by Jillian Hart
Acclaim for the authors of A SEASON OF THE HEART
JILLIAN HART
“Finely drawn characters and sweet tenderness tinged with poignancy draw readers into a familiar story that beautifully captures the feel of an Americana romance.”
—Romantic Times on High Plains Wife
KATE BRIDGES
“Bridges recreates a time and place to perfection and then adds an American touch with warmhearted characters and tender love.”
—Romantic Times on The Surgeon
MARY BURTON
“This talented writer is a virtuoso, who strums the hearts of readers and composes an emotional tale.”
—Rendezvous
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JILLIAN HART
grew up on her family’s homestead, where she raised cattle, rode horses and scribbled stories in her spare time. After earning an English degree from Whitman College, she worked in advertising before selling her first novel to Harlequin Historical. When she’s not hard at work on her next story, Jillian can be found chatting with a friend, stopping for a café mocha with a book in hand and spending quiet evenings at home with her family.
KATE BRIDGES
is fascinated by the romantic tales of the spirited men and women who tamed the West. Growing up in rural Canada, Kate developed a love of people-watching and reading all types of fiction, although romance was her favorite. She embarked on a career as a neonatal intensive-care nurse, then moved on to architecture and television production before crafting novels of her own. Currently living in the bustling city of Toronto, she and her husband love to go to movies and travel.
MARY BURTON
sold her first novel, A Bride for McCain, in January 1999. A graduate of Hollins University, Burton enjoys a variety of hobbies, including scuba diving, yoga and hiking. She is based in Richmond, Virginia, where she lives with her husband and two children.
A Season of the Heart
JILLIAN HART
KATE BRIDGES
MARY BURTON
CONTENTS
ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS
Jillian Hart
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
THE CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Kate Bridges
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
THE CHRISTMAS CHARM
Mary Burton
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Epilogue
ROCKY MOUNTAIN CHRISTMAS
Jillian Hart
Chapter One
The gunfire pounded relentlessly. Locked in a dream, Mac McKaslin wrestled down the screaming urgency to run. Not to run away from the gunfight on this holiest of nights, but rather to charge straight into the flying volley of bullets where she was waiting for him. Trapped. Held hostage.
As pumped full of murderous rage as he was, he wasn’t made of steel, so that meant he was cornered. The second he popped out from behind the boulders he and his team were using as cover, he would catch a bullet. But he had to get out from behind this rock and save her.
Eliminate the first threat. It’s what they’d taught him on the first day in training as a Montana Range Rider.
Bam! Bam! The pounding continued, or maybe it was the pulse surging through his veins. Her scream cut through the night as he picked off another outlaw and saw him fall lifeless to the ground.
It wasn’t enough. Amelia’s scream ripped apart the night and he heard nothing else, not the popping gunfire and the screaming agony of the dying. Nothing, not even the pounding of his heart, because he had no heart anymore, not if she died—
The hammering tore him awake, jerked him too fast and fierce out of the dream. Mac bolted up, the revolver on his bedside table already in his hand. He’d thumbed the hammer and taken two steps before he’d come fully awake. Before the ribbons of the nightmare fluttered away and he realized he wasn’t standing knee-deep in snow in the belly of the Badlands.
“Sheriff, are you in there?” It sounded like Jed from the train station. “We got a problem.”
With the ravages of a shattered life around him fading away on the shreds of the dream, Mac lowered his weapon, rubbed his free hand over his face and opened the door. The white starlight drifting over the snowy outside world looked so much like the one in his dreams.
There, on the porch, anchoring him to the present, was the shadow of a man who brought with him the scents of cigar smoke and a hint of Jack Daniel’s.
“What kind of problem?” Mac demanded.
“Pull on your trousers and a coat, and I’ll show ya.”
Long ago were the days of riding the wildlands in the territory, a Ranger looking for wrongs to right. Tonight he was irritated, mostly because he wasn’t the calm, controlled lawman he liked to pretend he was.
But also because it was damn cold outside. The crisp clear of it scudded across the floor and caught hold of his ankles, and he gritted his teeth. Cold enough to freeze the meat on his bones. What brand of fool would be out causing trouble on a night like this?
“If this is about kids turning over the outhouse, I’m gonna be mad.” Mac emerged from his bedroom into the dark space of the front room, buttoning the last fastener on his trousers. “This better be worth my trouble.”
“Hey, don’t get all het up at me. The engineer sent me to fetch you. It wasn’t my idea to leave my nice warm office.” Jed’s teeth chattered as he hiked down the front steps. “While I’ve got your attention, how’s it comin’ along with my last break-in?”
