The Christmas Ranch (The Cowboys of Cold Creek)

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “You know what Mom and Dad always used to say. When your heart is broken, the best way to heal it is to first mend someone else’s.”

  Celeste gave her a hard look. “And Mom and Dad were so smart, they both ended up dead after dragging their daughters from one godforsaken corner of the world to another.”

  Hope caught her breath, shocked at the bitterness in Celeste’s words. How could she argue, though? It was certainly true enough, just not the entire picture.

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” she said quietly. “I prefer to think that they gave their lives doing something they cared about passionately while trying to make the world a little better place.”

  “We might have to agree to disagree on that one,” Celeste said. “I don’t have quite your rosy view of what happened to us. The past isn’t the issue here, though. The fact remains that I honestly don’t understand how Faith and Mary could agree to let you go forward with this harebrained scheme to open the Ranch after we all decided to take this year off while we figure things out.”

  “I guess they have a little more faith in me than you do,” she retorted.

  Her sister’s expression softened. “I have faith in you. I love you. You know that. And I admire you more than I can say. I love that you go out into the world to explore and dream and live.”

  “But?”

  Celeste sighed. “No buts. I know there’s no way I can convince you this is a lousy idea. You always did have to charge into things and figure them out on your own.”

  It was as close as she was likely to get to her sister’s approval and she decided to take it. “Thanks, CeCe.” She held up the paper. “By the way, I really did love the story. Would you mind if I worked up a few illustrations to go along with it? I have a friend who owns a printing company in Seattle and I was thinking maybe I could talk to her about putting a rush order on printing a few copies and then we could sell them in the bookstore.”

  Celeste looked alarmed. “Sell them? No! Absolutely not!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I was just messing around, trying to come up with something to make Louisa and Barrett smile.”

  “You did. It’s a wonderful story.”

  “Not wonderful enough to be in a book!”

  “Oh, stop. It’s a delightful story. You’ve a gift, my dear. Louisa said you talked about printing up your stories so she could have them to read to her children eventually, right?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You’re going to have children of your own someday. Think of what a wonderful tradition it would be to read a story to them you wrote yourself.”

  “That would be lovely,” Celeste said. She was obviously wavering as she considered the possibilities, so Hope pushed her advantage.

  “I have to see if I can come up with some illustrations first. My art skills are a little rusty so I might not be able to—and then I have to check with my friends who own the printing company.”

  “So it might not happen?”

  Oh, she was determined to make it happen. This story was too adorable not to send out into the world.

  “Look at it this way. If we don’t sell any in the bookstore, you can always give them to Barrett and Louisa for Christmas.”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  “Do I have your permission, then?”

  Celeste—lucky enough not to be named Charity, thus sparing the sisters that triumvirate of virtues for names—finally nodded.

  “Sure. Go ahead. I can always use a few more Christmas presents.”

  “Excellent. Perfect. This is going to be wonderful, CeCe. You’ll see.”

  Her sister didn’t look particularly convinced but Hope didn’t mind. Her sister would be thrilled with the finished product. She intended to make sure of it.

  Chapter Five

  Rafe had survived plenty of miserable places during his twenty years in the military. He had hunted through caves in Afghanistan, parachuted into deep, all-but-impenetrable jungles in Laos and had lived off bugs and snakes for two weeks when his platoon had been cut off from radio contact during a mission in Iraq.

  Few of those places had struck him as depressing as this small county jail in Nowhere, Idaho, on a late November day.

  It didn’t help that he sat in front of his sister, wondering again how in the world she had let things go this far. She used to be so pretty, a little round, with big cheeks and dimples. She was always smiling, he remembered, even when their own family situation hadn’t been the greatest.

  Now she was thin to the point of gauntness, with huge circles under her eyes and a three-inch scar down her cheek that was new since he’d seen her eight months ago. She looked hard, worn down by the miles she had walked on tough, thorny roads.

  “My attorney is really excellent,” she was saying now. “Her name is Rebecca Bowman. She’s been very kind. She was the one who told me bluntly that the case against me was so clear-cut, my best chance was a plea deal. Because I agreed to testify against Big Mike, I might be able to get a sentence of two to three years, out in eighteen months. That’s better than five to ten, right?”

  “Sure.”

  He didn’t add that eighteen months was forever in the mind of a seven-year-old. Cami hadn’t been thinking of her son in any of this—not when she hooked up with the son of a bitch bar owner slash drug dealer she had met online.

  He hated these visits. Not only did they dredge up tough memories of their mother—who had been in and out of jail when they were kids and had spent her last two years on earth behind bars on drug charges before she died of a brain aneurysm—but they also provided stark evidence of his own failures.

  He had tried his best for his sister. He had joined the navy as soon as he could and sent almost every penny back to his aunt, who had reluctantly agreed to take Cami into her home.

