Her Montana Christmas

Ethan’s attention was explained when he raised his head from the opening prayer and said, “Now, then, ladies, thanks to Robin, you have before you copies of photos of Christmas decorations from one hundred years ago.” He went on to say that she had agreed to act as their historical consultant on this project. That won her smiles from the others, and she relaxed somewhat. “Robin,” he concluded firmly, “will have the final say on all designs.”

Soon they were all deep in conversation about swags, garlands and wreaths, as well as the past tendency to attach meanings to certain types of greenery. Marie started sketching, and Mamie set about estimating the necessary foot length of boughs that would be needed. Before long they had a design and a plan. Nadine divided up the responsibilities, and everyone went along without protest until she came to gathering the greenery itself.

“We’ll take care of that on the Shaw Ranch.”

“Uh, no, we have that covered already,” Ethan said.

“But—”

“The McGuire Ranch has more of what we need,” Mamie stated bluntly.

“You have enough to worry about,” Allison pointed out, “with the wedding and all.”

“Robin and I will take care of the greenery,” Ethan insisted, looping an arm around the back of Robin’s chair.

Just like that, every eye riveted to the pair of them again, and just like that, Robin’s breath caught in her throat.

“We, um, want to leave you and Marie free to concentrate on the wedding,” she offered with a wan smile.

“And I need Robin’s expertise on the specific meanings of the various types of greenery,” Ethan said. The speculation in the eyes around the table did not dim one iota, however.

“Who would really know the difference these days?” Nadine asked.

“I would,” he answered firmly, and that was the end of it.

Robin wondered if Ethan realized that he had just made them the object of conjecture and gossip. Surely he wouldn’t want that, especially if he ever found out why she’d really come to town. A pastor wouldn’t want to be linked to a woman who had come here under false pretenses to meet the family who didn’t even know she existed.

Then again, perhaps she had misjudged him entirely and he would be all too glad for a connection, any connection, no matter how distant, to the first family of Jasper Gulch—that was, if the Shaws didn’t toss her out on her ear the instant they discovered the truth about her great-grandmother Lillian.

Or rather, Lucy.

Chapter Three

It occurred to Ethan, belatedly, that the speculation about him and Robin Frazier could serve a purpose. He hadn’t meant to suggest that a romance might be brewing between then, but the presence of a possible love interest could provide him with a shield against unwanted attention. Perhaps, if everyone thought his own interest to be fixed, he could relax, at least for a little while, instead of being on constant alert for lures being cast his way.

The thought buoyed the young pastor so much that within hours the next morning, he had women sewing chrismon symbols out of white fabric and nearly a dozen children lined up for parts in the Christmas pageant to be performed on Christmas Eve. Moreover, he was busy writing a script, dependent largely on scripture, for the reading, which he proposed to do with one man and two women.

He was surprised by how quickly the whole program began to take shape in his mind. He didn’t imagine that Christmas-pageant costuming had actually changed much across the centuries since the time of Christ, but he wanted to copy what had been used in Jasper Gulch one hundred years ago, and he would require Robin’s help to ensure accuracy. Before even that, however, he suddenly found himself in need of some expert advice on historical Hanging of the Green services.

It was an old tradition of mostly European origin, and he’d been through several of them, but he wanted this year’s service to be as authentic as possible as one that might have taken place a hundred years ago in Jasper Gulch. So off to the museum he went on Friday. He stopped off at the diner and picked up a sandwich on the way, arriving close to the lunch hour. Leaving the half-eaten sandwich in the cold car, he went in to find Robin and Olivia sharing brown-bagged meals in the break room.

“Ethan!” Olivia greeted him, smiling broadly over the rim of a steaming cup of soup. Like Robin, she didn’t look much older than a teen, with her petite stature, blond hair and sparkling blue eyes. She’d married Jack McGuire in October at the centennial’s Old Tyme Wedding, to no one’s real surprise. The two had a well-known history that had made them an item from the moment Olivia had stepped foot back into town after an absence of several years. “Jack tells me that you’re coming out Saturday to raid the place for greenery.”

