Christmas In Snowflake Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Pop’s Sunday dinners were always like this. Chaos and chatter, kids and animals chasing each other, delicious smells seeping out of the kitchen.

  Curled up in a corner chair beside the fire was one of his favorite people on earth, his niece Faith.

  She had a book on her lap, her legs tucked up beside her, and was wearing a cute little fluffy white snowman sweater that somehow made him think of Genevieve, until he pushed away the thought.

  “Hey, Faith.”

  Her smile was soft, pretty, genuine. She looked at him without any kind of expectations, which was particularly refreshing in this family where everybody seemed to have some.

  “Hi, Uncle Dylan. I knew you were here because of Tucker. Did Grandpop know you were coming?”

  He pretended to grimace. “Oops. I think I forgot to mention it to him. Do you think he’ll have enough food?”

  “You know he will. He always makes tons.” She gave him a comforting sort of smile, looking so much like her mother that his heart gave a sharp twist for this poor motherless little girl and her brother, the little imp currently on Chihuahua patrol.

  “What are you doing in here by yourself?” he asked.

  “I got this book yesterday and I want to finish it. It’s so good. It’s about cats and they live in the forest and hunt together and talk to each other and stuff. You should read it!”

  He smiled. “Sounds like it’s right down my alley,” he lied. “Maybe you could lend it to me when you finish.”

  “Sure,” she said generously.

  Right now he had a powerful desire to sit on the uncomfortable sofa by the fire while Faith read her book about cats beneath a big framed photograph of the whole Caine family under different circumstances.

  There was his mom, sweet and pretty, though even then he could see signs of the cancer she fought for two years. And there was Charlotte, chubby and cute, and Pop with considerably more hair.

  And him. He was there, too, a cocky-as-hell, goodlooking teenager, smiling and whole.

  “I wish I’d thought to bring along a book. I would sit here with you and read.”

  “You can borrow one of Grandpop’s.”

  His chuckle sounded rusty but she didn’t seem to mind. “Maybe I’ll find one and come back when everybody starts getting too loud in the other room.”

  “Sure.” She smiled happily at him, and his heart ached all over again for Brendan and his family.

  “I guess I’d better go tell your grandpop happy birthday.”

  “Okay.”

  He kissed the top of her head, remembering the pictures she would color and send him every week during his long hospitalization. Some weeks they were the only thing that carried him through.

  Knowing he couldn’t delay anymore, he steeled himself and walked back to the huge great-room addition off the kitchen that he and his brothers had helped Pop build the summer he was twelve.

  As he expected, the scene was chaos—a few people sitting at the table talking, a couple of boys cheering at a football game on the big-screen TV, still others—Pop included—working in the open kitchen.

  His oldest brother, Patrick—a banker in Denver who must have driven out with his family for Pop’s birthday—was the first to notice him.

  “Well. Miracles never cease. Look who decided to come down from his mountain to be with us mortals.” Everybody snapped to attention at the grand announcement, including Pop, who looked beyond thrilled. “Told you he would come,” Charlotte said smugly. Dylan was almost certain money exchanged hands in a few corners.

  They didn’t need to make it seem as if he was a recluse. It hadn’t been that long since he had come to one of the infamous Caine family Sunday dinners—and he’d been here on Thanksgiving, for heaven’s sake.

  “You know this doesn’t count toward your community service, right?” Spence asked from the table where he was apparently hard at work snapping beans. Pretty humble work for somebody who should have been in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

  “Yeah, yeah. Hey, Pop. Happy birthday.”

  He leaned in and gave his father an awkward, onearmed hug. Dermot threw his arms around Dylan’s waist and hugged him back. “My birthday is complete now that you’re here,” he said when he pulled away, his eyes a little damp.

  “Yeah, forget about Jamie and Aidan. Who needs them?” he said.

