From Humbug To Holiday Bride

“What if I can’t find a place?” he asked.

“You said you would.” For the first time, he sensed the flatness in her husky voice.

“If I can’t, then what?” She hesitated. He listened closely to her voice, to each nuance and pause. His back to her, he kept his eyes shut to sharpen his perceptions of her. “Then what?” he insisted, not kindly.

“I won’t go,” she said, and he barely heard her.

“If I walk out this door today and say I can’t help you, what will you do?” She didn’t answer. “What will you do?” he demanded, letting frustration edge his words.

“I’ll wave goodbye,” she said, and although he recognized she was trying to be flippant, he caught another meaning in. her choice of words, and he wondered exactly what his options were. Was he being manipulated? Would she put a finish to the job if he left her now? It seemed unlikely since she was so determined to get well. But what if he was wrong?

He opened his eyes to see the shadowy street below illuminated by splashes of gold from streetlights and faint reflections from the pink horizon in the east. Dawn was breaking. Trying to focus his thoughts, he rubbed his chin, then clasped his hands.

What should I do? What’s my direction?

He reminded himself that he’d never been good at analyzing things, always ending up going in circles. The bald, fearsome truth was that he found it exciting—the thought of having B.J. close by in his home, under his protection, within reach of his touch. He hoped that it was his heart and mind speaking and not some other part of his anatomy.

He thought about Mrs. Billings having been a registered nurse most of her life, and he thought about the medical aids still in the house from his wife’s illness—the tub rails, the upstairs hall rails and the wheelchair ramp stored in the barn that served as a garage. They were all there, the pieces that fitted as if meant to be.

When he turned to look at B.J., she was lying still. Finally asleep, he thought. He left her then and found the cafeteria open. He drank some coffee, walked around the neighboring streets, watched the sunrise and finally visited the chapel.

The halls were alive with the usual daytime sights and sounds when he returned to the vicinity of B.J.’s room. He wanted to talk to her physician, Dr. Wahler, who was not available.

The nurse he had met before was at the station, however, and as free as ever with her opinions. “She’s being unreasonable,” she said, shaking her head sharply. “It isn’t a retirement home. It’s a convalescent center. Of course there are elderly people, but not entirely, and therapy can be continued. Or private nursing can be arranged for her.”

Hamish didn’t like the way she frowned and pursed her lips, as if she was exasperated with her patient.

“She can probably afford it, three shifts a day, installation of aids in her condo.” Her shrug was like a dismissal, and Hamish left her to call Mrs. B.

“I hope you’ll bring her home,” she suggested.

“There are other places for her to go. I don’t know whether to recommend a convalescent center or private care,” he told her.

“Neither is a good choice,” Mrs. B insisted. “Both are for people who have no one.”

“Well, that fits B. J. Dolliver pretty well. And it’s her choice to be alone,” he reminded her.

“So, who’s the one person who has successfully ignored her no-visitor plea?” she challenged.

When he did not reply, she charged ahead, “Who’s the one person she called when she needed help? Who’s there now trying to help her?”

He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes against the obvious. It was what he wanted. And feared. B.J. in his home day and night, needing him, goading and arousing him while she healed under his family’s care. B.J.—making him feel alive, so alive.

“It’s your decision, Hamish, but if you’re taking votes, you know which way mine goes,” Mrs. B said.

“We’ll see,” he muttered before he broke the connection.

Back in her room, B.J. once again sat on the edge of her bed, waiting for him. He patiently explained the benefits of the options available to her, avoiding her eyes and finally rising abruptly from the chair and walking to the window, turning his back on her again so that she wouldn’t see that his heart wasn’t in what he was advising.

“It’s your decision,” he said at last.

“Go away,” she rasped.

Rudeness. Now that was something he could handle. “So we’re back to that, are we?” he charged, swinging around to face her.

“Just go away. Who needs you?”

He moved to her bedside and saw what a fragile mask she was presenting to him, and something melted behind his ribs and seeped, burning, into his midsection. “You do,” he said finally.

“I never needed you,” she whispered, but her lips quivered, almost imperceptibly.

“I think you do,” he insisted, swallowing hard against the urge to gather her in his arms.

“I can’t go to one of those…places. I can’t. I won’t.”

“You can have private care in the comfort of your condo.”

“Strangers, all of them, changing shifts every eight hours, talking to me as if I’m six years old. Breakfast at eight, lunch at twelve. Oops, can’t fix dinner, that’s for the next shift. Prodding and poking, taking my blood pressure in the middle of the night. What kind of home life would that be? They would hate me. I’m not an agreeable patient. It wouldn’t work.”

He stared hard at the tangle of her hair. Her face was turned away from him. “Okay,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “Okay,” he amended, softening, “you can come home with me.”

