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.” Dixie tucked her thermos under one arm and flipped the door latch.“Aw, come on, lady—”A blast of icy wind wrenched the door from her hands, flung it wide, and peppered her skin with snow and sleet like gravel.Turning her face from the wind’s force, she wrestled the door shut, then fought her way down the sidewalk to the front of the diner.She had parked away from the windows to avoid curious eyes.Glancing back now through the swirling snow, she could barely see the car.Surely no one would notice Parker Dann in the backseat.In this squealing wind, if he yelled, no one would hear him, either.A wave of heat and the smell of hamburgers greeted her when she stepped inside the diner.Her taste buds snapped to attention.Around midnight, she’d stopped at a drive-through burger stand.She hadn’t eaten since.Raking snow from her hair, she scanned the diner.The ambient noises dropped a notch.Dishes slowed their clatter; voices leveled to a hum.Local citizens sized up the wayfaring stranger.A somewhat crooked Christmas tree decked with tinsel and candy canes twinkled in one corner, while Elvis crooned “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” on a vintage jukebox.To be home for Christmas, Dixie would have to cross three states and half of Texas in less than thirty hours.She sighed and slid onto a stool at the counter as she checked out her fellow customers.Two young couples sat at a square table across the room, thick down-filled ski jackets padding their chair backs.At the counter, a pair of middle-aged men in plaid flannel shirts drank coffee, and in a booth on the back wall, an elderly couple had just finished lunch.They shoved their plates aside and stared openly at Dixie.The waitress, twenty-odd, with bouncy chestnut hair, pushed through a swinging door from the kitchen.Her gingham uniform had a loose button dangling from the top buttonhole, a long run marred her stockings, and an artistically penned card Scotch-taped to her name tag said “Smile, it’s almost Christmas.” She set plates of food in front of the plaid-shirted men, then turned a ready smile at Dixie.“Yes’m.What can I get for you?”Dixie eyed the wall-hung menu.“Four burgers, two orders of fries, a large milk, and a thermos of black coffee to go.” She didn’t plan to stop again anytime soon.“I’d also like a coffee to drink while I wait.”The waitress wrote it all down, then flashed the smile.“We have some fresh cherry pie.You guys want to take some of that along, too?”Dixie checked the stool beside her to make sure she was alone.So much for anonymity.Everybody in town had probably watched the Mustang pull in, spotted the Texas tags even through the snow, and, with their keen country eyes, noticed Dann in the backseat.Smalltown folks didn’t miss much.“Cherry pie sounds real good,” Dixie said.The waitress jotted that on her pad, too, and scurried off to the kitchen.Minutes later she was back with Dixie’s coffee.“We got a room vacant if you guys want to bed down for the storm.Weatherman says the roads north of Hillsboro are closed.Expect they’ll be closed farther south inside an hour.”“Hillsboro? I just came through there.The roads aren’t closed.”“Yes’m, they are now.Storm’s coming in fast.” She slid two generous slabs of pie into a foam carrier.One of the men at the counter said, “Your first time up this way, is it?” His flannel shirt was red and green plaid.“First time and a quick trip at that,” Dixie told him.“I was hoping to make Omaha before stopping for the night.” Driving up early that morning, even with light snowfall, and the muddy remnants of earlier snowfalls along the shoulders, the roads had been clear.She couldn’t believe the highway would shut down completely.“Blue Norther’s pushing a ton of snow and ice down from Canada,” the man said.“Wet front’s moving up from the southwest.Be the devil of a mess when they get together—”“—and tougher’n the devil to outrun,” said the man beside him in blue flannel.“You got chains for that Mustang, have you?”“Chains?” Dixie had left sixty-degree weather in Houston the night before.Even if there’d been time, she wouldn’t have thought to bring chains.Blue plaid shook his head doubtfully.“Those roads will turn to ice before you get five miles.”In Texas, a favorite small-town pastime was teasing the tourists.She couldn’t help wondering if these South Dakotans were pulling her leg.“I don’t suppose you have a spare set of chains I could purchase, do you?”The two men looked at each other and shook their heads.“Harold would have some up at the Texaco,” said red shirt.“Only he shut down at noon.”“Good set of snow tires might do,” said blue shirt.“You guys have snow tires on that Mustang, do you?”Dixie was beginning to regret she’d even stopped.Ten minutes wasted here would’ve taken her ten miles farther south.But the snow snaking across the road in hypnotic waves had started her nodding off.“No snow tires,” Dixie admitted.Her tires were the best for driving through mud and sand [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]