Holiday in a Stetson: The Sheriff Who Found Christmas\A Rancho Diablo Christmas (4 page)

Over the next few weeks Garrett made an unnerving discovery.

He found that the very quality that had annoyed him the most about his blonde powder keg deputy was exactly the one he was now grateful she possessed.

Her irritating habit of taking things on and, ultimately, taking them over, turned out to be a good thing—at least in this case. Because when it came to matters that involved Ellie, he let Chisholm have free rein.

It had been three weeks since the shattering bombshell had hit, blowing up what had been his world. Three weeks since he had gone to fetch his niece and bring her back to live with him. Three weeks since he had buried his sister—here, in the cemetery right outside of the town, the way his annoying deputy had convinced him to do.

And he’d done it for exactly the reason she had specified. He’d done it for Ellie’s sake.

Chisholm seemed to know instinctively what was best for the girl, maybe, he reasoned, because she’d been one herself once. He didn’t really know. But
whatever the case, the woman had an inherent knack of knowing just how to treat Ellie and how to get along with her. His niece seemed to be doing better each day, except for the unnerving habit she had of referring to Chisholm as “Aunt Lani” despite numerous corrections.

But in the sum total of things, that was a minor price to pay. So he bit his tongue and stayed out of his energetic deputy’s way, which was, he thought, tantamount to attempting to stay out of the way of a runaway steamroller.

It wasn’t exactly a matter of choice so much as one of survival. And at times, when he was around the woman, it felt as if he were barely hanging on by his fingertips.

Moreover, he was dealing with a strange sensation: he found himself not being as put off by the things his deputy did as he had been when she’d first shown up in his office.

More to the point, he was attracted to her. It had crept up on him out of nowhere, nestling amid other, totally unrelated thoughts.

He found it unnerving. Not to mention out of character for him.

Except for the four years when he’d gone off to college, he had been a lifelong resident of Booth. Yet somehow it was Chisholm who had known what steps were necessary to get Ellie registered for school here, now that this was her new, permanent home. And Chisholm was the one who had taken his niece shopping for new, warmer clothes, because the ones she’d
worn in Southern California weren’t sufficient for winters in Texas, not at this latitude.

Chisholm, he’d noted, had paid for those clothes herself, and hadn’t asked to be reimbursed. Feeling that if he allowed her to do so, he would be even more in her debt, he’d informed her that he could take care of his own. Garrett had asked to see the sales receipts, had calculated the grand total in his head and then handed her a number of bills that more than covered the sum.

She’d made change, giving him back the difference despite his growled protest that the extra money was his way of paying her for her time.

“No need to reimburse me for that. I like hanging around with your niece. By the way, it’s nice to hear you actually claiming her,” she’d said, flashing that smile he found so irritating, and at the same time unsettling.

For the sake of having Chisholm continue being there for his niece, Garrett swallowed his retort.

Discretion was always the better part of valor, he tried to convince himself. But he hadn’t believed it when he’d first heard the saying, and he didn’t believe it now.

Each time he silently congratulated himself on getting better at holding his tongue, something else would crop up, knocking him back to square one. Such as when Chisholm had informed him that not only was he now the “proud owner of a top-of-the-line computer,” but she had seen to it that he was hooked up to the internet, too.

He did not receive the news well.

He’d grudgingly given in and gone along with using a computer at work, because the need for efficiency had outweighed his desire to keep things the way they had always been. But he had been adamant about avoiding computers, and everything they entailed, when it came to his personal space.

Which wasn’t his anymore, he reminded himself with a sharp pang.

Still, he wasn’t going to give up without at least some kind of a fight. “And if I said I didn’t want it?” he’d challenged.

She’d flashed that dazzling smile of hers, which was increasingly getting under his skin, and declared, “Too late.”

He’d narrowed his eyes into slits, pinning her to the wall. Then realized he had definitely lost his edge, because Lani wasn’t even pretending to be affected anymore.

“What do you mean, ‘too late’?” he asked.

“Well, that computer you bought?” she began, referring to the purchase she’d obviously had made in his name sometime in the last twenty-four hours. “I had Wally, the computer tech, hook it up to the internet for you at lunchtime.”

