Black Flame (6 page)

She stalked out of the Tar Barn and across the yard, letting herself into the house as though she lived there.

Deneen had been doing something in the kitchen while Jimmy took a quick shower, but when he was ready to go, she was waiting by the door.

“I just need to stop at the grocery on the way back,” she said. “It won’t take but a minute.”

Jimmy frowned. “I don’t think the stores will be open, will they?”

“I already called. SaveMart stays open until eight, so you’ll need to hurry.”

“Well, what do you need?” The snow was falling steadily, and Jimmy didn’t want to spend any more time in it than necessary. Also, Zane and Cal should have been home by now, and he was beginning to worry about them. “Maybe we’ve already got it.”

“No, I checked. I just need a couple of things so I can rescue your cake. And you’re out of cinnamon.”

“Rescue my…look, I know that the cake is a bit, er, unorthodox looking, but it tastes okay—I tried a piece that fell off. Besides, I don’t think cinnamon is going to help.”

“No, the cinnamon’s not for the cake, it’s for the coffee. I
always
have cinnamon in my coffee on Christmas morning.”

“Can’t you make an exception this once?”

“No, silly, that’s the point of traditions—you never make an exception, or it wouldn’t be a tradition!”

Jimmy considered trying to explain to Deneen that her argument didn’t make sense, then decided it might be easier simply to give in and stop by the store. “We should leave now. Road conditions will worsen as the snow accumulates.”

“I’m ready.”

Deneen opened the door and an icy blast of wind and snow blew into the room. She squared her shoulders and trudged out into the snow, her hands in their silly cat mittens jammed into her pockets. Jimmy would have called to her to wait, and searched the house for an extra pair of gloves, but she didn’t stop until she had clambered into the cab of his truck. A moment later she popped out again, holding the scraper. Jimmy had caught up with her by then, and tried to take it from her.

“No, I can clear a little snow from a windshield,” Deneen said. “How hard can it be?”

A little warning bell went off in Jimmy’s head, and he let go of the scraper. He was reminded of an occasion a few months ago when his date had insisted on carrying her heavy purse all through the mini golf course he’d taken her to, after Jimmy had suggested a number of items that she might not actually have needed and could have left at home. All he was trying to do was to reduce the strain on her back, but as she seemed increasingly upset by his suggestions that she didn’t need her cosmetics or spare hair accessories, he had offered to carry the purse for her. “I can carry it myself,” she had said in precisely the same tone Deneen had just used.

Evidently this was one of those maddening occasions when women didn’t just come out and say what they were thinking. Jimmy had obviously said or done something Deneen didn’t like, but instead of just telling him, and perhaps providing him with an acceptable alternative, she was now trying to clear an icy windshield with the brush end of the scraper. Which was understandable, for someone inexperienced with cold weather, but anyone who’d spent time in Conway knew that snowstorms often started with a spell of freezing rain, which left a layer of ice on the glass, which then—

“Ahhh!” Deneen shrieked, as the scraper flew out of her hand and into a snow covered bush. “I can’t feel my fingers any more—it just slipped—”

She tugged off her mittens and her hands, completely bare to the elements, were bright red, but that didn’t stop her from tackling the bush. Down on her knees in her denim jeans—and hadn’t she just been pointing out cotton’s unsuitability in cold, wet conditions?—she poked around in the branches. Jimmy watched her for as long as he could stand it, but when her muffled curses turned into sobs, he knelt down beside her.

“Um, Deneen, I know you are angry with me, but it doesn’t make any sense for you to risk frostbite. Will you please let me scrape the window, and get in the car?”

Next to him, she went completely still. The lights from the house cast a pale, golden light onto the lawn, but overhead the sky was thick with scudding clouds and swirling snow. After a moment, she hiccupped. Twice.

Jimmy carefully reached around her, where he’d spotted the handle of the scraper resting in the snow. After retrieving it, he gently put his hand under her arm and helped her to her feet. To his astonishment, she pressed her face to his chest and started to cry.

“This place…is…terrible,” she sobbed. “It’s cold and dark and you can’t even see the road and the scraper doesn’t work and I think I wrecked my manicure, but it won’t matter if they have to amputate my fingers, and Jayne’s going to think I messed up again because I didn’t tell her I was coming and I thought it would be such a nice surprise but nothing’s going the way I wanted…”

Carefully, tentatively, Jimmy put his hands on Deneen’s back and patted gently. She snuggled closer against him, her hands on his chest, crying harder.

