Hearts Evergreen: A Cloud Mountain Christmas\A Match Made for Christmas (13 page)

“Um…”

“She's nice, too,” Alyssa chimed in.

“And funny.” Mandi—who maybe wasn't as moody as he'd thought at first—actually giggled.

“Hold still for just a—”

“Are you married?” Jennifer asked.

The heat that crept into his face melted the snowflakes caught in his eyelashes. “No.”

The girls exchanged glances. That peculiar ripple of unease danced through him again.

“Sarah isn't married, either.”

“Really.” Connor snapped the picture, not even bothering to take another one in case the first one didn't turn out. “All done. It looks like Sarah's waiting for you.”

He sighed in relief as they scampered away, holding up the hems of their robes. Laughing as the wind tugged at their halos.

Sarah waited until they reached the door before knocking on it. When it finally opened a crack, an elderly man stood on the other side, resting his weight on a wooden cane.

As if the girls had rehearsed the moment a hundred times, Jennifer stepped forward and raised her arms.

“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy…”

T
he girls huddled together in the back of the van, a quilt thrown over their heads to muffle the sound of their voices. In the front of the vehicle, Sarah hummed the chorus of the carol they'd sung for Mr. Banister.

“Admit it. I'm right.” Jennifer crossed her arms over her chest.

Emma caught her lower lip in her teeth. “I don't know.”

“Didn't you notice the way they acted around each other?”

“They wouldn't
look
at each other,” Mandi pointed out.

“And Sarah seemed kind of mad when she told us he was going to write an article about the Good News-grams.”

“Exactly.” Jennifer gave her friends a superior smile. “According to my sister, when two people won't look at each other, it's because they
like
each other. Once they start, they won't be able to stop. It's like eating cookie dough. And Janie's in college, so she should know.”

The other girls murmured their approval. Jennifer's sister, Janie, did have a lot of boyfriends.

“Sarah does seem lonely,” Emma admitted. “I heard my mom say she doesn't have any family.”

A moment of silence descended on the group out of respect for Sarah's family status.

“What if they don't
ever
look at each other? Then what?” Mandi asked.

“That's where we come in,” Jennifer said, her voice thin with excitement.

“I don't know.” Emma peeked around the corner of the quilt and watched the tassel on Sarah's hat bounce in time with “Sleigh Ride.” “Maybe Sarah wants to find her own husband.”

“They're both about the same age and neither of them is bad looking.” Jennifer's shrug displaced the quilt and they yanked it over their heads again. “And you know what Sarah is always telling us.”

Their voices blended together as they solemnly recited one of their youth leader's favorite phrases. “God's greatest gift is love.”

“And Christmas is, like, the perfect time to give a gift, right? She's not going to always have us around to keep her busy, you know.” Jennifer put out her hand. “So who's in?”

Three fingers curled around hers and squeezed.

The high-pitched squeals under the quilt told Sarah she shouldn't have let the girls eat so much of Mr. Banister's homemade fudge. She wasn't going to win a prize for Youth Leader of the Year if she sent four adolescent girls home supercharged with sugar.

She fumbled with the radio and turned down the volume. The windshield wipers went on instead. Maybe they needed to add a new church van to their prayer list. “What's going on back there?”

“Nothing!”

The quick response only convinced her there was. The girls had been acting strange all evening. She'd noticed how quickly they'd taken to Connor. It surprised her because Connor wasn't exactly the warm, teddy-bear type of guy who drew kids like an outdoor jungle gym. Emma, who barely made eye contact with her, didn't seemed to be intimidated by his aloofness. She'd even been brave enough to offer him a piece of fudge. And Mandi, whose negative comments about men hinted at the lingering pain over her parent's divorce, had asked him questions about the countries he'd traveled to.

Sarah had expected Connor to leave right after he got the photo and the information he needed, but instead he'd joined them at the scuffed kitchen table and listened while Mr. Banister, who'd been forced into early retirement by an accident, entertained them with stories of his career as a lumberjack.