She searched his face with despair and anxiety. She wondered if he saw what she felt, if he sensed how many sleepless nights she had tossed, dreading the dawn. Did he see that she was as near to defeat as she had ever been? Certainly she hadn’t tried to hide her wariness, but then she had called him, and that was because she had grown curiously attached to him. God knew, she didn’t want to trust anyone.

She watched him, the handsome, quiet strength in his face, the way he stood before her, unaware of how substantial and real he appeared, the only solid person in her life.

“Yeah, I’ll go home with you,” she said softly.

She stiffened when she saw a flash of regret, then thought suddenly that he was going to find a way to waltz around his decision. But the dreaded words did not come. If he thought he had made a mistake inviting her to his house, he wasn’t going to retract his offer.

Her body still tingled with the heady experience of being swept up in his arms when he’d charged in like an avenging angel at four o’clock in the morning. Now, she longed to be close to him, to feel the soothing power of his tenderness.

“There will be conditions,” he told her, his voice low, but not soft. This was a time for firmness and resolution, it seemed, a time for promises to be made.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” she conceded softly before he realized what she had said. He would never know the damage to her precious pride, she realized.

“You will give me your word,” he said, “your solemn and sacred word that you will be courteous and sensitive with my children and Mrs. Billings. And that you will not insult, or in any way offend, a single member of my congregation.” She looked at him in mute misery, trying to hang on to the self-sufficiency that had deserted her. “I promise to take good care of you,” he added, but his voice was little more than a whisper. “I will do the best I can.”

She felt the trembling in her chin before she felt the hated tears spring into her eyes, then she dropped her head and felt her body convulse in sobs. It was her surrender although she wasn’t sure exactly what it was she was surrendering to. Tenderness? Trusting herself to the care of another? The loss of her independence? Was she going to find his care an alternate imprisonment, second only to three shifts of paid professionals in her own condo?

He came to her and held her against him, stroking her hair as she wept into his shirt, and she succumbed to his reassurance. For the first time in her life, she felt the full weight of her body and spirit being shared by another.

“You’ll be free to come and go as you please. We’ll make sure you can continue your therapy. We’ll help you get well. It won’t be the best of accommodations, but at least you won’t have to worry about steps. You can help out around the house if you want to, whatever you can manage from your wheelchair. And you don’t have to be nice to me. You can be as insulting and rude as you like with me.”

She pounded her good fist against his chest. “Damn you,” she cried between sobs. “You’re the damnedest man I ever met.”

“We won’t make you go to church, either,” he added as she pulled away from him and her sobs began to lessen. “And you don’t have to pray if you don’t want to,” he said. She wanted to scoff at that. She knew he wouldn’t be able to live up to that promise.

She took one last weak swing at his arm. “You are the most infuriating human being. I can’t wait for the day when I can walk away from your house and tell you where to stick it.” Her words came from habit and confusion, and a kind of familiar shame because she was being despicably weak.

He laughed and ruffled her tangled hair. “Then you’ve given me your word? And we’re checking you out of here?”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she replied with renewed hope. “We have to stop and rent a wheelchair first. The crutches are mine. And I don’t have any clothes to wear. They cut me out of the ones I was wearing when I was brought in.”

“Like taking a new baby home,” he teased.

She didn’t like his reference, but she ignored it. She wanted to get far away from the hospital as fast as possible. “The key to my condo is in my purse. Maybe you could pick up a few things for me? It isn’t far.”

“I can handle that,” he said laughing. She thought she should be angry with him, but he was so damnably endearing. Most likely he would get all the wrong things, but she simply gave him the key.

Hamish Chandler had confounded, entertained, infuriated and motivated her from the moment she first opened her eyes and found him studying her face. She had fought him every minute, every inch of the way, over the past few weeks because it was her nature to fight for her independence and her achievements and any threat to them. And at the same time, she had found herself baffled that she could not imagine getting on with her life without his being a part of it.

The man was an enigma, and she wondered why she was so oddly attracted to him. Probably, she thought, because the car accident had addled her brain as well as damaged her body. And now she was going to his house because she had nowhere else to go.

She had seemed to come alive once the decision was made, although there seemed little of the feisty scrapper left in her, Hamish thought, as he drove to her condo.

His call to Mrs. B had been happily received. Things at home were even now being prepared for their new houseguest. He wondered if it was possible to prepare his family for B. J. Dolliver’s interesting personality and how long she would be able to abide by the conditions he had set down.

When he arrived at his destination, he let himself into B.J.’s condo and was fascinated by what he found. Photographs had been enlarged and framed in shiny chrome to decorate her walls. Awards were propped haphazardly on her dresser; clippings were in messy piles in the dining room and in her bedroom. He looked through some of them, then placed them carefully in a suitcase. Maybe it would give B.J. something to do, sorting them, reminding herself how good she was and what she would one day go back to.

