She apparently didn’t notice—or care—that neither of them shared her enthusiasm.
Becca didn’t have a chance to talk with Gabi alone until after dinner, when Monica headed to the third bedroom—sniffing her nose at the twin bed and the boxes piled around her that Becca hadn’t had a chance to organize yet—to make some phone calls. Gabi immediately headed into the shower as if she wanted to avoid questions. Becca waited several moments after she heard the water shut off for her sister to change into her pajamas before seeking her out.
To her surprise, she found Gabi on the floor of the darkened living room, lit only by the light from the Christmas tree Trace had brought and decorated with them.
Colored streaks dripped down Gabi’s cheeks, the Christmas lights reflecting her tears.
“Oh, honey.” Becca folded her sister in her arms, marveling anew how she could come to care so much for Gabi in a few months. Gabi was stiff and unyielding for a moment and then she sagged in her arms. A lump rose in Becca’s throat when Gabi wrapped her arms around her, too.
“I’ve ruined everything,” she said, sniffling. “I’m sorry, Beck. I never ever thought she would come out here.”
She smoothed a hand over Gabi’s damp hair. “It’s not your fault. Monica likes the unexpected. She always has.”
“I should never have called her.”
She couldn’t lie to the girl, after she had known a lifetime of dishonesty, by pretending everything was fine. “It certainly complicates things. But we’ll be okay.”
“She’s going to ruin Christmas.”
“Not if we don’t let her.”
“You promise?”
The trust in Gabi’s voice staggered her, left her feeling completely unworthy. She hugged her tightly. “I promise,” she answered, though she had absolutely no idea how she was going to keep her word.
Monica was definitely up to something.
Less than twenty-four hours after her mother had blown into town like a nasty, greasy rain cloud, Becca knew she was cooking up some new scheme. Monica was on her cell phone constantly and she insisted on taking every call in the guest bedroom amid the boxes and clutter where she couldn’t be overheard.
She also had an unmistakable air of restless excitement around her. Most worrisome of all, she seemed especially watchful of Gabi. At odd moments, Becca would find her mother scrutinizing her sister with a considering expression that worried her to no end. If she caught Becca looking at her, Monica would revert to a bland smile that didn’t fool either of them.
Becca had never felt so helpless, trapped by her quandary. She wanted to tell her mother to leave, that she wouldn’t let her ruin Gabi’s first real Christmas. But with no legal, official custody arrangement between them, she knew Monica could drive away with Gabi at any moment and Becca would have no power to stop her.
She had been so worried, she had almost called in sick that day at the diner, but she knew that wouldn’t have been fair to Lou and Donna. The Gulch was bound to be busier than usual this close to Christmas, especially with school out for Christmas vacation. She just had to trust that Monica wouldn’t do anything stupid—which seemed a little like hoping Mother Nature would decide to send a heat wave to Pine Gulch for Christmas.
Now, as she pulled into her driveway behind Monica’s flashy red sports car, relief flooded her. Her mother and Gabi were still here.
If nothing else, her mother’s reappearance in their lives had proved without question to Becca how very much she loved her sister. She didn’t know exactly when her perception had changed, but she no longer considered her sister a burden. She loved Gabi and wanted, above all, to give her sister a safe, normal childhood.
A nine-year-old girl ought to be busy going to birthday parties and dance class, not playing a part in her mother’s latest con.
If Monica took Gabi away, Becca knew just what fate awaited her. More lies and manipulation. Gabi would have to become a player, willing or not, in whatever game Monica wanted to embroil her in next.
Becca refused to let that happen. She had given her word and she would do whatever it took to keep that promise.
The afternoon and evening were a repeat of the awkwardness of the day before. Though she did her best to keep her sister busy in the kitchen making homemade caramels she wanted to give to the Archuletas and The Gulch regulars the next day on Christmas Eve, Monica still managed to sneak Gabi away for a couple of private talks. Each time, Gabi would return subdued but she refused to talk about what was bothering her with Becca.
After they finished wrapping the caramels in little sections of waxed paper, Gabi finally said she was tired and wanted to go to bed. Though it was about an hour earlier than her usual bedtime, Becca didn’t stop her as she headed upstairs to her bedroom.
“Well, I’ve got to make a few phone calls,” Monica said, pushing away from the table, where she had sat and watched Gabi and Becca wrap the caramels.
“Before you do, I need to talk to you.” Becca forced her voice to be forceful, declarative.
Monica gave a light laugh, though she seemed slightly disconcerted. “That sounds ominous. You mind if I eat a caramel while you lecture me?”
Without waiting for an answer, she unwrapped one of the sticky-sweet pieces of candy and began to chew it.
“I don’t want to lecture you,” Becca said. True enough. She wanted to wring her mother’s neck for coming here and stirring up such tension, taking so much of the joy out of the holidays. “I want the truth. What are you planning with Gabi?”
Monica opened her mouth with a look of feigned hurt. She could have made a good living in Hollywood if she’d turned her talents in that direction. She was a brilliant actress, which was why she was so good at convincing people to part with their money, whether they wanted to or not.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m not stupid, Monica. I know the signs. You’re cooking up something and it involves Gabi.”
