One Christmas Knight Read online

  One Christmas Knight

  Kathleen Creighton

  Away in a – truck stop?

  FA LA LA LA – LABOR!

  Okay, maybe driving solo cross-country in her eighth month wasn't the most brilliant idea Mirabella Waskowitz had ever had. And maybe she should have turned back when she heard the blizzard warnings. But the feisty mom-to-be certainly didn't need advice from that strapping Southern trucker who kept crossing her path…

  UNTIL HER WATER BROKE.

  Here it was Christmas Eve, and single dad Jimmy Joe Starr wanted only to be home with his young son. Instead, he was snowbound with a beautiful "virgin" who was about to give birth. Jimmy Joe had long ago stopped believing in miracles. But Mirabella and her baby were about to change that…

  Kathleen Creighton

  One Christmas Knight

  The first book in the Sisters Waskowitz series, 1997

  Dear Reader,

  Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays of all sorts and welcome to another fabulous month’s worth of books here at Intimate Moments. And here’s a wonderful holiday gift for you: Captive Star, the newest book from bestselling, award-winning and just plain incredibly talented author Nora Roberts. The next of THE STARS OF MITHRA miniseries, this book has Nora’s signature sizzle and spark, all wrapped up in a compellingly suspenseful plot about a couple on the run-handcuffed together!

  We’ve got another miniseries “jewel” for you, too: The Taming of Reid Donovan, the latest in Marilyn Pappano’s SOUTHERN KNIGHTS series. There’s a twist in this one that I think will really catch you by surprise. Susan Sizemore debuts at Silhouette with Stranger by Her Side, a book as hot and steamy as its setting.

  And then there are our Christmas books, three tantalizing tales of holiday romance. One Christmas Knight, by Kathleen Creighton, features one of the most memorable casts of characters I’ve ever met Take one gentlemanly Southern trucker, one about-to-deliver single mom, the biggest snowstorm in a generation, put them together and what do you get? How about a book you won’t be able to put down? Rebecca Daniels is back with Yuletide Bride, a secret child story line with a Christmas motif. And finally, welcome brand-new author Rina Naiman, whose A Family for Christmas is a warm and wonderful holiday debut.

  Enjoy-and the very happiest of holidays to you and yours.

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  For America’s long-haul truckers, with thanks.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As anyone who has traveled 1-40 through the Texas Panhandle knows, the towns of Adrian and Vega do exist, approximately where I have placed them. So does Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Beyond that, any businesses, structures or individuals described in this story are pure fiction.

  During Thanksgiving week in 1992, a blizzard swept down out of the Arctic and deep into Texas, creating driving conditions on Interstate 40 exactly as I have described them. Since that time, it is my understanding that the state of Texas has made tremendous improvements in its preparedness for and methods of handling such emergencies. I am certain that I join countless long-haul truckers in a heartfelt “‘Preciate it.”

  Chapter 1

  “Lord, I hate these California turnarounds.”

  I-40-Arizona

  Like all well-brought-up Southern boys, Jimmy Joe Starr had been taught to respect both automobiles and good women. So when the lady in the shiny new silver-gray Lexus cut in front of him in the entrance to the Giant truck stop that was clearly marked Trucks Only, he didn’t give her a blast from his airhorn or push his Kenworth’s blue “anteater” nose up on her bumper to teach her a lesson, like some drivers he knew would have done.

  But he did shake his head and smile to himself. Oh, yeah. She was a looker, no doubt about that. Just as sleek and fine and pretty a sight as you would ever want to see. And the woman behind the wheel wasn’t bad, either.

  Jimmy Joe wasn’t generally all that attracted to redheads, but hers was a real nice color, a rich, glowing auburn. And she had a self-confident, bordering-on-arrogant tilt to her head that appealed to him-which was something else that set him apart from most Southern men of his acquaintance. Having been raised by a mama with pure applejack running through her veins, he was pretty well adjusted to uppity women.

