The Christmas Cookie Collection

by Lori Wilde

  “I’m good.” Nate Deavers knocked back the last swallow of whiskey. Set the empty glass down on the bar.

  For the past six months, he’d been coming into the bar almost every night. He arrived late, had one drink, and went home. Nate didn’t talk much about himself, deflected questions by sitting alone on the far side of the bar beside the Benjamin Ficus. He was on the optimistic side of forty and very good-­looking, with coal black hair lightly salted at the temples and peacock blue eyes. He was built like a Keith Black Hemi engine, big, strong, and quick. His biceps were the size of footballs. Raylene had once gotten a glimpse of a Navy SEAL Team Six emblem tattooed on his upper right arm, but she’d never dared asked him about it. He seemed a man who was waiting for something important to happen.

  She poured herself a glass of Cabernet, sauntered over to the jukebox, and punched up “Blue Christmas.”

  “Twenty-­seven,” Nate said.

  “Huh?” Raylene blinked.

  “Number of times you’ve played that song since I’ve been here.”

  “If you’re keeping count, then it’s taking you too long to drink that glass of Jack.”

  “Probably right about that.” He shrugged into his camo-­green down jacket. He wore faded Levi’s, a blue flannel shirt and black military boots.

  A long moment passed. He just stood there. Not moving.

  Raylene was not the type of woman who felt uneasy when she was alone in the room with a man, but a dangerous air lingered about this one. She squared her shoulders, stiffened her jaw the way she did when she had to throw drunks out of the bar.

  “I don’t normally ask a lot of questions,” he said, “since I don’t like answering them myself, but I’m going to ask anyway.”

  Great. He’s going to ask about Earl. She braced herself, not wanting to discuss the husband who’d run out on her last Christmas after she told him the big bad secret she’d harbored for thirty-­five years. Nate must have heard the gossip in town. Lord knows enough of that went on in Twilight.

  Raylene swallowed hard, tasting the salt of regret. So many damn regrets. She and Earl had been sweethearts since the first grade, although they broke up and made up at least a dozen times before they’d finally made it to the altar. Most of it was due to Raylene’s flirtatious nature, but she’d never—­not once during any of their break-­ups—­stopped loving Earl. He was her rock. The anchor that kept her grounded. Without him, she was cut loose, unfettered. It was a horrible feeling. He’d always had her back, even when he was mad at her. Earl had been her first boyfriend, her first lover, her first everything.

  Until last Christmas, when she’d confessed that during the final time they’d broken up (when Raylene was traveling with the Dallas Cowboys as a cheerleader) she’d gotten dead drunk one night in Vegas with Cowboy running back Lance Dugan and had woken up the next morning married to him. They’d immediately gotten the marriage annulled, but then Raylene had turned up pregnant. Lance’s blueblood family had stepped in. They were horrified he’d gotten “trailer trash” like Raylene pregnant, but they wanted that grandchild. They’d offered her a quarter of a million dollars to come to New York to give birth and then let them adopt the baby. And, damn her hide, the poor girl who’d grown up wearing bible school hand-­me-­downs on the farthest side of the railroad tracks had taken the money and run.

  The decision had haunted Raylene for thirty-­five years. After the baby was born, she’d taken the Dugans’ highfalutin’ money, returned to Twilight and the love of her life. And when Earl had gotten down on one knee in front of the Sweetheart Fountain in Sweetheart Park and asked her to marry him, it was the happiest moment of her life.

  She’d lied to Earl and told him she’d made the money modeling in New York. They wed and bought the Horny Toad so Earl could live out his dream of running his own bar. Ironically, shocker of shockers, his family struck oil on their property six months later. They were rich beyond their wildest dreams.

  She and Earl had had a very good life. They’d had a son of their own, Earl Junior, although he was grown and gone. She had lots of friends. But in her heart, there remained an empty place for the baby she’d given away.

  A daughter.

  In the end, Earl left her not because she’d given her own child away for a quarter of a million dollars, but because she’d kept it a secret from him.

