A Coldwater Christmas Read online

  Suddenly, it was quiet enough that even a whisper could have been heard, but it didn’t last. The moment Kace tried to hand the little girl back to Jana, the kid started to squeal again. This time, Kace got smacked in the face with that pink hat, and he took some blows from her little kicking feet. For someone whose tiny boots were four inches long, tops, she packed the wallop of an angry mule.

  “No! No! No!” she shrieked, and the moment Jana quit trying to tug her from Kace, the kid hushed again. Complete silence that had both Jana and him checking her. Kace could feel her still breathing, but that was the only sound she was making.

  Jana gave a weary sigh and pushed some stray strands of her hair from her face. “Marley’s teething, and she missed her nap.”

  Well, that explained the crappy mood, but it didn’t address why she’d quieted down in Kace’s arms. Or why the kid settled her head against his shoulder as if she belonged there. Of course, none of that hit the number one spot of Kace’s questions about this situation.

  Why the heck was Jana here?

  “Could you please just hold her while we talk?” Jana asked.

  She certainly wasn’t looking at him. That’s because she was fishing around in the huge diaper bag that she’d set on his desk, and she pulled out a bottle of water. Jana guzzled some as if she’d been crawling through the Mojave for days, and then she sank down into one of the chairs.

  Kace didn’t especially want to hold the kid. He didn’t have much experience doing that sort of thing and wasn’t sure he was doing it right. Plus, Ginger would no doubt spread some kind of gossip about this that would get back to Belinda Darlington, the woman he sometimes dated. Belinda seemed to live on the eternal hope that Kace would change his mind about marriage and fatherhood and would make those changes with her.

  He wouldn’t.

  Ever.

  But if Belinda got wind of his holding Jana’s daughter, then that might fuel some jealousy and hope that Kace didn’t want Belinda to have. Still, if he handed Marley back to Jana, then the crying might start up again. Jana looked as if she clearly needed a break from that, and it would help speed things along.

  Marley must have been resigned to the current situation, too, because she cuddled the hat against her like a blanket, stuck her thumb in her mouth and started sucking. Kace could practically feel the kid’s muscles go slack.

  “Thank you,” Jana muttered. After drinking more water, she looked up at him with her intense blue eyes.

  Eyes that could apparently still do a number on him.

  Like her butt, those baby blues gave him a few tugs on the heartstrings. So did her mouth, but it tugged at a different part of him. That mouth had always been a hot spot for him. Kace silently cursed himself for recalling that and shoved that notion aside.

  “Marley’s always cranky when she gets back from visits with her dad,” Jana went on.

  Visits, as in a custody thing, and even though he tried to stop his attention from going to her left hand, he looked anyway. No wedding ring. That must mean the divorce was final.

  “Since I doubt you brought your daughter in so I could arrest her for extreme crankiness, care to explain why you’re here?” he prompted, making sure he sounded and looked like a cop.

  Of course, his stern demeanor was somewhat diminished by the fact he was holding a thumb-sucking baby wearing pink overalls and tasseled cowboy boots. Plus, Marley’s wispy curls kept landing on his mouth, and he had to blow them away since they were tickling him.

  Jana nodded and gave another sigh, but she didn’t say anything until she’d stood and met him eye to eye. “Kace, we have to stop this wedding.”

  He was sure he blinked twice, and Kace searched back through his memory to see if he’d missed something. “Are you talking about my brother?”

  Because that was the only wedding Kace knew anything about. His brother Judd and his fiancée, Cleo, would be having a small private ceremony once they set an actual date, but there was no reason for Kace or anyone else to stop it. Judd and Cleo had been in love since they were teenagers so nobody would question why they were taking the “I do” plunge.

  Jana pulled back her shoulders, shook her head. “You haven’t heard?”

  Well, hell. That gave him a new jolt of concern. “Heard what?”

  She stared at him. Really stared. And she mouthed some profanity. “I just assumed your father had told you.”

  Now, that wasn’t just a jolt. It was more like an avalanche. “Told me what,” Kace snarled.

  Jana’s hands went onto her hips. “Your father asked my mother to marry him, and she said yes. They’re making plans for a wedding, Kace.” Her eyes narrowed to fiery slits. “Plans that you and I are going to stop.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  JANA HADN’T BEEN sure how Kace would react to her visit, but she hadn’t expected this stunned silence layered with a hefty dose of skepticism. She’d thought he had known about their parents’ relationship.

  Apparently not, though.

  And that meant she was going to have to fill him in.

  By the time she was done, Kace would likely be as riled as she was. Well, maybe he would be. Kace had never cared much for her mother, and unless something drastic had changed, he’d cared even less for his father. Still, if there was anyone who would be on her side for stopping this wedding, it would be Kace. He of all people knew what his father was.

  With Marley still in his arms, Kace just stared at her, obviously waiting for her to explain the bombshell she’d just delivered. She briefly considered taking Marley from him before she launched into the talk, but this was the first time in the past half hour that her daughter hadn’t been crying or fussing. Marley looked perfectly at peace with her cheek squished against Kace’s shoulder, and she was actually falling asleep. Even if it was, well, unsettling to see Kace holding her, Jana decided to take unsettling over the disruption.

