A Highlander Christmas Page 11

  But then, she also loved a good challenge.

  “According to my GPS, we’re going seventy-six miles per hour,” he said into the silence, glancing over at the odometer.

  Camry kept her foot steady on the accelerator. “I’m just keeping up with what little traffic there is.”

  A moan came from the backseat, and Luke glanced over his shoulder. “Um . . . Max doesn’t look so good. He’s drooling, and his eyes are watery.”

  “He gets carsick. The pill I gave him in Freeport will kick in soon.”

  “You intend to keep him drugged the entire trip?”

  “Max won’t need his medicine once he gets in the snowcat; he’ll be too excited about being on an adventure. He only gets sick in cars because he worries he might be going to the vet.”

  Luke started pushing buttons on his GPS again.

  Camry swiped it out of his hand and set it on the dash on her side of the truck, out of his reach. “Okay. I didn’t make you go back to your hotel, and we’re on the road. So pony up, Dr. Renoir. If you died when you were twenty, how come you’re still breathing?”

  “Because the raging river that killed me also slammed me into a rock and knocked the air back into my lungs.”

  She scowled over at him. “From the beginning, Luke. And your intriguing little story had better explain what made you apologize to your mother.”

  He started repacking everything that had come with the GPS. “You already know I have a kid sister named Kate. Well, when she was five, Mom and André and I took her to the pound on Christmas Eve, and she picked out a monster of a dog that appeared to be eight or nine years old. He was coal black with wiry hair, half of one of his ears was missing, and his eyes were clouded with developing cataracts. I tried to get her to choose one of the puppies, or at least something less pathetic-looking, but Kate claimed she wanted that one because it was the beautifulest dog in the world and she was going to love it forever.”

  He shrugged. “She insisted on naming it Maxine, even though I explained it was a male dog. But on Christmas morning, when Kate took Maxine out to play, almost two hours went by before anyone realized they weren’t in the yard.”

  “Two hours?”

  “It was one of those ‘I thought she was with you’ things. Mom thought Kate had ridden over to check on our neighbor with André, and André had driven away thinking she was in the house playing with the toys Santa had brought her.”

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, and Camry realized that even though he’d promised to tell her his story, it obviously wasn’t going to be easy for him.

  “When André got back and Mom realized Kate wasn’t with him, we all started looking for her. When we hadn’t found her an hour later, we went back to the house and Mom called our local conservation officer to start an organized search. André and I put on snowshoes and split up, and started searching in opposite directions.”

  “But if you needed snowshoes, didn’t Kate and the dog leave tracks you could follow?” Cam whispered, suddenly afraid this wasn’t going to be any easier for her to hear than it was for him to tell.

  He glanced over at her, then looked out his side window at the darkened woods passing by. “We’d had an ice storm two days before, and Kate and Maxine were light enough that they could walk on the crust, whereas André and I kept breaking through. We eventually moved far enough away from each other that I could no longer hear him calling for Kate. But I could hear the distant roar of the river.” He hesitated, then said softly, “That’s when I stepped under a giant spruce tree that had sheltered the snow from the rain, and found the tracks of a small child and dog.”

  He looked out the windshield, but Cam knew he wasn’t seeing the road. “I started running in the direction the tracks went, which was straight toward the river.”

  Camry tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “I know Kate survived, because you said she’s Fiona’s age. So I don’t want to hear any more of this story, Luke.”

  “Yes, you do.” He reached over and patted her thigh. “Because this is when I learned exactly what I had put my mother through when I’d run away six years earlier.” He took a deep breath, but left his hand on her leg. “I had never before and have never since been so scared. I broke into a cold sweat, having horrific images of Kate being swept away by the river. I hated that damn dog for luring her into the woods, and swore that when I found them I would wring his ugly black neck.”

