Snowfall on Haven Point

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You can only help us with the top branches, and then maybe you could go out while we finish.”

  Go out where? He wasn’t exactly up for a ten-mile hike here. “Sure. Hand me an ornament. Where do you want it?”

  “Right up by the top,” Chloe said. She handed him one of her paper snowflakes, lacy and so delicate he was afraid he would rip it, then pointed at a spot on the tree.

  Holding the snowflake in one hand, he maneuvered closer on the crutches, then reached to the top branches to hang it where she indicated.

  “How’s that?”

  “Good. Now this one.”

  She handed him what looked like an ornament out of Wyn’s collection next, a glittery white kneeling reindeer that Chloe proclaimed adorable.

  For the next few minutes, the children alternated between having him hang paper snowflakes and pulling new treasures out of Wyn’s ornament collection for him.

  Marshall did his best to comply with their wishes. If he were asked a week ago to make a list of activities he might have expected to be doing at any point in his immediate future, decorating a Christmas tree with a couple of cute red-haired kids never would have made the cut. Much to his surprise, he found it quite enjoyable, though.

  In between decorating the tree, the children talked to him about their schools, a funny trick their dog could do, a Christmas song Will had learned in preschool.

  It wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening—and almost enough to make a guy forget all about the throbbing pain in his leg.

  “Are you ready for another one?” Chloe asked him.

  He considered it a great honor that she didn’t seem terrified of him anymore, though she was a bossy little thing once she lost her nervousness.

  He shifted position on the stupid crutches. “Sure. Lay it on me.”

  She handed him another snowflake to go with the veritable blizzard he had already hung on the tree. “We’re running out of room here, kid.”

  She narrowed her gaze and studied the tree, then pointed to a spot just to his left and up a bit. “Right there. I think it can fit there.”

  He complied with her wishes.

  “Okay, Will and me can reach all the rest,” she said. “You go out now.”

  “Why can’t I just sit back down and close my eyes?”

  “This will be the second-best tree in Haven Point, after ours,” Will declared. “You wait and see.”

  “And you can’t see it until it’s done. We want it to be a surprise,” Chloe said.

  Marshall wanted to ask how the tree could possibly be any sort of surprise when he had personally hung at least a third of the ornaments. He didn’t have the heart to spoil their fun—and he was undeniably touched that these generous children wanted to bring a little brightness into his life. What was the harm in playing along with them?

  “I guess I could use a drink of water.”

  “We’ll call you and our mom to come in and see it when we’re all done,” Chloe said.

  “Fine. I guess I’ll go see what’s smelling so good in the kitchen.”

  He made his careful way down the hall to the kitchen, which smelled of apples and cinnamon and cloves. There, he found Andie with her back to him, bending over to add something to the bottom rack of the dishwasher.

  Yeah, he had a broken leg and an assortment of other aches and pains, but he was still a guy. He couldn’t have prevented his gaze from drifting to her shapely curves any more than he could stop the Hell’s Fury runoff in springtime.

  His body stirred with awareness—which had the potential to be more than a little embarrassing, considering he wore loose, soft basketball shorts.

  With her auburn hair piled on top of her head in a messy updo, she looked soft and pretty and he had an insane urge to press his mouth to the back of her neck just below her hairline.

  He blinked away the impulse and moved farther into the room as she stood up. Her dog spied him first and gave a tiny, excited woof, which alerted Andie. She whirled and for an instant he could swear heat flared between them before she seemed to collect herself.

  “Oh! You startled me!”

  “Not sure how. No one could say I’m exactly stealthy on these things.” He gestured to the crutches.

  Appealing color bloomed on her cheeks. “I guess my mind was somewhere else. Sorry. Are they about done in there?”

  “I’ve been banished from the room while they put the finishing touches on.”

  “You’re a good sport, Sheriff Bailey.”

  That was something not very many people would have said about him, but he wasn’t about to argue with her. “I said this earlier and I meant it. Please call me Marsh or Marshall. Once you’ve decorated a man’s Christmas tree, you should be allowed to call him by his first name.”

  Her color seemed to heighten. “Fine. Marshall.”

  The way she said his name in her soft alto voice sent a funny little shiver down his spine. Probably some kind of nerve receptor misfiring, he told himself, even as he tried to rid his brain of imagining her using that voice in the bedroom.

  She cleared her throat. “I know you weren’t crazy about having my kids decorate a tree for you. It means a lot to me that you let them do it anyway.”

  He didn’t deserve her gratitude. He hadn’t wanted them to decorate a tree and had agreed only because he hadn’t had the heart to turn down the offer. He didn’t bother telling her it likely would be a chore for him to remember to even plug in the lights throughout the remainder of the holiday season—not to mention, taking the thing down once Christmas was over.

  “Something smells good in here,” he said.

  “Oh. That. It’s an apple brown Betty. I thought it would go well with that vanilla ice cream you had in your freezer. It should be done in ten minutes or so, and then I’ll see if I can hurry the kids along so we can get out of your way. I promised you we wouldn’t take long.”

