A Creed Country Christmas. Linda Miller Lael

      She nodded, silently giving her permission.

      Almost as one, they scrambled for the door, causing the bell to clamor merrily overhead. Even Daisy, clinging until a moment before, peeled away from Juliana’s side.

      After pulling her cloak more closely around her and raising the hood against the cold wind, Juliana followed.

      LINCOLN WATCHED THEM GO. He’d hung his hat on one of the spindle-backed wooden chairs next to the stove earlier, and he reached for it. “There’s enough grief and sorrow in this world,” he told the storekeeper, “without folks like you adding to it.”

      Willand was undaunted, though Lincoln noticed he stayed well behind the counter, within bolting distance of the back door. “We’ll see what Mrs. Creed says, when you turn up on her doorstep with a tribe of Injuns—”

      Lincoln shoved his hat down on top of his head with a little more force than the effort required. His wife, Beth, had died two years before, of a fever, so Willand was referring to his mother. Cora Creed would indeed have been surprised to find five extra people seated around her supper table that night—if Lincoln hadn’t left her with enough bags to fill a freight car at the train depot before stopping by the mercantile. She was headed for Phoenix, where she liked to winter with her kinfolks, the Dawsons.

      “I’ll be back tomorrow if I get the chance,” he said, starting for the door. With that storm coming and cattle to feed, he couldn’t be sure. “To see if any letters came in on today’s train.”

      Willand glanced at the big regulator clock on the wall behind him. “My boy’s gone to the depot, like always, and he’ll be here with the mail bag any minute now,” he said grudgingly. “Might as well wait.”

      Lincoln went to the window, looked past his own reflection in the darkening glass—God, he hated the shortness of winter days—to see Miss Mitchell settling her unlikely brood in the bed of his wagon. Something warmed inside him, shifted. The slightest smile tilted one corner of his mouth.

      He’d been advertising for a governess for his seven-year-old daughter, Gracie, and a housekeeper for the both of them for nearly a year; failing either of those, he’d settle for a wife, and because he knew he’d never love another woman the way he’d loved Beth, he wasn’t too choosey in his requirements.

      Juliana Mitchell, with her womanly figure, indigo-blue eyes and those tendrils of coppery hair peeking out from under her worn bonnet, was clearly dedicated to her profession, since she’d stayed to look after those children even now that the Indian School had closed down. A lot of schoolmarms wouldn’t have done that.

      This spoke well for her character, and when it came to looks, she was a better bargain than anyone all those advertisements might have scared up.

      Glancing down at the display, with all the toys Willand was hoping to sell before Christmas, Lincoln’s gaze fell on the corner of a metal box, tucked at an odd angle under the bunting beneath the tree. He reached for the item, drew it out, saw that it was a set of watercolor paints, similar to one Gracie had at home.

      Was this what the boy had been looking at when Willand pitched a fit?

      For reasons he couldn’t have explained, Lincoln was sure it was.

      He held the long, flat tin up for Willand to see, before tucking it into the inside pocket of his coat. “Put this on my bill,” he said.

      Willand grumbled, but a sale was a sale. He finally nodded.

      Lincoln raised his collar against the cold and left the mercantile for the wooden sidewalk beyond.

      The kids were settled in the back of the wagon, all but the oldest boy snuggled in the rough woolen blankets Lincoln always carried in winter. Juliana Mitchell waited primly on the seat, straight-spined, chin high, trying not to shiver in that thin cloak of hers.

      Buttoning his coat as he left the store, Lincoln unbuttoned it again before climbing up into the box beside her. Snowflakes drifted slowly from a gray sky as he took up the reins, released the brake lever. The streets of the town were nearly deserted—folks were getting ready for the storm, feeling its approach in their bones, just as Lincoln did.

      Knowing her pride would make her balk if he took off his coat and put it around her, he pulled his right arm out of the sleeve and drew her to his side instead, closing the garment around her.

      She stiffened, then went still, in what he guessed was resignation.

      It bruised something inside Lincoln, realizing how many things Juliana Mitchell had probably had to resign herself to over the course of her life.

      He set the team in motion, kept his gaze on the snowy road ahead, winding toward home. By the time they reached the ranch, it would be dark out, but the horses knew their way.

      Meanwhile, Juliana Mitchell felt warm and soft against him. He’d forgotten what it was like to protect a woman, shield her against his side, and the remembrance was painful, like frostbitten flesh beginning to thaw.

      Beth had been gone awhile, and though he wasn’t proud of it, in the last six months or so he’d turned to loose women for comfort a time or two, over in Choteau or in Missoula.

      The quickening he felt now was different, of course. Though anybody could see she was down on her luck, it was equally obvious that Juliana Mitchell was a lady. Breeding was a thing even shabby clothes couldn’t hide—especially from a rancher used to raising fine cattle and horses.

      Minutes later, as they jostled over the road in the buckboard, Juliana relaxed against Lincoln, and it came to him, with a flash of amusement, that she was asleep. Plainly, she was exhausted. From the way her face had fallen as she’d read that letter, which she’d finally wadded up and stuffed into the pocket of her cloak with an expression of heartbroken disgust in her eyes, she’d suffered some bitter disappointment.

      All he knew for sure was that nobody had died, since he’d asked her that right off.

      Lincoln tried to imagine what kind of news might have thrown her like that, even though he knew it was none of his business.

      Maybe she’d planned to marry the man who’d written that letter, and he’d spurned her for another.

      Lincoln frowned, aware of the woman’s softness and warmth in every part of his lonesome body. What kind of damned fool would do that?

      His shoulder began to ache, since his arm was curved around Juliana at a somewhat awkward angle, but he didn’t care. He’d have driven right past the ranch, just so she could go on resting against him like that for a little while longer, if he hadn’t been a practical man.

      The wind picked up, and the snow came down harder and faster, and when he looked back at the kids, they were sitting stoically in their places, bundled in their blankets.

      The best part of an hour had passed when the lights of the ranch house finally came into view, glowing dim and golden in the snow-swept darkness.

      Lincoln’s heartbeat picked up a little, the way it always did when he rounded that last bend in the road and saw home waiting up ahead.

      Home.

      He’d been born in the rambling, one-story log house, with its stone chimneys, the third son of Josiah and Cora Creed. Micah, the firstborn, had long since left the ranch, started a place of his own down in Colorado. Weston, the next in line, lived in town, in rooms above the Diamond Buckle Saloon, and published the Courier—when he was sober enough to run the presses.

      Two years younger than Wes, Lincoln had left home only to attend college in Boston and apprentice himself to a lawyer—Beth’s father. As soon as he was qualified to practice, Lincoln had married Beth, brought her home to Stillwater Springs Ranch and loved her with all the passion a man could feel for a woman.

      She’d taken to life on a remote Montana ranch with amazing acuity for a city girl, and if she’d missed Boston, she’d never once let on. She’d given him Gracie, and they’d been happy.