Undercover Christmas. B.J. Daniels

      * * *

      MARNI COULDN’T BELIEVE what she’d volunteered for as she took Dry Creek Road out of town headed for the Horseshoe Hills north of Bozeman. She wound through the snowy foothills that lay in the shadows of the Bridger mountain range. Farmhouses became fewer and farther between, and the road narrowed as she left civilization behind.

      Occasionally she’d catch her reflection in the rearview mirror, and do a startled double take at the woman who looked back at her. Elise had insisted on putting a russet rinse on Marni’s normally dark-blond, curly, shoulder-length hair. Marni had drawn the line at chopping it off to look like El’s short wedge.

      “He’ll just have to think I let my hair grow,” she told her twin. “El, are you sure there’s no chance that this guy really doesn’t remember you?”

      El laughed. “Not after the four days we spent together.” Her eyes sparkled. “It was…magical.”

      Magical. Marni suspected that wasn’t the way Chase Calloway would describe it, especially now that Elise was pregnant

      “Here, let’s do something with your makeup,” El had said. “Then we’ll call my friend at the costume shop and get you a maternity form.”

      Elise had filled her in on how she and Chase had met, where they’d gone and what they’d done, just in case she needed those details to get past Jabe Calloway to Chase. Marni only hoped she could keep it all straight. The last thing she wanted was to get caught in this whopper of a lie.

      The deejay on the radio cut into Marni’s nervous thoughts with more disturbing news. A winter-storm warning. Great, exactly what she needed. “White Christmas” began to play on the radio. How appropriate. Well, it was too late now, she thought, looking at the darkening sky. All she could hope was that she’d get finished with Chase Calloway before the storm hit. And that he’d have some reasonable explanation for his disappearing act, just as El believed.

      But common sense told Marni that Chase’s father wasn’t keeping him away from Elise; he was just using the old man as an excuse. Even if Jabe Calloway had forbidden his son to acknowledge El and the baby, and Chase had conformed to his father’s wishes, what kind of man did that make Chase?

      No, Marni decided as she headed up the canyon, there was nothing about Chase Calloway she was going to like. She dropped down a hill through the snowy pines into Maudlow, an old railroad town with an abandoned clapboard hotel and gas station-grocery. Signs over the ancient fuel pumps outside listed gasoline at thirty-seven cents a gallon.

      Marni hung a left at Maudlow, driving past the old schoolhouse on the hill up Sixteenmile Creek, and felt her first real trepidation.

      The canyon narrowed in a thick fringe of snowcapped pine trees, rocky cliffs and creek bottom. She followed the winding frozen waters of the creek farther up the dead-end road and into the darkness of the approaching storm. She could feel the temperature plummeting outside her four-wheel-drive wagon and realized she hadn’t seen another vehicle on the road since the Poison Hollow turnoff.

      She cranked up the heater and rubbed her cold fingers as she looked anxiously to the snowy road ahead. A Montana native, she knew how quickly the weather could change. Especially in December. But it wasn’t the cold or the storm that worried her. It was not knowing what lay ahead in this isolated part of the country.

      She’d convinced herself that she’d missed the turnoff, when she saw the sign. Calloway Ranch. She shifted down, amazed at how cumbersome the maternity form was. How did pregnant women drive? She felt like a hippo out of water.

      She turned up the road, feeling even more isolation as she crossed the creek on the narrow one-lane bridge and drove into another narrow dark canyon.

      To her surprise the canyon opened up and in the middle of the small valley sat a huge, Gothic-looking house. It towered three stories. Nothing about it looked hospitable. No Christmas lights stretched across the eaves. Nor did any blink at the windows. Under the grayness of the approaching storm, the place looked dismal and downright sinister. Not that she’d expected a warm reception.

      Marni pulled her car in front of it and cut the engine. She sat for a moment, rehearsing. She was Elise Mc-Cumber. She checked herself in the mirror. Nice eye shadow, El. She was seven months pregnant. She patted the maternity form. “How ya doin’, ‘Sam’?”

      Then she shook her head in disbelief that she was doing such a fool thing and opened the car door.

      It didn’t look as if anyone was home. No dogs ran out to greet or bite her. What few vehicles were parked along the side of the house were snow-covered. What kind of ranch was this? Didn’t El say they raised horses?

      An uneasiness raised goose bumps on her skin. She looked up. A face peered out at her from a tiny window under the eave above the third floor. Then the face was gone. But the uneasy feeling remained.

      “Well, someone’s home,” Marni muttered. “And the family now knows I’m here.” She took a deep breath and mounted the steps.

      An older woman answered the door with a dish towel in her free hand. “Yes?” she inquired, giving Marni a disdainful once-over.

      “I’m Ma—Elise McCumber,” Marni said. “I’m here to see Chase Calloway.”

      “And what may I say this is in regard to?” she asked, even more cool and reserved than before. Unless Marni missed her guess, this was the same woman she’d spoken with on the phone earlier.

      “It’s personal,” Marni said meaningfully as she opened her coat and patted “Sam.”

      The woman rocked back on her sensible shoes.

      “Would you please tell Mr. Calloway I’m here. Elise McCumber.” Marni started to step into the foyer but the woman blocked her way.

      “Mr. Calloway isn’t seeing—”

      “I’ll take care of this, Hilda,” called a male voice from some distance behind the woman.

      The moment Hilda moved out of the doorway, Marni stepped in from the cold, breathing a sigh of relief. She’d gotten her foot in the door, so to speak.

      Marni wasn’t surprised to find the inside of the house as forbidding as the outside. The interior provided little warmth, from the dark hardwood floors and trim to the somber wallpaper and heavy dusky draperies. In the corner sat an artificial Christmas tree, flocked white and decorated with matching gold balls positioned perfectly around its uniform boughs. So different from the McCumber tree at the farm with its wild array of colorful ornaments, each homemade and placed on the tree by the McCumber kids.

      At the sound of boots on the wooden floor, Marni turned to see a large older man in western clothing coming down the hall. He filled the hallway with his size alone—he had to be close to six foot six—but also with his imposing manner. Marni took a wild guess. Jabe Calloway.

      “Yes?” he asked, assessing her with sharp, pale blue eyes. He seemed surprised by what he saw. “You’re inquiring about my son?”

      Marni watched the housekeeper scurry toward the back of the house as if the place were in flames.

      “I’m Elise McCumber,” she said, saying the name over and over in her head like a mantra. Or a curse. “And you’re…?”

      “Jabe Calloway,” he said, plainly irritated. “What is it you want with my son?”

      “I want to talk to him. What it’s about is between Chase and me.” A strange sound made Marni turn. She blinked in surprise as a younger man hobbled into view from down the same hallway Hilda had disappeared. Marni told herself this couldn’t be Chase Calloway.

      “Chase,” his father said, also turning at the sound. “There’s no reason to concern yourself with this. Ms. McCumber was just leaving.”

      “But this is my concern,” Chase said.

      Under normal circumstances,