That Christmas Feeling (4 page)

The sight of the elderly woman cuffed and snarling at everyone in sight sent a curl of flame through Claire’s chest. The truth of the matter was, Aunt Flossie had brought this on herself. She had alienated everyone to the point that no one wanted to go near her. For all they knew, she could have dropped dead weeks ago, and no one would have been the wiser.

Angry at her aunt, her family, the police, the state government and even herself, Claire snatched up the fishing net and dropped it over the nearest cat. A gray-striped bag of skin and bones, the animal instantly sprang to life—yowling, hissing, turning circles inside the nylon net, tangling claws and teeth and tail in a mass of freaked-out feline hysteria.

“Look at her! Look at what my niece is doing!” Flossie hollered. “She’s killing Oscar!”

Oscar?
This cat had a name? Struggling to keep the animal trapped, Claire reached for the pet carrier. As she tugged it toward the netted cat, a claw caught her hand and raked a line of torn flesh.

“Ouch!” she cried, tumbling backward into one of the haystacks of clothing and newspapers. The cat escaped
the net in a blur of gray fur. Ears flattened against his head, Oscar made for the open window and vanished with a flick of his long tail.

“Nice try, Clarence,” Rob said, reaching out to help Claire to her feet. “But I believe this is a job for two.”

“Fine, then.” She handed him the net. “See if you can do it.”

But the cats were on to their game now. Warily eyeing the enemy, they crouched with skinny muscles coiled and sharp claws dug in, ready to bolt. The two firemen had managed to put out the fire, and Claire was forced to shut the windows in order to prevent more animals from escaping. Even with doors and windows closed, it was going to be no easy matter cornering the malnourished, flea-bitten cats.

While Rob and Claire stalked a small yellow creature that looked as cute and innocent as a baby chick, Bill attempted to examine the handcuffed Flossie. His two compatriots held her gently but firmly in place while he looked into her ears, nose, mouth and hair, then studied her arms, fingers and toes. Aunt Flossie was busy calling the poor paramedic every name in the book when Claire and Rob finally nabbed the little yellow cat. Though it fought tooth and claw, they dropped it into the pet carrier and shut the metal door.

“Animal rescue here!” a heavyset woman announced, barging into the room. She put her equipment on the floor and immediately began setting out traps. Baited with food, the small cages would capture the cats alive and unharmed.

“About time we did this,” the woman offered as she
worked. “Hey, Miss Ross, how you doin’ this morning? Gettin’ a medical exam, I see. Good, good. We’re gonna round up some of your spare kitties, take ’em over to the shelter and see that they get baths, tags, shots, worm medicine. It’s just one of those things we need to do. We’ll bring you back one or two, how’s that? Make sure they can’t start any new litters, and you can have a couple of ’em. There you go—I thought that’d cheer you up! Hey, Chief, looks like you caught one already. And is that Claire Ross? Well, I’ll be jiggered. You don’t look a thing like you did in high school. Remember me—Jane Henderson? I didn’t think so, ’cause I was a grade or two younger, but I do recall you giving your senior assembly speech about how Buffalo was important in the Civil War. That was a good speech, and I never forgot it. Okay, let’s get to work, how ’bout?”

“Hey, I helped make that presentation,” Rob spoke up. “That was my project, too. Mine
and
Claire’s.”

Jane eyed him for a moment. “You gave a speech about Buffalo?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “For your information, Miss Henderson, the town of Buffalo, Missouri, was founded in 1841 on Buffalo Head Prairie, which was named for a buffalo skull landmark erected by the first settler, Mark Reynolds. During the Civil War, Dallas County was pro-Union, which made it the target of many guerrilla raids. In October 1863, Confederate troops under the command of General Joseph O. Shelby burned down the county courthouse. And in
July 1864, Confederate raiders burned the Methodist church, which was being used as the courthouse.”

Claire began to clap. “Well done, Chief West. I award you an A plus for excellent memory skills.”

“Told you I was smart,” he said. “And look at that.”

They followed his pointing finger to a cat that had already ventured into one of the traps. As it leaned toward the bowl of food, the cage door fell shut.

“Voilà!” Jane Henderson cried. “Cat number two is down for the count! Tell you what. You two head on outside and see if you can catch any of ’em in the yard. I spotted a few under the porch. I’ll work in here, me and Miss Ross. Huh, Miss Ross? You and me.”

