A Cold Creek Christmas Story. RaeAnne Thayne

old room.”

      What would Flynn think when she showed up at his house with a stuffed animal and an armful of books? she wondered as she chewed potatoes that suddenly tasted like chalk.

      It didn’t matter, she told herself. She was doing this for his daughter, a girl who had been through a terrible ordeal—and who reminded her entirely too much of herself.

Chapter Three

      “Are you sure you don’t want to help? This tinsel isn’t going to jump on the tree by itself.”

      Flynn held a sparkly handful out to his daughter, who sat in the window seat, alternating between watching him and looking out into the darkness at the falling snowflakes.

      She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “My arm hurts too much.”

      He tried to conceal his frustrated sigh behind a cough. The physical therapist he had been taking her to since her injury had given him homework during this break while they were in Idaho. His assignment was to find creative activities that would force her to use her arm more.

      He had tried a wide variety of things, like having Olivia push the grocery cart and help him pick out items in the store, and asking her help in the kitchen with slicing vegetables. The inconsistency of it made him crazy. Sometimes she was fine; other times she refused to use her arm at all.

      After their trip to the library, he’d realized his grandmother’s house was severely lacking in holiday cheer. She had made a snowman ornament and they had nowhere to hang it.

      Any hope he might have harbored that she would show a little enthusiasm for the idea of decking their temporary halls was quickly dashed. She showed the same listless apathy toward Christmas decorations as she had for just about everything else except Celeste Nichols and her little reindeer story.

      Other than hanging her own snowman ornament, she wasn’t interested in helping him hang anything else on the small artificial tree he had unearthed in the basement. As a result, he had done most of the work while she sat and watched, not budging from her claim of being in too much pain.

      He knew using her arm caused discomfort. He hadn’t yet figured out how to convince an almost-seven-year-old she needed to work through the pain if she ever wanted to regain full mobility in her arm.

      “Come on. Just take a handful and help me. It will be fun.”

      She shook her head and continued staring out at the falling snow.

      Since the shooting, these moods had come over her out of nowhere. She would seem to be handling things fine and then a few moments later would become fearful, withdrawn and just want him to leave her alone.

      The counselor she had seen regularly assured him it was a natural result of the trauma Olivia had endured. He hated that each step in her recovery—physical and emotional—had become such a struggle for her.

      After hanging a few more strands, he finally gave up. What was the point when she didn’t seem inclined to help him, especially since he’d never much liked tinsel on trees anyway?

      His father hadn’t, either, he remembered. He had a stray memory of one of his parents’ epic fights over it one year. Diane had loved tinsel, naturally. Anything with glitz had been right down her alley. Her favorite nights of the year had been red carpet events, either for her own movie premieres or those of her friends.

      His father, on the other hand, had thought tinsel was stupid and only made a mess.

      One night when he was about seven or eight, a few years before they’d finally divorced, his mother had spent hours hanging pink tinsel on their tree over his father’s objections, carefully arranging each piece over a bough.

      When they’d woken up, the tinsel had been mysteriously gone. As it turned out, Tom had arisen hours before anyone else and had pulled off every last shiny strand.

      After a dramatic screaming fight—all on his mother’s side—she had stormed out of their Bel Air house and hadn’t been back for several days, as he recalled.

      Ah, memories.

      He pushed away the bitterness of his past and turned back to his daughter. “If you don’t want to hang any more tinsel, I guess we’re done. Do you want to do the honors and turn out the lights so we can take a look at it?”

      She didn’t answer him, her gaze suddenly focused on something through the window.

      “Someone’s coming,” Olivia announced, her voice tight. She jumped up from the window seat. “I’m going to my room.”

      He was never sure which she disliked more: large, unruly crowds or unexpected visitors showing up at the door. Nor was he certain she would ever be able to move past either fear.

      With effort he forced his voice to be calm and comforting. “There’s no reason to go to your room. Everything is fine. I’m right here. You’re okay.”

      She darted longing little glances down the hall to the relative safety of her bedroom, but to her credit she sat down again in the window seat. When the doorbell rang through the house, Flynn didn’t miss her instinctive flinch or the tense set of her shoulders.

      He hoped whoever it was had a darn good excuse for showing up out of the blue like this and frightening his little girl half to death.

      To his shock, the pretty librarian and author stood on the porch with a bag in her hand and a black-and-brown dog at the end of a leash. In the glow from the porch light he could see her nose and cheeks were pink from the cold, and those long, luscious dark curls were tucked under a beanie. She also wasn’t wearing her glasses. Without the thick dark frames, her eyes were a lovely green.

      “Hello.” She gave him a fleeting, tentative smile that appeared and disappeared as quickly as a little bird hunting for berries on a winter-bare shrub.

      “Celeste. Ms. Nichols. Hello.”

      She gave him another of those brief smiles, then tried to look behind him to where Olivia had approached. At least his daughter now looked more surprised and delighted than fearful.

      “And hello, Miss Olivia,” the librarian said. “How are you tonight?”

      Her voice was soft, calm, with a gentleness he couldn’t help but appreciate.

      “Hi. I’m fine, thank you,” she said shyly. “Is that your dog?”

      Celeste smiled as the dog sniffed at Olivia’s feet. “This is Linus. He’s a Yorkshire terrier and his best friend is a black cat named Lucy.”

      “Like in Charlie Brown’s Christmas!” She looked delighted at making the connection.

      “Just like that, except Linus and Lucy are brother and sister. My Linus and Lucy are just friends.”

      Olivia slanted her head to look closer at the little dog. “Will he bite?”

      Celeste smiled. “He’s a very sweet dog and loves everybody, but especially blonde girls with pretty red sweaters.”

      Olivia giggled at this, and after another moment during which she gathered her courage, she held out her hand. The little furball licked it three times in quick succession, which earned another giggle from his daughter.

      “Hi, Linus,” she said in a soft voice. “Hi. I’m Olivia.”

      The dog wagged his tail but didn’t bark, which Flynn had to appreciate given how skittish Olivia had been all evening.

      She knelt down and started petting the dog—using her injured left arm, he saw with great surprise.

      “He likes me!” Olivia exclaimed after a moment, her features alight with a pleasure and excitement he hadn’t seen in a long time.

      “Of course he does.” Celeste smiled down at her with a soft light in her eyes