  Raylene’s eyes met Nate’s. He settled a green John Deere cap on a head full of thick, dark hair. “What is it?” she asked.

  “How come you haven’t decorated for Christmas? Everyone else around here acts like this is Whoville. You’re the only one in town without lights on your place.”

  Relieved at his question, she lifted one shoulder in a half-­shrug. “I’m too old to be out climbing on a ladder hanging Christmas lights.”

  “I could hang them for you.”

  She gave a sharp, humorless laugh. “Why on earth would you do that?”

  “You sort of remind me of my mother,” he said.

  “Oh that’s something every woman wants to hear from a handsome man.” But it was true. She was old enough to be Nate’s mama. That was a depressing thought.

  “My mama was a spitfire.” He shifted, looked uncomfortable as if he wished he hadn’t started this mess. “Just like you are. This time of year, I get to missing her. I’d consider it an honor to put up your Christmas decorations for you, Mrs. Pringle.”

  “Why not?” she said with an easy shrug. “But only if you let me pay you. You’re going to have to go dig the lights out of the shed and untangle them. I had to take them down myself last year, and I dumped them all in a big box.”

  “You can pay me in trade,” he said, nodding at the bottle of Jack Daniels behind the counter.

  “Deal.” Raylene set her wineglass on the jukebox and stuck out her palm.

  Nate shook her hand. “I’ll put the lights up for you next Wednesday. I’m off on Wednesdays and Thursdays.”

  She’d never asked him about his work, but somewhere she’d heard he worked for Devon Energy, keeping check on the numerous gas wells that had sprung up when the big oil companies decided it was worth their while to go after the Barnett Shale.

  “Maybe that’s exactly what I need,” she mused. “A little Christmas cheer.”

  “Traditions are good,” he said.

  “Can I ask you a question, Nate?”

  “If I can retain the option of not answering.”

  She laughed. “Deal.”

  Nate looked suspicious. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Have you ever been married?”

  “No.” His eyes clouded. He could shut off a conversation faster than a spigot.

  “Do you like women?”

  A smile flitted at the corner of his lips. “I do. Why?”

  “I was just wondering why a guy like you is spending Saturday night alone in an empty bar.”

  “You’re not trying to fix me up are you? I know how the ladies of your clubs like to meddle and make matches.”

  Raylene raised her arms. “Hands off. I promise.”

  He headed for the door. “You be careful going home, Mrs. Pringle.”

  “Thanks, Nate,” she said, feeling oddly comforted. She followed him to the front door, bid him goodnight, and locked up behind him.

  When she went behind the bar to finish cleaning up, her mind drifted back to Earl. She hadn’t heard a word from him in a year. Not after he withdrew a quarter of a million dollars from their bank accounts. The significance of that amount was not lost on her. He was sending a message. He’d never been one to nurse a grudge, but her secret had been a bombshell. Now, not one word from him in twelve months. She worried and fretted and finally prayed. She’d started to fear he was dead. She hired a detective to find him, but it was like he’d dropped off the face of the earth.

  Raylene was in limbo, waiting for the
love of her life to return. How long could she live like this? Not knowing what had happened to him? The punishment he was dishing out was more than she could bear. Raylene had changed, and not for the better. Without Earl, she was only a shell of her former self.

  You’re gonna have to move on. It’s clear he ain’t coming back.

  But that was just it. She didn’t want to move on. She wanted Earl. Wanted things to be the way they used to be.

  You can want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first. That was something her daddy used to say when she asked him for anything. Meaning that if she wanted something, she had to make it happen for herself. And for most of her life, she had done exactly that. But this was one desire that she had no control over.

  “Earl,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

  For the last year she’d been caught in limbo. Unable to do even the simplest thing like dye her hair. The activities of daily life without Earl took too much effort. She’d made no decisions. Changed nothing. One of her waitresses had quit, and she hadn’t even replaced her. Tonight it had been no big deal because the annual Christmas festival on the square had siphoned off her regular Saturday night customers, but usually she was run ragged waiting tables, pinch-­hitting for the bartender, and doing all the back-­office stuff, especially during the holidays.