  There were a couple of other reasons why Jimmy Joe was inclined to be in an easygoing and forgiving mood. For one thing, that was just pretty much his basic nature. For another, it was the 23rd of December and he’d just dropped off a load of textiles in the garment district of downtown L.A. and picked up a shipment of piece goods destined for an after-holiday sale in Little Rock, after which he was going to be headin’ for Georgia, where a little boy named J.J. was waiting for his daddy to bring Christmas home with him. The Good Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, Jimmy Joe expected to be rolling into his mama’s front yard just in time for turkey and all the trimmings.

  So that was why, when the redhead finally got herself sorted out and the silver Lexus pointed toward the four-wheeler parking lot, he just chuckled to himself and said, “Well, Merry Christmas, darlin’.” She crossed right in front of him with a saucy little flip of her sleek auburn head, and he caught a glimpse of a California license plate.

  “Figures,” he muttered.

  “You will never in a million years guess where I’m calling you from,” Mirabella Waskowitz said to her friend Charly Phelps, in an ambiguous tone somewhere between chagrin and glee.

  “Sounds like a truck stop,” said Charly, much to Mirabella’s disappointment. She loved Charly dearly, but the woman had no respect for a punchline.

  “How did you know?”

  “I can hear the loudspeaker in the background. They just called some driver for something-or-other up to the fuel desk.”

  “Oh,” said Mirabella, who hadn’t been paying attention. In her experience, voices on loudspeakers seldom had anything to say that concerned her.

  “You would not believe this place,” she continued after a moment, her enthusiasm undaunted. “For one thing, it’s huge. Acres and acres of trucks. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s kind of awesome, actually. Oh-and they don’t call them truck stops anymore. They’re called ’travel stops’ now-I guess so they’ll appeal more to the Winnebago set. It’s like a mini-mall in here. They have all sorts of stores, a post office, a couple of fast-food places, and a regular restaurant that actually has a salad bar, can you believe that? And get this-the phones are on the tables! At this very moment I am sitting in a comfy booth, one that actually has enough room to accommodate my stomach, with my decaf and a fairly decent turkey club on whole wheat in front of me.”

  “What?” said Charly drolly, “no sushi?”

  “Mock if you must, but the rest rooms are clean. Oh-and Charly, you’d love the gift shop. What an eclectic mix. They have some lovely signed Acoma Indian pottery sitting right next to key chains made out of honest-to-God rattlesnake heads and license-plate holders that say Honk If You’re Horny. Oh-and my personal favorite-there’s this little bald fat-guy doll, and when you squeeze a bulb he drops his pants and moons you. I think you’re supposed to put him in the back window of your car. I’m thinking of getting one for my Lexus.”

  Charly, who was originally from Alabama, laughed and said, “Get used to it. You know the place you’re heading for is the world capital of tacky.”

  “I thought that was Venice Beach.”

  “No, no, no, darlin’-Florida! Birthplace of the pink plastic lawn flamingo. Need I say more?”

  A gasp cut short Mirabella’s chuckle of appreciation. She added, “Ouch…damn,” and as she leaned abruptly back in the booth, her gaze collided with that of a young man, obviously a trucker, who was sitting in a booth
identical to hers, just catercorner across the dining room. He was on the phone, too, but not talking, and as he listened, for some reason he seemed to be frowning right at Mirabella.

  “What’s the matter?” Charly demanded. “The little tyke giving you problems?”

  Hearing the alarm in her friend’s voice and knowing Charly wasn’t above doing something rash, like putting in a call to the highway patrol, Mirabella hastened to reassure her. And while she was at it, she put a dazzling smile on her face for the benefit of the nosy trucker across the way.

  “Oh, you know,” she said through the smile, “it’s just these darn pressure pains. Seems like they’ve been getting worse the last couple of days.” She lost the smile, though, as she shifted to find a comfortable position for her legs while a lump the size of a small grapefruit was slowly blossoming on the right side of her abdomen. She rested one hand on the lump and rubbed it with a gentle circling motion as she said through held breath and clenched teeth, “Right now it feels like the little rascal’s doing push-ups on the nerves in my groin. I get these shooting pains that go all the way down to my toes. There wasn’t anything about this in the books, I can tell you that.”

