Unexpected Gift
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Delores Fossen
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Chapter One
CAPTAIN GABE BRENNER figured this particular Santa assignment had the potential to turn out bad.
And that TV film crew sure wouldn’t help things.
There were three of them in the crew. A woman with a microphone, a guy with a camera hoisted on his shoulder and the mayor, Bobby Hernandez. They were hunkered down next to some Texas sage bushes, and the woman and mayor gave Gabe rather enthusiastic waves when he brought his rental car to a stop in the parking lot.
Judging from the glittered red, white and blue sign that the mayor was holding up—Welcome Home, Captain Gabe Brenner—the trio was there for him. How the devil they’d heard about his homecoming, Gabe didn’t know, but they’d obviously had time to slap together a sign, and they were waiting right next to the building where he needed to go for his “Santa” duties.
The Sugar Springs Public Library.
Gabe tucked the small Christmas present in his pocket and opened the car door, winter slamming right into him. There was more likely to be sleet than snow in this part of Texas, but it was cold enough for something icy to start falling soon. That was an even better reason for him to finish up here and make the hour-long drive back to San Antonio for a little R & R.
“Welcome home!” the reporter gushed, poking a microphone at Gabe’s face before he could even take a step.
She was a thin brunette probably not old enough to drink. Her shoulders were hunched and her nose red, no doubt from the frosty wind snapping at her. He didn’t know her, but Gabe knew the cameraman. Delbert Grange, once the high school football tackle who’d made an art form out of being a jerk. Delbert didn’t look any happier about this assignment than Gabe did.
“Are you glad to be home?” the reporter asked, still gushing.
Since that microphone and camera were gobbling up every look and sound he made, Gabe managed a nod, a smile and a mumbled “yeah.” He was plenty glad to be finished with his latest deployment. And he’d celebrate.
Right after delivering the Merry Christmas greeting, message and present that his crew partner had asked Gabe to deliver.
To Kelly.
Oh, man.
Kelly.
Forty-five hours of travel to get to his old hometown of Sugar Springs, Texas. Forty-five hours to think about what Kelly might say to him. Of course, she was just as likely to say nothing. Gabe figured the air wouldn’t be the only thing that was chilly for this meeting.
“We know you’re a CRO. That’s an Air Force Combat Rescue Officer,” the reporter said, reading from an index card. “But can you tell our viewers what that is, what you do?”
Delbert snorted, clearly not thinking much of what Gabe did.
“I get to rescue people,” Gabe answered, hoping she wouldn’t ask for details that he couldn’t give her. Unlike this situation, his missions were classified and weren’t usually caught on camera.
“And did you rescue anybody on this deployment?” the reporter pressed.
“Naw, he just flew right over them,” Delbert grumbled. “Guess that’s what those wings are for.”
Gabe did indeed have angel wings on his CRO badge, and he was proud of them. But he got out of the car wishing he’d ditched his uniform at the airport. It would have meant digging around in his things to pull out something wrinkled and likely embedded with sand and with the smell of the desert. However, if he’d known he was going to draw the attention of a moron cameraman and a reporter out for a story of a military homecoming, then he’d be wearing civvies right now.
Or better yet, postponing this trip.
“We haven’t told anyone inside about your visit,” the reporter said, leaning closer and lowering her voice to a secret-telling whisper. “Kelly Coburn and the rest of library staff and patrons don’t know you’re coming.”
“Then, how’d you find out?” Gabe tried to step around them, but the reporter just darted in front of him. She moved pretty fast for a woman teetering on four-inch heels on an ice-scabbed sidewalk.
“Kelly’s brother, of course,” the mayor provided. “He sent us an email. You and Captain Ross Coburn are the town heroes, and we couldn’t let you sneak in without some kind of celebration.”
Gabe didn’t bother to mention that he’d left Sugar Springs fourteen years ago when he turned eighteen and rarely came back. But he would do some mentioning about it to Ross when he got him on the phone.
Hell’s Texas bells.
He was doing Ross a favor by coming here, and this was how Ross repaid him?
Of course, Ross didn’t have a clue that this would be the potentially bad assignment that it could turn out to be.
“This won’t take long,” Gabe told the reporter. “I just need to give Kelly this present from her brother and have a quick word with her.”
