by Regina Scott
A Family Made at Christmas
After taking guardianship of his late friend’s siblings and baby daughter, minister Levi Wallin hopes to atone for his troubled past on the gold fields. But it won’t be easy to convince the children’s wary elder sister to trust him. The more he learns about her, though, the more he believes Callie Murphy’s prickly manner masks a vulnerable heart...one he’s starting to wish he was worthy of.
Every man in Callie’s life chose chasing gold over responsibilities. Levi—and the large, loving Wallin family—might just be different. But she can tell he’s hiding something from her, and she refuses to risk her heart with secrets between them. Even as they grow closer, will their pasts keep them from claiming this unexpected new beginning?
“What about you, Callie? Do you want nothing for yourself?”
Her gaze brushed his, and for a moment Levi thought she’d confess some dream of her own. Then she shrugged as if dismissing it. “You do right by my kin, preacher, and I’ll be satisfied.”
So brave. He might have given another woman a brotherly hug to encourage her, but something told him Callie wouldn’t take kindly to the gesture.
Lord, I thought You sent me here. I thought You were offering me a chance to be the man You want me to be. Give me the words. Help me win her over, for her sake and mine.
“You don’t believe I’ll take care of you all,” he said aloud.
She shrugged as if she didn’t believe much of anything.
He released her shoulders. “I want to help you, Miss Murphy. I want to honor your brother’s wishes.”
She scrubbed at her cheek, but not before he saw the tears that had dampened them. “Adam’s gone. Besides, it wasn’t as if you two were partners.”
Partners. The most sacred of ideals where she came from. And that gave him an inkling of how to proceed.
“We weren’t partners,” he acknowledged. “But you and I might be.”
Regina Scott has always wanted to be a writer. Since her first book was published in 1998, her stories have traveled the globe, with translations in many languages. Fascinated by history, she learned to fence and sail a tall ship. She and her husband reside in Washington State with an overactive Irish terrier. You can find her online, blogging at nineteenteen.com. Learn more about her at reginascott.com or connect with her on Facebook at Facebook.com/authorreginascott.
Books by Regina Scott
Love Inspired Historical
Frontier Bachelors
The Bride Ship
Would-Be Wilderness Wife
Frontier Engagement
Instant Frontier Family
A Convenient Christmas Wedding
Mail-Order Marriage Promise
His Frontier Christmas Family
Lone Star Cowboy League: Multiple Blessings
The Bride’s Matchmaking Triplets
Lone Star Cowboy League: The Founding Years
A Rancher of Convenience
The Master Matchmakers
The Courting Campaign
The Wife Campaign
The Husband Campaign
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REGINA SCOTT
His Frontier
Christmas Family
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!
—2 Corinthians 5:17
To Kristy J. Manhattan, my fool dream, and to the Lord, for encouraging us to dream beyond ourselves.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Once Upon a Texas Christmas by Winnie Griggs
Chapter One
Near Seattle, Washington Territory
December 1874
Someone was watching her.
Callie Murphy kept her fingers moving as she pinned another diaper to the clothesline stretching from the cabin to the closest fir tree. She felt as if a gaze was fixed on her back, pressing against the buckskin coat that covered her cotton shirt and trousers. She had to be mistaken.
Her brother Adam had filed for a homestead a good five miles south of Seattle. He’d wanted space and quiet, claiming he was tired of the crowded gold rush camps in which they’d been raised. Mr. Kingerly and his wife lived a mile away, and the kindly older man would walk up to Callie if he wanted her help with something. The last stranger had passed this way months ago.
Still, she couldn’t help glancing around. The one-room cabin stood in the center of the clearing her brother had widened in the forest, but the forest was trying to reclaim it. Already ferns poked up heads along the edges, and blackberry vines, withering with the coming winter, snaked across the dirt. As for the forest beyond, the most movement was a bird flitting from branch to branch.
In the wash basket at her feet, Adam’s daughter blew bubbles, her round face a wreath of smiles. With shiny black curls and big blue eyes, six-month-old Mica reminded Callie of the porcelain-headed baby dolls on display in a Seattle mercantile window, especially around Christmas. The little girl looked far more like her late mother, Anna, than anyone on her father’s side of the family. Every Murphy, including Callie and her little brothers Frisco and Sutter, had hair the color of amber and eyes like slate.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,” Callie sang softly, feeling that itch between her shoulder blades that said her watcher was still there. “Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.”
Mica gurgled her delight, rocking from side to side to the tune.
“And if that mockingbird don’t sing,” Callie continued. “Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
Mica laughed.
