A Forever Christmas

by Marie Ferrarella

  She slumped against him, completely spent. Only then did she answer his question. “Yes.”

  With one arm around her, supporting the young woman, he looked around Gabe’s kitchen. A fight had obviously taken place before the gun was fired. Using a handkerchief, Alma was picking up the small handgun and depositing it into a self-sealing plastic bag.

  “What the hell happened here?” he asked Angel.

  But it was Joe who answered his question. “Looks like Angel shot an intruder.” The deputy squatted down beside the body and put his fingers against the side of Wynters’s neck.

  She looked at the deputy, afraid to breathe. If Wynters was alive, he’d come after her. No matter how long it took, he’d find her.

  “Is he—”

  Thinking she was asking if the detective was alive, Joe slowly moved his head from side to side. “No, he’s dead.”

  It was the tension and relief that brought on a fresh round of tears, not any sense of loss or grief. That had vanished a long time ago. Taking in a deep breath, she struggled to get hold of herself.

  Beside her, Gabe had risen to his feet and now draped his arm across her shoulders, as much to comfort her as to help hold himself upright.

  One look at her face and he knew. “You remember, don’t you?”

  The nod was all but imperceptible. Everything had returned, not in bits and pieces, but almost in one blinding flash.

  She recounted it very slowly, almost as if it had been a movie she’d been watching, starring someone else, not her.

  “When I saw him choking you—when I thought he was going to kill you—it all came back, like it was there all along. Jake was a bully. He got off on terrorizing me. I knew he’d never let me go, that he would rather see me dead first. I knew I had to get away and I did. I got away clean. But then one day I accidentally found out that my mother had just died. She was the only family I had,” she told him as tears gathered in her eyes. “I wanted to say goodbye.

  “I waited until everyone left after the reception and I slipped into her house to get her album of pictures and her locket. My late father had given it to her and she told me that someday it was going to be mine,” she explained.

  “I was about to leave when I thought I heard a floorboard creak. I knew in my soul that it had to be Jake and I just took off without looking back.” She sighed. “I guess I was right. He was the one who must have partially cut my brake lines.” A look of disbelief washed over her face. “He’d told me more than once that if he couldn’t have me, he’d rather see me dead than with another man.”

  She looked at Gabe, wanting him to know everything. “I never took his money. He lied about that. I wanted nothing to do with him. I just wanted to be free.”

  Gabe knew she wasn’t the type to steal. “So your name really is Dorothy Mandra?” he asked. It was going to take time for him to get used to that, he thought.

  She shook her head. “No.” That life was behind her and she wanted it to remain that way. “It’s Angel.” She looked up at Gabe, the man who had given her her name. The man who had given her her life. “My name is Angel,” she repeated again with feeling.

  “We’re going to need a statement, Angel,” Rick told her, deliberately using the name she’d chosen to stay with. “We’ll take it the day after tomorrow,” he added. “Tonight’s Christmas Eve and tomorrow’s Christmas, this will keep until after that.”

  But she shook her head. “No, I want to get this over with now, put it behind me once and for all.”

  “Your call,” Rick told her obligingly. Turning toward one of the people who had been drawn by the sound of gunfire and had subsequently congregated around them, he said, “Get the doc out here.”

  “Then he is still alive?” she asked in horror, staring at Wynters’s fallen body.

  “No, he’s dead all right.” Rick’s voice softened just a touch. “I want you and my deputy here checked out. Wouldn’t want to risk losing either of you,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Gabe offered no resistance, just asked for an indulgence. “Can I have a minute, Sheriff?”

  “You can have ten,” Rick told him genially. “Just don’t go wandering off.”

  “We’ll be just over there,” Gabe told him, pointing toward the pantry. Taking Angel by the hand, he went inside the pantry, switched on the overhead light and closed the door.

  Most of the pantry shelves were empty. That still didn’t explain what they were doing there. “Gabe?” she asked uncertainly.

