Free Home for the Holidays by Ros Baxter Page A

to her feet.
    Freed from the narrow frame of a slightly-open door, Jim Canning was an even more intimidating presence. “I hollered as I came in,” he said.
    “But how the hell did you get in?” Beth thought again about the magnificent girth of that door.
    “Back door,” Jim grinned. “S’open.  Just walked right in.  You should be more careful, y’know, Lizzie.”
    Just like a Canning boy to take advantage of an opening.  Of all the cheek.
    “My name’s Beth,” she spat.  “And you can just walk right out again, Jim Canning.  I already said you can’t come in.”
    Jim shrugged lazily, rolling broad shoulders. “Ever heard of ‘howdy neighbor’?”
    “Howdy, James Canning ,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and pressing her lips together, hard.  “What do you want that was so important you had to stroll right on in?”
    Jim shrugged again.  He looked like some kind of creature down from the mountains, standing in the fussy little sitting room. His hair was long, and he wore his beard shaggy. He was too tall – they were all too damned tall, that band of wayward brothers – and too broad of shoulder and long of leg and just too damned Canning to be standing in her mother's sitting room at all. He was wearing boots that belonged on a giant and a coat the size of Texas. Snow was melting in his dark chocolate hair.
    Oh no. She was already comparing him to food.
    Jim Canning had featured in her fantasies for way too long for her to be mixing him up with any of her appetites.
    Her stomach rumbled as she looked at him, and she fought the urge to run.
    Somehow, she already knew this was going to end badly.
    She wondered if she should just get out, quit while she was ahead.  She was back in Glory for three short days.  Didn’t matter that it was Christmas.  Her father had been terse and inconvenient in life and he was just as inconvenient in death.
    “Well now you see, Lizzie, I don’t have a lotta choice.”  Jim shook his head, shaking snow all over her mother’s antique rug.  Only a boy who’d grown up without a mother would wear his boots inside.
    Beth faced up to him, drawing herself as tall and intimidating as her five feet two would allow.  “Why the hell not?”
    “My plough’s stuck,” Jim said, smiling with a little downward slant which was more appealing than it should have been as he stood there dripping on her mother’s rug. Somewhere, Marlene Gibson was rolling in a well-upholstered grave.
    “Your plough?” Beth shook her head quickly, trying to grab hold of all the pieces of this.  “I thought you’d gone and become the local Donald Trump.  You know, now they let you out of reform school.”  She couldn’t help the nasty smile that slipped onto her face.
    Jim laughed, and the sound was even lower and sweeter than she remembered.  That laugh that used to make her mother cross herself and mutter lock up your daughters .  “Yeah well, one of those businesses is machinery,” he said.
    It was her turn to laugh.  “Doesn’t seem like a great business model,” she said.  “Drivin’ a plough.”
    Jim finally started to look satisfyingly annoyed.  His full, pretty mouth went kind of tense and he cracked his knuckles noisily.  “I don’t,” he said. “Normally.  All the boys are on break and I’m doing it as a favor.”
    The words settled like acid in her stomach.  “I don’t need any favors,” she said.
    “It’s not a favor for you, darl’n,” Jim said, lifting his hands and opening his palms like a man who hadn’t been given a lot of choice.  “It’s for Pa.  He didn’t want you to get snowed in on Christmas Eve.”
    “Your grandfather?” Beth felt giddy, and she drew her dressing gown tighter around herself.
    “He always had a soft spot for you,” Jim shrugged.  “And when he heard about your…” Jim’s eyes narrowed like he was remembering something. “Beg my pardon, Lizzie.  I should have said something earlier.