Just a Little Christmas

by Janet Dailey

  There was only one. Jubal played it once, then again, struck by the undercurrent of excitement in Ellie’s voice. He’d spent the past half hour convincing himself to forget her. But nothing could have stopped him from calling her back.

  She answered on the first ring. “Jubal? Are you all right?”

  “My phone was turned off. I just got your message.” He could explain more later. “You found something?”

  Wind howled under the protective awning that sheltered the gas pumps, muffling her reply. “Can’t hear you,” he said. “I’m on the road. Gracie’s asleep. Let me call you when I get her home. Maybe I can meet you somewhere.”

  She said something he couldn’t make out above the keening sound of wind. “I’ll get back to you,” he said, then ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. Inside the truck, Gracie was still asleep. Jubal started the engine and pulled back onto the road. He’d been fighting to stay alert before the call. Now he was wide awake, adrenaline surging.

  Ellie said she’d found something new—maybe something that could make a difference. But that wasn’t all that made his pulse race. Unwise as it might be, he had a reason to see her again.

  * * *

  Ellie put her phone in her purse and reached for her coat. Jubal had said he was on the road, headed home with Gracie. She couldn’t be sure how close he was, but waiting for him to call back and arranging to meet would not only take time, but for him it would mean leaving Gracie alone. If she could go now and meet him at the ranch, it would save time and trouble.

  “Where are you off to in such a hurry?” Clara glanced away from her favorite TV crime drama.

  “Just an errand. I shouldn’t be long. Would you keep an eye on Beau for me?” The little poodle had left the armchair and was sprawled under the Christmas tree, fast asleep.

  Clara raised an eyebrow. “Not a problem. But you’re being very mysterious. Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. See you later.” Ellie escaped out the door, found her keys, and climbed into the Purple People Eater. The engine fired up on the first try. The old bucket of bolts had served her well. But she wouldn’t be sorry to trade it in for her BMW.

  Wind gusts slammed the sides of the old car as she drove through town. Maybe another storm was blowing in. But for now the twilight sky was clear, the roads dry. She switched on the radio. Nothing but Christmas music, but it was better than hearing the howl of the wind outside.

  She’d reached the last stop sign before the main highway and was about to make the right turn when Jubal’s truck passed in front of her, headed in the direction of his ranch.

  She would know that truck anywhere. He was pushing the speed limit, probably anxious to get home. She’d hang back a little, give him time to get there and get Gracie settled. By the time he phoned her again, she’d be pulling up to the house.

  Turning onto the main road, she drove slowly. Far ahead now, the familiar taillights of Jubal’s truck were fading into the near-darkness. After the way she’d stormed out on him the day before, seeing him again might be awkward. Maybe she should apologize. But no, in the light of what she had to tell him, a petty argument wasn’t worth remembering.

  A few minutes later she turned off the highway and onto the gravel lane that led between the fields to Jubal’s ranch. Outside, wind battered the car and shook the ancient cottonwoods that grew along the roadside. The towering trees swayed like spooky goblins, their branches bare and dark against the moonlit sky.

  Ellie was gripping the wheel with both hands and humming along with Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas” when, above the wind, she heard a shattering crack. She glanced to her right, just in time to see a huge limb break loose from the nearest tree. Crashing through the weaker branches beneath, it plummeted right toward her.

  Ellie stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The car shot forward. Broken twigs and small branches showered down as the limb struck the ground behind her with a deafening thud.

  The car had come to a stop, Elvis still singing on the radio. Shaken, Ellie geared down and tried to pull forward, but something was blocking the wheels. Switching off the ignition, she braced against the wind, shoved open the door, and climbed out of the car.

  The limb that had fallen behind her was as long as a bus and at its base almost as thick as a man’s waist. It lay across the road, one heavy side branch resting against the car’s rear bumper. Loose twigs lay all around the car, littering the hood and trunk. One broken branch lay across the road, blocking the front wheels. For all that, the Purple People Eater appeared undamaged.

