Christmas Kiss (A Holiday Romance) (Kisses and Carriages) (2 page)

It had been a natural reaction, she realized hours later. She was a car girl. Since she’d turned 16 and gotten her first car, her car was her private space, her safe space. There were locks on the doors; she was able to think clearly in a space where she could lock out the rest of the world. And clear thinking was what she’d needed. Unfortunately, the Scottish car hadn’t turned out to be her safe place in the end.

Foolish? Yeah, probably. But you can’t fight someone’s knee-jerk reaction. Other people had “fight or flight” instincts. Hers were more like “fight or flee in a car.”

She’d thought she might eek out a modified version of her original trip. Sleep in the car. Live on crackers or something cheap, then show up back at her airport for her return flight on December 29
^th
. No problem.

No problem, except for now her car was in the drink and she was inching along the side of it, in the dark, with snowflakes soaking into the butt of her jeans.

She reached the edge of the trunk and looked over. To her amazement, the suitcase handle had stretched out and was easily within reach. And not only that, the stream wasn’t as deep as she’d feared and there was a path of large rocks—albeit snow-covered—leading from the car to the embankment.

The problem was the embankment. From the glow of her headlights she could see where she’d flown off the road and into a deep ravine. No one would be able to see her car from the road. No one would be stopping to help, even if they were out in that storm.

The wind was gone, like it had just picked up long enough to spin her off the road. But the storm continued in a steady straight fall of snowflakes that enjoyed a little spotlight before disappearing into the water in front of her car. It didn’t seem much colder than a snowstorm in Washington State, but at home, she rarely fell into creeks. Her feet were freezing fast; even if the air wasn’t cold, the water had been icy. The tingling in her toes had stopped. Now she couldn’t feel them at all.

But what a romantic place to die.

She’d come to Scotland to find her old positive attitude again and hopefully a side order of romance. But she could only be positive she was going to die if she didn’t get moving.

She pulled her luggage free and pulled it onto the bumper in front of her before she tried to stand. Then she found a good grip with her shoes and willed her frozen toes to hang on tight before she hurled the suitcase as far as she could toward the embankment. It went about five pathetic feet, but didn’t sink too far into the snow. The handbag sailed easily to the top of the ridge.

The pins-and-needles feeling returned to her feet. She didn’t have any time to be choosey about where she jumped. She just said another quick prayer and pushed off.

An athlete, she was not. The ground came up at her a little fast and a lot hard. Her grunt could have scared off a hungry wolf. But she was grateful not to have landed in water, and even more grateful no one was standing by with camera.

The ground beneath her feet began to slide, but she clawed her way through slushy mud and onto solid ground. The handle of her suitcase was still fully extended, so she was able to pull the bag to her with her icicle fingers without stepping back toward the water. The slide of the car had created a slope, so she was able to drag herself and her things back up to the road. She doubted she could have climbed up the bank any other way considering the way the ridge curved back over the water like an ocean wave just before it crashes.

Except for the fact that she’d spun off the road, she was feeling pretty lucky all around—well, the parts of her that still had feeling. She took a minute to catch her breath and look around. She needed to get her cell phone. If she didn’t have reception, it would at least be a light for a while.

The headlights died.

She stood very still.

With no moonlight or starlight coming through the thick cloud cover, an inky blackness surrounded her like a pack of menacing dogs. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face; she held it up and wiggled her fingers just to make sure. If she hadn’t been paying attention, just that second before the lights went out, she might have gotten turned around—
she might have walked right back off that ridge!

Looking for her handbag, and the cell, wasn’t worth the risk.

In spite of the pain in her fingers, she dragged her suitcase into the middle of the road so she could keep track of it—not the suitcase, the road. There weren’t any headlights, but she wasn’t surprised. The last town she’d passed had rolled up its sidewalks hours ago. And she hadn’t seen another car since the sun went down. At midnight, it seemed the only thing awake was the snow.

