A Family Christmas

The biggest bonus was that visiting with Tess Bucek always made Lucy happy.

Tess was the librarian. She and Evan had dated for a short while, earlier that year. Although the relationship hadn’t progressed very far, he’d considered asking her to marry him simply because Lucy had been so hungry for Tess’s motherly touch.

He’d backed off when he realized that making a wrong marriage would be worse for Lucy in the end. Tess was now a good friend, and happily engaged to a newcomer to Alouette, a writer named Connor Reed who lived in the keeper’s cottage of the Gull Rock lighthouse.

Lucy ran ahead, pushing open the door to the rainbow-hued Victorian house that had been converted into a small library. Evan followed her through the entryway, thinking how good it was to see Lucy so enthusiastic.

She raced into the library proper. He heard her voice, very bright. “Hi!”

After a pause the answer came, and it wasn’t Tess. “’Lo.”

A moment later, Tess chimed in, greeting Lucy with her usual perky cheer.

Evan arrived, his senses already heightened. Wild Rose Robbin looked at him, smiled and then hurriedly looked away, tucking her lips inward as if to keep the smile from escaping. She edged a stack of books across the checkout desk, toward Tess.

“You know Rose, right, Evan?” Tess was saying, looking from Lucy to Evan to Rose with a bright-eyed interest.

Evan cleared his throat. “We’ve met.”

“She showed me how to draw leafs in the woods,” Lucy said. She was staring up at Rose with an awe that approached reverence. One step closer and she’d be hanging off the woman’s sweater, begging for attention. Normally she was shy to the point of invisibility, especially around new people.

“Have you practiced?” When she looked into Lucy’s face, Rose’s mouth curved into a smile that was as natural and pretty as a daisy dancing in the breeze.

“I tried to.” Lucy put her hands on her hips, acting almost belligerent. She bobbed her head. “But my teacher said I was scribbling!”

Evan blinked in surprise. This was a new Lucy. Or, rather, the Lucy his daughter had started out to be, before the loss of her mother.

“I bet she wanted you to make a perfect leaf.” Rose held up one hand and drew a maple leaf in the air.

“Uh-huh,” Lucy breathed. She raised her own hand in imitation.

Rose shook her head. “Your teacher hasn’t really looked at the autumn leaves, then, has she?”

“Nope. They’re all, like, curly and nibbled on and—and—” Lucy scrunched her hand into a fist.

“So that’s how you should draw them,” Rose said. “Right?”

Even while she processed the books, Tess hadn’t missed an inflection of the conversation. She threw a significant look at Evan.

He shrugged, although the interaction was pretty amazing. Even with Tess, Lucy hadn’t come out of her shell so quickly.

“How are you, Rose?” he asked.

“Going to work.” She looked down at her books, a reflex to fill the awkward silence.

He followed her gaze. She’d checked out a large tome of Audubon bird prints, a hardcover he couldn’t see the title of and two paperbacks that featured embracing couples with flowing hair and ample cleavage. Hard to tell which was the male and which was the female.

Rose saw him looking and gathered up the books. “For my mother.”

“I loved Passionate Impulse,” Tess said. Her eyes danced.

Evan was sorry he’d noticed. “Uh, sure. Listen, Rose, I was thinking—”

“I have to go,” she interrupted. She made for the doorway, ducking past him with her rumpled hair falling across her forehead into her face. “G’bye, Lucy.”

Lucy followed the woman’s departure with beseeching eyes. “Bye.”

“Go on, Lucy, find yourself a few books,” Evan said when the door had clanged shut and she still hadn’t moved. The children’s room was adjacent to the main area, a space filled with light, plants, craft projects and colorful decorations. Throughout the summer he’d brought his daughter to story hour twice a week, but now that she’d started kindergarten and he was busy with basketball practice after school, their visits would be less frequent.

Lucy trotted off obediently. Evan stared after her, not yet willing to face Tess’s curiosity. He could feel it rolling off her, ripe with questions.

“The sequel, Passionate Embrace, wasn’t quite as good,” Tess finally said with a laugh in her voice.

“You women.” Evan had to grin. “All that romance gives you barmy ideas.”

“Sure, blame us if it makes you feel better.” Tess was petite, with short coppery hair and a warm personality—the kind of person who was a pillar of the community, with her penchant for running charity tag sales and Scrabble tournaments. “Got something besides romance on your mind, Evan?”

