RaeAnne Thayne - Christmas in Cold Creek

The space smelled musty and dusty and was piled with boxes and trunks Becca had barely had time to even look at in the few weeks they’d been in Pine Gulch. She pulled the string on the bare-bulb light and could swear she heard something scurry. They needed a cat, she thought. She didn’t want to add one more responsibility to her plate but a good mouser would be just the thing.

“I think I saw the ornaments somewhere over by the window. Help me look, would you?”

She and Gabi began sorting through boxes filled with the detritus of a lonely old man’s life. It made her inexpressibly sad to think about the grandfather she hadn’t even known existed. Monica had told her very little about the paternal side of her heritage. She had known her father had died when she was just a baby and Monica had told her she didn’t have any other living relatives on either side.

Big surprise. She’d lied. This was just one more thing her mother had stolen from her.

“He’s nice, isn’t he?”

She glanced at Gabi, who was looking toward the doorway and the stairs with a pensive sort of look.

“He’s the police chief, Gab. You know what that means.”

“We haven’t done anything wrong here.”

“Except tell the world I’m your mother.”

She never should have done it, but it was one of those tiny lies that had quickly grown out of control. When she’d tried to enroll Gabi in school after they arrived in Pine Gulch, Becca had suddenly realized she didn’t have any sort of guardianship papers or even a birth certificate. Worried that Gabi would be taken from her and placed into foster care, she had fudged the paperwork at the school. Thinking the school authorities would be more likely to take her word for things if she was Gabi’s mother rather than merely an older sister, she had called upon the grifting skills she hadn’t used in years to convince the secretary she didn’t know where Gabi’s birth certificate was after a succession of moves—not technically a lie.

The secretary had been gratifyingly understanding and told Becca merely to bring them when she could find them. From that moment, they were stuck in the lie. She didn’t want to think about Trace Bowman’s reaction if he found out she was perpetrating a fraud on the school and the community. She wasn’t a poor single mother trying to eke out a living with her daughter. She was stuck in a situation that seemed to grow more complicated by the minute.

“I still think he’s nice,” Gabi said. “He brought us a Christmas tree.”

She wanted to warn her sister to run far, far away from sexy men bearing warm smiles and unexpected charm. “You’re right. That was a very kind thing to do. Actually, it was his niece’s idea, right? You must have made a good friend in Destry Bowman.”

“She’s nice,” Gabi said, avoiding her gaze. “Where do you think you saw the ornaments?”

An interesting reaction. She frowned at Gabi but didn’t comment, especially when her sister found the box of ornaments just a moment later, next to a box of 1950s-era women’s clothing.

Her grandmother’s, perhaps? From the attorney who notified her of the bequest, she had learned the woman had died years ago, before she was born, but other than that she didn’t know anything about her. Since coming to Pine Gulch, she had been thinking how surreal it was to live in her grandfather’s house when she didn’t know anything about him, surrounded by the personal belongings of a stranger.

She had picked up bits and pieces since she’d arrived in town that indicated that her father and grandfather had fought bitterly before she was born. She didn’t know the full story and wasn’t sure she ever would, but Donna told her that her father had apparently vowed never to speak to his own father again. She could guess the reason. Probably her mother had something to do with it. Monica was very good at finding ways to destroy relationships around her.

Kenneth Taylor had been killed in a motorcycle crash when Becca was a toddler and her parents had never been married. Her only memories of him were a bushy mustache and sideburns and a deep, warm voice telling her stories at night.

She’d been curious about her father’s family over the years, but Monica had refused to talk about him. She hadn’t even known her grandfather was still alive until she’d heard from that Idaho Falls attorney a few months earlier, right in the middle of her own legal trouble. When he had told her she had inherited a small house in Idaho, the news had seemed an answer to prayer. She had been thinking she and Gabi would wind up homeless if she couldn’t figure something out and suddenly she had learned she owned a house in a town she’d never visited.

This sturdy little Craftsman cottage was dark and neglected, but she knew she could make a happy home here for her and Gabi, their lies notwithstanding.

As long as the police chief left her alone.

Females with secrets. He’d certainly seen his share of those.

Trace carefully wound the colored lights on the branches of their Christmas tree, listening to Becca and Gabi talk quietly as they pulled glass ornaments from a cardboard box. Something was not exactly as it appeared in this household. He couldn’t put his finger on what precisely it might be but he’d caught more than one unreadable exchange of glances between Becca and her daughter, as if they were each warning the other to be careful with her words.

What secrets could they have? He had to wonder if they were on the run from something. A jealous ex? A custody dispute? That was the logical conclusion but not one that sat comfortably with him. He didn’t like the idea that Becca might be breaking the law, or worse, in danger somehow. That would certainly make his attraction for her even more inconvenient.

He couldn’t have said why he was still here. His plan when Destry had begged him to do this had been to merely do a quick drop-off of the tree, the stand and the lights. He’d intended to let Becca and Gabi deal with the tree while he headed down the street for a comfortable night of basketball in front of the big screen with his squash-faced little dog at his feet.

Instead, when he had shown up on the doorstep, she had looked so obviously taken aback—and touched, despite herself—that he had decided spending a little time with the two of them was more fascinating than even the most fierce battle on the hardwood.

He wasn’t sorry. Gabi was a great kid. Smart and funny, with clever little observations about life. She, at least, had been thrilled by the donated Christmas tree, almost as if she’d never had a tree before. At some point, Gabi had tuned in on a Christmas station on a small boom box–type radio she brought from her bedroom. Though he still wasn’t a big fan of the holiday, he couldn’t deny there was something very appealing about working together on a quiet evening while snowflakes fluttered down outside and Nat King Cole’s velvet voice filled the room.

It reminded him of happier memories when he was a kid, before the Christmas that had changed everything.

“That’s the last of the lights. You ready to flip the switch?”

“Can I?” Gabi asked, her eyes bright.

“Sure thing.”

She plugged in the lights and they reflected green and red and gold in her eyes. “It looks wonderful!”

“It really does,” Becca agreed. “Thank you for your help.”

Her words were another clear dismissal and he decided to ignore it. He wasn’t quite ready to leave this warm room yet. “Now we can start putting up those ornaments.”