Christmas in Cold Creek Read online

  “Nothing,” Trace said. “She says she’s fine.”

  “I can ask my … Gabi if you’d like. They seem to be friends. If anyone can wiggle out the truth about what might be bothering Destry, it’s Gabrielle.”

  “That would be great.” Taft smiled at her and she wondered again at the capriciousness of fate. She had absolutely no reaction to his smile other than a pleasant warmth.

  When she met Trace’s glittery green gaze, that warmth exploded into a churning, seething firestorm, and she wanted to stand there and bask in the heat of it.

  “Excuse me, miss? Can I get more water?”

  At the voice from a neighboring table, Becca jerked her attention back to her job and the ten other tables full of customers who needed her. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

  She grabbed up the water pitcher and refilled the water glasses at the neighboring table, reminding herself as she attended to her other customers of all the reasons why fraternizing with local law enforcement was a bad idea.

  She might not be running a con but she was definitely living a lie. If he found out the truth—that Gabi was her younger sister, not her daughter, and that Becca didn’t have any kind of official custody arrangement with their mother—authorities could conceivably take the girl from her and put her into foster care. She couldn’t let that happen to her sister.

  The Bowman brothers seemed to be taking their time over their food and she tried not to pay any more attention to them than strictly necessary to make sure they had adequate service. The other customers kept her busy, especially the large group of college-age snowmobilers, in town for the weekend, that ended up taking the corner booth near Trace and his brother.

  They were demanding and petulant and becoming louder by the minute, to the point where she almost expected Lou to come out from behind the grill and start swinging his frying pan around.

  They were also not nearly as respectful as the local customers. Their flirting with her had a hard edge to it and when she reached to refill one coffee cup, the young man on the end of the booth tried to cop a quick feel.

  She instinctively squeaked and backed away. Before she’d even caught her breath, Trace was looming behind her. For a large man, he moved with deadly stealth, turning from amiable to dangerous in the space of a heartbeat.

  He’d been a military policeman, she remembered him saying. She could quite clearly picture him knocking a couple of shaved marine heads together for disturbing the peace. He had the harsh, indestructible look of a leatherneck. Definitely not someone to mess around with.

  “Thank you for breakfast, Becca.” He barely looked at her when he spoke, his attention on the rough group of snowmobilers.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. She could probably handle a group of kids on her own but she couldn’t deny she was grateful to Trace for stepping in.

  “You think you could top off my coffee one more time before I go?”

  “Sure. Right away, Chief Bowman.”

  She quickly escaped the tension and returned to the neighboring booth, where she quickly refilled his coffee.

  Taft said something to her about the weather and she answered distractedly, her attention still focused on Trace, who had now bent down and murmured something to the college kids. She couldn’t hear what he said but she saw the boy who had tried to grope her blanch as if he’d just driven his snowmobile into an icy lake.

  He nodded vigorously and then all of the kids dug into their food while Trace moved leisurely back to his own booth.

  She felt compelled to say something. “Thank you. I could have handled the situation, but … thank you.”

  “No problem. They shouldn’t bother you again.”

  “Just out of curiosity, what did you use on the little punks?” the fire chief asked. “The line about how you keep the band castrator we use on the cattle in the back of your squad car and aren’t afraid to use it?”

  He gave a slow smile that ramped her heartbeat up a notch. “No, but that’s always a good one. I just told them we have old-fashioned ideas around here about the way men ought to treat women. And that I have a special jail cell at the station house for little punks who come to town looking for trouble. They shouldn’t bother you again. You let me know if they do.”

  “I will,” she mumbled and moved quickly away before she did something completely ridiculous like burst into tears.

  She was more shaken by the incident than she wanted to admit—more by her reaction to what Trace had done than by a stupid little punk trying for a cheap thrill.

  Becca had been taking care of herself virtually since birth, since Monica had all the maternal instincts of a blowfly. Despite that, she had worked hard to become a competent, self-assured adult. She had been on her own since she became an emancipated minor at sixteen and had convinced herself she didn’t need anyone.

  So why did she literally go weak in the knees when a sexy police chief stepped up to watch over her?

  She had no answer for that. She only knew she couldn’t make up for the inadequacies of her childhood by seeking someone to watch over her as an adult. Right now her focus needed to be Gabi and nurturing her baby sister the way their mother never had.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m not going to stand for it, you hear me?” Ralph Ashton’s face was florid, his eyes an angry, snapping brown. “I pay taxes in this town, have done for sixty-five years now. When I’m being robbed blind, I’ve got a right to expect the police to do more than stand around scratching their behinds.”

  Trace fought for patience as he stood in the narrow aisle of the store the man had owned for years. Like an old-fashioned general store, Ashton’s sold everything from muck boots to margarine, pitchforks to potato chips. In his early eighties now, Ralph Ashton had been running the place since he was a teenager. He should have stepped down years ago but he still insisted he was perfectly competent to manage the day-to-day operations of the store, much to the frustration of his children—and the frustration of law enforcement officials who had to deal with his frequent complaints about shoplifters.

  “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Ashton. I’m sorry we haven’t been able to figure out who’s stealing candy bars out of your inventory. I still think it’s probably kids pulling a prank, but maybe there’s more to it.”

