A Montana Christmas

“Thank you.” She gave him a small smile. “Please. Call me ‘Mel.’ Everyone does.”

“They do?” The name didn’t fit. He knew an auctioneer named Mel. He could spit a stream of tobacco twelve feet.

“Don’t you have a nickname?”

“No.”

Jared set the platter down and tried to think of something interesting to say as he handed her the bowl of mashed potatoes. The family was used to Bitty’s comments and questions, but he hated the idea of Melanie being embarrassed. She didn’t look embarrassed, though. She looked as if she wanted to laugh, as if she was enjoying herself. Odd. Aunt Bitty didn’t usually inspire that sort of reaction.

“Looks like we’re going to get a lot of snow tonight,” was all he could manage to say. Everyone looked at him as if he’d just spoken Greek. “I…we won’t be able to give Melanie—Mel—a tour of the ranch until the weather clears,” he added. There. He gave Uncle Joe a say something look.

“Well—” the old man stopped buttering his roll and grinned at their guest “—tomorrow we’ll have to plow a path to the barn and introduce you to the horses. Too bad that little baby of yours is too little to enjoy the animals.”

“Yes, but I’ll look forward to seeing everything,” she said, glancing toward the couch where the child slept hemmed in by pillows. “I’ve never been to Montana before.”

“We’ll have to give you the grand tour, won’t we, Jared?” Uncle Joe winked.

“Mrs. Stone, dinner is delicious.”

“Call me Jenna, remember? What on earth did you eat on the train?”

“Sandwiches, mostly. Getting to the dining car was difficult with the baby.”

That was probably an understatement, Jared figured.

Jenna was obviously fascinated. “So how did you manage?”

“The man who sat across from us—he was going all the way to Seattle—brought back food and coffee, which helped so much. People were very kind, but it was a much harder trip than I thought it would be.” She wiped her lips with her napkin.

“Then why,” Bitty asked, her three chins shaking, “did you attempt such a thing?”

“I don’t like to fly. Will didn’t tell you?”

“Will didn’t tell us much at all,” Jared said, frowning. “Except that you had a red coat.”

“I’ve never liked flying, either,” Uncle Joe declared. “Give me my Ford truck any day. Seems like if I can’t drive there I’ve got no business trying to get there in the first place.”

“Folks gallivant around too much these days,” Bitty added, giving Jared a disapproving look. “If the young people stayed home they’d most likely get married faster and start having sons. My folks were nineteen when they got married and seems like you’d better get busy and—”

“Who wants coffee? Or tea?” His mother stood and began to clear the dishes from the table, and Melanie leaped up to help her. Fluffy barked for leftovers, distracting Bitty from her latest lecture and saving Jared from having to grit his teeth and remind his aunt that thirty-two was not over the hill.

And then there was Melanie. Jared picked up his dishes and grabbed Joe’s to take over to the sink, but he couldn’t help noticing that Melanie—Mel—seemed real comfortable in the kitchen. She and Jenna were good-naturedly arguing over Mel’s decision to wash the dishes, but then the baby cried and settled the argument. Melanie—he couldn’t think of her as Mel—rushed over to pick up the child and coo into her ear.

Jared’s heart sank down to his silver belt buckle. Was Will in love with her? Or worse, was she in love with Will? Why else travel by train—which sounded like the trip from hell—to spend the holidays with him?

“Jared.” His mother put her hand on his arm and whispered, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” He faked a yawn. “I guess I’m tired.”

You couldn’t fool Jenna Stone. She looked toward Melanie, who was bent over the couch putting the baby back in its makeshift nest. “She’s very lovely.”

“I guess.”

“The baby isn’t Will’s, so whose is it? And where is he?”

“You’ll have to wait until Will gets home to get the answers, Mom.”

“Thank God that happens tomorrow,” she said, keeping her voice low. “But I’m calling him tonight, right after dessert.”

“Good idea.” And let me know what you find out. If he was lusting after his future sister-in-law, he damned well wanted to know.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Jenna had been anxious to talk to Joe since dinner, but there’d been dishes to wash, pie to serve and a guest who needed to get settled into bed before she fainted dead away from exhaustion. Bitty and Fluffy were upstairs listening to Dr. Laura on the radio and Jared had hustled off to hide in the barn.

