Chapter 20 Maggie
MAGGIE
Christmas morning dawned white and brilliant. The storm had blown itself out in the night, leaving the world sleeping beneath a heavy, thick blanket of snow.
Maggie stood looking out of one of the uncovered windows across the wintry vista under a newly risen sun.
She was starting to feel the lack of a toothbrush and hairbrush, and definitely suffering the aftereffects of a night spent on a hard wooden floor.
The power was back on, but that didn’t help when there was nothing to cook.
They had each saved back a packaged snack for breakfast; hers was a granola bar, which she chewed on slowly to make it last.
It seemed likely that Maggie would be the one to fly back to bring help, but as it turned out, there was no need. The first sign Maggie had was a brief flash of a very large shadow on the snow, followed by the thump on the roof.
Charlie appeared out of the kitchen, where she and Sam were melting snow in a small tin camp pot Cara had produced. “What the heck was that?”
“I don’t know.” Maggie looked up nervously, only to flinch back as something very fast-moving and very large went down the side of the house in a scrabble of claws.
A moment later, the door opened and closed, and a man’s voice called, “Anyone home?”
“Barnaby!” Sam went to greet him. “I figured you’d come looking. You’re the biggest flying shifter any of us know.”
Barnaby was tall, dark-haired, and handsome in a nondescript way, wearing a charcoal topcoat over a gray sweater and dark slacks.
If Maggie had seen him on some typical city sidewalk, she wouldn’t have looked twice at him.
He must have shifted, she thought, and he was still wearing his clothes; ergo, he was a dragon, or something like it.
Having met Cara, she wondered how many different kinds of shifters there were in the world that she had never heard of.
“There are a couple of shifter search teams out looking for you, but I figured I’d check this place first. Joy and Leah tell me you’ve got your head screwed on straight—well, that was Leah, as you could probably guess—and I figured if you were in trouble, you’d know to head for the nearest source of shelter. ”
“You might think that, but you’d be wrong. Maggie was the one who found it. Maggie, come here and meet Barnaby Grey.”
“Bar to my friends.” He graciously shook her hand, then Sam introduced him to Charlie, and Cara poked her head in as well. Bar was exactly as well-mannered as if every day he found a party of squatters in his newly constructed mansion.
“If you’d be okay sitting tight for an hour or so, I’ll fly out and contact the search teams, and we should have you back to the lodge before lunchtime.”
“Lunch, my favorite word,” Sam said, and Bar laughed.
As he turned away, he tossed over his shoulder, “Merry Christmas!”
The door let in a rush of cold air, but Maggie stepped forward to see if she could get a look at what he turned into.
She wasn’t disappointed. Bar stepped off the porch, shimmered, and sprawled forward as the shining, scaly coils of a golden dragon, gleaming like hammered brass in the morning sun. He took off in a backwash of snow.
“Holy cow,” Charlie said behind her.
“Leah says he breathes fire, but I’m not sure if that’s just Leah being Leah.” Sam glanced toward Cara, as if abruptly remembering there was someone outside the family present. “Do you want to collect your things? The offer to come with us is still open.”
“Thank you,” Cara whispered, and she hurried off. There were sounds of rustling as she gathered up her scant belongings.
Maggie moved close to Sam, and he slid an arm around her waist. “What do you think?” Sam asked her quietly. “Think we can trust her?”
“Why are you asking me? You have a lot more experience at this kind of thing than I do.”
“Yeah, but your instincts are good,” Sam said. “I tend to go off facts and logic. But there’s a time for simply making leaps of intuition. What are your instincts telling you about Cara?”
“That she’s sincere,” Maggie said slowly. “And she’s wounded and alone. I don’t think she’s trying to deceive us or has any harmful intent.”
“See? That’s why I asked you.”
He hugged her and kissed the top of her head, and Charlie made exaggerated barfing noises and went to turn off the stove and look around the house a little more before they left. This left Sam and Maggie alone in the foyer for some intense lip-locking, which they proceeded to do.
“You know, as much as I’m looking forward to lunch when we get back,” Maggie panted, with Sam’s hands in her hair.
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m looking forward to getting up close and personal with the hot tub in the honeymoon suite. If its current occupants don’t mind, that is.”
Sam looked down at her with his eyes blown out, dark with desire. “I’m pretty sure that can be arranged.”
A search party on snowmobiles showed up about an hour later.