Sarah noticed that as the evening progressed, the older man's shoulders lifted from their weary slump and his eyes looked brighter. Even though she hadn't planned to stay longer than it took to deliver the message from Mr. Banister's daughter, Sarah sensed the man needed more than a Christmas carol. He needed laughter. And life. And someone to listen.

When Alyssa had stifled a yawn, Sarah realized she had to get the girls back to the church. Their parents were scheduled to pick them up at eight o'clock and the next Good News-gram might depend on how long they were forced to wait in the cold parking lot for their daughters!

Mr. Banister had honked loudly into a white handkerchief when the girls danced out the door of his tiny trailer into the darkness.

“Nice kids to give up TV for a night to listen to an old man ramble on,” he muttered. “It gets kind of quiet around here at night.”

Sarah noticed the hand-carved chess set on the coffee table and had an idea. “Some of the men who attend Lakeshore Community Fellowship formed a chess club last year, Mr. Banister. If you're interested, I'll have the contact person call you. They get together once a week to play chess and have coffee. You might enjoy it.”

Mr. Banister cleared his throat. “Wouldn't hurt, I suppose.”

Without thinking, Sarah had leaned over and kissed the man's weathered cheek. When she'd turned, she collided with Connor's cool gaze.

“A chess club, huh?” He murmured as she brushed past him. “I'll bet a person has to pay dues to belong.”

“It's a good thing I don't bet, then, because you'd lose,” Sarah had said.

Frustrating man
.

Replaying their conversation, she almost missed the turnoff to the church parking lot. As the girls tumbled out of the van, Sarah joined them to close the evening in prayer.

“I'll see you on Saturday at noon. That's our next delivery,” Sarah told them.

“Is Mr. Lawe going to be there?” Jennifer asked.

Sarah forced a smile. “I'm sure he will be.”

As the girls hurried to meet up with their parents, Sarah heard Jennifer say something to Emma that sounded suspiciously like, “See, I told you so.”

When Connor got back to his father's house, he found Robert asleep on the couch. His dad looked more fragile than Connor had ever seen him. He looked…old. Deep lines scored his face, his hair had thinned and even summer weekends on the golf course hadn't erased the pallor that resulted from a weakening heart.

Robert Lawe had always been a force to be reckoned with—a man who seemed larger than life—but for the first time Connor didn't see a man he had to prove something to. He just saw…a man. A man battling advancing years and failing health.
His father
.

You've been gone too long.

The words crept in as Connor stared down at Robert.

No. He couldn't have stayed in Jackson Lake. Robert hadn't
wanted
him to. Like in an old Western, the town just wasn't big enough for the both of them. Connor's lips twisted. Eventually they would have faced off in a showdown on The Avenue.

Maybe that showdown was yet to come.

Connor still felt the fallout from the bomb Alice Owens had dropped on him in Sarah's shop.
It's about time you take over the business so your father can retire.

Give up the career he'd spent the last decade building to rusticate in his hometown?
The Jackson Lake News
was a dinosaur. A weekly newspaper that still published recipes and local gossip.

“You home, son?” Robert's eyes fluttered open and focused on him. Blurry. Confused.

Son.

“Were you waiting up for me, Dad?” Connor had to crack a joke to offset the sudden burning behind his eyes.

Robert pushed himself into a sitting position and began to search his pockets. Connor spotted his father's glasses on the side table but knew better than to point them out. His dad accepted help like a cat accepted a knot in its tail.

“I must have fallen asleep. Who can stay awake during all those commercials?” Robert grumbled. “Where've you been? It's after eight.”

“Past my curfew, huh?” Connor grinned, dropped in the chair opposite the sofa and propped his feet on the coffee table. “As a matter of fact, I was working on an assignment from my editor.”

“What assignment?”

“A warm fuzzy Christmas story, remember?”

