The Bachelor's Christmas Bride

But just a little. The pain lotion he’d rubbed into it after his shower this afternoon had helped, the massage was helping, too, and he thought it would be fine by tomorrow. Every now and then it just liked to let him know that the doctors, the trainers, the coaches, the physical therapists had all been right—there was no way he could have gone on to play hockey again.

And he wasn’t going to. After returning to Northbridge in late September he’d done some house-hunting, and he was now the owner of his own forty-seven acres of farm and ranch land, of a house that was going to be really nice once he was finished remodeling and updating it. He was on that new path that was being celebrated tonight and he’d be damned if he was going to do any more mourning of what wasn’t to be.

He’d had a decent run in professional hockey. Hockey and the endorsements that went with a successful career had set him up financially. And even if it hadn’t been his choice to move on, even if moving on had happened a lot earlier than he’d hoped it would, a lot earlier than he’d expected it would, he was still glad to be back in Northbridge.

The positives were the things he was going to concentrate on—the new path, getting back to his hometown and the fact that it was Christmastime. The fact that this was the first Christmas in years that he was home well in advance of the holiday, with family. The fact that he didn’t have to rush in after a Christmas Eve game or rush out for a December twenty-sixth game. The fact that he wasn’t in a hospital or a physical therapy rehab center the way he had been the last two Christmases.

So things might not be exactly the way he’d planned, but they were still good. And he still considered himself a pretty lucky guy. A little older, a little wiser, but still pretty lucky. Lucky enough to have been able to go on.

The sound of a woman’s laughter drifted up to him then and he listened more intently.

Had Shannon Duffy come across the backyard from the garage apartment?

And why should he care whether she had or not?

He shouldn’t.

He didn’t.

But when he heard the laugh again and recognized it as his half sister Hadley’s laugh, he stayed put, continuing to rub his knee rather than go down the way he might have otherwise.

It was just good manners, he told himself. They were sort of the co-guests-of-honor. If Shannon was here, he should go down. If she wasn’t here yet, there was no rush.

Yeah, right, it’s just manners…

Okay, maybe he didn’t hate the idea that he was going to get to see her again. But only because she made for a pleasant view.

Dark, thick, silky, walnut-colored hair around that pale peaches-and-cream skin. A thin, straight nose that came to a slight point on the end that turned up just a touch. Lips that were soft and shiny and too damn kiss-able to bear. Rosy cheeks that made her look healthy and glowing from the inside out. Eyes that at first had seemed blue—a pale, luminous blue—and then had somehow taken on a green hue, too, to blend them into the color of sea and sky together. And a compact little body that was just tight enough, just round enough, just right…

A beauty—that’s what Shannon Duffy was. No doubt about it. So much of a beauty that he hadn’t been able to get the image of her out of his head even after he’d left her to her brother this afternoon when he’d come up here to shower.

So much of a beauty that he’d had to rein in the urge to stare at her every time he’d had the opportunity to see her today.

No wonder she’d snagged herself a Rumson….

Wes Rumson, the newest Golden Boy of the Montana clan that had forever been the biggest name in politics in the state. It had been all over the news a couple weeks ago that not only was he going to run for governor, he was also engaged to Shannon Duffy. When Dag had heard that, he’d figured that was the reason she was selling her grandmother’s property.

It was also one of the reasons that no matter how great-looking she was, he would be keeping his distance from her.

Engaged, dating, separated—even flirting with someone else—any woman with the faintest hint of involvement or connection or ties to another guy and there was no way Dag would get anywhere near her. And not only because he wasn’t a woman-poacher—which he wasn’t.

He’d learned painfully and at the wrong end of a crowbar that if a woman wasn’t completely and totally free and available, having anything whatsoever to do with her could be disastrous.

So, beautiful, not beautiful, he wouldn’t go anywhere near Shannon Duffy.

At least not anywhere nearer than anyone else who was about to share the holiday with her as part of a larger group.

Nope, Shannon Duffy was absolutely the same as the decorations on the Christmas tree, as the lights and holly and pine boughs and ribbons all over this house, all over town—she was something pretty to look at and nothing more.

