The Sergeant's Christmas Mission. Joanna Sims

at him with an anxious whine.

      “Her name is Top.” He sneezed. “Top Brand.”

      * * *

      Rebecca opened the front door of her inherited two-story home and surveyed the work. What she really wanted to do was curl up on the couch to take a nap. But to get to the couch, she would have to create a path through the boxes. And as good as a nap sounded, she had to push herself to make progress on the unpacking while her boys were at school. Once they got home, there would be dinner to make and homework to check. Rebecca knew that this was a big adjustment for Carson and Caleb; the sooner she got this house feeling like a home, the better it would be for them.

      “No rest for the weary.” She tossed her keys on the kitchen counter on her way to find the vacuum. The cereal explosion she had created was the first on her list of chores.

      “What a mess.” She sighed as she leaned over to plug in her vacuum. The first outlet didn’t seem to work, so she went in search of another outlet nearby. The third outlet worked, but now Rebecca was concerned about the fact that the other two hadn’t.

      “Oh, Aunt Ginny. What happened to your beautiful house?”

      After vacuuming up the cereal, Rebecca avoided the boxes and headed to her sons’ room instead. Carson had been a protective big brother from the moment Caleb was born; he always wanted to hold Caleb and feed him. The two boys grew up as best friends in part because they shared a room. Now that they could have their own rooms in this big old house, they still chose to stay together. Rebecca made the beds, something she usually had them do in the morning before school, and then grabbed the hamper and dirty towels out of the bathroom on the upstairs floor.

      She disliked doing laundry, and the fact that she was picking this chore over the boxes was a testament to her hatred of unpacking moving boxes.

      “You know what you need to do, Rebecca?” she said aloud as she used her back to push open the squeaky screen door leading to the back porch. “You need to get your butt inside and unpack those stinking boxes. Quit procrastinating!”

      She put the laundry basket down on the stained concrete porch floor with a sigh, trying to avoid dwelling on all of the things that needed attention on the property. Luckily, Shane had maintained the grass and shrubs while the deed to the house was being transferred to her, but she had inherited the house and all of its many belongings. And some of those belongings were just junk that needed to be collected and hauled away, like the rusted, broken lawn chairs littering the back porch.

      “I think Aunt Ginny, God rest her soul, may have turned into a bit of a hoarder,” Rebecca mused as she loaded the washing machine.

      When she went to retrieve the load of clothes she had washed the night before from the dryer, she found a ball of wet clothes that weren’t dry at all.

      “I didn’t turn this on last night?”

      She could have sworn that she had.

      She turned on the dryer again and then went inside to begin tackling the boxes. With the trip to the veterinarian with the kitten, and her strategic avoidance, the day was frittering away. As she started opening the boxes labeled “Kitchen,” Rebecca rehashed her interactions with Shane Brand. He was a bit of an enigma; his look was rough, with the beard and hair down to his shoulders, but there was something so soft and honest about his aqua-blue eyes. When they weren’t red from lack of sleep and too much alcohol, she imagined that those eyes could make any woman take a second and third look.

      For her, when she looked into his eyes, there had been a spark of familiarity somewhere deep inside of her that had flickered. She recognized him even though she had never met him before. Every now and again, she met a new person and it felt as if they connected on a soul level, as if they had known each other all their lives. That’s what it felt like with Shane; it felt as if she had known him all her life. And the way he took charge in the vet’s office and the mercy he showed that poor kitten put two additional points in the “plus” column to keep Shane on as a tenant. She had been so relieved when he stepped forward to help Top; now she didn’t have to worry about breaking terrible news to Carson and Caleb when they got home from school. Now she could tell them that, because of Shane, Top had a fighting chance to survive.

      Rebecca spent several hours unpacking the kitchen boxes, and when she was done, her back aching from bending over and her legs tired from climbing up on the footstool to reach the higher cabinets, she felt proud of herself. For the moment, she was just finding spots in the kitchen to blend her items with Aunt Ginny’s. Eventually, she would have to thin out the stuff jammed into the drawers and cabinets. There had been many moments when Rebecca came across a favored bowl of her aunt’s, something that stirred a childhood memory. It was in those times that she missed her dear aunt the most.

      With two more hours of work time left before she had to leave to pick up Carson and Caleb, Rebecca grabbed a piece of cheese and an apple from the refrigerator and downed a bottle of water before she headed out to the back porch. She was feeling good as she stepped outside; the sun was shining and it took the chill off the early-Spring temperature.

      “What in the world?”

      The clothes in the dryer were still in a damp ball and were starting to have a faint odor of mildew. This time, she knew that she had turned on the dryer. The darn thing was broken.

      She threw her hands up in the air. “Doesn’t anything in this stupid house work?”

      She fiddled with the dryer, pushing buttons, and then turned it back on. It sounded like it was working, but it wasn’t. Frustrated, Rebecca kicked the dryer, but instead of hurting the dryer, she hurt her foot. In response to the injury to her foot, she began shaking the dryer in frustration. Slightly out of breath from the exertion of fighting with the household appliance, Rebecca stood quietly, hands on hips, feeling better for having told the dryer a thing or two. This day had been a mixed bag, and it was only half over.

      “Lord.” Rebecca pulled the ball of damp clothes out of the dryer and dumped them into the laundry basket. “I deserve a glass of wine. I really do.”

      * * *

      After the trip to the vet, Shane and Recon took a nap together on the bed. It had taken some doing to get the dog to leave the kitten; he’d never seen Recon behave this way before, but there was no accounting for love, he supposed. Recon loved that kitten and that was the end of the discussion.

      “Let’s go outside, buddy.” Shane grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator, feeling like his daily routine, which had been disrupted by Rebecca with the pretty eyes, was back on track. It was after noon and he was heading outside with a beer in one hand and the keys to his Indian Motorcycle in the other. He played music at night, slept the morning away and then worked on restoring his motorcycle in the late afternoon. That had been his routine for years, and that was how he liked it.

      On his way to the detached garage, Shane heard Rebecca’s voice drifting his way from the back porch. He didn’t pay it any mind, determined not to get sidetracked, but a loud banging sound, as if she were getting in a fight with something, made him change directions, with a sigh, and head toward the back porch.

      “You okay?”

      Rebecca spun around at the sound of his voice. “The dryer isn’t drying. I cleaned the vent. That didn’t help.”

       Damn. So much for getting back to my routine.

      He only used to see Ginny about once a week; he could tell that Rebecca was going to command much more of his attention and his time than her aunt had.

      “Aunt Ginny always used to have a clothesline in the backyard,” she said to him after she started the washing machine. “Any luck it’s still around?”

      “Let me take a look at it before you go to all that trouble.”

      Her pretty eyes widened in surprise at his offer and then she smiled at him. “Thank you.”

      Shane went to get his tools so he could open up the back of the dryer. On his way to the