She couldn’t see it, of course, but she felt the gentle build of its weight on her shoulders and imagined she could hear the giant flakes landing gently on the ground, like whisper-light rain. The peace of it was incredible. She wondered if her deaf students ever enjoyed that peace, or if it always seemed a curse.

It was going to be the peace of death for her if she didn’t find a way to get warm. And since the only thing she had, in the darkness, was a suitcase full of clothes, they would have to do.

She opened that suitcase then squatted down to feel around, to find out what was dry. Unfortunately, frozen fingers weren’t capable of differentiating between wet and dry, so she held things up to her neck. Nothing seemed to be wet. She reached inside her coat and, with her hands in her arm pits, she thawed her fingers for a long minute so she could untie her wet shoes. She got them off, along with her wet socks, then stepped onto the dry lid. She hovered over her dry clothes to protect them from the falling snow, but wasn’t very successful.

The frozen bottoms of her jeans slapped against her bare feet and made her jump. She tried to unzip her pants, to take them off, but it was too late. Her fingers were frozen. But if the snow didn’t stop, whatever she put on would eventually be wet anyway.

Suddenly, she remembered the scissors in the inner pocket. At conferences, she was always running into people who were eager to start signing with their child, so she always kept some print outs of common signs in her bag, and a pair of scissors to cut up the flash cards. It was her idea of a tool kit.

And now it was going to save her life! She could cut off the icy ends of her pant legs and not need to take off her jeans at all.

She found the scissors right where they were supposed to be. Then she began hacking away at the best fitting jeans she’d ever owned, hoping the activity would help to warm her hands, hoping her joints wouldn’t freeze up and stop working. She had so little feeling left she wasn’t sure if the cloth was cutting or not.

She ignored the urge to lie down and rest.

Finally, one pant leg fell away. There was a little more sensation while she cut into the next one, a little more welcomed pain. Then the other side dropped away. The backs of her jeans were damp, but the warmth from her body would keep the rest from icing up.

A few tortured minutes later, she was wearing everything she’d packed, including two pair of socks for her feet, followed by the red rain boots she should have been wearing in the first place. Around her ears, she tied the pantyhose she’d tossed in, even though there was a hole in one toe. Five pairs of panties protected the top of her head from the ever-falling snow.

In the end, Bree stood inside an empty suitcase—her new safe place—wearing her short coat over a little black sparkly dress, over a plaid flannel nightie, over sweatpants, over her cutoff jeans. Making it impossible to zip up her coat were three shirts and two sweaters. The last two pair of socks went over her hands. After the blood started pumping the way it should, through all her extremities, she found a new reason to want to survive.

She was going to punch that little Scotsman in the nose for handing her the keys to a rental car with no snow tires! She’d never punched anyone in the nose before, but she was pretty sure she could pull it off.

The idea made her warm. In fact, she was getting good and toasty, standing there in the dark, in a suitcase filling up with snow, when she thought she saw a light. Then another. But they didn’t act like headlights.

Did Scotland have lightning bugs? Did they have them in winter?

Even as they moved closer—and thank heavens they
were
moving closer—they stayed an equal distance apart. She blinked hard, tried to figure out if it was a panic-induced mirage. She closed her eyes for as long as she could stand, then looked again.

Yes! Lights! Moving her way! She was saved! But she’d huddled there in her suitcase, in the middle of the road, thinking for so long that it was the only safe place to be, that she was reluctant to step out of it.

Blackness still surrounded her. The lights were so small and far away, they only served to show her how complete the darkness was, how vulnerable she’d been to creatures that could probably see well in the darkness if they weren’t huddled and asleep in their dens.

With her ears straining for animal noises, it seemed like an hour passed before the lights came closer. But she wasn’t stepping out of her zippered life raft until the Coast Guard arrived.

CHAPTER TWO

Bree heard the horses before she realized the lights swaying back and forth were a pair of lanterns hanging on each side of an old-fashioned carriage, shining on the backs of four huge white horses.

She was standing in the very center of the road, so there was no way they could pass without driving over her. She only hoped the driver wasn’t asleep at the wheel because she wasn’t sure how fast she could move if it came down to it. She waved her arms and gave her best football stadium whistle while she bounced on her legs. With each little jump, pain shot up from her heels to the back of her neck, but at least she was alive to feel it.