“Why would you say that to me?”
Becca ground her back teeth, refusing to play the game. “Because I know you. You forget, I was exactly in Gabi’s shoes until I cut off ties with you twelve years ago. Enough is enough, Monica. Gabi and I are making a good life here. She’s got friends, she’s starting to enjoy school. I’m thinking about getting a dog and a cat. She’s safe and happy now, for once in her life, and I’m not letting you drag her off again.”
Oh, she should have just shut up while she was ahead. As soon as she said the last part, she wanted to clamp her teeth together at her own stupid tactical error.
Big mistake, to throw everything out there like that and reveal how very protective she was of Gabi now. Monica would definitely capitalize on her mistake. She would have been much better off pretending she didn’t want Gabi around. Monica would have been much quicker to leave the girl with Becca if she thought it was some kind of onerous burden on her.
“You’re imagining things.” Monica put on her wounded look. “I don’t know why you’re always so quick to accuse me of things. I’m just here to spend the holidays with my girls.”
Becca hated to ask but felt she had no choice. “You’re not planning something here, are you?”
Monica’s look of surprise seemed genuine enough. “In Pine Gulch? No. I learned my lesson here.”
She stared. “What does that mean?”
“I haven’t had good experiences in Pine Gulch. After your father died, I contacted your grandfather looking for help.” Her mouth pursed and she looked every one of her nearly fifty years. “He threatened to take you away from me, the old bastard. I wasn’t going to let that happen so I vowed not to come back. When I was pregnant with Gabi, some old acquaintances needed another player for a big job here. The payoff was going to be huge but the whole job turned into a complete disaster. Fortunately I only had a small part. Nobody could tie me to anything. All I did was a little recon work for a few days. It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that, and I was able to get out of town fast wh
en things headed south. You know how I feel about violence. Just not my scene.”
She wasn’t interested in Monica’s walks down Memory Lane. All she wanted was to protect her sister.
“Gabi is happy here,” she repeated. “Don’t you think she deserves a chance at a normal life?”
“Gabrielle is not you, Rebecca. All you ever wanted was that normal you’re always going on about. Look at you now. Waiting tables in a two-bit diner in Nowhere, Idaho. I can’t believe any daughter of mine would be happy, but I never did understand you. Now, Gabi. She loves adventure.”
“She’s happy here,” she repeated to Monica.
Her mother smiled, tossing her waxed paper wrapper on the counter instead of the garbage can. “If that was true, she never would have called me. Good night, my dear. Sleep well.”
She walked out of the kitchen, leaving Becca with more of her messes to clean up and an ache of fear in her stomach.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, Christmas Eve, The Gulch was only open for breakfast and shortened lunch hours. Becca handed out her caramels and was delighted with the enthusiastic response. Much to her surprise, several of the regulars had little gifts for her, as well—a box of chocolate mints, a plate of cookies, a mug filled with hot cocoa packets. Donna and Lou left a wrapped gift for her on the shelf above where she hung her purse and coat.
Pine Gulch was a nice town, she thought. People here had gone far out of their way to make her feel welcome and she wouldn’t soon forget it.
Her happy holiday glow lasted until a little after nine when the door opened and the police chief of this nice town walked in. He was wearing a uniform—something fairly unusual for him, and a PGPD parka and Stetson.
Her traitorous insides trembled, and for an instant, she fiercely wished things could be different between them—especially that she had been honest from the day she showed up in town about Gabi and Monica. She had an equally fierce wish that Donna wasn’t tied up in the office right now so Becca didn’t have to deal with him this morning.
“Merry Christmas, Chief. Do you want a table or a booth?”
“Merry Christmas.” He gave her a cool nod. “Neither, actually. I just need a sweet roll and a breakfast wrap to go. I’ve only got a minute before I have to head back on patrol.”
“I guess police officers don’t get Christmas off.”
He shrugged. “I try to give my officers with kids as much time at home as I can during the holidays.”
Donna chose that moment to emerge from the back room, more paper place mats in her hand from the storage closet there. “If I know you, Chief, you’re going to be working double shifts from now until New Year’s.”
He shifted, looking embarrassed. “Don’t make it a bigger deal than it is, Donna. My officers work hard all year. If I can give them a little more time with their families over the holidays, it’s a small enough thing.”
Becca gazed at this strong, honorable man, her heart suddenly pounding in her chest. He worked himself into the ground over the holidays, gave up time with his own family, so his officers could be with their children. How could a woman resist a man like that?
She wasn’t in danger of falling in love with him, she realized, shock trembling through her. She was already there. She didn’t know when it had happened—perhaps that day in the diner when he had protected her from the rowdy snowmobilers or perhaps earlier, when he had shown up at their house with a Christmas tree and that rueful smile.
Or maybe she fell in love when she met her grandfather’s dog, Grunt, and discovered Trace was the sort of man who would take in an ugly little dog and give him a home simply because no one else stepped up to do it.
What if she dared tell him the truth? Surely he would understand and forgive her? She had to believe that. After all, she had only been trying to protect her sister.