  Ellie sagged against the side of the car, her knees shaking. If that massive limb had landed on the car, she could have died, and the baby, too. Either she was the luckiest woman alive or she’d just experienced a miracle.

  From inside the car, her cell phone was ringing. She yanked the door open against the wind, sank onto the seat, and grabbed the phone out of her purse.

  “Ellie?” The voice was Jubal’s. Her lips moved in an effort to reply, but the only sound that emerged from her throat was his whispered name.

  “What is it? Are you all right?”

  Willing herself to be calm, she struggled to tell him. Her voice shook as she related what had happened. “I’m not hurt. Just . . . I don’t know . . .”

  “Stay in the car. I’m coming,” he said.

  “Will Gracie be all right?”

  “Gracie’s in bed. She’ll be fine. Stay put.” The call ended.

  Ellie closed the door and slumped against the seat. The baby was stirring. She felt the poke of a tiny foot beneath her sweater. The answering surge of love brought tears to her eyes. What if something had happened to harm her precious baby?

  She’d been told that she would love her baby as soon as she saw it. At the time, Ellie hadn’t understood. But she did now. She loved her little one already, with a fierce protectiveness that was unlike anything she’d ever known. She thought about her own mother’s constant fussing and worry and how it had always annoyed her. Now, for the first time, she knew how Clara must feel, and how anxious she was to keep her beloved child safe. That motherly urge to protect never went away.

  Wiping her eyes, Ellie peered through the litter-covered windshield. The ranch was close. Jubal couldn’t be more than a few minutes away. But an eternity seemed to pass before she saw the truck’s headlights coming down the lane. She retrieved her purse and climbed out of the car. The wind whipped her coat around her as she waited.

  The truck stopped a few yards away. Leaving the headlights on, Jubal opened the door and sprang to the ground. “I’ll be damned, lady. Rescuing you could get to be a full-time job.” He made a feeble joke, recalling the recent night when she’d swung her BMW off the road to miss a deer.

  The smile vanished from his face as he took in the broken branches around the car, and the massive limb that could have crushed the vehicle as easily as an eggshell. “Oh, my Lord, Ellie!” he muttered. “You could’ve died right here.”

  Ellie took a step toward him but her legs refused to hold her. She stumbled, almost falling. Jubal reached her in two long strides. His arms caught her and cradled her close. She felt his strength supporting her, his body adapting to her awkward shape as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to hold her that way.

  Racked by dry sobs, Ellie buried her face against his open coat. He smelled of hay and horses and clean, honest sweat, and right now she needed him.

  “Oh, damn it, Ellie . . .” Muttering incoherent curses, he used his thumb to tilt her face upward. His kiss was rough and hungry, driven by a need as deep as her own. As the contact deepened, she felt the years melting away as if they’d never been apart—as if they were young and so much in love that nothing could come between them. The feeling wouldn’t—and couldn’t—last. But in that moment, with the wind whirling around them, there was nothing but Jubal, nothing but his strong arms and the raw sweetness of his mouth on hers.

  They broke apart,
Ellie trembling, Jubal making a visible effort to pull himself back to reality. “We’ve got to get you back to the house,” he said.

  “The car—”

  “It’ll have to wait for morning. You can call your mother when we get there.” Jubal put a sheltering arm around her shoulders as he led her to the truck and helped her climb in. Huddled beside him, with wind gusts pummeling the truck cab, Ellie kept silent as Jubal drove back to the house. She’d come here to tell him something important, she reminded herself. The fallen limb, Jubal’s dizzying kiss—they were nothing more than distractions. They couldn’t be allowed to make a difference between them.

  He helped her up the steps, into the shadowed living room, then went out again to put the truck in the shed. Ellie hung up her coat, then tiptoed down the hall to check on Gracie. In the glow of a night-light, Jubal’s daughter lay fast asleep, her arm cradling the toy dog Ellie had given her. Ellie couldn’t help smiling. The little girl was a heartbreaker. It was impossible not to love her—even knowing how much it would hurt them both when the time came to leave.