  “We’re calling Aidan on Skype later,” Charlotte said. “He’ll be here next week for Christmas anyway. And

  Jamie was just here for several days. He took Pop to Le Passe Montagne for his birthday before he left.”

  “I guess that counts. Smells great in here.” He mustered a smile for Erin and Carrie, his two sisters-inlaw—married to Drew and Patrick, respectively. Pop always did most of the work in the kitchen, even for his own birthday party, but Charlotte and the sisters-in-law all shared matriarch responsibilities.

  He was grateful his brothers had married good women. The men in his family seemed to have inordinately good taste—and then worked hard to deserve their wives.

  “How long before we eat?” he asked.

  “As soon as you get over here and stir the gravy,” Pop growled.

  “There are nearly twenty people crowded into this house. I just got here. Why do I have to stir the gravy?” “That’s why,” Dermot said briskly. “Because you just got here. Everybody else has been helping already. You know the rule in my kitchen.”

  “If you want to eat, you have to work,” all the Caine siblings said in unison.

  He sighed but moved obediently to the stove, picking up a wooden spoon from the drawer. Everything smelled delicious. His stomach growled. He probably hadn’t had a decent meal since that Thanksgiving dinner— not counting the leftovers Pop had sent home with him.

  He had cooking skills. All of them did. Dermot wouldn’t have allowed his children to grow up without them. Their parents had taken that motto seriously— with seven children, they had to be organized and efficient in splitting the workload.

  Pop had also made sure they all took a turn working at the café. He and Spence used to wash dishes together, back in the day.

  His limited culinary skills had come in handy during a few meals when they only had MREs. He always kept a few extra spices in his ruck to dress things up.

  He supposed he ought to start cooking more. TV dinners and a few doggie bags of food Dermot sent from the café just weren’t enough all the time. He didn’t really have a good excuse for why he didn’t, other than he didn’t feel like it most of the time.

  When Pop judged the gravy to be ready—others might be in on the prep, but he always had the final vote—they all jostled to find spots to eat.

  Even without Jamie and Aidan, the Caines overflowed the big twelve-place dining table. A second long folding banquet table had been set up in the sunroom for the kids.

  He enjoyed the meal and even enjoyed the company. He was grateful to be seated between Erin and Carrie. Erin taught third grade at one of the two Hope’s Crossing elementary schools while Carrie was a pediatrician in Denver.

  They talked over him mostly about their Christmas preparations, which presents were already wrapped, the gifts they were giving to neighbors. He was content to listen to them and also grateful not to have attention focused on him for once.

  His luck ran out just as the meal was winding down.

  Erin was the first to go in for the kill. “So, Dylan. How are things going with your service work at A Warrior’s Hope?”

  He set down his fork, the last few bites of his lusciously juicy roast beef losing a little of its savor. “Fine, so far.”

  “The real work will start tomorrow, when our new guests arrive,” Charlotte said from across the table.

  He wasn’t looking forward to that, but he supposed he would survive.

  “How are things with Miss Priss of the mighty right hook?” Brendan asked.

  “You mean Gen Beaumont?” he asked, a little more testily than he should have.

  “Yeah,�
�� Brendan said. “You ready to strangle her yet?”

  For a brief instant, his gaze connected with Charlotte’s, and he saw that shadow of worry there again. She hadn’t said anything to him since that moment the other day when she had walked into the cabin just as he was about to make the momentous mistake of kissing Gen. He had been waiting for a lecture, but for once his baby sister was minding her own business.

  “Not yet,” he murmured.

  “I would be. From what I understand, she is a holy terror. The other guys at the station house were talking the other day about a time when she crashed her car into the ladder truck when she was about sixteen, I guess. It was a brand-new convertible and the ink was hardly dry on her license. I guess she hit the truck while trying to back out of a parking space at the hardware store during the Fill the Boot fundraiser—and then she threw a fit. The guys shouldn’t have parked right there. It was all their fault. Blah blah blah. You would have thought the world had ended and the whole volunteer fire department had purposely set out to park in a spot they knew she would stupidly back into—like a big fluorescent green ladder truck was invisible. I guess her tantrum was pretty legendary.”

