Mistletoe Rodeo (Welcome to Ramblewood) (16 page)

A Home for
Christmas

Laura Marie Altom

“Rachel!”

Ignoring Chance Mulgrave, her husband’s best friend, Rachel Finch gripped her umbrella handle as if it were the only thing keeping her from throwing herself over the edge of the cliff, at the base of which thundered an angry Pacific. Even for Oregon Coast standards, the day was hellish. Brutal winds, driving cold rain...

The wailing gloom suited her. Only ten minutes earlier, she’d left the small chapel where her presumed dead husband’s memorial service had just been held.

“Please, Rachel!” Chance shouted above the storm. Rachel didn’t see Chance since her back was to him, but she could feel him thumping toward her on crutches. “Honey...”

He cupped his hand to her shoulder and she flinched, pulling herself free of his hold. “Don’t.”

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever. I just—”

She turned to him, too exhausted to cry. “I’m pregnant.”

“What?”

“Wes didn’t know. I’d planned on telling him after he’d finished this case.”

“God, Rache.” Sharing the suffocating space beneath her umbrella, his demeanor softened. “I’m sorry. Or maybe happy. Hell, I’m not sure what to say.”

“There’s not much anyone can say at this point,” she responded. “Wes is gone. I’m having his child...but how can I even think of being a mother when I’m so emotionally...”

“Don’t worry about a thing,” he said. “No matter what you need, I’m here for you. Wes and I made a pact. Should anything happen to either of us, we’d watch after each other’s family.”

“But you don’t have a family,” she pointed out.

“Yet. But it could’ve just as easily been me whose life we were celebrating here today.” He bowed his head. “Seeing you like this...so sad...makes me almost wish it was.”

Me, too.

There. Even if Rachel hadn’t given voice to her resentment, it was at least out there, for the universe to hear. Ordinarily, Chance and her husband worked together like a well-oiled team, watching each other’s backs. But then Chance had had to go and bust his ankle while helping one of their fellow deputy US marshals move into a new apartment.

If Chance had really cared for Wes, he’d have been more careful. He wouldn’t have allowed his friend to be murdered at the hands of a madman—a rogue marshal who’d also come uncomfortably close to taking out one of the most key witnesses the Marshal’s Service had ever had.

Her handful of girlfriends had tried consoling her, suggesting maybe Wes wasn’t really dead...but Rachel knew. There had been an exhaustive six-week search for Wes’s body. Combined with that, of the five marshals who’d been on that assignment, only two had come home alive. Another two bodies had been found, both shot. It didn’t take rocket science to assume the same had happened to her dear husband.

“Let me take you home,” Chance said. Despite his crutches, he tried to angle her away from the thrashing sea and back to the parking lot, to the sweet little chapel where less than a year earlier she and Wes had spoken their wedding vows.

“You’re soaked. Being out here in this weather can’t be good for you or the baby.”

“I’m all right,” she said, again wrenching free of his hold. This time, it had been her elbow he’d grasped. She was trying to regain her dignity after having lost it in front of the church filled with Wes’s coworkers and friends, and she just wanted to be left alone. “Please...leave. I can handle this on my own.”

“Rachel, that’s just it,” he said, awkwardly chasing after her as she strode down the perilous trail edging the cliff.

His every step tore at her heart. Why was he alive and not her husband? The father of her child. What was she going to do? How was she ever going to cope with raising a baby on her own?

“Honey, you don’t have to deal with Wes’s passing on your own. If you’d just open up to me, I’m here for you—for as long as you need.”

That was the breaking point. Rachel stopped abruptly. She tossed her umbrella out to sea, tipped her head up to the battering rain and screamed.

Tears returned with a hot, messy vengeance. Only, in the rain it was impossible to tell where tears left off and rain began. Then, suddenly, Chance was there, drawing her against him, into his island of strength and warmth, his crutches braced on either side of her like walls blocking the worst of her pain.

“That’s it,” he crooned into her ear. “Let it out. I’m here. I’m here.”

She did exactly as he urged, but then, because she’d always been an intensely private person and not one prone to histrionics, she stilled. Curiously, the rain and wind also slowed to a gentle patter and hushed din.

