True-Blue Cowboy Christmas
Page 1
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Copyright © 2016 by Nicole Helm
Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover art by Blake Morrow
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
About the Author
Back Cover
To Mom and Grandma Taylor, who always made Christmas magic.
Chapter 1
For Summer Shaw, happiness was made of simple pleasures—a place to call her own, a little patch of land, the big open sky, and food in her stomach. All that was why Shaw Ranch wasn’t just happy, it was heaven. Here, she also had family—as evidenced by the tiny week-old niece she held in her arms.
“She’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“So you’ve said, approximately three hundred times.” Mel sighed, closing her eyes and sinking into the living room couch. “Today alone.”
“Why don’t you take a nap? I can handle Lissa for an hour or so.”
“No, I’m fine.” Mel yawned, curling her legs onto the couch. “I’ll just close my eyes for a few seconds.”
“Of course you will,” Summer placated, cradling the baby in one arm while she draped an afghan across Mel with the other. “Your mama needs to learn that she can’t do everything,” Summer whispered to the bundle in her arms.
“I heard that,” Mel mumbled without any heat.
Summer tiptoed out of the room. With any luck, Mel would relax and sleep—at least until Lissa needed to eat again. Mel and Summer’s tentative relationship still had its moments of awkwardness, and had since Summer had showed up on the ranch’s doorstep over a year ago. But the changes that came with Mel’s pregnancy and Lissa’s birth had smoothed over those last pockets of distance.
They finally had something to bond them together, so they could get past being so wary of each other.
Summer hummed to the beautiful baby girl, walking her to the den at the end of the house. It was a cluttered, messy room that smelled of old magazines and dirt. Summer liked how it held the distinctive signs of the most recently married Shaw couple: her brother Caleb’s ranch magazines and her new sister-in-law Delia’s gardening tools stored for the winter.
This space had everything Summer wanted—comfort, the evidence of family, and the big window that looked out over mountains, barns, and so much of the Shaw ranch.
Winter held Montana in its grip, the mountains heavily snow-peaked, the world around her white and glittering. She missed the warmth of summer, but she couldn’t bring herself to miss California, even as she entered her second Montana winter. It would be harsh and long, but the upcoming holidays would warm up this interminable season. Her family would gather, and they would celebrate. This was a family who treated her as a person instead of a belonging—albeit a person they didn’t know what to do with.
At this point, it was mainly just her father who kept his distance. He had apologized, though, for treating her with silence when she first showed up. And he’d apologized for doing nothing to stop Summer’s mother from leaving him even though he had known she’d been pregnant with Summer when she left. He’d explained that he’d had to let her mother go so that he could keep Mel safe with him.
Even so, Summer wasn’t one hundred percent sure what to do with that apology, or with the dread that lived in her heart. Because who knew which of her mother’s stories were true? She might not belong here. Summer winced at the little prick of conscience she felt. She had been at Shaw for almost a year and a half, and she couldn’t let that possibility ever take this away.
The Shaws were her family. They never needed to know that there was doubt.
Summer took a deep breath. She’d spent a lifetime—short though twenty-three years might be—learning to soak up life’s good moments. She’d learned every deep-breathing, positive-thinking, centered-life meditation and practiced them with every fiber of her being. She breathed day and night, through thick and thin, happy and sad.
That had kept her going, all through the unpredictable prison that had been her life with Mom, and the new freedom she’d found in Montana and at Shaw.
Still, nothing was perfect. Even in moments like this one, holding this newborn—her niece—in front of the most beautiful landscape she’d ever seen, the joy could be jarred. A knot formed in the pit of her stomach. Tiny at first. A little pebble. But eventually it would grow until she had a boulder sitting on her chest.
Because a life spent collecting these few-and-far-between perfect moments had taught her one thing: Just when she thought she was on the right track—happy, peaceful, home—life would have other plans.
She closed her eyes against the certainty. Please don’t take Shaw away from me. I can handle anything but that.
Anything but that.
A beat. A breath.
Summer opened her eyes, and her gaze drifted toward the tree line around her little home. An odd structure built onto the back of an old truck, she always referred to it as her caravan. The Shaw land and house had become an extension of home, but the caravan was its heart. It was the thing she’d built. That was something no one could take away. Her home. Her ability to survive. Those were all hers.
Lissa fussed, and Summer began to sing one of the slow country love songs the regulars at Pioneer Spirit tended to drift off to.
