Christmas in Echo Creek_A Sweet Holiday Romance

by Kacey Linden

“Marcia, hi. Yeah, I am.”

  “That’s wonderful! Please say you’ll come for dinner tonight, unless you and Willow need to sort some things out, but I’m sure she’ll want to know that you’re all right. Neither of us slept a wink last night—”

  “Marcia, I’m sorry, but something’s happened.”

  Silence. “Cale Matthews, don’t you dare tell me that someone’s died. I can’t. Not now. Not this Christmas—”

  “No!” he hastened to reassure her. “No one has died. Kinley still has some recovering to do, but the doctors think she’ll be fine.”

  “Then what? Just tell me. I’m sitting down and I’ll handle it, I swear.”

  “Willow disappeared from her shift at Creekside and her brother was spotted in town this afternoon.”

  More silence.

  “Marcia, are you going to be okay? We’re headed out to look for both of them, but I need to know that you’re okay.”

  “I’m getting my purse,” she snapped, “and then I’m going to go looking for that rat-bastard and when I find him I’m going to run him over with my car.”

  Cale stifled the urge to laugh. It was strange to hear Mrs. Dillon threatening homicide, but then, he felt the same way. “I don’t want to have to arrest you, so please don’t hit him too hard.”

  “Cale,” she said after a moment, “do you think…” She couldn’t finish, but he answered anyway.

  “No. She didn’t leave us. She told me she wouldn’t do that, and I believe her. She’s still here somewhere, but she’s trying to protect us. Trying to keep Elliot away from the people she cares about. We just have to find out where she’s gone so we can protect her in return.”

  “Then why are you wasting time talking to me?” Marcia said severely. “Go! Get out there! Bring her home.”

  She hung up.

  Home. That was truly how she felt about the young woman who had dropped so unexpectedly into her life, and he suspected Willow felt it too. They were family now. And Echo Creek always took care of family.

  As he pulled away from the curb, he began making more phone calls. To Pete. Tess. Anyone he could think of who knew Willow. With the entire town watching out for her, Elliot wouldn’t stand a chance.

  Or so he’d thought. By nightfall, he’d checked everywhere he could think of that Willow might go. He’d searched his own house, even driven to Bend to ask questions at the hospital, in case she’d come looking for him and not realized he’d been released. After alerting the Bend PD, he drove back and cruised the outskirts of town until well after ten, trying to imagine anywhere else she might have thought to hide.

  His phone rang. It was his Uncle Pete.

  “Hey.”

  “Cale, where are you?”

  “Just coming back into town. Why?”

  “Look, a lot of people are wondering whether we ought to call off the search. We’ve been everywhere and no one’s seen anything. Some folks are thinking she might have bolted—left town the same way she came.”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? If she’s used to running, she might have just panicked.”

  “If you want to stop looking, that’s fine. I won’t blame you.” That was a lie. He would blame Pete for thinking that of Willow, even as he blamed himself for not trusting her with the truth. “But I know she wouldn’t just leave. She’s still here somewhere, and I’m going to find her before Elliot does.”

  A sigh. “Okay. Then I’m with you. I’ll tell everyone to quit whenever they have to, but you can send me wherever you need. Where haven’t you looked that she might be familiar with?”

  Cale breathed out a silent prayer of thanks. “She really hasn’t been that many places in town, and we’ve talked to everyone she knows. I thought she might have gone after her car, but Marty locked his place up early, and I don’t think she could have broken in.”

  “Do we know when she left Creekside? Is it possible she went to Marty’s before he locked up?”

  “Marty would have seen her. She trusts him, and she would have had to ask him for the keys.”

  “Not if Elliot was there. She would have been avoiding him. And if Marty locked up right after Elliot left, he might not have even known she was around.”

  Cale’s heart began to pound. “She could have been locked in the garage by accident.”

  “I hope not,” Uncle Pete said, “but you might as well look. Head on over. I’ll call Marty and ask him to run by and unlock it.”

