One Season And Dynasties Collection

He opened his mouth and then shut it again. When he saw the curious look on her face, he told her, “Well, I’m not going to argue with you, because I’m beginning to get the feeling that no one stands a chance of winning an argument with you.”

“Sure they do,” she declared, although, offhand, she couldn’t think of a single example to cite.

“Uh-huh.” His response as he started to go reeked of skepticism.

“Oh, and Colin?” Miranda called after him, raising her voice.

Colin was about to round the hood to get into his side of the vehicle, but stopped. “Yes?”

“Promise you won’t forget and leave the tree in the car. It’s a hardy little thing, but if you leave it in the car indefinitely, it’ll wilt and lose all its needles.”

Indulging her, he promised, “I won’t forget.”

“Oh, and drive carefully,” she called after him.

Colin paused again. He should feel annoyed or insulted that, given the nature of his work, she still felt the need to say something like that to him. And yet this whole scene just made him smile. He had no idea why.

Waiting, he turned around. “Anything else?”

Miranda knew that she was pushing her luck to the absolute limit, but then nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

Taking a breath, she forged ahead. “Well, there’s a Christmas Eve party, if you’d like to come.”

He hadn’t expected her to say that; he’d just assumed she’d have more trivial slogans to send his way. “At the hospital?”

He’d done his part at the hospital and she was now focusing on the other two places where she volunteered her time.

“Well, yes, there, too,” she allowed. “But I was thinking of the shelter.”

She still wasn’t narrowing it down, he realized. “Homeless or animal?”

“Homeless. Although, now that I think about it, we are having a party at the animal shelter, too,” she told him. “It’s an adoption party. There’s one every month, but there’s an extra push to find the animals a home just before Christmas.”

“Of course there is.” Listening to her, he shook his head. It was a wonder the woman didn’t just fall over and collapse. “When do you have time for you?” he asked.

“All of this is for me,” she responded. Seeing the doubtful look on his face, she insisted, “I derive pleasure out of seeing the animals find new homes and the kids getting better and going back to their families. And the women at the shelter taking stock of their situation and finding a way to create new lives for themselves and their children.”

Saints have less to do, he thought. Colin shook his head again, but the corners of his mouth had curved ever so slightly.

“All of this is for you, huh?” He watched as she nodded with feeling. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone like you before, Miranda Steele,” he told her in all sincerity.

“Is that a good thing?” she asked.

“I’m thinking on it,” he answered, remaining deliberately vague.

She couldn’t read his expression, and her curiosity was getting the better of her even though she knew it shouldn’t. “Let me know what you come up with.”

“I have a feeling you’ll be the first to know.”

Colin suddenly found himself fighting the urge to pull her into his arms. If he didn’t leave now, he might wind up doing something stupid, and as unique as this woman was, he didn’t need any complications in his life.

He’d already gotten too involved with her as it was.

He needed distance, not closeness, Colin insisted silently.

So why wasn’t he getting into his car and leaving? Why was he turning around and crossing back toward the woman?

Miranda was standing at the curb, ready to wave at him as he pulled away.

When instead of leaving, he approached, she looked at him uncertainly, slightly confused even while she felt her heart climbing up into her throat.

Her breath was backing up in her chest. “Did you forget something?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “My sanity.”

Her confusion mounted. “I don’t know what that means.”

Colin didn’t respond. At least not verbally. Instead, he took her into his arms just the way he’d told himself not to, and kissed her the way he knew he shouldn’t.

The way every fiber of his being felt that he just had to.

Confusion ran rampant all through Miranda. One moment she was standing at the curb, getting ready to watch Colin drive down the street and disappear; the next moment she found herself smack in the middle of an old-fashioned twister, being sucked up into its very core and whirling around so hard she couldn’t breathe. She certainly couldn’t think or get her bearings.

But then, bearings were highly overrated, she decided.

Standing up on her toes, Miranda dug her fingertips into his shoulders in a desperate attempt to anchor herself to something solid before she was swept so completely away she would never be able to find her way back again.

This wasn’t a kiss. She’d been kissed before, kissed by faceless, unremarkable men who faded from her memory before they had a chance to even walk out the door.

But this—this was an experience. A mind-blowing, incredible experience that she would remember to her dying day even if she lived to be a hundred and ten.

Colin fought the urge to deepen this kiss and take it to its natural conclusion. Fought the urge to sweep her up into his arms and carry her back inside her house so that he could make love with her. Make love with her until they were both too exhausted to even breathe.

He came within a hair’s breadth of giving in to that urge, that desire.

And then a last sliver of sanity rose up, stopping him.

He couldn’t do this, he silently insisted, couldn’t make love with her. Because if he did, he would be willfully bringing his darkness into her world.

She was a bright, shining ray of light, bent on bringing happiness to everyone and everything. If he took this to its natural conclusion, he would be guilty of if not extinguishing that light, then at the very least dimming it considerably.

