Farrie viewed the deputy struggling with the huge dog for a long moment, then she shrugged. “She’ll do that sometimes,” she said calmly. “I dunno – maybe Demon thinks he needs something.”
Kevin Black Badger needed something? Buck turned to Scarlett, but she only hugged his arm with both hands and said, “Maybe your deputy’s lonely.”
Buck was damned if he could follow this. But if they weren’t worried about the dog, he surely wasn’t. “She’ll come back,” Farrie put in consolingly, “she always does. Demon does what she wants to.”
He’d already learned that. Buck took Scarlett’s hand and tucked it under his arm and they began walking toward the Blazer.
While they were sitting before the Christmas tree at home and she was putting ice on his face, Buck planned to have a talk with Scarlett about the future. He’d never intended to live with his mother forever. In fact, he’d hired an architect some years ago to draw up plans for an A-frame he’d like to build up on Makim’s Mountain.
Farrie hurried to keep up with them. Just as they approached the courthouse parking lot, empty now except for one snow-covered television van, a somewhat bedraggled female figure came limping toward them.
“Oh, Sheriff!” The TV camera on the shoulder of the cameraman following her began to roll. “It’s Jennifer James. I’m so glad I found you! Do you have anything you want to say about the – ah, dramatic and controversial events that took place here in Nancyville tonight?”
Scarlett tried to pull away, but Buck held her firmly. It was all over, there was nothing to get upset about. In fact, if anything, it had all turned out pretty well. He grabbed Farrie with his free hand and turned them both to face the camera.
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do,” Buck said, mindful of his split lip and the need to keep it short. “I hope you got all of us singing ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men,’ because that’s the message from mountain people up here to the world. And it’s a good one. We hope the world pays attention.”
He put his arms around Scarlett and drew her to him, hoping that his pride and love showed on what was left of his face.
“I’d like,” he said, “to announce that I’m getting married to Miss Scarlett Scraggs of the – ah, prominent Scraggs family of this area. Her sister, Miss Farrah Fawcett Scraggs, will be her bridesmaid.”
He heard Farrie gasp. Scarlett pulled back to stare at him.
“Wish us luck,” Buck said, hurrying Scarlett and her sister away before they could say anything.
But Scarlett stopped short and wrenched her arm away to yell, “We’re engaged? We really are? Like we’re going to get married? You must mean it! You just told everybody that on television!”
“We have to talk about it later,” Buck told her. “But engaged, married, yeah.” If it hadn’t been for his lip, he would have grinned.
“You told the whole world that you’re going to marry a Scraggs?” Scarlett flung herself on him, making Buck stagger back a few steps, and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Buck Grissom, you are the kindest, bravest -”
“Nice to kids, too,” Farrie yelled, inching up to try to put her arms around both of them.
“- most loving man,” Scarlett breathed, looking up into Buck’s eyes. “I could just kiss you!”
“Wait just a few minutes, sweetheart,” Buck said, pulling her arms from around his neck. “You can kiss me all you want when we get home.”
“Home.” Farrie hobbled after them, looking excited. “Scarlett, ask him if -”
But the newswoman was coming after them. “Sheriff, just a minute. That’s very interesting, what you said about getting married. Can we ask you a few more -”
Buck seized both Scraggs sisters by the hand and loped toward the Blazer. He couldn’t wait a minute longer. His face hurt like hell, but if he was careful he might be able to hold Scarlett Scraggs in his arms and get in the kisses she wanted there before the Christmas tree.
“We need to make some plans, Scarlett,” he said, as he opened the Blazer door for her. “Like how many kids we’re going to have, where to build a house, that sort of thing.”
She looked at him, eyes wide. “Actually, I was thinking I’d like to open a restaurant.”
Restaurant? Buck thought that over as he lifted Farrie into the back.
“They told me,” Farrie was saying happily, “and Mr. Ravenwood the music teacher did, too, that I could be a country and western singer like Reba McEntire and Patsy Cline.” She looked at him with adoration in her eyes. “But you know, I think now I’d rather be a cop!”
“Law-enforcement officer,” Buck said automatically.
He sighed as he slid behind the wheel. Restaurant. He supposed he could live with that. And the pixie child wanted to be a deputy. That was going to be a little tougher.
Somehow, Buck found, looking around, he missed the damned dog. She’ll be back, Farrie had said. Buck couldn’t help it, he shuddered.
“Oh, look at it snow!” Scarlett cuddled close to him in the front seat, her warm mouth at his ear. Buck put his arm around her. In the Blazer’s back seat, Farrie was singing softly to herself.
“We never had a Christmas like this one,” Scarlett whispered happily.
Buck recklessly leaned over, considering that he was driving with only one arm, to kiss the top of her beautiful head. He could just about gauge the reaction in Nancyville – in all of north Georgia – when their engagement announcement showed up on the television evening news. But Nancyville would just have to get used to it, he told himself. As far as he was concerned, the Scraggses were there to stay.
“Neither,” Sheriff Buck told his fiancée with great satisfaction as they turned into the road to the mountain, “have I.”
Biography
Maggie Daniels
Maggie Davis, who also writes under the pen names of Katherine Deauxville and Maggie Daniels, is the author of over 25 published novels, included A CHRISTMAS ROMANCE (as Maggie Daniels) and the best-selling romances BLOOD RED ROSES, DAGGERS OF GOLD, THE AMETHYST CROWN, THE CRYSTAL HEART, and EYES OF LOVE, all written as Katherine Deauxville. Ms. Davis is a former feature writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, copywriter for Young & Rubican in New York, and assistant in research to the chairman of the Department of Psychology at Yale University. She taught three writing courses at Yale, and was a two-time guest writer/artist at the International Cultural center in Hammamet, Tunisia. She has written for the Georgia Review, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, Holiday, and Venture magazines. She is the winner of four Reviewer’s Choice Awards and one Lifetime Achievement Award for romantic comedy from Romantic Times Magazine, and received the Silver Pen Award from Affaire de Coeur Magazine. She is also listed in Who’s Who 2000. Ms. Davis’s Civil War novel THE FAR SIDE OF HOME was re-released and published in 1992. Her romantic comedy ENRAPTURED, set in the Regency Era, was published in June of 1999 and the following September, Leisure/Dorchester Books published her latest historical romance THE SUN GOD in the Leisure romance anthology Masquerade. Her novella ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL is included in the August 2000 anthology Strangers in the Night. Further information for Maggie Davis can be found at her web page, www.maggiedavis.com.
