The Santa Man

Chapter 6

Sarah handed the man—Hip—back his wallet, which he shoved in his jacket.

"I'm Sarah," she said. "Sarah Winslow."

He frowned down at her. "How the heck did you end up here if you're going from Missoula to Billings?"

In other words, why wasn't she on I-90? He thought she was an idiot, of course. Which she was used to, having felt she was making that impression most of the past three years. Still, it stung. "I spent last night with a friend from high school. In Havre. That was her on the phone. She worries."

"That's the Indian reservation."

"She's Lakota."

"You must really want to get wherever you're going for Christmas."

"I certainly do," she chirped. "I'm going to be in Mexico tonight."

He ran a hand through his hair and looked past her, to the expanse of snow-covered plains. The north wind blasted them with another gust of frigid air. "You could have been stuck out here for a long time."

"I have a GPS. And a cell phone. And I had a plan."

He looked at her Subaru, planted sideways in the ditch. "Do you have another plan?"

"I called AAA."

"And?"

"They're going to get back to me."

"That might take a while. The closest tow truck operator has gone to visit his daughter in Seattle."

She didn't like the sound of that. Still, she could probably find a hotel room in Billings and catch a flight out tomorrow. Maybe. Suddenly her Mexican beach seemed very, very far away.

But still, better than being home watching the house across the street with its perfect tree in the window and the hundreds of little white lights decorating the bushes and porch railings.

She'd take the ditch any day, except she didn't want to freeze to death.

He went around to the back of the truck and opened the cover. She watched as he lifted cardboard boxes out of the truck bed and set them on the road. He seemed to know what he was looking for, because it only took a few minutes for him to lift out a large chain. He set it on the side of the road and carefully replaced boxes piled with Christmas gifts back in the bed of the truck.

"Thank you for doing this," she said. She assumed not many trucks drove around these back roads without a tow chain. "I'm sure you're on your way to work, or home, or shopping or something important."

"Something important," he muttered. "Yeah.But don't thank me yet." He didn't look at her as he went around to the front of the Subaru and examined her bumper. He held the oversize hook in his oversize hand and knelt down to peer under her car. She heard some muttering, but he emerged without the hook in his hand and a satisfied expression on his interesting face.

She liked his face, actually. Not traditionally handsome like Mark's, but a face that would look good in fifty years and not go all puffy and square. A dependable face, she decided. Did his wife and four children appreciate that?

Sarah hoped so. She had the strangest yearning to lean against him and bury her face in his jacket.