Holiday in a Stetson: The Sheriff Who Found Christmas / A Rancho Diablo Christmas

A Holiday gift for readers of

American Romance

Two heartwarming Christmas novellas from two of your favorite authors

The Sheriff Who Found Christmas by Marie Ferrarella A Rancho Diablo Christmas by Tina Leonard

Holiday in a Stetson

The Sheriff Who Found Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

A Rancho Diablo Christmas

Tina Leonard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Sheriff Who Found Christmas

Marie Ferrarella

Dear Reader,

I have always been a sucker for a Christmas story. To date, I think I’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life about forty times. Each year, when Hallmark airs its traditional Christmas story, I’m right there, watching every minute—even the commercials, which all have to do with Christmas cards and coming home or reconnecting with family. I get misty-eyed just thinking about it.

For me, there truly is nothing greater than a story that takes place around Christmas—unless it’s a story about a cowboy. Put the two together and, well, I’m there. So when I was asked to write a short story taking place around Christmas time and set in a Texas town, they had me at “Could you—?” Needless to say, writing this story about a withdrawn sheriff who is forced to reach out to his late sister’s newly orphaned daughter and not just give her a home but a Christmas to remember, as well—and who does so with the help of his deputy, a transplanted homicide detective from San Diego—was nothing short of a labor of love for me.

I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it at least half as much as I did writing it. In closing, I wish you love this holiday season—and always.

Love,

Marie Ferrarella

MARIE FERRARELLA is a USA TODAY bestselling author and RITA® Award winner. She has written over two hundred books for Silhouette and Harlequin Books, some under the name of Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

To Mama,

I miss you every day,

But

most of all,

I miss you at Christmas

Chapter One

He wasn’t a superstitious man.

He wasn’t a man who believed in very much of anything, actually. But there were times when Sheriff Garrett Tanner felt as if fate, or the powers that be, or whatever it was that gave order to the universe, had it in for him.

This feeling involved more than just his childhood, which for all intents and purposes had come to an abrupt, jarring end when he was five. That was when his father, a loving, gentle giant of a man, died suddenly. His mother, Mary, an exceedingly timid woman unable to exist without a husband, remarried less than six months later. Her second choice, made from desperation rather than anything her heart dictated, was a tough-as-nails ex-marine.

Garrett’s stepfather, Wendell Warner, never missed an opportunity to belittle him and bully him. It was a harsh childhood, but some kids had worse ones. Garrett had survived his, and ultimately, it had made him strong. Unlike some, faced with demoralizing factors in their lives, he didn’t become a homeless drifter or a serial killer, both of which, statistics were quick to point out, half the abused children grew up to become.

He’d outlived his tormentor—his stepfather had died in a drunken bar fight on the receiving end of the jagged edge of a broken bottle—and Garrett had gone on to become the sheriff of the very town his late stepfather had had nothing but contempt for.

As it turned out, his mother had exactly six months of freedom before she slipped on a patch of ice and hit her head on the curb. She died twelve days later without ever regaining consciousness. Garrett had her buried in the plot beside his father. It was his way of denying that his stepfather had ever existed.

With his parents gone, he’d wanted to do nothing more than go about his job and live out his days in the small town of Booth, Texas, southwest of Houston. He’d figured that things like having a wife and family were beyond the realm of emotionally damaged people like him, and he was fine with that. Being alone really didn’t bother him. He’d been alone even when his mother and stepfather were alive and he had lived with them.

The only person he had ever been close to during those years was his half sister, Ellen. Infused with his own father’s ethics, Garrett had looked after her while she was growing up, and had kept her, as much as he could, out of his stepfather’s way.

The situation grew more and more tense, and he’d believed that one day they would come to a head over Ellen. But then she’d abruptly quit high school—to marry a marine who’d been created in the image and likeness of her dad. Everything about Private First Class Steve Duffy reeked of the abusive ways of her father—right down, Garrett suspected, to verbally controlling her and making her feel worthless.

Just before Ellen had run off, Garrett had come as close to begging as he ever had in his life. He had asked her not to marry Duffy, but she did anyway. The morning after he’d tried to appeal to her better judgment, she was gone. Shortly thereafter, she’d called to tell their mother that she was now Mrs. Steve Duffy.

Garrett had lost track of Ellen after that. Seven whole years went by without a word from her. And then, a month ago, he’d gotten a letter. It began with her apology for allowing so much time to pass without contacting him. He suspected even more would have gone by if it hadn’t been for the fact that her husband had “died serving his country.”

Garrett was more inclined to think that the quicktempered marine had probably died in some sort of one-on-one confrontation with the relative of another woman he was attempting to hurt and brutalize.

Whatever the cause of his brother-in-law’s demise, Garrett privately thought it was a reason to rejoice more than mourn. His sister was finally free to reclaim her life, and still young enough to enjoy it and make something of herself.

When he’d read that she was thinking of coming “back home,” he’d been surprised. But once he entertained that notion, he had to admit that he was very pleased. His sister was, after all, the only person he had ever opened up to. The only person he had really cared about.

Hard though it was to own up to, he’d lost any feelings for his mother a long time ago, around the time she’d first allowed his stepfather to take a strap to him and whip him.

Anticipating Ellen’s arrival, Garrett had started getting things ready for her. He’d told her that she was welcome to stay with him for as long as she wanted. And he was completely unprepared for the phone call that came as he sat in his office this morning.