They brought extra winter gear for the riders, and Bar had told them to expect four people.
Maggie went around the house doing a little last-minute tidying, picked up a scrap of wrapper, made sure they hadn’t left anything behind.
The last thing they did was lock up, and she tried to push the plywood panel over the window by the door back into place.
They would need to tell Bar to fix it, she thought.
The ride to the lodge seemed astonishingly short, and also much less sexy when she was sitting behind Doreen instead of Sam. She was tired, hungry, uncomfortable, and starting to wish for an end to this particular stage of her Christmas adventure.
Seeing the lodge from a distance, capped with snow, made her think of her first sight of it in all its wintry glory, which felt much more than just a few days ago.
Rather than lying in still white solitude like Bar’s mansion, the lodge was bustling.
A truck with a snowplow was actively clearing the parking lot, a shuttle bus idled in the already cleared area in front of the steps, and animal-form shifters cavorted on the back lawn, while those in their human forms were gathering for ski tours.
Amid all this activity, the snowmobiles went nearly unnoticed as they pulled up. But not unnoticed by everyone. When Maggie dismounted, she noticed that Hester had come out to talk to the head of the snowmobile party, a large scar-faced man who Maggie had gathered was Doreen’s husband.
Maggie took a steadying breath. Sam was looking at her with concern, and she knew she would have his support if she needed it. But this had to be done on her own.
She went over to Hester.
“Well,” the smaller woman began, wearing her habitual slight frown as Maggie approached her. “I see you found her.”
Maggie squared her shoulders and looked Hester in the eyes. “I did. I also broke my word to you. I did the thing I said I wouldn’t do, and I’ll pack my things immediately if you want me to.”
Hester stared at her, the concentrating frown dissolving in shock. “Why would I want that?”
“I promised you I wouldn’t shift while I was here.”
“Maggie, you went out in a storm to rescue a kid. What kind of monumental jerk do you think I am?”
“I—I didn’t mean—” Maggie stammered.
Hester firmly clasped Maggie’s hand. “You did a brave thing. I’m not blaming you for it.”
Sam had been whispering to Charlie, who bounced up to Hester, pulling the chain out of her collar. “Ma’am, look, I found my necklace. Dad says he reported it missing. I actually lost it on the ski trail. It was my fault, and I’m so sorry for the trouble.”
“I ... see.” Hester’s gaze returned to Maggie. “Well, I also didn’t keep all my promises, you know. I have been known to jump to unfounded conclusions a time or two.”
It wasn’t quite an apology, but it was good enough for Maggie. She nodded back.
Hester turned her attention to Sam and Charlie.
“I also have good news, which is that no one has to double up tonight. We have a few guests leaving this afternoon, as soon as the roads are clear, which means we’ll have plenty of space tonight.
Each of you can have a room of your own.
I can get you the keys once housekeeping is done. ”
“How does that sound, sweetheart?” Sam asked Charlie. “No more sharing with Dad?”
“Dad, I don’t care, I just want a shower and lunch, not necessarily in that order.”
Maggie heartily concurred, though in her case it was more like a shower, lunch, and Sam.
But it turned out to be a hot lunch first—a rarity for the hotel, which usually offered a grab-and-go sandwich and muffin buffet.
For Christmas, they laid out a lavish spread, with roast beef and ham, buttered potatoes, casseroles and hot rolls, and a selection of vegetarian and vegan dishes as well.
Maggie loaded her plate twice, too hungry to care that she looked and probably smelled like she’d spent the previous day out in the snow and then slept on the floor overnight.
Her faint guilt about not having been there to help out in the kitchen was overwhelmed by a weary relief to just a guest for a change.
Maggie hadn’t had a chance to talk to Cara since she got to the hotel, but she noticed the unicorn shifter seemed to have been adopted by the Swedish moose family, all of them sitting together at one table.
So that was apparently going all right for now.
Sam came back from discussing it with Hester, and reported that Cara would be staying at the hotel for a little while, maybe a similar informal arrangement to the one Maggie had used to pay off her debts both monetary and otherwise.
And then Charlie was hustled off to her new room for a shower and a nap, while Maggie retrieved her things from the employee dorm and followed Sam at his unsubtle invitation into the honeymoon suite. The cot, she noticed, was gone.
“Hester said there are clean sheets on the bed,” Sam said. He grinned. “I think she’s still trying to make up for certain things.”