RaeAnne Thayne - Christmas in Cold Creek

Maybe he would always be the bachelor uncle. It wasn’t necessarily a bad role in life, he thought as Destry urged her pony faster on the trail.

“Almost there!” she exclaimed, her face beaming.

A few moments later they reached the thickly forested border of the ranch. Destry was quick to lead the way to the tree she had picked out months ago and marked with an orange plastic ribbon, just as their mother used to do.

Ridge cut the tree quickly with his chain saw while Destry looked on with glee. Caidy and a couple of her dogs had come up, as well—Trace had left Grunt, the ugly little French bulldog he’d inherited from Wally Taylor, back at the ranch house since the dog couldn’t have kept up with the horses on his stubby little legs.

His sister didn’t help cut down the tree, only stood on the outskirts of the forest, gazing down at town.

“How about you?” his brother asked. “You want us to cut one for you while we’re up here?”

His brother asked every year and every year Trace gave the same answer. “Not much sense when it’s just me. Especially since I’ll be working through Christmas anyway.”

Since he didn’t have a family, he always tried to work overtime so his officers who did could have a little extra time off to spend with their children.

Caidy glanced over at them and he saw his own melancholy reflected in her eyes. Christmas was a hell of a time for the Bowman family. It probably always would be. He hated that she felt she had to hide away from life here with the horses and the dogs she trained.

“Hey, do you think we could cut an extra tree down for my friend?” Destry asked him.

“I don’t mind. You’ll have to ask your dad, though.”

“Ask me what?” Ridge asked, busy tying the sled to his saddle for his horse to pull down the mountain.

“I wanted to give a tree to one of my friends.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. We’ve got plenty of trees. But are you sure her family doesn’t already have one?”

Destry shook her head. “She said they might not even put up a tree this year. They don’t have very much money. They just moved to Pine Gulch and I don’t think she likes it here very much.”

Trace felt the same sort of tingle in his fingertips he always got when something was about to break on a case. “What’s this friend’s name?”

“Gabi. Well, Gabrielle. Gabrielle Parsons.”

Of course. Somehow he’d known, even before Destry told him the name. He thought of the pretty, inept waitress with the secrets in her eyes and of the girl who had sat reading her book with such solemn concentration in the midst of the morning chaos at The Gulch.

“I met her the other day. She and her mother moved in near my house.”

Both Ridge and Caidy gave him matching looks of curiosity and he shrugged. “She’s apparently old Wally Taylor’s granddaughter. He left the house to her, though I gather they didn’t have much of a relationship.”

“You really do know everything about what goes on in Pine Gulch,” Caidy said with an admiring tone.

Trace tried his best to look humble. “I try. Actually, the mother is waitressing at The Gulch. I stopped there the other day for breakfast and ended up with the whole story from Donna.”

“What you’re saying, then,” Ridge said, his voice dry, “is that Donna is the one in town who knows when every dog lifts his leg on a fire hydrant.”

Trace grinned. “Yeah. So? A good police officer knows how to cultivate sources wherever he can find them.”

“So can we cut a tree for Gabrielle and her mom?” Destry asked impatiently.

He remembered the secrets in the woman’s eyes and her unease around him. He had thought about her several times in the few days since he saw her at the diner and his curiosity about why she had ended up in Pine Gulch hadn’t abated whatsoever. He had promised himself he would try to be a good neighbor. What was more neighborly than delivering a Christmas tree?

“I don’t see the problem with that. I can drop it off on my way home. Help me pick a good one for them.”

Destry gave a jubilant cheer and grabbed his hand. “I saw the perfect one before. Come on, over here.”

She dragged him about twenty feet away, stopping in front of a bushy blue spruce. “How about this one?”

The tree easily topped nine feet and was probably that big in circumference. Trace smiled at his niece’s eagerness. “I’m sorry, hon, but if I remember correctly, I think that one is a little too big for the living room of their house. What about this nice one over here?” He led her to a seven-foot Scotch pine with a nice, natural Christmas-tree shape.

She gave the tree a considering sort of look. “I guess that would work.”

“Here, you can help me cut it down then.” He fired up Ridge’s chain saw and guided his niece’s hands. Together they cut the tree down and Trace tied it to his own horse’s saddle.

“I hope Gabrielle will love it. You’re going to take it to her tonight, right?” she demanded, proving once more that she was nothing like her selfish mother except in appearance. Destry was always thinking about other people and how she could help them, much like Trace’s mother, the grandmother she had never met.

“I promise. But let’s get it down the hill first, okay?”

“Okay.” Destry smiled happily.

As they headed back toward River Bow Ranch while the sun finally slipped behind the western mountains, a completely ridiculous little bubble of excitement churned through him, like he was a kid waiting in line to see Santa Claus. He tried to tell himself he was only picking up on Destry’s anticipation at doing a kind deed for her friend, but in his heart Trace knew there was more to it.

He wanted to see Becca Parsons again. Simple as that. The memory of her, slim and pretty and obviously uncomfortable around him, played in his head over and over. She was a mystery to him, that was all. He wanted only to get to know a few of her secrets and make sure she didn’t intend to cause trouble in his town.

If anybody asked, that was his story and he was sticking to it.

How did parents survive this homework battle day in and day out for years?

Becca drew in a deep, cleansing breath in a fierce effort to keep from growling in frustration at her sister and smoothed the worksheet out in front of them. They had only four more math problems and one would think she was asking Gabi to rip out her eyelashes one by one instead of just finish a little long division.

“We’re almost done, Gab. Come on. You can do it.”

“Of course I can do it.” Though she was a foot and a half shorter than Becca, Gabi still somehow managed to look down her nose at her. “I just don’t see why I have to.”

“Because it’s your homework, honey, that’s why.” Becca tried valiantly for patience. “If you don’t finish it, you’ll receive a failing grade in math.”

“And?”

Becca curled her fingers into fists. Her sister was ferociously bright but had zero motivation, something Becca found frustrating beyond belief considering how very hard she had worked at school, the brief times she had been enrolled. In those days, she would rather have been the one ripping out her eyelashes herself rather than miss an assignment.

Not that her overachieving ways and conscientious study habits had gotten her very far.