  He had been a complete jerk to her earlier, but she still had been willing to overlook it and was making him something she thought he might enjoy.

  Her words and the reminder of his own behavior made him feel about six inches tall. His jaw worked. “You probably already figured this out, but I’m an ass sometimes.”

  She flashed him a look that said she didn’t completely disagree. “You’re in pain and hate being laid up. I get it.”

  “That’s not a valid excuse.”

  “Honestly, Marshall, you apologized very sweetly earlier and you’ve more than made up for it this evening by being so kind to my children.”

  “Kind? They’re the ones who wanted to do a nice thing for me. It’s not some huge sacrifice for me to let them, though I’m still not quite sure why they’re going to so much trouble for some cranky neighbor they barely know.”

  “I can’t answer that for sure, but...” She hesitated. “I don’t know how much Will remembers his dad or really understands what happened to him, but Chloe does. She knows her dad was a police officer who died in the line of duty. You’re in law enforcement and were injured in the line of duty. I have to think maybe she’s made some kind of connection there between the two of you.”

  “Between her dad and me.” He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

  “She adored her dad and used to love leaving little gifts for him all the time. A bracelet she made out of string, a picture she colored, cookies she saved from her own snack and packed in a little bag to tuck into his lunch the next day. That kind of thing. Since she can’t give Jason those little gifts now, maybe somehow she feels like doing something nice for another police officer is the next best thing.”

  His throat felt tight and achy and he couldn’t seem to find any words.

  “That’s about the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” he finally said, his voice raspy. “Now I really do feel like
an ass.”

  She smiled. “Or maybe she just wanted to cut out a bunch of snowflakes and you were the lucky recipient. Who knows? She’s six.”

  It would be entirely too easy to lose his heart to this whole family. The lovely, deceptively fragile-looking mom, the cute chatterbox of a four-year-old boy and the sweet girl who saved her own treats and tucked them away to give to her police officer father.

  “That’s nice,” he finally said. “Law enforcement isn’t always very popular these days.”

  “Yet you do it anyway. Why is that?”

  Sometimes he wondered that himself. He shrugged. “It’s kind of a Bailey family tradition.”

  “I know. Your father, your grandfather, your brothers. Wyn has told me as much.”

  That was part of it, but not the whole picture. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” he said. “My dad was my hero. I guess I’m a lot like Chloe in that way. I used to watch him leave the house in his uniform day after day and think he was better than Superman or Batman.”

  Her features softened. “Everyone tells me what a good man he was. You must miss him a lot.”

  “Hard not to,” he admitted.

  The ache was always there; it just hit him harder at certain moments.

  He pictured John Bailey and the last difficult years of his life. Deep guilt always threaded through that image like some kind of foul, twisted creek.

  He might have been able to prevent those tough final years. If he had stepped up and confronted his father in the months before he was shot about his suspicions that John Bailey wasn’t behaving like himself, his father might still be alive.

  Instead, he had let his love and respect for the man color his own judgment as a fellow law enforcement officer.

  His father hadn’t been fit to serve. Something had been very wrong. Marsh had begun to suspect it but had said nothing, wanting to believe he was imagining things, that his father was simply tired or stressed or overworked.

  Only after the fact, he had confronted Cade about what really happened that night and his best friend reluctantly confirmed his suspicions.

  John had begun to show signs of early-onset senility.

  Both he and his best friend felt responsible for not identifying it and taking steps to remove John from the force.

  “This is probably going to sound strange,” Andie said, breaking into his thoughts, “but I’m a little jealous that you had such a good example. I can only wish I had a dad like John Bailey, even if it meant I had to suffer the pain of losing him one day.”

  “Your father wasn’t a good man?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? He wasn’t in my life. I don’t know if my mother even knew his last name. When I asked her about him once, she told me she thought his first name was Kevin and he had a cute Irish accent. That’s it, probably because she was too high to remember the rest.”

  Her words revealed volumes about her childhood. She seemed so put-together, so loving and kind, he never would have guessed she came from a rough background.

  “You were raised by an addict?” he asked carefully.

  The sudden regret in her eyes told him she had disclosed more than she intended. “Not really,” she said. “My mother got clean when she found out she was pregnant with me, moved home with her parents and stayed away from drugs until I was about five, when she relapsed. She was in and out of rehab after that and I stayed with my grandparents.”

  He didn’t miss her flat, guarded tone when she spoke of her grandparents, so unlike the open affection she showed to her children. “You never had to do the foster care route?”

  “No. I guess I was lucky in some respects. Living with my grandparents might not have been ideal, but at least I had a secure home.”

  Might not have been ideal. What kind of pain did those words conceal? He felt a rush of compassion for her at the same time he was deeply grateful for his own childhood—fishing trips with his brothers and Cade, hiking the mountains around here, swimming in Lake Haven.

  In many respects, he had enjoyed an ideal, rosy, Norman Rockwell sort of childhood.

  This inevitably drew his thoughts to Christopher next door, angry and hurting and lost, whose childhood was vastly different. His chest ached for both the boy and Andie.