  “Bella, you’re crazy to be doing this-you know that, don’t you?”

  “Hey, I’m fine.” The young trucker had finished his phone call and was now drinking coffee and watching her intently through its steam.

  Cute guy, said a voice way in the back of her mind. And then, My God, he’s young.

  It was a purely objective observation; Mirabella considered hrself something of a connoisseur when it came to masculine physical attributes, having recently done some extensive research on that subject. This one was tall, lean, tan and blond-some of her very favorite flavors. In fact, if she could pick-

  She gasped, gulped cold decaf and nearly choked on it.

  “Bella?” said Charly’s voice in her ear. “You okay?”

  “Fine-I’m fine.” Mirabella mopped her bulging front with her napkin. “Spilled my coffee, dammit. Look, of course I’d rather have flown-and I don’t see why they make such a fuss about it, for God’s sake, my due date’s still four weeks off, and anyway you’d think nobody’d ever had a baby in a plane before-but on top of that, it’s the holidays, and there just wasn’t anything available. It’s not like I had much choice.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

  “Charly…”

  The sigh that drifted across the wire was suddenly contrite. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. How’s your dad doing, by the way? Have you talked to your mom?”

  “I talked to her this morning. He’s doing better, actually.” She took a deep breath to calm the fear that always rippled through her when she thought about her father, and about the utterly unthinkable possibility of his dying. Pop, die? No. Not for-oh, at least twenty or thirty years, yet.

  Pop, you’d better get well, and stay that way. I need you, dammit! Because, aside from the fact that she couldn’t even begin to imagine a world without her dad in it, she just hadn’t counted on raising this child without Pop Waskowitz for a grandpa.

  Especially, she thought with a twinge of guilt she tried to ignore, if he couldn’t have a dad of his own.

  And with some mysterious homing instinct, like birds returning to a favorite nesting place, her eyes found the long, slender form of the young trucker in the booth across the way. Incredible, she thought. Uncanny.

  “They’re calling this heart attack a warning,” she said to Charly in a tone bright with false optimism. “Mom said it looks like they’ll let him go home for Christmas, but then after the holidays they’re going to want to run tests. You know how it goes-see if he’s going to need surgery.”

  “He’ll be okay, Bella. Bypass surgery’s not even a big deal nowadays.”

  “Yeah,” said Mirabella on an exhalation, not in the least convinced. “I know.”

  “He know you’re coming?”

  “He doesn’t know I’m driving. Mom didn’t want to tell him. She’s sure he’d only have another heart attack worrying about me.”

  “So, you’re gonna be his Christmas present.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Mirabella. “So far I’ve only made it as far as New Mexico.”

  “New Mexico! Is that all? My God, it’s been two days.”

  “I can’t help it. The problem,” said Mirabella defensively, “is that I keep having to stop all the time to go to the bathroom.”

  “And you’re still going to make it by Christmas?”

  “Uh…Christmas Day, yeah, hopefully. I should be able to.” But she had to shut out the little voices of self-doubt that were starting to kick up a fuss in the back of her mind, and her natural bent toward honesty made her add, “If I can make it as far as Texas by tonight. Which reminds me, if I’m going to do that, I’d better say goodbye and get on my way. What about it, Charly, shall I get you a souvenir? That Acoma pottery’s nice.”

  “You sure you’ve got room? If I know you, that Lexus is probably packed to the roof with presents already.”

  “Just the trunk,” said Mirabella with a guilty smile. “I did try to behave myself this year.”

  “Well, if you insist,” said Charly, “I’d rather have the license-plate holder. Listen, you take it easy now, okay? Your mom and dad want you to get there in one piece. And I do mean one.”

  Mirabella laughed. “Oh, I’m taking it easy. Obviously.”