He shrugged. What the hell. In for a penny…

“Don’t read anything into this,” he said.

The librarian made an agreeable sound that he didn’t believe for a second.

“But…”

Tess made an impatient gesture. “C’mon. Out with it, man.”

He gave in. “Tell me about Wild Rose.”

CHAPTER THREE

TESS FROWNED INSTEAD of continuing to tease him. “Like what?”

“How she got her name, for starters.”

“She’s had it forever, it seems. I couldn’t say.”

“You could say. If you wanted to. She’s about your age, right? You must have gone to school together.”

“She was a grade behind me.”

“It’s a small school system. I’m sure you knew her.”

“Yes, but we didn’t hang out. Rose was…”

“Wild?”

Tess shook her head. “Not then. I mean, when we were younger. Maybe a little—she grew up with two older brothers. It wasn’t until later that…” She shrugged.

“So you do know how and when she got the nickname.”

“Evan, why don’t you just go by what she is now? I’ve been the subject of town gossip myself, so I’m not that eager to repeat tales about another person. Especially when it’s old talk. And who knows what’s truth and what’s exaggeration?”

“I’m not looking for reasons to condemn the woman, I promise.”

“Then why?”

“You saw Lucy with her. She really came out of her shell. So I was thinking I could hire Rose to give Luce drawing lessons. But there’s the woman’s reputation to consider.” And the reason she continued to lurk at his practices and games. Unless…

What if Rose had a crush on him?

Heat crawled up his neck. He wasn’t so conceited he thought every woman was after him. But it had been known to happen. After Krissa had died and a decent interval had passed, a number of single ladies had approached him with casseroles and come-ons, both as subtle hints and open-ended invitations. The principal’s secretary had mooned over him for months until he’d spelled out his disinterest. Even though she was going out with one of the bus drivers, she still gave him the occasional lingering glance. And there were some of the high-school girls, who were far too bold.

“Do you think—” The question stuck in his throat. He couldn’t ask Tess. She might think he was condescending to Rose, especially after he’d been nosing around her reputation.

“It’s a great idea!” Tess leaned over the checkout desk and gave his arm a squeeze. “From what I just saw, art lessons will really make Lucy blossom. And they might be good for Rose as well.” Tess smiled like a pixie, lifting her brows a little.

“Don’t get any ideas,” he warned. I’m already having enough for both of us.

She batted her lashes. “Like what?”

“I only have a professional interest.”

“Aw, that’s no fun.” Tess’s mouth straightened. “Rose could use a friend.”

“Doesn’t she have any? How about you?”

“I try. I chat her up as much as I can and I’ve invited her places and encouraged her to come to community events. But she’s not very interested. And then, there’s her mother.” Tess leaned forward with her palms on the desk. “She has a sick mother at home.”

“And Rose takes care of her on her own?” Evan adjusted his thinking on the woman one more time. Apparently Rose wasn’t out partying with the rough crowd who bought their liquor at the Buck Stop.

Tess nodded. “Rose came back to Alouette for her father’s funeral. I guess it was, hmm, maybe two years ago already.”

Around the time of Krissa’s illness, Evan thought. No wonder he hadn’t noticed.

“Her mother’s health was deteriorating and she couldn’t handle the family business on her own,” Tess continued. “So Rose stayed in town.”

The family business. Evan thought of the quaint but run-down cottages off Blackbear Road. He hadn’t realized they were still operational. Couldn’t be turning much of a profit. “No other family members offered to help?”

“Her brothers didn’t return for the funeral. Bad blood, there, I hear. One of them went off to join the Army years ago and the other’s in prison.”

Evan’s alert flag went up. “Prison?”

Tess scrunched her nose, as if she’d said too much. “Held up a liquor store at gunpoint. Don’t judge Rose by that, okay?”

“Hard not to,” he murmured.

The librarian straightened and struck a scolding tone. “Look at her actions—judge those. She runs the rental cabins, she takes care of her mother, she works late hours at the Buck Stop. I’d say Rose is practically a saint.”

Evan grinned. “Go ahead. Shake your finger at me. I can tell you want to.”

With a muffled snort, Tess wagged an index finger under his nose. “Don’t make me laugh when I’m lecturing you.”