“It will be all right,” he said, because it seemed like a good thing to say.

“No it won’t,” she mumbled against him. The sensation of her face pressed against his chest—even through his coat—made it hard for Jimmy to breathe. “I got fired last week and I told everyone I quit. It’s just if my family finds out I was fired from the brow bar after what happened at the taqueria—I mean, they’ll never give me another chance. How was I to know Mitzi had left the wax heater on high? I never meant to hurt that woman, and if she sues…”

Deneen’s mystifying stream of consciousness devolved into wordless tears, and Jimmy patted harder. Eventually, he gave up and wrapped Deneen in his arms, tucking her head under his chin, trying to hug her into silence. She held on, snuffling and squeezing, until at last, slowly, she quieted and pulled away from him. She looked up at him, tears sparkling on her cheeks.

“You’re kind of a surprisingly good hugger, Jimmy,” she said. “Thanks for letting me have my meltdown. I find it’s best just to get it all out, don’t you?”

“Uh, I’m not really…I don’t…I mean, you’re welcome.”

“And the feeling’s back in my fingers,” she said, waggling them as proof. “You’re a very warm person.”

“I’m just wearing a down coat,” Jimmy said. “The loose structure of duck feathers traps air exceptionally well.”

She surprised him by laughing. Her capacity for rapid changes in emotion was truly exceptional. “Nah, I think you’re just warm,” she said, making tracks in the snow to the passenger side and opening the door.

As he started in on the frozen windshield, scraping ice with expertise he’d earned in the first few storms of the season, she added, “That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!”

It was slow going. Jimmy drove like an elderly person, keeping to the right lane as other traffic passed him, even though most vehicles were being cautious in the accumulating snow.

“Oh, look,” Deneen said, as they passed a car that was fender deep in a drift on the side of the road. A truck had stopped and the two drivers were affixing a tow chain to the car. “How did they end up there?”

“Easier than you’d think,” Jimmy said. “Drifts, black ice, snow snakes, there are many ways a car can lose traction in bad weather.”

Deneen swallowed and decided that she’d rather not know what a snow snake was.

Jimmy’s phone, which was resting in the cup holder, sounded with the ring tone of an old-fashioned phone. He glanced at it and then back at the road.

“Can you get that? It’s Cal, and I don't want to take my attention off the road.”

Deneen picked it up and put it on speaker before answering. “Hello, this is Jimmy’s phone, Deneen Burgess speaking.” The training she’d received at the short-lived office manager job she’d landed last summer had got her in the habit of answering the phone briskly.

“Deneen Burgess?” Cal’s voice was crackly and faint. “Jayne’s little sister?”

“Yes. Hi, Cal.” Ordinarily Deneen might have felt a little star-struck to be speaking to Calvin Dixon, once the most coveted bad boy hunk of Red Fork High School. “I don’t know if you remember me from high school, but I dropped a pencil in front of you once.”

“Yeah, weird, that happened to me a lot,” Cal said. Deneen smiled; so, he still didn’t realize the effect he’d had on girls. “But I do remember you. Er—kind of skinny, with short light blond hair and braces, right?”

“Well, my hair grew out and I got rid of the braces.”

“Welcome to North Dakota, but what on earth are you doing with Jimmy’s phone?”

“I’m here,” Jimmy said. “I’m driving, so I can’t take my hands from the wheel.”

“Oh?” Did Deneen detect a change in Cal’s tone? “And where are you two headed on Christmas Eve?”

“I, er, came to visit Jayne,” Deneen said, hoping Jimmy would keep his mouth shut so she wouldn’t have to explain the fiasco. “I thought it would be nice to spend a white Christmas up north and be here when they got back.”

She pointedly ignored Jimmy, in case he disapproved. After all, it wasn’t so much a lie as…well, okay, so it was a tiny white lie.

“That’s great. I hope to be having Christmas dinner with you tomorrow. I’ve been putting a ton of overtime in and Chief’s making me take tomorrow off. But look, I don’t think I’m going to be home tonight. Too many accidents out on the road, we’re all out answering calls. And unfortunately one of them’s a three-car pileup on Route 15 that’s taking up both lanes, so it looks like Zane’s not going to make it home either.”