  “I’ve got something to say before this night gets any weirder,” Gabe told her.

  She braced herself, waiting to hear what she felt in her heart was going to be the beginning of the end. Their end. And why not? Taking up with her had almost cost Gabe his life. What man wanted a woman like that to keep hanging around?

  “All right,” she whispered, an unbelievable sadness clutching her heart. “Go ahead.”

  He reached into his pocket. Good, it was still there. He hadn’t lost it in the fight.

  “All right,” he began, his mouth suddenly so dry it felt as if his tongue was going to stick to the roof of his mouth any second now, “before Doc starts poking and prodding me and Rick starts picking your brain apart for details about this horror show, I just wanted to ask you… I just wanted to ask you…”

  This wasn’t going to come out right, he thought. His head was really hurting him and all the words he’d rehearsed so carefully had temporarily vanished from his brain.

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered.

  This was going to be worse than she thought. She could feel tears begin to sting her eyes. She decided to spare him the trouble. “That’s all right, you don’t have to say it,” she told him.

  Puzzled, he looked down into her upturned face. “I don’t?”

  “No.” She pressed her lips together, afraid she was going to start sobbing. “I’ll leave as soon as I give Rick my statement.”

  “Leave?” Gabe echoed. The pain he still felt around his neck was nothing in comparison to what his heart was suddenly going through. “Why would you leave?”

  How could he ask her that? Was he playing some sort of a game?

  Or was he?

  “Because you want me to,” Angel answered. “Don’t you?”

  “No, I don’t,” he cried with feeling. “What I want is to give you this,” he said in an eruption of frustration, pulling out his hand and opening it to reveal an engagement ring lying in his palm. “I had a whole speech worked out, but now I can’t seem to rem—”

  Snatching the ring from him, Angle quickly slipped it on the proper finger on her left hand.

  She didn’t want a fancy proposal. All she wanted was him—for the rest of her life.

  But first, she suddenly remembered her own news. “I have something I have to tell you first,” she said, “before I give you my answer.”

  “What?” he asked uneasily.

  She’d wanted to pick her time, but after what just happened, he needed to know—and the sooner, the better. “You’re going to be a father.”

  He looked at her, stunned beyond words. “Are you saying—”

  “I’m pregnant.” And then she took a breath, knowing this could change everything. “So if you want to take your ring back—”

  He didn’t even hear her. His mind was stuck in first gear. “You’re sure? You’re sure you’re pregnant?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Very sure. But that doesn’t mean you have to marry me.”

  “Yes, I do,” he insisted. “I want my happy ending.” He looked at her and said, “You still haven’t given me your answer.”

  He was one in a million. And she loved him. “Yes,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck. “Yes, yes, yes,” she repeated, uttering each word in between the kisses she rained on his face.

  The final “yes” was followed by a long, soulful kiss that was equal parts joy and relief.

  Which was the way Rick found them when, concerned by the silence, he finally
opened the pantry door. Taking in the scene, the sheriff of Forever smiled knowingly and quietly closed the door again.

  “I can always take the statement later,” he murmured, pleased, as he walked away.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Cowboy Soldier’s Sons by Tina Leonard!

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  Chapter One

  We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

  —Shakespeare’s The Tempest

  Shaman Phillips wasn’t expecting a blonde bombshell to show up at the front door of the Dark Diablo farmhouse, but one glance at her shapely legs, long silky hair and beautiful face made him believe tonight might be a lucky night for a lone wolf. “Hello,” he said. “Can I help you?”

  “Hi.”

  Shaman decided the voice of an angel went with her amazing looks. She was way out of his league—and yet even a man with scars liked to gaze at beautiful things.

  “I’m looking for Chelsea Myers.”

  “Ah. The Chelsea Myers who married my brother Gage in July. She’s Chelsea Phillips now.” Shaman leaned forward, out of the doorway, planting his well-worn boots on the porch. “They live at the Callahan place, Rancho Diablo, in Diablo.”