  Nate’s remark about the Christmas lights brought it all home to her. She couldn’t keep living in limbo. Time was marching on and it wasn’t waiting on her. Earl might never come back.

  That thought was a stab to her heart. She dropped her head in her hands. Sooner or later she was going to have to face the possibility of divorce.

  But if Earl wanted a divorce, why didn’t he just come home and ask for one? Could he really just stop loving her after all these years? Raylene felt sick to her stomach.

  What if Earl was dead?

  That was the horrible thought she couldn’t shake. It was the only explanation she could come up with for why he hadn’t come home. He was born and bred in Twilight. All his family lived here. But they all claimed he had not been in contact with any of them, either.

  “Earl,” she whimpered. “Please come home for Christmas.”

  She lifted her head and looked around. It felt so empty without Earl behind the bar. So lifeless. Nate was right. She needed to decorate for the holidays. Cheer this place up.

  She also needed to hire someone, but the thought of going through interviews exhausted her. She worked more than sixty hours a week to keep her mind off Earl, but she needed time to heal. To think. To come to some kind of closure.

  Yet what closure could there be without knowing what had happened to her husband?

  Make a move. Do something. You’ve got to snap out of this.

  With a heavy sigh, she got up, retrieved the glass of wine she’d left on the jukebox, and poured the remainder down the sink. She washed the glass and put it on the shelf. When she was done, she went to the office and took a faded Help Wanted sign from the desk drawer. She padded back to the front of the bar, pulled back the dusty red gingham curtains, and slipped the sign in the window.

  There. She’d taken action. Forward motion. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  Symbolism. The last refuge of a desperate woman.

  CHAPTER TWO

  On Sunday afternoon, Shannon Dugan sat in the plain white Chevy Malibu she’d rented at DFW Airport, staring at the front of the Horny Toad Tavern.

  The place was a country-­and-­western bar built from rough-­hewn cedar. The emblem of a giant horned frog decorated the center of the façade erected over the entrance. Weathered, knobbed pine resembling old west hitching posts served as railing.

  A few pickup trucks were parked on an asphalt parking lot that needed resurfacing. The smell of popcorn, hickory smoke, and beer tinged the air. An old George Jones song leaked from the windows.

  On the right side of the bar sat a pawnshop. On the left was a barbecue restaurant. Behind all three establishments lay gently rolling land heavy with juniper, mesquite, and cedar trees.

  So this was it. The place her birth mother had bought with the money she’d gotten after she’d sold Shannon to her grandparents.

  She drew in a deep breath, clutched the steering wheel tightly, and for one serious moment considered turning the Chevy around and catching the next flight back to New York. How easy it would be to flee. It had taken her a year to work up the courage to come here.

  Of course, she’d found out about Raylene at the very same time she’d discovered her husband of six months was a con man who had taken her for three million dollars.

  The sour taste of shame and regret slipped over her tongue as she relived the past Christmas Eve in vivid detail. That was when her lawyer had called to tell her that the check she’d written him for settling her grandfather’s estate had bounced. At first, she’d assumed it was simply some banking glitch, and she’d assured the lawyer that she would get it straightened out.

  But the banks had already closed, and there wasn’t anyone she could talk to until after the holiday. She’d gone online to monitor her main checking account only to find it overdrawn. As was her savings account. She immediately checked on her money market account. It too had been drained. Later, she discovered that the gold kept in her safe deposit box had been cleaned out as well.

  Panicked, thinking they were victims of identity theft, she’d put out a call to Peter who’d said he was going out shopping for her Christmas gifts. He was spontaneously boyish that way. Waiting until the last minute to do everything. Although Shannon didn’t complain about that because Peter’s impulsive, fun-­loving nature was what had attracted her to him from the moment her best friend Charlotte had brought him to the country club as a mixed-­doubles partner for her. He’d been a classmate of Charlotte’s late brother when he’d attended school at Oxford.