“Oh, I’m listening, Marian.” Whenever Tess got too librarian-ish, he used the nickname on her.

“You’d better. Rose deserves a break.”

“Yeah,” he said, but he was thinking that it didn’t have to come from him. Arranging the drawing lessons would lead to getting involved, to some degree, and he had already decided not to go down that path.

“In a small town like this, where people have known each other forever, it’s not easy for someone like Rose to make a fresh start. But with you…” Tess cocked her head. “You have the ability to see her as she is, not through the filter of her past mistakes.”

“You’re not going to fill me in, are you?”

Tess hesitated. “I can tell you some of it. Do you promise to be fair?”

He gave her a look. She should know him well enough by now.

“All right,” she conceded. “You’re as good a judge of character as anyone I know.”

“Except when it came to Connor.” Evan had bristled when he’d first met Tess’s fiancé, but then even she had suspected the man of skullduggery.

Tess rolled her eyes. “Pah. That was a territorial pissing contest. Metaphorically, of course.”

Evan laughed. “Well, you know men—we’re animals. Connor had to prove himself before I trusted him with you.”

“You think Rose hasn’t proved herself?”

“Questions remain.” The lurking, primarily. The rest was his own curiosity.

Tess walked to the doorway to the children’s room, checking on Lucy’s progress. She motioned to Evan to wait and disappeared into the room, where he could hear her discussing books with his daughter. He moved off, glancing around the main room to be sure there were no eavesdroppers, then took a chair at one of the more secluded study tables.

Objectively, his interest in Rose should be curtailed, not fed. But there was his daughter’s welfare to consider, and Lucy had taken to Rose like no other. He’d risk his own involvement in the woman’s life if that meant helping Lucy. Although his heart went out to Rose now that he knew more of her situation, her troubles would have to remain secondary.

The arousal of his male interest—that was unsettling. The veritable monkey wrench in his plan.

Especially if Rose was equally attracted to him.

“Why the scowl?” Tess pulled over a chair and sat beside him. She crossed one leg over the other, tugging on her short red skirt when it rode up.

“Hmph.” The librarian had great legs, but Evan found himself wondering what Rose would look like in a dress or skirt. She might be pretty if she tried. Not that he expected women to keep themselves turned out like Barbie dolls. There was a certain appeal to Rose’s rakish independence. The intense blue of her eyes, how her wild, wavy hair framed her face…

Tess put her elbow on the table and tucked her fist beneath her chin. Her shoulders relaxed with a sigh. “Lucy’s rereading one of the Princess Ella books. She never gets tired of them.”

“Tell me about it. Every night, she wants one as a bedtime story. I know them by heart.”

“No offense, but you two need a woman in your lives.”

“We’re doing fine.”

“Then why the interest in Rose, hmm?”

“That’s, uh—” Evan slid his spine lower in the chair. “Don’t come at me from a different direction, hoping for a slip-up. I already explained. She’s good for Luce.”

Tess patted his thigh. “Keep telling yourself that, hon.”

He glowered, but he wasn’t as miffed with Tess as he pretended. She was only asking the same questions he’d asked himself. She’d probably guessed that he was feeling oddly uncertain.

Tess had her own fix-it streak and would gladly be the one to push him over the edge into unwelcome territory. For his own good, she’d say. With a twinkle in her eye.

“So,” he said in a low voice. “Spill the beans.”

She sighed again. “Most of this is rumor.”

“I’ll take it with a grain of salt.”

“You’d be better off talking with Rose herself.”

“I don’t know that the Spanish Inquisition could make her talk.”

“She’s not that bad!”

“Bad enough.”

“Why do I feel we should have theme music?” Tess said. “The song about not giving a damn about your bad reputation would do. That’s Rose, all right.”

“You’re wrong. She does care.”

Tess turned her head on its side, still propped on her fist. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’ve looked that closely?”

He wondered how much he’d given away. “Get on with it, Marian.”

“What I remember…” Tess looked off across the library. “Rose was a different sort of kid when we were in grade school. Shy and quiet, but also stubborn. Rebellious at times. She didn’t take well to authority, like her older brothers. But it was as if the teachers expected no better. The Robbins were that sort of family.”

“What sort?”