  “It’s high time you did something about this. Set up a sting or something.”

  “If you would stop erasing your security film every twelve hours, I might have a better chance of figuring things out.”

  “You know how expensive that film is?”

  They had had this argument often and Trace knew a losing cause when he stared it in the eye. He was about to respond when a new customer came into the store. His pulse jumped when he saw Becca Parsons pull a shopping cart out of the row and head off in the other direction.

  Though it was a wintry December day with snow falling steadily, she was like a breath of springtime, like standing in a field of daffodils while birds flitted around him building nests… .

  The whimsy of that sudden image popping into his head left him unnerved and he quickly turned back to Mr. Ashton.

  “If you want to catch the shoplifters, you might have to spend a little money to do it.”

  “I’ve spent money! I pay my taxes. I have rights, don’t I? It’s a disgrace. That’s what it is. These rotten kids are bleeding me dry and you won’t even dust for fingerprints. I’m calling the mayor. Right now. See if I don’t.”

  The old man was growing increasingly agitated, Trace saw with concern. He nodded in a placating sort of way. “I understand your frustration, Mr. Ashton. Honestly, I do. I’m sorry we haven’t had more luck. Let’s talk about our options. Why don’t you sit down and take a rest? Where’s Rosalie?” Ashton’s granddaughter usually did her best to take over as many store responsibilities as Ralph would let her.

  “Useless thing. She took her mother to a doctor’s appointment in Idaho Falls. Seemed to think the assistant manager could run the place on his
own.” He spoke as if that was the most ridiculous idea he had ever heard, as if he were the only one fit to make decisions.

  Trace didn’t like Ralph Ashton—the guy had been a grumpy old cuss ever since he could remember—but he still had to respect the man’s dedication to his business and he couldn’t help the stirring of pity when he saw the tremble of Ralph’s hands as he straightened a row of canned peaches on the shelf above them.

  “Look, I’ll fingerprint the rack if you’ll agree to go sit down in Rosalie’s office and work on some paperwork or something. The assistant manager can still find you if he needs help with anything.”

  “You’re just trying to get rid of me and then you’re going to duck out and leave me to deal with these lousy shoplifters on my own.”

  Trace gave him a stern look. “I said I’ll check for fingerprints and I will. You can watch me the whole time through the security cameras. You know we Bowmans keep our word, Mr. Ashton.”

  Ralph gave him a considering look. “True enough. Your parents were good folks. I always used to say your dad was about the only honest man in town. If he said he would pay you in a few weeks, you’d get your money right on the dot.”

  The reminder of Trace’s father seemed to convince the man. “I do have plenty of paperwork. Just let me know when you’re done.”

  He stumped off, his cane making a staccato beat through the store. Trace gave a heavy sigh and turned back to the candy rack. This was a completely futile exercise when half the people in town bought gum and candy bars from Ashton’s Mercantile, but he would keep his word and humor the guy. And then maybe he would have a good, long talk with Rosalie about increasing their security budget a little and maybe stationing a stocker nearby after school to keep a better eye out.

  He was just lifting his eighth set of prints—for all he knew, it could have been his own since he’d bought a tin of wintergreen Altoids a few days earlier—when Becca turned onto his aisle, her shopping cart full of budget items like macaroni-and-cheese boxes and store-brand cereal. She did have some baking supplies—butter, sugar, flour, as well as some cake decorating sprinkles and colored icing—and he guessed Christmas cookies were in her immediate future.

  When she spotted him, her eyes lit up with warmth but she quickly concealed her expression. He’d never known a woman so guarded with her emotions. What made her so careful? Was it something about him or did she have that reaction to everyone? He very much wanted to find out. He remembered his ridiculous imagery of earlier, how she seemed to bring springtime into the store with her despite the snow he could see through the front doors, which was now blowing harder than ever.

  He found it more than a little unsettling how happy he was to see her or how many times in the last week since he last saw her that he had driven past her house at the end of a long shift and been tempted to turn into the driveway toward those glowing lights. He hadn’t been this interested in a woman in a long time.

  “How have you been? I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “You haven’t been into The Gulch lately. At least not during my shift.”

  “I’ve stopped in a few times for dinner.” But you weren’t there. He decided it would be better to leave that particular disappointment unspoken.

  “Lou and Donna have been really great to let me work mostly the breakfast and lunch crowds so I can be with Gabi after school and in the evenings.”

  “They’re good that way.”

  She smiled. “That’s exactly the word. They’re good. Really nice people.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You sound surprised.”

  “Not surprised, exactly. I’m just not … used to it, I guess. They’ve been extraordinarily kind to me.”

  “That’s the way they are.”

  “I keep thinking how lucky I am that The Gulch was the first place I applied for a job when I came to town. I’m amazed they’ve let me stay, if you want the truth.” She gave him a rueful smile. “I’m really not waitress material. You may have noticed.”

  “You’re doing fine.”

  “I’m not, but I’m trying. I’m amazed at how patient and kind they’ve been with me. I keep looking for an ulterior motive but so far I can’t find anything.”