He shot a glance at Robin, who sat staring at a prepackaged potpie on which she’d barely broken the crust. “Yes. Um, Mamie Fidler judges that the McGuire Ranch has the greatest variety of greenery hereabouts.”

“She’s right,” Olivia said, stirring her soup. “There’s cedar, which symbolizes royalty, fir and pine for everlasting life, holly, which represents the ultimate mission of Christ on the cross, and ivy, a symbol of resurrection. All would have been well known, I imagine, to anyone halfway versed in the traditions of the church a hundred years ago.”

“More so than today, it would seem,” Ethan muttered.

“Don’t forget the bells,” Robin put in. “Bells to signify the birth of royalty.”

Ethan shared a conspiratorial smile with her as Olivia said, “And I thought jingle bells were just for fun.”

He cleared his throat and mused, “Obviously, you two have already done excellent research.” He looked to Robin then and added, “I don’t suppose we could find an order of service or program for the Hanging of the Green ceremony, could we?”

She didn’t even have to think it over. “From a hundred years ago? Doubtful. If such a thing exists, it would be in your files.”

He shook his head. “There’s nothing there. At least not that I can find.”

“We might find something online from another church in another part of the country, if that will be of help to you.”

“I suppose it’ll have to do. I did think of it, but surfing the internet on my cell phone is not very handy.”

“I’ll take a look for you,” Robin said, starting to rise.

Ethan waved her back down into her chair. “Finish your lunch first. It can wait.”

“Maybe you’d like to join us,” Olivia offered. “I could heat you a cup of soup in the microwave.”

“Well,” he said, smiling, “if you’re sure. I just happen to have a sandwich in the car.” With the temperature hovering just above freezing, he’d judged that the sandwich would be as safe in his car as in a refrigerator.

“Your soup will be ready when you return,” Robin promised, getting to her feet, “and my pie should be cool enough to eat by then, too.”

“In that case, I’ll be glad to join you,” he told her, setting off.

He caught the speculative look that Olivia sent Robin as he slipped back out into the hallway. He felt a pang of guilt about that, but that was how it went in a small town, or so he told himself.

* * *

Strangely, while Ethan was at the museum sharing lunch with her and Olivia in the break room, Robin looked forward to Saturday’s outing with him. Later, as he sat at her shoulder while she searched the internet for historically accurate Hanging of the Green services, she couldn’t help being intensely aware of his every breath, murmur and movement with a kind of joyous expectation. Later, they surfed the web looking for and ordering delicate, period-appropriate glass bulbs and electric candles, as real ones would be too dangerous to use. Only after he went on his way, leaving her to her usual work, did she begin to have serious doubts about keeping company with him.

Perhaps the speculative looks that Olivia slid her way when she thought Robin wasn’t looking were to blame. Or maybe it was realizing how much she was coming to enjoy the pastor’s easy company. The phone call that she received as she was letting herself into her room at the Fidler Inn that evening certainly didn’t help.

“Hello,” she said, juggling her things. “One minute, please.”

“Robin?”

The sound of her mother’s voice instantly made the industrial carpet seem a more dull shade of brown than usual, and the creamy faux chinking between the faux logs on the walls suddenly became a rather uninspiring tan.

“Robin, is that you?”

“Yes, of course, Mother. Who else would it be?”

Her kitchen, which consisted of a six-foot length of brown cabinet that held a two-burner stovetop, a tiny microwave, minifridge, bar sink and four-cup coffeemaker, had been entirely adequate before; yet now she saw it as ridiculously lacking, even for a single woman whose main meals were prepackaged and microwaved.

“Well, it could be anyone, for all I know,” Sheila Frazier complained. “It’s been days since we last spoke, and you might have moved out of that dreadful motel by now.”

Strange. Ethan had recognized her voice after a single chance meeting. Well, perhaps more than one. But shouldn’t her own mother be able to recognize her voice? And how did Sheila know what the inn was like? She’d never been here. Still, the comfy patchwork quilt on the bed suddenly seemed faded and old, and the unstained woodwork that had struck Robin as so fresh when she’d first come to stay at the Fidler Inn now appeared unfinished, incomplete.

Dropping her handbag on the bed, Robin stared at the little square dining table—which bore no resemblance to the pair of chairs that flanked it—and steeled herself for the conversation to come, her mood shifting just as her surroundings had.