  His hand on her thigh tightened, then was suddenly gone. “I still have nightmares about what I saw when I reached the river. Kate was dangling on the edge of the ice only a few feet above the rushing water. She was utterly motionless, and that dog—that beautiful, mangy pound mutt—had his teeth clamped on her coat, holding her back from falling in.” Luke looked over at her. “I have no idea how long Maxine had been holding her like that, but I swear that if Kate fell, he had every intention of going with her.”

  Camry checked her mirror and guided her truck to the side of the interstate, braking to a stop all the way over on the grass before shutting off the engine. She closed her eyes and buried her face in her hands on the steering wheel.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” he said, cupping her head in his broad palm. “I stripped off my snowshoes and carefully made my way to them. Maxine was quivering uncontrollably, and his mouth was bloody from the strain on his teeth. His feet were bloody, too, and I could see where he’d been gouging the crust, trying to pull Kate up over the lip of ice.”

  Picturing the scene all too vividly in her mind, and fearing what was coming, Camry scrambled over the console and into his arms.

  Luke cradled her against his chest and quietly continued. “As I approached them, I felt the ice shelf start to buckle. Just then I heard several shouts, and realized that André and some other men had spotted us. But it was too late. I grabbed Kate’s coat and pulled her up, yanking her out of Maxine’s mouth, then flung her as far as I could back across the crust just as the shelf gave way. The dog and I fell into the river.”

  “Oh, God,” Camry whispered. “The water must have been freezing.”

  “It literally took my breath away. The force of the rapids slammed me into boulders and held me under until I thought my lungs were going to burst.”

  “And y-you died.”

  His arms around her tightened. “I suddenly wasn’t cold anymore, and everything went . . . peaceful.”

  “But then you came back.”

  “The current must have slammed me into another rock, and I broke the surface and sucked air back into my lungs. But I was completely disoriented. Then something snagged the shoulder of my jacket, and I felt clawing on my legs.”

  “Maxine.”

  “Just like with Kate, that damn dog latched on to me and started swimming across the current. There was enough light left that I could see the river was frozen solid where it turned to flat water up ahead, and I knew that if we didn’t make it to shore, we were going to be swept under the ice.”

  “You both made it.”

  “I did.”

  “A-and Maxine?”

  “I spent the next three weeks searching for his body, but I never found him.”

  “He died!” Cam wailed, burying her face in his shirt. She punched his arm. “I said I didn’t want to hear this story!”

  “I’ve never told anyone what happened after I fell in the river; not about my drowning, nor what Maxine had done,” Luke murmured into her hair.

  That surprised her. “But why? Wouldn’t you at least want Kate to know that Maxine died saving your life?”

  “It seemed too personal to share with anyone. Or maybe . . . sacred is a better word. So I just let everyone be thankful that Maxine had saved Kate’s life.” He sighed heavily. “The dog hadn’t lured her into the woods; he had followed her.”

  Cam relaxed against him. She was still upset that Maxine hadn’t survived, but damned glad that Luke had. “Did you find out why Kate had left the dooryard?”

  “She told u
s she was looking for a special rock in the pool of pretty pebbles she remembered seeing that summer, when she and André had been fishing in the river.”

  “What made her think she could find it with snow on the ground?”

  “Five-year-olds don’t think about silly details like that; they just go after what they want.” His lips touched her hair again. “All Kate was focused on was finding a special rock so she could give it to me for Christmas. Because, she told me that night when she came to my room after we got back from the hospital, she didn’t want me returning to college without something to remind me of home . . . and of her.”

  He took a ragged breath. “I came unglued. She’d nearly died trying to find some stupid rock for me, and I started yelling at her. But instead of bursting into tears like a normal kid, you know what she did?”

  Camry said nothing, because she couldn’t.

  “She wrapped her tiny arms around my legs and told me that she loved me so much, her heart hurt when she thought of my missing her the way she missed me.” He took another shuddering breath. “And then she explained that she could sit in my room whenever she missed me, but that I didn’t have anything to remind me of her when I was away at college.”

