Christmas in Cold Creek

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It didn’t seem right somehow. Why couldn’t Trace Bowman be some kind of stereotype of a fat old guy with a paunch and a leering eye and a toothpick sticking out of the corner of his mouth? Instead he was much younger than she might have expected the chief of police to be, perhaps only mid-thirties. With brown hair and those piercing green eyes and a slow heartbreaker of a smile, he was masculine and tough and very, very dangerous, at least to her.

She should not have this little sizzle of awareness pulsing through her every time she risked another look at him. Police. Chief. Did she need any other reason to stay far, far away from Trace Bowman?

With habits ingrained from childhood, she catalogued all she had picked up about him from their brief encounter. He either worked or played hard, judging by the slight red streaks in his eyes, the circles under them and the general air of fatigue that seemed to weigh down his shoulders. Since he was still in uniform and his boots were mud-splattered, she was willing to bet it was the former.

He probably wasn’t married—or at least he didn’t wear a wedding ring. She was voting on single status for Pine Gulch’s finest. If he had a wife, wouldn’t it be logical he’d be going home for a home-cooked breakfast and maybe a quickie after a long night instead of coming into the diner? It was always possible he had a wife who was a professional and too busy to arrange her schedule around her husband’s, but he gave off a definite unmarried vibe.

He didn’t seem particularly inclined to like her. She might have wondered why not if he hadn’t made that comment about being her grandfather’s neighbor. He apparently thought she should have visited more. She wanted to tell him how impossible that would have been since she’d never even heard of Wally Taylor until she received the notification of his death and his shocking bequest, right when her own life in Arizona had been imploding around her.

A customer asked her a question about the breakfast special, distracting her from thoughts of the police chief, and she forced herself to smile politely and answer as best she could. As she did she was aware of Trace Bowman standing up from the counter and tossing a few bills next to his plate, then shoving his hat on and heading out into the cold drizzle.

The minute he left, she took her first deep breath since she’d looked up and seen the uniform walking into The Gulch.

The man didn’t particularly like her and she had the vague sense that he was suspicious of her. Again, not what she needed right now.

She hadn’t done anything wrong, she reminded herself. Not really. Oh, maybe she hadn’t been completely honest with the school district about Gabi’s identity but she hadn’t had any other choice, had she?

Even knowing she had no reason to be nervous, law enforcement personnel still freaked her out. Old, old habit. Savvy civil servants ranked just about last on her mother’s list of desirable associates. Becca would be wise to follow her mother’s example and stay as far away from Trace Bowman as possible.

Too bad for her, he lived not far from her grandfather’s house.

She glanced at her watch—one of the few pieces of jewelry she hadn’t pawned—and winced. Once again, time was slipping away. She felt as if she’d been on her feet for days when it had been only an hour and a half.

She rushed over to Gabrielle, engrossed in reading To Kill a Mockingbird, a book Becca would have thought was entirely too mature for her except she’d read it herself at around that age.

“It’s almost eight. You probably need to head over to the school.”

Her half sister looked up, her eyes slightly unfocused, then released a heavy sigh and closed her book. “For the record, I still don’t think it’s fair.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. You hate it here and think the school is lame and well below your capabilities.”

“It’s a complete waste of my time. I can learn better on my own, just like I’ve always done.”

Gabi was eerily smart for her age. Becca had no idea how she’d managed so well all these years when her education seemed to have been haphazard at best. “You’ve done a great job in school so far, honey. You’re ahead of grade level in every subject. But for now school is our best option. This way you can make friends and participate in things like music and art. Plus, you don’t have to be by yourself—and I don’t have to pay a sitter—while I’m working.”

They had been through this discussion before. Her arguments still didn’t seem to convince Gabi.

“I can find her, you know.”

She gave a careful look around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “And then what? If she’d wanted you with her, she wouldn’t have left you with me.”

“She was going to come back. How is she supposed to find us now, when you moved us clear across the country?”

Moving from Arizona to eastern Idaho wasn’t exactly across the country, but she imagined it seemed far enough to a nine-year-old. She also wasn’t sure what other choice she’d been given because of the hand Monica had dealt her.

“Look, Gab, we don’t have time to talk about this right now. You have to head to school and I have to return to my customers. I told you that if we haven’t heard from her by the time the holidays are over, we’ll try to track her down, right?”

“That’s what you said.”

The girl didn’t need to finish the sentence for Becca to clearly understand. Gabrielle had spent nine years full of disappointments and empty promises. How could Becca blame her for being slow to trust that her sister, at least, meant what she said?

“We’re doing okay, aren’t we? School’s not so bad, right?”

Gabi slid out of the booth. “Sure. It’s perfect if you want me to be bored to death.”

“Just hide your book inside your textbook,” Becca advised. It had always worked for her, anyway, during her own slapdash education.

With a put-upon sigh, Gabi stashed her book into her backpack, slipped into her coat and then trudged out into the rain, lifting the flowered umbrella Becca had given her.

She would have liked to drive her sister the two blocks to school but she didn’t feel she could ask for fifteen minutes off during the busiest time of the morning, especially when the Archuletas had basically done her a huge favor to hire her in the first place.