  He wondered again at her life before she moved into her grandfather’s house. What experience with the world led a woman to become so cynical that she constantly seemed braced for hurt and didn’t know how to accept genuine kindness when it came her way?

  “They don’t have an ulterior motive, I can promise you. That’s just who they are. Lou and Donna care about Pine Gulch and the people in it. You’ll find when you’ve been around a little longer that this town is lucky enough to have more than a few people like the Archuletas. Good, honest, hardworking people who watch out for each other.”

  “I’m beginning to see that,” she murmured. She made a vague gesture at the candy rack and his evidence bag open in front of him. “What are you doing?”

  In light of the claim he’d just made about Pine Gulch and the town’s inhabitants, he felt a little sheepish replying, “Okay, not everyone is honest. Ralph Ashton, who owns the store, seems to think he’s been the victim of a dastardly crime spree. He’s losing more inventory than usual from his candy stock.”

  “So you’re fingerprinting the display rack? Forgive me, Chief Bowman, but that seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m humoring Mr. Ashton,” he admitted. “He’s an elderly man and rather set in his ways. I tried to explain this was an exercise in futility since every single person in town has bought candy off this rack at some point. But he’s got a bad heart and I didn’t want to stress him more by arguing with him. Seemed easier to just lift a few prints.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, as if he were a completely alien species she had just wandered across in the mountains.

  Right now, he felt like one. “I know. It’s stupid.”

  She shook her head, something warm and soft in her eyes. “I don’t think it’s stupid. I think it’s … sweet.”

  He wasn’t sure he really wanted her thinking he was sweet. He had been a police officer for the last decade and a military policeman for four years before that. He’d passed sweet a long, long time ago—if he’d ever been there at all. Before he could correct her misconception, he heard a high, childish voice shriek out his name.

  “Trace! Trace! Trace!”

  Both of them looked at the approaching cart, pushed by a woman with a swinging blond ponytail and a delighted smile that was only matched by the cherubic two-year-old with the inky black curls and the huge dark eyes who was waving madly at him from the front seat of the cart. “Hi, Trace. Hi, Trace!”

  He smiled at Easton Springhill Del Norte and her adopted daughter, Isabella. “Hey, you. Two of my favorite people!”

  Belle held her arms out for him to hug her in that generous, loving way she’d been blessed with despite her haphazard early years. “How’s my girl?” he asked and was rewarded with an adorable giggle.

  “I’m good. Mommy said I could have a juice box in the car if I’m good while we’re shopping.”

  “That’s a brave mommy. You’ll have to be careful not to spill it.”

  “I won’t. I’m a big girl.”

  “I know you are.” He eased her back into the seat and kissed Easton on the cheek, strangely aware of Becca watching them. “Becca, this is my favorite two-and-a-half-year-old, Miss Isabella Del Norte, and her mother, Easton.”

  Becca gave a stiff sort of smile. “Hi. I think you’ve come into the diner a few times.”

  “Oh, right.” Easton beamed. “You’re the new waitress, Wally Taylor’s granddaughter. It’s great to formally meet you.”

  “How are you, East?”

  “I’m great.” She gestured to her baby bump, about the size of a bocce ball. He knew she was expecting in March. “Beginning to waddle. Another few weeks and I won’t be able to get up on a horse, I’m afraid. Cisco’s already making noises about me taking a
break from calving this year.”

  “You look beautiful,” he told her, completely the truth. She had always been lovely to him, but he couldn’t deny that since Cisco Del Norte had stopped his wandering and settled down in Pine Gulch and they had married, Easton had bloomed.

  Trace could admit now that he’d been worried the man would break her heart all over again and leave like he’d been doing since they were just kids, but by all appearances, Cisco seemed like a man who wasn’t going anywhere, who loved his family and raising horses and living in a small Idaho town. He’d even helped Trace out a few months ago on a drug case with South American ties, Cisco’s specialty after years as an undercover drug agent.

  A few years ago, Trace had wanted much more than friendship with Easton. They had dated several times and he had been pretty sure they were moving toward something serious when Cisco had returned home. When he saw how much Easton loved the other man, Trace had stepped aside. What else could he have done? He couldn’t regret it, not when their joy together was obvious to everyone around them, but once in a while when he saw her, he couldn’t help the little pang in his heart for what might have been.

  “I need to finish shopping and check out,” Becca said. “I’ll see you later.”

  “I’m sorry we interrupted your conversation,” Easton said. “It’s wonderful to meet you.”

  Becca gave a polite smile and headed around the next aisle. He watched her go for a moment. When he turned back, he found Easton studying him carefully.

  “She seems very nice.”

  “How do you know? You barely exchanged two words with her.”

  She gave a shrug and tucked a stray blond lock behind her ear “I’ve got a vibe about these things. She’s very pretty. I heard she has a daughter. Any husband in the picture?”

  “East.” He glared at her, which she parried with an innocent look.

  “What? I was just asking.”

  “As far as I can tell, no. No husband in the picture.”

  “Good. That’s very good. I’ll have to make sure Jenna sends her an invite to the Cold Creek Christmas party at the McRavens’ so I can get a chance to sit down with her for a real visit.”