“I think the boys can take care of themselves,” her uncle declared. He folded up the newspaper and set it aside. “But it’s no good telling you that because you’re going to worry, anyway.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “You saw the way he looked at her.”

“Jared?” At her nod he continued, “Yes. She’s a beautiful young woman. And if I was fifty or sixty years younger I might be looking at her like that, too.”

“But—”

“He’s a red-blooded man.”

“And she’s Will’s.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But he asked her here.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s serious about her, Jenna.” His voice grew gentle and he patted the space beside him on the leather couch. She crossed the room and sat down, then tucked her head against his shoulder.

“I know, but I worry.” The den was one of her favorite rooms in the house—and the oldest. She loved the old leather furniture and her mother-in-law’s braided rug; she had even grown fond of the elk antlers that graced the wall above the fireplace mantel. The fieldstone fireplace had kept generations of ranchers warm at night and was the place where the boys always hung their Christmas stockings, even though the tree stood in a corner of the much grander living room across the hall. She’d intended to get the tree after Will returned, so her sons would humor her and help decorate it.

“And I miss George.” She’d loved that man since her thirteenth birthday when he delivered the collie pup her parents had gotten for her from the Stone ranch. He’d been gone eight years and sometimes it felt like forever.

“Yep. G.W. was a good man.” He’d been “G.W.,” short for George William, to a generation of older men who’d known Jenna’s father-in-law as George and called his son by his initials to avoid confusion.

“He’d know what to do. Will would have told him all about this girl.” She felt the beginning of a headache coming on.

“If there was something to tell,” her uncle reminded her.

“I just wish I knew what was going on. I called Will but there was no answer. I got his damn voice mail again.”

“He’ll call back.”

“He’d better do it soon. It’s getting late and I wanted to warn him about the storm.”

“As if you have to tell a cattleman about the weather.”

She chuckled. “I have a few more things to talk about than the weather. Such as, is he serious about Melanie and where is the father of that baby?”

“She’s a pretty little thing, that baby is. Doesn’t cry much.”

“I thought she was my granddaughter when they walked in the door tonight. Part of me still wishes she was.”

“Nothing wrong with wishful thinking,” the old man declared. “But there isn’t a Stone man—dead or alive—who wouldn’t have married the mother of his child. Your Will’s cut from the same cloth.

“Jared, too.” Uncle Joe nodded his agreement. Jenna lifted her head to look at him. “You saw his face tonight, didn’t you?”

“He passed her the potatoes.”

Jenna sighed and lifted herself off the couch. She crossed the room and added another log to the fire. Her temples began to throb in earnest. “I think I’m going to take some aspirin and go to bed.”

“You do that, hon. I think I’ll wait for Jared to finish up in the barn and see if I can get him to play a hand of rummy. Where’s our houseguest? In bed for the night?”

“Settled in with the baby upstairs.” She stepped over to the window and pulled the drape back. The lights were still on in the large barn, meaning Jared was taking his sweet time doing chores. “Damn snow.”

Joe picked up his newspaper. “Go to bed and quit your worryin’.”

Good advice, of course, but easier said than done. She crossed the foyer and, careful to keep from making too much noise, headed up the stairs. Tomorrow she would decorate the banister with pine boughs and big red bows. Maybe Melanie would like to help. She seemed like the kind of young woman who enjoyed being useful, but her presence here could be a problem.

She couldn’t explain it to Joe. Not this. Jared had looked at Melanie just like his father had looked at her that night when she was sixteen and had been alone in the horse barn with him. George had kissed her—really kissed her—for the first time. The secret love of her life finally looked at her as if he’d never seen anyone so beautiful. And she was not a raving beauty, not then and not ever. But George—all grown up at the ripe old age of twenty-three—thought she was. And looked at her as if he wanted to do all those things men did with women in the romance books she’d loved reading. On her eighteenth birthday, two weeks after she’d graduated from high school, they spent a honeymoon weekend in Great Falls and she’d discovered that books couldn’t compare with the real thing.

Jenna paused at the top of the stairs. The upper level was shaped like a T, with her wing on the left, the boys’ rooms on the right and the long corridor lined with guest rooms. She used to joke that she could open a bed-and-breakfast and make extra money, if all else failed. A hundred years or so ago the Stones used all this space, but now it seemed wasteful to let them go empty. She heard the radio behind Bitty’s closed door, but it wasn’t likely to disturb the others, since Bitty’s was the first room off the stairs. Uncle Joe and Melanie were opposite each other four doors down, with Melanie using the guest room that had its own bathroom.