Not again. Mac jammed his arms into his jacket and launched out the door. It wasn’t the easiest thing to keep his cool well after midnight, when the echoes of Amelia’s screams were still ringing in his ears.
He had to remember, where once he’d tried to right wrongs and stop bad men before they could do more harm, he was now a small-town sheriff in a little mountain town in the Rockies. Smaller problems, but those matters were important to the people who lived and worked in this town.
So, he shoved aside his frustration and opted for discretion. “I’m following up leads. Got a witness who saw three boys running down the alley about the time you heard them rummaging around.”
“I appreciate your diligence, Sheriff.”
“Sure thing.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. The wind was up tonight, and clouds sped across the star-strewn sky, gathering strength, draining darkness. One by one those stars winked out, leaving the street dark as Hades.
The town of Moose was smaller than most, but well enough off. It hosted a main street full of thriving businesses, and the mill n
orth of town kept a lot of folks employed most of the year. On an ordinary walk across the nighttime streets, he often felt a sense of satisfaction at being part of a place like this. It was a good decent place. Solid. Storefronts were clean and tidy. Come morning, people he knew by first name would call out to him as he passed.
But tonight his heart was too numb to feel much of anything. No, that was wrong; he wasn’t numb, he was used up. The sap and life burned out of him. It was the dream. It was the time of year. It was anything, sometimes everything that would bring up the dream. It would spark like a stray ember in dry grass and flame out of control before a man could stop it.
“Over this way.” Jeb hiked through the drifts and up onto the loading platform. Instead of heading over to the storage buildings, he arrowed straight to a railroad car where the engineer stood silent, haloed by the drift of his cigarette smoke.
“We didn’t wanna wake ’em.” Jeb dropped his voice, and gestured toward the cracked boxcar door.
“Not another stowaway?”
“Well…not a usual stowaway.” Jeb stepped aside.
Not again. Mac didn’t think he could stomach it on this night, the longest of the year. Another old man hungry and alone with no family to care for him, or, no family that cared. Probably some old war veteran, wandering and homeless. It always got to him.
Mac tipped his hat to the engineer and, with no reason to delay, stepped inside. He’d make the arrest as was his duty, and with as much respect as possible.
The instant his boot met the iced floor of the boxcar, he sensed it. Something wasn’t right; he heard the quiet rhythm of breathing instead of the snoring draw and pull of a man sleeping. And the scent; he didn’t detect cheap whiskey or cheaper tobacco.
What he sensed was peace. A somber quiet radiated like light within the confines of the pitch-black car. Lost in shadows, hidden in the inky blackness in the far corner was something, he could feel it, sense it like the blood warm in his veins.
He took the match tin the engineer handed him and struck a light. The flame flared and fought back enough darkness for him to see her. An angel’s profile, wisps of ebony hair, a soft rosebud mouth, and then the match faded in the wind and flickered out.
Leaving only night shadows. A woman. He couldn’t get over the sight of a nice woman in a place like this. But the soft moan low in her throat told him she was waking, and he lit another match quick before she could panic. But as the spark struck and light erupted, her rasp of fear echoed against the low ceiling.
He was too late. The last thing he wanted to do was to scare her, a woman alone. She was young—not too young, somewhere in her twenties, he figured, but far too tender to be traveling like this alone. And she knew it, judging by the flare of her eyes, a jewel green in the match’s flare. In an instant she was sitting up, her hand moving beneath the single blanket covering her.
A bowie knife was his guess. “Easy now, ma’am. I’m not about to hurt ya.”
Beneath the wool blanket, her hand became a fist around the handle of a blade.
He didn’t take another step. No sense panicking her. She was within her rights to be afraid. Disoriented. Alone. Vulnerable. So he held up the match and his free hand. So she could see he wasn’t armed. And he wasn’t coming any closer. “I’m Mac McKaslin, ma’am. The sheriff of this town. You want to let go of that knife you’re holding?”
“No. I’m quite fond of my blade.” Her words came low like the alto chime of a bell, and the sound of it moved him back in time, to another woman’s voice and another woman’s fear that was tangible as snow on the wind.
He swallowed hard, feeling the starch go out of his knees. It had been years since he’d let himself think of Amelia in the waking hours, to allow her brief image to flash across his mind’s eye, and there it was, he saw the gold of her hair, the blue of her eyes, the delicate features and her voice, calling for him for help, trusting him to save her.
“Here’s a lantern, Mac.” Jed’s down-to-earth western drawl brought him back.
Mac was grateful for it and for the light. He wasn’t the kind of man to let emotion, memories or anything else get the best of him. He was tougher than that. A good man had to be. “They’re gonna need to load up, miss, so you’ll have to come with me.”