Rather than his sister, he found himself talking to a social worker named Beth Honeycutt. As he listened, a feeling of foreboding came over him. The disembodied voice told him that there had been an accident. The bus Ellen had been on had been involved in a head-on collision with a cross-country Mack truck.

The room around Garrett grew very dark, despite the fact that it was ten in the morning and the sun had until moments ago filled the small sheriff’s office.

He clutched the receiver in his hand, feeling the life drain out of him. He heard a distant voice asking if there’d been any survivors. Belatedly, he realized that the voice belonged to him.

“Just one,” the solemn woman on the other end of the line told him. “Your niece survived, Sheriff Tanner.”

The numbness inside him splintered a hairbreadth, just enough to allow a measure of confusion to push its way in. Ellen hadn’t said anything about having a daughter.

Maybe there’d been some mistake. Maybe this was someone else’s sister and the woman had gotten phone numbers mixed up.

“What niece?” he asked in a raspy tone.

“Yours,” the social worker told him. “Ellen Duffy’s little girl. She’s six years old and her name is Ellie.”

Garrett’s voice, already low, became even lower as he growled, “There has to be some mistake. My sister didn’t have any children.”

“She had this one,” Beth insisted. “Your niece was discovered unconscious in the wreckage. Apparently her body had been shielded by her mom. It looked as if Mrs. Duffy threw herself over the girl at the last minute. Most likely, she died saving her daughter.”

The woman who had thrown his entire world into chaos with just a few simple sentences paused to take a breath, then continued. “Ellie was taken to the hospital. The doctors found that she sustained some cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. She was released within a few hours. When can you come by to pick her up?”

Garrett felt like a man trapped in a nightmare. What the woman on the other end of the line was asking wasn’t registering in his brain. “How’s that again?” he murmured.

“When can you come by to pick up your niece?” Beth Honeycutt repeated. She sounded sympathetic, but removed.

He said the first thing that occurred to him. “I don’t know.”

Garrett struggled to deal with the huge curve he had been thrown. For the most part, when he wasn’t patrolling Booth, he led a very solitary life. He didn’t mingle, didn’t join in any of the festivities that were periodically held in town—not in summer and especially not around the holidays, which were swiftly approaching.

There was no place for a child in his life. He’d had a dog once, a mongrel named Blue, but that had been more a case of the animal adopting him than the other way around. Moreover, it had taken a long time before he’d accepted the dog into his life. Blue’s passing had left Garrett more emotionally isolated than before.

A child? No, he had no place for one, no ability to take care of one. There had to be some other option, some alternate course.

“Look,” he said, still reeling from the news of Ellen’s death, “can’t you find some place for her?”

The social worker sounded neither surprised nor annoyed. Apparently, she’d heard requests like this before. “You are your sister’s only living relative. If you don’t accept responsibility for your niece, there’s no alternative but to put her into the system. What that means—”

“I know what that means,” he said, cutting the woman off. It meant a string of foster homes and a nomadic life at best. At worst …

At worst she could wind up in a home like the one he’d grown up in.

In all good conscience, he couldn’t do that to Ellen’s child.

“So you’ll come to pick her up?” Ms. Honeycutt asked, taking his interruption to mean he’d changed his mind.

Pick her up. As if he was swinging by a restaurant to pick up an order of takeout.

Garrett frowned.

Pulling out a sheet of paper, he picked up a pen and asked, “Where is it, exactly, that you’re located?”

The woman rattled off an address in the center of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The accident, she went on to tell him, had taken place just outside the city limits.

Ellen hadn’t even made it back to Texas, much less to Booth, Garrett thought, feeling an uncustomary pang.

Damn it, Ellen, you should have listened to me. You shouldn’t have married that creep in the first place. Then you’d still be alive.

But she had married Duffy, and now she was gone.

And Garrett had a niece.

What the hell was he going to do with a little girl? he wondered. He didn’t even have anywhere to put her—unless he fixed up his couch. He supposed that would have to do until he figured out his next move.

After muttering a few final words to the social worker, Garrett hung up the phone. Tossing the receiver back into its cradle would have been a more accurate description.

Damn it all to hell, anyway.

“Something wrong, Sheriff?”

The question came from the second reason he thought that fate—or whatever—had it in for him.

Slowly, Garrett turned in his swivel chair to face the other occupant in the small office, a space that had until recently been his private domain.

Six months ago the town council—six of the wealthiest men in Booth—had whimsically decided that keeping the peace in the extremely slow growing Texas town required more than just one person. Telling Garrett that they didn’t want him to wear himself out, they had gone on to insist he needed a deputy, someone he could share the load with.

Or the boredom, he’d thought at the time.

Then, because he turned down each and every potential candidate who came in to interview for the newly created position, the town council arbitrarily took it upon themselves to do the interviewing—and hiring.

Garrett knew he was doomed then.

And he’d been right. To a man, the six-member committee had voted to hire a law enforcement agent who had just moved here from San Diego—a former homicide detective named Lani Chisholm. A woman he now considered a perpetual thorn in his side. A woman who, much to his annoyance, seemed intent on bringing sunshine to every dim corner of their mutual existence.

He’d given up hoping that she would find life here too uneventful and dull, and would move back to San Diego.

Instead, she appeared to have the staying power of an application of Superglue.

Her bright, cheerful smile, evident even in the early hours of the morning, got on his nerves. As did her voice. It was much too sultry for a deputy.

He raised his eyes, shifting them in her direction, and glared at her. As Davy Crockett had been reputed to do, he’d decided to stare down what he considered to be his adversary.

Chapter Two

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 satisfaction,” 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.”