At her second glimpse of the caravan way off in the trees, she didn’t pay much attention to the little dot of red. The vehicle was a colorful thing as it was. She’d repainted the outside this summer, a vibrant purple and blue to mimic the sky at dusk.
But that red was off. She squinted, noticing the dot of color was moving. It was too big to be a bird, too red to be…well, anything else, but so far away it was impossible to make out clearly.
Her stomach dropped with the sour fear she thought she’d gotten over, except for in her dreams. Surely it wasn’t big enough to be her mother. Surely, surely Mom wouldn’t have followed her here. But that bright, vibrant red had always been one of Mom’s favorites.
Run.
Panic bubbled up in Summer’s chest, and she backed away from the window. She couldn’t let Linda get up here, especially couldn’t let her talk to any Shaws. Linda would turn them against Summer and ruin everything Summer’s life had become. Who knew what damage she could inflict on the Shaws, on this place Summer was finally beginning to think of as home.
She turned on her heel. She wasn’t going to run. She’d promised herself she would never run away again. So, she’d fight.
* * *
It was not her mother.
After settling Lissa back with Mel and failing to stay calm or nonchalant, Summer dashed across the snow-packed land that separated the Shaw house from her caravan. She arrived breathless and near tears, only to find a little girl. A little girl dressed in red. Red coat, red boots, even her pants were red. She had a shock of unruly, curly blond hair, and she stared at Summer with big, blue eyes.
Summer wasn’t great at guessing ages, but the girl had to be old enough for elementary school, though probably not much older than that.
“Hello,” Summer offered once she could breathe almost normally. “Are you lost?”
The girl continued her wide-eyed staring.
“Are you okay?” Summer pressed, taking a few uncertain steps toward her. She didn’t know of any neighbor children. A few families around the ranch made sure not to associate with any of the Shaws. There was a lot of not-so-pleasant history there, mainly involving Caleb being a bit of a ne’er-do-well as an adolescent.
“Are you a fairy?” the little girl whispered.
Summer’s eyebrows shot up. Maybe the girl was really lost—days lost and delirious. “No, sweetheart. Are you cold? Hungry?”
“Are you an angel?”
“No, just a human.”
Summer carefully knelt in front of the girl. She knew what it was like for strangers to approach you, touch you, speak to you, and leave you uncomfortable.
Summer swallowed a lump in her throat, swallowed away old, bad memories, and resisted the urge to touch the girl to see if she was shivering. It was far too cold for a little girl to be left wandering around.
“Is that yours?” The little girl nodded toward the caravan.
“Yes.”
“It looks like a fairy palace.”
Summer smiled. Fairy palace might not have been the aesthetic she was going for, but colorful and free meant different things to different people. Maybe that description was about right.
“It’s a little cold to be walking around alone. Can I help you get back to your house?”
“I got a little lost.” She bit her bottom lip, the downy, pale slashes of her eyebrows drawing together. “Daddy will be mad.” The little girl’s big, blue eyes filled with tears.
The chill in the air was no match for the chill in Summer’s heart. Angry fathers weren’t something she had any experience with, but angry parents or adults who scared children… She knew them, and the memory was disturbing.
She felt immediately protective of this lost and scared little girl. Poor thing. She needed a friend.
“I’m Summer. What’s your name?” She held out her hand. An offer, if the girl felt so inclined to take it.
The girl opened her mouth, but before any sound came out, a man’s voice bellowed through the trees. “Kate!”
Instinctively, Summer stepped between the trees and the girl. The little thing didn’t need an angry man yelling at her when she was lost, teary, and scared, whether he was her father or not. Parentage wasn’t a get-out-of-being-a-monster-free card for anyone. “If you want to hide—”
But the dot of red darted around her.
“Daddy! I’m here!” Kate waved her red mittens and jumped up and down, then got distracted by the snow puffing up in drifts as she jumped. She giggled, kicking the snow in powdery arcs, any threat of tears gone.
“Katherine.” The man burst through the tree line. He was obviously furious and frustrated, but the predominant emotion on his face was neither of those things.
He was terrified.
Summer knew she should soften. A man who felt terror as he searched for his missing daughter was more than likely not the kind of man who would hurt her as well.
Or so one would hope.
But Mom had been loving and thoughtful one minute, quick to raise her hand the next. Everything inside Summer coiled into a tight, tense ball. It took a great feat of strength not to reach out and grab the bundle of red away from the man. A lot of people were very, very good actors, after all. She had found people who were honest and good as well. She just had no idea which one he was.