Earlier today, around noon, Garrett remembered, she’d darted out, mumbling something about having Ellie-related errands to run. He had just assumed they had something to do with buying more clothes or schoolbooks. And, to be honest, he had reveled in the fact that for one glorious hour the office was quiet and his again, so he hadn’t really questioned her
very closely about the nature of this “Ellie-related” undertakings.

Garrett suppressed a weary sigh. He should have known better.

“In my house?” he asked his deputy now. Actually, it was more of an accusation.

Lani pretended to regard the rhetorical question seriously. “Well, having the hookup and the computer up on the roof would be a little inconvenient, what with it being slippery and all, so yes, in your house.”

There really seemed to be no boundaries to this woman’s pushiness. And it was his fault, he knew, because he’d given her free rein.

He simply had to put the fear of God into her, so that she wouldn’t continue to get carried away like this. Otherwise, she might decide that, now that he had a niece to take care of, he needed a bigger house—and one morning he’d wake up to discover that the place had been sold out from under him.

He’d put nothing past her.

“I don’t remember you asking my permission,” he said, his voice low, cold.

The look she gave him—half sexy, half amused—hit him right in the solar plexus, a sucker punch he hadn’t been expecting and definitely didn’t want. He could feel it spreading out like a pool of sunshine, taking hold and coloring everything it touched.

“Gunny taught me that it’s always better to ask for forgiveness than for permission,” she told him, as if that took care of everything.

“Gunny?” Garrett echoed.

Was that a relative? He knew it couldn’t be a boyfriend, because of all the time she put in with Ellie. No relationship could have been sustained with that amount of absence. Besides, Lani was so talkative, she would have given him far more details about the man than he would have wanted to hear.

She nodded. “That’s what I call my dad. I think it secretly makes him feel as if he’s still in the marines. He loved being in the service, but he gave it up for me because he didn’t have anyone to leave me with when he found out he was going to be deployed overseas.” She smiled fondly, and Garrett could see just how much she loved her father. Garrett thought of his own dad for the first time in years, and admitted to himself that he truly missed the man. “So to me,” she was saying, “he’ll always be Gunny.”

As usual, she’d told Garrett more than he’d actually asked for. It seemed to him that she was always talking, always filling the air with details. She was crowding not only his space, but his mind as well.

“I suppose that makes more sense than you having some computer tech wire my house for the internet,” he commented.

“You’ll get used to it. Pretty soon, you won’t know how you ever did without it,” she promised cheerfully.

He sincerely doubted it. He had no use for being up-to-date just for the sake of
being
that way. As far as he was concerned, technology made things far too complicated.

“Besides, you can’t fight the twenty-first century forever, Sheriff,” she pointed out.

“Apparently not with you around,” he grumbled.

She tried again. “And more to the point, Ellie needs the internet so that she’ll be able to do her research.”

This was a new angle, he thought. Lani hadn’t mentioned anything about this before. “What research?” he asked.

She would have thought that would be obvious. After all, the little girl
was
in school. “Ellie needs to be able to do research for her homework.”

School had become pretty much a blur. Garrett couldn’t remember what had gone on during his elementary school years, other than the time he’d spent trying to avoid his stepfather’s swinging hand and bad temper.

But even so, he couldn’t fathom the idea of in-depth homework at his niece’s tender age. “She’s six.”

For such a young man, he certainly didn’t make an effort to keep up on things that didn’t interest him, Lani realized. She would have thought that being sheriff would have forced him to stay abreast.

She picked up the thread that he had left her. “Beside the fact that school’s gotten more progressive since you went, before you know it Ellie’ll be seven, then eight, then nine. Then ten, and then—”

“Stop,” he begged, holding up his hands as if to physically ward off her words. “I get it. I get it.” Deciding that he needed air, he pushed his chair back from his desk and rose to his feet. “I’m going out on patrol.”

“Okay.” As he crossed the room, she suddenly looked up from what she was about to write. “Oh, by
the way, I wanted to ask you if you’re going to need any help with the decorating?”

Slowly, Garrett turned away from the door, an uneasy feeling growing in the pit of his stomach, telling him that this wasn’t going to be good.