He couldn’t be responsible for that, couldn’t do that to her and all the other lives that Miranda would wind up touching.

Although every fiber of his being fought it, trying to keep him from following through, he separated himself from Miranda. He removed her arms, which she’d wound around his neck, and pushed them down against her sides, held them there for a long moment—until he could collect himself.

“I’ve got to go,” he told her hoarsely.

Then, without another word, Colin got into his car and turned on the ignition. He pulled away from the curb without a single backward glance.

Then, unable to help himself, he looked in the rearview mirror.

Miranda was still standing there at the curb where he had left her.

A pang of regret seized his very being.

Colin struggled with the impulse to turn the car around and head back to her. Instead, he pushed down hard on the accelerator, determined to put more and more distance between them.

“Count yourself lucky,” he said, addressing the figure that was growing progressively smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror. “You don’t need someone like me in your life.”

He had a very strong feeling that if he had given in to himself tonight, if he had weakened and made love to Miranda, he wouldn’t have been able to walk away from her, short of being sandblasted away.

That would be a very bad thing.

For her.

Miranda had a sinking feeling as she watched Colin drive off that he could very well be gone from her life for good.

There’d been something about the set of his shoulders, about the foreboding expression on his face as he had removed her arms from around his neck and stepped away, that made her think of an iron gate coming down, separating the two of them.

Cutting her off from him.

But even so, she kept watching for him every time she looked up, every time her attention was drawn to something—a noise, a flash of light out of the corner of her eye.

Every time she raised her eyes, she was looking for Colin.

And every time she did, he wasn’t there.

He wasn’t leaning in the doorway of any of the hospital rooms belonging to the small patients she attended, wasn’t standing across the street from the animal shelter, waiting for her to come out. He wasn’t walking into the women’s shelter, wasn’t ringing her doorbell and standing on the front step until she opened the door.

He wasn’t anywhere in her life—except in her mind, and there he had set up housekeeping, big-time.

If she was going to function properly, she was either going to have to purge him from her mind and forget all about him, or else beard the lion in his den, Miranda thought in a moment of madness.

Get hold of yourself, she silently lectured.

She was far too busy for this, far too busy to mentally dwell on a man who—a man who...

In the middle of her rounds, Miranda abruptly came to a dead stop. She’d initially been drawn to the tall, dark, silent police officer not because he could kiss like nobody’s business and set her soul on fire. She’d been drawn to him because of the sadness she saw in his eyes. She remembered thinking that Colin needed someone to brighten his world, to help him find hope and hang on to it.

He needed her, and somehow, she had lost sight of that.

But not anymore, she vowed. She was back on track and determined to strip that sadness, that darkness out of him until Officer Colin Kirby found a reason to smile of his own accord.

He could keep those lips to himself. That wasn’t what was important here. What she wanted was his happiness.

And she was determined to help him find it if it was the last thing she did.

Chapter Fifteen

Despite his resolve, he couldn’t seem to get Miranda out of his head. Not that day, nor the next. The harder he tried, the less success he had. His thoughts turned to the bubbly nurse over a dozen times a day. More, if he was being honest with himself.

For the first time in his adult life, Colin’s laser-like focus completely failed him.

He couldn’t get himself to concentrate exclusively on his work. Images of Miranda’s face kept materializing in his mind’s eye at the worst possible times, impeding him at every turn.

Colin had never been one to throw in the towel. He struggled to regain control over himself and his thoughts. He’d triumphed over the racking pain of losing his parents—especially his mother, who he’d been so close to—and managed to keep going during his tour overseas when more than half his platoon had been wiped out all around him.

And though they hadn’t been close, guilt had skewered him when he’d lost his partner, Andrew Owens, while on the job.

But he’d managed to rise above all that, erasing it from his mind and functioning as if his insides hadn’t been smashed into a thousand pieces. He did it to survive, to continue putting one foot in front of the other and moving on the path he found himself on.

But this—this was completely different. For some mysterious reason, he’d lost his ability to isolate himself, to strip all distracting thoughts from his mind.

He’d lost the ability to continue, and he knew he had to resolve this if he had any hopes of functioning and moving on with his life.

He just had to figure out how.

How had this happened? It felt as if Thanksgiving had been only yesterday, then somehow she’d blinked, and now Christmas was a week away and Miranda had more than enough to keep not just herself but half a dozen people busy.

To paraphrase Dickens, it was both the best time of the year and the worst time of the year, mainly because of all the things that were associated with the season. The shelters as well as the hospital needed her more than ever, and there was enough for her to do thirty-six hours a day if she could somehow find a way to create that many hours out of thin air.

But even with everything she had to handle, she couldn’t stop thinking about Colin. Worrying about Colin. It was interfering not just with her ability to devote herself to her work as a nurse, but also as a volunteer—in both areas that used her services.

