A Dixie Christmas Read Online Free PDF

influence of drugs.”
     
    “I don’t take drugs.”
     
    “You did today, buddy.”
     
    “Take me back to the hotel.”
     
    She let loose with a long sigh. “We’ve already been through this before. You need special care. Since you have no family, I volunteered  . . . out of the goodness of my heart, I might add  . . . and do I get any thanks? No, sirree.”
     
    “Who said I have no family?”
     
    “You did?”
     
    “I  . . . did  . . . not!” His face flushed with embarrassment.
     
    Geez, why would he be uncomfortable over revealing that he had no family? It only made him appear human. Hah! Maybe that was the key. He didn’t want to be human.
     
    “I don’t discuss my personal life with  . . . strangers.”
     
    Bingo! “Well, you did this time.”
     
    His eyelids fluttered with sleepiness even as he spoke. “What elsh did I saaaay?”
     
    The little demons on the wrong side of Annie’s brain did a victory dance at Clay’s question. Here was the perfect opportunity for her to get even for his patronizing comments.
     
    “Well, you did a lot of singing.”
     
    His eyes shot open. “Me? In public?”
     
    “Hmmm. Do you consider the emergency room a public place?”
     
    “That’s impossible.”
     
    “And, of course, there was your remark about haylofts  . . .”
     
    “Huh?”
     
    Annie could see the poor guy was fighting sleep. Still, she couldn’t help herself from adding, “  . . . and making love.”
     
    “Making love in a hayloft? I said that ?” Clay murmured skeptically. “With you ? Humph! I couldn’t have been that much out of my mind.”
     
    Before she could correct his misconception that he’d associated making love in a hayloft with her, his head fell back. Good thing, too, because Annie was about to give him a matching goose egg on the other side of his insulting noggin. “Did you say humbug?”
     
    “No! Why does everyone think I’m a Scrooge?” he asked drowsily, followed by a lusty yawn.
     
    “Maybe because you are.”
     
    “I said humph,” he mumbled in his sleep. Then a small snore escaped from his parted lips
     
    “Humph you, you egotistical bozo.”
     
    Can’t help falling in love…
     
    Clay awakened groggily from a deep sleep to find it was dark outside. He must have slept a good four hours or more.
     
    For several moments, he didn’t move from his position on the high, maple, poster bed, where he lay on his stomach, presumably to protect the back of his aching head. He burrowed deeper beneath the warm cocoon of a homemade patchwork quilt and smiled to himself. So, this is how it feels to be one of the Waltons.
     
    By the light of a bedside hurricane lamp, he studied his surroundings. It was a cozy room, with its slanted, dormer ceiling  . . . hardly bigger than his walk-in closet at home. The only furniture, besides the bed, was a matching maple dresser and a blanket chest under the low double windows facing the front of the house. A well-worn easy chair of faded blue upholstery sat in one corner, flanked on one side by a floor lamp and on the other by a small side table on which sat a paperback book and a pile of magazines. A few photographs, which he couldn’t decipher from here, a high school pennant, and some cheaply framed prints of cows— What else! —adorned the pink rose-papered walls.
     
    It had to belong to the Blessed Virgin Bimbo who’d brought him here. Unless the collection of Teddy Bears on the chest and the sweet-smelling toiletries on the bureau belonged to one of her brothers. Somehow, though, he didn’t think any of the virile young men he’d seen in that wacky Nativity scene were gay farmers.
     
    Clay should have felt outrage at finding himself in this predicament. Instead, a strange sense of well-being filled him, as if he’d been running a marathon for a long, long time, and finally he’d reached the finish line.
     
    Slowly he came fully awake as the sounds of the house, which had