  “I don’t know why I told you that,” she said a moment later. “You seem to be excellent at getting me to confess things I rarely talk about. I guess that’s what makes you a good police officer.”

  “Why don’t you talk about your childhood?”

  She picked up a cloth and used it to wipe down the countertops. The smell of lemon dish detergent mingled with the apples and spices from the oven.

  “What’s the point?” she said after a moment. “It’s the past and I can’t change it. It wasn’t horrible, anyway. I was never physically abused or starved or locked in a closet or any of the ugly things you can encounter in your line of work. It just wasn’t a very loving place for a child to thrive or feel secure.”

  “I’m sorry. Every child deserves to feel loved.”

  “I agree. I promised myself when I left home at seventeen that I wouldn’t look back. I don’t very often. I also vowed that I wouldn’t for one moment ever give my children a reason to feel unwanted or unimportant.”

  Again, all she didn’t say about her childhood seemed to expand to fill the kitchen. His heart twisted with compassion—and admiration that she had come from that and then had suffered great loss and trauma in her own life yet still struggled so valiantly to make a beautiful world for her children.

  “You’re a very good mother,” he said quietly.

  She gave a laugh that sounded self-conscious. “Here’s a news flash for you, Marshall. No mother ever thinks she’s good at her job. We do our best. That’s all.”

  He couldn’t help thinking of Charlene, who had been a very loving—if somewhat smothering—parent. He loved her dearly and didn’t tell her that often enough.

  “I’m sure those happy kids in the other room would tell you what a good job you’re doing.”

  As if on cue, Chloe and Will rushed into the room, their faces bright with excitement.

  “Okay. I think we’re all done,” Chloe said. She looked like she could hardly contain her enthusiasm.

  “Come see!” Will ordered, reaching for his hand to tug him toward the living room.

  When the boy’s fingers slipped between his, Marsh felt a weird jolt in his chest.

  “William Jason Montgomery, be careful,” Andie exclaimed. “You don’t want to knock over Sheriff Bailey.”

  “Sorry,” the kid said, pulling his hand away quickly. Marsh wanted to tell both of them it was fine, but he decided it was probably better not to say anything.

  He followed the kids back to the den. They had turned all the lights off and only the tree was illuminated, glowing bright and cheerful.

  “Oh, kids,” Andie breathed. “It’s beautiful!”

  He had to agree. As far as Christmas trees went, it wasn’t exactly a professionally designed job. Some of the ornaments were clustered in bunches and there were a few uneven spots, but it was clear the two kids had taken great care to hang the ornaments.

  It touched him to the core that they had done such a kind thing for him.

  “Your mom is right,” he said gruffly. “That is, without a doubt, the prettiest tree I’ve ever had.”

  “Really?” Chloe looked as thrilled as if he had told her Santa Claus lived upstairs.

  “Honest. It looks like a different room in here. I can’t help but catch a little Christmas spirit, with such a beautiful tree.”

  The children grinned at each other and at their mother, who gave him a bright smile that hit him like a sunbeam in July.

  “Thanks a lot for going to all this trouble for me,” he said, his voice gruff.
“I feel really honored, especially since you made so many of the decorations yourself.”

  “It was fun. I’m glad you like it,” Chloe said.

  “Yeah, because if you didn’t, we would have to take all the ornaments off and that would be a lot of work and I’m already starving,” Will said.

  Andie brushed a hand across her son’s head. “Let’s clean up the bag and the boxes now and leave Sheriff Bailey to enjoy his tree in solitude.”

  That’s what he wanted, right? For everyone to leave him alone so he didn’t have to work so hard to be nice.

  Right now, it somehow didn’t seem at all appealing.

  “You don’t have to rush off,” he said on impulse. “Why don’t you stay for dinner? I was thinking pizza sounded good. We could order from Serrano’s—and we’ve got apple brown Betty and ice cream for dessert.”

  “Pizza and ice cream!” Will exclaimed.

  “Can we?” Chloe implored her mother.

  Andie looked caught off guard at the invitation. “I think we’ve bothered Sheriff Bailey enough for the evening.”

  It was an obvious reference to his words of earlier in the day, the ones he suddenly would have given just about anything to take back.

  “But he invited us!” Will pouted.

  “I did. And I meant it. Think of it as my way of repaying you for all the trouble you just went to.”

  “Please?” Chloe entreated.

  Andie looked down at her children, then at him with an expression that managed to mingle puzzlement and suspicion. She was probably wondering how he could flip so abruptly from telling her basically to stay away to inviting them for dinner.

  If she figured it out, he would like to know the same thing.

  “Serrano’s pizza is delicious and I haven’t figured out any other plans for our dinner,” she finally said. “I suppose that would be okay, if you’re sure.”

  “Positive. To be honest, I get tired of eating by myself. My own dinner conversation is pretty boring.”

  This made Chloe giggle but was nothing less than the truth. He spent a great deal of his free time in solitude. Unless he was grabbing lunch with Cade or one of his deputies or having family dinners at his mother’s, most of his meals were spent at his desk or in front of the television set on low for background noise while he worked on reports.