But damn, no one could say she wasn’t pretty to look at….

“A neckruss goes on your neck, a brace-a-let goes on your wristle.”

“Right,” Shannon confirmed with a smile at three-year-old Tia McKendrick’s pronunciation of things.

After a lovely dinner of game hen, wild rice, roasted vegetables and salad, followed by a dessert of fruit cobbler and ice cream, everyone was still sitting around the table in the dining room of Logan and Meg McKendrick’s home.

Wine had also been in abundance and had left Shannon more relaxed than when she’d arrived this evening. She assumed the same was true for her dinner companions because no one seemed in any hurry to get up and clear the remainder of the dishes.

Tia, on the other hand, had ventured from her seat to sit on Shannon’s lap and explore the simple circle bracelet and plain gold chain necklace that Shannon had worn with her sweater set and slacks tonight.

“Can I see the brace-a-let?” Tia requested.

“You can,” Shannon granted, taking it off and handing it to the small curly-haired girl.

Looking on from Shannon’s right were Meg and Logan—Tia’s stepmother and father.

To Shannon’s left were Chase and his soon-to-be bride, Hadley—who also happened to be Logan’s sister.

On Hadley’s lap was fifteen-month-old Cody, and directly across from Shannon was Dag.

Which made it difficult for her not to look at him in all his glory dressed in jeans and a fisherman’s knit sweater, his well-defined jaw clean shaven and yet still slightly shadowed with the heaviness of his beard.

Their positioning at the table apparently made it difficult for him not to look at her, too, because his dark eyes seemed to have been on her most of the night.

“I think that brace-a-let is kind of big for you, Miss Tia,” Dag said then. “You can get both of your wristles in it.”

Tia tried that, putting her tiny hands through the hoop from opposite directions as if it were a muff. Then, giggling and holding up her arms for everyone to see, she said, “Look it, I can!”

That caught Cody’s interest and the infant leaned far forward to try to take the bracelet for himself. Luckily Shannon had worn two, so she took off the other one and handed it to the baby. Who promptly put it in his mouth.

“So, Shannon, you’re pretty much a stranger to Northbridge even though your grandmother lived here?” Logan asked then.

“I am. I only visited here a few times growing up and that was all before I was twelve. Between my parents’ business and their health, there was just no getting away.”

“What was their business?” Hadley asked.

“They owned a small shoe repair and leather shop, and the building it was in. We lived above the shop and they couldn’t afford help—they worked the shop themselves six days a week—so in order to leave town, they had to close down and that was too costly for them. Gramma would come to visit us—even for holidays. Plus with my parents’ health problems they were both sort of doing the best they could just to get downstairs, put in a day’s work and go back up to the apartment.”

“Did they have serious health problems long before they died?” Chase asked.

“My mom and dad’s health problems were definitely serious and started long before they died,” Shannon confirmed. “As a young man, my dad was in an accident that cost him one kidney and damaged his other—the damaged one continued to deteriorate from the injury, though, and he eventually had to go on dialysis. My mom had had rheumatic fever as a kid and it took a toll on her heart, which also made her lungs weak and caused her to be just generally unwell.”

“I’m a little surprised that people in that kind of physical shape were allowed to adopt a child,” Meg observed.

“The situation at the time helped that,” Shannon said. “What I was told was that my birth parents were killed in a car accident—”

“True,” Chase confirmed.

“There wasn’t anything about other kids in the story,” Shannon continued. “I didn’t know there was an older sister who had a different father to take her, or that there was an older brother and twin younger brothers, that’s for sure. What my parents said was just that there wasn’t any family to take me, that the reverend here had put out feelers for someone else to. When my parents asked if that could be them, the reverend helped persuade the authorities to let them have me despite their health issues—which weren’t as bad at the time, anyway.”

“I don’t know if you know or not, but that reverend is my grandfather,” Meg said.

“Really? No, I didn’t know that.”

“And sick or not, your folks must have wanted a child a lot,” Hadley concluded.

