Kitabı oku: «A Texas Christmas Reunion»

Chapter One

If not for the fact that Juliette Lindor had a baby riding her hip, she would have been tempted to march across the street and disrupt the robbery taking place at Beaumont Spur Savings and Loan.

Goodness knew Sheriff Hank would not be running to the rescue of the townsfolk’s money. No doubt the half-hearted lawman was having a fine high time with his cousins, who were at this very moment incarcerated in his jail.

“For pity’s sake,” she muttered, witnessing the crime through the front window of her restaurant.

Apparently the bank was destined to be robbed today. According to town gossip, which there was plenty of, the sheriff’s Underwood cousins would have held it up had they not been arrested last night for previous crimes. Beaumont Spur’s lawman was not so unworthy as to set his relatives free, but neither was he dedicated to holding up every jot and title of the law.

Moments ago, the robber committing the current crime while wearing a ragged coat and a half-crushed hat had glanced every which way except heavenward before he slithered into the bank.

Straining to listen, Juliette heard shouting but thankfully no gunshots.

The thief backed out the door and nearly tumbled into a horse trough. Righting his balance, he dashed across a mound of melting snow that glittered in the midmorning sunshine. On the run, he glanced up and down Main Street, a leather bag tucked under his arm.

Juliette rushed to the front door of the café and shoved the bolt into place. If the criminal was looking for a hiding place, he would not find it in her establishment.

She would forbid him entrance for the muddy state of his boots alone, set aside the fact that he was a lowdown lawbreaker.

The single customer in her restaurant looked up from his soup.

“It’s the bank again,” she explained, catching and kissing the small fist grabbing for the front of her blouse.

The gray-bearded gentleman shook his head but continued to spoon soup into his mouth. “Been ten months since the last holdup. I reckon that’s something. Still, this town isn’t what it used to be.”

No truer words, as far as Juliette was concerned. She dearly missed the sweet Beaumont she had been born and raised in. “Levi, do you remember when we all used to gather about the spring in the town square on Sunday afternoons?”

“Those were good days. My Martha used to make the sweetest cherry pies for everyone. You were only a little thing but you might remember.”

She’d been eight years old when Martha Silver died, but she still recalled the flavor of sweet cherries on her tongue and the indulgent gaze of the woman smiling down at her.

“Anyone get hurt this time?”

Juliette walked back to the window and moved the curtain aside. “Mr. Bones is chasing the thief, so I imagine he wasn’t armed.”

“That’s a mercy. Don’t begrudge the banker his business, but we did just fine without a bank for years before the rail spur came to town. I’m keeping my cash in the safe at the mercantile. Can’t recall Leif being robbed in all the time he’s been open.”

Nor could Juliette. Of course, Leif Ericman was a giant of a man who had taken to wearing a sidearm since the arrival of the rail spur. For all that Leif had a wicked scowl, he was known for his kindness. A robber, a stranger to Beaumont Spur, would not know it, though.

“I’m finished.” Levi slapped his spoon on the tablecloth.

“Would you like a piece of cake before you go?”

“What I mean is, I’m finished with Beaumont Spur. I’m moving on to a place the railroad hasn’t corrupted.”

“Levi! You can’t. You’ve lived here since—oh, since forever!”

He sighed, nodded. “Since before you were a glimmer in your parents’ smiles. I brought my bride here because it was a good, peaceful place to settle. Sure isn’t that anymore. I’m not the only one talking about leaving.”

Yes, she knew that. A whole group of families were considering the move together.

But Levi Silver? It couldn’t be!

In spite of what it had become over the past few years, Juliette loved her town. It broke her heart to see it falling to ruin. Even children were dashing about during school hours without proper discipline because the schoolteacher had quit suddenly in October and the new one had not yet arrived.

What this town needed was a reliable sheriff and a strict schoolmaster.

