Authors note: This is my third story in my Hot Tails in Oak Hills series; the first two are The Reunion and Claiming Emily. I wanted to do something different, so this one is a lot longer. It's divided into three parts. I hope all of you enjoy my next installment. Merry Christmas. GEV
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Holly, Snowflakes and a Christmas Angel
December 24th
Gabriel Michael Grigori hated the holidays, especially Christmas. It wasn't the hustle and bustle that got to him, he could handle that in stride, it was everything else about the time of year, the joy, the merriment, the time spent with family and friends, which got to him the most. Because it was exactly five years ago to the day that his world came crashing down around him.
He had been thirty-five at the time and living in Portland, married to his high school sweetheart with a nine-year old girl that was the spitting image of her mother with big brown eyes and shiny brown curls. Everything was perfect. He had a good job as a police officer with the city and was already moving up in the ranks, his wife worked out of their small two-bedroom apartment so she could stay at home with their daughter, and they were finally on their way to having enough money saved for their dream house in the suburbs with the picket fence and large back yard. He had volunteered to work Christmas Eve because it paid double time, the extra money was going towards the new house, and he was out on patrol when his daughter called, wanting to have a cup of hot chocolate with him before she went to bed. Gabe's partner laughed, said he completely understood, and they headed towards the coffee shop where they were going to meet his wife and daughter.
A call for a robbery in progress had come in and since they were the closest, they were the first to respond with a second car on the way but the severe weather that had the city locked down with heavy snow and ice had caused them to get there a little too late, the thieves fleeing the scene in a hailstorm of bullets when they heard the sirens of the approaching cars. Gabe and his partner went in pursuit while the other two officers responded to the scene. It wasn't until after they had the suspects in custody, and they had returned to the scene of the robbery, when Gabe had been informed that his wife and daughter were two of the innocent bystanders on the sidewalk at the time of the shooting and had been rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Gabe had spent the next twelve hours at the hospital, pacing the floor of the surgery waiting room, praying for his wife and daughter, his heart heavy with fear when the trauma surgeon finally appeared to give him the prognosis, but the outcome was bleak. His daughter had died on the table and his wife had been moved to intensive care under the careful watch of the nurses as she fought for her own life after losing a lot of blood, part of her liver and her spleen. He cried for several hours, sitting at her bedside and when she finally regained consciousness around eleven o'clock Christmas evening, when she weakly asked where her daughter was, he told her and she took one long, hard look at him, told him to get out and that she never wanted to see him again, turning her head on the pillow and closing her eyes as she started sobbing. He left the hospital, only to return the next day and she still told him the same thing. He begged and pleaded, tried to reason with her but she wasn't having any of his excuses, he was the reason their daughter was dead, and she was lying in a hospital bed in severe pain.
The third time he went to see her; she kicked him out permanently, telling the nurses he wasn't welcome in her room anymore. So, after that final rejection, he never bothered going back to see her and a week later he received divorce papers from her attorney. She had blamed him for everything and no matter how much he tried to make peace with her, there was no way she would ever forgive him for not being home that night like he should have been, because if he had stayed home, their daughter's life wouldn't have been taken so early all because she wanted to have a cup of hot cocoa with her daddy before she went to bed while he kept everyone in the city safe. He signed the papers without argument and a month later he left Portland a broken and disheartened man.
He settled in Oak Hills, a small town two hours south of Portland, bought a house that had never been finished by the previous owners and spent his free time working on his new residence to keep his mind occupied, but the death of his daughter still haunted him. He had applied for the recently vacated position as corporal on the town's police department, signing on with them a week after moving. The town had a much lower crime rate than the city and when he was on duty, he mainly patrolled the town, wrote a few traffic violations and responded to emergency calls, which mainly consisted of traffic accidents and bar fights, unlike the homicides and armed robberies that occurred in the larger city on a weekly basis.
After a year he started to settle into the small-town life, finding out that it was a lot less stressful than the big city and he was starting to relax more, starting to move on with his life, but never really thought about dating anyone again. But still, whenever the holidays rolled around, he did everything he could to block those nights out of his mind, which usually meant working all day long and well into the night, whether it be in the weight room he had in his spare room or out on patrol, keeping the residents of the small town safe because God knows he couldn't keep his own family safe that night. And now five years had passed; he had received a promotion, was forty and still alone.
