The Man Under The Mistletoe. Muriel Jensen

put her free hand to his forehead, certain he was hallucinating. “Matt, don’t be ridiculous.” She whipped the coat off her shoulder and put it around him. He was starting to look pale and there was blood everywhere. “Who’d want to kill you? And I was standing just a few feet…from…you.”

      Her denial that he’d been shot lost impetus as she remembered that moment. She’d heard Chase’s gasp of surprise and turned to find that Matt had pushed him to the snow. She’d opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing, but he’d been coming toward her, his eyes on something in the trees across the road. Then she’d heard the loud pop, watched his body take the impact that drove him to his knees.

      Her brain was muddled with lingering shock and the upsetting sensation of having his warm lifeblood oozing onto her fingers. She was having difficulty thinking this through. But if he’d thought there was a gun out there, and he’d been running toward her—

      “You mean…the barrel of the gun was aimed at me?” she asked.

      Before he could reply, Chase came running outside followed by Jackie Whitcomb, who, as well as being the mayor, was the owner of the inn. She was carrying a blanket.

      “The ambulance is coming right away,” Chase said, kneeling beside Matt. “You’re not gonna die, are you?”

      “No,” Matt replied. “I think the bullet just nicked me.”

      Rosie doubted that. This was a lot of blood for a simple nick, but she knew Matt was trying to allay Chase’s fears.

      “Good Lord!” Jackie exclaimed, handing Rosie the coat and wrapping the blanket around Matt’s shoulders. “Can you stand? Let’s try to get you out of the cold.”

      They had him on his feet and, supporting his weight, they’d taken several steps toward the inn when the sound of a siren split the air.

      “Here comes the ambulance!” Chase said.

      Rosie pushed him gently toward the sidewalk. “Go flag them down, Chase, so they don’t go in around the back.”

      Rosie and Jackie, Matt between them, reversed directions down the snowy path. The siren grew louder, then stopped.

      They were intercepted by Chase who ran ahead of two EMTs, one carrying a bag, the other pushing a gurney. The one with the bag was tall and fair, the other short and sturdily built.

      “Hi, Rosie.” The tall one was Randy Sanford, her friend Paris’s husband. He looked inside Matt’s jacket, removing the large cotton square Rosie had pressed into the wound. “Not too deep,” he said after a moment. “Okay, let’s get you on the gurney.”

      The other technician, Randy’s friend Chilly Childress, had opened it out and helped him ease Matt onto it. Rosie’s reality teetered dangerously. Matt, whom she would never forgive for having abandoned her when she’d needed him so much, still represented for her the happiest period of her life. For the first time since then, she had a clear memory of how cold and distant she’d been. She wanted to remember why, but found she couldn’t and Matt was now supine on a gurney, being lifted into the back of an ambulance, wincing and pale.

      While Randy climbed into the back with the gurney, Chilly opened the passenger-side door of the ambulance, beckoning her. “Want to ride with us?” he asked.

      She hesitated. She wanted Matt to be all right, but she didn’t want to be where people were struggling for life and possibly dying. She’d had all she could take of that.

      “Your husband’s going to be fine,” he assured her, still holding the door. “But we have to get him to the hospital.”

      Her husband.

      “Go,” Jackie said, her hands on Chase’s shoulders. “I’ll take care of Chase.”

      “No, I want to come,” Chase protested, trying to follow Rosie.

      “You stay with Jackie, sweetie,” Rosie said as she ran back to give Chase a hug. “I’ll call and tell you what’s happening, and the minute I’m home again, I’ll come and get you.”

      “He’s not going to die?”

      “No.”

      “You’re sure. ’Cause…lots of our family does that.”

      “Well, see there. He isn’t our family. He’s a DeMarco, not an Erickson.”

      “But you’re a DeMarco, and he’s your family and you’re my family, so—”

      “I promise you,” Rosie said firmly, holding both his hands, “that he is not going to die, and I’m going to bring him home, and whenever that is—tomorrow or the next day—we’re all going to have hot buffalo wings together. Okay?”

      Chase finally bowed to pressure. “Okay. But I’m gonna be really mad if you’re wrong.”

      “Go,” Jackie encouraged Rosie. “And don’t worry. Matt will be fine.”

      MATT FELT as though he was in hell—or, at least as if his arm was. Though he doubted seriously that Christmas was celebrated there. There were cardboard cutouts of Santa, elves, and puppies in Santa hats all over the windows and walls. A glittering, three-dimensional paper star hung from a light fixture in the middle of the ER.

      The EMT had been right; it was just a flesh wound. He’d been bandaged, given an antibiotic and pain medication.

      “You’re going to have to rest this arm for a couple of days,” the doctor said, then turned to Rosie. “The bullet scraped some muscle, so he’s going to be pretty uncomfortable. This dressing will have to be changed a couple of times a day.”

      Rosie didn’t look thrilled at that notion. Of course, she wasn’t thrilled that he was here at all. But he’d seen that horrified expression in her eyes when she saw he’d been shot, and remembered that she’d worn it two years ago after she’d found her father on the porch and lost their baby. He guessed it was the blood that had upset her.

      The doctor continued with his instructions. Rosie nodded, looking stoic and controlled.

      The doctor studied her closely. “Are you all right?”

      “Yes.” She nodded.

      He turned to Matt. “She should have a brandy when you get home.”

      “I’ll see to it.” Matt slipped off the table to his feet, feeling the pain in his arm reverberate all the way into his head. Okay. He was going to have to move more carefully.

      The doctor caught his wince, shook one of the pills he’d given him into the palm of his good hand and went to the sink for a paper cup of water.