“Decorating what?” he asked warily.

She gestured around the area. It was almost two weeks before Christmas and there wasn’t so much as a single decoration in the room. “You know, your house, the office.”

He looked around, not following her train of thought. Did she intend to overhaul every inch of his life now that he’d allowed her to have a toehold? “What’s wrong with the way they are now?”

“Nothing,” she answered, her tone clearly saying that she felt otherwise. “But this isn’t Christmassy looking.”

“And…?” he asked, still waiting for an explanation that made sense to him.

“And?” Lani echoed in disbelief. Was he serious? Of course he was. She was dealing with a man who obviously needed a visit from three Christmas ghosts to set him straight—and maybe even
that
wouldn’t help. “Well, it’s Christmas, or at least it’s going to be.” She looked at him, knowing the answer even as she asked the question. “You don’t own any Christmas decorations, do you?”

Garrett made no attempt to answer. Instead, he glared at her.

Lani shut her eyes and groaned. “Oh, my God, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.”

“No,” he said firmly, “you don’t.”

Lani opened her eyes again. “Yes, I do,” she contradicted. Then, before he could protest or make an objection, she quickly presented her argument. “Ellie needs Christmas. All kids need Christmas, but Ellie needs it more than most.”

As usual, her line of reasoning eluded him. “And why is that?”

Lani suppressed a sigh. For a sharp man, Garrett could be so very dense sometimes.

“Because this is her first Christmas without her mother. And, just as important, this is her first Christmas with you.” How could he not see something so obvious? “She needs to build up good memories. Now, are you going to have her looking back on her childhood, remembering that things went downhill after she turned six, or are you going to make it so that she’s going to be able to look back and smile because she has some very good memories of the years she spent with you?”

Chisholm did have a way of phrasing her arguments; he’d give her that. But not out loud. He knew that even hinting at that would allow her to think she had carte blanche.

“Anyone ever tell you that you can be damn annoying?”

“You do. Every time you look at me,” she added glibly, before he could dispute her statement. “I’ll be over tonight,” she told him as she got started making her list. “With decorations.”

“I never doubted it for a minute,” he answered without bothering to turn around again.

The door slammed hard as he left.

Lani grinned to herself as she went on writing her list. He wasn’t fooling her. She was wearing him down.

“A real Christmas tree?” Ellie asked in amazement that very same afternoon. “With real branches and everything?”

It was hard to miss the way the little girl’s eyes were shining. Still, the big, handsome robot of a sheriff had obviously been completely oblivious to the expression on his niece’s face or the wistful note in her high voice. Lani glanced in his direction, holding her breath, waiting to see if he suddenly voiced any last minute objections to securing a real Christmas tree. He didn’t.

Relieved, Lani told the little girl, “Yes, we’re going to go get ‘a real Christmas tree with real branches and everything.’” Sympathy tugged at her heart. As was her way, she picked up on what wasn’t being said. “Didn’t you have one back where you lived?”

The small shoulders lifted and fell in dismissal. “We had a tree, but it was a fake one,” Ellie told her. Staring down at the toes of the new shoes she’d gotten just last week, she explained solemnly, “My father said there was no reason to buy a real one just to throw it out again in a couple of weeks.”

“Practical,” Lani heard Garrett murmur under his breath.

Now there was his problem in a nutshell, she thought. “Christmas isn’t about being practical,” she told him, determined to bring him around if it was the last thing she ever did. Changing his attitude had become her personal crusade. “Christmas is about magic. Christmas
is
magic,” she declared. Turning back to Ellie, she bit her tongue to keep from commenting on the girl’s late father’s Scroogelike philosophy. Instead, said, “Out here we have lots of trees to choose from, so we can go pick one out today for ourselves. We can go get our own very special Christmas tree. Can’t we, Uncle Garrett?” she asked, glancing at him over her shoulder, waiting for his confirmation.

Hearing the question directed at him had Garrett looking at her in surprise. Up until this point, he had just assumed that, as with everything else during the last few weeks, Lani was going to commandeer this task. That his live wire of a deputy would be the one to take Ellie to the Christmas tree lot. That Chisholm would select a tree and do the honors herself by cutting it down.

