Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 1 of 2: A Rancher for ChristmasHer Montana ChristmasAn Amish Christmas JourneyYuletide Baby

by Brenda Minton

  “Ethan says they have to get back to town,” Jack told Olivia, as if warning her not to protest, “and you’ve been outside without your coat too long, Livvie McGuire.”

  Olivia made a face, but she scampered to the warmth of her husband’s side, snuggling beneath his arm, and waved goodbye as Robin all but dived into the passenger seat of the car.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Ethan said, dropping down behind the steering wheel. “I promised the ladies they could get started on the decorations this afternoon.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You, of course, are excused. You’ve already given generously of your time today.”

  She started to suggest that she could manage a few more hours if her expertise was needed, but she knew it wasn’t wise to spend more time in Ethan’s company. Besides, Saturday was usually reserved for laundry, and she’d already spent more than half the day alone with him. Some distance would be best just now.

  Ethan seemed all business when he let her out in front of her room at the inn later, saying that he could manage unloading without assistance and that he wouldn’t dream of taking one more moment of her time that day. After thanking her profusely, he drove away. She couldn’t help feeling a little let down. What, after all, was laundry compared to gathering greenery with the handsome pastor of the Mountainview Church of the Savior?

  As she washed and dried and folded and hung her laundry, she worked very hard not to think about what it felt like to perch on Ethan’s shoulder and be so effortlessly lifted upward or to waste time imagining that he had almost kissed her. She resolved firmly not to believe that his winks were flirtatious rather than merely teasing, or that he had picked the gazebo for their luncheon for any reason other than it had provided a simple form of shelter, breezy though it might have been. She would not assume that he was attracted to her or believe that her attraction to him could have the slightest chance of bearing fruit.

  She managed not to think of him, or even how the committee was coming along with its work, more than a few dozen times that whole afternoon and evening, so he caught her off guard the following morning when he called her name from the pulpit. The church had been spruced up with a few sprays of now-wilted greenery and candles from last month’s early small-town Christmas in honor of Dale Massey, and they’d sung Christmas carols to properly start off the season, but all that would obviously pale in comparison to what the pastor planned for the true Christmas celebration. Ethan named everyone on the decorating committee when he announced a formal Hanging of the Green service the following Wednesday evening. Had he left the matter there, all would have been well, but he went on to thank Robin specifically and profusely for helping to research and design the decorations, as well as gather the greenery.

  Sitting in the pew next to Olivia and Jack, Robin blushed bright red. Livvie seemed to find the whole thing as significant as she’d found his choice for a luncheon site, bumping her shoulder against Robin’s and grinning conspiratorially. Robin ignored that, and she intended to ignore Ethan by slipping quietly out a side door after church, but Rosemary Middleton snagged her by the wrist the instant the service ended.

  “It’s about the chrismon symbols,” she began urgently. “Something just isn’t right.”

  She hauled Robin back to the room where the decorating committee had been working and indicated a pile of several dozen white homespun objects on one corner of a table.

  “They’re limp,” Rosemary complained. “We can’t hang those on a tree or garland.”

  The other ladies joined them, everyone crowding into the room at once, and all offering suggestions at the same time.

  “We should have glued them to cardboard instead of sewing them together.”

  “They have to be stuffed with horsehair.”

  “With straw.”

  “Why not fiberfill?” Robin asked. “It’s not authentic, but it’s lightweight and as long as the look is right, it should be fine.”

  “I have some we can use,” Mamie said.

  “You better clear it with Pastor first,” Rosemary put in.

  “Yes, you seem to have influence with the pastor,” Nadine commented meaningfully.

  Because she was a Shaw and family, though she didn’t even know it, Robin let that slide.

  “I’ll take care of it. In fact, I’ll take care of stuffing the chrismon symbols.”

  “You have to sew yarn loops into the opening, too, so they can be hung,” Rosemary pointed out.

  “I ought to be able to manage that.”

  “I’ll help,” Mamie muttered reluctantly.