Hopefully, a word that wouldn’t involve her telling him to take a hike. A year ago she’d called him a mistake.
Well, that’s what Kelly had called their one-night stand anyway.
No arguments from Gabe.
It had been exactly that—a whopping, Texas-size mistake. Brought on by four straight shots.
All right, five.
He’d been nursing the end of yet another relationship that wouldn’t have lasted anyway. And Kelly had been nursing worry and fear that her brother, Ross, was off to yet another dangerous assignment in the Middle East. His fourth in ten years. Air Force CRO was pretty much a synonym for dangerous assignments, but this one had gotten to her. Bad dreams, Kelly had said. About Ross, and Gabe, not returning.
An attractive, upset woman needing a shoulder to lean on and a full bottle of Jack Daniel’s were rarely a good combination.
Still, Kelly and he had set things right by agreeing it’d been wrong. They had also agreed not to tell Ross. Gabe had jumped right on that particular “let’s carry this to the grave” bandwagon since he didn’t want to spend a year deployed with a man who might want to beat him to dust for sleeping with Kelly, Ross’s kid sister.
A kid sister who Gabe now had to face.
“Trust me, there really won’t be anything to film for this homecoming,” Gabe tried again with the TV crew. “I just need to tell Kelly merry Christmas since Ross can’t come home yet to do it himself.”
“There’ll be plenty to film,” the mayor argued. “The whole state will want to see this. And Ross wants it all caught on camera so he can see the surprise on his sister’s face when you walk into the library.”
That didn’t help the knot in Gabe’s stomach.
“All right,” the reporter said, her shoes tapping like a hungry woodpecker on the sidewalk as she followed him. “Everybody stay quiet so she doesn’t hear us. We want to catch the happy look on Kelly’s face for tonight’s news.”
Despite the still-gobbling camera, Gabe didn’t manage to stave off a scowl that time, and he threw open the door to the library. Like just about everything else in Sugar Springs, it hadn’t changed at all. A checkout desk was to his immediate right, and sprawled out in front of him were rows of scarred wooden bookcases. The place smelled like old paper, Elmer’s glue and the scraggly cedar Christmas tree just to his left.
The woman behind the checkout desk was yet something else familiar. Doris Jenkins. She was eighty if she was a day, but there was nothing wrong with her eyesight. She brightened right up when she saw Gabe and the crew, and grinning, she pointed toward the back of the room.
“Kelly’s back there,” Doris mouthed.
Dragging in a long breath that he figured he’d need, Gabe headed in that direction to the kids’ section. Even if he hadn’t known the way, he could have just followed the sound of her voice.
Kelly’s voice.
When he cleared the last row of bookshelves, he spotted her.
And that required yet another deep breath.
Unlike the last time he’d seen her, she wasn’t dressed in the “walk of shame” wrinkled clothes that he’d been responsible for wrinkling. Today, Kelly was wearing a velvet Mrs. Santa Claus costume with white furry trim and granny shoes. She had a red ruffled bonnet plopped on bunned-up, honey-colored hair. Something that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else but her.
She looked amazing.
Happy.
She was reading The Polar Express to a group of kids seated on the floor around her. There were five of them, their parents and grandparents lingering back, watching. All attention focused on the kids’ reactions and Kelly, the assistant librarian.
Gabe got a flash of her, naked.
Oh, man. Definitely not something he should be remembering. He wasn’t here to repeat another mistake.
Neither Gabe nor the TV crew said a word, but their movement snagged the attention of some of the other adults. Then the kids. It went through the group like a wave, and they turned toward him. The whispers, giggles and other excitement started almost immediately, but Gabe kept his focus on Kelly.
As she lifted her gaze to meet his.
Because he was watching her so closely, he saw the recognition flash through her pale green eyes. Quickly followed by her mouth dropping open. She stood, The Polar Express splatting to the floor.
“Gabe,” she managed to say on a rise of breath. “You’re here.”
“Kelly,” he managed to say right back.
And he braced himself for whatever would happen next. If she ordered him out, he’d hand her the present, tell her what Ross wanted him to say and then head back to his rental car. Fast.
But nothing happened.
Kelly just stood there, looking several steps past the stunned stage while she kept repeating Gabe, long pause, deep breath, you’re here.
“Gabe’s really home,” Mayor Hernandez announced as if Kelly needed clarification. Or to snap her out of this gobsmacked, mumbling trance she was in.
