Dawn Temple - Moonlight and Mistletoe

Kyle nearly lost his train of thought when Shayna stumbled out of the kitchen, her skin so pale that her veins stood out in morbid relief. He wanted to fling the phone against the wall and pull her back into his arms. But Patty was bitching in his ear, threatening to screw Walker by going straight to the media.

This potential danger to his client-to his career-narrowed Kyle’s focus back onto the job at hand. “Patty, if you cross Dr. Walker, you won’t get one red cent.”

She continued to rant and rave for nearly half an hour. He should have hung up long before now, but knowing Patty it would have pissed her off so badly that she’d have acted immediately-the resulting actions harming everyone involved.

Not wanting to see Shayna suffer any more for her mother’s mistakes, he talked until both his voice and his vocabulary were exhausted. Eventually she agreed to cool her heels.

The instant he disconnected the call, he raced upstairs to check on Shayna. He never should have touched her. Where the hell was his professionalism? His common sense?

The wine and the candles had gone to his head. Not that he’d been drunk. Far from it. But the atmosphere had lulled him into forgetting who they were, why he was here. And now he’d hurt her. Damn. She didn’t deserve to be used. Not by Walker or Patty and most certainly not by him.

Shayna represented the complete opposite of what he aspired to. Ironic that she was the key to his future success. Of course, if he didn’t get a handle on this situation, he would lose everything he’d worked for.

He knocked gently on her bedroom door. “Shayna, are you okay?” The only sound was Brinks sniffing through the crack at the bottom of the door.

“Shayna?”

“Go away.”

“Not until I know you’re okay. What did she say to you?”

“Nothing I shouldn’t have been able to figure out on my own.”

What the hell did that mean? “Shayna, please let me in. We need to talk.”

“I think we’ve said more than enough.”

He didn’t like the defeat in her voice. Through all the crap that had been thrown at this woman, he’d never once heard her sound weak.

“Go away, Kyle.” The light filtering under her door went dark. He stood there several more minutes, encouraging her to speak to him, but eventually he had to concede.

He trudged back downstairs and started cleaning the kitchen.

Both Patty and Shayna insisted Walker had known about the child from the beginning. If that were true, a million dollars was paltry compensation for the abuse of abandoning a child to the hell of life with a witch like Patty Hoyt. Imagine the emotional scars of spending years trapped under that woman’s vindictive thumb.

As bad as his own childhood had been, at least the true hell hadn’t started until he was ten years old. By the time heroin took control of his mother’s life, he’d been big enough to seek shelter when the storms brewed. Had Shayna ever had any protection from Patty?

His eyes were drawn to the portrait over the fireplace. James Miller had been her protection. He’d rescued her from Patty’s world, and even though the man had made mistakes along the way-mistakes the world was likely to persecute him for-Kyle knew Miller’s actions had been heroic.

And now Kyle had crashed her life, unleashing all that old pain. As a child, Shayna had been resilient enough to bounce back. As an adult, would she be strong enough to recover a second time?

First thing Friday morning, Shayna picked her way down the road, sticking to the shoulder, doing her best to avoid the slushy brown patches of ice and dirt. The ground looked as if someone had spilled a giant Coke Icee over the mountain.

Good thing her boots were designed to muck through all sorts of nature’s nastiness. It took her thirty minutes to reach Kyle’s car. It was nose down in a ditch about two miles from the cabin. The front tires were buried in mud, the hood was crunched and from the way the tires listed in, she figured the front axle was significantly bent.

Stepping carefully into the ditch, she pried open the back driver’s-side door and peeked inside, finding nothing except the keys still dangling from the ignition. Bracing a knee on the backseat, she reached in and snagged them. Not that anyone could steal the car. It wasn’t going anywhere without a wrecker.

So much for sending him on his way and never hearing from him again. She had no doubt he’d turn rescuing his rental into an excuse to knock on her door and continue pushing Walker’s outlandish proposal.

Odd thing was, after last night’s debacle, she’d gladly spend hours talking about that ridiculous offer. Even that would be better than discussing how close she’d come to falling for his kiss-now-sign-later game.

After Kyle had finally left her alone last night, she’d tossed and turned until the early-morning hours, trying to come up with a game plan to get rid of him. When she’d finally dragged her groggy body out of bed, she’d bundled up and headed out here to check the bridge, hoping and praying with each step that at the lower elevation, the ice wouldn’t be such a nuisance.

No such luck.

Thanks to the steam coming off the water and the freezing wind blowing across the bridge, the road surface wore a thick coat of black ice. The half-mile span was too wide to attempt walking across, except under the most dire of emergencies. And while she wanted Kyle Anderson gone, she didn’t want it badly enough to see anyone risk life or limb.

She turned and whistled as Brinks came charging out of the woods, barking like crazy. The past couple of months had been unusually warm and dry, so the dog was loving this cold weather.

Thinking about the lack of recent rainfall sparked another idea in Shayna’s head.

It might be possible to cross the gulch on foot, down by Hunter’s Pass. Not an easy trek, but if it meant getting Kyle out of her home, she was game.

She’d need a volunteer to pick him up on the other side, someone she trusted. One person came to mind immediately: Danny Robertson. A widower with two young girls, he was one of the steadiest men she’d ever met.

Of course, he was probably working today. Even in Land’s Cross, the day after Thanksgiving was a retail tradition, and as the owner of the biggest feed and seed store in the county, Danny would be hard at it all day. It would be a huge imposition, but at this point, desperation demanded she ask.

The hike back to the cabin took only twenty minutes. Now that she had a plan, she couldn’t wait to put it into action. Brinks trotted along beside her, breaking away every now and again to chase a squirrel. By the time they escorted Kyle to Hunter’s Pass and returned to the cabin, both she and the dog should sleep like rocks.

Finally. Some good news. If she didn’t catch up on her rest before tomorrow night’s pageant, she’d be one cranky Ms. Noel.

When she reached the cabin, she noticed the smoke curling out of the chimney and the light shining in the kitchen. The scene stopped her in her tracks. It had been a long time since she’d returned to anything other than an empty home.

She patted her fingers over her heart, missing her daddy more keenly than she had in quite a while. As if sensing her sadness, Brinks dashed over and butted his head against her hip.

“Thanks for the support, boy.” She ruffled the hair between his ears, then walked around to the backyard.

The hinge on the porch screen squeaked as she let herself in, pausing to kick out of her nasty rubber boots before entering the mudroom. She hung her overcoat on the hook without breaking stride and continued into the kitchen-where she came face-to-face with Kyle, brandishing the fireplace poker like a sword.