It was long past time she found a little holiday spirit.
Chapter Ten
“What was your favorite subject in school?”
Elise took a sip from her water glass at the elegant restaurant in Billings, doing her best to handle what felt very much like an interrogation. Beside her, Matt nudged his knee against hers and out of the corner of her gaze, she took great comfort from his supportive smile.
“Um, English,” she finally answered. “I’ve always loved to read. Working in a bookstore is a dream come true.”
That was apparently the perfect thing to say to a high school teacher. Betty’s eyes warmed and her smile widened. “You come by that naturally, my dear. Women on my side of the family have always been big readers. My mother, my aunts. All of us. They’re all dying to meet you, by the way.”
Oh, mercy. Elise hadn’t given much thought to extended relatives she might have to meet. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Just the thought of it had her snatching up her water glass again and gulping it like she had just run a marathon through the Mojave.
Under the table, she felt Matt’s leg nudge her knee again. He was doing it on purpose, she knew, offering her whatever physical comfort she could take from his touch.
“So Jack, tell me about being a police officer in San Diego. Harbor police, isn’t it?” Matt asked as smoothly as the attorney he might have become, finessing a witness. “You probably deal with some really fascinating cases. What were you working on just before you came out to Montana?”
“My partner and I are trying to nail a money launderer working with the Mexican cartels. It’s mostly leg-work but we’ve had some close calls.”
With Matt’s subtle encouragement, all through their entrées Jack told stories about his work while Betty added her own perspective about what life was like being married to a police officer.
Elise liked both of them. They seemed to be a genuinely nice couple who loved each other and their family. That was one of the toughest things about everything that had happened. If circumstances had been different, she would very much have enjoyed the chance to get to know them.
Jack was just like the delicious cheese rolls they served at the restaurant…crusty on the outside but warm and gooey at heart. Betty was smart and funny with a deep streak of kindness Elise had already sensed.
They seemed great, two people she instinctively wanted to know better. But everyone just seemed to expect so much of her.
Maybe it was only her. Erin didn’t seem to be having the same trouble adjusting to everything. From the moment Erin met Helen and Grant, she seemed to instantly love them and had melded into the fiber of their family with apparent ease, with none of this stiff awkwardness Elise felt around her birth parents.
Elise knew she couldn’t love them as parents and probably never would. Helen and John were her parents and no amount of DNA testing would ever change that, just as Matt kept trying to tell her. She just wished she could relax and become more comfortable with Jack and Betty’s eagerness to be part of her life.
She just had to try harder, she told herself. “How long will you be staying in Montana?” she asked at the next conversational lull.
Betty and Jack exchanged a look. “We don’t have to be back for work until after the New Year,” Betty said.
“We actually wanted to talk to you about that,” Jack added.
Her nerves suddenly tightened. “Oh?”
“Erin tells us you’ve left your job at that bookstore here in Billings to spend some time in Thunder Canyon with your mother and brother.”
“I’m not sure if that’s a permanent leave or not. I guess you could say I’m on sabbatical.”
Jack and Betty exchanged another look, then Betty reached across the table and gripped Elise’s hand in hers. Her birth mother’s fingers were long and slender, just like hers, Elise thought.
“I know we’ve mentioned this in passing before but we wanted to make more of a formal offer. We would really love you to come stay with us for a while.”
Elise felt a lump rise in her throat at their hopeful faces and she didn’t know how to respond.
Betty squeezed her fingers. “We have tons of room now. It’s just the two of us, since your brothers…” She faltered a little and looked at Jack for help, then cleared her throat. “Since our sons are both back east now.”
Elise had never lived anywhere but Montana. The idea of moving to California wasn’t without some appeal, she had to admit, but beneath the table, Matt’s long leg tensed next to hers and a muscle flexed in his jaw—reminding her of a very big reason she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave Montana just now.
The Castros seemed to sense her hesitation.
“Don’t worry about answering now,” Jack said in that gruff tone she was beginning to recognize was characteristic for him when his emotions were involved. “You just think about it over the holidays. And you know, maybe you might enjoy just coming down for a couple weeks and testing the waters a bit.”
“Which are lovely, by the way,” Betty added. “The waters, I mean. Beach, sunshine, perfect weather.”
“Beats scraping six inches of snow off your car every morning during a Montana winter,” Jack said.
“I can see where it would.” She managed a smile, more than a little charmed by this taciturn police officer.
She thought of her father, strong and honorable and handsome, always willing to listen to her troubles and offer her advice. She had desperately missed having a father in her life during her formative teenage years, when everything from boys to school to her future seemed so confusing. Grant had tried to fill a paternal role in her life, but an older brother’s advice wasn’t quite the same as a father’s.
“I’ll think about it,” she promised them now, aware of Matt’s continued tension beside her.
The conversation shifted to foods she enjoyed and stories about her childhood. By the time they finished dessert, some of the tautness in her shoulders had eased.
She was suddenly glad she had come—and immensely grateful to Matt for being so willing to step up and join them as her support system.