  “Now, Brendan Thomas. That will be enough of that,” Dermot said firmly from the head of the table. “I’ll not have you speaking poorly about Miss Beaumont.”

  He wasn’t sure why his father jumped to Gen’s defense but he wouldn’t complain about it. At least this way, he wouldn’t have to do it.

  “Why can’t he talk about her?” Erin asked. “Dylan wouldn’t even be in trouble with the law if not for her. Isn’t that right?”

  “Whatever happened to lawyer-client privilege?” he muttered to his brother, across the table.

  “Drew didn’t say a word about what happened, as much as I nagged him. I heard the whole story out of Charlotte when we went to String Fever for their annual holiday bead fair—where I spent entirely too much money, by the way.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered to Charlotte.

  “You should probably know Genevieve is a frequent topic of conversation at String Fever, especially since her ill-fated but gorgeous wedding dress is still on display in the store.”

  He didn’t want to ask—nor did he want to think about her engagement to some jackass who had probably been perfect for her. Except, maybe, for his little habit of impregnating teenagers.

  “Everybody was talking about this latest escapade of hers,” Charlotte went on. “Word was already out that you had been involved, so people pressed me for details. You’ll be happy to know, I glossed over most of the finer points.”

  “It wasn’t entirely her fault. I should have minded my own business. Like a few others I could mention in this family,” he said pointedly to Charlotte, though he could have been addressing the room as a whole, or at least all those over eighteen.

  “I’m still blaming her,” Erin said. “I agree with Brendan. She’s bad news. She and her mother donated some books to the school library a few years ago and insisted on a full-fledged assembly so they could receive proper recognition from the school for their generosity.”

  Something told him Laura Beaumont had been the driving force behind that one, though he supposed he could be completely wrong about the situation.

  “She’s been a really good help so far at A Warrior’s Hope,” Charlotte said. “In fact, she and Dylan spent all day decorating Christmas trees in the new cabins. You should see them. They’re beautiful.”

  The whole room seemed to descend into silence at that pronouncement and everybody stared at him. A few jaws might have even sagged.

  Even Brendan looked amused, and it took a lot to make that happen these days.

  “Excuse me,” he murmured. “Did you say…Christmas decorating?”

  “Yes. They did a really good job, too,” Charlotte said.

  “Do you even have a Christmas tree at your own cabin?” his thirteen-year-old niece Maggie—named for their mother—asked him with interest.

  Dylan felt heat crawl up his cheeks and hoped to hell he wasn’t actually blushing.

  “Yeah,” he growled. “Tucker and I put it up weeks ago. And then we held hands, er, paws and sang Christmas carols all night long.”

  “Really?” Faith looked wide-eyed at him.

  He shook his head at her, feeling kind of bad for being grumpy around her.

  “That’s what you call sarcasm, honey,” Brendan said to his daughter. “Your uncle Dylan is something of an expert at it.”

  True enough.

  “I haven’t gotten around to putting a Christmas tree up this year,” he answered her more gently. “It’s just me and Tucker. There’s not much point, especially when I can always enjoy your grandpop’s tree when I need one.”

  Faith seemed to find that a terrible tragedy. Her chin even quivered. “You could always put up a little one. I have one in my room you could borrow, if you want.”

  He mustered a smile for her, touched to the depths of his hardened, sarcastic, miserable soul. “I appreciate that, honey. I do. I’ll tell you what. I’ll try to cut down a little one from the forest around my place.”

  That seemed to satisfy her and he was grateful Brendan didn’t bring his kids up to Snowflake Canyon very often for her to check the veracity of that particular claim. He had no intention of cutting down a tree. Decorating six cabins for A Warrior’s Hope had rid him of absolutely any desire for a tree of his own. Not that he ever planned to put one up in the first place.