  Cami had been terribly unhappy there and had gone from a laughing, smiling, rosy-cheeked girl to a quiet, sullen teenager. She told him she didn’t like living with their aunt and begged him to get out of the military and come back to find a job closer to home. He had tried to explain to her that he didn’t have many options to make an honest living, with no training and no college education. He was an eighteen-year-old kid who could barely take care of himself, forget about his sister.

  The military had seemed the best option to build a better future for both of them, and he consoled himself that the money he was sending back each month had to be making her life a little more comfortable.

  He had no idea until Cami told him years later that his aunt’s husband had been abusing her in just about every possible way.

  He should have known. He should have done whatever was necessary to protect her and he had failed—now here she was in jail because another son of a bitch had used her and abused her trust.

  “Time’s almost up,” the guard in the corner announced, and Rafe tried not to feel another layer of guilt at his relief.

  “How’s my little guy?” Cami asked. “Is he doing his schoolwork and staying out of trouble?”

  “He’s doing okay on the schoolwork front,” he said. After a moment’s internal debate, he decided to tell her the rest of it. “He broke a window of a pickup truck the other day by throwing snowballs. He was having some kind of contest with one of his friends to see who could hit the most cars and decided to put a rock in one.”

  “Oh, no. I hope nobody was hurt.”

  She hadn’t seemed too concerned about hurting innocent people when she dragged her son across the country so she and her lowlife boyfriend could deal drugs out of the back room of his bar.

  “Nobody was hurt. It just scared the truck owner. A woman by the name of Hope Nichols. After school lets out today, we’re going to her place to help her with a little work and repay the debt.”

  “Jo
ey will probably hate that.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “He made a poor choice and now he has to do what he can to make amends.”

  It was a message more about her than about her son and both of them knew it. After a moment, Cami nodded. “You’re a good uncle and a good man, Rafael.”

  He wished he could agree. He saw mostly his mistakes and his weaknesses. He saw a man who had been out saving the world when he should have been home helping his sister keep her life on track.

  A man whose error in judgment had ended up in the death of a man he was trying to rescue.

  “I wish I could have found a man like you instead of a jerk like Michael Lawrence. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  He could have answered that she was thinking she wanted some kind of safety and security. Mike Lawrence had been a business owner, running a tavern in Pine Gulch, when they met online. After they had been chatting for a few months, he had somehow sweet-talked her into coming to Idaho to “help him out” at the tavern.

  Helping him out had meant selling illegal prescription drugs out of the back room of the bar.

  Why his sister hadn’t picked up her son and gone back to California the minute she figured out what was going was something he would never understand.

  “Time’s up,” the deputy intoned. “Back to your cell.”

  Cami stood up, looking small and vulnerable. He hated thinking of her behind bars. He just had to hope she had the strength of spirit to accept the consequences of her own choices better than their mother had.

  “Thank you for coming to see me. I know you hate it.”

  “I hate it,” he acknowledged. “But I love you, which makes it a little easier.”

  Her eyes softened and filled with tears. He wished he could reach out and hug her but physical contact was forbidden.

  “Thanks for everything. Give Joey my love, okay?”

  He nodded and watched her being led back to her cell, his emotions in tumult. He wanted to pound something. A tree, a concrete wall. He didn’t care what.

  He walked out of the jail into the pale sunshine, wondering what the hell he was going to do now. Joey wouldn’t be home from school for another three hours and he sure as hell didn’t feel like going back to that crummy rental house and watching daytime TV.

  He climbed into his SUV, tempted to drive to the other tavern in town, the Bandito, and have two or three—or ten—beers. Since he made it a point never to drink when he was upset, instead he headed on impulse toward Cold Creek Canyon.

  He told himself he was only scoping out the place, doing a little recon to make sure he could find The Christmas Ranch when Joey’s school let out.

  That didn’t quite explain why, when he saw the sign for The Christmas Ranch, where your holiday dreams come true—and a smaller one that read Closed Indefinitely—he found himself turning into the parking lot.

  No harm in looking around, he told himself, seeing what might need to be done.

  The place looked pretty vacant. He saw a boarded-up lodge-like building with big river rock chimneys on either end and an empty pen next to it with a barn that must be the home for Rudy, Sparkle, Whosywhatsit and the other reindeer.

  The place had a certain charm, he had to admit, but he could see it needed some basic maintenance work. As he climbed out of the SUV, he could see a few sagging shutters, a rain gutter that had come loose, a big hole in the fence.

  If she was going to whip this place into shape, she needed some serious help.

  He walked around the building, casing the situation like he would gather advance intel for a mission.

  The weather had turned warmer, melting off what remained of the few inches of snow they’d had over the weekend. It wasn’t quite strip-off-your-coat weather, but the wind didn’t have that bitter bite of a few days earlier.

