What She Wants for Christmas

She ought to tell him she didn’t expect to see Joe ever again. But she couldn’t. Not at Christmas. “No,” she said shakily.

Mark nodded, apparently satisfied.

“You really like Joe, don’t you?” Teresa asked.

Mark stopped playing with his Christmas gift from Joe. He lifted his head. Joe was the first man Mark had really cared about since his father’s death. Losing Joe, too, would devastate her son. Her heart wouldn’t be the only one breaking.

“Yeah,” Mark said carefully. “He’s really cool. I was thinking—I mean wondering…well, do you think you might marry him?” The last came out in a rush.

She couldn’t seem to speak, didn’t know what to say.

The truth, she thought. Tell him as much of the truth as you can bear.

“If he ever asks me to marry him, I’d say yes.”

Mark studied her for a long moment, his eyes serious, then gave another decisive nod. “Good.”

What She Wants for Christmas

Janice Kay Johnson

MILLS & BOON

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JANICE KAY JOHNSON

Janice Kay Johnson is the author of more than sixty books for adults and children. She has been a finalist for a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award four times for her Harlequin Superromance novels. A former librarian, Janice lives north of Seattle, Washington, and is an active volunteer and board member of Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter. When not fostering kittens or writing, she gardens, quilts, reads and e-mails her two daughters, who are both in Southern California.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

“CAN’T WE GO shopping?”

Thirty seconds after walking in the front door from a lousy day at work, these were not the first words Teresa Burkett wanted to hear from her daughter.

“Don’t whine,” she said automatically. “I didn’t let you whine when you were two, and I’m not going to start now.”

Nicole dumped a cat off her lap and rose from her slouch on the sofa. Sounding teenage indignant, she said, “Can’t I ask a perfectly reasonable question?”

“Certainly.” Teresa headed for the kitchen. “Go right ahead.”

Mark was already there. A typical ten-going-on-eleven-year-old boy, he was eating. String cheese, a bowl of some sugary cereal and a pop. Teresa shuddered.

She opened the fridge and grabbed a cola. Caffeine. She needed it quick. One long swallow later, she noticed the casserole dish, still covered with aluminum foil, reposing on the refrigerator shelf.

Stay calm. “You didn’t put dinner on like I asked.”

“Mo-om.” Her pretty dark-haired daughter looked at her as if she were an idiot. “It isn’t time to put dinner on. You’re home early.”

Teresa sighed. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”

Mouth full, Mark asked, “How was your day?”

“Crummy.” She made a face. “I did three spays, wormed two horses and treated a few miscellaneous cats and dogs. Otherwise, I hung around the clinic hopefully and helped Eric load his truck.”

The dairy farmers had decided their animals could afford to wait until the vet they knew—a man—could get around to them. They were a conservative lot, these farmers. Their daughters and wives might get their hands dirty helping out, but they didn’t make the major decisions and they didn’t become veterinarians.

A couple of the farmers had checked Teresa out by bringing their cats or dogs in for treatment. She had to assume that her appearance was part of the problem. Maybe if she’d been a big strapping gal, they would have accepted her gender philosophically. Instead, she was a slender five foot four when she stretched. Her wiry strength didn’t show. She looked petite and elegant, ornamental instead of useful.

Only, if they wouldn’t give her a chance, how the hell did she demonstrate her competence? A wave of panic washed over her. Financially and legally, she was Dr. Eric Bergstrom’s partner now; she’d bought into the practice. But she wouldn’t blame him if he got damn tired of doing all the work while she loitered around the clinic.

“Dr. Craig said you could come back to your old job any time.” Nicole was trying hard not to sound hopeful. “It’s not too late. The sale on this…house hasn’t even closed.” The pause was calculated; the three-bedroom farmhouse on the edge of town was not, in Nicole’s opinion, a suitable residence for a sophisticated teenager. She belonged back in the oversize, ostentatious, French-provincial style home they’d left behind in Bellevue, an increasingly ritzy community across Lake Washington from Seattle. Teresa was trying very hard to be patient. Fifteen was a tough age at which to have to move, but Nicole would adjust.