“Thank you,” she eventually said. “You’ll never know how much I appreciate you trying to help, but...”

“I’m not just trying,” he said. “If you’d let me in, we can ride this out together. I’m hurting, too.”

“I know,” she said, looking to where she’d white-knuckle gripped the soaked lapels of his buff-colored trench. “But I—I can’t explain. I have to do this on my own. I was alone before meeting Wes, and now I am again.”

“But you don’t have to be. Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I’m here for you.”

“No,” she said, walking away from him again, this time in the direction of her car.

“Thanks, but definitely, no.”

Eighteen months later...

T
HROUGH
THE
RAIN
-
DRIZZLED
, holiday-themed windows of bustling Hohlmann’s Department Store, Chance caught sight of a woman’s long, buttery-blond hair. Heart pounding, his first instinct was to run toward her, seeking an answer to the perpetual question: Was it her? Was it Rachel?

No. It wasn’t her. And this time, just as so many others, the disappointment landed like a crushing blow to his chest.

That day at the chapel had been the last time he’d seen her. Despite exhaustive efforts to track her, she’d vanished—destroying him inside and out.

When eventually he’d had to return to work and his so-called normal life, he’d put a private investigator on retainer, telling the man to contact him upon finding the slightest lead.

“You all right?” his little sister, nineteen-year-old Sarah, asked above an obnoxious Muzak rendition of “Jingle Bells.” She was clutching the prewrapped perfume box she’d just purchased for their mother. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Might as well have,” he said, taking the box from her to add to his already bulging bag. “Got everything you need?”

“Sure,” she said, giving him the
Look
. The one that said she knew he was thinking about Rachel again, and that her wish for Christmas was that her usually wise big brother would once and for all put the woman—his dead best friend’s wife—out of his heart and head.

Two hours later, Chance stuck his key in the lock of the Victorian relic his maternal grandmother had left him, shutting out hectic holiday traffic and torrential rain. Portland had been swamped under six inches in the past twenty-four hours. The last time they’d had such a deluge had been the last time he’d seen Rachel.

“Where are you?” he asked softly as the wind bent gnarled branches, eerily scratching them against the back porch roof.

Setting his meager selection of family gifts on the wood bench parked alongside the door, he looked away from the gray afternoon and to the blinking light on his answering machine. Expecting the message to be from Sarah, telling him she’d left a gift or glove in his Jeep, he pressed Play.

“Chance,” his PI said, voice like gravel from too many cigarettes and not enough broccoli. “I’ve got a lead for you on that missing Finch girl. It’s a long shot, but you said you wanted everything, no matter how unlikely...”

Despite the fact that Rachel had run off without the decency of a proper—or even improper—goodbye, her tears still haunted him when he closed his eyes.

Chance listened to the message three times before committing the information to memory, then headed to his computer to book a flight to Denver.

* * *

“W
ESLEY
,
SWEETIE
,
PLEASE
stop crying,” Rachel crooned to her ten-month-old baby boy, the only bright spot in what was becoming an increasingly frightening life. Having grown up in an orphanage, Rachel was no stranger to feeling alone in a crowd, or having to make it on her own. So why, after six months, was this still so hard?

Despite her hugging and cooing, the boy only wailed more.

“Want me to take him?”

She looked up to see one of Baker Street Homeless Shelter’s newest residents wave grungy hands toward her child. She hadn’t looked much better when she’d first arrived, and Rachel still couldn’t get past the shock that she and her baby were now what most people would call
bums
.

After reverting back to the name she’d gone by at the orphanage, Rachel Parkson, she’d traveled to Denver to room with her friend Jenny. But while Jenny had gotten lucky, landing a great job transfer to Des Moines, Rachel had descended into an abyss of bad luck.

A tough pregnancy had landed her in hospital. While she’d been blessed with a beautiful, healthy baby, at the rate she was going, the hefty medical bill wouldn’t be gone till he was out of high school. Wes’s life insurance company had repeatedly denied her claim, stating that without a body it wouldn’t pay.