  Cale hung up and punched the accelerator as he sped past the city limit sign. What if Pete was right? The temperature had hovered around freezing all day, dropping lower after nightfall, and he had no idea whether Willow had taken a coat. She had only planned to be at work, so she might have left her hat and gloves at home.

  It felt like an hour before he skidded to a stop in front of the garage and jumped out of his truck. Marty was just jogging across the street from his house nearby, his keys in hand.

  His face was pale. “Cale, I swear I wouldn’t have locked it up if I’d thought anyone was in there. I just didn’t want that Elliot guy to see that his car was here.”

  “We’re not sure yet, Marty.” Cale fought to remain calm. “Let’s just open it up and check.”

  Marty fumbled with the padlock for a moment before unlocking it and yanking off the chain. The enormous door rumbled upwards at a glacial pace, and Cale didn’t wait for it to rise all the way. He slid under as soon as he would fit.

  “Willow?” he called breathlessly. “Willow, are you in here?”

  Silence greeted him for a long, tense moment. He felt his heartbeat slow, his worry abate, though only a fraction. She was still out there somewhere.

  A rustle in the corner startled him. Then a clank, like tools hitting against each other.

  “Who’s there?” Every sense went on alert, and he reached for his off-duty weapon just as he heard the whisper.

  “Cale?”

  Willow.

  He forgot the doctor’s orders, forgot everything in his haste to get to her, in the farthest, most shadowy corner of the shop.

  “Marty, lights!” he called frantically, racing across the floor, dodging clutter and vaulting over the hood of a beat-up Honda. He heard Marty swearing, but then the lights switched on and he saw her.

  She was huddled in a corner, hidden behind a pile of tires. He was relieved to see that she was wearing her hat, and her gloves, but she had only her own thin jacket to protect her from the cold.

  Her frozen lips barely moved as she whispered his name again. “Cale. I didn’t leave.” Her eyes were pleading with him to believe her. “I was going to come find you.”

  “I know.” He dropped to his knees beside her, his eyes filling with tears of relief. “I believed you. And I never would have stopped looking.”

  She smiled, and her eyes closed.

  Cale touched her cheek gently and found it icy cold. “We’ve got to get you out of here.” He bent down to pick her up, one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her shoulders.

  She weighed so little that even in his weakened condition, it was nothing to lift her off the floor and cradle her in his arms.

  Her eyes flew open as her head came to rest on his shoulder. “Elliot!” She was obviously still afraid. “We can’t go back to Marcia’s. I don’t want him to hurt anyone.”

  “Do you really think I would let your pathetic brother hurt either of you, ever?” Cale asked her softly.

  Her eyes closed again. “No, but you were injured. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You did everything you could,” he reassured her. “Now let us help. We’re going to take you home, okay?”

  “Okay,” she murmured, and nestled against his shoulder. “Home.”

  Glancing down to where the pale curve of her cheek rested against his coat, Cale felt himself finally relax, almost entirely at peace for the first time in years. “Home,” she’d said, and that was where they would go, but home, for him, was no longer a place. His home wa
s with Willow, wherever she was, for as long as she’d have him.

  There was still so much to be said, so much he needed to apologize for. He had to believe she’d forgiven him, but he knew it would take time to regain her trust, and to convince her that she didn’t need to leave Echo Creek. Even if she decided not to be with him, he wanted her to know that her Christmas miracle didn’t have to end.

  For tonight, his own miracle was right there in his arms, and that was all the Christmas he needed.

  Chapter 15

  Willow awakened while it was still dark. A glance at the clock beside her bed revealed that it was a little after three in the morning, but she felt like something had disturbed her after only a few hours of troubled sleep.

  Once Cale had confirmed that she was cold, but in no danger, he had turned her over to Marcia, who had warmed her up, stuffed her with soup, and tucked her into bed, swearing to keep all visitors away until she was sufficiently rested.