As she bused a table by the front window, she kept an eye on her sister. Between the umbrella and the red boots, the girl made a bright and incongruously cheerful sight in the gray muck.

She had no idea what she was doing with Gabi. Two months after she’d first learned she had a sister after a dozen years of estrangement from her mother, she wasn’t any closer to figuring out the girl. She was brash and bossy sometimes, introspective and moody at others. Instead of feeling hurt and betrayed after Monica had dumped her on Becca, the girl refused to give up hope that her mother would come back.

Becca was angry enough at Monica for both of them.

Two months ago she’d thought she had her life completely figured out. She owned her own town house in Scottsdale. She had a job she loved as a real-estate attorney, she had a wide circle of friends, she’d been dating another attorney for several months and thought they were heading toward a commitment. Through hard work and sacrifice, she had carved her own niche in life, with all the safety and security she had craved so desperately when she was Gabi’s age, being yanked hither and yon with a capricious, irresponsible con artist for a mother.

Then came that fateful September day when Monica had tumbled back into her life after a decade, like a noxious weed blown across the desert.

“Order up,” Lou called from the kitchen. She jerked away from the window to the reality of her life now. No money, her career in tatters, just an inch or two away from being disbarred. The man she’d been dating had decided her personal troubles were too much of a liability to his own career and had dumped her without a backward glance, she had been forced to sell her town house to clean up Monica’s mess, and now she was stuck in a sleepy little town in southeastern Idaho, saddled with responsibilities she didn’t want and a nine-year-old girl who wanted to be anywhere else but here.

Any minute now, somebody was probably going to write a crappy country music song about her life.

To make matters even more enjoyable, now she’d raised the hackles of the local law enforcement. She sighed as she picked up the specials from Lou. Her life couldn’t get much worse, right?

Even if Trace Bowman was the most gorgeous man she’d seen in a long, long time, she was going to have to do her best to keep a polite distance from the man. For now, she and Gabi had a place to live and the tips and small paycheck she was earning from this job would be enough to cover the groceries and keep the electricity turned on.

They were hanging by a thread and Chief Bowman seemed just the sort to come along with a big old pair of scissors and snip that right in half.

Chapter Two

Trace leaned back in his chair and set his napkin beside his now-empty plate. “Delicious dinner, Caidy, as always. The roast was particularly fine.”

His younger sister smiled, her eyes a translucent blue in the late-afternoon November light streaming through the dining room windows. “Thanks. I tried a new recipe for the spice rub. It uses sage and rosemary and a touch of paprika.”

“You know sage in recipes doesn’t really come from the sagebrushes out back, right?”

She made a face at the teasing comment from Trace’s twin brother, Taft. “Of course I know it’s not the same. Just for that, you get to wash and dry the dishes.”

“Come on. Have a little pity. I’ve been working all night.”

“You were on duty,” Trace corrected. “But did you go out on any actual calls or did you spend the night bunking at the firehouse?”

“That’s not the point,” Taft said, a self-righteous note in his voice. “Whether I was sleeping or not, I was ready if my community needed me.”

The overnight demands of their respective jobs had long been a source of good-natured ribbing between the two of them. When Trace worked the night shift, he was out on patrol, responding to calls, taking care of paperwork at the police station. As chief of the Pine Gulch fire department and one of the few actual fulltime employees in the mostly volunteer department, Taft’s job could sometimes be quiet.

They might bicker about it, but Trace knew no other person would have his back like his twin—though Caidy and their older brother, Ridge, would be close behind.

“Cut it out, you two.” Ridge, the de facto patriarch of the family, gave them both a stern look that reminded Trace remarkably of their father. “You’re going to ruin this delicious dessert Destry made.”

“It’s only boysenberry cobbler,” his daughter piped in. “It wasn’t hard at all.”

“Well, it tastes like it was hard,” Taft said with a grin. “That’s the important thing.”

Dinner at the family ranch, the River Bow, was a heralded tradition. No matter how busy they might be during the week with their respective lives and careers, the Bowman siblings tried to at least gather on Sundays when they could.

If not for Caidy, these Sunday dinners would probably have died long ago, another victim of their parents’ brutal murders. For a few years after that fateful time a decade ago, the tradition had faded as Trace and his siblings struggled in their own ways to cope with their overwhelming grief.

Right around the time Ridge’s wife left him and Caidy graduated from high school and started taking over caring for the ranch house and for Destry, his sister had revived the traditional Sunday dinners. Over the years it had become a way for them all to stay connected despite the hectic pace of their lives. He cherished these dinners, squabbles and all.

“I worked all night, too, but I’m not such a wimp that I can’t take care of my fair share,” he said with a sanctimonious look at his brother. “You sit here and rest, Taft. I wouldn’t want you to overdo. I’ll take care of the dishes.”

Of course his brother couldn’t let that insult stand, just as Trace expected. As a result, Taft became the designated dishwasher and Trace dried and put away the dishes while Destry and Ridge cleared the table.