The woman’s hand remained clenched beneath the thin blanket, every muscle tensing up visibly beneath the worn wool coat draping her like a hand-me-down that was two sizes too big. Something else was off, and Mac sensed it a moment too late. The bulk beneath the blanket he’d assumed was from the bulk of a skirt and petticoats shifted. The softest voice came muffled from beneath the wool and loaded with fear. “M-mama?”
Well, I’ll be damned. Mac understood better now—a mother protecting her young, and he took another step back. And another. Until he was far enough away that the dark-haired woman relaxed a tad and laid her free hand on the child’s shoulder.
“It’s all right, baby.”
There was no mistaking the love in her tone, and it changed the timbre of the night. The ruthless wind gusted with an arctic force stirring the random bits of straw on the car’s frosted floor, yet it could not dispel the softness in the air that gleamed like the gentlest light. Something rare, and it was this woman. His heart might be ashes, but those ashes well remembered the warm crackle of love’s flame. Mac closed down the places of his lost heart and barricaded them well.
What kind of world was this, where a mother and child huddled alone beneath a single blanket, and on a frigid night? The woman’s eyes met his, dark pools that spoke not of naiveté but of disillusion. What could have put that in a young mother’s soul?
“Change of plans, Jed.” He saw the same shock on the depot clerk’s face. “She has a child with her. We’re gonna take ’em to the inn.”
Jed’s surprise turned to remorse. “I don’t think so, Sheriff. That’s not railroad policy.”
“He’s right.” The engineer took a deep drag on his cigar. “There’s only one way to handle stowaways. The company can’t afford to let folks ride for free. They gotta pay.”
“This isn’t your usual stowaway situation.” Mac couldn’t remember ever coming across a mother and child. Not like this.
Crystal snow fluttered from a heartless sky to dust the floor at his feet. The woman was watching him, her voice too low to discern what she was saying as she comforted her little girl. She was too lost in the shadows for him to see how old the little one was, but one thing was certain. She was far too young to be without a home. Much too young to know uncertainty and fear.
“We can’t toss ’em in jail.” His words cracked like winter thunder. “It just isn’t right, Jed.”
“I don’t care if it’s right. It’s the way it is. A stowaway’s not better than a thief.”
A thief. Carrie Montgomery’s chest squeezed hard at that horrid truth. Is this what she had become? What her life had unraveled to? She’d seen the pity in the lawman’s steeled gaze. It was hard to miss. She hated to think what she looked like, bedraggled from travel and from sleep. It took every ounce of dignity she had to lift her chin, even the littlest bit, and not give in to the despair closing in on her.
She’d not come this far to fail. To be called and judged a thief. This was the end of the line—they’d been found. She’d accept this the best way she could, as a setback and not as defeat.
With a handful of change weighted in her skirt pocket, she gathered her child in her arms, bundling her as well as possible against the frigid cut of the wintry gale. It took but a moment to loop the fraying satchel handle on her arm.
“Mama, I’m c-cold.” A tiny sob seemed to shatter the night.
And Carrie’s heart. “I know, baby. Just a few minutes more.” Where she would find shelter, she couldn’t say, but find it she would. A storm was heading this way and she’d rip these mountains down stone by stone to find a safe place for her child.
She faced the three men blocking the doorway. This wasn’t going to be easy. She
felt the fist of it in her gut. “Excuse me.”
“I don’t think so.” The man in full uniform beneath his wool jacket closed the small gap between the men and the doorway, barring her from escape. “You’re a stowaway, ma’am.”
“And as soon as I step foot off this train, then I’m not any longer. So, please, step aside.”
“It’s not that easy. You’re trespassing.”
Shame burned hot on her face and pulled downward inside, making her feel smaller. Diminished. But she had a daughter to fight for. A child’s welfare at stake, so she put some steel in her voice. “Move aside and I’ll gladly stop trespassing—”
None of the men moved.
She studied one grim face after another until finally she came to the sheriff. The big commanding man, not beefy like the man in uniform or lanky like the local man, but a solid, dependable cut of muscle and authority. He’d been the one who’d backed off, and she put her hopes in him now. “I don’t want trouble, sir. I just want off this boxcar.”
“I think that’s reasonable enough.” The lawman’s eyes were cold, not warm, and haunted when she expected them to be full of judgment. Good. Perhaps he had larger concerns. And he’d leave her be.
To her relief, the lawman stepped aside and gave her room to pass on the other side. She took it, moving with as much dignity as possible when the deepest of instincts screamed at her to run and run fast. Her hold on her child tightened as she took those last few steps toward the door.