  Willow thought Cale had gone home to sleep after that, but her memories of the evening were a little fuzzy, starting while she was still at the garage. She remembered feeling cold and drowsy, thinking that no one would find her until it was too late, and then Cale had come, seemingly out of nowhere. She hadn’t even had a chance to ask him how he found her. It was enough that he had.

  Unable to shake off a feeling of restlessness, Willow decided to go downstairs for a drink of water. She slid out from under her blankets and wrapped up in a sweater, cracking open the door to her room just in time to hear an ominous creaking coming from the attic.

  She froze, and waited for it to happen again. After a period of silence, she remembered what Marcia had said about the old house and its noises. It was no wonder the older woman believed there might be rats.

  Willow opened the door a little further and stepped out into the hall, only to stop dead in her tracks when the unmistakable clatter of something falling filtered down through the floor.

  That was not simply the sound of old timbers settling. This time, at least, it was no hallucination—there was definitely something in the attic.

  Down the hall, the other bedroom door opened to reveal Marcia, holding a broom in one hand and an enormous flashlight in the other. She held out the flashlight to Willow and beckoned her forward.

  “That was not my batty old-lady imagination,” she hissed, after Willow took the flashlight from her and almost dropped it in the process. The thing was heavy! “We’re going up there and we’re going to find out what’s making that noise, once and for all.

  Willow thought she would much rather not encounter any marauding rodents in the middle of the night, but she wasn’t going to make Marcia go up there alone, so she led the way up the attic stairs and peered in. Everything seemed usual, except for one strange difference—it was cold. An icy breeze reached them, even there in the doorway, and Willow discovered the cause as soon as she moved the beam of light to rest on the attic window.

  It was broken.

  “Drat,” Marcia exclaimed. “That would explain how something got in. Could even be a racoon, with a hole that size. Let’s see if we can’t chase it out.”

  She stepped inside and moved across the floor confidently, looking behind boxes, poking at odds and ends with her broom. They were about halfway to the window when they both heard something rustling in the farthest corner from the door.

  “Back there!” Marcia marched towards the corner, with Willow following tentatively behind her, and as they rounded a stack of trunks, something ahead of them moved.

  Willow’s heart jumped into her throat. She swung the flashlight up just in time to illuminate the scene as their quarry leapt out of the corner towards them… and it was no raccoon.

  The intruder was human.

  Willow shrieked and dropped the flashlight. A grunt and a thud followed. Crouching to the floor, terror clutching at her throat, Willow fumbled frantically for the light as it rolled away across the uneven boards. “Marcia!” she screamed.

  Another grunt and a yelp came from the corner. Willow’s hands trembled as she scrabbled her way towards the light, almost paralyzed by fear but determined to help Marcia. Whoever had broken in was apparently willing to beat up an old lady and Willow was the only one who could do anything about it.

  She finally got a firm grip on the flashlight, grasped it with both hands, and prepared to use it as a club if necessary. Rising to her feet, she made her trembling way towards the corner where she’d last heard a sound.

  Now there was nothing but harsh breathing.

  Holding back a moan of terror, she took a deep breath and shifted the flashlight until it shone directly at the sound. Then she bit back an incredulous gasp.

  Marcia was not the one who’d been beaten. She stood tall and straight in her bathrobe and slippers, her broom raised threateningly over the prone form of a man who lay huddled on the floor, his arms tucked over his head.

  “Stop her!” he yelped, as soon as the light hit him. “Don’t let her hit me again!”

  Willow froze at the sound of his voice.

  The man started to squirm away, but Marcia whacked him over the head with her broom handle, drawing another squeal of pain.

  “Elliot?” Willow’s voice shook, but she took a step closer, and then another step. It was undeniably him. Ratty old sweatshirt and all.

  “This is your brother?” Marcia said fiercely, as the light reflected brightly off her glasses.

