Montana Christmas. Jackie Merritt

      Recognizing Lucas’s voice, she turned to smile at him as he walked toward her from the street. He was carrying a shovel. “Hi, Lucas. Isn’t this a glorious morning?”

      Lucas’s rolling laugh rang out. “It is if you enjoy shoveling snow. I’ve already done my driveway and sidewalks, and now I’m going to help with yours.”

      “Lucas, that’s not at all necessary.”

      “Course it’s not.” Lucas grinned. “Big, strapping girl like you could shovel for three days and not get winded.”

      Andrea had to laugh. She was definitely not “big and strapping.” In fact, she was on the small side, barely five foot four inches tall and weighing in around one-ten.

      “I might not be big,” she retorted pertly, teasing him as he was teasing her, “but I’m strong.”

      Lucas laughed again. Compared to his six-foot-two height and two-hundred-forty-pound weight, she was a little bit of a person, and her proclamation of physical strength was obviously funny to him.

      “But how much snow have you shoveled before?” he asked. “I’ll bet this is your first time.”

      “Okay, so I’ve never shoveled snow before today. But I’m truly enjoying the job. Lucas, since you’ve already cleared your own driveway and sidewalks, you’re probably tired. Please don’t overdo it by helping me.” She worried about Lucas at times. He was at least forty pounds overweight, carrying most of the excess poundage in his chest and belly. If he had a heart attack shoveling her driveway, she would never forgive herself.

      “For your information, young woman, I’m not tired and I’m not ready to go back inside. I’ll shovel a bit more, if you don’t mind.” Lucas set to work.

      He sure could be stubborn when he wanted to be, Andrea thought. Stubborn in a nice way, though. Giving up on the friendly debate, she dug her own shovel into the snow. “Did you hear the storm in the night?”

      “Sure did. Thought the wind was going to blow the roof off for a while there.”

      “I loved hearing it. There’s something about a storm at night that makes me feel cozy and safe.”

      “It does that, all right. Makes one think of his own good fortune—having a warm bed, comfortable home, enough financial security to get by without worrying all the time. Not everyone’s so lucky.”

      “True,” Andrea agreed, frowning a little. Her financial security was not of her making. As she bent and scooped at a brisk tempo, her thoughts went to her mother. Sandra had died last February, and Andrea had been the only recipient of her estate. It was shortly after the funeral, when she’d been given access to her mother’s private papers, that the series of events began that had changed the course of her life. She’d been working for the Los Angeles Times, still an unimportant cog in the production of the huge newspaper but harboring a longtime dream of journalistic success. Going through Sandra’s papers, tying them together and finally grasping their import had been a shock. More of a shock, in fact, than her mother’s sudden demise had been.

      All of her life, she had believed her father to be the man named on her birth certificate: Harry Dillon. Harry was a total mystery to her. Sandra had waved the subject aside as trivial every time Andrea had tried to talk about him, as though it didn’t matter that her daughter’s father never visited, never called, never even sent birthday cards. Because of several documents in her mother’s files, Andrea had deemed it essential to finally meet Harry Dillon. She’d hired a detective agency to locate him, which proved surprisingly easy to do. Then, armed with those documents, she’d paid Harry a visit.

      He was a cordial man, married many years with grown children. After a little prodding and an explanation of her curiosity, Andrea had finally learned the facts of her own life.

      “Your mother was pregnant with you when we got married, Andrea. She was pregnant when she went to Nevada to obtain a quickie divorce from your real father, a man called Charles Fanon. No, I have no idea where you might find Mr. Fanon. I agreed to my name being used on your birth certificate, as I was very smitten by Sandra and would have agreed to anything she asked.”

      Harry had smiled ruefully. “But she never loved me, and proved it by leaving me before you were a year old. I’m sorry you had to grow up thinking your father didn’t want you, but the truth was that Sandra wouldn’t permit even the slightest contact. Apparently, when she was done with a man, that was it.”

      Andrea’s own memory had reinforced Harry’s comment. Counting Charles A. Fanon—she had the divorce papers between Sandra and Charles as proof of Harry’s story—Sandra had been married five times. And yes, when she was through with a man, she wouldn’t even- speak to him on the phone. As Sandra’s last three husbands had all been wealthy men, Andrea could only surmise that her mother had married Harry, a common laborer, to legitimize her unborn child. In spite of Sandra’s many missteps and indiscretions with men, she had possessed an innate sense of propriety. In fact, even while she was flitting from man to man—she hadn’t married them all—one would have been hard-pressed to label her anything but a lady.

      Anyhow, the same detective agency that had located Harry had tracked Charles Fanon to Rocky Ford, Montana. Andrea had quit her job, left her mother’s very nice house…which now belonged to Andrea—in the hands of a trustworthy couple who had been in Sandra’s employ for many years, and traveled to Rocky Ford with every intention of immediately confronting Mr. Fanon. Once there, however, her courage had deserted her, and after seven months, she was still procrastinating.

      At times, she was furious with herself for delaying something she knew had to be done. At others, she rationalized her cowardice by concentrating on the things she had learned about Charles—or Charlie, as he was called in Rocky Ford. For one, she wasn’t his only family. He had a daughter, Serena Holden, and a niece, Lola Sheridan. Also, there had been a son, Ronald, who had died in the military. Ronald’s widow, Candace, and their young son, Ronnie, had lived with Charlie until Candace remarried. Candace’s new husband, Burke Mallory, was the only person in Montana who knew Andrea’s background. Burke was now a cattle rancher, but he’d been a cop on an undercover investigation in Rocky Ford when he’d run into Andrea under suspicious circumstances. It had taken him only a few days to unearth her true identity, which had greatly upset Andrea until Burke promised her that he would not reveal her secret to anyone. She had enormous respect for Burke Mallory, but was glad his and Candace’s ranch was eighty miles from town, which pretty much eliminated chance meetings.

      As for Charlie, he’d been living alone in his big old house on Foxworth Street since Candace and Burke’s wedding. Andrea often wondered if he was lonely now, although he did have a coffee shop in the front portion of his house to keep him busy. Every night while lying in her bed before falling asleep, she pictured herself walking into that coffee shop and introducing herself. Hello, Charlie. I’m Andrea Dillon, your third child, your second daughter. She usually went to sleep with a sickish feeling in her stomach because of that fantasy.

      And maybe that’s all the whole thing was, she was beginning to think—a fantasy. If Charlie hadn’t wanted a third child at the time of his and her mother’s divorce, why on earth would he want one now? Why was she so driven to see this through and, at the same time, too cowardly to do it? Why was she afraid? She hadn’t been afraid to call

      on Harry, after all. Maybe leery was a better word for whatever it was inside of her that kept her from accomplishing her goal with Charlie. But if she was never going to confront him, why stay in this small Montana town?

      These were not new questions. Andrea had been asking them of herself for months, without being able to supply the answers. Surprising her, however, was an answer about why she stayed in Rocky Ford: she liked it there. For the first time in her life, she was putting down roots. Sandra had moved them around California so much, Andrea had never felt connected to any one place. Here, in this unpretentious little country town, she was at long last discovering the tranquillity of belonging.

      Even so, she wasn’t entirely