And it was Christmas Eve yet again.
Gabe shifted the bulk of his muscular six-foot one-inch frame in the driver's seat of his solid black Ford Explorer police interceptor and reached up, rubbing his tired eyes. His day had started off fine, no serious calls, no fender-benders despite the rush of the holiday, so he just patrolled the town, did several welfare checks on some of the elderly residents that were still recovering from the last heavy rainstorm a few months ago, stopped to shoot a few hoops with a couple boys that were playing in the youth center's side lot and then parked in the empty lot of the insurance office where he had an unobstructed view of the intersection to the interstate. He typed up his reports in his laptop while he watched traffic, chatted for a while with the other officer that was on duty and munched on the trail mix he had stashed in the SUV. He looked at his watch. It was almost five o'clock.
He had been on shift for the past ten hours and still had two more to go before he could go back to the station to print out and file his daily reports with the clerk before going home to his empty, lonely house. He needed caffeine if he was expected to make it through the rest of his shift, so he shifted the vehicle into gear and pulled into the twenty-four-hour coffee stand a few minutes before they closed for the holiday and ordered a large caramel mocha with an extra shot of espresso, tipping the barista five dollars as she handed him his coffee with a smile and told him to have a safe evening. He took the coffee from her, returning her smile and took a cautionary sip as he pulled away from the drive-up window, deciding to kill the next two hours with one last patrol of the town and possibly the outskirts.
He put the cup in the holder between the seats and pulled back onto the main road, looking off into the distance. The gray skies were starting to turn dark and the biting cold of the winter night would soon be closing in. The forecast had called for a light snowfall and since he had been living in the small town, he had concluded that when the weather service predicted snow on the valley floor, that didn't include Winema Valley. Rain, yes. Freezing temperatures, yes. Snow, highly unlikely. And never anything as severe as what he had to deal with when he lived in Portland with the wind whipping in through the gorge and weeks of harsh snow and hazardous ice.
He turned left at the stop sign and drove through the town, turning up the heater to take the chill off the night. Traffic would be picking up soon as people got off work early for Christmas Eve and started to head home and he needed to be extra alert on the last leg of his patrol, because even if he dreaded the happiest time of the year, there was an entire town that didn't and it was his duty to make sure that there were no accidents so everyone could have a wonderful and merry holiday even if he locked himself inside his house for the rest of the night and all of the next day.
Gabe turned on the windshield wipers as the first scattering of snowflakes started to flutter down from the dark sky; the weather service prediction had been accurate for once and the falling snow couldn't have started at a better time. All the businesses except for the two all-night gas stations and the twenty-four-hour convenience store that was owned by foreigners that didn't celebrate the holiday were closed for the rest of the night and all day tomorrow, leaving the town silent and secure as the snowflakes started to fall, blanketing the ground with a light dusting of pristine snow. His patrol was just about over, and he started to head back towards the station to sit down in the warmth of the building so he could print out his reports for the day when he caught sight of the flashing hazard lights coming from a vehicle stranded next to the on-ramp that led to the southbound entrance of the interstate.
He quickly turned an illegal U-turn in the middle of the intersection, flipped on the red and blues atop the roof of the Explorer and rolled up behind the red Jeep Compass, turning on the truck's side mounted spotlight, illuminating the light snow falling in the night. He spied the very shapely, female legs encased in green leggings and knee-high black leather boots that were visible beneath the bottom edge of the cream-colored parka that the woman was wearing as she stood under the protection of the open rear gate, obviously looking for something in the back, the smaller SUV sitting a little lower on the passenger side. She was either stuck in the mud that had yet to dry out from the last rainstorm or she had a flat tire. He shifted the utility into park, reached for his navy-blue departmental baseball cap on the passenger seat and pulled it down over his short cropped blond hair, pushing open the door and climbing out, the snow on the asphalt crunching under his booted feet.
He turned the collar of his jacket up against the falling snow and tugged the waistband back down over his waist, leaving his holstered pistol free. He tugged the zipper down on his jacket far enough to reach inside and pull his flashlight from its holder on his vest, turning it on and tugging the zipper back up against the bite of the cold air. He shined the light along the driver's side of her vehicle, peeking inside the open rear hatch to see if there were any more occupants inside. She was alone. "Is everything okay, ma'am," he asked as he approached her, his smooth, deep voice carrying into the night.