  Peter Clark was so different from her—­chatty where she was quiet, daring where she was conservative, flashy where she was drab. Peter had drawn her like a magnet, mainly because she’d grown up in an austere household with older ­people determined that they would not make the mistakes with their granddaughter that they’d made with their morally lax son. Shannon had the strictest upbringing of anyone she knew, but she was obedient by nature. Rebellion never crossed her mind.

  When Peter asked her out, it was so unexpected that a man like him would be interested in a bookish woman like her that she suspected it was for her money. Shannon was unaccustomed to intriguing, good-­looking men courting her, but after having him checked out by a private detective and learning he came from a wealthy background himself, she went out with him. What she had not known at the time was that his real name was Owen Cleary and he’d stolen Peter Clark’s identity.

  Peter proposed on their fourth date, and she found herself saying yes. After so many years of nursing her ailing grandparents, it felt good to do all the things other women got to do when they were in their teens and twenties.

  The wedding had been lavish. Her grandfather insisted on it, even though his health was rapidly failing. Her grandmother had died the previous year, and all the fight had gone out of him. He was dwindling before her eyes.

  Life had been good with Peter. He was fun and an exciting lover. Yet there were warning signs she’d chosen to ignore, blissful in her cocoon of false happiness. He never seemed to have any money. “Tied up in investments,” he’d say.

  Whenever she asked him about his past, or his family, he shook his head, told her he was alone in the world and it hurt too much to talk about his past. She backed off. What else could she do? And she hoped for the day when he felt comfortable enough to confide in her.

  Then her grandfather’s condition had worsened and she’d been by his bedside until the end on Thanksgiving Day. Peter had been solicitous. Taking care of paying the bills—­or so she thought. Telling her that she should stay
at her grandfather’s house on Long Island and not worry at all about coming home to their condo in the city until everything was wrapped up. He’d been kind and considerate, and she’d stupidly told herself she had the best husband in the whole world.

  So it wasn’t until midnight on Christmas Eve that she finally realized Peter was not coming back. Nor was he going to answer her repeated texts and phone calls, because he was the one who’d absconded with her money. She had other monies, of course. The house, investments, some rental properties, treasury bonds, but her net worth and cash flow had taken a crippling blow. Ultimately, however, what hurt the most were his betrayal and the fact that she’d been so desperate for love and attention that she’d let down her guard. How stupid. How gullible. What a terrible judge of character.

  In the midst of all this, a knock sounded at the door of her grandfather’s house. An armed security guard stood there with a disheveled man in his sixties.

  “I found him cruising the neighborhood, Mrs. Clark,” the security guard said. “He claims he has something important to tell you. Do you know this man? Should I call the police?”

  She blinked at the rumpled man, thinking he might have some connection to Peter. “Who are you?” she’d demanded, all traces of her well-­bred civility gone.

  “Name’s Earl Pringle,” the man had said. “And I’ve got sumpin’ important to tell you about your real mother.”

  “My mother died when I was a baby.”

  Earl shook his head. “No, ma’am. She didn’t. She’s alive and well and living in Twilight, Texas.”

  A car horn honking on the highway jerked Shannon back to the present. It had taken her a year to make her way here. She’d had a lot to deal with. Her grandfather’s passing. Being robbed by her husband and made a fool of. Pinning down her father and asking him if Earl Pringle’s story was true. Learning that it was indeed.

  She wasn’t going to leave until she’d done what she’d come here to do. Confront her birth mother.

  But how to go about it? It wasn’t a topic that rolled easily off the tongue. She’d planned an entire speech. Rehearsed it on the plane. But now that she was here, all the scenarios she envisioned had vanished. For one thing, she wasn’t a confronter. Her grandparents had stoically kept negative feelings bottled up tight and had expected her to do the same. Her father, Lance, had a sunny, easygoing disposition whenever he was around. She had no training in the art of verbal aikido.