  For a moment, he lifted his face to the pale November sun and breathed in air scented with pine and sage. A guy could get used to this, definitely.

  He headed around the building, taking note of a few other repairs that needed to be finished. When he returned to his vehicle, he found a familiar old blue pickup truck parked next to his SUV—and a beautiful woman climbing out.

  Something in his chest gave a quiet little sigh when he spotted her. He decided not to let that bother him. So he was happy to see her. There was no crime in that.

  “Hi! What are you doing here?”

  He suddenly found himself wanting to tell her the whole ugly business. About Cami and the ass-hat she got messed up with, about her sentencing—and, further back, about their mother and her complete lack of nurturing.

  He pushed away the demons. “I was in the neighborhood,” he lied, then decided there was no point in it, since nobody drove into the out-of-the-way box canyon of Cold Creek unless they had a reason to be here.

  “Okay, I wasn’t in the neighborhood. I drove here on purpose. Call it a recon mission. I wanted to make sure I could find the place later when I need to bring Joey. And since I was already here, I decided to take a look around. Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  “Funny, sailor. By the looks of you, I never would have guessed you’re a master of understatement.”

  He smiled, his mood suddenly much brighter. She headed around the back of the pickup truck and pulled down the tailgate then reached to tug a ladder out of the bed.

  Rafe followed her and took the weight of the ladder from her. “I’ve got this.”

  “You don’t have to help me. I can handle it.”

  “You’re doing me a favor. I was looking for something physical to do. This fits the bill nicely. Where are we heading with it?”

  “Over there.” She pointed to the sign above the entrance to the parking lot. “I need to take down the closed sign and let people know we are no longer closed indefinitely.”

  She pulled another sign out of the pickup bed, a huge painted white sign that read Opening the day after Thanksgiving, and below that, Better than Ever.

  In light of all the obstacles she faced, he found her optimism refreshing, a bright spot in an otherwise miserable day.

  He carried the ladder back to the entrance and set it up under the other sign.

  “Thanks. Thanks a lot.” She headed to the bottom of the ladder and set one foot on the first rung from the ground.

  “Can you hand me the sign when I go up a few more rungs?” she asked. Her hands suddenly gripped the side of the ladder for dear life and a sudden fine sheen of perspiration had appeared on her top lip. Her hands were shaking, he realized. Despite the obvious signs, it took him a minute to put everything together.

  “You don’t like heights much, do you?”

  She set her foot back on the ground. “How did you guess?”

  He wasn’t sure she would appreciate knowing her pale face and pinched lips sort of gave things away. Instead, he only smiled again. He had only great admiration for people who were afraid of things but confronted them head-on anyway.

  “I must be psychic. Hand over the hammer and the nails. I’ve got this.”

  “Oh, but...”

  He shook his head. “No worries. I’ve got no problem with heights. I’m used to jumping out of airplanes or helicopters or boats for that matter.”

  “No. You don’t have to. I can do this.”

  Yeah, he respected the heck out of that determination in her voice. “So can I. Were you planning on using that hammer in your pocket to adhere the sign? Hand it over, then, and whatever nails you want me to use.”

  She looked at him and then up at the sign again. Apparently she decided there was no shame in accepting help.

  “Fine. Here you go. Knock yourself out.”

  She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a handful of nails, still warm from being so close to her
body heat, then handed over the hammer. Their hands brushed as she dropped the nails into his palm and he was aware of a little quiver of awareness in his gut.

  “So why don’t you like heights?” he asked, mostly to distract himself from an attraction he didn’t want to feel and wouldn’t do anything about anyway.

  She shrugged. “I just don’t. Never have.”

  Did it have anything to do with that frantic helicopter ride in Colombia, when she had fought and screamed and tried to jump back out to race toward her father, who was obviously beyond saving at that point?

  He could help her, more than just hanging this sign.

  As he climbed the ladder and started taking down the other sign, he realized he wanted to try. Helping her get this big worn-down mess ready for the holidays would give him something to fill his days and maybe, in some small way, would help him feel like he had at least tried to make things up to her.

  He couldn’t do anything for his sister right now, except take care of Joey. But he could take a little burden off the shoulders of Hope Nichols by helping her make this place ready for the season.

  He pulled the Closed sign off. “Watch it,” he called down before he dropped it to the ground.

  “You ready for the new one?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  He stepped down a few rungs and took the sign she handed up to him. One side was easy. He lined it up in the same holes as the other had been but the new sign was much longer than the other one had been so he had to climb down, move the ladder over to within reach, then climb back up.

  He glanced down at her. “Tell me when it’s straight.”

  She tilted her head, looking bright and lovely in the afternoon sun. “A little higher. No, now down just half a hair.”

  “How’s that?” he asked around the nails in his mouth. “Is it straight?”

  “Oh, perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

  He decided to take her word for it as he hammered the nails in then climbed down the ladder.