The Christmas Secret

By Jeannie Watt

Trapped in a cabin in a raging blizzard with the one man on earth who could turn her world upside down…this Christmas holiday was not playing out at all the way Lil Reynolds had planned. Not even close.

When Lil’s former fiancé chose to marry on Christmas Eve—the day he and Lil had planned to marry one year ago—she knew she had to get out of town for the holidays. Heading to the isolated family cabin seemed like the perfect solution, until the blizzard came…and a man showed up at her door in the heart of the storm. Casey Lanigan. Her ex-fiancé’s brother. A man with whom she shared a secret summer romance many years ago. A man who’d betrayed her trust. A man who, despite everything, still made her heart beat a little harder…

So much for a Lanigan-free holiday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tule Publishing
• Release date: Nov 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781943963478

Jeannie Watt

Jeannie Watt lives in a historical Nevada ranching community with her husband, horses and ponies. During the day she teaches junior high and at night she writes about cowboys, ranchers and cops. When she’s not writing or feeding the animals, Jeannie enjoys sewing, making mosaic mirrors and cooking with her husband.

Book preview

Author

Keep Up with your Favorite Authors and their New Releases

For the latest news from Tule Publishing authors, sign up for our newsletter here or check out our website at TulePublishing.com

––––––––

Chapter One

Lil Reynolds pulled her red wool peacoat more tightly around her as she walked through the front door of her grandfather’s mountain cabin, aka her Christmas sanctuary. The air was colder inside the cabin than outside, but frigid or not, Lil was glad to be there, miles away from Sweetheart and the well-meaning people who kept giving her concerned glances and reassuring smiles.

If battle lines had been drawn in the small town, the majority of the townsfolk would have been on her side of the line, rather than on that of her former fiancé, Curtis Lanigan and his bride-to-be, Sophia Whiting. But Lil didn’t want people to choose sides. She didn’t regret calling off her wedding to Curtis a little over a year ago, but she did wish that Sophia had not chosen to be married on Christmas Eve—the exact same day she and Curtis were supposed to have wed. That made for some awkwardness.

It was hard to tell if Sophia was making a point, staking a claim, or if Curtis simply lacked the cajones to tell her to pick another date. Regardless, the problem with Sophia picking the same date was that it led to Lil getting a whole lot of sympathy. Lil hated sympathy. Hated people feeling bad for her. Heaven knew she’d experienced enough of that due to the drunken antics of her father; she didn’t need to experience it again.

The idea of spending the holidays at the cabin had come after the final Community Christmas Decoration Committee meeting, which her aunt Tilde chaired. Every time someone mentioned Christmas Eve and the fact that they needed to hold the Community Christmas Celebration a day early, due to the Lanigan-Whiting wedding, people had taken great pains not to look at Lil. To the point that she’d felt like shouting, I don’t care! I’m good with this. Stop feeling sorry for me!

But she didn’t, because she wasn’t one to make a scene or make people feel uncomfortable. Nope. She was the person who calmed people down when they became upset. Sweet librarian Lil.

She set down the cat carrier, hoping Miss Kitty didn’t freeze to death while she dealt with small matters such as heat and water. Miss Kitty, who was not a talkative feline, let out a small bewildered meow from inside the crate and turned in a circle. Lil knelt down to open the door and the long-haired calico who’d been her companion for the past ten years, crept out. She’d been to the cabin often during the summer months and knew the place well, but apparently not when the temperature was approaching zero. She lifted her nose, sniffed the cold air then turned around and walked back into her crate and curled up into a fluffy ball.

Right. Heat.

Coming up, Lil said, her breath showing white as she spoke to the cat.

She was lucky to have electricity at the cabin. After her great-grandfather built it in the 1940s, the power company had been hungry for customers and had run lines to all kinds of ridiculously remote places. By the time the Lanigans built their much larger cabin, two miles farther up the mountain on their patented mining claim in the 1970s, the power company hadn’t felt so generous. Their cabin ran on a generator.

But she wasn’t going to think about the Lanigans.

Lil’s jaw tightened as she cranked on the small electric heater under the bay window, then walked into the kitchen to plug in the heater there. The cabin had electricity, but the main heat source was wood, delivered every fall by Milt Carlton, her down-the-hill neighbor, who lived at the turn-off at the base of the mountain. Not that Lil used a lot of wood. She only lit the stove during the early summer or late fall evenings, so half a cord was all she ever needed. She now hoped that half a cord would be enough for her week-long sojourn into holiday isolation. It was cold.

She crossed the kitchen and pulled open the back door only to have a pile of drifted snow fall into the kitchen. Lil shook her head before brushing as much of it aside as possible and pushing the door closed again. Okay, so there might be a slight learning curve to cabin life during the winter months, but Lil was up for it. Anything but to be in Sweetheart, putting on her brave face. Her aunt Tilde and her cousin, Patricia, had been shocked when Lil had told them that, for the first time ever, she wasn’t going to attend the Community Christmas Celebration—that she planned to be at the cabin instead. She might as well have said that she was going to spend the holidays in a cave from the way they’d reacted.

In addition to convincing Tilde and Patricia that she didn’t want to stay in Sweetheart for the holidays, she’d had to convince her mother and grandmother that she wasn’t about to travel to Spokane, crossing two Idaho mountain passes in the winter to get there. Traveling the freshly plowed road to the cabin—thank you, Milt—was all the scary driving she wanted to do this holiday season.