“A lot,” Shannon confirmed. “But having one of their own just wasn’t possible.”

“Did you have a good life with them?” Chase asked.

Despite the two occasions when she and Chase had met in Billings and the few phone calls and emails they’d exchanged, they’d barely scratched the surface of getting to know each other. And while she was aware that Chase’s upbringing in foster care had been somewhat dour, Shannon hadn’t gotten into what her own growing-up years had been like.

“I didn’t have a lot of material things,” she told him now. “But no one was more loved than I was. My parents were wonderful people who adored each other and who thought I was just a gift from heaven,” she said with a small laugh to hide the tears that the memory brought to her eyes. She also glanced downward at Tia still playing with the bracelet in her lap and smoothed the little girl’s hair.

When the tears were under control and she glanced up again, she once more found Dag watching her, this time with a warmth that inexplicably wrapped around her and comforted her before she told herself that she had to be imagining it.

“It must have been so hard for you to lose them,” Meg said, interrupting that split-second moment.

“It was,” Shannon answered, forcing herself to look away from Dag. “But at the same time, they had both gotten so sick. That’s why my grandmother left Northbridge a few years ago—to help me take care of them when it was just more than I could do on my own—”

“You took care of them?” Dag asked in a voice that sounded almost as if it was for her ears only.

“I did—happily, and they made it as easy as they could, but I still had to work, too, and do what I could to help the man I’d hired to keep the business running. Plus my parents needed someone with them during the day, as well, so Gramma came to stay. By the time my dad died last January I couldn’t wish him another day of suffering just so I could go on having him with me. And he and my mom were so close that she just couldn’t go on without him. I think her heart really did break then, so it was no shock when she died just months later. And to tell you the truth, after spending every day of their adult lives together—working together, going up to the apartment together, never being without each other—it sort of seemed as if they belonged together in whatever afterlife there might be, too.”

“And then there was just you and your grandmother?” Dag asked, his eyes still on her in that penetrating gaze.

“Right, Gramma was still with me. And she seemed healthy as ever. She helped me go through all my parents’ things—personal and financial and business. She helped me find an apartment so we could sell the business and the building it was in. She helped me move. She was just about to come back to Northbridge—which was what she really wanted to do for herself—when she had a heart attack in August. She didn’t make it through that….”

This time Shannon shrugged her shoulders to draw attention away from the moisture gathering in her eyes. When she could, she said, “Strange as it may sound, my grandmother’s death was actually the shock.”

“And just like that—within a matter of eight months—you lost your whole family?” Hadley marveled sadly. “Chase said you had taken some time off from teaching kindergarten then, and it’s no wonder!”

“But now she has Chase and two more brothers out there somewhere who she and Chase are going to find,” Meg reminded, obviously attempting to inject something lighter into the conversation.

Shannon looked at her newly discovered brother. “Whatever I can do on that score…” she said to him.

“I’ve hit a wall trying to find the twins,” Chase said. “I’m thinking about hiring a private investigator after the first of the year. But we can talk about that later.”

To change the subject completely then, Shannon said, “So I know Chase and Logan grew up together as best friends and then traveled the country and ended up starting Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs, but were you all friends in school?”

“Actually, no,” Meg answered. “I know—small town, you’d think we would have lived in each other’s back pockets. But I was younger than Chase and Logan, so I was barely aware of who they were and they say the same thing about me. I knew Hadley a little better, but again, we weren’t the same age, so we didn’t hang out together.”

“But, Hadley, if Logan and Chase were close, you must have known Chase,” Shannon observed.

“Oh, she knew him all right,” Dag said, goading his half sister.

Hadley didn’t rise to the bait beyond throwing her cloth napkin at him before she said, “I knew Chase. I had the biggest crush on him ever. But we didn’t get together until this past September when he moved back here—”

“When I really got to know her,” Chase contributed, putting his arm around the back of Hadley’s chair and leaning in to kiss her.

