A Cold Creek Christmas Story

She hated being afraid all the time. She knew it was a by-product of the trauma she and her sisters had endured at a young age, but neither Hope nor Faith seemed as impacted as she had been.

Hope seemed absolutely fearless, spending years wandering around underdeveloped countries with the Peace Corps, and then on her own teaching English. Faith had plowed all her energy and attention into her family—her marriage, her children, the ranch.

Celeste’s life had become her job at the library and the stories she created.

In some ways, she supposed she was still a hostage of Juan Pablo and his crazy group of militants, afraid to take a move and embrace her life.

“Everything’s ready and I’m starving,” Mary said cheerfully. “What are we waiting for? Let’s eat.”

Dinner was noisy and chaotic, with several different conversations going at once.

“How did story time go?” Faith asked when there was a lull in the conversation.

She instantly remembered the shock of looking up from Dr. Seuss to see Flynn and his daughter.

“Good.” She paused. “Charlotte Delaney’s grandson, Flynn, and his daughter were there. I guess he’s in town to clean out Charlotte’s house.”

“Flynn Delaney.” Hope made a sound low in her throat. “I used to love it whenever he came to stay with Charlotte. Remember how he used to mow the lawn with his shirt off?”

Celeste dropped her fork with a loud clatter, earning her a curious look from Hope.

“Really?” Rafe said, eyebrow raised. “So all this time I should have been taking my shirt off to mow the lawn?”

Hope grinned at him. “You don’t need to take your shirt off. You’re gorgeous enough even when you’re wearing a parka. Anyway, I was a teenage girl. Now that I’m older and wiser I prefer to use my imagination.”

He shook his head with an amused look, but Celeste was certain his ears turned a little red.

“You said Flynn came into the library with his daughter,” Faith said, her voice filled with compassion. “That poor girl. How is she?”

Considering Flynn’s connection to Charlotte, whom they all had loved, everyone in Pine Gulch had followed the news reports. Celeste thought of Olivia’s big, haunted eyes, the sad, nervous air about her.

“Hard to say. She limped a little and didn’t use her left arm while we were doing the craft project, but other than that she seemed okay.”

“Who is Flynn Delaney and what happened to his daughter?” Rafe asked.

“It was all over the news three or four months ago,” Chase said. “Around the time Charlotte died, actually.”

“You remember,” Hope insisted. “We talked about it. He was married to Elise Chandler.”

Understanding spread over Rafe’s handsome features. “Elise Chandler. The actress.” He paused. “Oh. That poor kid.”

“Right?” Hope frowned. “What a tragedy. I saw on some tabloid in the supermarket that Flynn never left her side through the whole recovery.”

Somehow that didn’t seem so surprising, especially considering his devotion to his daughter during story time.

“What happened to her?” Louisa asked. At eleven, she was intensely interested in the world around her.

Her mother was the one who answered. “Elise Chandler was a famous actress,” Faith said. “She was in that superhero movie you loved so much and a bunch of other films. Anyway, she was involved with someone who turned out to be a pretty messed-up guy. A few months ago after a big fight, he shot Elise and her daughter before shooting and killing himself. Even though she was injured, Olivia managed to crawl to her mother’s phone and call 911.”

Celeste had heard that 911 call, which had been made public shortly after the shooting, and the sound of that weak, panic-stricken voice calling for help had broken her heart.

“She seems to be doing well now. She didn’t smile much, but she did tell me she loves the Sparkle book and that her dad used to read it to her over and over again in the hospital.”

“Oh, how lovely!” Hope exclaimed. “You should take her one of the original Sparkle toys I sewed. I’ve still got a few left.”

“That’s a lovely idea,” Mary exclaimed. “We definitely should do something for that poor, poor girl. It would have broken Charlotte’s heart if she’d still been alive to see Flynn’s little girl have to go through such a thing.”

“You have to take it over there,” Hope insisted. “And how about a signed copy of the book and the new one that hasn’t come out yet?”

Her heart pounded at just the idea of seeing the man again. She couldn’t imagine knocking on his door out of the blue. “Why don’t you take it over? You’re the illustrator! And you made the stuffed Sparkle, too.”

“I don’t even know him or his daughter.”

“As if that’s ever stopped you before,” she muttered.

“It would be a really nice thing to do,” Faith said.

“I baked an extra pie,” Aunt Mary said. “Why don’t you take that, too?”

All day long people had been pushing her to do things she didn’t want to. She thought longingly of jumping in her SUV again and taking off somewhere, maybe Southern California where she could find a little sunshine. As tempting as the idea might be sometimes, she knew she couldn’t just leave her family. She loved them to bits, even when they did pressure her.

She wanted to tell them all no, but then she thought of Olivia and her sad eyes. This was a small expenditure of effort on her part and would probably thrill the girl. “That’s a very good idea,” she finally said. “I’ll go after dinner. Linus can probably use the walk.”

“Perfect.” Hope beamed at her as if she had just won the Newbery Medal for children’s literature. “I’ll look for the stuffed Sparkle. I think there’s a handful of them left in a box in my old room.”

What would Flynn think when she showed up at his house with a stuffed animal and an armful of books? she wondered as she chewed potatoes that suddenly tasted like chalk.

It didn’t matter, she told herself. She was doing this for his daughter, a girl who had been through a terrible ordeal—and who reminded her entirely too much of herself.

Chapter Three (#ulink_29e72f77-b4e3-5bb9-954d-02c066e01a41)

“Are you sure you don’t want to help? This tinsel isn’t going to jump on the tree by itself.”

Flynn held a sparkly handful out to his daughter, who sat in the window seat, alternating between watching him and looking out into the darkness at the falling snowflakes.

She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “My arm hurts too much.”

He tried to conceal his frustrated sigh behind a cough. The physical therapist he had been taking her to since her injury had given him homework during this break while they were in Idaho. His assignment was to find creative activities that would force her to use her arm more.

He had tried a wide variety of things, like having Olivia push the grocery cart and help him pick out items in the store, and asking her help in the kitchen with slicing vegetables. The inconsistency of it made him crazy. Sometimes she was fine; other times she refused to use her arm at all.

After their trip to the library, he’d realized his grandmother’s house was severely lacking in holiday cheer. She had made a snowman ornament and they had nowhere to hang it.

Any hope he might have harbored that she would show a little enthusiasm for the idea of decking their temporary halls was quickly dashed. She showed the same listless apathy toward Christmas decorations as she had for just about everything else except Celeste Nichols and her little reindeer story.

Other than hanging her own snowman ornament, she wasn’t interested in helping him hang anything else on the small artificial tree he had unearthed in the basement. As a result, he had done most of the work while she sat and watched, not budging from her claim of being in too much pain.

He knew using her arm caused discomfort. He hadn’t yet figured out how to convince an almost-seven-year-old she needed to work through the pain if she ever wanted to regain full mobility in her arm.