Clandestine Christmas. Elle James

follow you here. You should be okay.”

      She smiled. “I have a limited number of skills. Changing my name and hair color hardly constitutes going incognito when all I’m qualified to do is sing and...”

      Chase covered her hand. “Look, Sadie, you’re done with that other life. You don’t have to go back to entertaining men. You have a good job here, where all you have to do is sing for a living.” Though he subsidized her earnings, he wasn’t telling her. He owed her his life.

      She nodded. “Thanks to you. I’m just afraid my past is catching up to me.”

      “Why? What has you scared?”

      “I had another empty message on my voice mail. On my new cell phone.” She bit her bottom lip.

      “It was a computer-generated sales call gone bad.” Chase shook his head. “What else do you have?”

      “I feel like someone is following me. Watching me.” She turned her head and stared out at the practically empty barroom. “Especially today. Every time I turned around I saw nothing, yet I can swear someone is there. Waiting. Watching.”

      “Sweetheart, after having a stalker following you around for the past few weeks, you have a right to feel paranoid.”

      She pulled her hand away from his. “It’s more than that. When I left my dressing room earlier, I locked the door behind me. I went back because I forgot my throat spray. The door was open. I know I locked it.”

      “Perhaps the janitor?”

      “He doesn’t come on until after midnight.”

      Chase’s anger simmered just beneath the surface. Sadie was his friend and he hated seeing her so distraught. “I placed a call to a man I know of who provides specialized, undercover bodyguards. I asked specifically for a woman to blend in with you and the saloon.”

      Tears welled in Sadie’s eyes. “A bodyguard?” Then she shook her head. “I can’t pay you back. Not yet.”

      “No need. I don’t like the idea of you and Jake in danger. At least you’ll be safe at the ranch until you find a place of your own. And hopefully, we’ll discover who’s stalking you and nail the jerk before you move back to town into your own place.”

      She smiled. “In the meantime, I need to know that you’ll be there for Jake, if anything happens to me. You’re the only one he trusts besides me and the Quaids.” She leaned closer to him. “Chase?”

      “Yes, Sadie?”

      “If anything should happen to me, I want you to have this.” She pressed something cold and hard into his palm and curled his fingers around it.

      “What is it?” He could tell by the shape, it was a key, but to what?

      “It’s the key to my safe-deposit box at the First Colorado Bank in Denver. You, me and my attorney are the only ones who have access to the box. He has authority to turn it over to the police should you and I disappear.”

      “Which you aren’t, and I’m not,” he assured her.

      Sadie took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I haven’t told you everything about me. The safe-deposit box has information in it that would explain a lot. I can’t say that I’ve lived a perfect life. Far from it. Basically, it’s a compilation of my secrets and Melissa’s, Jake’s mother.”

      Chase snorted. “As if I would be the one to judge.”

      Sadie gave him one of her gentle smiles. “You’ve changed in the past two years, Chase.” Her forehead crinkled. “I’m glad you’re not drinking as heavily, but I think you’ve lost some of your fire.”

      It was his turn to smile at her. “The last time you gave me advice, I slowed down. Are you telling me I slowed down too much?”

      “You did the right thing. You were on a suicidal path. Your grandfather’s will was just the ticket to get you back on track, not me.”

      “I wouldn’t have come back to Fool’s Fortune if it hadn’t been for you.”

      Her mouth twisted. “Sure you would have, if for nothing else but to spit on your grandfather’s grave for the way he disinherited your mother.”

      “My parents might still be here if he hadn’t been so hard on my mother.”

      Sadie clucked her tongue. “You don’t know that.”

      “Well, they wouldn’t have been living in New York City. My mother never liked living anywhere else but Colorado.”

      “That’s the past. As a wise man once said to me, you have to let go of your past to live in the present or you will have no future.”

      Chase sat across the table from Sadie, the woman who, despite her former trade, reminded him of the mother he’d lost six years ago. He pocketed the key, determined to guard Sadie’s secrets. “Thanks, Sadie. Rest assured. I’ll take care of Jake if anything happens to you.”

      She nodded. “That’s all I ask.”

      “Now let me take you home.”

      “I drove my car here. I can drive it home.” She pushed to her feet, a tired smile curving her lips. “I should be okay.”

      Chase shook his head. “I won’t take no for an answer.” He, too, rose from his seat. “Besides, I’d like the company on the drive back to the ranch.”

      “Are you sure you don’t mind that Jake and I are staying with you at the ranch?”

      “The house is too big for just me and the Quaids.” With a smile, Chase added, “Jake should be sound asleep by now. Knowing Frances, she’s plied him with homemade cookies and read him several books by now. Probably let him stay up late, despite his nine o’clock bedtime.”

      Sadie’s lips twisted. “I’d be angry at her, but she’s so good with Jake and he adores her. The poor boy needs a mother.”

      “He’s got you.”

      “And I love him with all my heart. Too bad Melissa didn’t live to watch him grow into a man. Hard to believe she’s been dead almost six months.”

      “Still hurts, doesn’t it?” Chase slipped an arm around the older woman and hugged her to him as they walked to the little room behind the stage where Sadie had left her faux fur jacket hanging on a coat rack.

      Sadie stopped in front of the coat rack and waited for Chase to gather her coat and hold it out to her. As she slipped her arms into the sleeves, she said, “A mother should never have to bury her own child.”

      Jake let his hands rest on Sadie’s shoulders for just a moment. “You never told me what happened to Melissa.”

      “She ran her car over the side of a cliff. The police ruled it an accident, but the people who knew her said she’d been acting funny, almost paranoid.”

      Jake shrugged into his coat, his eyes narrowing. “Do you think she committed suicide?”

      “I wouldn’t put it past her. But then, she exacerbated her problems by continuing to put herself front and center of trouble.” Sadie’s shoulders sagged, making her appear every bit of her forty-something years. “I should have spent more time with her when she was a teen.”

      “If she was like every other teen, she wouldn’t have wanted you around.”

      “You don’t have any kids scattered across the country, do you?” Sadie pinned him with her stare. “You were the wild one for a while there.”

      “No, I was sure to protect the women I’d been with...and any child that might have resulted, from getting a father he couldn’t count on.” Fishing his keys from his pocket he held the door for Sadie.

      She touched his cheek as she stepped through the door. “You would make a