Flossie glared, red eyed and pinch lipped, at Jane Henderson. “You’re planning to kill my cats.”

“No, I ain’t. Now, who’s this over here in the trap? This one got a name?”

“Betsy.”

Rob slipped his arm around Claire’s shoulders and bent down to whisper in her ear. “Betsy? Betsy and Oscar?”

Momentarily disconcerted by the nearness of the man, Claire couldn’t come up with a witty response. All she could think was that to Aunt Flossie these creatures were not wild, stray cats. They were Betsy and Oscar and who knew who else? They were her friends, her companions. Her family. And because of Claire, the old woman was handcuffed in her own house, enduring the humiliation of a medical exam by a total stranger, forced to surrender her precious privacy.

Those thoughts were running through Claire’s head at
the same moment she was realizing that Rob West smelled just the way he had in high school—like shaving cream and leather and the fresh, wide outdoors. But he was closer to her now, closer than he’d ever been, and in spite of her heavy coat she could feel the steely strength in his arm around her. Near her cheek, his chest spread out like a flat plain that seemed to go on forever, and the geometric angle of his jaw grazed her temple as he hurried her out of the parlor and onto the porch.

“Whew, escaped!” he said, and his breath was warm on her skin. “Good ol’ Jane. She’s been wanting to catch those cats ever since she started working at the shelter, but I knew how much they meant to Miss Ross. I kept hoping I could somehow talk her into giving them up.”

“Not a chance,” Claire said, rubbing her bare hands together for warmth. “Rob, I think it’s more than an obsession. She loves those cats.”

“Maybe so, but she can’t take care of them. Look at that group huddled over there near the chimney.” He absently cupped Claire’s hands between his and blew on them. “Mangy little things. They’ll be better off with Jane. She’s been fairly successful at adopting out the animals she gets. And she said she’ll bring a couple of the cats back over here to keep Miss Ross company.”

Claire tried to listen as he went on telling her about the local animal shelter, but somehow her mind was no longer on cats. It was on Rob West. Tall, handsome, brave, generous—and yes, even smart—Rob West. Rob West, who was holding her hands and smelled like heaven and had
eyes that could make a woman quiver right down to her toes. Rob West, whom all the girls in school had had secret crushes on. Rob West, who’d quarterbacked the football team and won all those wrestling trophies. Rob West, who hated studying Missouri history and resented working with skinny Claire Ross and somehow still remembered every word of his senior assembly presentation.

But it wasn’t really
that
Rob West, either. This one was ten years older and went to church and had lost his wife in a car accident. This one had become a police chief who helped plan the town Christmas parade and caught cats in a little old lady’s house. Somehow all the Rob Wests were woven into a single man who was standing here in front of Claire. She knew him. And didn’t know him. He was familiar. And a stranger. He was comfortably normal. And overwhelmingly, disconcertingly attractive.

“So you think we can figure out how to use that lasso thing of Jane’s?” he asked, turning to Claire so that she was no longer looking at his profile but staring into his blue eyes. “If you came at the cats from one direction, and I came from the other…”

He stopped speaking and swallowed. She blinked. Dropping her hands, he shoved his own into his pockets. She moistened her lips.

“Uh, yes,” she said. “That would be good. Surround them.”

For a moment he didn’t respond. “Did you always have those eyes? That color, I mean. Green.”

“Hazel, I think.”

“No, they’re green.”

“Well, they’re the same ones I’ve always had. I don’t wear contacts, either. Just glasses for reading.” She nodded, trying to think of something else to say that made sense. “And grading papers.”

“Okay.” He frowned. “Because I don’t remember those eyes from high school.”

“You probably don’t remember anything from high school.” She managed the old teasing tone. “Except your speech, I guess. That was pretty impressive, by the way.”

“I remember stuff, Claire. I told you I heard everything you said to me.” He shifted from one foot to the other. “And I remember your hands, too. Long, thin fingers. You had pretty hands. Still do.”

“Thank you.” She pushed them deep into her coat pockets and wrapped them around her gloves. “Thanks for…warming them.”

“Yeah, well…I guess I’d better go get that lasso thing.” As though suddenly remembering he had to be somewhere, Rob turned and barreled back into the house.

