Holiday in a Stetson: The Sheriff Who Found Christmas\A Rancho Diablo Christmas (2 page)

He really was a challenge, Lani thought, looking at the man she took orders from—whenever he deigned to speak to her, which wasn’t all that often. She supposed that was because ever since he’d become sheriff, he’d been alone in this office, and wasn’t accustomed to speaking aloud while he sat at his desk. Having a deputy thrust upon him had to require some adjustment on his part. She understood that and was willing to wait until it happened.

She was still waiting.

Lani had been hoping that the approaching Christmas season would soften Tanner up a little, make him more human. For the most part, she was a mixture of optimism and practicality, but even so, it became more and more apparent to her that as far as the sheriff’s epiphany was concerned, she had been deluding herself.

Garrett Tanner had no intentions of coming around or of showing her a softer side, because the man
had
no softer side.

Still, soft or stern, he did owe her an answer to her question.

An answer that wasn’t coming unless she made a point of asking again. So she did, this time raising her voice. “Something wrong, Sheriff?”

Rather than answer, Garrett shot back a question of his own. “Why?”

Giving him a wide, forced grin, Lani said, “Well, you seem surlier than usual. I was just wondering what set you off, that’s all.”

His eyes narrowed. Though he would have thought that by now she would have run out of ideas, she still found new ways to annoy the hell out of him.

“You mean you were just being nosy.”

“There’s that,” Lani allowed cheerfully, deliberately taking no offense. There was no point in it.

Besides, four years on the SDPD had helped her develop a very tough hide. That little life lesson had never come in handier than when dealing with a man she viewed as the prince of darkness. Not the devil in this case, just a man who seemed to prefer keeping his life and everything else in the shadows.

“And,” she continued, refusing to be put off by his scowl, “I was wondering if maybe I could help.”

“Help?” he echoed, stunned. “How could you help?”
How the hell could
anyone
help?
he thought. This was a huge, unsolvable dilemma he found himself facing. He didn’t want the little girl, but on the other hand, it didn’t seem right just letting the system absorb her. That would be a fate worse than living with him.

“Well, first I’d have to know what was wrong, then I could hopefully answer that question to your satis
faction,” Lani replied matter-of-factly. Then the wide grin returned as she declared, “Okay, your turn.”

“My turn?” he echoed. What the hell was she talking about now? He didn’t have time for whatever game she thought she was playing. “My turn for what?” he barked.

Determined not to be put off by his dark glare and darker voice, Lani spelled it out. “I answered your question. Now you tell me what’s wrong, so I can tell you how I can help.”

There was no way she could help. No one could. Ordinarily, he would just walk out without saying another word. But ordinarily, he didn’t have anyone in the office to walk out on. Having this woman here, nibbling along the perimeters of his everyday life, had thrown everything off. Which was possibly the reason he heard himself answering the woman’s question.

“My only sister was killed two days ago in a bus accident.”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” It took Lani less than a second to react. She was on her feet and crossing over to him quickly.

Before Garrett was actually aware that she’d stood up, his deputy was placing what he assumed was a comforting hand on his shoulder. His own reaction was purely instinctive, brought on by years of fending off his stepfather’s blows. He stiffened.

Lani did her best to appear as if she hadn’t noticed that he’d gone stiff as a board. Putting herself in his place, thinking how she would have felt if she’d had a sibling to lose, instead of being an only child, she asked kindly, “What can I do to help?”

Garret shrugged her hand off as he swung around in his chair to look at her.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he demanded. “She’s dead. There is no help for her.”

Lani got it. He was angry and there was no one to take it out on but her. She’d seen enough bereaved relatives in her four years on the force to understand the complex emotions at work here. She took no offense, and instead, let him rail at her.

“I meant what can I do to help
you?
You were obviously close to her,” she added, when he glared at her, silently indicating that she should back off. “I can see it in your eyes.”

His immediate response was to tell her that it was none of her business. But somehow the words didn’t come out. Instead, he heard himself saying in a hollow voice that echoed the emptiness he felt inside of him, “She was coming with her daughter.”

Was.

His sister was relegated to the past tense now, Garrett realized. There was a knot in his gut that threatened to become incredibly painful.

He didn’t want words of consolation; Lani could tell that by the set of his jaw. So she focused on the living. “Is the girl all right?”

He blew out a breath. “Yeah.”

He said that almost grudgingly. Did he resent his niece being alive when his sister had been killed?

You poor kid,
Lani couldn’t help thinking.
You don’t know what you’re in for.

“How old is she? Your niece,” she prompted, when the sheriff didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know,” he said impatiently. “I didn’t even know my sister
had
a kid until a few minutes ago.”

Lani stared at him. She knew the man kept to himself, but she’d assumed he was that way around people he considered outsiders, not his own family. Not for the first time Lani wondered what had happened to Tanner to make him this way. No one was born with the kind of disposition he had. Something had to have happened to
make
him back away from people.