A hotel without fleas wouldn’t hurt, either. It was her firm opinion that a gracious inn would attract a better sort of clientele than the saloons did. The town might then thrive, and new families would move here to replace the ones who were leaving.

Baby Lena curled her fat little fist around the ribbon tied in Juliette’s braid. She drew it to her mouth and sucked on the yellow satin.

“Here comes Mr. Bones back again. From here it looks like he’s grinning. He’s got a leather bag tucked under his arm. He must have caught the robber, then.”

“Looks like your money is safe until the next time, Juliette.” Levi stood up, then dug about in his pants pocket. Withdrawing some coins, he stacked them neatly on the table. “If I were you I’d keep my cash under the bed or in the mercantile safe, like I do.”

Stashing money under her big lonely bed was the least safe place she could think of. Strangers were not the only ones hoping to snatch unsecured funds.

Crossing the room, Levi joined her at the window and peered out. He cupped the curve of Lena’s dark, curly-haired head in his bony hand, his fingers gnarled with age and years of hard work.

“A widow like you.” He shook his head then kissed Lena’s chubby fingers. Turning, he walked toward the door, slid the bolt free. “With the responsibilities you’ve taken on—you shouldn’t be here. Go someplace safe and find a good man to marry.”

“I’ve had a good man.”

Steven Lindor had been reliable in every way a husband could be. What was left of his body was buried in the cemetery outside of town, alongside Thomas Warren Lindor’s equally broken body.

“I still say he and his brother never should have taken a job with the railroad.”

Looking back, no one would deny that. But at the time, Steven and Thomas had both been newlyweds and could not turn down the generous pay the railroad offered.

Even the fact that both men had babies on the way had not kept them from going. No—she believed it had actually propelled their decisions.

Her husband and her brother-in-law had perished.

But she had not.

Yes, she had wept, pounded her fist against her pillow and railed against fate. But in the end she had given birth to a beautiful baby girl.

In the instant she’d heard her newborn’s cry, hope for the future bloomed in a way Juliette could never have imagined.

“Take care walking home, Levi. The boardwalk will be slippery.”

“Been walking these streets more than half my life, missy, don’t reckon I’ll lose my balance now. See you at dinnertime.”

Juliette watched him go then closed the door, relieved to see that he did test each step as he proceeded down the boardwalk.

In the distance, the train whistle blew. She heard the rumble of the big engine as it pushed the train back toward Smith’s Ridge.

If only—oh, never mind.

Wishing that the railroad had picked some other town in which to set down its spur was as useful as wishing there was something she could do to restore Beaumont to the hometown she loved. The place where neighbors smiled at one another when they passed on the boardwalk, where one laid down one’s head at night in blissful slumber without the racket of saloons to disturb the peace of the evening.

A flash of yellow caught her eye. A hatbox with a fluffy yellow bow sat on one of the tables.

Oh, no! A customer—Miss Quinn her name was—must have left it behind. The woman had been distracted with joy over boarding the train and going home to marry the handsome man she was engaged to.

There was nothing to do but store the hatbox away in the event that Miss Quinn returned for it one day.

Reaching for it, Juliette saw an envelope tucked between the box lid and the bow. Curiously, Juliette’s name was written on the delicate parchment.

Before she had a chance to wonder about it, she heard a baby’s strident cry coming from the small room behind the kitchen.

“Sounds like your brother is hungry, Miss Lena.”

“If you can’t keep that boy content, you shouldn’t be running a business. Family comes first for a woman.” Her father-in-law’s grumble reached the dining room from the kitchen.

Thankfully there were no customers present to hear his lament.

Truly, did the man not understand that she would rather be at home tending her husband and their child?

Circumstances had sent her life another way. She could smile at the future or weep over the past.

She chose to smile.

* * *

Juliette sat down at a table in the back of the dining room and draped a shawl over her left shoulder. Tenderly she tucked the end under Joe’s small padded bottom.