  The goddess stepped closer, her high fire-engine-red heels clicking on the wood porch. “My name is Tempest Thornbury. I met Chelsea and Cat in July, before I returned to Italy.” She held up a small Louis Vuitton bag, complete with tufts of tissue paper coming out the top. Shaman knew what Louis Vuitton was; his sister, Kendall, was a huge fan. “I brought this for Cat. Is there a possibility you could give it to her?”

  “Come on in,” Shaman said, tamping down the wolflike tendencies fighting inside him. “I’ll get their address and you can send it to her. It’d probably be quicker. I never know when I’ll see them, now that the school year has started.”

  Tempest smiled. “Thank you.”

  Shaman went to get the address, and she followed him into the house. He handed her a piece of paper. “Cat started school in the middle of August in Diablo. She’s real happy there.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  He decided his visitor was even more beautiful close up. The hot-red suit fit her curves to perfection. She didn’t wear a wedding ring or jewelry, just some gold hoop earrings that kissed her cheeks.

  “She’s a sweet girl,” Tempest added.

  Shaman nodded, suddenly uncomfortable and not sure why. His first thought was to seduce this angel—what man could resist?—but she was too perfect for him. How dumb was that?

  Ten years in the military, most of them spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, might have left him hungry for female companionship, but it had also left him with scars on his back, a chunk missing from his shoulder and a red slash across his sun-browned cheek. He was lucky those were his only visible scars. Many of his buddies hadn’t fared so well.

  A little less perfection in a woman would suit him better. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

  Tempest smiled and turned on her heel. “I was hoping to see Cat and Chelsea, but I suppose they won’t be back until the semester is over?”

  “Can’t say.” He wasn’t familiar with Cat’s routine. “Chelsea and Gage just announced that they’re expecting a baby, so I don’t know how often Chelsea will be out here.”

  Tempest glanced back at him, looking pleased. “That’s wonderful! I’m glad to hear it.” She opened the front door before he could do so. “I didn’t get your name?”

  “Shaman Phillips.” He held the door for her, and as she walked out, caught a tease of a light flowery perfume. “You staying in Tempest, Tempest?” He grinned. “I didn’t realize you were named after the town.”

  She leaned into him, catching him off guard. “It’s a stage name. My real name is Zola Cupertino.”

  His brain tried to process that information, along with the distracting fact that she was dangerously close to him. And he didn’t think it was an accident. If he didn’t know better, he’d think she—

  “Soldier...” Tempest murmured.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he said, out of habit. She must have seen his military bag, and his combat boots in the living room.

  “I just got off a plane from Italy,” she announced. “I wonder if you might be interested in taking me out to dinner?”

  He blinked. “Certainly,” he said, trying to be chivalrous and not sound as surprised as he was by her unexpected invitation.

  She smiled at him, a sweet, slow, sexy smile, her angelic eyes free of artifice, but holding a silent plea. Maybe he didn’t want to see it. But she was still standing oh-so-close to him, and the next thing he knew, he’d taken the statuesque blonde in his arms and was kissing her like a dying man.

  She kissed him back hungrily.

  “Wait a second,” Shaman said. He was a lucky guy, but not this lucky. Angels didn’t just drop from the sky into his hard-edged world. “How did you say you know Gage and Chelsea?”

  “Met them this summer. Don’t stop what you’re doing, soldier.”

  He kissed her again, his mind trying to find the hook in the sweet deal she seemed to be offering him. She could have any guy in the world. Why would she choose him, instead of running from the sight of his scar-streaked face?

  What the hell. A man didn’t get too many gifts in life, and if this angel wanted to fly into his arms, he needed to quit acting like a skittish horse. “Hey, you want that dinner or not?” he asked, giving her one last chance to back away.

  “After,” she murmured, melting into him.