  “My knees buckled,” he continued, his voice raspy, “and I knelt down to hug her. But before I could, Kate held up her tiny fist and opened her fingers to reveal a black-and-white speckled pebble in her palm. She told me it was a lot smaller than the rock she’d wanted to find for me, but that she’d been forced to grab the beautifulest one she could reach in the pool of open water, because Maxine had kept pulling on her coat.”

  Luke ducked his head to press his cheek against hers. “You know what love really is, Camry? It’s uncompromising, unpretentious, and unconditional, and sometimes it makes your heart hurt. I apologized to Kate for yelling at her, and she patted my cheek and said that she knew I was angry because I loved her—just like Maxine had growled at her when she’d climbed down to the water. Kate said, and I quote, ‘Maxine didn’t let me fall in the river because he knew I was going to love him forever.’ ”

  Luke rested his chin on her head with a sigh. “I had never paid much attention to Kate for the first five years of her life. I didn’t have a clue what to do with an infant, and by the time she was a toddler, I was away at college most of the year or working in town and hanging out with my friends all summer. But that didn’t stop her from loving me so much that her heart hurt when I was gone.”

  He lifted Cam’s chin to make her look at him, his smile tender in the glow of the dash lights. “I tucked Kate in bed, then went downstairs to the living room, got down on my knees, and apologized to my mother for running away when I was fourteen. Then I apologized to André for being such a self-centered bastard, and thanked him for not giving up on me.”

  He shifted beneath her without breaking his embrace, then pressed something into the palm of her hand. “Here. If you try real hard, I bet you can feel the love, too,” he whispered, folding her fingers over the tiny, smooth object. “The next summer, just before I headed off to college again, I took Kate down to the river and we built a huge rock cairn in honor of Maxine. Then I searched until I found a very special rock, and gave it to Kate. She hugged it to her heart and said it was the beautifulest rock she’d ever seen.” He squeezed Cam’s fist. “I’ve carried this pebble since that Christmas. No matter where I am in the world, or what I’m doing, I just have to reach in my pocket to know that I am uncompromisingly, unpretentiously, and unconditionally loved.”

  He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “And the moral of my story, I’ve since realized, is that sometimes our most profound lessons come from a five-year-old child, and sometimes they show up as a mangy old dog.”

  “Or as a fellow scientist who for some reason has clamped his teeth into me, and refuses to let go until I go home and apologize to my mother?”

  He suddenly stiffened. “No,” he said with a growl. He set her back over the console and into her seat. “Don’t compare me to Maxine. That dog was a gutsy, selfless hero, whereas I’m a self-serving bastard who didn’t think twice about stealing someone’s life’s work.”

  She gasped softly. “Is that how you see yourself?”

  He looked over at her, the dash lights accentuating the harsh planes of his face. “Fiona had it wrong, Camry. I’m nobody’s miracle.”

  “But you didn’t mean to destroy Podly.”

  “I sure as hell meant to use the data I was trying to download,” he said, turning away to look out his side window.

  Camry stared out the windshield, desperately wanting to tell Luke that he hadn’t caused Podly to crash, Fiona had. But even though she knew they would have to talk about it eventually, she simply didn’t have the courage to open that particular Pandora’s box quite yet.

  She started the truck, checked for oncoming traffic, and accelerated back onto the interstate. Maybe Fiona did have it wrong. Miracles were the stuff of magic, after all, and the magic wasn’t known for rewarding hijackers and no-good, rotten liars. It was more prone to toying with them the way a cat toyed with a mouse—or the way an impish niece with a thing for satellites did—just before sending down some seriously bad karma.

  Yeah, well . . . if she and Luke had some dues to pay, Camry couldn’t think of a better person to pay them with. Because contrary to what he might think of himself, she knew that, just like Maxine, Lucian Renoir had no intention of letting the raging river sweep her away.