There was rarely a time when she put him to her breast that she did not think of Lillian. For all that she smiled while she cooed to Joe and tickled his fat little belly, she felt a tug of sadness that it was Juliette feeding him and not his mother.

“Your mama was beautiful, Joe—just like you are. And she loved you so very much.”

Truly, no one could have looked forward to a child’s birth with more joy than Steven’s brother and his wife had.

Juliette knew this because they had shared a wedding day and a home. Lillian had only been one month along in her pregnancy with Joe when Juliette conceived Lena.

Their large home had nearly vibrated with happiness over anticipation of the babies’ arrival. But there was worry, as well. Her husband and her brother-in-law were determined that their children would be born to the best of everything money could buy. The trouble was, at that point in their young lives, they’d been far from able to provide a pair of silver spoons.

So the men had left their pregnant wives behind and gone away to California...to make a living working for the Southern Pacific Railroad.

During the wee hours of a January morning in the mountains at Tehachapi, the rear cars of the train they’d been on had detached, rolled back down the grade, crashed and burned. Life as Juliette knew it had perished along with Steven and Thomas.

Lillian lost her will to live. Try as Juliette might to get her sister-in-law to look toward the future for her child’s sake, she could not draw Lillian out of her despondency. After Joe’s birth she grew even more morose. She wouldn’t eat or take the fresh air, choosing instead to sit in her darkened room and weep.

Until the chilly night she’d crept quietly out of the house to crouch in the rain. Juliette didn’t know how long her sister-in-law had been in the yard shivering. She only discovered Lillian was out there when Joe began to cry.

That had been the first time she took her nephew to her own breast. The poor baby was hungry and his mother refused him. As Lillian sat in front of the fire, shaking with cold, a distant look in her eyes, Juliette had known she’d set her sights on death.

For a week she had tried to get Lillian to eat, to smile at sweet baby Joe, to do anything but stare blankly into space. In the end, her sister-in-law caught a fever and was gone within three days.

“But I love you, Joe.” Juliette stroked his soft round head. “I’m yours forever.”

Juliette was more grateful for this unexpected son than she could say. He was her sweet little miracle in the ashes of what had been her life.

Smiling down at him, she was rewarded with the endearing sigh babies made when they nursed.

“What do you suppose this note has to say, sweet boy?”

Reaching for the hatbox, she could not even imagine.

The bell on the front door jangled. A young woman blew inside along with a gust of cold wind.

“Hello, Nannie,” Juliette said with a smile for her customer. “Just give me a moment. Coffee? Pastry?”

“Oh, I’ve no time to eat! I’ve found out a tasty bit of news that simply has to be shared.” Nannie’s small, closely set blue eyes glittered in apparent delight with what she was about to impart. “You know, Juliette, you’ll ruin your figure nursing both those babies.”

“I suppose that’s a risk I’ll have to take if Lena and Joe are to survive.”

Nannie Breene tipped her head to one side, frowning. Unless Juliette missed her guess, the girl would have spent no less than an hour and a half this morning arranging her blond hair in flirtatious curls about her face.

“I’m sure you know best, of course. But wouldn’t a wet nurse do as well?”

“A wet nurse in Beaumont Spur?” Juliette would not hire one even if there had been a woman wanting the job. Love and cuddles went into the feeding as much as life-sustaining food did. “Someday you’ll—”

Nannie cut her off with a crisp snap of her fingers.

“My news!” Her small eyes flashed in clear anticipation of Juliette’s coming reaction. “You won’t believe this!”

Nannie sat down in a chair across from Juliette, anchored her elbows on the table then stretched her neck forward, leading with her dainty, pointed chin.

“It’s hardly news that the bank has been robbed,” Juliette pointed out. “Can I get you some tea—a cookie?”

“How can I even think of it? Not knowing what I know—and it certainly is not something as common as the bank being robbed.”

For all that Nannie was bursting to repeat her news, she was apparently waiting for Juliette to drag it from her.