The condo was an expensive place, and her furniture was exotic and eclectic, obviously collected from around the world. He took two large framed photos off the bedroom wall, wrapped them in a coverlet from her bed and carried them to his car trunk. He would hang them in his house so that she would feel more at home.

In the bedroom, he went through her dresser drawers and closet, trying to remember the kinds of things a woman needed and liked. He eventually filled two suitcases and then a grocery bag with shoes.

It dawned on him as he was packing that she was not going to be impressed with his house, not when she was accustomed to the luxury she had surrounded herself with. Maybe her long stay in the hospital would have dulled her expensive tastes, he thought. All her possessions looked costly, fashionable contemporary pieces mixed with beautiful antiques and exotic-looking imports. And there was the hot tub in the screened deck off her bedroom.

No, she wasn’t going to be very happy with his home.

On the way back, he stopped to pick up the electrically powered wheelchair that had been reserved for her by Dr. Wahler. When he finally got to the hospital, he carried in the overnight bag so B.J. could get dressed. He didn’t expect her to remove each item while he stood there, but that was exactly what she did, flinging bra, panties, blouse, skirt, comb and brush, sandals, deodorant and makeup down on the bed. “Well, I see you were in the right place at least,” she said wryly. “But I don’t usually wear lacy underwear when there isn’t anyone to impress.”

“I thought Mrs. Billings might have to help you undress,” he retorted. He didn’t want to hear that she had lacy underwear to impress a man. He didn’t want to think of her with another man. He tried to concentrate on how welcome it was to hear her displaying a little of her old abrasive spirit.

“By the way,” he added, “I had intended for you to sleep on the daybed in my office, but that simply won’t work. You’ll take over my bedroom, and I’ll stay in the office. I hope you won’t mind.”

“But it’s your bedroom. Why should I mind?”

“My bedroom is upstairs.”

“But I can’t…how will I—”

“I’ll have to carry you up and down,” he said, and then he looked away as curious sensations gripped him. He didn’t want to feel the heat that was coursing through him. He didn’t want to acknowledge how pleasant it had been to hold her against him and that what he was feeling for her was more than compassion.

Chapter Three

When B.J. saw his car, she knew there was going to be a lot of adjusting on her part. It reminded her of an old weathered hull, clean, big as sin, dull tan marred by rust corrosion along the bottom of the doors and fenders. Inside, it was spotless and worn, and when she’ looked around, thinking she deserved a medal for holding her tongue, he grinned at her and said, “It came with the rectory. You’ll like it. Smooth ride. Like sitting on a cloud.”

It was a smooth ride, and she could barely hear the engine running once he managed to get it started.

She hadn’t thought to ask where Kolstad was, hadn’t really cared. It was simply the place where Hamish lived and worked. In truth, he didn’t seem like a pastor at all. Not that she had had much contact with clergy in her years of living with a father who worshiped athletic prowess above all, and thought spirituality referred to poltergeists.

Hamish was a gorgeous man to look at, and she would never in all her life forget the magnificent charge she’d felt when he held her in his arms. Of course, she couldn’t tell him how his gentle ways affected her, because they touched something so deep in her she ached with it. No man in her life had ever made her feel so threatened, or so feminine. She had missed him between visits, and hated admitting that she did. Life in the hospital had taken on a chill when he wasn’t around. She’d felt adrift, missing his laughter and his confidence and the infuriating way he had of fielding her insults as if she were an amusing child punching at shadows.

Kolstad was only a half hour from downtown and the hospital, a straight shot down a country highway from the freeway. First she saw the cornfields, then the suburban housing developments and finally the small old town blooming within the ever-growing suburbia. On the east edge of the town, they pulled into the driveway of an old, squat, prairie-style farmhouse surrounded by a chain-link fence, precisely cut lawn and acres of hay field all around it.

Behind the house were two sheds, one large and apparently also serving as a garage, and the other smaller, converted into a children’s playhouse of some sort. Two little girls ran to meet Hamish, stopping only to struggle with the latch on the chain-link gate and then flying into him as he came around the back of the car.

He hunkered down to hug them both, then stood with one in each arm. He nodded toward her, and something caught in her chest at how tenderly he held his children and how much they adored him.

When he set them down, he pulled open the passenger door. “You’ll have to tell them your name,” he said. “I never did ask.”

She frowned at the lie, then looked at them. “B.J.,” she said.

“No, your real name,” he insisted with his beguiling soft laughter.

“It’s just B.J.,” she repeated.

“Belinda Jean? Begonia Jasmine? C’mon, let’s have it.”

“Brenda Jane,” she said reluctantly. “I hate it.”

“Brenda Jane is a beautiful name,” he countered. He spread a hand on the top of each little girl’s head, the taller one with the dark curly hair and the smaller one with the straight blond strands. “This is Emma, and this is Annie. Say hello to Brenda, girls.”

