Christmas in Cold Creek

“I’m beginning to see why people prefer artificial trees.”

“Oh, blasphemy!” He aimed a mock frown in her direction. “What about that heavenly smell?”

“A ninety-nine-cent car air freshener can give you the same thing without the sap and the needles all over the carpet.”

He shook his head with a rueful smile but didn’t argue and she was painfully aware of the highly inconvenient little simmer of attraction. He was an extraordinarily good-looking man, with those startling green eyes and a hint of afternoon shadow along his jawline. Avoiding him would be far easier if the dratted man didn’t stir up all kinds of ridiculous feelings.

“I’ll clean up the needles, I promise.”

To Becca’s surprise, Gabrielle seemed to glow with excitement. She was such a funny kid. Becca was no closer to figuring out this curious little stranger than she was two months ago when Monica had dumped her in her lap.

“Okay, moment of truth.” Trace stepped back to look at his handiwork. “Does that look straight to you two?”

Gabrielle moved toward Becca for a better perspective and cocked her head to the side. “It looks great to me. What about you, Be—um, Mom?”

Gabi stumbled only slightly over the word but it was still a surprising mistake. Her sister was remarkably adept at deception. No surprise there since she’d been bottle-fed it since birth. Becca glanced at the police chief but he didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss and she spoke quickly to distract him.

“Looks straight to me, too.”

“I think you’re both right. It is straight. Amazing! That didn’t take long at all. You’ve got some serious tree setup skills, young lady.”

Much to Becca’s astonishment, her sister giggled. Actually giggled. Gabrielle blinked a little, clearly surprised at the sound herself.

“Now what are we going to decorate it with?” the girl asked.

“I’ve got a couple strings of lights out in the truck. We can start with that.”

“I can probably find something around here,” Becca said quickly. “If not, I can pick some up tomorrow.”

She didn’t want him here. It was too dangerous. The more time they spent with the police chief, the greater the chance that either she or Gabi would slip again and he would figure out things weren’t quite as they seemed. She had the distinct impression he was suspicious enough of them and she didn’t want to raise any more red flags.

Her unwilling attraction to him only further complicated the situation. She just wanted him to leave so she could go back to duct-taping her life back together.

“I’ve already got the lights out in my truck. Why go to so much trouble of tracking down more?”

“You’ve already done more than enough.”

“Here’s something good to know about me.” Trace grinned. “I’m the kind of guy who likes to see things through.”

For an insane instant, she imagined just how he would kiss a woman—with thorough, meticulous intensity. Those green eyes would turn to smoke as he took great care to explore and taste every inch of her mouth with his until she was soft and pliant and ready to throw every caution out the window… .

She blinked away the entirely too appealing image to find Trace watching her. His eyes weren’t smoky now, only curious, as if wondering what she was thinking. Heat rushed to her cheeks with her blush, something she hadn’t done in a long time. He wouldn’t be talked out of helping them decorate the tree. Somehow she knew she was stuck in this untenable situation and continuing to protest would only make him wonder why she was so ardently determined to avoid his company.

Gabi was obviously pleased to have him here and it seemed churlish of Becca to make a deal about it. How long would it take to decorate a tree, anyway?

“Thank you, then. I think I saw a box of old ornaments up in the attic in my … my grandfather’s things.”

“Great. I guess we’re in business.” He headed for the door and returned a moment later with a box that had Extra Christmas Lights written on it with black permanent marker in what looked like a woman’s handwriting. He didn’t have a wife, she knew, so who had written those words? Maybe he had an ex or a steady girlfriend. Not that it was any of her business who might be writing on his boxes, she reminded herself.

He immediately started untangling the light strings and she watched long, well-formed fingers move nimbly for a moment then jerked her attention away when she realized she was staring.

“Gabi, come help me look for the ornaments.”

Reluctance flitted across the girl’s features as if she didn’t want to leave Trace Bowman’s presence, either, but she followed Becca up the narrow stairs to the cramped storage space under the eaves adjacent to the room Gabi had claimed as her own bedroom.

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.