“That’s terrible,” Deneen said. “Is he going to have to spend the night on the rig?” She didn’t have any idea what the inside of a rig looked like, but she doubted it would make for peaceful slumber.

“No, he called to let me know that the owners of a ranch out that way are putting up the crew, and they’ll just return in the morning for their shift tomorrow.”

“But they aren’t working on Christmas Day, surely?”

“Every day of the year. Rigs don’t ever shut down, not with the production costs and the demand being what they are.”

“Poor things. What a way to spend their holiday,” Deneen said with feeling. At least a few people in North Dakota were going to have a worse Christmas than her.

“If it gets clear out here, I’ll run out there and check on them. But they’ll be okay. Anyway just wanted to let you, Jimmy, know not to hold dinner for us.”

“It, um, is all gone anyway,” Deneen said, trying to sound regretful.

“What a shame,” Cal said sarcastically.

“Cal,” Deneen said, before he could hang up. In one of their long phone calls, Jayne had told her about how hard Cal had worked to prove himself to the police Chief, after being unable to get on the force in Arkansas due to some black marks on his juvenile record. Jayne was obviously proud of him, which was all Deneen needed to know; Red Forks’ wicked heartthrob had made good. “Er, stay safe out there, okay? I’m looking forward to re-meeting you.”

“Thanks, I’ll do my best.”

By the time Cal had wished them a Merry Christmas and hung up, Jimmy had pulled up in front of a postcard-pretty farmhouse on the edge of town. Colorful lights sparkled from the eves, and a jolly lighted Santa drove his sleigh across the roof.

“Oh, how lovely!” Deneen gasped. At last, somebody who understood the holiday spirit.

Jimmy came around and opened her door. Deneen had to admit that she could get used to his old-fashioned manners, especially if he just loosened up a bit. But when they reached the front door and Mrs. Osterhaus came to greet them, he addressed her formally.

Luckily, she was ready for him. “Good evening, Doris,” was as far as he got before she pecked him on the cheek and dragged him into the house.

“Mercy, come on in out of the cold, you poor things! And who is this lovely girl?”

“Doris, may I present Deneen Burgess, who is visiting from Arkansas. Deneen, this is Doris Osterhaus, my fellow volunteer at the Family Circle Intervention Center.”

“Oh, those manners of yours!” Mrs. Osterhaus giggled. “You surely would make your mother proud. Young lady, how was your flight?”

Deneen felt herself slipping into the easy rhythm of small town visiting. This, at least, she knew how to do. With an occasional glare at Jimmy, who clearly wanted to be on their way, she said hello to Dr. Osterhaus, admired photographs of the grandchildren who would be coming tomorrow for Christmas dinner, accepted a slice of fruitcake and a cup of coffee, and exclaimed over the beautifully decorated tree.

“Oh, I didn’t even use half of my decorations this year,” Mrs. Osterhaus said, beaming, as she poured more coffee. “Poor Larry—his office assistant is out on maternity leave. I help when I can, but the temp quit after two days, so he’s been seeing patients and running the office all by himself.”

“That sounds like quite a challenge,” Deneen said, while a little light bulb went off in her head.

“Oh, it’s not too bad,” Dr. Osterhaus said. “I’m an optometrist, so my patients aren’t in life-threatening situations. They’ve been quite understanding about the delay in eye exams and contact lens fittings and so forth.”

“Okay, it’s been nice, we should go,” Jimmy said, unable to contain himself any longer. “Deneen still needs to stop by the grocery.”

“Oh no,” Mrs. Osterhaus said. “That place will be a madhouse tonight! It always is when a big storm rolls in, and with the holidays here, everyone will be doing last-minute shopping. What is it that you need, dear?”

“Just a few things—cinnamon, powdered sugar, and gumdrops.”

“By coincidence, I have all of those! I insist you taken them.”

“You even have gumdrops?”

“My grandchildren are coming tomorrow,” Mrs. Osterhaus beamed. “And we will be decorating gingerbread cookies.”

“Say no more,” Deneen said. “I’d love to borrow them. And you’ve been so kind already, I hate to take advantage of your hospitality, but I have one more request.”

“Of course, dear,” Mrs. Osterhaus beamed. “It’s so nice to see Jimmy finally found a lovely girl. Now we just need to convince you to stay up here in beautiful Conway.”

“Oh,” Deneen said, blushing. “We’re not…er…”