Christmastime Courtship Read online

  “You remember what to do, Jason,” she prompted. “We practiced.”

  “Oh yeah.” Small fingers pulled the remote a little closer and then pushed one of the arrows. The back of his bed began to rise. He beamed, looking very proud of himself. “I got it right.”

  “Of course you did.” She tousled his hair affectionately. “That’s because you’re such a smart boy.”

  Jason’s chocolate brown eyes shifted to look at the policeman who had come to visit him. “Is that a real badge?” he asked, pointing toward Colin’s chest.

  He glanced down and nodded. “It sure is.”

  Jason looked at him hopefully. “Is it okay if I touch it?”

  Colin came closer and leaned over the boy’s bed. “Go ahead.”

  Small fingers reached out and very slowly and reverently traced the outline of the badge.

  “Wow,” Jason murmured. “When I grow up, I’m gonna be a police officer just like you.”

  No one had ever said anything like that to him before—since he didn’t interact with children—and Colin found himself truly moved, more than he thought possible. Especially since the boy was talking so positively about a future he might not live to see.

  “And you’ll be a really great police officer. Maybe even a police detective, if you study very hard,” Miranda told the little boy. She could see that Colin had been affected. It wasn’t that she wasn’t as moved as Colin. She had just learned to handle her own onslaught of emotions so they wouldn’t get in the way of her being the best possible nurse she could be for the sake of the children.

  “I’ll study real hard,” Jason promised. He sounded sleepy. And then he yawned. “I’m tired, Miranda.”

  “Well, then I suggest you’d better get some sleep,” she coaxed.

  It was obvious that he was trying not to let his eyes close. “But then I’ll miss seeing Officer Colin,” the boy protested.

  “Tell you what,” Colin said. “I’ll come by again and see you before I leave.”

  “And will you be back tomorrow, too?” the little boy asked. It was clear that he was losing his battle to keep his eyes open.

  “Not tomorrow,” Colin answered honestly. “But I’ll come back soon.”

  “Promise?” Jason asked sleepily.

  “I promise,” Colin told him, saying the words as solemnly as if he were talking to an adult.

  But the boy was already asleep again.

  Miranda moved the covers up higher on Jason’s small body. “That was very nice of you,” she told Colin with genuine warmth.

  He shrugged. “I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Jason might argue with you about that—if he could argue,” she added, looking at the boy with affection. She glanced at her watch. “C’mon, we need to spread that charm of yours around before your coach turns into a pumpkin.”

  Colin shook his head, mystified. “I never understand half of what you’re talking about.”

  Miranda laughed. “You might just be better off that way.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  But Miranda didn’t hear him. She was on her smartphone, busy summoning the other nurses.

  Chapter Twelve

  In less than three minutes after Miranda finished making her call, the hallway outside Jason’s room was alive with activity.

  As Colin looked on in amazement, nurses and orderlies pushed children in wheelchairs and patiently guided others who were using walkers, crutches or braving the way to the recreational room on their own under the watchful eye of an aide or a parent.

  To Colin, it looked as if an organized mass evacuation was having a dry run. The whole thing seemed incredible to him, given the average age of the children. However, rather than leaving the building, everyone was going to the large recreation room that currently held the Christmas tree.

  Glancing back, Miranda realized that the “guest of honor” directly responsible for this mass migration was still standing just outside Jason’s doorway. Determined to change that, she took Colin’s hand in hers.

  “C’mon,” she coaxed.

  The expression on his face was rather uncertain as he took in the masses. “That’s an awful lot of kids,” he told her.

  She gently tugged on his hand. “They don’t bite,” she said cheerfully. “And having them all together in one place means you won’t have to repeat yourself. You can say things just once.”

  The uncertain expression deepened. “What things?”

  Miranda had nothing specific to offer, but she was confident that issue would be resolved naturally.

  “It’ll come to you,” she promised. “And the kids’ll probably drown you in questions once they get started. C’mon,” she coaxed again, drawing him down the hallway. “You’re not afraid of a bunch of little kids.”

  She said it as if she believed it, Colin thought. And it wasn’t the kids he was afraid of; he was afraid of inadvertently saying something that might wind up hurting one of them.

  But now that she had started this parade of hospitalized children, like some sort of modern-day Pied Piper, he couldn’t very well hang back and watch from the sidelines. The sidelines had virtually disappeared in any case, as Colin found himself surrounded on all sides by children streaming into the rec room.

  “Kids,” Miranda said in a slightly louder voice, when the commotion had died down and the children had all settled in. “This is my friend Officer Kirby. When I told him that some of you had never met a policeman or seen one up close before, he insisted on coming by to say hello.” Turning to look at Colin over her shoulder, she grinned at him and said, “Say hello, Officer Kirby.”

  On the spot and feeling decidedly awkward, Colin murmured, “Hello.”

  The moment he did, a cacophony of “Hellos,” mostly out of sync, echoed back at him.

  Pattie, a little girl with curly red hair seated in a wheelchair in the front row, was the first to speak up. “Are you really a policeman?” she asked.