Making a long, sad story short, she’d lost everything, and here she was, now earning less than minimum wage doing bookkeeping for the shelter while trying to finish her business degree one night course at a time through a downtown Denver community college.

She was raising her precious son in a shelter with barely enough money for diapers, let alone food and a place of their own. She used to cry herself to sleep every night, but now, she was just too exhausted. She used to pray, as well, but it seemed God, just like her husband, had deserted her.

Baby Wesley continued to wail.

“Sorry for all the noise,” she said to the poor soul beside her, holding her son close as she wearily pushed to her feet with her free hand. She had to get out of here, but how? How could she ever escape this downward financial spiral?

“Rachel?”

That voice...

She paused before looking up. But when she did, tingles climbed her spine.

“Chance?”

* * *

A
FTER
ALL
THIS
TIME
, was it really Rachel? Raising Wes’s child in a homeless shelter? Why, why hadn’t she just asked for help?

Chance pressed the heel of his hand to stinging eyes.

“Y-you look good,” he said, lying through his teeth at the waiflike ghost of the woman he used to know. Dark shadows hollowed pale blue eyes. Wes used to brag about the silky feel of Rachel’s long hair cascading against his chest when they’d made love—but it was now shorn into a short cap. “And the baby. He’s wonderful, Rachel. You did good.”

“Thanks,” she said above her son’s pitiful cry. “We’re okay.” She paused. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to see you... To help you...”

“I don’t need help.”

“Bull,” he said, taking the now screaming baby from her, cradling him against his chest, nuzzling the infant’s downy hair beneath his chin. “What’s his name?”

“Wesley,” she said, refusing to meet his gaze.

He nodded, fighting a sudden knot at the back of his throat. Such a beautiful child, growing up in such cruel surroundings. And why? All because of Rachel’s foolish pride.

“Get your things,” he growled between clenched teeth, edging her away from a rag-clothed derelict reeking of booze.

“W-what?”

“You heard me. You tried things your way, honey, and apparently it didn’t work out. Now we’re doing it
my
way. Your husband’s way.”

“I— I’m fine,” she said, raising her chin, a partial spark back in her stunning eyes. “Just a little down on my luck. But things will change. They’ll get better.”

“Damn straight they will.” Clutching the infant with one arm, he dragged her toward the shelter’s door with the other. “You don’t want charity from me, fine. But is this really what you want for your son? Wes’s son?”

While Chance regretted the harshness of his words, he’d never retract them. Years ago he’d made a promise to her husband, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to back out on it now.

He glanced away from Rachel to take in a nearly bald, fake Christmas tree that’d been decorated with homemade ornaments. Pipe cleaner reindeer and paper angels colored with crayons. Though the tree’s intent was kind, he knew Rachel deserved better.

While killing time on endless stakeouts, Wes would ramble for hours about his perfect wife. About how much he loved her, how she was a great cook, how she always managed to perfectly balance the checkbook. Wes went so far as to offer private morsels he should’ve kept to himself—locker room details that should’ve been holy between a man and his wife. But because of Wes’s ever-flapping mouth, whether he’d wanted to or not, Chance knew everything about Rachel from her favorite songs to what turned her on.

Another thing he knew were Wes’s dreams for her. How because she’d grown up in an orphanage, he’d always wanted to have a half-dozen chubby babies with her and buy her a great house and put good, reliable tires on her crappy car.

Chance had made a promise to his best friend; one that put him in charge of picking up where Wes left off. It was a given he’d steer clear of the husband-wife physical intimacies—she was off-limits. Totally. But when it came to making her comfortable, happy...by God, if it took every day for the rest of his life, that’s what Chance had come to Denver prepared—and okay, he’d admit it, secretly hoping—to do.

Looking back to Rachel, he found her eyes pooled. Lips trembling, she met his stare.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”

Baby Wesley had fallen asleep in Chance’s arms. His cheeks were flushed, and he sucked pitifully at his thumb.

“I—I tried breastfeeding him,” she said. “But my milk dried up.”

“That happens,” he said, not knowing if it did or didn’t or why she’d even brought it up...just willing to say anything to get her to go with him.