“How could you not know?” The question slipped out before she could stop herself. Lani bit her lower lip, waiting to be chewed out.

“She married a guy who was just like my stepfather, and moved away. We lost touch,” he retorted, angry at Ellen for being so stupid. Angry at himself for not stopping her. And angry at this petite blonde, blue-eyed perpetual thorn who’d just rubbed salt into all these old wounds. Never mind that it was unwitting on her part. She’d still managed to do it. “Any other questions?” he growled.

“No,” Lani replied, feeling for him despite the fact that he was acting pretty much like a wounded bear. “I think I can pretty much fill in the blanks.”

“Oh?”
What blanks?
he wanted to demand, but he restrained himself.

She could hear a dangerous note in his voice, but Lani decided it best to pretend she hadn’t. Instead, she gave him the theory she’d just worked up.

“Yes. You told your sister not to marry the guy, she did anyway, and you told her that you were washing your hands of her. Hurt, she retreated, and you put her
out of your mind. For the most part,” Lani qualified. “But you went on caring about her, anyway.”

Garrett rose to his feet, towering over the woman by a good ten inches. She was as fair in coloring as he was dark. He thought it rather ironic, reflecting the difference in their dispositions.

Right now, she was annoying the hell out of him—the way she did most days. But today he’d had just about enough.

“So, how long did you travel with the carnival as a fortune teller?” he asked coldly. “Or did you have a little storefront shop of your own back in San Francisco?”

“San Diego,” Lani corrected with no animosity. “And no storefront, no carnival. I do have a degree in criminology,” she replied, deliberately putting on the smile that she knew drove him crazy. “I minored in profiling.” Had he actually looked at the résumé she’d submitted, he would have known that, she thought. She turned her attention to a more pertinent question. “So, when are you going?”

“Going?” he repeated. He felt cornered and highly resented it. He wasn’t accustomed to people burrowing into his business. Folks in Booth knew better. But that was partially because they knew about his stepfather and the kind of abuse the man had inflicted on his family. They cut Garnett some slack and appreciated the work he did.

“Yes, to pick up your niece. Or is someone bringing her to you?”

He frowned. The woman who had called him with the news hadn’t offered to bring Ellie or to accompany
Ellen’s remains. That meant that both were his responsibility. “I’m going,” he told the annoying deputy, then added, almost to himself, “I’ve got to see about making arrangements to bury my sister.”

“Where?” Lani asked.

He looked at her. What kind of question was that? Did she want a blow-by-blow description? “What do you mean, where? In the ground.”

“I mean are you going to bury her in New Mexico, or here in Booth?”

He hadn’t thought of that. He was still dealing with finding out that Ellen was dead. “There, I guess.”

Lani suppressed the impulse to tell him that wasn’t a good idea. Instead, she tried to tactfully steer him in what she felt was the better direction.

“Why don’t you bring her back here? This was her home, right?” Lani had done her homework on her silent boss and found out that he had grown up in the vicinity. That meant his sister had, as well. “That way your niece could feel as if her mother’s close by.”

What kind of nonsense was this woman babbling about? “What do you mean, ‘close by’? Her mother’s dead.”

This man had a soul; Lani knew it was in there someplace. Finding it was going to be a huge challenge, but she was suddenly determined to do it. “It’s a state of mind thing. Trust me, having her mother’s grave close by will help her. It did me.” Because Tanner gave her what she took to be a quizzical look, she went on to explain, “My mother died when I was really young. Whenever I was trying to work something out, or feeling particularly upset, it helped
having a grave site to go visit. I’d sit there sometimes for an hour, talking to her.”

She loved her father dearly and he had tried to be there for her at all times, but sometimes, it just helped talking things out with her mother. Even if there were no audible answers.

She searched Garrett’s face, trying to see if he understood what she was telling him.

He looked somewhat uncomfortable. “That’s more than I wanted to know.”

“So you say,” Lani replied brightly. She wasn’t buying it for a minute. As she turned to go back to her desk, she heard a world-weary sigh escape from his lips.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, she thought, turning back. “You want me to come with you?” The quizzical expression on his face deepened. “To pick up your niece.”

If he was being totally honest, what he would have wanted was to have her go instead of him, but he couldn’t very well say that. This little girl—Ellie, was it?—was his responsibility, not his gabby deputy’s. Besides, someone had to remain in Booth. That, he assumed, had been part of the town council’s thinking behind hiring a deputy. So that if he was called away, there would still be someone here to watch over the town.

Not that it needed that much watching.

“No,” he muttered. “The council wants someone to be in Booth at all times.”

