A Bramble House Christmas (Carrigans of the Circle C Book 6) (24 page)

She couldn’t help softening at those words, and the sincere look in his eyes as he said them. But then she remembered how she’d felt staring down the barrel of that shotgun, and her resolve was back, stronger than ever. “Goodbye, O’Dell.”

On his way out the door, he turned over the “Open” sign in the window.

Had he... ?

He gave her a wink and another one of his killer smiles. “Didn’t want anyone walking in on us, did I?”

Damn it, he had.

But she still managed to get the last word. “You mean like last time?”

D
awson dropped the smile, along with the pretense of being cool and collected, the moment he left Sage’s store. That had been harder than he’d thought it would be. But he hadn’t lied when he said it was good to see her, because it had been. Damn good.

He knew he deserved every bit of her cool disdain.

But he’d hoped to see a crack in the veneer. There’d been one sweet second when he’d caught a glimpse of something that wasn’t hatred in her eyes. But then it was gone and all that was left was a solid concrete wall, with her on one side and him on the other.

Well. He’d said his apology at least. Taken the first step.

He took a moment to soak in the ambiance of Marietta, Montana. It was cool in the shade, but if you stepped into the sun you could almost believe you’d been transported back to summer. He liked the look of the park in front of the Courthouse. And the way Copper Mountain shone above the town, sunlight glinting off the granite facets.

It was a real town, solid and also beautiful.

He just hoped he hadn’t made a big mistake coming here.

D
awson was in town for the rodeo, Sage supposed. But had it really been necessary for him to come to
her
town? There were rodeos all over this country and he had to pick Copper Mountain Rodeo in Marietta Montana. Volunteers and shop owners had been getting ready for weeks. There were banners on Main Street and most of the stores had a western-themed display in their front window. Last night she had coerced her friend Jenny into helping her set out bales of hay, and a rusted wagon wheel in her own window, using them as background for her display of pretty copper boxes.

Poor Jenny. Her big fancy wedding had been called off and she was really beside herself. But maybe it had been for the best. Sage hadn’t been all that fond of Charles.

Hopefully the rodeo would distract Jenny from her heartache. The kick-off was happening tomorrow night with street dancing and a fund-raising dinner. In the morning the barricades would go up, blocking off traffic from the three blocks that were considered the heart of the town.

Sage’s shop was within this area and she was expecting her chocolate cowboy boots to sell like crazy. Not so much the hot chocolate—that was a big hit in winter. But she’d just started making chocolate dipped frozen vanilla yogurt bars and she suspected she’d have a run on those as well.

With the store sign saying “Open” once more, customers resumed coming in, some to browse, but most to buy. She noticed her hands trembling as she counted out change to the first few of them.

Damn that O’Dell. After all this time he should have just
let it be.

A
t six o’clock Sage closed her shop, dropped a deposit off at the bank, then got on her bike to cycle home. As usual her route took her along Bramble Lane, the nicest street in town, with stately brick and stone homes on one side and the Marietta River on the other. Many of the original mining magnates who had built this town on the profits of copper, had chosen this road for home.

Her own mother, Beverly Bramble, had descended from one of those families, and not only this street, but also the family home, still bore their name. Sage was passing it now, a red brick mansion on a stone foundation with white trim and a gracious porch. There was a turret above the porch and a widow’s walk to the left of that.

When her mother was still alive, she used to take Sage and her three sisters to have tea with great-aunt Mabel once a month. That tradition had died, along with her mother, over fifteen-years ago. But great-aunt Mabel still lived on—now supported by a grand-niece who had turned most of the bedrooms in the old mansion into guest rooms.

Sage still popped in on the old lady now and then. But Mabel was so rude, she never looked forward to those visits and suspected her great-aunt didn’t get much enjoyment out of them either.

She only continued them as a nod to her mother’s memory.

Several blocks further on Bramble Lane, past the mansions, were some more modest homes. Sage hit her brakes when she saw a ‘Conditional Sale’ sign on a pretty two-story with a red door and a charming stone walkway. The house had been for sale for almost three months. Now it seemed, someone had made a serious offer.

She stuck out her bottom lip, disappointed. Not that she had the money for a down payment—she’s checked the price and it was too high. But while the house was on the market, at least she’d been able to
dream.