And why, when Shannon averted her eyes, her gaze landed instead on Dag, she didn’t know. But there they were, suddenly sharing a glance while the soon-to-be-married couple shared a kiss. And to Shannon it almost seemed as if something couple-ish passed between them, too.

Which, of course, couldn’t possibly have been the case and she again questioned what was going on with her.

Wanting whatever it was interrupted, she focused on Logan to say, “And there are three more McKendrick sisters with unusual names, right?”

“And another McKendrick brother—Tucker,” Logan answered. “You’ll meet them all tomorrow night at the rehearsal and dinner.”

Cody threw Shannon’s bracelet then, letting everyone know that he was no longer content.

“Oh-oh, I think it’s past a couple of bedtimes,” Meg said.

“Not me!” Tia insisted. She was still on Shannon’s lap but now she’d taken off her shoes and was trying unsuccessfully to put both of her feet through Shannon’s bracelet.

“Yes, you, too,” Logan interjected.

“And that’s our cue for dish duty,” Chase added with a grimace tossed at his friend.

“That was the deal,” Hadley reminded. “Meg and I will put kids to bed, Logan and Chase get to show what they learned as dishwashers on their grand tour of the country, and Dag and Shannon are off the hook because the dinner was for them.”

“I don’t mind helping with clean-up,” Shannon said.

“Shhh,” Dag put in. “Don’t ruin a good thing.”

“Besides,” Meg added. “You’ve had a long day, Shannon. You drove the whole way in from Billings and had the closing, and all of us plying you with questions tonight. You have to be worn out. I know I would be.”

“How about if I walk you out to the apartment?” Dag offered before she could respond to what Meg had said.

“Oh. You don’t have to do that,” Shannon demurred, not because she didn’t want him to, but because the minute he suggested it she wanted him to too much….

“I think that’s a great idea—Dag should walk Shannon to the apartment so she doesn’t just have to trudge out there alone,” Meg agreed.

“Really—”

“Go on,” Hadley urged. “I’d walk with you but I have to get all of Cody’s gear ready to take with me to our place.”

The spacious, luxurious loft was what Hadley was referring to. It was in the building beside the apartment over the garage where Shannon was staying. The same building that housed the work space and showroom for Mackey and McKendrick Furniture Designs on the ground floor.

Hadley’s urging seemed to have ended the discussion because everyone got up from the table and Meg came to take Tia from Shannon’s lap.

“Give back Shannon’s bracelet and tell her thank you for letting you play with it,” Meg told the three-year-old.

“I could keep it….” Tia whispered to Shannon.

“No, you can’t keep it,” Meg said before Shannon had the chance to answer, taking the bracelet from Tia and the other one from where Cody had thrown it, and giving them both to Shannon just before she picked up Tia.

Shannon said her good-nights while Dag ran upstairs for a jacket. A brown leather motorcycle jacket that made him look every inch a bad boy when he returned with it on.

But Shannon told herself that wasn’t anything she should be noticing. Or appreciating. And she curbed it.

She had her own coat on by that time, too, and the next thing she knew, they were out the back door and into the cold, crisp night.

“It’s so quiet here,” she said softly when Dag had closed the door behind them.

“A nice change from inside?”

“It wasn’t that dinner wasn’t nice,” she was quick to say as they headed for the garage in the distance, not wanting him to think there was anything about the evening that she hadn’t enjoyed. “I guess it’s just that I’m not used to having so much family around.”

“Because there was always just your mother, father and grandmother?” Dag said as they fell easily into step with each other.

“Yes. And really, until the last few years, it was just my parents and me. But here I am now with a brother and a nephew and Hadley will be my sister-in-law, and there’s all of you McKendricks, too, who seem to be like family to Chase—”

“Not to mention two more brothers if and when you find them,” Dag reminded.

“It’s a lot for someone who’s always been part of a small group, a small life.”

“A small life?” Dag repeated with a laugh. “What exactly does that mean?”

“You know, just a small, simple, workaday life. Certainly no living in Italy and France the way Hadley did. Or even the kind of travel Chase and Logan did around the country for years. Teaching kindergarten isn’t a high-powered career. I’ve been to a few fancy parties with Wes, and there was a trip to Europe, but I haven’t done anything that would qualify as a big life.”

