really put it away.”

      Dani felt some of the tension leave the cowboy’s body. “You fed him?”

      “We fed him.” Cliff grinned. “That’s quite a youngster you’ve got there, Mr. Given. Thanks to his description, I knew that you were who you said you were the minute I saw you,” the policeman continued, words that explained the reason he’d reholstered his gun.

      Ryan relaxed so completely that Dani’s shoulders dipped under the weight of his muscled arm, now stretched across them.

      “Dani, can you hang around long enough to give me your version of what happened tonight?” Cliff asked.

      “I guess so,” she replied somewhat grudgingly. In truth, she wanted nothing more than to hightail it back to the sanctuary of her ranch. Dani, who worked hard to make her life an endless cycle of identical days, didn’t want or appreciate the excitement fate offered her this Christmas Eve.

      At that reply, Ryan Given disengaged himself from both her and Cliff. When Dani automatically put distance between them, the cowboy gave her a once-over so thorough her entire body glowed with embarrassment. His expression said that what he saw did not impress him. Dani, who shouldn’t have cared less, nonetheless bristled.

      “I guess I should thank you for bringing me back to Clearwater,” Ryan said. He put his fingers to the back of his head again and winced. His comment did nothing to soothe her ruffled feathers. His discomfort evoked no compassion.

      “Don’t bother. I only did it because I thought you were one of the convicts who escaped this morning.” She turned to Cliff. “Have they been caught yet?”

      “No, but it’s just a matter of time. We put out an APB right after the motel clerk saw them steal Mr. Given’s truck—”

       “They stole my truck?”

      Cliff nodded, his own expression full of the empathy Dani lacked. “We thought they’d taken you, too, as a hostage…speaking of which, your son is anxious for your safety. Why don’t we go on inside? I’ll tell you everything I know there, and we may even be able to rustle up another hamburger or two.”

      Looking a little dazed, Ryan nodded. The two men then followed Dani into the station.

      A good twenty minutes passed before Cliff, Ryan and Dani finally sat down in the break room to reconstruct the night’s events. She paid for her earlier lack of pity for Ryan by now blinking back tears that resulted from the emotional, if oddly restrained, reunion she witnessed between the cowboy and the young son who obviously adored him.

      Admittedly interested in Ryan’s brief tale of