Emma moved forward, her eyes wide with innocent curiosity. “Hi,” she said. “My daddy said you have crutches.”

Annie hung back, fingers in her mouth, peeking around her father’s khaki trousers. He just stood there like a proud dad and grinned. It was plain to see which of the girls had his personality.

“Stand back,” Hamish said, pulling Emma away from her. “Brenda has to get out and stand up on her own. It’s very hard for her. Remember I told you she was hurt in a car accident?”

The girls stepped back in solemn obedience and clutched at his trousers, Emma at a pocket, Annie on a seam. B.J. didn’t particularly like having an audience to watch her awkward efforts, but nobody laughed. When she was perched on the edge of the seat with both feet on the ground, Emma stepped forward with her hand extended. “Can I help?”

B.J. looked at the innocent eagerness in the chocolate brown eyes, and smiled. “Sure.” She took the little girl’s hand. “Pull,” she said. Emma pulled and B.J. pushed until she was standing.

“Okay,” Hamish said, then lifted her and cradled her in his arms. “I’ll take you to see Mrs. Billings.”

The girls ran ahead, hopping and skipping and turning in circles. They opened the gate and then the back door. Hamish finally set her down on a wood chair at a wood table covered with oil cloth in an old-fashioned run-down kitchen. She hadn’t seen anything like it since she was a child visiting an ancient relative who still lived “in the country.” The only modern convenience she saw was a toaster.

Mrs. Billings was in her fifties now. Her hair was graying, and she wore polyester pants and a paisley overblouse that failed to hide her barrel waist. She smiled and jiggled as she spread her arms wide and gave B.J. a long, gentle hug. “Lemonade?” she offered. “Coffee?”

Not much had changed, B.J. thought. Here again was Deborah’s beloved aunt with her round, beaming face and warm, laughing eyes she remembered so well.

“We’re gonna get kittens,” Emma said. “Rainbow has ‘em in her tummy.”

B.J. smiled at Emma. “Are you going to have lemonade?”

“I don’t like lemonade. It’s too sour. Do you like kittens?”

“I don’t know. I never had one.”

The child’s brown eyes widened to saucers and her mouth dropped open. “You never had a kitten!” Her response connoted a ghastly deprivation—worse, it seemed, than her accident.

“What’s so bad about that?” B.J. challenged. “I never missed having one.”

But Emma’s astonishment knew no bounds. “Didn’t you ever hold one?”

“No, I don’t think so. Kittens weren’t my thing. Never cared for the little buggers,” she said.

“Never cared for a kitten!” Emma made a face to share her horror with Annie, whose blue eyes reflected concern as she, too, shook her head slowly. They were clearly in deep sympathy with her problem.

As B.J. rolled her eyes, she caught Mrs. Billings’s chuckle and felt for a moment as if she had been dropped into another world. Little girls liked juvenile hard rock and dressing Barbie dolls. Kittens were surely passé. Why weren’t they experimenting with makeup or watching television or stealing coins off the dresser like normal kids did? B.J. wondered. “I’ll have lemonade,” she said to Mrs. Billings.

“It’s really sour,” Emma warned, scrunching up her face.

“So am I. We’ll get along fine,” she said, watching Hamish come through the door with her suitcases.

“These are Brenda’s things,” he announced.

“Damn it, I’m B.J.”

“Don’t swear in front of the children,” he said softly, leaning toward her.

“Sorry. I’m not Brenda. I’ve never been Brenda. It’s the name of some soap opera person my mother liked before I was born,” she muttered.

“It’s a nice name, very feminine. Like you. Sometimes,” he said, and then added, “Brenda Jane.”

She rolled her eyes. “Dear Lord, help me, she sighed without reverence, then she heard his soft laugh.

“Catching on already?” he quipped.

Annie crawled up on a chair, folded her arms on the edge of the table, rested her chin in the middle of them and silently stared at her. Emma flitted around the room chattering about first grade, which she had just started, about riding the school bus like the big kids, about playing Chinese checkers and hating pineapple because it stung her mouth. She showed B.J. her loose tooth and said she didn’t have to change clothes after school today because B.J. was coming to stay and so it was okay to leave her good clothes on.

“My daddy’s going to sleep in his office,” she announced, skipping on one foot, holding the toes of the other one behind her.

“Is that all you do is talk?” B.J. asked. “You never stop talking.”

“Pretty much. Mrs. Billings calls me a chatterbox. Daddy said once I said my first word I never shut up.” Her high-pitched laughter sailed around the room. “That’s silly, ‘cause I don’t talk when I sleep, or in church. Or when I’m supposed to be quiet in school.”

“Why do you talk so much?” B.J. asked,’mesmerized by this miniature version of the reverend, with all his joy and open laughter bubbling out of her like soapsuds.

“There’s lots to say,” she said, hopping in a circle. “I bet you can’t do this.”

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