“So far,” Dag amended. “But marrying into a rich and powerful family and possibly becoming the First Lady of Montana? That ought to pump up the volume considerably.”

Shannon hoped that dropping her head when he said that only seemed to be because she was watching her first step up the outer wooden staircase alongside the garage to the apartment. But really she was hiding her expression so she didn’t give away that she wasn’t going to pump up the volume of her life by marrying Wes Rumson.

“Becoming the First Lady of Montana would be a bigger life all right,” she muttered noncommitally. “And a bigger life is always what I’ve wanted. But we were talking about what I’m used to and neither a bigger life nor a lot of large family gatherings like tonight are it.”

“So you’ll have some adjusting to do and tonight was good practice,” Dag said as he followed her up the stairs.

“Tonight was just nice,” she said quietly again.

They reached the landing and she unlocked the apartment door, reaching inside to turn on the light and wondering suddenly if she should invite Dag in. She couldn’t think of any reason why she should. And yet she felt some inclination to do it anyway.

“Want to hide out here until the dishes are done?” she asked with a nod in the direction of the main house where Chase and Logan were visible through the window over the sink.

Dag glanced in that direction, too, but then brought his gaze back to her, accompanied by a grin that was disarmingly handsome. And made her think that he was tempted to accept her invitation to stay.

But after a moment he seemed to fight the urge and said, “I might not have been able to hold my own with those two when I was eight and they were making me pick up their smelly socks, but now? They don’t get anything over on me.”

Still, he didn’t seem in any hurry to go and Shannon wasn’t sure what to do about that. Standing there facing him, staring up into features any movie star could have used to advantage, wasn’t giving her answers.

Then Dag said, “Those movers you hired to pack everything and clear out your grandmother’s house missed a few things. Nothing big—just some odds and ends I’ve come across working on the place—”

“Like?”

“Like some clothes and a blanket that were stuffed up high in a closet. Some kitchen things. A couple pictures that had fallen behind a drawer. An old jewelry box—I can’t even remember what all. I’ve been putting them in boxes when I come across them because I didn’t know if there was anything you might want—”

“Most of what the movers brought to Billings I sold in a yard sale at a friend’s house. There was so much of it that I can’t imagine that they missed anything.”

“Like I said, I don’t think there’s anything important. It’s stuff that was probably jammed somewhere because not even your grandmother needed or wanted it. But still, I don’t want to be the one to throw out anything that isn’t mine. There’s only two boxes and I can bring them home, but I thought you might want to see what I’m doing to the place. Maybe have one more walk through it for old time’s sake…”

Was that what was appealing to her about his suggestion?

Or was it the thought of going out to the ranch and seeing him?

It had to be the nostalgia—the house had been her grandmother’s after all. And she had spent some time there with her grandmother when she was a child.

Plus there was some curiosity to see what Dag was doing to the place, she told herself. That had to be what was behind her wanting to take him up on his offer.

“I think I might like to walk through the place one more time,” she said. “Just tell me when it’s convenient for you.”

His grin returned even bigger than it had been before, but Shannon refused to allow herself to read anything into it—like the fact that maybe he wanted the visit from her just to see her, too….

“Tomorrow? I’ll be working out there all day. You can swing by anytime.”

“Shall I take your cell phone number and call first?”

“Nah. Anytime. Sleep in in the morning, unpack, do whatever you had planned and when it works out for you, just drive over.”

“Okay.”

And why did they go on standing there, looking at each other as if there should be more to say?

Shannon didn’t know but that’s what they were doing—

she was just looking up into those black, black eyes of his, lost a little in them….

Then he finally broke their stare. “Great. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Sometime tomorrow,” she reiterated, thinking that the minute it came out of her mouth it sounded stupid.

But it didn’t seem to affect Dag because he just tossed her another thousand-watt smile and turned on his heels on the landing. Then he called a good-night over one of those broad shoulders and went back down the steps.