She needed to talk to Colin, she decided, and she needed to do it face-to-face, not over the phone. Any other means would be far too impersonal.

Because of the hectic pace this time of year generated, taking time off from the hospital was not an option. The only thing she could do was try to shave a little time from her volunteer work. The pace there was hectic, as well, and there were a great many demands on her time whenever she had any to spare. But she had to do this. Because not talking to Colin was unthinkable.

The problem was, since she still didn’t know where the man lived, the only place she could hope to find him was along the route he patrolled or at the precinct before he went off duty.

However, both conflicted with her shift at the hospital.

Still, maybe if she played the odds and really hurried—and hopefully he was getting off late—she might be able to catch Colin before he left work for the day.

Miranda felt stressed because even if she was lucky enough to catch him, she’d have to talk fast because the women’s shelter’s Christmas party, the one she’d helped organize for the children, was scheduled to begin the minute she walked through the door.

She was exhausted already.

As Miranda dashed to her car, all set to take off for the precinct, her cell phone rang.

Please let it be a wrong number, she prayed as she took it out of her purse and then quickly put in her password.

The caller ID that came up belonged to the homeless shelter. Specifically, to Amelia.

Maybe the director was just checking in with her, Miranda thought, mentally crossing her fingers as she answered.

“Hi, Amelia.” She used her free hand to buckle her seat belt. “What’s up?”

“We’ve got an emergency,” the woman said, without even bothering to return the greeting. “I just hung up with Santa Claus. He called to say he’s stuck in traffic in LA and he’s not going to be able to get here in time.”

Miranda knew the director was referring to the man she had hired to play Santa for the kids at the shelter. Thinking of the children’s disappointment, she felt her heart sink.

The words came out before she could stop them. “But the kids are expecting to see Santa Claus.”

“I know. I know,” the director answered. “The toys are here, but they’re going to feel really let down that Santa Claus couldn’t make it to hand them out.”

Her mind going in all directions, Miranda searched for a solution. And then she thought of something. “Do you still have that old Santa suit from last year?”

“I think so,” Amelia answered. “The last time I saw it, it was in the storage room, shoved behind some cans of paint. Why?”

“Find it,” she told her. “I’ll be at the shelter as soon as I can get there,” Miranda promised, terminating the call.

So much for waylaying Colin today, she thought, dropping her phone into her purse.

“Looks like you’ve gotten a reprieve, Officer Kirby,” Miranda murmured under her breath, starting up her vehicle and then peeling out of the hospital’s parking lot.

She was going to need padding. Lots and lots of padding if she had a prayer of pulling this off. She’d have to have Amelia round up a whole bunch of pillows.

Miranda was still trying to figure out exactly what she would do as she pulled into the women’s shelter’s parking lot. If she hadn’t been so lost in thought, she would have seen him.

As it was, she didn’t.

Not until after she’d jumped out of her car and run smack-dab into him, so hard she all but fell backward. Only Colin grabbing her by the arm kept her from meeting the concrete skull-first.

Stunned, for a split second Miranda thought she was hallucinating—until her brain assured her that she really wasn’t conjuring Colin up.

He felt much too real for that.

“Colin?” she cried, shaken. “What are you doing here?” Miranda still wasn’t a hundred percent sure that she wasn’t just imagining him, putting his face on another man’s body.

The police officer released her slowly, watching her intently to make sure she was all right.

“I guess I’m not as noble as I thought,” he answered with a self-depreciating shrug.

Maybe she had hit her head, Miranda thought, blinking. She didn’t understand what he was telling her. “Why?”

“Because,” he confessed, “I was going to stay away from you.”

Miranda continued staring at him. He still wasn’t making any sense to her.

“Why is staying away ‘noble’?” she asked.

He might have known she’d want an explanation. This wasn’t easy for him to say. “Because I would only bring you down, and you don’t need that.”

Miranda thought of the kids in the shelter. She was still in a hurry, but the emergency would have to wait, at least for a couple minutes. This needed to be cleared up, and it needed to be cleared up now.

“First of all,” she told him, “I do have free will and a mind of my own. I’m not just some ink blotter that indiscriminately absorbs whatever happens to be spilled on it—”

“I’m not saying that you’re an ink blotter!” Colin protested.

“I’m not finished,” she informed him crisply. “And second of all, I can make up my own mind whom I want or don’t want in my life. That’s only up to you if you don’t want to be in my life because you can’t abide being around me.”

Colin stared at her in astonishment. How could she even think that, much less say it?

“You know that’s not the case.” Angry at how the situation was devolving, he had to rein himself in to keep from shouting the words at Miranda.

“Well, then there’s no problem, is there?” she concluded. Turning on her heel, she started to walk toward the building.