Sighing, she asked, “What is it, Mother?”

“I thought you should know that a position has come open as a research assistant here at the university. The Templeton foundation is endowing the position, so if you apply, you’re guaranteed to get it. I know it smacks of nepotism, but after all the good the Templetons have done the university, we are not ashamed to—”

“Mother,” Robin interrupted, wondering why she couldn’t exercise the same circumspection with her own family that she did with everyone else, “this position is in the science department, isn’t it?”

“Well, of course, but you are a trained and able researcher.”

“I am a historian,” Robin said, enunciating each syllable clearly, her temper barely in check. “I know you place no value on that, but history is what I love. History is what I do. And I already have a job as a historian here in Jasper Gulch.” Never mind that it barely paid above minimum wage or that she’d been thinking of leaving.

Her mother’s reply was exactly what Robin expected.

“Oh, honestly. You cannot mean to bury yourself in that hideous little throwback of a town, where you don’t even have decent cell-phone service so I have to call you at your motel, all in the vain hopes of connecting with some jumped-up cowpokes who just happen to be distant relatives.”

Robin pinched the bridge of her nose. “Mother, do you not realize that you are displaying the very same attitude that drove Great-Grandma Lillian away from her home?”

“And you are determined to follow in her footsteps!” Sheila Templeton Frazier, Ph.D., insisted shrilly. “What have we done that is so awful?”

“You haven’t done anything, Mother,” Robin said. “I didn’t come here to get away from you. I came in search of something more. Why won’t you listen?”

“And why won’t you understand,” Sheila countered, “that you are nothing to these Shaws? You will never be anything to them but a lying little opportunist, Robin. You may think that because they’ve accepted young Massey into the fold, they’ll accept you, too, if only for the Templeton name, but I assure you that is not the case. Even if they believe your claims, which I doubt, once they understand that Templeton funds are tied up exclusively in the foundation for scientific research, they’ll bar you from the door. Mark my words. How many times has it happened before?”

Sadly, Robin had lost more than one erstwhile friend who, having discovered her Templeton relationship, had thought she could command the Templeton money. Only those connected with the Templeton Foundation for Scientific Research enjoyed the largesse of Templeton funds, however, and Robin had long ago decided that science was not her calling. Her father managed the foundation, from which her Templeton grandparents had both retired. Her mother was herself a research scientist, so the Templeton foundation was, in a very real sense, the family business. But not—much to the chagrin of her parents—for Robin.

She was fully aware that if she didn’t somehow engage with the foundation or marry someone who could be taken into the foundation, all the Templeton money would pass out of the family’s control with the deaths of her parents. And that was fine with her. What the Templetons didn’t seem to understand was that family was more important to Robin than foundations or money. They just didn’t understand how sad and lonely she was because her acknowledged family consisted of only her parents, her Templeton grandparents and one unmarried Frazier uncle, her father’s brother, Richard, none of whom seemed to value her in any real way. They looked down on her profession. They looked down on her relationship with her beloved late great-grandmother. They even looked down on her faith, which she’d learned at her great-grandma’s knee.

She’d never known her Gillette grandparents. Her Frazier grandparents had both died when she was young; she didn’t even remember her grandmother, Dorothy Elaine Gillette Frazier. Perhaps that was why she had been so close to her great-grandmother, Lillian Gillette. And that was why, a year after her beloved great-grandma’s death, she had come here to Montana to find what remained of her family. Her Shaw family. Lillian, many would be shocked to know, was not Lillian at all but rather Lucy Shaw, whom entire generations of Shaws thought dead and buried for decades.

They all assumed that Lucy Shaw had died in 1926 when her Model T automobile had careened off the Beaver Creek Bridge into the rushing water below. They had no idea that Robin’s great-grandma Lillian had confessed on her deathbed, at the ripe old age of one hundred and three, that she was Lucy Shaw and had faked her own death in order to run away from Montana to New Mexico with her beloved Cyrus. Lillian—or Lucy, rather—had encouraged her lonely great-granddaughter to find her Shaw relatives in Montana, but Robin’s father and mother had insisted that Lillian had been raving when she’d come up with the “Montana story.”