  Chapter Twelve

  They arrived in Pine Creek shortly after midnight, but it took them another two hours to get their hands on a snowcat—which they virtually stole out from under the noses of the TarStone Mountain Ski Resort night-grooming crew. It was nearly three in the morning before they got back to the truck they’d hidden several miles from the resort, and Luke couldn’t decide if Camry had a death wish or if she just got her jollies from skulking around in the shadows.

  He did learn some interesting things about himself, however. One, he probably should stick to physics, as he’d likely starve to death if he had to steal for a living; and two, even if he had spent the entire night in a cold sweat, he rather liked performing any number of illegal acts with Camry. At one point he’d even been tempted to look down the front of her pants to see what equipment she was packing; the woman appeared to have nerves of steel, the focus of a Navy Seal, and the mind of a master criminal.

  She also had a rather perverse sense of timing; like when they’d been hiding in the maintenance garage while they’d waited for one of the workers to kindly refuel the groomer they intended to . . . borrow. Apparently having grown bored, Camry had gone after Luke’s package. But just as he’d been trying to wrestle her hands away from his belt buckle, the garage lights had suddenly gone out and the man had left.

  Camry had immediately returned to criminal mode, leaving Luke—and his bewildered lower brain—sprawled in the corner, in total darkness, wondering when exactly he had lost his mind.

  Camry finally pulled the snowcat to a stop beside her SUV and shut off the engine, snapped on the interior lights, and shot him a smug smile.

  Luke pried his fingers off the handle he’d been clutching in a death grip. “Would you care to explain what your intentions were back there in the garage?”

  “I intended to steal us transportation. Which I did.”

  “No, I mean when we were stuck hiding behind that equipment. It wasn’t exactly the time or place for slap and tickle. And besides, I thought you were . . . um, off the market for a few days.”

  Her smile turned downright cheeky. “Hey, just because the Ferris wheel isn’t running doesn’t mean the entire amusement park is shut down,” she said with a laugh, opening her door and hopping out.

  Luke stared after her, nonplussed.

  He suddenly gave a bark of laughter and scrambled after her, happy to realize their little affair was still on—which made him glad he’d snuck out to the drugstore yesterday and purchased a whole box of
condoms.

  Camry opened the back door of the truck to let the dogs out as Luke approached her, still chuckling. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking how this excursion into the wilderness is going to be a lot more interesting than my last one.”

  Tigger bounded out of the truck behind Max, only to give a yelp of surprise when she suddenly disappeared. Luke fished the dachshund out of the snow and set her back on the seat. “Yes, Tigger,” he said, brushing off the shivering dog. “I’ll bet this is exactly how you pictured your Christmas sleepover with Auntie Cam, isn’t it?”

  “Her sweater is in the green backpack,” Camry said. She opened the rear hatch and started transferring their gear to the snowcat. “Just stomp down a circle in the snow so she can go pee.”

  Luke dug through the backpack, found what looked like a doll’s sweater, and started dressing Tigger. Or he tried to, realizing he should have paid better attention when Kate had conned him into playing house with her dolls. “At least it’s bright pink, so we’ll be able to find you,” he muttered, pushing what he hoped was the neck down over Tigger’s head. “What are we going to do for fuel?” he called back to Camry. “I don’t remember seeing any gas stations on Springy when I was there.”

  “I stole this particular groomer because it burns diesel. And Megan and Jack are building a camp on the lake at the base of the mountain, which means they would have lugged up a drum of fuel last summer that we can use.”

  “Did you hear that, Tig? We’re going to teach you to steal, too. That way we can all share a jail cell so you won’t be scarred for life.”

  Luke finally sighed in defeat, scooped Tigger up, and carried her to the back of the truck. “Here,” he said, holding the dog out to Camry. “You figure this contraption out and I’ll load our gear.”

  She tucked her hands behind her back. “You need the practice for when you have kids,” she said, her eyes shining with amusement.

  Luke hugged the half-dressed dachshund to his chest. “I’ve decided not to have children, because I’m afraid they might addle my brain.”