Callie shook her head. Who was she to promise diamond rings? That was almost as bad as Pa’s promises, saying he’d strike it rich. Always one more hill to climb, one more creek to pan. Always little to show for months of labor. That was the way of the men she’d met. They either dreamed dreams too big to realize or thought only of themselves.
“If you’re looking to rob us,” she called into the forest, “it’s only fair to tell you we got nothing of worth.”
The forest was still, as if everything was waiting. In defiance, she bent and picked up another diaper, hanging it alongside the others. It didn’t matter who was watching or why. She had one goal: to keep her, Frisco, Sutter and Mica safe until Adam returned. She’d protected her family most of her life, starting with her younger twin brothers after her mother had died of influenza, now with them and Mica. She knew what she was doing.
Still, this fe
eling was too much like the last time she’d lived on the gold fields, five years ago at the Vital Creek strike in the British Territories. At fifteen then, she’d just started getting her womanly curves. Most of the miners had noticed.
“You don’t strike it rich, Murphy,” one had told her father, “you let me know. I’ll buy your daughter off you.”
Pa had thrown himself at the fellow, and Adam had jumped in right after. That was when she’d started wearing loose clothing, washing and combing her hair less often, keeping her head down and her rifle close.
She almost shuddered at the memory, but she refused to give her watcher the satisfaction of knowing she was nervous, and for good reason. She’d grown complacent in their little hideaway. Her rifle was hanging on its hook over the hearth.
As if she felt the same concern, Mica frowned.
Callie made herself brighten at the baby braced in the wash basket as she retrieved one of the boys’ shirts. “Isn’t it a nice day to hang the clothes, Mica?”
A twig snapped in the woods. Ice raced up her spine. Callie stepped closer to Mica, bent as if to choose another piece of clothing and closed her hand on the stick she used to stir the wash.
“Excuse me.”
Callie whirled, stick raised like a club with Mica behind her. The fellow standing there held up his hands as if in surrender.
“Sorry I startled you. I’m looking for the Murphy family.”
Callie eyed him. He looked about Adam’s age, with curly hair a shade darker than hers and eyes so deep a blue they were nearly black. Something about those eyes seemed sad, weary, as if he’d come a long distance and still had a ways to go. He didn’t look particularly dangerous.
She held the stick high anyway.
“What do you want with the Murphys?” she asked.
“I have news about their brother Adam,” he explained. “Are you California?”
This time she did shudder. Why had Pa picked such silly names for his children? Adam had the only name that sounded normal, and only because Pa had thought the first boy in the family should be called after the first man in the Bible. When Callie had asked her mother, God rest her soul, about why she hadn’t protested, Ma had smiled.
“You know your pa,” she’d said. “When he gets an idea in his head, there’s no arguing with him.”
That was why they’d followed him from San Francisco in the south to the British Territories in the north.
Still, only family knew Callie’s real name, which meant this man must have talked to Adam. She lowered the stick but kept it at the ready.
“I’m Adam Murphy’s sister,” she acknowledged. “What do you know about my brother?”
He dropped his hands and took a step closer. Her fingers tightened on the stick. He must have noticed, for he paused.
“I mean you no harm. My name is Levi Wallin. I’m a minister.”
A minister? Now, that made no sense. Why would a minister bring her news from Adam?
“I don’t know your game, mister,” she told him, “but I think you better leave. I have two other brothers, and they don’t take kindly to strangers.”
He frowned. If he really was a minister, he’d probably lecture her on being kind to strangers, respecting her elders, even though he could only be five or six years her senior. That was what ministers did, she’d learned from the few she’d met—criticize her, show her exactly how different she was, why she would never fit in with good society. She figured the best thing to do was let them go their own way while she went hers.
But this fellow didn’t show any sign of leaving. “I knew your brother well,” he said, voice soft. “Adam had honey-colored hair, just like you, and his eyes were lighter. He was a little shorter than me, but that didn’t stop him from fighting for his place or protecting his family. When Gap-Tooth Harding offered to buy you, every man in camp weighed in on one side or the other.”
Now Callie frowned. “You were at Vital Creek?”
“To my sorrow,” he admitted. “Scout Rankin and I had a claim at the opposite end of town from yours. I met Adam in a card game at Gillis’s. He cleaned me out.”
Just when she wanted to trust him! “Now I know you’re lying. Preachers don’t gamble.”
He smiled, and something inside her bubbled up as warm as a hot spring. “I wasn’t a preacher then.”
He wasn’t one now that she could see. Those rough wool trousers and caped duster looked warm, but they weren’t nearly nice enough to belong to a fancy minister. Ministers liked to show how important they were, how much better, smarter. If that was what it took to win God’s favor, she never would.