  She said her goodbyes, punched the Off button and returned the handset to its cradle on the wall next to the booth, then took a deep breath and picked up a triangle of her club sandwich. At last the baby had settled down. Maybe she could actually eat in peace.

  She did notice that the young trucker across the way had picked up the phone again and was no longer paying any attention to her, thank God, but just looking out the window, watching the big trucks roll in off the interstate, one after another…

  Jimmy Joe Starr was finally getting through to his mama’s house in Georgia. He listened patiently to the rings, and on the third one the voice he wanted most in this world to hear said, “This is the Starr residence. How may I help you?”

  He just had to chuckle, hearing all that coming out of his eight-year-old son’s mouth. J.J.’s regular greeting up to now had been more along the lines of,“H’lo, who’s this?”

  “Gramma been workin’ on you?”

  “Dad!”

  “Hey, J.J., whatcha up to?”

  “Oh, nothin’ much. Where are you? When are you comin’ home?”

  Those were J.J.’s two standard questions, and they never failed to wring a twinge of guilt and regret out of Jimmy Joe’s insides. And of course, never more than at this time of year. “I’m in New Mexico,” he said, hoping it sounded cheerful enough. “Got a load to drop in Little Rock tomorrow, and then like I told you, I’ll be headin’ for the barn. I’ll most likely be there when you wake up Christmas morning.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure, I promise-long’s the road don’t open up and swallow me.”

  “Dad…”

  “Come on, J.J., you know I’m gonna be fine.”

  “I know, but… you know what? There’s supposed to be a big snowstorm in the Texas panhandle. What if you get stuck?”

  “Hey, where’d you hear about this snowstorm, huh? Gramma tell you?” He was going to have to have a little talk with his mama, is what he was going to have to do-remind her what a worrywart J.J. was.

  “I saw it on The Weather Channel. They called it the Arc-Arc-tic Express. It sounds really bad.”

  Jimmy Joe shook his head. What was he going to do with an eight-year-old kid who watched The Weather Channel? “Hey, what’d I tell you? The Big Blue Starr’ll drive through anything, right? I’ll be there on ol’ Santa’s heels, just like I said I would. Now, quit your woffyin’-you’re startin’ to sound like an ol’ lady, you know that?” He smiled at J.J.’s outraged denial. “So, tell me quick, what you been up to? I gotta get back on the road.
Everybody gettin’ ready for Christmas? Who was that had the phone tied up so long? Your Aunt Jess, I reckon. Am I right?”

  “I guess. Dad?”

  “Yeah, son?”

  “When can I go back to school?”

  “Back to-what kinda question is that? It’s Christmas vacation!” Just as Jimmy Joe was starting to think his kid had come down with some kind of bug or other, something in the boy’s tone of voice got through to him. He let his breath out and said, “Okay, J.J., what’s up? You in trouble with your grandma again?”

  “It wasn’t my fault, Dad, I swear! I mean, what else was I supposed to do? She kissed me!”

  “What? Who kissed you? Gramma?”

  “No! Sammi June.”

  “You don’t mean your cousin Sammi June?”

  “Yeah. Right smack on the lips, Dad. Yuck!”

  Jimmy Joe was trying his best not to laugh-at least not enough so it would spill over into his voice. With deep seriousness he said, “What on earth do you suppose made her do a thing like that?”

  A heartfelt sigh drifted over the wire. “Well, she said it’s on account of the mistletoe.”

  “Mistletoe?”

  “Yeah, Aunt Jessica went and hung little bunches of it all over the house. Sammi June says if you catch somebody standing underneath one of the bunches, they have to kiss you, it’s a rule. Is that true, Dad?”

  Jimmy Joe coughed and said, “Well, I think it’s more like a tradition than an out-and-out rule. So, anyway, she caught you and she kissed you. And then what did you do?”

  “I socked her.” He said it like. “Well, of course-what do you think?”

  “Oh, Lord. J.J.,” said Jimmy Joe sternly, “what do you know about hittin’ girls? Come on, now, I don’t have to tell you that. You tell me.”