A Mistletoe Vow: A Cold Creek Christmas Story / Falling for Mr December / A Husband for the Holidays

“Don’t give her any ideas,” he said in the same low voice. Their gaze met and he felt a strange jolt in his gut at the impact of those green eyes behind the glasses.

“You don’t want a little dog?”

He shrugged. When he was a kid, the only pets had been his mother’s annoying, yippy little purse pooches. He had never really thought seriously about it before, too busy with work and his shared custody of Olivia.

When things settled down for her a little, maybe he would think about it. She did seem to be enjoying Celeste’s pets.

Both he and Celeste seemed content to watch her petting the two pets, and he was aware of that elusive sense of peace seeping in again.

“How’s the house cleaning going?” she asked him.

He thought of the work still ahead. “I don’t think I realized what an undertaking it was to clear out eighty-five years of living. After about three days of work, we got one of the rooms cleared out today.”

“Good work.” She paused. “If you need help, I’m available most evenings.”

She looked embarrassed after she spoke, though he wasn’t quite sure why, when he took the offer as nothing but generous and kind, especially in the hustle-bustle of the holidays.

“Thank you,” he said sincerely.

She gazed at him for a moment, then shifted her attention back to Olivia, but not before he saw a hint of color climb her cheeks.

“What are you doing with your business in California while you’re here?”

“I’m doing as much as I can long-distance, but it hasn’t been easy. Since the shooting, I’ve basically had to trust my second-in-command to take much of the load at the sites. I’ve been handling the administrative things after Olivia goes to bed. Everyone who works for me has been great. I couldn’t ask for better people in my company, but I think we’re all ready for things to start getting back to normal after the holidays.”

She looked between him and his daughter, her expression soft. “You’re a good father, Flynn. Olivia is lucky to have you.”

“I don’t know about that,” he muttered. “A good father would have known what was going on at her mother’s house. I should have seen it. It wasn’t a stable situation for a young girl. Elise had boyfriend after boyfriend traipsing in and out of their lives, all tabloid fodder. Brandon Lowell at least had stuck around for longer than a few months. I was stupidly grateful for that, but if I had been paying more attention, I would have seen his downward spiral. Maybe I could have stepped in earlier.”

“What would you have done?”

“I don’t know. Found him the help he needed, at the very least. Maybe filed for an emergency custody order so we could have avoided all this trauma and pain.” The nightmare of the shooting was as vivid and stark as if it had happened the day before. “Elise called me right before it all went south.”

“She did?”

He checked to be sure Olivia wasn’t paying attention to them but to the animals before he continued. “She told me Brandon had been drinking all day and was acting strangely. She was worried about him, but she didn’t sound panicked or anything, was just calling to ask my advice. She’d done this before, called me for advice when he was drinking too much or having a manic episode, but something told me this time was different. I was on a job site fifty miles away, so I told her to grab Olivia and take her to my house, and I would deal with the situation when I got back.”

He was quiet, regret a harsh companion. “I wish to hell she had listened to me. She was always so stubborn, thinking she knew best. I was about five miles from her place when I got the call from the police. I’ll never forget that instant when it felt as if the whole world changed.”

Chapter Five (#u2f75bc29-2f75-5a37-b22e-990bf425a700)

She couldn’t imagine what he must have gone through, knowing his daughter had been hurt. She also could tell by the threads of guilt twining through his voice that he blamed himself for not being able to control the situation and keep his daughter safe.

“What happened wasn’t your fault,” she murmured.

“Wasn’t it?” he asked, the words clipped.

Unable to resist the need to offer him comfort, she reached out her hand and rested it softly on his.

She completely understood where he was coming from. She knew all about that crushing weight of responsibility.

In that last panicked rush toward the helicopter and the navy SEALs, she had been terrified as usual. She had hesitated, frozen in fear. Her father had paused to go back for her and shoved her in front of him, pushing her forward with his usual words of encouragement as they had raced to safety.

He had thrust her into the helicopter ahead of him, but her split second of fear had had a terrible cost. Her father had been shot just before he would have been able to make it to safety.

If she hadn’t been so afraid, if she had started to run when he had first told her to go, maybe her father would still be with them now.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were all given one do-over in life?” she murmured. “One free pass to go back and change one action, one decision, one thoughtless word?”

He gave her a searching look, as if trying to figure out what moment she would alter. Finally he nodded. “One would be a start, I suppose, though I probably could use about a half dozen free passes.”

“Instead, we have to do our best to live with the consequences of our choices.”

“Not an easy task, is it?”

No. She had been trying for nearly twenty years.

He flexed his hand and she realized with great chagrin that she was still touching him. She pulled her fingers back quickly, her skin still tingling from the heat of him.

After an awkward moment, he turned to his daughter.

“Olivia, we should probably take off or someone else will eat our delicious pizza.”

“We haven’t ordered it yet,” she said with a concerned frown. “Do you think they’ll run out?”

“I was just teasing. But we really should go.”

“Okay,” she said reluctantly. She rubbed noses with Linus and petted Lucy one last time, then stood up.

She might have been mistaken, but Celeste thought she seemed to be moving better, even than a few days before.

Flynn drove a luxury SUV that smelled of expensive leather with hints of his woodsy, intoxicating aftershave. As he drove to the pizza place in town, she and Olivia talked about the books the girl had checked out of the library and about her schoolwork and her home in California.

He seemed content to listen, though once or twice she caught him giving her a sidelong glance, no doubt trying to figure out how he had gotten saddled spending the evening with the boring children’s librarian.

Monday night was family night at the Rocky Mountain Pizza Company—The Rock, as they called it in town. From the outside it looked as though the place was hopping.

This was one of the more family-friendly hangouts in Pine Gulch. Though it had a pool table in the back room, it also featured foosball and air hockey tables, as well as a few vintage video games like Ms. PAC-MAN and pinball.

Celeste came here about once a month, either with her sister or with friends. Usually she enjoyed the delicious wood-fired pizza and the comfortable, familiar atmosphere. The scent alone—garlic and yeast and a fabulous red sauce—made her stomach rumble.

On the heels of that first sensory overload, though, Celeste became aware that people were looking with curiosity at her and her companions.

She saw the police chief, Trace Bowman, and his wife, Becca, at one table with their children. In the next booth were Nate Cavazos and his wife, Emery, one of her good friends. Emery and Becca both looked intrigued.

For a wild moment, she wished she had refused the invitation from Olivia—or that she had persuaded Flynn to take them all the way to Jackson Hole or even Idaho Falls, somewhere far away from Pine Gulch where people didn’t know her.

Instead, she squared her shoulders, waved at her friends and did her best to ignore their speculative looks.