Page 6 of Colorado Christmas Carol

Mellie, all excited, was waiting for Essa in the lobby at exactly five minutes to four. But Duke wasn’t there.

“Where’s your dad?” Essa asked, looking around.

“On the phone in our room,” Mellie said. “But he said he’d only be a minute. You look nice,” she added in a faintly surprised tone.

“It’s the way I usually dress,” Essa protested, glancing down at her jeans and Save the Cobras T-shirt, with sneakers.

“Your hair,” came the amused reply.

“Oh.” Essa had left it long. It came to her waist in back, pale blond and thick and beautiful. She wasn’t sure why she’d worn it down. She usually didn’t.

“It looks pretty,” the child told her, smiling from ear to ear.

“Thank you,” she replied gently, brushing back a stray strand of Mellie’s blond hair. “Yours always looks pretty.”

“Thank you,” was the quick reply.

“Hello there,” Dean said, coming down the staircase. “Both of you down here?”

“Yes, Daddy’s got a surprise for me! And I wanted Essa to come, too.” She lowered her voice. “Daddy wasn’t pleased,” she confided.

Essa laughed. “Yes, well, we’re not exactly sociable,” she agreed.

Dean shook his head and chuckled. “I’m sorry you couldn’t come today,” he told Mellie. He cocked his head. “You’re a nice child,” he added in an odd tone. He glanced at Essa. “And you’re a nice woman. Not just nice. You have . . . you’re odd. I don’t mean that in a demeaning way . . .”

“I am odd,” Essa said softly and with a smile. She studied him. “And I think you are, too. In a nice way. You have a . . . a sad background. But it’s nothing you can’t overcome.”

He looked downcast. “That might have been possible,” he said, “if I’d met you two sooner. But there are things we have to do that we don’t want to do.”

“I understand,” she said, still smiling kindly at him.

He sighed and smiled back. “You really are exceptional. Don’t think too badly of me in the future,” he said, surprisingly. “I didn’t know the right people at the right time. It might have changed everything.”

“I see.”

“You don’t,” he corrected. “But you will.” He smiled at Mellie. “I’ve enjoyed knowing you. I’m sad and happy that you couldn’t come with me today. You’re a sweet child. I hope you have a wonderful life.”

“Thank you. I think you’re nice, too,” Mellie said warmly.

Dean looked torn. He glanced at Essa. “I think maybe her dad has a sixth sense,” he commented. He smiled. “Or maybe you do. What a lucky thing. Or maybe it’s just fate. See you.”

He left them with a wave.

“That was a strange conversation,” Mellie told Essa, moving closer to her.

“It was,” Essa said, spooked by it. The man was saying a lot without saying anything.

They were still discussing it in whispers when Mellie’s dad came down the stairs. He was wearing his usual indifferent expression, except that it changed to a tight-lipped one when he spotted Essa.

She glared at him and didn’t say a word. He glared back.

“Essa is my friend. You don’t really mind that I asked her to come with us?” Mellie asked in a plaintive tone.

He took a deep breath. “Of course not.” He glanced at Essa. “I thought you were going to another dig with your friend Dean?”

“He invited Mellie,” she said, “and then he invited me. But Mellie said you had someplace special for her to go that was secret. And she wanted me to come.”

He scowled as he pulled out his car keys. “Why were the two of you whispering?”

“It was something Dean said,” Essa told him. “He said you must have some sort of sixth sense. We didn’t understand what he meant.”

“And he said he was happy and sad that we couldn’t go with him,” Mellie added.

Duke knew something, Essa could tell. But she didn’t question aloud the sudden change of expression that he hid very quickly. Obviously he wasn’t sharing any information with the enemy, she thought wickedly.

He looked down at her with a strange expression. “Your hair,” he said. “It’s very long.”

“Too long for my profession,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. “It caught on fire once, before I learned to put it up before I went into a kitchen.”

He actually laughed, but he covered it up at once by coughing. “Well, you won’t be near any fires today.”

She and Mellie followed him out to his car. Mellie quickly claimed the back seat. An amused Duke insisted she move to the front seat. He climbed in and glanced at both of them to make sure their seat belts were on before he put on his.

“I always wear a seat belt,” Essa remarked. “It saved the life of one of my friends. He was in the passenger seat in a wreck. It was the only thing that kept him from going through the windshield. His mother said he had bruises where the seat belt dug into him.”

“Better bruises than dead,” Duke replied as he drove out onto the highway.

“Where are we going, Daddy?” Mellie asked excitedly.

He glanced at his daughter and smiled secretively. “Wait and see.”

“Oh, Daddy!” she wailed. And then she grinned.