  He carried her to his bedroom, taking his sweet time, being careful with the soft suit and delicate white camisole. Her bra and panties were angel-wing white and breathlessly lacy, the kind that didn’t do much for support but everything for a man’s libido. Keeping the lights low, he whispered to her in soothing tones, expecting at any moment for her to tell him she wanted out of his bed. But she let him do whatever he wanted to her, and she was sweet like he’d never tasted sweet before.

  And when he finally entered her, Shaman thought he’d died and gone to some magical place he’d never known existed. In all the dirty, lonely nights he’d been scared out of his wits—and he’d been plenty scared, tough guy or not—he’d fantasized about a woman. Any woman. A soft, sweet woman to take away the pain.

  This woman was a velvet-soft gift from the gods, and whatever he’d done to deserve this time with her, Shaman wanted the moment to last forever.

  Tempest cried his name, and he lost himself in her. She grabbed at his shoulders, and he didn’t even think about his wounds or his scars. He held her and kissed her, savoring her like a treasure.

  Then they slept—maybe for an hour; he wasn’t certain. A glance out the window showed a moon that was huge and high in the sky. Getting out of bed, he said, “Let me shower. I’ll take you for that dinner.”

  She smiled at him in the moonlight. “Thanks, soldier.”

  Afraid to keep the lady waiting, he took the world’s fastest shower, dressing like a madman. Yet he wasn’t all that surprised when he came out and all that was left on the bed was the little Louis Vuitton bag, and a note that read, “Just remembered I have a meeting in town. Rain check for the dinner? Tempest.”

  He grunted. She’d signed the note as if it was an autograph for a book or a photo. “A meeting,” he muttered. Shaman glanced
at the note again, massively disappointed. Rain check.

  I’ll just bet.

  * * *

  “WHO IS HE?” Tempest asked her dearest friends, Shinny and Blanche Tuck, after they’d hugged each other. It was so good to be here, in the Ice Cream Shoppe where she’d spent so many happy hours. The couple had been parents of sorts, shepherding her through difficult times as a child. Shinny could always be counted on to give her one of his delicious “specials,” a frothy chocolate milkshake she’d adored as a kid. Now she knew he’d simply been trying to put meat on her scrawny bones, but back then she’d thought she was the luckiest girl in the world when he gave her the scrumptious treats.

  Shinny and Blanche sat across from her in the lipstick-red booth. The store was closed, and soon they’d go home. But for now they were enjoying catching up.

  “He’s one of the Phillips boys from Hell’s Colony,” Blanche said. “Seems to be a good family, if his brother Gage is any indication.”

  Shinny was happy to let his wife tell the story, but filling in the details was his forte. His balding head with its white tufts of hair shone under the fluorescent bulb overhead as he leaned back in the booth. “Gage comes out every once in a while. Shaman and he are trying to fix up Dark Diablo. They’re the ones Jonas Callahan hired to bring the place to a working condition.”

  “Why’d you go there?” Blanche asked worriedly. “You don’t want to be around Dark Diablo. Nothing good can come of it, even with him there.”

  Tempest conceded she wasn’t quite sure what had happened tonight. Seduction wasn’t her style, and she hadn’t had a lover in years. But the man at the ranch had seemed so defenseless, so...sexy. Sexier than any guy she’d ever seen, in some way she couldn’t identify. His coffee-colored

  eyes had had a faraway, lonely, almost vulnerable look in them, and for some reason she’d sensed in him a safe harbor. “I wanted to take Cat a present. I thought she and Chelsea would be there. Funny that everything changed in the two months I was gone.”

  “Yes,” Blanche said, her tall dark updo quivering under the light. She had enough hair to make up for Shinny’s lack of it. “Gage and Chelsea decided living at Rancho Diablo would be best, to help Cat make the transition to the area. She adores being around all the Callahan children. We went to their wedding, by the way. It was so lovely.” Her friends looked at her. “It’s the kind of thing I hope you’ll have one day.”