  “Your father hasn’t been in touch with you?” Jana asked.

  “No.” And since Kace had practically growled that answer through clenched teeth, it let Jana know that he felt the same way about Peter Laramie as he had years ago when Kace and she had been together. Of course, some of the venom in his tone was likely for her. He still carried a lot of resentment over their divorce.

  Welcome to the club.

  She had resentment, too, but Jana aimed most of that particular feeling at herself. Most. The rest was for her mother.

  “I haven’t spoken a word to my father since he walked out on his family when I was about ten years old,” Kace added.

  So, no contact for a very long time, considering that Kace was now thirty-five. That no contact surprised her because Jana had assumed that Peter had visited her mother here in Coldwater. Even if he had, it was possible no one had noticed him because her mother’s house was so far out of town.

  “I just assumed you’d kept tabs on him or something,” she commented.

  “No need. He lost any importance to me when he left.” He added a shrug that she suspected was meant to convince her that he didn’t care about this one way or the other. And maybe that was partly true. But there was importance because of the mark the man had left on his children.

  “Your father’s here in Coldwater right now,” Jana told him.

  Kace nodded. “Deputy Cassaine just informed me of that when she wrote him a traffic ticket. But I haven’t seen him. Nor do I have any intentions of seeing or talking to him.”

  Jana groaned. Not good. She needed Kace on her side about this. This upcoming marriage had disaster written all over it.

  Kace glanced down at Marley, who was sleeping now. That seemed to be his cue to hand her back to Jana, and thank goodness the baby remained sleeping while he did.

  Without the “baby shield” and the commotion of Marley’s fussing, Jana got her first good look at Kace. A look she hadn’t gotten in a cou
ple of years, and even then it had been a glimpse from a distance as she’d driven through town and spotted him.

  It was no glimpse today, though.

  He was right there in front of her, only inches away, and Jana had no trouble seeing those ice-gray eyes. Cop’s eyes that could make you feel as if you’d committed a felony or two. Once though, they had made her feel something totally different.

  The curl of heat flickered inside her. It always did when it came to Kace. Which was totally reasonable. He was tall, dark and hot with that black hair and warrior’s face. Well, a pretty warrior’s face anyway. Kace would hate to know that he could have been mistaken for a model in those snug Wranglers and great-fitting dark gray shirt. He would equally hate that some of the women in town had dubbed him Deputy Tight-Buns when he’d first pinned on a badge.

  He cleared his throat, just a quick brusque sound to remind her that she was staring at him and he was still waiting for her to get on with her explanation. Jana decided to summarize things for him.

  “I believe your father is a gold-digging SOB with a slime streak several miles long.”

  Kace lifted his shoulder. “And your point would be?” he asked, clearly not disagreeing with her.

  Jana gently rocked Marley so that she wouldn’t wake up while she got to the point. “A couple of months ago, Peter met my mother at a party given by their mutual friends in San Antonio. They’ve basically carried on since then. Yesterday, he asked her to marry him, and she said yes.”

  Jana had tried to explain what was going on without adding any emotion to it. Hard to do though when it riled her to the core.

  “Eileen knows that he’s my father?” Kace asked.

  Jana nodded. “I ran a background check on him and gave her everything I learned. She knows that he abandoned his family. Abandoned you,” she emphasized. “She knows that his leaving eventually led to your mother’s overdose on drugs, which then led to you and your brothers being placed in foster care.”

  Hellish foster care in some instances. Kace’s younger brothers, Callen and Nico, had nearly been killed at the hands of a monster who’d been their foster mother’s boyfriend.

  And Jana knew that Kace blamed himself for it.

  It wasn’t logical for him to do that, but he was the oldest and therefore had put that on his shoulders. Thankfully, Kace and his brothers had eventually ended up here in Coldwater, where they’d gotten a prizewinning foster father, Buck McCall. Buck had given the boys love and stability. A home. But Jana knew all of them carried the emotional scars from their past.

  A past that Peter Laramie had set into motion by leaving.

  Kace huffed and put his hands on his hips. “You believe Peter committed some kind of crime, maybe even blackmailed your mother into becoming engaged to him?”

  “No, but I believe he will commit a crime,” Jana blurted out but then stopped. “I believe he’s capable of committing a crime,” she amended, “and I’m sure you feel the same way.”

  He tapped his badge. “I tend to need some kind of evidence before I arrest a person. The law’s just funny that way.”

  The frustration quickly replaced that coil of attraction. “His past is all the evidence you need. He spent time in jail.”

  Judging from Kace’s slight shift in posture, he hadn’t known about that, and it prompted her to reach into the diaper bag and take out the two-page background report that Jana had hired a PI to do on the man. Kace kept his eyes connected with hers for several long moments before he took it.

  “He served six months for drug possession,” Jana pointed out though there was no way Kace could miss it. She’d literally highlighted it.

  “Twenty-four years ago,” Kace said as he read through the report. “That was about a year after he left my mother.”

