High-Caliber Christmas Read online

  “That’s what’s so weird,” Jace said. “McCall got a photograph of John Carris. We really look nothing alike.”

  That was odd, Kayley thought. Ava must have seen something in Jace, a kindness in his face, a compassion, or even his pain, something that had drawn her to him—and Whitehorse.

  “Maybe it was always supposed to end here,” Kayley said making Jace laugh. She did love the sound of his laugh.

  “Are you telling me it was fate?”

  She thought of Marie. “Something like that.”

  Jace nodded, his gaze caressing her face. “Maybe you’re right.”

  JACE REALIZED THAT AS strange and tragic as it was, Ava and Eva had brought him and Kayley together again. Life did work in mysterious ways.

  He took solace in the fact that Ava was at peace. Eva, well, he wouldn’t count on that.

  Since taking Kayley home from the hospital, Jace had been busy getting his life in order. He’d taken the For Sale sign out of the yard and called his boss. He wouldn’t be going back. His boss tried to change his mind, but Jace finally knew what he wanted. There would be other, younger men eager to save the world.

  His place was in Whitehorse, Montana.

  He’d finally quit running.

  But that meant there was one thing he had to do.

  One day in the weeks before Christmas, he drove south through the snowy rolling prairie. It was another of those brilliant winter days when the sun glistens on the snow and the sky is an incredible blinding blue.

  In the distance, the Little Rockies were a deep purple. Only a few clouds bobbed along in that sea of blue. Several bald eagles watched him drive by from their perches in the bare limbs of a tree silhouetted against the horizon.

  Jace had never been to the Winchester ranch, but then again few people had in the past twenty-seven years.

  As he drove under the log arch, he thought of his mother. Jace knew Marie would have approved of what he was about to do. That made him feel a little better.

  For years Kayley wasn’t the only one who’d been waiting, believing one day he would come home to the woman he loved and this place and lifestyle he’d once loved more than life itself.

  His mother had faith that he would eventually quit running from the pain of his loss and his fears and risk that kind of loss again for love.

  As he came over a rise, he saw the ranch lodge. The log structure looked old and very western. He’d heard the lodge had been built back in the 1940s, designed after the famous Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone Park.

  According to the stories, patriarch Call Winchester had amassed a fortune and built the lodge onto an older section his parents had constructed years before.

  He’d added the adjacent barns and outbuildings and bought up more land until he had one of the largest ranches in the county.

  As Jace got out, the front door opened and he saw Virginia Winchester standing in the doorway.

  The look on her face threatened to break his heart. She looked so happy to see him. He wondered for a moment if coming out here wasn’t a mistake. He wasn’t sure he was ready for this.

  Then he reminded himself of his promise not to close himself off from the people who cared about him and walked toward the lodge and his mother.

  Chapter Fifteen

  With Christmas and her wedding just weeks away, Sheriff McCall Winchester knew she couldn’t put it off any longer.

  The whole family would be attending the wedding. She had to find out if someone in the family had been involved in her father’s death. She knew her grandmother had been doing some investigating of her own. As far as McCall could tell, though, Pepper hadn’t discovered who might have betrayed not only McCall’s father, but also Pepper herself.

  “She’s never going to let it lie,” McCall told her fiancé, Luke Crawford, as they lay in the small double bed in his travel trailer.

  Through the window, she could see the beautiful house he’d built for them. Luke said it would be finished by the time they returned from their honeymoon and had made her promise she wouldn’t peek inside until then.

  She couldn’t have been more excited—and anxious about marrying this man lying next to her.

  “Are we talking about your grandmother again?” he asked, sounding half-asleep.

  “I’m worried about the wedding.” She knew they’d had this discussion many times before. When her grandmother had insisted she and Luke get married at the Winchester ranch, McCall had been touched. After all, except for a few months of her life, she’d been the black sheep, an outcast, not even accepted as a Winchester, her paternity in question.

  All that had changed when she’d discovered that her father, Trace Winchester, had never left town on the lam, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a devastated mother. His murder had brought his daughter and mother together.

  The second shock to both of them was how much McCall resembled her grandmother.

  “The problem is that Pepper is still convinced someone in the family was involved in Trace’s murder,” she told her fiancé now.

  Luke opened one eye and focused it on her. “I wondered how long it would take before you admitted you agree with her.”

  “Who said I agree?”