  Willow nodded. “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Hah!” Marcia gripped the broom tighter and brought the handle whistling down on his shoulders again. “That’s for Willow, you cowardly bastard.” She glared at the cowering intruder. “Don’t you dare move or I’ll hit you so hard you’ll wish you’d never heard of Echo Creek.”

  The curled-up form of Elliot let out a whimper of pain, and Marcia looked up at Willow triumphantly.

  “Wait until Cale sees this,” she said, resting her broom handle on the floor beside her vanquished foe. “I always told him there were rats.”

  The next few hours went by in a whirl of lights and strangers and questions that Willow answered mechanically, still in a state of something like shock. Marcia must have called Cale at some point, because he showed up looking like a thundercloud, and Willow wondered for a few tense moments whether he might actually hit Elliot.

  But when he spotted her brother sitting in the back of the sheriff’s car, bloodied and bruised by blows from a broom wielded by an old woman, Cale merely clenched his fists and nodded in a deeply satisfied way.

  They didn’t have a chance to talk. Cale had to go back to the sheriff’s office with the prisoner to make reports and arrange for his transfer to Seattle, but he took the time to ask both Willow and Marcia if they were okay, and promised to come back later. His eyes met Willow’s, serious and filled with questions, but that wasn’t the time to deal with their own difficulties and they both knew it.

  As soon as the window was boarded up and all of the officers were gone, Willow fell back into bed. She ought to have been too keyed up to sleep, but she simply didn’t have any energy left. It had been too long since she’d slept well. First the debacle at the Becketts’, then the fire, and now this.

  She felt Marcia pulling the blankets up over her, heard a soothing voice telling her to rest, then drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  Even though she awakened several times throughout the next day, nothing seemed important enough to get out of bed for. She wasn’t afraid anymore. Cale was going to be fine. Elliot couldn’t hurt anyone from where he was going, and there would be plenty of time to figure out everything else.

  It was past dinner time and fully dark again by the time she stretched, rolled out of bed and padded downstairs. The house was quiet, but a fire crackled in the hearth, and the Christmas tree lit up the living room with a warm and welcoming glow.

  “Marcia?” Willow called, when a search of the kitchen turned up empty.

  “She went to do some shopping
.”

  Willow had completely missed the fact that Cale was lying on the couch until he stood up and slid his hands into his pockets, looking peculiarly vulnerable.

  “I didn’t want you to be here alone, so I volunteered to stay until she got back.”

  “Oh.” For a moment, her tongue froze. What did she say? Were they okay? Was he angry? Did he remember what she’d said after the fire?

  “How are you feeling?” He sounded so awkward, Willow began to wonder whether he was as nervous as she was.

  “I don’t even quite know,” she admitted, “but rested at least.”

  After a drawn-out moment of silence, Cale spoke up again.

  “I’m sorry about last night.” He sounded a little ashamed. “I never dreamed he’d find you here or I never would have left. He said he’d been hanging around the garage all day, since it was the only clear lead he had, and then followed us back after I found you.”

  “It’s fine,” Willow reassured him. “No one knew, and everything came out well. In fact, this is probably for the best—if you’d found him, you might have done something you would have regretted, and now Marcia gets to be an Echo Creek legend.”

  “While I get to be the cop who was shown up by an old lady with a broom?”

  Willow laughed, but the sound died out quickly, leaving them staring at one another once more.

  “Are you doing okay?” she asked tentatively. “I haven’t had a chance to ask since you got out of the hospital.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Willow stifled a sigh and tried again. “I should tell you that when I went to feed your dogs yesterday, Winnie licked my hand and then sat next to me while Duke and Bear played in the yard. I think she’s decided to drop the indifferent act.”

  Cale didn’t say anything.

  “I also heard that Lydia Ortwell took an informal poll after the tour, and printed the results in Sunday’s paper. Alicia Alverson’s house was voted most likely to give children nightmares and she’s been telling everyone who’ll listen that she’s going to move to a town where her talents will be appreciated.”