“Well, whatever you are,” Callie told him, “I’m not sure what to do with you.”
“I’d like to talk to you and your brothers.” He nodded toward Mica in the basket. “And your husband, of course.”
He wasn’t the first to assume Mica was her daughter instead of her niece, for all the differences in their coloring. She told him what she told the others. “I don’t have a husband.”
Again, she waited for the expected response—the gasp, the finger shaking, the prediction she would suffer for her sins.
Instead, his eyes widened. “Adam has a daughter? Where’s his wife?”
She could lie, claim Adam’s wife was in the house with a gun at the ready, but suddenly Callie felt as weary as this fellow looked. She jerked her head over her shoulder. “Buried over there. I’m in charge until Adam gets back.”
He moved closer yet, carefully, as if unsure whether she’d hit him or snatch up the baby and run. She considered doing both, but he was close enough that she could see the lines fanning out from the corners of his eyes. Worry lines, Ma had called them, and she’d had her share. What worried this man?
“That’s a heavy burden,” he murmured. “I can see why Adam wanted me to help.”
“Adam asked you to help?”
He nodded. She studied his face, but he didn’t avoid her gaze or blink rapidly like she’d known some men to do when lying.
She drew in a breath. “I wish he’d thought of us before hightailing it back to the gold fields the minute his wife Anna died of a fever. But you needn’t worry, mister. My brothers and I are handling things just fine. We’ll make it through until Adam gets back for the winter. If you see him before we do, just remind him that if he doesn’t live on his claim in the next two months, we could lose it.”
His face sagged, and he put a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Miss Murphy. Adam won’t make it back in time. He died three months ago. I only received word yesterday.”
* * *
There was no good way to say it. Even if he’d been a minister eight years instead of eight months, Levi thought he’d have stumbled telling Callie Murphy what had happened to her brother. Adam had been so alive, so feisty, so determined to strike it rich. It was hard for Levi to believe all that energy had been snuffed out.
“Are you sure?” he’d asked the two grizzled miners who’d stopped by Wallin Landing with the news and to bring him Adam’s belongings and the note to the Murphys.
They’d hung their heads, avoided his gaze.
“Surer than we wish we was,” one of the old timers gritted out. “He caught pneumonia and couldn’t fight it off. All that’s left of Adam Murphy now is a pile of regrets.”
Levi knew something about regrets.
He kept his hand on Callie’s arm now, ready to catch her if she fainted. She didn’t so much as sway. Her eyes, a mixture of blue and gray that reminded him of the swirling waters of Puget Sound, narrowed on him.
“Prove it.”
She spat out the words, as if he’d lie about anything so important. How ironic. He’d lied enough over the years, to escape punishment, to win something he’d wanted, to make himself appear more important. Now he was tellin
g the truth, and she didn’t believe him.
“My horse is tied out front,” he said. “I have Adam’s letter in my saddlebag. Come with me, and I’ll give it to you.”
Her jaw worked as if she fought hard words. “I’m not going anywhere with you. And I don’t trust you out of my sight.”
She was either the most suspicious woman he’d ever met, or the wisest. She was also plenty brave, ready to lay into him with that stick. Having been raised in the gold camps and now living so far out, she probably had to take precautions. He hadn’t intended to look dangerous, but then, he’d used his boyish charm too many times in the past to think that danger couldn’t look pleasing.
“Then maybe I can help you until your brothers get back.” He bent to reach for the clothes, and she stepped in front of him.
“You want to help?” she challenged. “The pump’s been stuck for weeks. We have to lug all the water through the woods from the creek. Fix the pump, and we’ll talk.”
Levi straightened. “Fair enough.” He located the pump near the back of the cabin and went over to it. Easy enough to spot the problem. The device was orange with rust. He glanced up to ask her whether she had any oil, and words left him with his breath.
She’d picked up the baby and stood there, swaying from side to side, singing softly. The buckskin coat and trousers, so common on the gold fields, still hinted of a figure. The sunlight shafting through the forest sparked around her, sending gold skipping along her hair.
Levi turned his back on her. Oh, no. You have no business admiring Adam Murphy’s little sister. You have a lot of work to do before you’re fit to be a husband to any woman.
A movement in the bushes caught his eye, and a moment later two boys about eight years of age scampered into the clearing, dragging a burlap sack between them. The pair was identical, down to the dirt on their round cheeks and the mud on their worn boots. Sutter’s Mill Murphy and San Francisco Murphy. Back at Vital Creek, the miners used to make a game of guessing which boy was which.
“Look what we got, Callie,” one crowed.