Humor played along her lips. She’d been in town for six months and in that time, the only “crime” that
had come to her attention was that Mrs. Willows had her mailbox knocked over, and that was only because her sister had accidentally backed her car into it and hadn’t owned up to the deed until three days later.

“Lots of people are in Booth at all times,” she pointed out glibly. “I don’t think they’d have anything against the town being ‘sheriffless’ for a couple of days.”

He frowned. “I’m not interested in your opinions,” he snapped. “Just mind the shop.”

She couldn’t continue arguing with him about everything, not without risking having him fire her. So she retreated.

“Will do,” she promised with a smart salute. “Oh, and Sheriff?”

He was already at the front door, one hand on the doorknob. Bracing himself, he glanced at her over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Go easy on her,” Lani advised. “She just lost her mom.”

“She’s not the only one who lost someone,” Garrett replied.

“Yes, but right now I’m betting it feels like that to her.” Lani thought of a way to eliminate the initial awkwardness. “On your trip back, while you’re driving, you might want to tell her a couple of stories about your sister when she was a little girl.”

Now what was the deputy getting at? “Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“It’ll help you bond with her,” Lani assured him.

Garrett left the office, muttering under his breath.

Lani shook her head, turning back to her desk. “Good luck, little girl,” she murmured. “You’re really going to need it.”

“So, have you whittled that boss of yours down to size yet?”

Retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant Wayne Chisholm tossed the question over his shoulder when he heard his front door open and then close again later that evening. He was in the kitchen cooking dinner, and assuming that his daughter would be stopping by after work, the way she did most evenings.

They shared a great bond, Lani and he. Aside from each being the other’s only family, he was very proud of the fact that they not only genuinely loved one another, but liked each other, as well.

After his second retirement, he had come to Booth and settled down. The small Texas town reminded him a great deal of the sleepy little town in Montana where he’d grown up. But the winters up north were too harsh for him now, especially since, after twenty years in Southern California, he had grown accustomed to a warmer climate. Booth combined the weather of Southern California with the atmosphere of the Montana town that had once been his home. Settling here just seemed right to him.

His only concern had been leaving Lani behind, but he needn’t have worried. She followed soon afterward. She’d waited only long enough to see if he was happy in his newly adopted home. Once he said he was, she’d pulled up stakes and joined him.

“I’m working on it, Gunny. I’m working on it,” Lani answered as she walked into the small, welcoming kitchen.

Shrugging out of her sheepskin jacket, she dropped it on the back of one of the two chairs and smiled wearily at the squat bull of a man hovering over the twelve-quart stockpot.

Whatever he was stirring smelled like heaven, she thought. Whiffs of steam emerged, but her father didn’t seem to notice, or be bothered by the heat.

As she watched him, affection swelled in her heart. Gunny had single-handedly raised her after her mother had died. He liked to say that they had actually raised each other because, without her mom around, he’d had to grow up and become a full-time parent really fast. Lani loved him dearly.

When he had moved here, she hadn’t hesitated. Unable to imagine life without her father somewhere close by, she’d quit her job and followed him out. When she saw the position open for deputy sheriff, she’d jumped at the chance of doing something close to her own line of work.

“My money’s on you, kid,” Gunny said with conviction. “Dinner’s about ready, so don’t get comfortable. You’ve got work to do.”

Lani grinned and crossed to the kitchen cabinet over the counter next to the sink. That was where her
father kept the dishes. He cooked; she set the table. It was a division of labor she could more than live with.

“Smells good,” she told him, pausing to take a deep whiff of the aroma coming from the stovetop.

She didn’t have to look to identify what was for dinner. Beef stew, made with lots of tiny potatoes, in addition to baby peas and petite carrots—just the way she liked it.

“Have I ever made anything that didn’t?” he asked, only half teasing. “Besides, nothing but the best for my girl.”

About to open the overhead cabinet to take down two plates, Lani abruptly stopped, and instead, crossed over to her father. Standing behind him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and, leaning her head against his broad back, gave him a fierce hug.

“Hey, what’s that all about?” Turning around carefully so that he faced her, and holding his large wooden spoon aloft, he returned the hug with his free arm.

“Just wanted to let you know that I realize how very lucky I am to have a father like you,” she murmured.

“Well, I can’t argue with perfect logic like that,” he acknowledged, then, gently moving her back so he could look at her face, Gunny became serious. “What happened?”

Lani took a deep breath before answering. As she talked, she stepped aside, allowing him to get on with what he’d been doing.

“The sheriff got a phone call today from some social worker out in New Mexico. His sister was in a bus accident.”

“She all right?” Gunny asked.

“No.” Lani shook her head. “She’s dead,” she told him grimly. “Piecing things together, I figured out that she grew up in Booth, and was coming back to live here with her daughter.” Opening the drawer where her dad kept the silverware, she stopped for a moment to say, “The sheriff didn’t even know his sister had a daughter.”