Assuming, Teresa thought ruefully, that her mother didn’t end up tucking her tail between her legs and running.

“Actually, I signed the papers today. It’s all ours. Give up, kiddo,” she said lightly, then groaned when the dogs leapt to their feet and raced, barking, to the front door. A second later the doorbell rang. “Are either of you expecting a friend?”

“Friend?” Nicole struck an astonished pose. “Who has a friend?”

Nonetheless, she trailed her mother to the door. Presumably even some hick neighbor would be a diversion in this outpost of civilization.

“Quiet!” Teresa snapped at the dogs. Golda and Serena quit barking and looked sheepish. She opened the door and gaped. If the man on her porch was a hick, might she never find civilization again.

He actually wore overalls and muddy work boots, as most of the farmers around here seemed to, but this guy was built. Muscles, shoulders wide enough to shelter a woman from a cold wind, long legs… He had to be at least six foot two. His straight dark hair looked silky, his lean face was tanned, his wide mouth set in the kind of grim line that served as a challenge to any self-respecting woman. But it was his eyes that riveted her. In that dark face, they were a vivid electric blue.

“May I help you?” Thank God, she didn’t sound quite as dumbstruck as she felt.

He moved his shoulders, as though uncomfortably aware of what had been going through her mind. “Dr. Burkett?”

“Yes?” A client?

“My sister suggested I stop by. Jess Kerrigan. She said you wanted some trees taken down.”

Trees? Jess Kerrigan? Teresa snapped out of it. Jess was the nice owner of those show-quality Arabians. She had actually agreed cheerfully to let the new vet treat one of them. And the conversation with her had even been useful. During a discussion of Teresa’s old farmhouse—Jess knew the previous owners—Teresa had asked about tree-toppers. Her client had remarked that her brother was a logging contractor.

“He’ll give you a good price,” she’d announced. “I’ll tell him to.”

“Oh, you don’t need—”

“We like to welcome newcomers to White Horse.”

If only the dairy farmers felt the same.

The man was still standing there on her doorstep waiting. Teresa pulled herself together. “Bless you. I’d forgotten to get your name or phone number from her. Why don’t you come in?”

He glanced down at his boots. “I’d better not. If you could just show me the trees…”

“Sure.” She stepped out and let the dogs slip through. Closing the door in her astonished daughter’s face, she smiled. “Around the house.”

She was conscious of him behind her in a way she couldn’t ever remember being. She couldn’t remember, either, the last time she’d hoped so fervently that a man had noticed her, as well. Unless… Oh, no—had Jess Kerrigan said anything about a sister-in-law? But of course he’d be married. Any man this beautiful had to be. In fact, any man over thirty with a half-decent character was married, never mind what he looked like.

The front lawn was springy under her feet. Too springy; it was half moss, shaded by the stand of mixed cedar and hemlocks to the south of the house.

“These,” she said simply, standing aside. “The realtor said one of them came down last year on the roof, which is why the house has a new one. I don’t want to take a chance on a repeat. Besides, I’d like a little more sun. The closets are mildewing.”

He nodded and rubbed his chin reflectively as he stood contemplating the fifteen or so trees, tilting his head back to gaze up, then glancing around as though her yard told him something.

“I thought I might leave the big cedar,” Teresa said, feeling the need to fill the silence. “It’s pretty.”

Without a word, he went to the tree. From a pocket in his overalls, he pulled a screwdriver and poked it into the trunk. “Rotten. Better take it out, too.”

“Rotten? Oh, what a shame.”

“Are you thinking you might get much for these trees?”

“Get much?” She blinked, then realized she didn’t even know the man’s name. When she asked, he looked surprised.

“Sorry. I guess I figured Jess would have mentioned it. Joe Hughes.” He held out one large hand.

It completely engulfed hers. She liked the feeling, which took her aback. She’d spent most of her life trying to overcome the handicap of her size. Now she wanted to be overwhelmed by some primitive hunk of masculinity?