“Not…admired,” came the careful answer. “The father was a hunting and fishing guide. Something of a blowhard. A big drinker, arrested at least once for illegal poaching. I don’t know a lot about Maxine, Rose’s mother, except that she stayed close to home. The brothers were hellions.”

“And Rose?”

“She wasn’t too friendly, but then she didn’t get much of a chance to be, either. All the ‘good’ mothers warned their kids away from playing with the Robbins. Let’s just say, we sure weren’t having picnics or slumber parties out at Blackbear Road.” Tess ducked her head to press her knuckles beneath her nose. “In retrospect, I feel pretty awful about that. Rose must have been lonely, even if she acted like she didn’t care.”

Evan pushed down his rising empathy. “If she was this lonely outcast you say, how did she get the reputation?”

“This is where the rumors begin.” Tess took her voice down another notch. “When we got older, like fifteen, sixteen, the boys started paying more attention to Rose. She was striking—black hair to her waist, slim, tanned. The snobbier girls dismissed her because she didn’t have the right clothes or social graces. But of course the boys didn’t care about that.”

Evan’s mind drifted, imagining Rose at sixteen. He could see her—a wild rose of the forest, hardy but also beautiful and so fragile.

Damn. Where was the poetry coming from? Somebody ought to slap him in tights and call him Romeo.

Tess continued with a shrug. “What mattered to the boys was that she didn’t have a curfew. Or many other rules. The Robbins kids basically ran wild.”

“I see.”

“Supposedly, Rose had a few temporary…alliances. And the boys talked. Bragged. You know. So she got this reputation. Wouldn’t surprise me if it was overblown, knowing how gossip balloons in this town.”

Evan was familiar with the concept. His first year as head coach, he’d suspended several of the team members for drinking and breaking curfew. The incident had expanded into a brouhaha that took over a school board meeting. Some of the more belligerent parents had wanted him reprimanded for overly harsh discipline, but he’d remained calm and kept a firm stance, and wiser heads had prevailed.

Tess had fallen silent. He prodded her. “And then?”

“Rose started hanging with a bad crowd. They got into trouble—underage drinking, petty vandalism, that kind of thing. People said she was just like her brothers. Then, I don’t know, there was an incident that was hushed up pretty fast, except that people whispered about it for a long time. They said there was some kind of confrontation between Black Jack Robbin and the Lindstroms. The rumor was that Rose had become involved with Rick Lindstrom—led him into temptation, according to his parents.”

“Or vice versa.”

“All I know for sure is that the Lindstroms wouldn’t want their son associating with someone like Rose. Rick’s gone now, died in a forest fire out west, but I remember him well. The golden-boy type—handsome, charming, spoiled and arrogant. I seriously doubt that Rose was the instigator, in whatever happened between them.”

Evan’s stomach dropped. “Do you think it was only a sexual thing?”

“Probably. That’s what my classmates assumed.” Tess aimed a “sorry” look at him, as if he had a personal stake in Rose Robbin’s love life. “But there was also a rumor about ill-gotten money, stolen maybe, or a payoff. The cops were supposedly called in, and suddenly Rose went away. Some said she ran away, some said she was sent to juvenile detention. After a while, it was clear that she was gone for good. She didn’t come back, even for a visit, not until her father’s funeral.”

“Did you ever ask her what she’d been doing, all those years away?”

“Sure. She said she’d been working here and there. Never got married, never had kids.”

Evan mulled that over for a minute or two, counting up the years. He hadn’t been able to imagine what Rose would find interesting about his basketball team—good kids, all of them, but just an ordinary group of teenage boys, fascinating only to their girlfriends and their…

Parents.

Suddenly the explanation was obvious. Though times had long changed since the days when a girl in trouble was sent away in shame to spare the family embarrassment, the epidemic of pregnant teenage runaways remained. He knew well, having put in a work-study course at a shelter and a runaway hotline during his college years. It was astounding that no one else in Alouette had come to the same conclusion.

On the other hand, he could be way off base.

“Hold on,” he said when Tess started to rise. “You’re sure Rose said that, in so many words?”

“What—the marriage and kids part? I don’t remember her exact words. But it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Tess slid sideways in her chair, eyeing him doubtfully. “Evan. What are you suggesting?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly. Rose’s business was her own, as long as she didn’t make trouble.

“Be nice,” Tess warned as she stood.