  Luke laughed and closed his eye again. “Your grandmother is right. You make a damned good sheriff. You’re a born investigator. So investigate. Better to find out before the wedding, don’t you think?”

  She lay back on her pillow, staring up at the ceiling. “There isn’t much time,” she said, more to herself than Luke. “But the whole family is coming home a few days before the wedding.”

  McCall sighed. Why had she been putting it off?

  Because her father was dead and nothing could bring him back. And investigating her own family, the family she’d just been accepted into, wasn’t something she’d wanted to do. A sure sign she shouldn’t be sheriff.

  As she studied the trailer ceiling, she had to admit the truth to herself. She believed that the killer hadn’t acted alone, had suspected it from the moment she’d found her father’s remains within sight of the Winchester ranch. There had only been one reason to kill her father on that high ridge with the ranch in the distance.

  And while she was being truthful, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know who in the Winchester family had been involved. She feared her grandmother would regret knowing, as well.

  But the wedding day was looming. It was time to find out who in the wedding party was an accomplice to murder.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Kayley heard the sound of a pickup coming up the drive and looked out to see Jace pull up and get out of his uncle’s truck.

  As he reached in the back, she caught a glimpse of evergreen. To her delight, he pulled out a Christmas tree. With everything that had been going on, she hadn’t had time to even think about Christmas, let alone a tree. Not that she could go out and cut one with her ankle in a cast—even a walking cast.

  As Jace started for the house, he spotted her at the window. He smiled and mouthed “I love you.”

  She felt that surge of warmth that always filled her at the sight of him. She hobbled to the door and opened it, letting him and the tree in on a gust of cold air.

  “I know you like to go get your own tree every year, but since you can’t, I went out and cut you one. I hope you like it.”

  “That was very thoughtful.”

  He grinned at her, that melting grin of his. “I was hoping we could decorate it together. Like we used to.”

  She nodded, smiling. Over the past few weeks, they hadn’t spent a lot of time together. She’d been busy with school, and he had been busy at his place.

  “I’d like that,” Kayley said, remembering all the other Christmases they had decorated not only the tree at her house, but at his, as well. “I have some hot apple cider on the stove, and I made another batch of gingerbread men.”

  He breathed in the scent. “Yum. It smells great in here.”

  While Jace set up the tr
ee, Kayley put Christmas music on the stereo and dug out the boxes of Christmas ornaments.

  Outside it had begun to snow, huge white flakes that floated by on the wind. They were definitely going to have a white Christmas. She loved these kinds of snowstorms. There was something so pure in the cold silence of falling snow.

  Inside, they decorated the tree, each ornament bringing back memories and stories they relived together. They laughed and recalled moments with his mother, Marie, who had always loved Christmas.

  When they’d finished, it was dark out. Kayley turned out the house lights, and Jace plugged in the tree. The sight brought tears to her eyes.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered as Jace took her hand and they sat on the floor under it looking up at it just as they had when they were kids. It felt like the time she’d seen her first Christmas tree and known there would be many more to come.

  “Thank you, Jace. You couldn’t have given me something I wanted more.”

  “It is beautiful. Just like you.”

  She looked over at him. Love shone in his dark eyes. He’d come home to her. There was no doubt in her mind now. Jace Dennison was finally where he belonged. By her side.

  “I have something else for you,” he said.

  “Jace, it isn’t Christmas yet.”

  “It’s a little pre-Christmas surprise.” He reached into his pocket and brought out a small velvet box.

  Her heart began to pound. “Jace—”

  “Please, just open it.”

  She took the box in trembling fingers, then slowly opened it and felt her heart lift like helium. There, nestled in the box, was the engagement ring he’d given her twelve years ago. The same one she’d given back the day he left Whitehorse.

  “You once said that you loved this ring. Do you still love it?” he asked.

  She threw her arms around his neck, unable to hold back the tears.

  He got on both knees in front of her, the two of them sitting in the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. “Kayley Mitchell, will you marry me?”

  She looked into his dark eyes and saw nothing but love. Jace Dennison really was home—and hers. “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  Jace slipped the ring onto her finger, a perfect fit. “I love you, Kayley. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  As she curled up in his arms beside the tree, Christmas music playing softly and the smell of cider and gingerbread cookies in the air, Kayley decided to keep her little surprise until Christmas.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7509-0

  HIGH-CALIBER CHRISTMAS

  Copyright © 2010 by Barbara Heinlein

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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