  “Yes.” And then, doing his best not to sound so wooden, Colin added, “I am.”

  The two extra words seemed to open up the floodgates. Suddenly he heard questions coming at him from all directions.

  “Do you have a gun?” one boy in the back asked.

  “Do you shoot people?” a boy beside him added.

  “How many bad guys have you caught?” a little blonde girl ventured, while a smaller girl with almost violet eyes shyly asked him if he was “a good cop.”

  Taking pity on him, Miranda spoke up, hoping that the piece of information she told them would somehow help the children to get a better image of the kind of police work he did. “Officer Kirby rides a motorcycle.”

  A dark-haired boy with crutches beside his chair cried, “Cool!”

  A little girl to Colin’s left asked, “Can you do a wheelie?”

  “Did you ever fall off your motorcycle?” one little boy wearing a brace asked. “I fell off my bicycle once and broke my neck bone.”

  “Your collarbone,” Miranda corrected gently.

  “Oh yeah, my collarbone,” he amended. He was still waiting for an answer. “Did you ever fall off?” he asked again.

  “No,” Colin answered. “I never have.”

  “Did it take you a long time to learn how to ride your motorcycle?” a little girl sitting near the Christmas tree asked.

  As he began fielding the questions a little more comfortably, more and more came his way. Before he knew it, Colin found himself immersed in a give-and-take dialogue with approximately twenty-five children of varying ages, confined to the hospital ward for a number of different reasons.

  He was surprised, given the relative seriousness of their conditions, how eager the children all seemed to hear
about his job and what he did on his patrols.

  Some asked run-of-the-mill questions, like how long it had taken him to become a police officer. Others wanted to know what he thought about while he was out on patrol. Still others asked totally unrelated questions.

  The queries came one after another, some voiced eagerly, others shyly, but there were no awkward silences. Everyone had questions, usually more than one. Or two.

  Pleased, Miranda stood back, happy to see the children so caught up in their visitor. She kept a watchful eye on Colin, as well, ready to step in if it got to be too much for him. But as the minutes went by, she was fairly certain that he was doing fine. He didn’t need her to bail him out.

  When the motorcycle officer answered a little girl named Shelly’s question if he’d ever had a pet hamster—he hadn’t—Miranda finally decided he’d had enough for one day and stepped in.

  “I’m afraid Officer Kirby is going to have to be going,” she told the children. The news was met with youthful voices melding in a mournful “Oh,” tinged with surprise as well as disappointment.

  “Can he come back?” the girl with the curly red hair, Pattie, asked. Then, not waiting for Miranda to reply, she took her question straight to the horse’s mouth. “Can you, Officer Kirby?”

  “If I get the chance,” Colin answered diplomatically.

  Progress, Miranda thought. She’d expected him to make an excuse outright. The fact that he hadn’t, that he’d said something half hopeful in response, made her feel that he was beginning to come around and see the light.

  He was starting to see the children as people.

  “When?” A persistent little boy wearing a wool cap over his bare head looked at his new hero hopefully.

  “When his sergeant can spare him again,” Miranda told the child, grasping at the first handy excuse that came to her. The look in Colin’s eyes when their glances met assured her she’d come up with a good one. “Now, everybody, say goodbye to Officer Kirby.”

  A swell of voices, more enthusiastic since the kids had gotten to spend some time with him, chorused loudly, “Goodbye, Officer Kirby,” while others added, “Come back soon!”

  Putting her hand on Colin’s elbow, Miranda took control of the situation. She gently guided him out of the room. They swung by Jason’s room and he spent a little time there.

  After that, Miranda walked him to the elevators.

  “Well, you survived,” she observed happily, offering him a pleased smile.

  “I guess I did, didn’t I?” There was no missing the relief, as well as the surprise, in his voice. Colin paused, looking back over his shoulder in the general direction of the rec room. “Are all those kids...you know...?”

  Somehow, even though he’d spent more than an hour talking with them, Colin couldn’t get himself to say the word. Saying it made it that much more of an evil reality.

  Miranda seemed to know exactly what he was trying to ask her. If the children were terminal.

  “Treatments have greatly improved over the last five years. A lot of those kids have more of a fighting chance to beat the odds and get well, or at least have their diseases go into remission. Meanwhile, every day they have is special to them, and we all have to make the most of it.

  “They really enjoyed having you come,” Miranda went on. “Thank you for letting me bully you into coming to the hospital to talk to them.”

  “Is that what you call it?” he asked, amusement curving his mouth. “Bullying?”

  “No,” she admitted honestly, raising her eyes to his. “I don’t. But that’s what I figure you’d call it, so I thought I’d put it into terms that you could relate to more easily.”

  Her eyes were at it again, he thought. Doing that funny little laughing, twinkly thing that captivated him.

  The elevator arrived and he put his hand against one of the doors to keep it from closing. He searched for words to answer her and finally said, “Maybe I’ll let you bully me into it again soon.”