  Pleased with that offer, the ladies quickly swept the floppy white symbols into a large plastic bag, dropped in a skein of white yarn and handed it over. When she got to her car with it, Ethan was standing on the boardwalk, talking to a few stragglers, without an overcoat despite the biting cold wind.

  He looked older, more mature and strangely more masculine in his pastoral collar and dark suit. After shaking hands with a pair of older men, he wheeled about and came straight to her, as if he’d known exactly where she was every minute. Taking the bag from her, he put it into the back of her little hybrid while she gratefully slid down into the front seat. Coming forward to speak to her, he rubbed his bare hands against the cold.

  “Settled the quandary of the chrismon symbols, did you?”

  “If you don’t have any objection to my stuffing them with fiberfill.”

  He waved a hand. “If you’re okay with it, I’m okay with it. There are quite a lot of them, though. Are you sure you can get them done by Wednesday on your own? The plan is to let everyone in the congregation hang one, either on the tree or the garlands.”

  “Mamie will help.”

  “Bless Mamie. And you.”

  For a moment longer, he looked down at her over the rim of her car door as if he would say something more, but then he closed the door, stepped back and slid his hands into his pockets. She pulled the keys from her purse, started up the engine and drove away as quickly as she could. The last she saw of him, glancing back via her rearview mirror, he still stood there, his shoulders hunched against the cold.

  She would not think that he had a wishful, almost forlorn expression upon his face. She would not wonder if he had been about to invite her to lunch. She would not believe that he had been waiting for her near her car. She would not, oh, she would not, daydream about him just because he was so kind and lighthearted and caring or because he looked so handsome in his black suit and white collar or because he delivered his sermons in such a poignant, down-to-earth fashion and turned his warm brown eyes on her as he thanked her from the pulpit.

  Positively, definitely, she would not even contemplate letting anything beyond simple, polite friendship develop between them, for chances were that after Christmas, maybe after the first of the year, she would be leaving Jasper Gulch, one way or another. Either she would tell the Shaws the truth about Lucy and herself and they almost assuredly would reject her, or she would simply slip away without opening that can of worms at all. If the Shaws didn’t believe her, the mayor wasn’t likely to let her hang around town. He certainly wouldn’t let her keep her job, and even if she could find another one, she probably wouldn’t be very popular around town. On the other hand, she couldn’t see herself keeping quiet and staying here just to live a lie of silence. No, she couldn’t plan on staying here in Jasper Gulch.

  The very thought brought tears to her eyes, though she didn’t know how this quaint little town with its dusty streets, dilapidated bridge and decades-old secrets had managed to work its way into her heart. Even if the Shaws rejected her or never knew she was their kin, she was going to miss Jasper Gulch and the friends she’d made here.

  She was very much afraid that she was going to miss Ethan Johnson most of all, and that shouldn’t be. That just shouldn’t be. Why, she hardly knew the man.

  But no matter how often she told herself that, she knew in her heart of hearts that when she left h
ere, she would be taking along a huge load of regret. For the rest of her life, she was going to think of the hunky pastor of the Mountainview Church of the Savior and wonder and wish…and very likely grieve what shouldn’t, couldn’t, be and never was.

  Chapter Five

  Somehow when the knock came at her door on Tuesday evening, Robin knew it was Ethan. She looked at Mamie and tried not to blush with excitement. The older woman knotted the thread with which she was attaching a yarn loop to a closed and stuffed fabric chrismon symbol. She trimmed off the thread and tossed the finished decoration aside.

  “Wonder who that could be,” she said, her plump lips struggling to contain a smile, her needle firmly grasped between thumb and forefinger.

  Robin rolled her eyes and went to let him in. He huffed and stamped his dry feet on the bristled mat, spreading a grin around the small, warm room and taking in the mounds of plump chrismon symbols on the table and bed. “Hello.”

  Mamie nodded, plying her needle on yet another bit of fabric. “Pastor.”

  “Ethan. Can I get you some coffee or hot apple cider?”