There was no denying it. That was exactly what she wanted. Their clasped hands brought other visions to her mind: his head bent over hers, his body pressing hers down, his— She firmly put the brakes on her imagination. He was married, she reminded herself. He must be. Besides, he hadn’t demonstrated any great interest in her. Maybe his tastes ran to six-foot Nordic goddesses.

But, no. He hadn’t let her hand go, and when she lifted her gaze to his, it was to catch a flicker of something in those eyes that sped up her pulse more than her first chance at surgery had. Were his cheeks tinged with red as he finally released her hand?

“Jess always says I have no manners,” he said ruefully. “I guess she’s right.”

“What do sisters know?” Teresa said, grinning at him.

He lifted one dark brow. Didn’t it figure he could. “You have some, too?”

“Two. I’m the middle child. I’m sure that’s why my psyche is so fragile.”

For a moment he studied her as gravely as he had the stand of trees. Then he smiled, slow and heart-stoppingly sexy. “You look fragile all right, but my mama always taught me appearances are deceiving.”

“Smart woman.”

His eyes lingered on her face as the smile faded. She felt flushed and dizzy.

“Five hundred dollars,” he said.

“What?” She stared at him.

“For your stumpage. The trees aren’t big enough to be worth much, but I can get them out easy enough—the truck can back right down your driveway. Pulp mill’ll take ’em. You’ll be rid of the trees and have a little cash.”

Thank heavens for his speech, the longest out of his mouth yet. It had given her time to realize he wasn’t offering five hundred dollars for her body.

“Does that include your taking the stumps out, not just grinding them down?”

“Yup. And burning the stumps and slash.”

“You’re on,” she said.

That eyebrow rose again. “Don’t you want to get other bids?”

“I already have. Two. One of the guys wanted to charge me two thousand dollars. Said the trees weren’t worth anything. He was going to buck them into firewood length and leave them for me. I’d have been stacking them for the rest of my life. The other fellow didn’t do stumps. He gave me the names of a couple of places that grind them down. I’m thinking of putting the vegetable garden there. How can I if the ground is full of roots?”

Joe Hughes nodded. “I don’t think anybody would beat my price, anyway.”

“Your sister guaranteed you.”

“Sisters are good for something,” he said, straight-faced.

“Yours seemed like a nice woman. She let me touch her horses.”

He heard the flash of bitterness, because those disconcerting eyes fixed themselves on her face again. “You’re a vet.”

“I’m a woman.”

His gaze flicked downward, then back to her face. “I noticed,” he said in a voice that had roughened just enough to be a compliment.

“Women are apparently competent to treat a five-pound cat. A thousand-pound Jersey cow is another story.”

He frowned. “Guess we’re a little backward in White Horse.”

“Eric—Eric Bergstrom, that is—warned me, but he thought the farmers would get over it. Judging from my first few weeks, they’re not in any hurry to.”

“We’ll have to see what we can do about that,” Joe said.

She made a face. “Don’t tell me you’re a dairy farmer on the side.”

“Nope. Hardly know one end of a cow from another. But I have friends who are.”

“Ah. You’re going to tell them what a sweet girl I am.”

He apparently didn’t mind her sarcasm, because one corner of his mouth twitched. “I’m going to tell them which end of their cow not to be.”

A cow’s ass. She liked it.

“Might come better from you than me,” she conceded. Her basically cheerful nature triumphed and she laughed. “When can you take out my trees?”

“Next week. Say, Monday.”

Monday was one of her days off. She could watch. She didn’t kid herself about what—or who—she’d be watching.

She smiled and held out her hand. “See you then.”

He glanced down at her hand and seemed to deliberate for a moment before he took it. His grip sent a shiver through her. When he released her, he flexed his fingers before balling them into a fist. Unfortunately his face told her remarkably little.

“Monday,” he repeated, gave a brief nod and headed for his huge shiny blue pickup without a backward glance.

Teresa wandered into the house. Both kids were waiting for her.

“Who,” her daughter demanded, enunciating carefully, “was he?”

“A hunk, wasn’t he?”

Nicole’s lip curled. “He was dirty!”