  Returning to the living room, she plugged in the Christmas tree lights, settled on the couch, and used her cell phone to call her mother.

  “Ellie? Did you have another accident? Are you all right?” Clara’s voice shook with alarm.

  “I’m fine, Mom.” For once, Ellie didn’t feel annoyed by her mother’s concern. She could imagine herself asking her own daughter the same questions.

  “So why are you calling? Where are you?”

  “I’m at Jubal’s.”

  “Oh . . . really?” Ellie could imagine her mother smiling.

  “I just needed to tell him something. I was planning to come right home, but a big tree limb blew down across the lane. I can’t leave here until it’s cleared away tomorrow morning.” Ellie knew better than to mention how close that limb had come to crushing her car.

  “So you’ll be there all night?” How delicious, Ellie could almost imagine Clara thinking.

  “Relax, Mother. Gracie’s here, so you don’t have to worry about a scandal. I’ll probably spend the night right here on the couch.”

  “You don’t have to explain, dear. That’s really none of my business. But think about it. Maybe that limb fell off the tree for a reason.”

  “Honestly, Mother—” Ellie’s patience was frayed to the snapping point.

  “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”

  The memory of that electrifying kiss flashed through her mind. She couldn’t lie to her mother. “All right! Maybe I am still in love with him! And I adore his little girl. But nothing’s going to happen. There are too many . . . issues.”

  “Issues? Like what?”

  “Like me being pregnant with my ex-husband’s baby. Like all the reasons I left in the first place. Like—”

  She broke off at the creak of a floorboard behind her. Glancing around, she saw that Jubal was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  Chapter 12

  Jubal had come inside through the back door, which opened off the kitchen. He hadn’t meant to overhear Ellie’s exchange with her mother, but here he was, caught in the act.

  He’d done some serious thinking after he’d left her to put the truck away. The kiss they’d shared had made him feel like a giddy teenager again. Holding her in his arms had brought back all the surging hormones and pulse-pounding thrills of the old days. But that kiss had been a mistake. He was already dealing with a plateful of trouble. The last thing he needed was to get jerked around by Ellie again.

  Now, as if things weren’t complicated enough, she’d just confessed to her mother that she loved him. In the awkward silence that followed, Jubal knew he had to put the brakes on this scene. The last time Ellie had said she loved him, she’d ended up damn near destroying him. He wasn’t about to let it happen again, especially now that Gracie was involved and could be hurt.

  At the same time, he had no desire to embarrass Ellie, especially since she’d come to help him. For now, the simplest strategy would be to pretend he hadn’t overheard.

  She had ended the call to her mother. That was Jubal’s cue to stride into the living room, rubbing his hands as if to warm them. “That howling wind is brutal,” he said, moving toward the fireplace. “My ears are ringing so loud I can barely hear.”

  If she bought that line, he could probably sell her some nice oceanfront property in Nevada. But at least it gave her an out.

  “In that case, you should probably warm up before I give you the news I brought.” She was playing along, but something told Jubal she wasn’t fooled.

  “How’s that again?” Crouching by the hearth, he turned toward her. His hand cupped his ear. “Give me a minute to light this fire and I’ll be right with you.”

  He struck a match. The stack of dry kindling, crumpled newspaper, and logs, which he’d laid earlier, caught the flame and swiftly became a cheerful blaze.

  Straightening, Jubal turned back to face her. Ellie was huddled in a corner of the sofa, her cell phone still in her hand. She’d been through a hell of a time tonight. Still, she looked beautiful, with windblown hair framing her face and firelight dancing in her dark eyes. It was all he could do to tear his gaze away from her.

  “Thanks for plugging in the tree,” he said. “The place should be warming up in the next few minutes.”

  “How are your ears?” Was it a jab or just a polite question?

  “Better, I think.” He joined her on the couch, needing to change the subject. “So what’s the big news?”