Sage placed her foot back on the pedal of her bike, then pushed off, continuing down Bramble Lane then taking a left toward the center of town. She loved cycling to and from work, but never more than in the autumn when the cottonwoods were golden and the air was as crisp as the Spartan apples that grew in the valleys up north of Marietta.

At the next street she began to feel the old ache in her knee like a whisper from her past. Not so much pain as a reminder of what happened when you tried to please someone else, rather than yourself.

The days of trying to impress her dad were over for her now. It had been an uphill battle from the start, since she’d been born a girl, rather than a boy, the third of four sisters, the quiet one of the bunch, pretty but not beautiful like Mattie, reasonably intelligent but not brilliant like Dani, and, God knows, nowhere near as tough and brave as Callan who still lived and worked on the family ranch with their dad.

When she reached the house she was currently renting—small and utterly charmless compared to the Bramble Lane one—Sage wheeled her bike into the garage, then headed in the back door to the kitchen where she exchanged her bike helmet and gloves for her purse and a box of the salted caramels from the fridge holding her extra inventory. She thought about changing her outfit. It was family reunion time at the Circle C Ranch tonight. Though Dani lived in Seattle, and Mattie and Wes had a spread up near Missoula, they always came home for the Copper Mountain Rodeo. The night before festivities officially began was family night, marked by a big barbecue at the ranch house.

Sage opened her closet door to consider her choices. But the sight of the pumpkin-colored taffeta she’d worn for Jenny’s aborted wedding was so depressing she decided she would go as she was.

One day soon she needed to put that dress in a box... or maybe sell it to a consignment clothing shop.

The drive to the Circle C was a long and beautiful one, winding along the valley that cut through the Gallatin Range to her right and the Absarokas to her left. Here there were miles and miles between neighbors. Most of the land was owned by just three families.

First were the MacCreadies, whose ranch house and outbuildings were about half-an-hour from Marietta. Mrs. MacCreadie was the sweetest woman, but she’d gone a little strange after the birth of her triplets—which had come just a year after her second child.

“You’d have to lock me away in a mental institution if that happened to me,” Sage remembered her mother saying. Now
her
parents had known how to use birth control. At least four years were between her and each of her sisters.

Tucked deeper into the valley, she knew, was the Douglases place. But tragedy had made that ranch a place she preferred not to think about. One of her sisters—she was pretty sure it had been Mattie—used to babysit for the Douglases. Before.

One of her favorite Lady Antebellum songs started to play and she turned up the volume on the radio.

Fifteen minutes farther she came to the Sheenan’s spread. Bill and his wife had had a boy to match every one of the Carrigan girls, but they’d had very little to do with one another in school. Water rights were what it was all about when you were a rancher and Bill and her father had an ongoing feud about the mountain-fed stream that ran along the border of their properties. They both had the right to use that water, but over the years both Bill and her own father had been guilty of some surreptitious damming and diverting.

Sage didn’t know who had started it.

And she didn’t care.

She had something else against the Sheenans...
Secret number two.

H
er dad was barbecuing hearty beef ribs on the back deck when she arrived. Hawksley Carrigan wasn’t the sort of father who took to hugging and kissing, so she patted his shoulder as she walked by. His hair was the usual gray tangle, but his face seemed to age every time she saw him lately. More deep grooves in the sun-baked skin. Fallen jowls and bushy eyebrows that made him seem even more forbidding than he had when he was younger.

“’bout time you got here.”

“The shop closes at six, Dad.” Of course, mentioning that was like barbecuing salmon during wasp season—looking to get stung. Her father could not understand why she’d gone into business making and selling hand-made chocolates. If Hawksley had his way, she’d still be living on the ranch and barrel-racing—despite her injured knee.

“Where’s Wes?” Mattie’s husband was usually out on the deck with her father. Not that the two men liked each other much. But when it came to barbecuing meat—the men knew where they belonged.

“Didn’t come this time.”

That was a first. Knowing better than to try and coax the reason for this from her father, she headed for the kitchen, the biggest room in the house, but also, paradoxically, the coziest.

Mattie was at the butcher block island, chopping veggies for a salad. Callan was pulling the nice dishes out from  the glass-fronted, built-in maple cabinetry. As for Dani—well, the brains of the family was drinking wine and supervising.

“Hey, sisters! I’m here!” She slipped her box of chocolates on the counter by the phone where they wouldn’t get in the way, then targeted her oldest sister with a kiss. “Mattie—where’s Wes?”