Teresa was in just the mood to provoke a little outrage. Musingly she said, “There’s something about a sweaty man…a day’s growth of beard…a little dirt under his fingernails…”

“But, Mom!” Mark stared at her as if she’d gone stark-raving mad. “Then how come you won’t let me go to school dirty? How come I have to wash my hands before we eat? How come—?”

“You’re not a man, stupid.” His sister didn’t even glance at him. “You’re a boy. A little kid. A—”

“You think you’re so grown-up? Then how come the men aren’t all lined up outside?”

“There isn’t anyone in this nowhere place I’d want lined up!” Nicole flared. “And can’t you tell when Mom is putting you on?”

“Actually, I wasn’t,” Teresa said calmly. “He’s a very handsome man. Now, can we quit bickering? He’s also a logger who is going to take those wretched trees out for us. Monday.”

“Cool,” Mark declared. “Can I watch?”

“Nope. You’ll be in school by then, remember? Registration tomorrow.”

“School!” Nicole collapsed on a kitchen chair. “Mom, what am I going to wear?”

“How about leggings and a sweater?”

“How about overalls and work boots?” her fifteen-year-old retorted bitterly.

“Seems to me a pair of sacky overalls is one of your standards,” Teresa agreed. “Good idea.”

“Please, please, please, can we go shopping?”

“Nope.”

“Why?” Nicole wailed.

“Because I don’t want to,” Teresa said reasonably. “And you have a perfectly adequate wardrobe. Now, can I turn the oven on?”

“Why didn’t you let me move in with Jayne?” Nicole jumped to her feet. “This place stinks!” She ran from the room and a moment later Teresa heard her feet thundering up the stairs.

She’d probably spend the rest of the evening on the telephone with her friends in Bellevue. The long-distance charges would have to become an issue eventually, but for now Teresa figured they were a small price to pay. She sighed and saw Mark staring after his sister with almost as much bewilderment as his mother felt.

“Like Bellevue was so great.” He stuffed some string cheese in his mouth. “What’s for dinner, Mom?”

Thank God for one cheerful member of her family. “Chicken and artichoke hearts.”

“Cool,” he said again. He even submitted to a hug, though he didn’t have a clue why she felt compelled to give it.

“YOU SHOULD HAVE seen this guy.” Nicole flopped back against her pillow and rolled her eyes, even though Jayne couldn’t see. “I swear he had size-twelve feet, and these clumps of mud were sticking to his boots, and he wore overalls. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d been chewing on a piece of straw.”

“He’s your neighbor?” Jayne sounded properly horrified.

“No, he’s some kind of logger. Mom’s having some trees taken out.”

“Well, then, you’ll probably never see him again.”

“Everybody here looks like that,” Nicole said gloomily. “They’re all farmers or loggers or something. I heard these two girls talking the other day, and one of them is competing to become Dairy Princess at the fair next year. Can you imagine? The crown probably has horns on it!”

Nicole wasn’t sure why, but she didn’t tell Jayne her mother had thought the logger was a hunk. No, that wasn’t true; she did know why. She was embarrassed. Her own mother, for crying out loud!

“Listen,” Jayne said, “I gotta go. Maddy and Kelly and I are going to a film festival tonight. They’re running a bunch of foreign films. I don’t like subtitles, but Maddy says some of the guys are going, including—get this—Russell Harlan, so I’m wearing that red dress—you know, that one you helped me pick out—and my hair on top of my head in a scrunchy, and he can’t miss me, right?”

Talking to her best friend hadn’t helped, Nicole thought a moment later, hanging up. Now she was more depressed. She was the one who’d liked Russ Harlan, not Jayne. He had these really dark eyes and he wore an earring and he was super intense about things. She’d wanted him intense about her. She was the one he was supposed to be noticing, not Jayne.

“I feel like I’ve been sent to prison,” she said aloud to her empty room. Her room. Yeah, right. Her bedroom had had blue plush carpet and a cushioned window seat and its own bathroom. This room had peeling wallpaper, which her mother said they’d replace, and bare wood floors. Her gilt-trimmed bedroom set looked about as out of place as Nicole felt.