  She told him, then, about the baby shower and meeting Donetta Huish, the loan officer’s wife, who’d sold Jess her grandfather’s house—the house that became the B and B. The awkwardness between them fell away as he listened.

  “I didn’t think twice about it,” she said. “Not until my mother remembered the name of the old man who’d lived there. It was Jacob Shumway.”

  Jacob Shumway. A memory flashed in Jubal’s mind—a stoop-shouldered, wild-eyed old man standing in his ratty bathrobe on his moonlit porch, shrilling curses at the young hooligans who’d disturbed his sleep.

  “The Vinegar Man?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I remember that old grump. We kids used to dare each other to knock on his door and run away before he could open it. I can’t believe I lived in Branding Iron my whole life without caring enough to even know the old man’s name.”

  “I didn’t know it either,” Ellie said. “That’s pretty sad when you think of it.”

  “So what are the chances that it’s his signature on that loan document?”

  “He was still alive at the time the document was dated, but he’d have been very old. And to shut himself up the way he did, the poor man must’ve been mentally ill. I remember Donetta saying that she and her husband moved here to keep an eye on him.”

  Jubal stretched his legs, resting his boot heels on the edge of the time-scarred coffee table. He took a deep breath to calm his galloping pulse. “For now, let’s assume he did sign the contract. A sick old man like that, how would he even know what he was signing? He could’ve been duped into writing his name.”

  “Unless he was sharper and meaner than we give him credit for. What if he was in on the scheme?”

  “Either way, since he was a recluse, he’d need a go-between on the outside. Somebody he trusted.” Jubal swung his feet to the floor, stood, and strode to the desk in the alcove. Coming back with the contract, he took the three pages out of the manila envelope, spread them on the coffee table, and switched on a nearby reading lamp.

  The blue-inked signatures and the old-fashioned notary seal looked genuine, but the document itself had been photocopied on cheap, slick paper. The lender had probably kept the original and given Jubal’s father a signed copy.

  Jubal sat down again and studied the copied letterhead at the top of the first page. It had an old-fashioned look to it, with leafy scrolls surrounding the company name. The original paper may have been embossed—the design
had that quality look about it.

  Jubal had already done some checking. The only address on the letterhead was a post office box in Cottonwood Springs, which had long since been rented to different customers. Below the post office box was a phone number, which Jubal had called. He’d reached a woman, also in Cottonwood Springs, who’d told him she’d had the same number for twenty years and had never heard of the Shumways. Dead end.

  Shumway and Sons. Jubal frowned at the name on the letterhead. “It would help to know whether Jacob Shumway had any sons.”

  “I could ask my mother,” Ellie said. “But I only heard about two daughters, both deceased now. Since Donetta’s mother was one of the daughters, and since it was Donetta who inherited the house, I’m guessing there were no sons—or at least none who outlived him.”

  Ellie leaned in close, studying the letterhead. “This is strange,” she said. “There’s a phone number here, but no fax number or email address. Jubal, what if the property management business was old—really old, like fifty or sixty years—maybe even older? That would explain why we couldn’t find it online or in the county records.

  “This is what I’m thinking.” She gripped his arm, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Maybe Jacob Shumway didn’t have any sons. Instead, he could have been one of the sons—maybe the last one living. If the business was still a legal entity—or even if it only appeared to be—he would have the right to sign the document and not have it questioned. And he could easily have kept a supply of the old company letterhead stationery.”

  “Give me a minute.” Jubal leaned against the back of the couch and closed his eyes; his thoughts were spinning so fast that it made his head ache.

  “So my father wanted to borrow five thousand dollars to pay for the funeral. He went to the bank. They turned him down because of bad credit. So somebody steered him to Shumway, used the old letterhead paper to draw up the loan contract, then had the old man sign it with a notary present. Somewhere along the way my father turned over the deed to the ranch and got his five thousand dollars. And we know the rest of the story.” Jubal sighed. “It makes sense—but the puzzle still has a couple of missing pieces. If the old man was too far gone to know what he was signing, who was behind the plan? And who owns the ranch now?”