“Of course.” He glanced up. “When haven’t I been?”

“Oh, every now and then. Like whenever you see wrongdoing.” Tess looked worried. “I shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. You’re thinking that there’s something wrong with Rose.”

“No, I’m not. Honestly.” Evan rose, towering over the petite librarian by nearly a foot. He tapped her under the chin. “I’ll give the woman a fair chance.”

“Does that mean Lucy will get the lessons?”

“Maybe. We’ll see what Rose thinks. She might not be willing.”

“Turn on that charm of yours.” Tess tossed a saucy grin over her shoulder as she walked back to the main desk, reminding him why he liked her so much. Connor Reed was a lucky guy to have won her heart.

“What charm?” He considered himself to be a standard-issue, salt-of-the-earth type. A good guy. He worked hard, loved his daughter, paid his bills, did what was right. Solid, but nothing spectacular. Krissa had married him for that, and six years later asked for a divorce for the same reasons.

Tess only shook her head fondly. “Ack. You’re such a guy.”

There was nothing he could say to that, so he went to collect his pink, sparkly, princess-loving daughter, who at times still seemed like a foreign species to him.

“AHEM. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Rose opened her eyes, recognizing the voice with a flip of her stomach. “Evan,” she said. Her throat rasped. “Uh—” She scrambled to set aside the mop and cleaning supplies she’d cradled in her arms while she sat on the stone step outside her cottage to savor the last of the afternoon sun.

“Let me.” Evan took the mop while she dropped the dust rags into the scrub bucket she’d emptied nearby. “Fall cleaning?”

“We had guests in two of the cottages—bird hunters. They left this morning, so I was cleaning up the—” She stopped and shrugged, aware that she was giving away more information than necessary. That wasn’t like her, but Evan made her nervous. “Y’know.”

It had been more than a week since she’d run into Evan and Lucy in the library. Seeing him on her home territory was strange, particularly when he’d been on her mind so frequently. She might have believed that she’d conjured him up if he didn’t seem so solid and strong and real. He wore a jacket over a blue Alouette Gale Storm sweatshirt, dark jeans and running shoes. His hair was so neat, his jaw so cleanly shaved, the whites of his eyes so bright that she felt grungy and dowdy by comparison. Which she was. That hadn’t bothered her before. Much.

“Deer season next month,” he said, handing her the mop. “You’ll be full up, I suppose.”

“We have several bookings, but it’s not like the heyday when my dad was here to be the guide.” She wouldn’t have been able to stay if that had been the case. Even their occasional guests were a trial for her. She was wary of all men, but especially strangers, and was on constant alert until they were gone. A lesson learned the hard way.

“That’s a shame.” Evan scanned the woods. Fragrant pine boughs swayed in the breeze. “It’s a picturesque location. Great piece of property.”

Maxine’s Cottages overlooked a particularly nice, secluded section of the Blackbear River—a wide S-curve bubbling with rapids, with a steep slope to the water’s edge, mature forest and no other homes in sight.

“Yeah.” Although her mother had entertained several generous offers, none of them involved keeping the cottages open for rent. Maxine still expected that one of her boys would come home to take over. Rose, under no such delusion, had collected business cards from Realtors and land developers in anticipation of the day her mother saw reason. She did have an attachment to her cottage and the riverside setting, but she’d sacrifice them in a heartbeat if given the opportunity to get out of Dodge.

She stated the obvious. “The place hasn’t been kept up, unfortunately.” All that she could manage was keeping the rooms clean and the grounds trimmed. Paint was peeling off the wood trim, shingles were missing, the faulty plumbing was a constant trial. There wasn’t the money to hire pros, so she tackled the bigger jobs as she could. Her friend and handywoman Roxy had offered to help out, but Rose was uneasy about accepting handouts.

Evan barely glanced at the slipshod maintenance before he turned his gaze on her. His eyes were brilliant, the color of a mug of icy root beer shot with sunlight. Under his perusal, the skin on her cheeks became warm and tight.

“Do you have any plans for the business?”

Rose shook her head. “I’d shut down tomorrow if my mother would allow it. She’s the one in charge.”

“Ahh.” He nodded. “I just met Maxine, over at the main house. She said it would be okay if I came out here to find you. I called the other day, but I guess you didn’t get the message?”