“Thank you for coming all the way to Billings just for dinner,” Jack said after he’d picked up the check. “We would have been happy to come to Thunder Canyon, you know. We’re going to be there anyway in a few days.”
“I know. That’s what Betty said when we discussed arrangements over the phone. But I really didn’t mind coming here.”
Actually, she had been the one to suggest they meet in Billings—she just hadn’t told the Castros why—that she wanted to avoid all the prying eyes in Thunder Canyon and those who would be sure to gossip about Elise meeting up with her birth parents for dinner.
Since the Castros mentioned they planned to stay with friends in Billings before coming to Thunder Canyon in time for Christmas, she had jumped at the opportunity to meet them in relatively neutral territory.
“This was lovely,” Betty said while they were finding their coats.
“It was.” Elise shivered a little when Matt’s fingers brushed her hair as he helped her into her coat.
“We’ll see you again while we’re here,” Betty said. “Your mother invited us out to the ranch for Christmas Eve, then called back to say you were all going to a big party at some new lodge and we were invited to that as well.”
Helen hadn’t mentioned she had invited the Castros to Connor McFarlane’s lodge opening.
“Everyone in town is talking about it,” Elise said. “Matt and his father actually built it.”
“It will be good to see some of our old Thunder Canyon friends,” Jack said.
A few hours ago, Elise might have dreaded the idea of facing them again in a few days. Now she didn’t find it nearly as overwhelming. She was making progress, she thought. Baby steps still made up forward motion, right?
“Have a safe journey back to town, my dear,” Betty said. She wrapped Elise in a lavender-scented hug. When she pulled away, Elise was disconce
rted to see tears in her eyes. She was more surprised when Jack also wrapped his arms around her.
“You think about what we said, about coming down to San Diego. We would sure love having you there.”
“I will,” she promised.
Matt took her hand when they left the restaurant. The sky was a starless matte black and the air carried the smell of impending snow.
Matt held the door of his pickup open for her. Acting completely on impulse, Elise brushed her lips along his jawline. “Thank you so much for coming with me tonight. It means the world to me. I’m not sure I could have made it through without you.”
He shook his head and kissed her forehead. “You did fine, El. Great, in fact. I could barely tell you were nervous.”
She eased back onto the seat while he walked around to the driver’s side. When he climbed inside and started the truck, he immediately turned the heater on high to take away the chill.
“They seem like nice people,” he said.
“They are.” She closed her eyes and rotated her neck to ease some of the strain of the evening. “I think I suddenly realized tonight that letting them into my life and maybe my heart isn’t really a betrayal of my family.”
He gripped her fingers in his. “Of course it’s not. There’s room enough in there for everybody.”
Including tall, dark-eyed cowboys with sexy smiles.
Elise shivered a little, suddenly stunned by how very quickly Matt had become such an important part of her life.
Despite the poor timing and the general emotional uproar in her life, she was falling in love with him. Real love, not some girlish infatuation. Each moment she spent with him, those ties binding her heart to him tugged a little more tightly.
She ought to be terrified, but somehow all she could manage for now was a little flare of panic, quickly squelched.
“I hate to ask after you’ve already been so wonderful to come all this way with me just for a steak…”
“A great steak. And wonderful company,” he corrected.
She smiled. “Right. But I forgot one of my mother’s Christmas presents at our house here in Billings. I bought it months ago and hid it in the back of the closet. Somehow I overlooked it when I was packing for the move to Thunder Canyon. The house is only a few blocks from here. Do you mind if we stop there before we head back?”
“Not at all.”
She gave him directions and a few moments later they drove down the wide, tidy street where she and her mother had lived for more than a decade.
Neighbors along their street had always enthusiastically celebrated the holidays. Every house had decorations of some sort—from a couple of those big inflatable snow globe thingies to the discreet colored bulbs the sweet, elderly Mrs. Hoopes in the little house on the corner left up year-round.
By contrast, the small brick house she shared with her mother looked dark and cheerless against the dank sky, even though a few of the windows gleamed with the lights they had set on timers to avoid announcing to the world the house was empty.
They should have at least put up a Christmas tree before they left for Thunder Canyon. Neither of them had thought of it in all the craziness of discovering the mix-up at Thunder Canyon Hospital twenty-six years ago.
“So do you think you’ll go to San Diego with the Castros?” Matt asked after he put the pickup in gear in the driveway of her house.
She shot him a quick look. Though his tone was casual, his brown eyes watched her intently. Her mind flashed back to that stunning kiss beneath the mistletoe, to the soft, tender peace that had wrapped around them like holiday ribbons.
“I need to give it more thought. I certainly wouldn’t mind escaping the cold this winter but there are…other reasons I’m not sure I want to leave Thunder Canyon right now.”
The silence seemed to seethe between them and she could feel her cheeks burn from more than just the pickup’s heater. She reached for the door handle, needing to escape the finely wrought tension inside the cab.
“It should only take me a moment to find the gift in my closet.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“If you want, I’m sure I can find some cocoa or something before we start out back to Thunder Canyon.”
