The Bachelor's Christmas Bride. Victoria Pade

you know if they have a mechanic?”

      “Absolutely. The best—and only—one around here. I can give him a call for you, have him come down and take a look. He has a tow truck, too, if he needs to take it back to the station.”

      Shannon checked the time on her cell phone. The closing on her grandmother’s property was in little more than an hour.

      “I guess that would be good,” she said tentatively. “Do you think the mechanic could come right down? I’m kind of in a hurry to get somewhere….”

      “Even if he can’t, you can just leave the keys under the seat and Roy—he’s the mechanic—will take care of it. And if you need a lift somewhere, I can probably get you there.”

      Nice eyes or not, she wasn’t getting into a car with a complete stranger.

      “Thanks, but I can call my brother—”

      “Who’s your brother? It’s a small town, I probably know him.”

      “Chase Mackey?”

      “Shannon? Are you Shannon Duffy?” Santa asked.

      “I am. How—”

      “I’m Dag McKendrick—I’m the one you sold the farm to. Chase’s partner, Logan, is my half brother.”

      The local Realtor had handled the sale. Shannon knew the name of her buyer, and that there was a family connection with her brother’s partner, but they’d never met.

      “Wow, this is a small town,” she said, thinking about the coincidence.

      “And I’m staying at Logan’s place until I finish remodeling your grandmother’s house. You’re set to stay in the apartment above Logan’s garage, right? So that must be where you’re headed.”

      “Right.”

      “So we can call Roy and have him take a look at your car while you just go home with me.”

      Oh.

      He made that sound as if everything had worked out perfectly. But Shannon still couldn’t help being uncomfortable with the thought of taking everything this man said at face value and totally trusting him.

      “Uhh… thanks, but—”

      “Come on, it’s fine. I even have candy….” he cajoled, taking a tiny candy cane from his pocket.

      “You’re a stranger masquerading as Santa Claus trying to lure me into a car with candy?” she said.

      He laughed and while it wasn’t a Santa-like ho-ho-ho, it was a great laugh.

      “I guess that does sound bad, doesn’t it?” he admitted. “Okay, how about this…”

      He reached into one of the skates that he’d again slung over his shoulder and pulled out a wallet.

      “Look—I’ll prove who I am,” he said, showing her his driver’s license.

      Shannon took a close look at it, particularly at the picture. For the kind of photograph that had a reputation for being notoriously bad, his was the exception. Not only were those eyes remarkable, but so was the rest of his face.

      Roller-coaster-shaped lips. A slightly long, not-too-thin, not-too-thick nose that suited him. The shadow of a beard even though he was clean shaven, accentuating a sharp jawline and a squarish chin that dented upward in the center ever so alluringly.

      And his hair—like the full eyebrows she could see for herself—was the color of espresso. It was so dark a brown it was just one shade shy of black, and he wore it short on the sides, a little long on top and disheveled to perfection.

      And yes, the name on the license was, indeed, Daegal Pierson McKendrick.

      “Daegal?” Shannon said as she read the unusual name.

      “My mother had visions of glory. She thought it sounded European and sophisticated. My sisters are Isadora, Theodora and Zeli. But you can see that I am who I say I am. And in an hour and a half we’ll be sitting across a table at the bank for the closing on your grandmother’s property. Plus, tonight we’re having a family dinner together, and we’ll actually be living within spitting distance of each other even when we aren’t together. I think you can risk a five-minute ride in my car.”

      Shannon had no idea why, but she couldn’t resist giving him a hard time despite the abundance of reasons why she could trust him.

      “How do I know that the person behind that beard is the person on this driver’s license?”

      He looked to his right, to his left, over his shoulder, making sure none of the children he’d been teaching to skate were around to see. Then he eased the beard down just enough for her to realize that in reality he was even better looking than in the photograph.

      It was only a split-second glimpse, however, before he released the fluffy white disguise that must have been held on by elastic because it snapped back into place.

      Then he waved a finger between the driver’s license in her hand and himself and said, “Him, me, same guy. Not somebody who’s gonna drive you out into the woods and ravage you.”

      Why did that make her smile? And maybe sound a little tantalizing?

      She again had no answer to her own question but she did finally concede. “Okay. Let’s call the mechanic and then I guess I’ll have to trust you.”

      Dag McKendrick took a turn at smiling at her—a great smile that flashed flawlessly white teeth. “You don’t have to trust me. You can walk—it’s about four miles straight down South Street—five minutes by car, maybe an hour or more on foot, your choice…”

      “I’ll take the ride. But remember, the mechanic will know who I left with.”

      “And the possible future-Governor of Montana will track me down and have me shot if anything happens to his soon-to-be wife.”

      So the news had even reached Northbridge. Shannon had been hoping that somehow the media coverage might have bypassed the small, secluded town during the two weeks since Wes’s on-camera proposal.

      But while she wasn’t Wes Rumson’s soon-to-be anything, she’d agreed not to refute it in public. She’d agreed to let Wes’s press people handle it in a way that saved face for him, that didn’t harm his bid for governor. And she couldn’t blurt out the truth now, on the street, to someone she didn’t know.

      Even if she suddenly wanted to more than she had at any moment in the last two weeks.

      Because, as she looked into Dag McKendrick’s coal-black eyes, she hated the idea that he thought she was engaged when she wasn’t.

      And she didn’t understand that any more than she’d understood any of the rest of her response to this man.

      But that was what she’d agreed to and she had to stick to it.

      She had to.

      So she bit her tongue on the subject and merely said, “I’ll get my suitcase out of the trunk while you call the mechanic. If you would, please.”

      “Already sounding gubernatorial,” he teased.

      Shannon merely rolled her eyes at him and reached beside the driver’s seat to release the lever that opened the sedan’s trunk.

      “Just leave your suitcase, I’ll get it,” Dag McKendrick commanded as she headed for the rear of the car. “We can’t have the future First Lady toting her own luggage.”

      Shannon ignored him and went for her suitcase anyway.

      But as she was standing behind the car, she couldn’t keep herself from peeking around the raised trunk cover at him, telling herself it was to make sure he was using the cell phone he’d taken from the inside of that same skate his wallet had been in, and not just to