“Ho, there!” A man sat high on the front of the vehicle. He was wearing a top hat, of all things, but who was she to complain?

The horses stopped more than ten feet from her and she sighed in relief, not knowing if she could have gotten out of the way fast enough. She still felt glued to the spot as if her life depended on it.

And as that thought bounced around in her head, she got the strangest impression she should keep on standing there and wait for the next car to come along. Like someone was whispering in her ear that she might end up regretting something. A chill ran up her spine, but it only served to remind her how close she’d come to freezing to death, and that was all it took to get her moving.

“Be ye Miss Colby, then?”

She’d just stepped out of the suitcase when the man called out and she seriously considered climbing back in again. How could he know who she was? If he came from the rental place, how did he know she’d spun off the road and not gone on to her destination?

“You know m...m...my name?”

The man jumped down into the slushy road and hurried forward. His hair was gray, nearly white, even. But he didn’t look more than fifty or so.

“The name’s Ferguson. Sawyer Ferguson. I’m from the HSTC, the Heart of Scotland Tour Company. I’m sorry I failed to meet you at the pub, lass. Uh...” He frowned and looked her over. “Uh. That is... Ye are a
lassie,
underneath all that. Are ye no’?”

Bree looked down at her substantial girth, then back at him and nodded.

“Oh, fine, then. That’s fine. You’re not quite to order, but that’s fine. It’ll all work out fine.”

He bent down to get her suitcase. But since she was pretty sure she’d just been insulted, she put a boot on the corner to stop him.

He straightened and raised his brows but said nothing.

“What? I’m not quite to order?” She’d be damned if she was going to be unclear about anything else during her week-long vacation. The last thing she’d been unclear about was wanting a car with snow tires.

“Oh, tut-tut,” the driver said. “Meant nothing by it a’tall. Just that all the planning in the universe can’t guarantee how things will go, is all. I was up on the castle road and saw the car lights take a wee spin. I worried it might be you. No one but a yank would brave this storm in the wee hours, eh? So I came a runnin’. But would ye mind telling me yer full name, so I know I’ve the right lassie?”

Bree pulled her foot back from the suitcase. “Brianna Catherine Colby. I go by Bree. The rental car is in the water. I need to let someone know.”

His smile stretched all the way across his face. It was a little creepy.

“No worries, lass. I’ll be happy to make the call, tell them where to find ol’ Bess.”

“Ol’ Bess?”

“Aye. It’s the terrible excuse for a car that Ronald Dugan finagled you into this eve. He’ll return your money. I’ll see to it.”

As usual, the return of some of her hard-earned money made her feel better and released a little of the steam she’d been building up on behalf of the car rental man. Unfortunately, that was all that was keeping her warm. A shiver rolled through her body and one of her panties slipped past the pantyhose and down over one eye. Mr. Ferguson started laughing.

“‘Tis very creative, the way you kept yerself warm, lass. But I promise you’ll be nice and cozy inside the carriage.” A horse moved a bit and the light of the lantern shined on her handbag. “Oh, I’ll collect that, Miss Colby. Not to worry.”

She headed for the carriage, but she wasn’t about to stop worrying. She’d already been the victim of one old Scotsman that night, and she wasn’t about to trust the next one in line. But survival came first. Tomorrow was soon enough to make heads roll.

The carriage wheels had been changed out for rails. “It’s a sleigh,” she said. “I’ve been saved by Santa Claus.”

The old man choked and gave her a frown. “’Tis a coach, make no mistake, lass. Nice and warm inside.” He opened the door. “Up ye go then.”

There was even a lantern inside, and whether or not it was a fire hazard, it was probably what was keeping the interior warm. Ferguson gave her a hand up. She found the bench under a thick blanket that felt like lamb’s wool. And she wasn’t sure if it was because of the many layers of clothes she wore, or the stuffing, but the seat felt like a cloud. She was tempted to lie down on it.