Several weeks ago, Robin had finally found enough proof to convince her that Lillian’s story was true. Lillian was Lucy, but Robin’s parents wanted nothing to do with the Shaws, considering them little more than country bumpkins who would try to impose on the storied Templeton name and the science foundation that her mother’s family and Robin’s father so assiduously protected.

Sadly, as her parents had recently pointed out, Robin now had little reason to believe that the Shaws would want to have anything to do with her. After all, she had been living and working among them under false pretenses for months. Her parents wanted her to forget the Shaws and come home to New Mexico to “do something useful” with her life, the study of history not being on their list of useful endeavors.

If only Robin had trusted Great-Grandma Lillian and not let her parents put doubts into her head about the veracity of Lillian’s story, she wouldn’t be in such a mess now. She could have gone to the Shaws with a straightforward story and looked for proof without subterfuge, but she’d been so afraid of branding her beloved great-grandmother a liar that she’d become a liar herself. Even though she’d found the proof she’d sought, her mother was right that the Shaws weren’t likely to look kindly upon her lies. And neither, she imagined, would Ethan Johnson. What man of God would?

So, despite her brave words to her mother over the phone, Robin worried that she ought not to accompany Ethan the next morning. After the call ended, she hung up the bedside phone and sat brooding about it for several minutes.

She sensed that Ethan was a very special man and that under other circumstances something special might even develop between them, but her deceit had surely doomed any possible relationship already. It would, she was convinced, be better simply to end her association with him entirely. Perhaps she ought to just leave Jasper Gulch altogether. Maybe her mother’s phone call was a sign of that. Maybe God was trying to tell her to get out now before she humiliated herself.

When the phone rang, her cell phone this time, she halfway expected it to be Ethan telling her that he wouldn’t need her assistance on Saturday after all.

Instead, he said, “I’m making a terrible pest of myself, aren’t I?”

She had to laugh. “Hello to you, too, Ethan.”

“Oh, good. She’s not ready to hang up on me. Yet.”

Smiling, she rolled her eyes. “What is it now?”

The phone crackled, as cell phones tended to do in Jasper Gulch, then he very clearly said, “Would it be a terrible imposition if I asked you to come to the church this evening? I need some advice concerning the pageant.”

She held her breath, wondering if she ought to refuse simply because she so very much wanted to see him.

After a moment, he softly counseled, “You know, it’s okay to pray about these things first. I do.”

She touched her eyebrow and closed her eyes, picturing him with that phone in his hand, praying about whether or not to call her, but then she shook her head. That wasn’t what he meant. Surely that wasn’t what he meant.

“What time?”

“Around seven?”

“Seven it is.”

“Great.” She could hear the relief in his voice. “Weather shouldn’t be a problem, but dress warmly. The sanctuary is chilly on a Friday evening.”

“All right.”

“See you soon.”

She broke the connection and sighed. Whatever was wrong with her? Did she have to go looking for a broken heart? Maybe she should just tell him that she couldn’t go with him tomorrow and put an end to this whole silly crush before she did something truly stupid.

* * *

She turned up at seven sharp, her pale gold hair twisted into a prim knot atop her head. It seemed to Ethan that she’d come armored, with a wide headband that covered her ears and a big, fuzzy, shapeless pale green sweater that covered her almost from knees to chin. Brown leggings and half boots completed the ensemble. She looked rather like a prickly pear, and he had to wonder if that was the point, so wary did she seem at first.

He’d felt compelled to call her. Indeed, seeing her tonight had seemed absolutely imperative. Nevertheless, he welcomed her skittishness and got right down to business, leading her straight into the sanctuary to describe in detail his ideas for the Christmas Eve pageant.

“What do you think?” he asked, finally winding down. “Now, I know they wouldn’t have had this great space to work with, so I’m open to suggestions.”

Robin walked back and forth, considering carefully before saying, “We could put down a tarp and scatter some hay, maybe stack up a few bales and cover them with hopsacking.”

“Very doable.”

“We could also paint a backdrop and string it up on rope.”

“Which do you think would be more in keeping with the period?” Ethan asked.