Claire let out a breath. This was weird. Rob West was way out of her league. She could tease him. Scold him. Educate him. But she could not—absolutely
not
—desire him. And she knew the way her heart was beating at this moment had nothing to do with the exercise of chasing stray cats or battling Missouri’s winter wind. Definitely not.

“That’s far enough!” Rob gritted his teeth in concern and frustration as Claire inched her way across a tree limb toward a shivering cat. Did the woman ever listen?

“Hey, Claire, don’t go any farther!” He tried again. She had insisted on being the one to go after this cat. At six foot four and a hundred pounds heavier, Rob had reluctantly agreed. “That branch is too thin, Claire. It’s not safe.”

“Shh!” She scowled down at him, her eyes flashing in the setting sun. They were
not
hazel. “Stop yelling at me, you nincompoop.”

“Just try the lasso.”

“All right, all right.” Spread full-length along the branch, she gripped it with one hand and both knees as she extended the metal pole toward the cat.

Except for this wily black-and-white tomcat, the group gathered at the mansion had finally captured all the felines. Earlier in the day Rob made the welcome discovery that Florence Ross had locked all the doors to the basement and upstairs rooms, confining her living area mainly to the front parlor, the foyer and a single bathroom. After combing the house for weapons, he located the pistol and several caches of ammunition, which he confiscated. Though concerned about her reaction to the cat roundup, he removed Flossie’s handcuffs.

Despite the old woman’s every effort to deter them, Jane Henderson—along with Bill Gaines and the two firemen—eventually trapped all the indoor cats. About midafternoon, Jane and her crew stacked the humane shelter’s van with ten cages. After promising to make regular checks on Flossie until they could return a couple of her cats, Jane drove away. The men begged off, saying they needed to go take showers.

That left Claire and Rob to continue the nearly impossible job of cornering the strays that lurked around the perimeter of the mansion. Climbing trees, falling through the rotting porch floor, negotiating the roof, and racing back and forth, they’d managed to nab six cats. The two indoor ones that Jane’s shelter couldn’t take made eight. This final tom in the old oak tree would complete their mission.

“The pole isn’t long enough,” Claire called down from the tree limb. “I can’t reach him.”

“Just come on down, then. We can leave him.”

“Leave him? After all this, you want to leave him here?”

“Claire, it’s one cat. Please come down. You’re making me nervous.”

“Rob, I’m fine—just good ol’ Clarence up a tree. What do you care anyway?”

“I care, okay?”

Her face appeared over the limb a second time. Green eyes pinned him, and he felt again an unexpected jolt that zinged down his spine and settled in the pit of his stomach. What was
that
all about? She was right—it was just dorky Claire Ross up in the tree. Skinny ol’ Clarence…whose curls cascaded downward like a flow of red-hot lava. Whose lips transfixed him every time she spoke. Whose peach-soft skin just about begged him to caress it.

He couldn’t be looking at her this way, Rob cautioned himself. After his wife’s death, he had made a conscious decision not to date again, and certainly never to remarry. The painful experience had taught him that he wasn’t cut out for the job. Like the Apostle Paul, he had a God-or
dained mission that transcended marriage. Rob West belonged to the people of Buffalo. He was their servant, their caretaker, their protector. In a strange sense he was wedded to a town. And quite content with the relationship, too.

Besides, women were a lot of trouble. Sherry had been unhappy with just about everything Rob did. Despite all his triumphs in high school, he learned that in his wife’s eyes he appeared a total failure. Sherry hadn’t wanted Rob to become a policeman. She disliked the size and condition of the only house they were able to afford after their wedding. She hated the church he had joined, and refused to attend. Most of all, she resented being married.

Though he had dated the vivacious blonde through much of high school and had believed they were in love, he belatedly discovered that Sherry had goals that went far beyond the little town of Buffalo. After graduation, she packed up and headed for college as a theater major, planning one day to move to Hollywood and try for her big break as an actress. When she found out she was pregnant with Rob’s child, she reluctantly agreed to marry him, and even though she miscarried the baby, they stayed together through seven unhappy years. Sherry had regularly reminded her husband that he had killed her dreams and ruined her life. He never wanted to do that to anyone again.