Delbert volleyed the camera between the two of them. The reporter did the same with the microphone.
All clearly waiting for something joyous to happen.
Gabe wasn’t counting on that joyous part, but he would put a quick end to this very uncomfortable moment.
“I brought you a gift from Ross,” Gabe said. He walked toward her, stepping around the kids and taking the present from his pocket. “He got tied up with briefings in Germany and can’t make it home this week, but he wanted me to wish you a merry Christmas. He’ll be home by New Year’s Eve.”
“Gabe,” Kelly repeated.
When she didn’t reach for the gift, Gabe took her hand and plopped the small present in her palm. That’s when he realized she was trembling. And that she’d gone way too pale.
“I know,” Gabe whispered, hoping to keep this particular message out of range of the microphone. “I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want me to come.”
“Of course she wanted you to come.” The mayor again. Obviously, Gabe hadn’t been out of range after all. “Kelly’s your best friend’s little sister. There’s no reason on earth she wouldn’t want you here.”
Gabe knew otherwise.
But then, others in the room maybe did, too.
He felt the change in the air. Subtle but still there. The welcome-home and excited looks turned, well, weird. Some of the adults leaned into each other, whispering. There was even a random gasp.
Good grief.
Had folks gotten wind of Kelly’s one-nighter after all? Or had something in their body language just given it away?
At least word of their indiscretion hadn’t gotten back to Ross, because if it had, Ross would have addressed the subject with Gabe during the past year. No way would Ross have approved of his kid sister falling into bed with a no-rings-attached kind of guy like Gabe.
Heck, Gabe felt the same way.
“We have to talk,” Kelly whispered. “In private.”
Gabe shot a stay-back glance at the TV crew, reminding himself that this was how he’d wanted his homecoming to play out from the beginning. In private. Where Kelly could toss him out without having the details paraded on the evening news.
“We’ll be right back,” Kelly said to no one in particular.
She took hold of Gabe’s arm, maneuvering him out of the semicircle of kids and toward the back hall, where there were three small storerooms and offices, one of them Kelly’s.
“How about a welcome-home hug and kiss first?” the reporter called out to them. “That way, folks all over Texas can see how glad you are for Captain Brenner to be home.”
That earned the reporter a jab in the ribs from the mayor. Kelly lost even more color in her cheeks. The behind-the-hand whispers rippled through the room again.
Yeah, nearly everybody but the reporter knew about the one-nighter, all right.
And once Ross saw this footage, he’d figure it out no time flat.
Gabe was a dead man. Or at least a hurting one, and he’d stand a serious chance of losing Ross’s friendship forever.
Kelly kept up the trek toward her office despite the reporter still calling for that hug and kiss. Which definitely wasn’t going to happen. But then, getting inside Kelly’s office didn’t happen, either. While they were still a few steps away, another familiar face popped out of the room just up the hall.
The perky blonde was Janine Slater, Kelly’s best friend, and that perkiness faded considerably when her gaze landed on Gabe.
“Gabe,” Janine said, “you’re here.”
He nearly laughed. “Yeah, I’m hearing that a lot just lately.”
Kelly mumbled something he didn’t catch and proceeded toward her office. This time, she might have actually gotten him in there if the sound hadn’t snagged his attention.
A baby.
Specifically, one making fussing noises.
That froze Janine, and her eyes doubled in size. “Uh, she needs to be changed and the diaper bag’s in your office. I was just about to get it.”
“You had a baby?” Gabe automatically asked Janine.
“Uh,” Janine said. Not much of an answer to a pretty direct question.
Gabe also didn’t miss the renewed frozen look that Kelly was giving him.
“How about that hug and kiss so we can wrap this up?” the reporter called out again.
Worse, both the cameraman and reporter trotted toward where Kelly, Janine and Gabe were standing as if waiting for some proverbial shoe to drop.
The baby let out another wail. This time, not a fuss but a full-fledged cry. Kelly’s grip melted off his arm, and she hurried toward the room with Janine.
Gabe made his way there, too. And that knot in his stomach? Well, it got even tighter.
Why would Kelly be rushing off to take care of Janine’s baby? Or any baby for that matter?
Unless…
Oh, hell in a handbasket.
Yeah, that shoe dropped loud and hard.