The father sank to his knees in front of the girl, grabbing her shoulders. “What are you doing? You can’t keep doing this to me.” He ran his gloved hands down her arms and over her face, as though he was checking for an injury. Once he was satisfied, he pulled the bundle of red against his chest. For a few quiet minutes, he simply held her there, his eyes closed, some of the tension in his shoulders draining away, clearly moved and relieved that she was unharmed.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. But look.” She pointed at Summer, a bright smile showing off two missing front teeth. “I found a fairy palace.”
For the first time, he looked at Summer. He got to his feet, his mouth tightening into a frown. He was a tall man, a broad man, and neither the puffy work jacket nor the cowboy hat that now shadowed his face could do anything to hide the obvious—that he would be far stronger and more powerful than her.
“Who are you?” he said. No, that was too kind—his tone was all demand as he stepped in front of Kate as if he could shield her from Summer.
Summer wanted to shrink away or hide, but she’d learned something about standing up even when it was the scariest thing imaginable. “Maybe I should be asking you that.”
“Why are you talking to my dau—” Kate grabbed the hem of his coat and he stopped.
“Daddy,” she whispered, tugging on his coat. She grinned up at Summer. “She’s a fairy queen. Just like in the bedtime book.”
“We’re going home.” He moved his daughter by the shoulder, steering her toward the trees that separated Summer’s clearing from a fence she’d never crossed. She’d never even given a thought to what lay beyond it, because Shaw had been enough. Shaw felt safe.
For some reason, nothing beyond that fence ever had.
Chapter 2
Thack didn’t speak as he marched Kate back to the ranch. All he did was hold on to her hand and text Dad with his free one.
Found. Okay.
He didn’t trust himself to say much of anything. Yelling wasn’t the answer. Blubbering all over her certainly wasn’t the answer, even though that’s all he’d wanted to do after he’d spent a good half an hour searching the property for her. Finding no sign of her.
The problem was that he had no idea what the answer was anymore. If he couldn’t trust Dad to keep an eye on her, and he couldn’t trust her to follow the rules, would he have to trust someone else?
Not an option. Not if Kate was going to run away and talk to strangers. A woman he’d never seen before, and Kate had been all but curled up in her lap. She could be anyone. She could pose any danger. She could have kidnapped Kate easy as you please.
Thack took a deep breath and let it out. Kate was safe. For now.
The ranch came into view. The house he’d grown up in. The house he was busting his butt to keep
up with. From the outside, covered in snow, it looked picture perfect, if a little dull, with sun-bleached logs and roof. But as winter settled in and work with the cattle became mainly feeds and ice breaks and keeping the herd alive, Thack’s attention had to shift to fixing everything that had been ignored during the hectic spring and summer months.
The barn needed a new roof and door. The back porch on the house needed a new joist, which would be a pain to replace in all the snow, but the floor was currently a danger to his rebellious daughter.
“Daddy…”
“You know you’re not supposed to wander off like that,” he said, exhausted. Wrung out. “It’s dangerous. Not to mention you left the property. That is absolutely one hundred percent against the rules.” The things that could have happened to her while he was looking the other way…
Kate huffed out a breath. “But I saw a fairy palace! And I knew just where I was.” She tugged her hand out of his grasp. “Kinda.”
“You’re not supposed to wander alone. You’re not supposed to cross the fence. You’re not supposed to…” He trailed off. This had been a constant refrain for how long? She just didn’t listen, and Dad didn’t listen either.
Kate ran across the yard and up to the porch where Dad was standing and flung her arms around his waist. He patted her back and said something Thack couldn’t hear. Thack took his time crossing the yard, hoping to rein in some of his frustration before he spoke to his father.
When he reached them, he looked at Kate instead of Dad. “I’m very disappointed in you. You did something you knew very well you were not supposed to do. Go to your room, and do not come out until I come talk to you.”
“But I’m hungry.” Big, blue eyes looked imploringly up at him. Because she was too smart a kid not to know how to hit him where he couldn’t deny her.
“Up to your room. I’ll bring you something to eat once I talk to your grandfather.”
She grumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like “mean Dad,” and then ran inside. The sound of her crying echoed out the door, in his ears, and down into his chest. Everything hurt, and every time he thought they’d outgrown the hard part, more hard parts cropped up.