“Sounds great.”
He opened the door for her then took her elbow to help her through the snow. She and her mother had paid a neighbor boy to keep the walks clear and it looked as if he was keeping up with his responsibility. Still, Matt didn’t let go and she was grateful for his warmth as he helped her up the steps to the small porch.
Inside, the house had that expectant feeling of a place that hadn’t seen human interaction in a few weeks. The air was musty and still and a thin layer of dust that would make her mother crazy if she saw it had already begun to settle on everything.
Matt flipped on more lights, taking an obvious interest in the comfortable chic decor Helen favored.
Though small, the house had always seemed warm and bright to Elise, especially after the oppressive darkness that had descended on Clifton’s Pride after her father’s murder.
“Nice,” Matt said.
She smiled as she untwisted her scarf and set it on the usual spot atop the console table in the entry.
“I think it became a haven of sorts for both of us after my father died. Grant was busy with his own life by then, so my mother and I just had each other. We made a pretty good life here.”
“You didn’t want to go off on your own?”
She shrugged. “I moved into an apartment for a year or so while I was in college but it seemed silly to pay rent when my mother and I have always had a great relationship and never seemed to get in each other’s way.”
She paused and gestured to the living room. “Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. It will only take me a minute to grab my mom’s present and then I’ll see what I’ve got in the kitchen.”
“Why don’t I do a walk-through of the house, check the pilot lights on the furnace and water heater, the pipes, that sort of thing?”
She smiled a little. Wasn’t that just like him, to think about those sorts of guy details that probably wouldn’t have occurred to her? “Thanks. Good thinking,” she answered, then headed down the hall to her bedroom.
Her room was icy and she took a moment to flip on the gas fireplace for an instant warm-up. After she pulled her desk chair over to her closet, she climbed up to dig in the back recesses of her top shelf for the handcrafted necklace and earring set she had purchased for her mother at a summer art fair and then promptly forgotten about until the other day.
After she returned the chair to her desk, her gaze landed on a framed picture that had sat there so long it had become a usually overlooked part of the landscape.
She picked it up, the glass frame cold and heavy in her hands. The picture had been taken at Clifton’s Pride a few weeks before her father’s death. If she remembered correctly, one of her aunts had taken it near the horse paddock and it featured all of them—John, Helen, Grant and her, looking skinny and small with blond braids and a little freckled nose.
She looked absolutely nothing like the rest of her family. Everything was different—the shape of her eyes, the tilt of her nose. How had they all missed the signs for all these years?
She was a changeling, an interloper.
Her thumb traced John Clifton’s strong, smiling features, frozen forever in her memory just like this. Raw emotions bubbled up in her throat, clogging her breath. She missed him so dearly.
What would he have to say about this whole mess? She couldn’t even begin to guess. Then she thought of Jack Castro and his gruff eagerness to be part of her life.
It was too much. The stress of the evening, her conflicted feelings, everything. She sagged onto her desk chair and clutched the photograph to her chest, fighting tears and memories and this gaping sense of loss.
Some time later, she heard Matt walking down the hall and hurriedly swiped at her stupid tears.
/> “Everything looks like it’s running just fine,” he said. “I nudged the thermostat up a little bit while we’re here. Remind me to turn it back down when we go.”
His voice trailed off as he entered the room and Elise winced. Why did he always have to see her at her worst? She felt like she had been an emotional mess since the moment she bumped into him at The Hitching Post.
He crossed to her quickly, his eyes dark with concern. “What’s the matter? What happened?”
She gave a resigned sigh and held out the picture. “I thought I was doing so much better about everything tonight at dinner. Coming to terms with…all of it. I had a good time with Jack and Betty. They’re very nice people, people I think I could grow to care about. Then I saw this picture of my family…the family I’ve always known as mine…and I just feel like I’ve lost something somehow.”
“Oh, sweetheart. Come here.”
He pulled her into his arms and she hitched in a breath, feeling foolish and weepy and deeply grateful.
“This is so stupid.” She sniffled. “I’m such a mess.”
“Anyone else would be in the same situation. You’ve had the rug yanked out from under you again, just like it was when your father was killed.”
She stared at him, stunned that he could so clearly understand something she hadn’t even put together in her own head. She felt as if she were reliving those terrible days of loss and uncertainty all over again. “That’s it exactly! I’m not sure how to go on now that everything has suddenly changed.”
“You’re doing fine, Elise. Give yourself some credit.”
His faith in her warmed a cold place deep inside. “Thanks, Matt. You must be so sick of me and my maunderings.
Yes. Exactly! She felt as if she were reliving those terrible days of loss and uncertainty all over again as she struggled to adapt to her changing situation.
“I don’t know what that word means,” he admitted with a soft smile. “But I’m not sick of you. I could never be sick of you, Elise.”
His arms tightened around her and with a sense of inevitability, she lifted her mouth to his. When his lips slanted over hers lightly, the whole twisting, crazy emotional snarl inside her seemed to settle.
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