They couldn’t stay in this dump. They just couldn’t. Things were great in Bellevue. Nicole wished she’d paid more attention to all Mom’s talk about buying into a veterinary practice somewhere. She’d been looking for so long Nicole quit listening when Mom talked about why she liked or didn’t like this town or that vet or whatever. Big mistake. She should have listened carefully. Instead, first thing she knew, her mother had gone ahead and done it. A For Sale sign appeared in their front yard, and they all drove up here one Saturday to look at houses.

The sight of White Horse had put Nicole in shock. It had a whole two streets of businesses. One pizza parlor that she could see. One! The movie theater was this run-down little place that played a single movie at a time, a month or more after it’d opened in Seattle and Bellevue and even Everett. The high school was this huge ugly stucco building that must have been built fifty years ago. Mom thought it was great that you could walk anywhere in town. Great. Where were you supposed to go? The library? The bowling alley? Who bowled?

And she had to register for school tomorrow and start the next day. Mom insisted that moving during the summer was easiest, so she wouldn’t be the only kid whose first day it was. Nicole had believed her then, but that was before she’d seen White Horse. How many new kids were there likely to be in the high school? Two? Three? She could just see it now: heads turning as she walked into each class, the stares as she went down the hall.

Well, she didn’t care what a bunch of farmers thought, anyway. What she had to do was figure out how to get her mother to change her mind and move back to Bellevue.

At first she’d thought it was hopeless, but lately she’d begun to wonder. The farmers around here didn’t want a woman vet, which Nicole thought sucked, except for the fact that her mom was looking more discouraged every day. Her mom had figured White Horse was some kind of rural paradise; she’d given Nicole and Mark all these lectures about how the move was as much for them as for her, because in a small town like this they were getting away from drugs and crime and gangs. So everything was supposed to be perfect, right?

The first glimmerings of an idea brought creases to Nicole’s brow. Wait a minute—Mom was catching the drift, but too slowly. Dr. Craig would hire someone to take her place at the animal hospital in Bellevue; then, even if they left White Horse, they might have to go somewhere else. What if Nicole could speed up the process? Show her mother all the crummy parts of life in this cow town? She could mount a campaign. She wouldn’t want to be obvious; that would make Mom mad. No, she could be really subtle, just sort of coax Mom to really look around.

Surely that was all it would take.

By this time, Nicole was sitting bolt upright, legs crossed. Like tomorrow. She wouldn’t let her mother stop at the school office. No, she’d insist that someone give them a tour, show them the lab facilities—did this school know what a lab was?—and the library. Another of the things Mom went on and on about was how important a good education was. Nicole smiled. If her mother thought they wouldn’t get a good education here, they were gone.

Back to Bellevue. Yes.

JOE GLANCED at his watch. Noon. “Take an hour,” he called, and the two men he’d brought out on this job nodded and carried their chain saws to the open back of his pickup.

They consulted briefly and then Brad Mauser said, “We’re going to run into town and get some burgers. Want to come?”

Joe’s glance strayed to the kitchen window of the farmhouse, where he could see the blur of a white face and dark hair. “Nah.” He shrugged. “I brought a sandwich.”

Though he was used to the scream of chain saws and the thunder of falling trees, the silence after the men left was welcome. Autumn sunshine warm on his back, he looked around at their morning’s work.

A dozen trees lay on the ground between the house and fence, lined up as neatly as pick-up sticks pulled from the pile. Most of the downed trees had already been shaved of their limbs and were ready for loading. If all went well, they’d have the other half down this afternoon. Come morning, they could get the timber out of here and clean up. Give the slash a few weeks to dry and he’d come back and burn it. If he was smart, he’d come back on a day when Dr. Teresa Burkett was working and therefore not home.

The jolt he’d felt in his gut when she opened the door that day last week had scared him a little. She was out of his league. He was lucky to have a high-school diploma. She’d finished God knows how many years of college. He was a small-town boy with no ambition to leave his home. She was a big-city professional woman who probably thought White Horse was pretty and peaceful. It was. But, unlike him, she’d be heading for Seattle every time she got bored.