  “Genevieve is a beautiful decorator,” Charlotte said. “I’m not sure how she pulled it off but she made each one of the cabins magical.”

  “With Dylan’s help, of course.” Spencer made sure to emphasize this point, grinning broadly, until Dylan wanted to pound him. If the man didn’t seem to fit in so effortlessly with the family and wasn’t so obviously crazy about Charlotte, he might have tried, old friend or not.

  “Genevieve Beaumont is a nice girl,” Dermot insisted. “She always has a kind word for me when she comes into the café. I’ll admit, I can’t always say the same about her mother, but they’re two different people.”

  He didn’t want to talk about Genevieve. He bluntly changed the subject to one he knew would best distract his father. “So, Pop, I bumped into Katherine Thorne the other day.”

  “Did you?” Dermot seemed inordinately interested in cutting his delicious roast beef with pinpoint precision. Dylan was sure he wasn’t the only one of his siblings amused by the color that rose on his father’s cheeks. Pop and the elegant city councilwoman must hold the record for world’s slowest courtship. It mostly consisted of a lot of hem-hawing around and Dermot pretending he didn’t blush every time she walked into the café.

  “She and I seem to be on the same schedule for grocery shopping. I see her at the market just about every time I go. If you want me to, I can give you a call next time I’m heading that way and you can meet us there.”

  Charlotte and Brendan, the only ones really paying attention to the conversation, both snickered, and color rose over Dermot’s weathered features. “You all think you’re so funny.”

  “Yes. Yes, we do,” Dylan said. Teasing his father about his crush was one of the few things that made him happy these days.

  “Well, you’re not. Katherine is a lovely woman and I’m happy to count her as a friend. That’s all there is to it.”

  Dylan wanted to say the same about Genevieve but decided the circumstances weren’t at all comparable.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After dInner, he helped clear the table and even managed to make polite conversation with just about everybody while they all worked together to clean the kitchen—all except Pop, who played a game with the grandkids in the great room.

  As long as he could remember, the Caine family tradition had held that Pop—and Mom, before cancer took her when he was a teenager—would fix the meal and the kids would clean it up together. All these years later, they still fell into the same habits.

  He had never m
inded much. They would tease and joke and sometimes taunt each other, but the work went fast with seven children.

  Growing up in a big family had advantages; he couldn’t deny that. He had always known one of his brothers would have his back, whether with playground bullies or on the ball field.

  There were also negatives. He couldn’t deny that, either. Everybody seemed to think he—or she—had a right to know his business and then offer an opinion on it. Since his injury, that had become more obvious.

  As he might have expected, Charlotte managed to corner him just as everybody was wrapping up the dishes.

  “I’m so happy you came for Pop’s birthday,” she said with one of her customary hugs. He loved all his siblings but had a special spot in his heart for her, not only because she was the only girl and they all looked out for her but also because the two of them had been the last Caine kids home while their mother was dying of cancer.

  They all shared the grief over Margaret Caine’s passing but he and Charlotte had probably felt it most keenly. Unlike their older brothers, they hadn’t started moving on with their lives yet or had the distraction of new adventures or challenges.

  They had been in this house, forced to try to comfort each other as best they could and to step in where needed to help Pop.

  He still had memories of walking downstairs in the middle of the night on more than one occasion and finding Pop sobbing by himself in the dark.

  The experience had bound them together as nothing else could.

  “I’m not a complete hermit, contrary to popular belief,” he said to her now. “I do get out once in a while.” “I’ve seen you more this last week than I think I have since you’ve been back in Hope’s Crossing.”

  He grunted and returned their mom’s beloved gravy tureen to the top shelf of the cupboard.

  “I so wish Aidan could have come for Thanksgiving while Jamie was home on leave. It’s been forever since we’ve all been together.”

  “Never satisfied, are you?” he teased.

  She smiled a little as the group playing a game with Pop in the other room suddenly erupted in laughter.