  There was no other way to describe it but to say that he saw joy leap into her face. “Just say the word,” she told him.

  Doing his best not to stare, Colin nodded. “Maybe I will,” he said.

  Stepping inside the elevator, he dropped his hand. Her smile was the last thing he saw before the doors shut.

  * * *

  During the remainder of the day, after he returned to the precinct and went on duty, Colin tried to tell himself that the heat he was experiencing radiating through his chest and his gut was nothing more than a case of heartburn. But he had a strong suspicion that even if he consumed an entire bottle of antacid tablets, that wouldn’t have any effect on the warmth that was pervading him.

  He should have been annoyed. That pushy woman had invaded his world and messed with his routine. She’d completely messed up the natural order of things.

  But somehow, try as he might, he couldn’t drum up the slightest bit of irritation. To make matters worse, he caught himself thinking about her.

  A lot.

  Thinking about her and wondering if he wasn’t inadvertently sealing his own doom if he just happened to stop by her place and see her again sometime in the near future.

  Like tonight.

  Telling himself that it was the holiday season and that everyone was guilty of experiencing some sort of generosity of spirit—why try to be different?—he didn’t go home after his shift was over. Instead, he hung around the precinct for a while, killing time by catching up on the paperwork that was the bane of every police officer’s existence.

  And when he was finished and he’d made sure to file all the reports before leaving, Colin decided to play the odds. For this to work out, Miranda needed to be home instead of one of the two places she volunteered.

  He had less than a fifty-fifty chance of finding her there, but he went and picked up a pizza anyway.

  With the tantalizing aroma from the pizza box filling the interior of his vehicle, Colin made one more quick stop, at a pet store that was along the way, and then drove on to his final destination, Miranda’s house.

  He wasn’t aware of holding his breath that last half mile until he found himself releasing it.

  Her car was parked in the driveway.

  Apparently, Miranda was done doing good deeds for the day, Colin thought happily as he parked his vehicle at the curb and got out.

  When he passed her car on the way to her front door, he felt heat coming from her engine.

  She must have gotten home just minutes ago, he thought with a faint smile.

  Juggling the extra-large pizza, Colin rang the doorbell. Inside, Lola instantly began barking. The familiar sound was oddly comforting, though he couldn’t begin to explain why. He was afraid that if he thought about it too much, he’d turn right around and go home. Coming here like this carried many implications, and he wasn’t sure he was ready to face them.

  The best way to deal with those implications at the moment was just to ignore them. Ignore them and focus on the hungry feeling in the pit of his stomach. The one that involved not having eaten.

  When Miranda opened the door she was obviously more than a little surprised to see him.

  “Hi, what’s up?”

  “Um, I thought that since you made me dinner that other time, I should reciprocate.” Rather than continue—because he felt himself about to trip over his tongue—he held up the cardboard box. “Pizza,” he added needlessly, since the aroma—as well as the shape and the label—clearly gave away what he had brought.

  “You made me a pizza?” Miranda asked, amused.

  Her question threw him for a second. “What? No. I picked this up on the way over here. I guarantee you wouldn’t want to eat any pizza that I made,” he told her with a self-depreciating laugh.

  “Oh, it couldn’t be all that bad,�
� she stated, ushering Colin in and then closing the door behind him.

  Lola came bounding over the moment he walked in. The animal’s attention was totally focused on him and, more specifically, the aromatic box he was carrying.

  Miranda caught the dog’s collar to keep the German shepherd from knocking Colin over. “She’s happy to see you.”

  Colin harbored no such illusions. “She smells the pizza,” he said.

  “And you,” Miranda added. “Dogs have incredibly keen senses of smell—and they can separate one thing from another. The pizza’s the draw,” she agreed. “But Lola clearly likes you.”

  Colin made no acknowledgment of that statement one way or the other. Instead, he took a small paper bag out of his jacket pocket. The sack had the insignia of a local pet store chain embossed on it. Thinking ahead, he had stopped to pick up several doggie treats before coming by. At the very least, he’d wanted to be able to distract the dog for a few minutes so that he and Miranda could have their pizza in peace.

  “I brought these for her,” he announced, passing the bag of treats to Miranda.

  Opening it, she looked inside and then smiled broadly at him.

  “I think that before the evening is over, Lola is going to be madly in love with you.”

  Lola had begun to nudge the paper bag with her nose before Miranda finished her sentence.

  “I was just hoping to distract her long enough for us to eat the pizza,” Colin explained.

  Miranda laughed. “In that case, you should have bought out the entire pet shop. Have you ever watched a dog eat? It’s like watching a furry vacuum cleaner. The treats’ll be gone before we have a chance to sit down.

  “But that’s okay,” she assured Colin. “I’ve been working with her and she’s getting to be a little more well behaved than she was.” Her grin widened as she added, “We might even get to eat an entire slice apiece before she starts begging for a bite—or ten. The trick,” Miranda told him with a wink, “is not to give in.”

  Easier said than done, Colin thought. The dog was already looking up at her with soulful eyes.