* * *

They drove to a neighboring town, about halfway between Benton and Denver, to, of all things, an ice-skating rink.

“Oh, Daddy, you remembered!” Mellie exclaimed, and hugged him tight. “I thought you said you hated ice-skating now and would never do it these days!”

“I didn’t say that.” He noticed her glowering at him. “Well, I didn’t mean it, when I said that,” he corrected. He handed her a bill. “Go rent some skates.”

“Aren’t you going, too?” she asked Essa.

“I don’t imagine the would-be novelist here could stand up on them,” Duke said with a bland expression.

Essa just looked at him with an expression that could have stopped a charging bull. She went with Mellie to get skates.

“Can you really skate?” Mellie asked. “’ Cause Daddy gets real snarky with people who don’t do it well. He has his own skates, too.”

“I get by,” Essa replied, not adding that she’d won a regional championship while she was still in high school. She also had skates, but she’d had no idea they were going to an ice rink on this surprise trip for Mellie.

“Okay then.”

“Are you good at this?” she asked Mellie.

“Not as good as Daddy thinks I should be.” She sighed. “He and Mommy used to skate all the time.”

They both sat down to put on their skates. Mellie noticed how meticulous Essa was about lacing up the skates; it was something a beginner might not even know how to do.

“At least these have toe stops,” Essa muttered, “but they’ve really been worn. I guess I’ll escape blisters. Some, anyway.” She laughed.

“You do know how to skate,” Mellie said enthusiastically.

“I might. Just don’t mention it to your dad, okay?”

“Okay!” Mellie agreed. It sounded like great fun, helping her new friend get one up on her dad. So few people ever did.

* * *

They went out onto the ice and were surprised to find Duke already there.

“I thought we might have to pick your friend up off the ice. Several times,” he murmured, waving the red flag at the bull.

Essa smiled. “You’re so kind . . . oops,” she said, and pretended to slip. She recovered her balance. “These things aren’t too stable, are they?” she asked. “Gosh, it’s a lot different from roller skates.”

“Yes, it is,” Duke replied with a very superior smile.

“Well, no time like the present to get started, right?” She leaned forward just a little, her legs in position. “Somebody want to give me a little push . . . ?”

Duke gave her barrier a gentle push. She skated around the rink, very fast, and because there were only a couple of people skating, and at the other end of the rink, she jumped at top speed, and went into a triple salchow, followed by a toe loop, and finally ending in the unique layback that had helped earn her the medal in district competition.

She skated off the ice, out of breath. “Wow, thanks for the push,” she told a wide-eyed, silent, blond man. “It sure helped!”

“That was awesome!” Mellie exclaimed. “How did you learn to do that?”

“Years of practice. I won a district competition medal about four years ago.”

“Why did you quit?” Duke asked.

“Both my parents died of a virus three years ago,” she said quietly. “I didn’t have the money to go into higher competitions. And I was too busy with . . . other matters.” She choked back tears.

“Any siblings?” he asked.

She shook her head, fighting for control. “Just me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and it sounded genuine. “That would have been rough, both at once.”

She took a long breath. “It’s never easy, losing someone you love. It’s worse when there are two of them. But they went together.” She smiled sadly. “You almost never saw them apart, except when they were at work.”

“What did they do?” he asked.

“Dad was a deputy sheriff. Mom worked as a dispatcher for 911.”

“Well.” He actually sounded impressed.

“Dad always wanted to get a novel published. I helped him work on them, but he never did.” She looked up at Duke. “If I ever make it, it will be like he made it, too. If that makes any sense.”

“It does,” he told her, and for once, he wasn’t snarky.

“Aren’t you going to skate anymore?” Mellie asked Essa.

“I was just catching my breath.” She glanced at Duke. “I forgot to ask—can you skate?” she asked, and with a really snarky smile.

“I do all right,” he said easily. He pushed away from the barrier, sped around the rink as she had, jumped, and landed a triple salchow, a double toe loop, and a very nifty layback.

His cheeks red from exertion, his dark eyes glittering, he glanced at Essa’s open-mouthed surprise. “I love skating.”

“Daddy was asked to go to the Olympics, but Mommy got sick, and he couldn’t go,” Mellie said softly.

“I’m so sorry,” Essa said with genuine feeling. “You really are an awesome skater.”

“Thanks,” he said, and glared at his daughter for saying something so personal to a virtual stranger.

“She’s not like most people,” Mellie said surprisingly. “She’s . . . well . . .”

“Odd,” Essa supplied. “I don’t fit in with other people. I sort of sense things about people. It makes them uncomfortable.”