“What did you find?” Robert's eyebrows met in the center of his forehead. “Shop with a Cop? It's been done. Mittens from the Mission Circle? Last year's news.”

Connor noticed the chess set on the marble side table by the fireplace and remembered the expression on Mr. Banister's face when Sarah mentioned the group of men who got together to play. She certainly seemed to have a way with people. Unlike him.

“Trust me. This one is new. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.” Connor nodded at the chess set. “Are you up to a game?”

“Chess? I'll beat you and you'll cry again.”

“Dad, I was ten years old the last time we played. I promise I won't cry this time if you win.”

Robert shrugged. “I don't have anything better to do.”

As a teenager, the gruff response would have sent Connor out of the room to follow his own pursuits. He'd refused to waste time with someone who didn't want him around. This time, he decided to stay and see what would happen.

He stood up and caught the flash of regret in Robert's eyes. The one he would have missed if he'd simply walked away like he'd done in the past.

Was it possible his dad was getting tired of the tension between them, too?

Maybe for the second time, he was in the right place at the right time. Sarah Kendle would probably call it divine intervention. He called it a coincidence.

Sarah peered through the row of corkscrew curls that formed a curtain over her eyes, keeping an eye on the customer stalking around the shop. The one whose broad shoulders barely cleared the narrow aisle between the displays.

He was back. Again. Sarah had hoped he'd sleep in on Saturday morning and skip the Good News-gram the girls were scheduled to deliver.

No such luck.

When he'd walked in minutes after she unlocked the door, she'd given herself a paper cut. Then she'd nicked her finger on a pair of scissors. Not only did Connor's presence inflict serious damage on her peace of mind, if he stayed in her shop any longer, she'd be a patient at the walk-in clinic by noon.

Connor paused to stare at a framed photograph on the wall. There were several, but she could tell by his position which one had captured his attention. A close-up of a bull moose. A slice of light from the morning sun captured every glistening bead of water that fell from the animal's muzzle as it lifted its head from the river.

“Is this an Anne Elliott?”

Sarah's breath caught in her throat and she tried another one. A little bit better. “Yes.”

Connor had his back to her as he studied the photograph. “I bought five photos from her Maine collection. I don't have this one.” He sounded a little put out.

Sarah suppressed a smile. “It's not part of the
Maine
series. That one was taken on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.”

Connor tossed a frown over his shoulder, clearly skeptical. “Are you sure? I collect her work and I've never seen this one.”

“I'm sure.” Humor threaded Sarah's voice as she stepped around the counter and came over to stand beside him. “I was with her when she took it.”

She was serious.

And suddenly Connor saw it. The faint resemblance to the woman whose face graced the book jacket of his first edition printing of Anne Elliott's Winter collection. The piquant chin. The large, wide-spaced eyes. The women were too far apart in age to be sisters, the resemblance too uncanny to be anything less than immediate family. “Anne Elliott is your
mother
?”

“Was.” Sarah wouldn't look at him. “She died two years ago from ovarian cancer.”

“I'm sorry.” The words sounded inadequate even to Connor's ears. And judging from the rigid set of Sarah's shoulders, he'd inadvertently scraped against a wound that hadn't healed. “I hadn't heard. I keep tabs on what's going on in the world but sometimes I lose track of what's happening in my own backyard.”

“Not many people know. It's the way she wanted it. Mom never liked drawing attention to herself.” Sarah's lips tilted. “All she wanted to do was snap pictures. Becoming famous surprised her.”

“There's another book scheduled for release this spring, if I remember correctly.” He'd preordered it the year before and had wondered about the two year lapse between collections.

Sarah nodded. “Her publisher just finished her last collection. It's not as complete as her early work, but they included some of her journal entries this time. And there'll be a tribute to her in the front.”

Sarah didn't say so, but Connor knew she'd written it. It was obvious that she and her mother had been close. The urge to wrap his arms around Sarah and absorb some of her pain shocked him. He stuck his hands in his pockets. Just to keep them in line.