Taft was just running water in the sink when Destry came in on her father’s heels, her eyes as huge and plaintive as one of Caidy’s rescued mutts begging for a treat. “Please, Dad. If we wait much longer, it will be too late.”

“Too late for what?” Taft asked innocently.

“Christmas!” Destry exclaimed. “It’s already the last Sunday in November. If we don’t cut down our tree soon, the mountains will be too snowy. Please, Dad? Please, please, please?”

Ridge heaved a sigh. He didn’t need to express his reluctance for Trace to understand it. None of his siblings had been very crazy about Christmas for nearly a decade, since their parents were killed just before Christmas Eve ten years ago.

“We’ll get one,” his brother assured Destry.

“What’s the point of even putting up a tree if we wait much longer? Christmas will be over.”

“It’s not even December yet!”

“It’s almost December. It will be here before we know it.”

“She sounds like Mom,” Taft said. “Remember how she used to start hounding Dad to cut the tree a few weeks before Thanksgiving?”

“And she always had it picked out by the middle of the summer,” Caidy answered with a sad little smile.

“Please, Daddy. Can we go?”

Trace had to smile at his niece’s persistence. Destry was a sharp little thing. She was generally a happy kid, which he found quite amazing considering her mother was a major bitch who had left Ridge and Destry when the little girl was still just a toddler.

“I guess you’re right.” Ridge eyed his brothers. “Either of you boys up for a ride to help me bring back the tree? We can get one for your places, too.”

Taft shrugged. “I’ve got a date. Sorry.”

“You have a date on a Sunday afternoon?” Caidy asked with raised eyebrows.

His brother seemed to find every available female between the ages of twenty-two and forty. “Not really a date. I’m going over to a friend’s house to watch a movie and order pizza.”

“You just had dinner,” Caidy pointed out.

Taft grinned. “That’s the thing about food … and other things. No matter how good the feast, you’re always ready for more in a few hours.”

“How old are you? Sixteen?” Ridge asked with a roll of his eyes.

“Old enough to thoroughly enjoy my pizza and everything that goes along with it,” Taft said with another grin. “But you boys have fun cutting down your Christmas trees.”

“You in?” Ridge asked Trace.

Since he didn’t have a pizza buddy right now—or any other kind of euphemistically termed acquaintance—Trace figured he might as well. “Sure. I’m up for a ride. Let’s go find a tree.”

He could use a ride into the mountains. It might help clear the cobwebs out of his head from a week of double shifts.

The decision had been a good one, he decided a half hour later as he rode his favorite buckskin mare, Genie, up the trail leading to the evergreen forest above the ranch. He had needed to get out into the mountains on horseback again. The demands of his job as head honcho in an overworked and underfunded police department often left him with too little leisure time. He ought to make more time for himself, though. Right now, with feathery snowflakes drifting down and the air smelling crisp and clean, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

He loved River Bow Ranch. This was home, despite the bad memories and their grim past. Counting Destry now, five generations of Bowmans had made their home here, starting just after World War I with his great-grandfather. It was a lovely spot, named not only for the family name but also for the oxbow in Cold Creek that was a beautiful nesting spot in the summer for geese and swans.

Below the ranch, he could see the lights of Pine Gulch gleaming in the dusk. His town. Yeah, it might sound like something out of an old Western, but he loved this little slice of western heaven. He’d had offers from bigger departments around Idaho and even a couple out of state. A few of them were tempting, he couldn’t deny that. But every time he thought about leaving Pine Gulch, he thought about all the things he would have to give up. His family, his heritage, the comfort of small traditions like breakfast at The Gulch after an overnight shift. The sacrifices seemed too great.

“Thanks for coming with us,” Destry said, reining her tough little paint pony next to his mare.

“My pleasure. Thanks for asking me, kid.” His niece was turning into a good rider. Ridge had set her on the back of a horse from just about the moment she could walk and it showed. She had a confident seat, an easy grace, that had already won her some junior rodeo competitions.

“Are you finally going to put up a tree this year, Uncle Trace?”

“I don’t know. Seems like a lot of trouble when it’s only me.”

He hated admitting that but it was true. He was tired of being alone. A year ago, he thought he was ready to settle down. He’d even started dating Easton Springhill. From here, he could see across the canyon and up to where she ran her family’s place, Winder Ranch.

Easton wasn’t for him. Some part of him had known it even as he’d tried to convince himself otherwise. Just how wrong she’d been for him had become abundantly clear when Cisco Del Norte came back to town and he saw for himself just how much Easton loved the man.

The two of them were deliriously happy now. They had adopted a little girl, who was just about the cutest thing he’d ever seen, all big eyes and curly black hair and dimples, and Easton was expecting a baby in the spring. While Trace still wasn’t crazy about Cisco, he had to admit the guy made Easton happy.

He had tried to convince himself he was in love with Easton but he recognized now that effort had been mostly based on hope. Oh, he probably could have fallen in love with her if he’d given a little more effort to it. Easton was great—warm and compassionate and certainly beautiful enough. They could have made a good life together here, but theirs would never have been the fierce passion she shared with Cisco.

A passion he couldn’t help envying.

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?”