That Christmas Feeling by Catherine Palmer, Gail Gaymer Martin Read Free Book Online

God-ordained mission that transcended marriage. Rob West belonged to the people of Buffalo. He was their servant, their caretaker, their protector. In a strange sense he was wedded to a town. And quite content with the relationship, too.
    Besides, women were a lot of trouble. Sherry had been unhappy with just about everything Rob did. Despite all his triumphs in high school, he learned that in his wife’s eyes he appeared a total failure. Sherry hadn’t wanted Rob to become a policeman. She disliked the size and condition of the only house they were able to afford after their wedding. She hated the church he had joined, and refused to attend. Most of all, she resented being married.
    Though he had dated the vivacious blonde through much of high school and had believed they were in love, he belatedly discovered that Sherry had goals that went far beyond the little town of Buffalo. After graduation, she packed up and headed for college as a theater major, planning one day to move to Hollywood and try for her big break as an actress. When she found out she was pregnant with Rob’s child, she reluctantly agreed to marry him, and even though she miscarried the baby, they stayed together through seven unhappy years. Sherry had regularly reminded her husband that he had killed her dreams and ruined her life. He never wanted to do that to anyone again.
    “I care because I’m the police chief,” he called up to the green eyes that were currently hypnotizing him into a jelly-kneed trance.
    “I see,” she said, still staring.
    Absolutely, he could not let Claire know the effect shewas having on him. He squared his shoulders. “I can’t have the newspaper printing a story about me letting the high school history teacher fall out of a tree while chasing a cat. It wouldn’t look good.”
    “Oh, right,” she said. “Well, excuse me for not caring about your precious reputation.”
    Turning away, she edged farther along the branch toward the cat. Rob swallowed as the slender limb dipped downward. The cat growled, a long guttural emanation that reverberated through the chill air. Claire stretched out the aluminum pole. The noose on its far end slipped over the cat’s head. Claire tightened the loop, and the cat leaped.
    “Oh, Rob!” Her arm jerked downward as the big tom’s white paws and black tail flailed in midair, and she clung to the branch with one hand and her knees. “Rob, he’s going to hang. I’m killing the cat.”
    “Let him go! Drop the pole!” Rob pulled himself onto a lower branch and started climbing the tree. “Just don’t fall. Let the cat go.”
    “But he’s caught in the noose! If I drop him, he won’t be able to land on his feet. He’ll get hurt.”
    “Forget the cat, Claire. You’re the one who’s going to get hurt!”
    She was trying to lower herself to another branch as the cat squirmed and yowled on the end of the pole. “Help him, Rob! Move him onto a branch, and I’ll try to loosen the—”
    She lost her grip and toppled downward right into a large empty squirrel’s nest that had been built in the crossed branches of the tree. Dead leaves flew outward in a puff ofbrown dust. The cat dropped to the ground and took off running with the aluminum pole still attached to the noose around his neck.
    “Claire, are you okay?” Rob reached for her. The branch under him cracked. “Hang on!”
    “ You hang on!” She scrambled through the leaves to grab him. The branch snapped, and they both went down, sliding through bare limbs and snapping off twigs on their way to the ground.
    “Ha! Ha!” Flossie Ross crowed through an open window as Rob rolled off Claire, who was squealing in pain. “Serves you both right! I hope you broke all your arms and legs! And your heads, too!”
    Rob caught Claire’s shoulders and lifted her into his lap. “Are you hurt? Is anything broken?”
    “Where’s the cat?”
    “He’s fine. I can see the pole sticking out from under the porch.”
    She let out a