Her Mistletoe Miracle. Roz Denny Fox
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wouldn’t have a clue what to do around a newborn. By the time I come back in the spring, the kid’ll be sitting up and there’ll be something substantial to hang on to. They don’t live far from here, Hana. Maybe if you’re not off fighting a fire, I’ll swing by and take you to see the baby, since you sound keen on little kids.”
She gazed beyond him into the distance, and an awkwardness fell between them. “Uh…maybe.”
“My sister wouldn’t mind. You’ll be back here next spring, right?”
She lifted one slender shoulder and Mick’s heart slammed hard up into his throat at the very possibility that she might not be coming back to Montana.
Wingman started racing around and bounding to the end of his leash, barking his head off. A long shadow fell across the couple. A muscular, dark-haired man wearing a frank scowl strode up and shouldered Mick aside.
“Hana, what’s taking so long? Kari said you came to collect our supplies from Mick. Everything else is loaded in my Jeep. Come on, you’re holding us up. I want to make camp at the fir tree break in time to pitch tents for the night.”
Hana didn’t respond to Jess Hargitay’s order.
Mick felt tension drawing tight as if there were a power struggle between the two. Wanting to intercede, Mick tapped Jess on the back. “Cloud Chasers’ office manager said you’d pay cash for this load, Hargitay.” Mick dug a wadded-up charge slip from his shirt pocket and shoved it none too gently against Jess’s chest. “Soon as you cough up the dinero, I’ll haul these supplies to your Jeep.”
There had never been any love lost between the two men who glared at each other now. The dislike had existed before Hana, but intensified whenever Jess caught them talking.
Always cocky and sure of himself, Jess brushed off Mick’s hand. Locking eyes with the pilot, he reached out in a too-familiar manner and filtered his fingers through Hana’s curls. “Hey, babe, I’m kinda short this month. Run back and pass the hat among the rest of our climbers. I’m supplying the wheels and gas to get to the site. The least all of you can do is spring for food, canned heat and long johns.”
Hana opened her mouth as if to refuse. Instead, she moved her head and ducked under the thickly muscled arm, and murmured a final farewell to Mick.
The air crackled in her wake. Neither man spoke, but they continued to take each other’s measure until tall, beanpole thin Kari Dombroski loped up to hand Mick a collection of bills and coins.
He stuffed the money in his pocket without counting it. Brushing past Jess, Mick pulled the supplies out of the Huey.
As if to keep Mick from seeing Hana again, Jess relieved him of most of the load, except for the small stuff, which he snarled at Kari to grab.
Wingman lunged at the end of his leash to bark at Jess, and Mick turned his back on the smoke jumpers and bent to calm the dog. “Nice guy, huh, pooch?” he muttered. “If you could talk, I’d ask you what in hell Hana sees in that jackass.”
The dog whined and licked his face as Mick untied him and hoisted him into the chopper. Before Mick had his harness and the dog’s fastened, the mottled black Jeep kicked up dust farther down the dirt road.
As he lifted off, Mick noted with interest that he and Jess were both headed toward dark clouds building over the mountain range.
He tried not to think of petite Hana Egan climbing craggy ridges topped by snow and already shrouded in a thickening gray mist.
To distract himself, he projected his worry onto Saturday’s potluck. What if the wind was the first taste of the Canadian storm? If it got so bad the party was cancelled, Marlee would be devastated. Oh, his sister made noises about not wanting to attend, but Mick had seen right through her. She wanted the day to be perfect. And Mick wanted that for her, too. She and Wylie deserved to kick back a bit after nursing Dean, Wylie’s son, through Burkitt’s lymphoma last winter. Between worry over Dean, and Pappy’s funeral not long on the heels of Dean’s remission, the whole family needed a bit of fun.
CHAPTER TWO
PINE NEEDLES BLEW out from under the Huey as Mick set the lumbering chopper down on Wylie’s private runway. Mick sat and admired the handsome six-seat turbo prop Merlin housed under an open shed to the left of the runway. He had helped his brother-in-law buy the plane as a surprise for his bride. Wylie had said Marlee had cried happily when she saw it.
When Mick had told Pappy, he’d merely laughed and said he’d known all along that any woman born a Callen would consider a plane an appropriate wedding gift.
Mick thought any woman who lived in remote Montana would think it an excellent gift. But then, he was more practical than sentimental. When he was a kid, this part of Montana was so sparsely settled, ranchers, hunters and the few recreational-sport lodge owners were dependent on small planes to fly them out in an emergency. That was still true, but to a lesser degree. Now, land was being cleared right and left. Whole towns had sprung up in areas where there used to be nothing but forest.
Mick, who was far from a recluse, nevertheless wasn’t sure how he felt about all the growth. But old trail blazers like his grandfather and Finn Glenroe were either dying off or they were selling out to developers. Two weeks ago he’d heard that Finn and Mary, who’d run the isolated Glenroe Fishing Lodge for as long as Mick could remember, had accepted a buyout because Finn’s arthritis had gotten so bad.
Since arriving home to nurse his war wounds, Mick had watched resort developers salivate over Finn’s land. The same outfits sniffed around Cloud Chasers. The day after Pappy’s funeral, Mick received three phone offers on the property. Land grabbers were worse than vultures in Mick’s opinion. Pappy would turn over in his grave if Mick were to sell. And yet…
Refusing to let himself get maudlin again, he took off his earphones in time to hear the last sound of the rotors. No wobble with any of his landings. Replacing the main hub and the lubricant must have done the trick.
“Uncle Mick, Uncle Mick!” He heard his niece, Jo Beth’s, excited cry the minute he cracked the forward door. It was followed by Dean’s whoop and Piston’s wild barking, which prompted a response in kind from Wingman.
Mick unbuckled the wiggling dog from his harness and lifted him down before climbing from the cockpit himself.
Scooping up the dark-haired girl waiting to be hugged, he marveled again at the change a year and acquiring a brother and new dad had wrought on the formerly unhappy girl. Jo Beth, now six, had been pouty and prone to tantrums when Marlee first moved home after the death of her first husband.
His twin had served two tours in the Gulf, supporting the family while Jo Beth’s dad wasted away from lymphoma. Even though Marlee had fallen hard for Wylie Ames, when his son had been diagnosed with a different form of lymph cancer, Marlee had had a rough patch where she almost walked away from love. Surprisingly, Jo Beth handled Dean’s illness better than her mother. The girl never wavered in her belief that her friend would recover. And now his cancer was in remission, and doctors expected it to last.
At the moment Dean looked the picture of health. The boy laughed in delight at being mobbed by the two cavorting dogs—dogs similar in size, and looking enough alike to have common parents, which was possible since they had come from the same shelter only months apart.
“Wingman remembers me,” Dean said, his freckled face split in a wide grin.
“He does at that.” Mick reached down and ruffled the boy’s red hair. “You’re looking good, my man.”
“I grew an inch, too,” the boy boasted. “The doctor told Mom that was excellent news.”
“It sure sounds good to me! So, where are your folks?” Whenever Mick had come to visit, one or the other parent accompanied the kids to the airstrip.
Jo Beth pointed. “Mama’s in the kitchen saying words Grandmother Rose wouldn’t like one bit.”
Jo Beth’s paternal