Very well. “What is your news? It must be something urgent.”

“Oh, it is!” Nannie leaned farther forward and whispered, “Trea Culverson is returning to Beaumont Spur.”

* * *

It was after midnight when Juliette wrapped a blanket about her shoulders and stepped onto the back porch of her small house. She stared up at the moon. It was full and bright. Not even halfway up the sky, it looked huge and close, almost as if she could reach out and touch it.

Her day had not ended when she bade the last customer good-night then put the Closed sign on the restaurant door. She’d wrapped the babies against the late November chill, tucked them in the pram then bundled her father-in-law up in a heavy coat.

As he normally did, Warren Lindor had insisted on being led to The Saucy Goose. As she always did, she pushed the pram with one arm and dragged the old man home by the coat sleeve.

Luckily, home was only a block away from her café.

By the time she fed the babies, tucked them into bed, gave Warren a snack and settled him into his room, and then baked the pastries for the next morning, it was late. Her neighbors had doused their lamps hours ago.

Perhaps she ought to do the same, but now was her time. No matter the weather, it was her custom to stand on her porch and listen to the quiet whispers of deep night. The sounds changed with the seasons, but her sense of peace in the moment did not.

In the beginning, when she’d first discovered this precious time, she had stood in this spot gazing up at the deep sky, often weeping while she held the image of Steven close.

But it had been a year since he went away to work for the railroad. She still thought of him. She always would, of course. But she did not do it as frequently now, and when she did it was with smiles more often than tears.

She had been blessed beyond reason with a daughter and a son. Oh, she might have been crippled by grief and loneliness, but because of the babies she carried a song in her heart.

After selling the big house she had shared with Steven and his family, she had been able to purchase her restaurant and this cozy cottage.

Each morning she had a purpose in waking, breathing, smiling at the new day and wondering what it would bring.

If the gossip was correct, it would soon bring the return of the prodigal son.

Although, unlike the prodigal, there would be no loving father’s arms open in welcome. For Trea there would be no fatted calf given in celebration.

Everyone in town, except a dozen girls with fluttering hearts, had been glad to see the last of him.

And Juliette? She had not been happy to see him go. It had broken her young heart.

Even after all these years, she remembered his expression in the instant he’d fled.

The reflection of flames consuming the livery that night had cast his face in a red-orange grimace. To many people his silence, his failure to declare his innocence while he risked his life leading horse after horse to safety, was the same as an admission of guilt that he’d set the fire.

That was not what Juliette believed. To her way of thinking, Trea would never have done anything to endanger an animal.

Was she the only one to have noted that every able-bodied man standing and witnessing the destruction had done so from across the street, leaving the rescue of the animals to a seventeen-year-old?

While it was true that Trea had always been the town bad boy—a hellion born of one—unlike his father, he was never mean-spirited.

More often than not his crimes involved kissing the girls in town. As far as Juliette could tell, none of them considered it a crime at all.

It did, however, cement his reputation as the black sheep begotten of a black sheep. Whenever a minor crime of any kind was committed, it was assumed that Trea was the perpetrator.

Juliette had valid reason to believe he was not the wicked child they had cast him as. Perhaps, in part, due to the fact that he had never kissed her. She might be the one girl in Beaumont who had never had her heart broken by him.

Which didn’t mean that she had not envied those girls and spent dreamy moments wondering about Trea’s kisses. How many nights had she lain awake in her bed imagining what it would be like to feel his lips, hear sweet whispers of affection, and all the while brooding over which of her friends might be finding out right that moment?

And now, if the gossip proved true, Trea Culverson was coming home.

Even though she was a woman grown, a widow with children, her heart beat a little faster, even her belly tickled.

She knew it was silly. Years had passed. Trea was no longer the daring, forbidden boy who’d taken her breath away.

He was a man grown. Heaven only knew who he had grown to be.