The baby was fussing. Jenna paused and wondered if she should knock and offer to help, but decided that the young mother could no doubt use some privacy. It wasn’t as if little Beth was her own granddaughter, after all.

And it wasn’t as if the pretty dark-haired woman was Jared’s “special” guest. Her oldest son, far more serious and quiet than Will, didn’t lose his heart easily. In fact, she wondered if he ever had.

Jenna entered her bedroom, recently redecorated in shades of white and cream, and prayed neither one of her boys would get hurt.

EVEN WHEN SHE LAY SNUGGLED under the covers, Melanie still felt as if she was on the train. Not that she’d been horizontal under a pink-and-purple flannel comforter on the train, of course, but when she closed her eyes she could almost feel the rumble of the tracks under the bed.

Beth fussed in her cradle, so Melanie stretched her arm down to rock the little pine bed. Jared, strong and silent and oh-so-capable, had carried it down from the attic, wiped it clean and proceeded to fold blankets to create a soft mattress.

He’d said one word. “There.”

She’d thanked him and he’d stridden out of her bedroom and shut the door behind him as if he wished she’d stayed put, behind a closed door, until it was time for her to go home. Obviously he thought she was here to claim his brother and he didn’t approve. And yet he’d been kind to her. Once again she’d had the strangest urge to throw herself into his arms and lean on that wide chest and hang on for dear life.

Hormones, of course, were her major problem. Not feelings of attraction for Will’s older brother. She blamed everything else on hormones, why not this?

Mel eyed the small brass clock on the nightstand. After midnight, which meant she’d been asleep for almost two hours. Beth’s fussing meant she would want to nurse again soon and Melanie felt the familiar heaviness in her breasts that came every four hours or so.

Sure enough, Beth let out a screech that wouldn’t be appeased by the rocking of her bed, and Mel scooped her up into the soft double bed, plumped the pillows against the oak headboard and fed her while snow pelted the windows on the far side of the room.

She had made the right decision by coming here. No one here felt sorry for her—if she didn’t count understandable sympathy about traveling by train with an infant. No one in this self-sufficient family felt guilty about celebrating Christmas while Melanie mourned a fiancé who died nine months ago when a plane crashed into a Kansas cornfield. No concerned relative with worried eyes had whispered, “But what are you going to do now?”

And while she loved her aunt and uncle and their daughter, Dylan, who was most likely furious with her, she didn’t intend to ruin their Christmas.

She didn’t intend to ruin anyone’s Christmas.

FOR ONE SPINE-CHILLING SECOND Jared thought the house was haunted. The soundless moving of the rocking chair, the light-colored gown, the glare of snow coming in through the living room windows and a sudden keening cry all added up to a good reason for his heart to end up in his throat.

Just for a second, of course.

But the ghostly vision was Melanie in a long robe, rocking a fussy baby in Grandmother Stone’s favorite chair.

He swore under his breath. Couldn’t the woman stay put in her own room?

Her eyes widened as she saw him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Did we wake you? I thought if we came downstairs—”

“No. I came down for something to eat.” He kept his voice low, though he didn’t know why he bothered. The baby was clearly not going to go to sleep. It kept lifting its head from its mother’s shoulder and making frustrated noises. “That is one angry kid you’ve got there.”

“No kidding.” She surprised him by smiling, which didn’t help his resolve to ignore her. “She didn’t get her temper from me, I swear.”

Then from whom? He didn’t voice the question aloud. It wasn’t his business. None of this was his business. “I thought rocking chairs were supposed to make babies go to sleep.”

“Tell her that.” Mel leaned forward and lifted herself from the chair. Her robe, a pale shade of green, looked soft. It was tied at her waist with satin strings and hung to her ankles. And she was barefoot.

“I didn’t want to make any noise,” she explained when she caught him looking at her feet.

“You’ll catch cold. Come into the den and I’ll get a fire going.” He was insane, he reminded himself. He should get back to his own room, take the stairs two at a time, lock the door. Damn Will, anyway.

“It’s almost two o’clock,” she protested, patting the baby’s back. The infant squirmed against her and let out a little cry. But her head settled on Mel’s shoulder. “We’d better try going back to bed.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.