Before he could think better of it, Colin caught her by the arm to keep her from leaving. “Oh, there’s a problem, all right.”

Her desire to resolve this warred with her sense of responsibility. She was going to be cutting it very close, Miranda thought. For all she knew, Amelia might not have located the Santa suit yet.

“Walk with me,” she requested. When Colin fell into step beside her, she asked him to elaborate on what he’d just said. “Do you want to tell me just what is the problem?”

Colin tried to smother his frustration. He felt as if he was talking to a moving target, but then, that was part and parcel of who this unique creature was.

He thought of waving away her question, or just telling her flatly, “no.” But he had started this and had to be man enough to own up to it.

Colin forced himself to say, “I can’t get you out of my head.”

Miranda’s eyes were shining. She spared him a smile as they came up to the shelter’s double doors. “Still not seeing the problem.”

“But you will,” Colin predicted.

She highly doubted that. “Then we’ll put a pin in this now and talk about it later. Right now, I have an emergency to deal with,” she told him as she reached for the door’s brass handle.

So she wasn’t just running from him, Colin thought. Taking charge, he nudged her hand away and opened the door for her. “What sort of an emergency?”

She glanced at her watch. “The Christmas party starts in less than half an hour and Santa Claus is still in LA, stuck in traffic.”

Okay, this was convoluted, even for her. “You want to run that by me again? And this time, try to speak slower than the speed of light.”

Miranda took a breath. “Amelia hired this professional Santa Claus for the party, and now he can’t get here in time because he’s stuck in traffic. These kids have been disappointed an awful lot in their lives. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it happen again if I can do something about it.”

“Just what is it you have in mind?”

“Amelia said there’s an old Santa suit here at the shelter. If we can find it, I’m going to play Santa Claus.”

Colin looked at her for a long moment. And then he laughed. Hard. It occurred to Miranda that she had never heard him laugh out loud like that before, but now wasn’t the time she wanted to hear it. “You got a better idea?”

It took him a second to collect himself and stop laughing. “Sorry, Miranda, I don’t mean to laugh at you, but you just don’t look like anyone’s idea of Santa Claus.” He paused again, thinking. And then he nodded. “And yes, I’ve got a better idea.”

She thought she knew what he was going to say and she shook her head, shooting down his idea.

“Just handing out the gifts to the kids isn’t going to be enough. These children want Santa Claus giving them those gifts. They want to be normal and see Santa Claus, like every other kid this time of year. They’ve got a right to that,” she insisted passionately.

Just seeing her like this nearly undid Colin. “That wasn’t the idea I had,” he told her. “Let’s go see if we can find that Santa suit. I’ve got a better chance of pulling this off than you do.”

It didn’t happen very often, but Miranda found herself practically speechless. When she did recover, she cried, in astonishment, “Really?”

Colin nodded. “Really.”

Miranda continued staring at him, waiting for some sort of a punch line. When none came, she had to ask, “You’re going to willingly play Santa Claus without having me twist your arm?”

He really did like surprising her.

“Without bending any of my body parts,” he assured her. “Now are we going to go on standing here talking about it or are you going to take me to wherever you think that Santa suit is stashed so we can get this show on the road?”

Her response to his question sounded incredibly like a squeal. The next second, Miranda had grabbed his hand and was dragging him through the shelter’s main room.

Before they had crossed it, Amelia approached them.

“Did you find it?” Miranda asked breathlessly. “The Santa suit?”

“It’s in my office.” The director seemed a little surprised by the man Miranda had in tow. “Officer Kirby, it’s so nice to see you again. Are you going to be joining the party?”

Before he could answer, Miranda cried, “Definitely!”

Turning on her short, stacked heel, Amelia followed Miranda and the policeman to her office.

Still somewhat bewildered, the woman sounded uncertain as she asked Colin, “You’re not going to be playing Santa Claus for the children, are you, Officer Kirby?”

Glancing her way, Miranda answered the question for him. “It’s a real Christmas miracle, isn’t it?”

The dignified director was smiling so hard she was practically beaming. “It most certainly is. The suit’s going to be a little big on you,” she warned Colin. “So I found some pillows.” She gestured to some stacked on the battered, secondhand easy chair that stood in the corner of her small office.

Colin briefly glanced at them. “They’ll work,” he told her.

Looking pleased, Amelia said, “Well, I’ll give you some privacy...” And she eased herself out of her office.

“And I’ll go get the sack of toys ready so you can hand them out,” Miranda volunteered. “I’ll meet you back here in Amelia’s office. If you finish dressing before I return, wait for me. You don’t want to go into the main hall empty-handed.”

No matter how much Miranda had built up the importance of Santa Claus making an appearance, he knew that the toys were the main attraction. “Not a chance,” he assured her.

But as he turned to look at her, he found that he was talking to himself. Miranda had already hurried off.