While Lou fixed Trace’s breakfast burrito, she grabbed one of the diner’s famous cinnamon rolls from the double batch he had prepared that morning and slipped it into a sack. On impulse, she hurried to the back room for the last small gift bag full of caramels. She already knew Trace had a sweet tooth. Maybe a little candy would help make his long shift a little more bearable.
She was heading back to the dining room when her cell phone rang. Though she carried it with her, very few people had the new number she had obtained when she moved to Pine Gulch. A quick glance at her caller ID verified the call was from her mother’s phone. For a moment, she was tempted to shut off the phone and not accept the call. But since Monica was with Gabi, there was always a chance it was some sort of emergency.
“Yes. Hello?” she finally answered, pitching her voice low.
“She’s packing my stuff!”
Instead of her mother’s voice, she heard Gabi’s and the frantic words turned her insides to ice.
“What?” She could only pray she had misunderstood.
“She just went to the bathroom and I sneaked her phone so I could call you. She’s packing all my stuff. I think she’s trying to leave before you get back.”
Panic exploded through her. She had suspected this very thing, damn it. Why hadn’t she brought Gabi to work with her? When would she ever learn that she couldn’t trust Monica for a single second? “It’s Christmas Eve!”
“I know.” Gabi’s voice wobbled. “I tried to tell her that we should wait until after the holidays, but she said we need to go, that she has people waiting in California, a man, and she’s told him all about me. I’ve apparently been away at boarding school and now I get to spend Christmas with them.”
No. No, no, no! She wouldn’t let this happen. What could she do?
Feeling wild, trapped, she gazed out at the diner trying to formulate a plan and her gaze landed on Trace looking big and solid and reassuring as he stood at the counter talking to Donna.
Trace. I hope you know that if you’re ever in any kind of trouble, you can always come to me, he had said to her.
She had to tell him. He was the only one who could help her. How he would do that, she had no idea, but she had to do whatever necessary to protect her sister.
“Stall her. However you can think of, just stall her, okay?”
Gabi was silent for about three seconds. “I’ll try,” she finally said, doubt threading through her voice. She was probably wondering whether she had put her trust in the right person. Becca didn’t blame her for that.
“Hang in there. Whatever you do, don’t let her know you called me. You’ll have to delete the record from her recently dialed calls. Do you know how to do that?”
“I can figure it out.” Gabi sounded terribly young suddenly. Young and frightened. “I don’t want to go, Becca. I like it here with … with you.”
This was a vast outpouring of affection coming from her reserved little sister and Becca had to swallow down tears. “I know, sweetheart. I’m not going to let her do this. Your place is here with me now. Hang on, okay? Just stall her.”
“Okay. I’ve got to go. I just heard the toilet flush.”
Gabi ended the call and Becca drew a deep breath. After the next few moments, everything was going to be different. The time for lies and deception was over. Trace might hate her now but she couldn’t worry about that.
She had to protect her sister, whatever the cost.
He had to stop coming in here.
He would just have to leave enough time in the mornings so that he could make his own breakfast at home before he left for the day or else somehow force himself to be content with a breakfast sandwich from the fast-food place at the other end of town.
It was too hard to come to The Gulch now with Becca here. Every time he saw her, he had to fight with everything inside him not to pull her into his arms and not let go.
“Here’s your breakfast burrito. I don’t know where Becca has run off to,” Donna said, her dark eyes exasperated. “I swear she was putting a cinnamon roll into a bag for you. Let me just grab you another one.”
“I sa
w her go to the back room a minute ago,” he said. Of course he hadn’t missed that. He was aware of every move she made, pathetic lovestruck fool that he was.
“I’ll just see what’s going on,” Donna started to say, but before she could move, Becca walked back into the room.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
He saw tension in every line of her body, from the tight set of her shoulders to her clenched fists, and her features were as colorless as they’d been that day her mother came into the diner.
She seemed to take a deep breath and then headed toward him. As she neared, he saw fear in her eyes, stark and cold. He instinctively reached his fingers toward his weapon, hovering there—braced for trouble, despite not knowing its source.
“What’s wrong?”
She let out a shaky breath. “I need your help, Trace.”
“You’ve got it,” he said without hesitation.
She blinked, confusion in her eyes, as if she hadn’t expected such ready willingness. Becca struck him as someone who had been carrying her troubles by herself for entirely too long. Maybe it was time she allowed someone else to lend a shoulder.
Her features softened, her mouth trembling, then she pressed her lips together. “I have to tell you something first. You won’t like it.”
“Sit down first. You look like you’re going to fall over.”
“I can’t. There’s no time. I need to …” She drew in a deep breath, her hands in tight fists at her side. “I just have to come right out and say this. Gabi isn’t really my daughter.”
He stared, the air leaving him a whoosh. He didn’t know what to think, trying to process the shock of this revelation.
“It’s a long story, one I don’t have time to get into right now, but she’s really my younger sister. Half sister, I guess. We share a mother. You met her the other day here at The Gulch.”
Christmas in Cold Creek Page 15