She swept up the snow from the worn linoleum floor—a floor she’d thought about replacing after inheriting the cabin five years ago, but had never gotten around to—and dumped it into the sink. Until she had time to shovel off the unprotected back porch, she’d have to bring in her wood by carting it to the front porch. Doable—especially since the only thing on her agenda for the day was to settle into the cabin and make it holiday cheerful. For herself. Being in isolation didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the season on her own terms. She realized too late, though, that she should have brought a different coat for wood hauling. But coats could be dry cleaned and she was determined to enjoy her holiday, come what may.

Once the wood was hauled and the fire built, Lil closed the faucets she’d left open last fall, flipped the breaker on the pump and heard the satisfying sound of the hot water tank and toilet bubbling and burping as they filled. A few minutes later she turned on the kitchen faucet. It gave a couple coughs, then water started flowing.

Water. Heat. A couple boxes of food and holiday decoration, a small potted Christmas tree, a bottle of champagne to celebrate her Christmas and near-miss wedding. What else could she possibly need?

At the moment, all she could think of was what she didn’t need.

Company.

Looking at the leaden sky outside, she didn’t think that was going to be a problem.

He’d tried.

Casey Lanigan strode out of his ground floor apartment at the end of Second Avenue and headed toward his truck, which was idling in the driveway. Lanigan Greenhouses, where he’d been employed until about an hour ago, were located closer to Polson than Sweetheart, but he’d chosen to live in Sweetheart when he’d returned to Montana, rather than room in the giant new house his father had built in Polson. He’d told himself it was because he’d been raised in Sweetheart and because his brother was still there, living in the house they’d grown up in...but perhaps he’d also sensed how things would ultimately go down between himself and his father.

Sensed, but not consciously acknowledged.

Selling his business and returning home to help manage the family greenhouses after his dad’s bypass surgery five months ago, had been a huge step, but he’d thought he was ready to come home. To redeem himself. To build a new relationship with his father. Unfortunately, Daniel Lanigan had a long memory; judgments made years ago still held, and Casey finally understood that he wasn’t going to be able to change his father’s perception of him. He’d also discovered that his father hadn’t wanted him to come home to help in the first place. That had been something his stepmom, Deb, had engineered.

Deb. Ever the peacemaker. Ever the optimist.

Casey no longer bought into her optimism. Things weren’t going to work out between him and his father no matter what—at least not on a professional level—so in an effort to preserve any hope of a personal relationship, as tenuous as it might be, and to keep from giving his father yet another heart attack, he was going back to work for his former business partner. As soon as his brother got married and his duties as best man were over, he’d be on his way. He’d leave today if he could.

Eight years, and still paying for the sins of his youth.

It pissed him off...but there wasn’t much he could do about it. That pissed him off more.

A gust of unseasonably warm wind hit him as he crossed the snowy lawn, the result of a cold front moving in from Canada, pushing warm air in front of it. He wouldn’t be seeing a lot of cold fronts where he was going—at least not for several months, since it was now summer in Chile, where he’d soon be back on a drill rig.

Casey got into his truck and put it in gear, backing out onto the snowy street. Although the wind was blowing, the snow wasn’t coming down that hard. He should be able to get to the cabin, where he’d stowed all of his field gear due to lack of space in the tiny place he’d rented, and back into town by evening. Then he had to contact his landlord, explain that he was moving out. That meant abandoning his cleaning deposit and last month’s rent, but it was worth it to get out of Montana before things got worse between him and his old man.

Given their history, Casey had fully expected to have to prove himself when he’d returned home. His father had been in poor health and dealing with anxiety that had followed the unexpected heart attack, so having his work double-checked for the first month or so was a given. It’d gotten pretty damned insulting when the double-checking continued and showed no signs of abating. Ever. When his father seemed happier to take his secretary’s advice than Casey’s.

Casey had tried to be patient. He’d given his parents a lot of grief in his younger years, but he’d also turned himself around and started a successful exploration drilling business. He’d sold his half of

Reviews for The Christmas Secret

[carleneinspired · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lil is tired of the stares, the pity, and the sentimental looks. She's getting away to her family cabin, even if it means the entire town will think she's wallowing in sadness while her ex-fiance gets married on their old wedding date. She's got all she needs with her cat, Christmas music, food, and peace and quiet. That is, until a blizzard starts in and brings with it Casey Lanigan. Not only was he her first love, but he's also the brother of her ex-fiance. With their story unfinished, Lil and Casey have to work together to be as comfortable as they can stuck in the cabin until help arrives. Their unspoken feelings may just come to light and put them on a new path.

Easily my favorite Christmas story this year. I loved the two main characters, Lil and Casey, I liked their history and their personal background, and I especially liked how they both let their emotions make their decisions. As always, second chance stories tug at my heartstrings. In this case, there's a definite love-triangle type situation, but not one that overpowers the story. Yes, there's a past with Casey's brother that Lil wants to forget, and I kind of wish she'd never dated him, but there's more to it.. The rekindling of their romance is slow, but the feelings are strong and easy to feel through the words. I liked that Lil and Casey both dealt with some personal things that helped lead them to finally dealing with the history they share. I liked their humor and their witty dialogue, plus I really just enjoyed them as a couple. There's Christmas, family drama, and of course, a great love story in this short holiday read.