Holiday in a Stetson: The Sheriff Who Found Christmas / A Rancho Diablo Christmas. Marie Ferrarella

one,” the solemn woman on the other end of the line told him. “Your niece survived, Sheriff Tanner.”

      The numbness inside him splintered a hairbreadth, just enough to allow a measure of confusion to push its way in. Ellen hadn’t said anything about having a daughter.

      Maybe there’d been some mistake. Maybe this was someone else’s sister and the woman had gotten phone numbers mixed up.

      “What niece?” he asked in a raspy tone.

      “Yours,” the social worker told him. “Ellen Duffy’s little girl. She’s six years old and her name is Ellie.”

      Garrett’s voice, already low, became even lower as he growled, “There has to be some mistake. My sister didn’t have any children.”

      “She had this one,” Beth insisted. “Your niece was discovered unconscious in the wreckage. Apparently her body had been shielded by her mom. It looked as if Mrs. Duffy threw herself over the girl at the last minute. Most likely, she died saving her daughter.”

      The woman who had thrown his entire world into chaos with just a few simple sentences paused to take a breath, then continued. “Ellie was taken to the hospital. The doctors found that she sustained some cuts and bruises, but nothing serious. She was released within a few hours. When can you come by to pick her up?”

      Garrett felt like a man trapped in a nightmare. What the woman on the other end of the line was asking wasn’t registering in his brain. “How’s that again?” he murmured.

      “When can you come by to pick up your niece?” Beth Honeycutt repeated. She sounded sympathetic, but removed.

      He said the first thing that occurred to him. “I don’t know.”

      Garrett struggled to deal with the huge curve he had been thrown. For the most part, when he wasn’t patrolling Booth, he led a very solitary life. He didn’t mingle, didn’t join in any of the festivities that were periodically held in town—not in summer and especially not around the holidays, which were swiftly approaching.

      There was no place for a child in his life. He’d had a dog once, a mongrel named Blue, but that had been more a case of the animal adopting him than the other way around. Moreover, it had taken a long time before he’d accepted the dog into his life. Blue’s passing had left Garrett more emotionally isolated than before.

      A child? No, he had no place for one, no ability to take care of one. There had to be some other option, some alternate course.

      “Look,” he said, still reeling from the news of Ellen’s death, “can’t you find some place for her?”

      The social worker sounded neither surprised nor annoyed. Apparently, she’d heard requests like this before. “You are your sister’s only living relative. If you don’t accept responsibility for your niece, there’s no alternative but to put her into the system. What that means—”

      “I know what that means,” he said, cutting the woman off. It meant a string of foster homes and a nomadic life at best. At worst …

      At worst she could wind up in a home like the one he’d grown up in.

      In all good conscience, he couldn’t do that to Ellen’s child.

      “So you’ll come to pick her up?” Ms. Honeycutt asked, taking his interruption to mean he’d changed his mind.

      Pick her up. As if he was swinging by a restaurant to pick up an order of takeout.

      Garrett frowned.

      Pulling out a sheet of paper, he picked up a pen and asked, “Where is it, exactly, that you’re located?”

      The woman rattled off an address in the center of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The accident, she went on to tell him, had taken place just outside the city limits.

      Ellen hadn’t even made it back to Texas, much less to Booth, Garrett thought, feeling an uncustomary pang.

       Damn it, Ellen, you should have listened to me. You shouldn’t have married that creep in the first place. Then you’d still be alive.

      But she had married Duffy, and now she was gone.

      And Garrett had a niece.

      What the hell was he going to do with a little girl? he wondered. He didn’t even have anywhere to put her—unless he fixed up his couch. He supposed that would have to do until he figured out his next move.

      After muttering a few final words to the social worker, Garrett hung up the phone. Tossing the receiver back into its cradle would have been a more accurate description.

       Damn it all to hell, anyway.

      “Something wrong, Sheriff?”

      The question came from the second reason he thought that fate—or whatever—had it in for him.

      Slowly, Garrett turned in his swivel chair to face the other occupant in the small office, a space that had until recently been his private domain.

      Six months ago the town council—six of the wealthiest men in Booth—had whimsically decided that keeping the peace in the extremely slow growing Texas town required more than just one person. Telling Garrett that they didn’t want him to wear himself out, they had gone on to insist he needed a deputy, someone he could share the load with.

      Or the boredom, he’d thought at the time.

      Then, because he turned down each and every potential candidate who came in to interview for the newly created position, the town council arbitrarily took it upon themselves to do the interviewing—and hiring.

      Garrett knew he was doomed then.

      And he’d been right. To a man, the six-member committee had voted to hire a law enforcement agent who had just moved here from San Diego—a former homicide detective named Lani Chisholm. A woman he now considered a perpetual thorn in his side. A woman who, much to his annoyance, seemed intent on bringing sunshine to every dim corner of their mutual existence.

      He’d given up hoping that she would find life here too uneventful and dull, and would move back to San Diego.

      Instead, she appeared to have the staying power of an application of Superglue.

      Her bright, cheerful smile, evident even in the early hours of the morning, got on his nerves. As did her voice. It was much too sultry for a deputy.

      He raised his eyes, shifting them in her direction, and glared at her. As Davy Crockett had been reputed to do, he’d decided to stare down what he considered to be his adversary.

       Chapter Two

      He really was a challenge, Lani thought, looking at the man she took orders from—whenever he deigned to speak to her, which wasn’t all that often. She supposed that was because ever since he’d become sheriff, he’d been alone in this office, and wasn’t accustomed to speaking aloud while he sat at his desk. Having a deputy thrust upon him had to require some adjustment on his part. She understood that and was willing to wait until it happened.

      She was still waiting.

      Lani had been hoping that the approaching Christmas season would soften Tanner up a little, make him more human. For the most part, she was a mixture of optimism and practicality, but even so, it became more and more apparent to her that as far as the sheriff’s epiphany was concerned, she had been deluding herself.

      Garrett Tanner had no intentions of coming around or of showing her a softer side, because the man had no softer side.

      Still, soft or stern, he did owe her an answer to her question.

      An answer that wasn’t coming unless she made a point of asking again. So she did, this time raising her voice. “Something wrong, Sheriff?”

      Rather than answer, Garrett shot back a question