  “The cider sounds good, if it’s no trouble,” he replied to Robin.

  “Not if you don’t mind the powdered version.”

  “It’s what I use.”

  “Coming right up, then. Leave your coat on the bed there.”

  He divested himself of his outerwear and dropped it on the bed before pulling the small armchair closer to the table.

  “I’ve come to help.” He carefully added, “And beg another favor.”

  Robin froze in the act of tearing open the package of cider powder and looked over her shoulder. He had placed a dark purple folder on the edge of the table.

  “What sort of favor?”

  “I need another reader for the Christmas pageant.” At her frown, he hurried on. “There aren’t any lines to memorize. You just have to read.” He laid his hand on the folder. “It’s all right here. Will you look it over, at least? I’ve marked the part I want you to take.”

  She might have argued, but Mamie seemed about to burst into laughter, so Robin focused on dumping the powder into the mug, adding water, stirring it together and getting the concoction into the microwave without slamming the door on the small appliance. Once she had the drink heating, she addressed the issue with, she thought, admirable calm. Didn’t the man realize how often he left the two of them open to rabid speculation?

  “I’ll look at it and let you know.”

  Ethan smiled and rubbed his hands together, asking, “Now, how can I help? I’m afraid I’m no good with needle and thread.”

  “You stuff, then, and we’ll both sew,” Mamie ordered, explaining how to poke the airy, weblike fiberfill through the tiny opening at the top of each piece until it was stiff enough to hold its shape. The job was so easy that they already had a large pile awaiting the addition of a small loop of yarn and a few stitches to close the hole and hold everything together. The work truly would go much more quickly with both Mamie and Robin sewing.

  Robin picked up the needle and thread she’d set aside earlier and went to work. Ethan chatted as he poked airy bits of polyester into small fabric chrismon symbols, telling them which children were playing which parts in the pageant. When he got to Mary, Mamie gaped.

  “Lilibeth Shoemaker? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I am not,” Ethan said quietly but in a tone that brooked no interference. “The committee cleared Lilibeth of any involvement in the disappearance of the time capsule.”

  “But the note hinted that someone with the initials L.S. was mixed up with the time capsule,” Mamie argued. “Who else could it be but Lilibeth Shoemaker?”

  “Lucy Shaw,” Robin blurted.

  After a stunned moment of silence, Ethan shook a wisp of fiberfill at her. “Now, that makes perfect sense. More sense, anyway, than Lilibeth managing to dig up the time capsule, hide it from everybody for some unimaginable purpose, only to hang around here to be accused of the crime, then have it turn up again. Besides, the notes never said L.S. stole anything.”

  “Well, when you put it like that,” Mamie muttered thoughtfully.

  “How else can you put it?” Ethan demanded, shaking his head. “No, it’s much easier to think that this all has something to do with Lucy’s incident at the bridge than a pouty teenager.”

  Robin’s blood ran cold. The incident, not the accident. Did Ethan know about Lucy’s deception? Had he learned that she’d faked her death so she could run off and marry Cyrus?

  No, the idea was ludicrous. How could Ethan know that? No one knew but her and the Frazier family, and they certainly wouldn’t have told anyone. Would they? Not even to scuttle a relationship between her and the Shaws?

  No, they wouldn’t stoop that low. Still, someone had written those notes.

  For a moment, Robin couldn’t catch her breath. Was her family so anxious to ruin her chances to fit in with the Shaws that they would try to sabotage her with anonymous notes? She couldn’t bear to think it.

  Ethan said something about letting he who was without sin cast the first stone, and Mamie reluctantly admitted that Lilibeth would make as good a Mary as anyone, and the matter smoothed over. Indeed, Robin had already forgotten it and everything else except the possibility that the Frazier/Templetons might be responsible for those notes, which she now felt sure referenced her late great-grandmother. She was so troubled by the possibility that she could only stare blankly at Ethan when, as he was taking his leave a couple hours later, he asked if she would have an answer for him after the service the next evening.

