The Man Under The Mistletoe. Muriel Jensen

following him back inside.

      “No.” He did head for the buffet table. “Did you have anything at all substantial today? Ham? Cheese? Deviled eggs?”

      Chase made a face. “I thought there’d be hamburgers or hot wings.”

      “It’s a wedding. They have classier stuff.” He studied the array of food. “How about some vegetables and dip?”

      “How about more cake?”

      “No.”

      Chase looked betrayed. “You sound like Aunt Rosie.”

      “That’s because we love you and want you to be healthy.”

      Matt finally talked Chase into eating a spring roll by telling him it came with hot sauce. Chase felt honor-bound to try it.

      By the time he’d finished two of them and a few carrot sticks, the Yankee Inn’s banquet hall was empty of guests and the waitstaff was beginning to clean up.

      Sonny appeared, changed out of her elegant pink suit and wearing casual slacks and a faux fur-trimmed black parka. She was still very chic. As Matt stood, she wrapped him in a fragrant embrace.

      “A cab’s picking up Ginger and me to take us to the airport. You’ll be long gone when I return, so I just wanted you to know how good it was to see you again and…” Her smile seemed to falter and that deep sadness he’d often seen in her came to the fore. “And…how much I wish things had turned out differently for you and Rosie.”

      “So do I.” He returned her hug. “I haven’t given up yet, though she’s not doing much to inspire hope.”

      “I think you should kidnap her,” she said, “and take her to China.”

      “I’ll give that some thought.”

      Ginger shouted from the doorway that the cab had arrived. Rosie, still wearing the raspberry gown, had pulled her coat on over her shoulders and hurried toward them from the other direction. She and Matt and Chase followed Sonny and Ginger to the cab.

      It was almost four and the sun was already low on the horizon. Snow-covered rooftops and church steeples were pink in its glow.

      There were hugs all around.

      “Do think about what I said,” Sonny murmured to Matt as she followed her sister into the cab. She held the door open when the cabbie would have closed it. “I’ll be home the night before the community Christmas dinner,” she shouted at Rosie. “If anybody needs me for anything, you can give them Aunt Sukie’s number. You know Carol Walford. Everything’s a crisis!”

      “Okay, Mom. Don’t worry.”

      “What’s that all about?” Matt asked.

      “Mom’s giving the welcoming speech at the Revolutionary Dames’ annual Christmas dinner on the tenth. Carol Walford is the chair, and Mom swears she wears starched underwear. You can imagine how stiff she is if Mom thinks she is.” The cabbie closed the door. “I heard her tell you to think about something. What was that?”

      “She wants Uncle Matt to kidnap you and take you to China,” Chase reported, looking from one to the other.

      Rosie gasped indignantly.

      Matt brought his fist down playfully on top of Chase’s head.

      He should have let him have another piece of cake, then he’d have been too engrossed in it to overhear their conversation. “Just a little joke, Rosie,” he said placatingly.

      Rosie turned to wave as the cab drove away with the snick of tire chains in the rutted snow. Quiet settled over the parking lot, now empty of cars. The staff still inside were parked in the employee lot in back.

      “Like carting me off somewhere would solve anything,” she said while she continued to wave. “You and I just aren’t…”

      Matt heard only part of her assurance that nothing in the world could bridge the chasm between them. His attention was caught by the glint of a slanting ray of setting sun on metal or glass. It had an eerie familiarity. He’d been a soldier during Desert Storm, and he’d covered a year of battles in Yugoslavia before he decided that he missed home too much and gave up being a foreign correspondent.

      His brain processed what he saw more quickly than it reeled out the accompanying thoughts. He’d already pushed Chase to the ground when a bullet smashed into the ground between him and Rosie.

      Rosie turned at the strange sound, and Matt lunged toward her to knock her to the ground as a second shot rang out.

      Something slammed into his upper arm, burning like a branding iron, and knocked him to his knees.

      He heard Rosie scream, saw her white and horrified face as she knelt beside him, and thought with perverse satisfaction that he finally had her attention.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      ROSIE COULDN’T SEEM TO get enough air. Shock, disbelief and horror at the sight of blood spreading on the sleeve of Matt’s jacket took control of her body. How could this keep happening to her? The bloodstain brought back the memory of the red on the side of her father’s face, streaming to his shoulder, the stuff dried on the sleeve of his shirt, congealed on the arm of the chair, in a little pool at his feet, her own backward tumble off the porch.

      With that came the wrench of pain in her stomach and the certainty that something awful had happened to the baby she carried. Then there was blood on her legs, on her tennis shoes.

      She remembered hearing herself scream and that sound came back to her with all the shrill clarity of the moment she’d made it.

      She had a weirdly disassociated sense of having lost the past two years. Every small step she’d made in the recovery of her good sense, in her willingness to go on, in collecting her shredded hopes and dreams and trying to start over was being wiped out.

      “Rosie,” Matt said, his voice surprisingly strong. “Rosie!” He shook her, then swore, the action probably hurting his wound. “Rosie, come on.”

      She came back to the present, on her knees facing Matt. She had hold of his arms and he held hers, his fingers biting into her flesh. She’d lost the jacket she’d thrown over her shoulders to come outside and was aware of being cold as she yanked the decorative handkerchief out of Matt’s pocket and reached inside his coat to press it to the wound. Nausea rose to the back of her throat. She prayed she wouldn’t be sick.

      “Chase,” Matt said, “put Aunt Rosie’s coat back on her shoulders.”

      Chase, his eyes enormous and terrified, scrambled to his feet.

      “Never mind the coat,” Rosie told the boy. “Run inside and get my purse. The cell phone’s in it. Call nine one one and tell them where we are, and that Uncle Matt’s been shot.”

      “Okay.” The boy began to run off, but Matt stopped him.

      “Get the coat first,” he said calmly, “then call nine one one.”

      As the boy came back to do his uncle’s bidding, Rosie snapped at Matt, “You’re bleeding, you idiot.”

      “And you’re freezing, angel voice,” he returned. “Stop yelling, okay? I’m starting to get a headache.”

      The coat had fallen right beside her and Chase picked it up. He placed it on her shoulders, then took off at a run for the inn.

      “You okay?” Matt asked, his eyes roaming her face as she held the handkerchief firmly to the wound.

      “Of course I’m okay,” she retorted. She didn’t know why she felt so testy. “I didn’t get shot. I swear to God, hunters get more careless every year. Farmers and ranchers have to put red blankets on their cows and horses so they’re not mistaken for deer or elk! Pretty soon we’re all going to have to wear—”

      “It wasn’t a hunter.”