She tilted her head, thinking it over, perhaps picturing it. “I think we should use loose hay and build a rough stable with timbers or logs.”

“I agree. I’ll get some of the men on it, but I’ll need you to approve their plans. If you don’t mind.”

She clasped her hands behind her back and, after a moment, shrugged. He let out a silent breath.

“About the costumes,” she suddenly began, “the fabrics will be the important part. I’ll ask around. Maybe Mamie has some vintage stuff. If not, we’ll have to arrange a trip into Bozeman or another larger town.”

A smile broke across his face. “Thank you. I couldn’t do this without you, any of it.”

To his utter relief, she smiled. “Glad to be of service.”

He laughed, feeling tons lighter, and impulsively took her hand in his, saying, “I will be so relieved when we have all the greenery gathered.”

Frowning, she pulled her hand free and turned away. Ethan’s heart abruptly sank.

“Robin, is everything okay?”

She sent him a quick, joyless smile. “Oh, you know how it is. Christmas can be a bittersweet time.”

“Are you missing your family?”

She turned to face him then looked down at her toes. “Yes and no. Sadly, I don’t miss the family I have, but I do miss the family I don’t have. Strange, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” he admitted.

“You couldn’t,” she told him with a shake of her head. “But we ought to miss family, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he said simply, “but family is sometimes a burden.”

Her round, blue gaze sharpened. “Is yours?”

He wanted to tell her then, everything, about his losses and disappointments, his fears and heartbreaks, his hopes and needs, but he didn’t dare.

“Some of them are,” he answered evasively. “I miss my sister and niece, though.”

“Oh? Will they come for Christmas?”

Sadness stabbed him. “I doubt it.” That was a half-truth at best, though, and he suddenly wanted very much to give Robin better, so he followed it with a flat “No.”

For some reason, she seemed almost as disappointed as he felt. “That’s too bad.”

“Will your family come here for Christmas?” he asked.

She didn’t even pause to think. “Oh, no. They wouldn’t.”

“Will you go there?” It hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment that she might, and he suddenly realized that all his plans would crumble without her.

As was her custom, she mulled over her answer for a moment, but then she shook her head. “No, I won’t go there.”

Ethan didn’t try to hide his relief. He let it beam out of him. “I am selfishly glad. I don’t think I could pull off this centennial Christmas without your help, and I wouldn’t want to try.”

She smiled then, genuinely smiled. He clasped his hands behind his back, the sudden need to reach out and pull her against him shaking him to his toes. Instead, he offered to walk her to her car. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, after all, though he was having some trouble with the gentlemanly thing at the moment.

As she drove away into the night, he prayed for guidance. And self-control. It had been a very long time since he’d felt anything like what Robin Frazier stirred in him.

For a moment, long-dormant memory swamped him. Suddenly he was back in Los Angeles, standing on the curb in broad daylight, Theresa beside him. He heard the squeal of tires and the sharp, rapid staccato of gunshots. He felt himself flinch and throw up his arms, dropping to his knees as dust and bits of concrete stung his skin, and then as abruptly as it had begun, it was over, except that almost at once the iron-rich smell of blood rose into his nostrils, coating the back of his throat. He opened his eyes to find Theresa on her back with her dark hair spread across the sidewalk, her arms flung haphazardly across her slender body, a neat hole in her forehead and another in her neck, her dark eyes wide but unseeing, as he tried in his panic to keep her from leaving him. Some part of him had known from the first glimpse that she was already gone, but he’d had to try.

He hadn’t tried to hold a woman since then, and he never meant to.

“Ah, Lord,” he whispered, “don’t let me go back there. Give me courage, wisdom and guidance, the strength to realize all that You plan for me and to walk away from anything that is not Your will. Anything and anyone.”

No matter how compelling.

Chapter Four

Somehow, when Robin was with Ethan, she felt strangely disconnected from the pitfalls that surrounded her. She knew intellectually that any relationship around Jasper Gulch was potentially problematic for her. As soon as her deceptions were discovered, people were bound to choose sides, and most would undoubtedly side against her and with the Shaws. Still, Ethan’s very presence tended to make her awareness of that fact fade into the background. That was part of what made him so dangerous.