He had no doubts that she could. The woman might be on the small side, but she had already proved to him that she was abnormally strong. She probably spent her off hours bending steel in her bare hands—when she wasn’t leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, he thought.

And then a question hit him. “How would you know about where to get a tree?” he asked her. “This is your first winter in Booth.”

“It might be my first winter here, but I have no intention of spending it like a hermit,” she told him pointedly, then added the simple rule that had always seen her through. “If I don’t know something, I ask questions. Lots and lots of questions,” she added, hugging Ellie to her with one arm. The little girl looked up at her, grinning happily.

Chisholm was spouting a basic, no frills philosophy; why Garrett found it so irritating he didn’t know. But he found everything about this woman to be that way. Like that mouth of hers. Even when it wasn’t moving—which was rare—he found it annoyingly distracting.

And compelling.

Garrett wanted to still her mouth. With his own.

If he was being strictly honest, he’d have to admit to himself that his mind kept straying to thoughts of the overly attractive deputy more and more, usually at the most inopportune moments. And God knew that couldn’t be good.

“I bet you do,” he commented in response to her statement about asking question. She’d certainly heaped enough questions on him, shattering any hopes he had of maintaining silence for more than a couple seconds at a time.

Aware that his niece was currently looking up at him hopefully, he had no recourse; he had to agree to going along on this excursion. So, with a sigh, he said, “Okay, we might as well go now before all the best ones are taken.”

Even though he’d been on the receiving end a couple of times already, he still wasn’t prepared for
Ellie’s response. Suddenly, small arms went around his waist in a fierce hug and a little face buried itself in his shirt, just above his belt buckle. “Thank you, Uncle Garrett,” Ellie was exclaiming—rather loudly, since her face was pressed against his middle.

A warmth initially ignited by the heat of Ellie’s breath spread through him. The warmth was ratcheted up a notch when Lani followed his niece’s example and she hugged him as well. Her arms reached up higher. And more securely.

“There’s a decent person in there, after all,” she told him triumphantly as she released him and stepped back. “I just knew it!”

“There’s a decent person on the outside, as well,” he countered.

“True, but he’s a lot more frightening,” she answered, suppressing a grin. “Go get your jacket, Ellie. We are going tree hunting,” she declared triumphantly.

The girl went running off. “I’ll be right back,” she cried, then begged, “Please don’t leave without me!”

Garrett snorted. “As if that would happen. That damn tree wouldn’t be coming into this house if it wasn’t for her.”

Still have my work cut out for me,
Lani couldn’t help thinking. And the decorations were only the last part of the equation.

H
E REALLY WASN’T SURE
just how it happened. Or how he’d gotten roped into any of this, since he had absolutely no intention of joining in anything that remotely had to do with preparing for a holiday that had long since stopped having any meaning for him.

But somehow, he’d been forced to come along on the tree hunt and, as it turned out, he rather than his overbearing deputy had been the one to make the final selection—with the approval of his niece—of the Christmas tree. He was surprised that his opinion was even requested. The only thing that didn’t surprise him was that he was given the job of cutting the selected spruce tree down once it had been paid for.

Together with Lani—and Ellie, because the woman insisted that his niece join in the effort—he managed to hoist the newly cut evergreen up on top of the roof of his 4x4. The man selling the trees, Matt Lockhart, supplied thick ropes to safely anchor it. Garrett wasn’t surprised that Lani took over the job. She made better knots than he did.

With the spruce now immobilized, they transported it to his house.

And then, he discovered much to his dismay—although he’d already had a sneaking suspicious it was going to turn out like this—the real work began.

True to her word, Lani had brought a whole cache of decorations over to his house, some new, others with a long history she had no inhibitions about sharing.

For the sake of peace, he agreed to help decorate the tree he had lugged in through the door and put up. And while he worked, the blonde whirlwind managed to make the rest of his living room look as if a Christmas shop had recently exploded, and there were annoyingly festive decorations everywhere he looked.

By the time the evening was winding down, they were all but finished.