“Bad blood between them?” her father asked curiously.

“I don’t know,” Lani admitted. “There was some kind of misunderstanding, I think. Seems that his sister married someone just like the sheriff’s stepfather.”

Gunny thought for a moment and filled in the blanks. “Which put the sheriff’s nose out of joint?” It was more a question than a statement.

“I think it did more than that, but he won’t talk about it. The man won’t talk about
anything,
” she told her father, exasperated. “But I got the impression that life was hell for him when he was growing up under his stepfather’s roof.”

Now it all made sense. “Which is why you hugged me,” he stated.

“Kind of,” she admitted with a grin. Forks and knives in hand, she continued setting the table. “And also because I haven’t told you lately how grateful I am that you didn’t just ship me off somewhere when Mom died.”

“Can’t take too much credit for that.” Gunny smiled at his only offspring. “Nowhere to send you, really. Neither your mom nor I had any brothers or sisters.
Her parents were both gone, and mine weren’t exactly the kind of people to leave in charge of a little girl.”

Lani knew that her grandparents on his side had both had more than their share of drinking issues, which made her marvel all the more about the kind of person their son had turned out to be. He’d been a little strict, but loving and oh so protective of her.

In the beginning, he had taken her with him whenever the Corps had moved him around the country. And when that became a problem, when it looked as if he was going to be stationed in a less than stable region of the world, he had resigned his commission. Just like that, he had opted to take the retirement he really wanted no part of, and had gone in search of a different career. Because of his background, and the degree he’d earned while in the marines, he’d become an engineer. For her.

Lani paused before taking out two tall glasses, and brushed her lips against the five o’clock shadow growing on his cheek. “Well, I appreciate the sacrifice.”

“Yeah,” he acknowledged with a dramatic sigh, “it’s been really hard putting up with a bratty kid all these years.”

She pretended to look at him sternly—as if she ever could. “I meant giving up your commission and entering the private sector.”

“Well, that didn’t turn out too bad,” he speculated. “Got to do my bit in defense of my country, just from another angle.” That was her father’s succinct summation of his years spent as an engineer in the aerospace-defense industry. “And now I get to be retired, cooking for you.”

“You’d cook whether I was here or not,” she pointed out.

“True, but it’s nice having a guinea pig,” he countered with a laugh. “Which reminds me. Come here, I need you to sample something.” Taking the wooden spoon in hand again, he dipped the tip of it into the pot he’d been stirring when she walked in, and held it out to her. “What do you think?” As she moved in to take a taste, he cautioned, “Careful, it’s hot.”

“Thanks for the warning,” she said drily. “I didn’t see the steam billowing out of the pot on the stove.”

He laughed, shaking his head as she sampled the stew. “Whoever marries you is going to have his hands full.”

“Good,” Lani declared. “The stew, not the crack you just made about my future, nameless husband,” she clarified when he looked at her, amused. She plucked two napkins out of the ceramic holder in the center of the small table, and tucked them beside the plates. “You mind if I take some of your world-famous stew for someone else?” She was thinking ahead to the next evening.

“Well, when you butter me up like that, how can I say no?” Her dad transferred a portion of the stew into a tureen, then placed that in the center of the table. “Do I get to know who this someone is, or is it a secret?”

“No, no secret,” she told him, sitting down. She spooned out a helping of stew for herself. “It’s for Tanner and his niece, when he gets back with her.”

Taking the ladle from her, Gunny followed suit, doling out a larger portion for himself. He’d built up
an appetite cooking. He wasn’t one of those people who constantly sampled as they went. He claimed it ruined the appetite, not to mention that it produced fat cooks.

“Oh?”

“No, not ‘oh,’” she retorted, picking up on her dad’s inflection. “The sheriff’s going to have his niece with him, and something tells me he’s going to really need help dealing with this. I’ve got a feeling that he has no idea how to act around a little girl, and doesn’t know the first thing about what they need.”

Gunny’s expression gave no indication what he was thinking. “So you’re going to feed him and volunteer to teach him how to be a substitute dad.”

She looked at her father pointedly. “Someone once told me that if I see someone who needs a hand, I should stop and give him one.”

“Wise person, that someone,” he commented, pausing to wipe the corner of his mouth.

Lani laughed. “Yes, I always thought so. Wise and incredibly modest.” She got up to get herself a can of soda from the refrigerator.

Her father nodded. “Good combination. Hey, while you’re over there, why don’t you get your old dad a beer?”

Lani looked back at him, fisting her hand on her hip. Her eyebrows drew together in a pseudo scowl, emulating what she’d seen on the sheriff’s face. “What did I say about that?”

“Sorry. While you’re over there, why don’t you get your
young
dad a beer?”

“Much better. One beer coming up.” She pulled open the refrigerator door, thinking again just how very lucky she was.