  “About the reading. Practice starts Thursday.”

  “You might as well say yes,” Mamie put in, tidying up the table now that the chrismon symbols had all been finished.

  “I’m going to need your input anyway,” Ethan told Robin apologetically. “On the costumes, the set, the staging, everything.”

  She sighed, torn. “Fine. If I’m going to be there anyway, I might as well read the part.”

  “My thoughts exactly,” Ethan said happily. “Oh, and one more thing.” He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “The bell ropes have arrived.” He pulled back, adding, “You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  “No, no, I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Great. We’ll talk about that later, then. In private.”

  She nodded and let him out the door. Barely had she closed it again when Mamie crowed, “In private, no less.”

  Robin gusted out a great sigh. “It’s not what you think.”

  “What I think,” Mamie teased saucily, “is that our pastor is finally about to stake a claim.”

  Robin shook her head. “No. No, it’s not like that at all. It has entirely to do with a surprise for the Christmas celebration.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mamie replied doubtfully. “We’ll just see about that.”

  “You will,” Robin told her, and suddenly she very much feared that she had spoken the gospel truth. She and Ethan had nothing between them but a centennial-style Christmas celebration, and that was all they ever would, could, have.

  *

  The Hanging of the Green service went beautifully, better than even Ethan had envisaged. A group of stalwart men hung the long evergreen garlands, interwoven with strands of electric candles, glass ornaments and sprigs of ivy and holly, beneath the windows at the sides of the church, while Ethan explained the meanings of the various materials used.

  The women of the decorating committee came forward to tie on big red bows. Various elders festooned the altar and lectern with swags of greenery, which the ladies also decorated. A beautifully carved crèche was placed upon the altar next to a large Bible open to the Christmas passage in Luke, the whole array set against a backdrop of tapered candles in bronze holders. The tree had been put up in the vestibule and decorated with electric candles and bows. The chrismon symbols were passed out. The children went out to further decorate the tree while the adults finished up inside the sanctuary
.

  Finally, small candles with paper collars were passed out and lit. The congregation sang a last carol. Ethan prayed a closing prayer. They blew out the candles and trooped back to the fellowship area for cookies, Christmas punch and mincemeat pie, which tasted surprisingly good. Ethan managed to snag a chair next to Robin. In fact, that chair seemed to have been saved for him, if not by her then by the matchmaking element of his congregation.

  Balancing a tiny saucer and cup on one knee, he went straight to the heart of the matter. “Went well, didn’t it?”

  “It certainly did. I even heard the mayor say so, and Faith is so pleased with the decorations that they’re only planning pew bows and some additional candles for her wedding ceremony.”

  “That’s good. I think it looks beautiful myself, even better than I’d hoped.”

  “It really is lovely,” Robin agreed.

  “Couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to say that.”

  “No, I mean it. You’re an integral part of the whole scheme. So about tomorrow evening…”

  She laughed and wagged a finger at him. “I’m onto you, Pastor Ethan Johnson. Butter up the volunteer and hit her again.”

  He grinned unrepentantly. “Absolutely. Can you come around seven?”

  “I can.”

  He broke off a bit of cookie and said, “Tell you what, I’ll feed you dinner first. To thank you for all you’ve done.”

  If it had been anyone else, he’d have assumed she hadn’t heard him, for the seconds drew out longer and longer. “Why not?”

  He let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “Fine. What time do you get off work?”

  “About five-thirty.”

  “I’ll be at the inn by a quarter of six to pick you up.”

  “Okay.”

  “See you then,” he said, getting to his feet.

  As he walked away, he congratulated himself on his cleverness. It wasn’t a date; he did not date. Ever. But no one other than he and Robin would actually know that their being out together was just him repaying a favor. Let the rest of the town assume what they would. He’d gain a bit of breathing space, and Robin would get a decent meal, something he wasn’t sure she managed too often, living in that room with its tiny kitchenette at Mamie’s. That was what he called a win-win situation.