Stepping back, he surveyed his work with a critical eye and caught himself thinking that it hadn’t turned out so badly, after all. And—this part he intended to keep to himself—he’d actually enjoyed decorating with Lani and his niece.

“So, what do you think?” he asked Ellie.

Circling the tree, she nodded with approval. And then she stopped.

“It needs an angel,” she said, suddenly looking wistful and solemn. “Mama always put her special angel right on top of the tree instead of a star.”

“What kind of an angel?” Lani asked, thinking she could probably find one close enough in appearance to please the girl. The emporium had several.

“It was wooden and the angel’s dress was painted a really pretty blue,” Ellie remembered fondly. “The bottom was hollow so Mama could stick it up on the tippy-top when she stood on a chair.” She looked at Lani sadly. “I think the angel flew away in the bus crash, ’cause Mama made sure she packed it with her. She said it was the most special angel in the whole world and she didn’t want to ever lose it.”

Lani noticed that since the girl started talking about the ornament, Garrett had gotten very distant looking again. So much for making giant strides, she thought, once again resigning herself to the fact that making Ellie’s uncle come around was going to take a huge amount of painstakingly slow work.

She knew by now that he wasn’t going to talk to her about what was bothering him, not with his niece there. The only slim hope she had was to get him
alone. So she turned toward Ellie and asked, “Honey, can you go wash up now? It’s almost time for bed.”

She bobbed her head, it was clear that at least some of the magic surrounding the season had reentered her life.

“Sure.” And with that, Ellie hurried off.

Once the little girl was out of earshot, Lani turned toward Garrett and said, “Okay, tell me what’s the matter.”

He didn’t disappoint her, but gave her the answer she fully expected. “Nothing.”

Allowing a sigh to escape, she deliberately fell back on the facts. “That’s not what your face is saying. Tell me,” she pressed.

His eyes were flat and distant as he looked at her. She felt a chill go sweeping through her heart. “You’re wasting your talents here. You should be with the FBI,” he told her.

“I’ll apply next month,” she answered cryptically. “Now tell me what’s wrong,” she coaxed again, more insistently this time. And then she realized what he wasn’t saying. “You made that angel for your sister, didn’t you?”

Garrett stared at her for a long moment, his expression frosty, definitely no warmer now than it had been just a moment ago. “Really wasted in a place like Booth,” he repeated.

She tried again. “Talk to me. Please.” She couldn’t bear that look on his face. There was a sadness about it she knew he wasn’t aware of. A feeling that cut deep. “What are you thinking?”

He deliberately avoided looking at her this time.
She was probing in an area that she had no business looking into. “That you’re annoying.”

Once more with feeling.
It seemed as if for every two steps forward she took with this man, she was always taking one step back. “We’ve already established that. What else?”

A wave of pain swept over him, nearly overwhelming him. Garrett wasn’t even aware that he sighed.

But Lani was.

“That I should have protected her. That maybe if I had, Ellen would still be alive.” And now he did look at Lani. “Still here.”

She saw the pain in his eyes. The pain he couldn’t block or strip away.

“And maybe not,” she pointed out gently. “Women get very stubborn when they think they’re in love. Beating yourself up over what you should or shouldn’t have done in the past doesn’t change anything in the present. You can only go forward from here, Garrett, not back.”

The barriers he’d tried to maintain rose up again. “That belongs in a fortune cookie.”

She knew Garrett was trying to get a rise out of her, to turn this into an argument, but she refused to take the bait. “As long as you read it and promise to take it to heart, doesn’t matter where you see it.”

“Aunt Lani, I’m ready,” Ellie called out.

Lani cocked her head toward the den. Ellie was in bed and waiting to be tucked in. Fingers mentally crossed, Lani looked to see if Garrett would volunteer. But his expression remained stony.

Well, she wasn’t about to give up that easily. “I’m going to go tuck Ellie in. Why don’t you join me?”

Right now, Garrett couldn’t look at his sister’s little girl. It would bring up too many memories he just couldn’t deal with. “No, I—”

Lani took his hand in hers and tugged in the direction of the hallway.

“Join me,” she repeated more firmly. There was a smile on her face, but her tone said she wasn’t taking no for an answer.