Christmas in Cold Creek. RaeAnne Thayne

have to pay a sitter—while I’m working.”

      They had been through this discussion before. Her arguments still didn’t seem to convince Gabi.

      â€œI can find her, you know.”

      She gave a careful look around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “And then what? If she’d wanted you with her, she wouldn’t have left you with me.”

      â€œShe was going to come back. How is she supposed to find us now, when you moved us clear across the country?”

      Moving from Arizona to eastern Idaho wasn’t exactly across the country, but she imagined it seemed far enough to a nine-year-old. She also wasn’t sure what other choice she’d been given because of the hand Monica had dealt her.

      â€œLook, Gab, we don’t have time to talk about this right now. You have to head to school and I have to return to my customers. I told you that if we haven’t heard from her by the time the holidays are over, we’ll try to track her down, right?”

      â€œThat’s what you said.”

      The girl didn’t need to finish the sentence for Becca to clearly understand. Gabrielle had spent nine years full of disappointments and empty promises. How could Becca blame her for being slow to trust that her sister, at least, meant what she said?

      â€œWe’re doing okay, aren’t we? School’s not so bad, right?”

      Gabi slid out of the booth. “Sure. It’s perfect if you want me to be bored to death.”

      â€œJust hide your book inside your textbook,” Becca advised. It had always worked for her, anyway, during her own slapdash education.

      With a put-upon sigh, Gabi stashed her book into her backpack, slipped into her coat and then trudged out into the rain, lifting the flowered umbrella Becca had given her.

      She would have liked to drive her sister the two blocks to school but she didn’t feel she could ask for fifteen minutes off during the busiest time of the morning, especially when the Archuletas had basically done her a huge favor to hire her in the first place.

      As she bused a table by the front window, she kept an eye on her sister. Between the umbrella and the red boots, the girl made a bright and incongruously cheerful sight in the gray muck.

      She had no idea what she was doing with Gabi. Two months after she’d first learned she had a sister after a dozen years of estrangement from her mother, she wasn’t any closer to figuring out the girl. She was brash and bossy sometimes, introspective and moody at others. Instead of feeling hurt and betrayed after Monica had dumped her on Becca, the girl refused to give up hope that her mother would come back.

      Becca was angry enough at Monica for both of them.

      Two months ago she’d thought she had her life completely figured out. She owned her own town house in Scottsdale. She had a job she loved as a real-estate attorney, she had a wide circle of friends, she’d been dating another attorney for several months and thought they were heading toward a commitment. Through hard work and sacrifice, she had carved her own niche in life, with all the safety and security she had craved so desperately when she was Gabi’s age, being yanked hither and yon with a capricious, irresponsible con artist for a mother.

      Then came that fateful September day when Monica had tumbled back into her life after a decade, like a noxious weed blown across the desert.

      â€œOrder up,” Lou called from the kitchen. She jerked away from the window to the reality of her life now. No money, her career in tatters, just an inch or two away from being disbarred. The man she’d been dating had decided her personal troubles were too much of a liability to his own career and had dumped her without a backward glance, she had been forced to sell her town house to clean up Monica’s mess, and now she was stuck in a sleepy little town in southeastern Idaho, saddled with responsibilities she didn’t want and a nine-year-old girl who wanted to be anywhere else but here.

      Any minute now, somebody was probably going to write a crappy country music song about her life.

      To make matters even more enjoyable, now she’d raised the hackles of the local law enforcement. She sighed as she picked up the specials from Lou. Her life couldn’t get much worse, right?

      Even if Trace Bowman was the most gorgeous man she’d seen in a long, long time, she was going to have to do her best to keep a polite distance from the man. For now, she and Gabi had a place to live and the tips and small paycheck she was earning from this job would be enough to cover the groceries and keep the electricity turned on.

      They were hanging by a thread and Chief Bowman seemed just the sort to come along with a big old pair of scissors and snip that right in half.

      Chapter Two

      Trace leaned back in his chair and set his napkin beside his now-empty plate. “Delicious dinner, Caidy, as always. The roast was particularly fine.”

      His younger sister smiled, her eyes a translucent blue in the late-afternoon November light streaming through the dining room windows. “Thanks. I tried a new recipe for the spice rub. It uses sage and rosemary and a touch of paprika.”

      â€œYou know sage in recipes doesn’t really come from the sagebrushes out back, right?”

      She made a face at the teasing comment from Trace’s twin brother, Taft. “Of course I know it’s not the same. Just for that, you get to wash and dry the dishes.”

      â€œCome on. Have a little pity. I’ve been working all night.”

      â€œYou were on duty,” Trace corrected. “But did you go out on any actual calls or did you spend the night bunking at the firehouse?”

      â€œThat’s not the point,” Taft said, a self-righteous note in his voice. “Whether I was sleeping or not, I was ready if my community needed me.”

      The overnight demands of their respective jobs had long been a source of good-natured ribbing between the two of them. When Trace worked the night shift, he was out on patrol, responding to calls, taking care of paperwork at the police station. As chief of the Pine Gulch fire department and one of the few actual fulltime employees in the mostly volunteer department, Taft’s job could sometimes be quiet.

      They might bicker about it, but Trace knew no other person would have his back like his twin—though Caidy and their older brother, Ridge, would be close behind.

      â€œCut it out, you two.” Ridge, the de facto patriarch of the family, gave them both a stern look that reminded Trace remarkably of their father. “You’re going to ruin this delicious dessert Destry made.”

      â€œIt’s only boysenberry cobbler,” his daughter piped in. “It wasn’t hard at all.”

      â€œWell, it tastes like it was hard,” Taft said with a grin. “That’s the important thing.”

      Dinner at the family ranch, the River Bow, was a heralded tradition. No matter how busy they might be during the week with their respective lives and careers, the Bowman siblings tried to at least gather on Sundays when they could.

      If not for Caidy, these Sunday dinners would probably have died long ago, another victim of their parents’ brutal murders. For a few years after that fateful time a decade ago, the tradition had faded as Trace and his siblings struggled in their own ways to cope with their overwhelming grief.

      Right around the time Ridge’s wife left him and Caidy graduated from high school and started taking over caring for the ranch house and for Destry, his sister had revived the traditional Sunday dinners. Over the years it had become a way for them all to stay connected despite the hectic pace of their lives. He cherished