  Jana heard the judgment in his tone. Twenty-four years was a lifetime ago, and he hadn’t had a repeat offense. That still didn’t make him a good guy. Jana could feel his sliminess all the way down to the marrow of her bones. And she didn’t think she felt that way about him solely because he’d ditched his family and spurred the problems Kace and his brothers had gone through.

  “He lists his occupation as an artist, and he owns a shop called What-Knots,” Kace added, still reading.

  “A junk store with a so-called art gallery attached,” she corrected. “And artist is a very subjective term. Anyone with a paintbrush could call themselves that.”

  Kace made a sound that could have meant anything, but she didn’t think it was one of agreement. He continued to scan through the rest of the report that included the man’s divorce from Kace’s mother along with his previous residences in Texas and Oklahoma. What it didn’t include was a single instance where he’d ever attempted to contact any of his sons. That only added to his sleazeball label as far as Jana was concerned.

  “He doesn’t seem like the sort of man Eileen would marry,” Kace commented, his attention still on the report. “He’s got the money, but he doesn’t travel in her social circles.”

  “Exactly!” Jana agreed.

  Though some would see that as a plus for Peter. Jana loved her mother—most of the time anyway—but no one could ever accuse Eileen of having a common touch. Not until recently anyway. Her mother was going through, well, changes, and while some of those weren’t all bad, this marriage was.

  “But opposites can and do attract,” Kace said. This time, he looked up at her, their gazes colliding, and she knew he was talking about them now.

  Yes, they had been opposites, but when compared to her mother and Peter, Kace and she had practically been birds of a feather. They’d wanted the same kind of life on a ranch. They’d wanted kids. Jana had anyway. And that gave her a hard pinch of a reminder. The truth was, if it hadn’t been for the kid factor, Kace and she might have never married.

  But this wasn’t about them, Jana quickly reminded herself. Kace and she were finished. However, she couldn’t say the same for her mother and Peter. And yes, they were the king and queen of opposites.

  Eileen was old money and worth millions. Eileen’s father had been as rich as his father and grandfather before him. They weren’t exactly Texas royalty, but her mother belonged to enough snooty clubs to run in elite social circles. Much to Eileen’s dismay, that sort of thing didn’t appeal to Jana. She just wanted to raise her daughter, run her horse ranch, put her divorces behind her and make sure her mother wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.

  “Did your father get drugs for your mother?” Jana came out and asked, but she didn’t wait for the answer. “Because if he did, he contributed to her death.”

  “That’s a stretch. She didn’t overdose until a couple of years after he left.”

  Well, there went that theory. “Still, she wouldn’t have used drugs in the first place if he hadn’t made her life miserable. Maybe he even abused her in some way.”

  “Not that I ever saw.” He stayed quiet a moment, and she worried that maybe she’d triggered some really bad memories for him.

  Of course, she had.

  This situation was likely bringing it all back for him. Jana had woken Kace from enough nightmares to know that things had stayed with him long after he’d gotten out of the tangled mess of his childhood.

  On a heavy sigh, Kace handed her back the report. “What exactly do you think I can do about any of this?”

  “You can stop the wedding,” she said without hesitation. “They’re already planning it for Valentine’s Day at my mom’s house. That’s less than three months away. Between now and then, you and I can convince her what kind of man Peter Laramie really is.”

  Kace shook his head. “If that report didn’t convince her, then I don’t know what good I can do.”

  “You can remind her of what he did to you and your brothers.” Jana’s voice was a little louder than planned, and it caused Marley to squirm against her.
“You can use your badge to intimidate Peter into leaving town,” she added.

  This time, her voice wasn’t too loud, but there was plenty of emotion in it. She was on the verge of begging.

  “You know I can’t do that,” Kace said. No shout or whisper for him. No emotion, either. It was his flat cop’s voice that coordinated well with his flat cop’s eyes. “This isn’t my rodeo, not my clowns.”

  Jana wanted to curse, and she wished she had a stronger argument to convince him to help her. She couldn’t very well ask him to do it as a favor for old time’s sake, since their old times hadn’t been that good.

  Well, parts of them hadn’t.

  The divorce had been a serious dark spot, but the beginning of their marriage had been like their courtship. Scalding hot. Jana didn’t think it was an exaggeration that Kace and she had had sex more times in those two years than she had in the fifteen years that’d followed. Scalding hot, incredible, memorable sex—that she was trying hard not to remember now. She didn’t need thoughts like that in her head when she obviously had to come up with a way to get him on board with this marriage battle.

  “I’ve already talked to my mother’s friends,” Jana went on, “and they’ve had no luck convincing her to give this relationship more time, not to jump into marriage with a man she hardly knows. A man who’s seventeen years younger than she is, I’d like to point out.”

  “He’s fifty-four,” Kace commented. “Yeah, that’s a big age difference all right.”

  It was indeed a big gap since her mother hadn’t had her until she was thirty-six, and Kace’s father had had him when he was still a teenager.

  “But Eileen’s not exactly robbing the cradle,” Kace added.