The Holiday Bride

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Why was it that her phone always rang exactly when the baby went down?

Trinity raced across her cabin in her flannel pajamas and socks. Her cell phone, which she had forgotten to mute, was lit up on the butcher-block counter in the tiny kitchen, ringing like a fire alarm.

“Ah, s**t!” she muttered and winced as she stubbed her toe on the leg of a stool she hadn’t pushed in. She landed on the phone before it could ring a third time. “Hello?” she whispered, putting all the pissed-off tone she could muster into the word. She stared at the open door to the only bedroom, through which she could just make out the crib. Time stood still as she waited for the cry.

“Whoa, geez, did I wake you?”

It was Dawn, her sister.

Trinity pressed her hand to her chest, over the swell of her breasts, feeling grungy after having opted for sleep instead of a shower. In her pajamas, she felt the chill of the cabin. She needed to get more wood for the fire, too, considering she didn’t think it was still going.

“Just got the baby down, and the phone just about woke her,” she said. “I was considering a shower even though I’d love nothing more than to grab a few more hours.” She groaned and caught a whiff of something off, then lifted her arm and realized it was her. Yup, the shower had now moved up the list of necessities.

“Sleep?” said Dawn. “What the f**k, Trinity? You were supposed to be on the road, remember, for Christmas at Mom and Dad’s? You are not going to chicken out! Tell me you’re going to show up, please, because if you don’t, Mom and Dad are likely to drive up, and then they’ll know I’ve been lying to them. Mom told me just yesterday you were sounding unusually tired, and here’s me, having to cover your butt yet again. I said it was likely a deadline, because you’ve picked up a lot of new clients and are trying to accomplish the impossible, and you were probably pulling an all-nighter again. I swear I can feel my nose grow. I seriously wonder if she can tell I’m lying. Good thing Dad wasn’t there, because he’d have known for sure…”

Trinity held the phone away from her ear, still not missing the rest of her sister’s rant. Boy, Dawn could get mad when she wanted to, and Trinity knew that the little secret she’d been keeping from everyone except her sister had only dug her into a hole she didn’t think she could get out of.

Avoidance was just something she’d become really good at.

“I’m coming,” she said. “I told you I would. I was just up most of the night with the baby, and I’m so damn tired I can feel it in my bones. I’m sure you don’t want me driving on these roads with a baby, ready to fall asleep.” She knew she was spreading it on thick, but at the same time, nervousness had been nipping at her butt again. If she could just find an excuse someone would buy, she’d be able to get out of going home to her parents’ place for Christmas. “So stop panicking. I promised I would come and face the music.”

Right, the music—which was her parents and the fact that she had a baby only her sister knew about. Like, who did that?

In fact, the baby’s father was the real issue: Garrett Franke, her dad’s deputy, whom she’d hated since the tenth grade. What had she been thinking? He was tall and dark haired, and she was a sucker for his drawl and smile.

A momentary lapse. She’d not spoken to him once since their night together.

“Look, if you’re that tired, I can come and get you,” Dawn said. “Even better, how about Mom or Dad—or, better yet, both? Then you can explain about the baby before you see everyone, and I won’t have to be there when they realize I’ve been lying to them for nine months! And while we’re at it, Trinity, you need to pick a name for the baby. I gave you my ideas already, so just pick one and go with it.”

Dawn’s names were all from the list of the top forty in the country—Amelia, Joy, Iris, Kennedy…as if one of them would fit. Trinity strode over to the sink and reached for a glass, then turned on the tap and filled it with water. On the table sat her open laptop and notes from her current client’s website design, which was only in the beginning stages. Right, something else she still needed to do. She could finish if only she didn’t have to leave her cabin.

There it was again, that wistful longing for a Christmas alone with her baby. Why did the thought appeal to her like the perfect present?

“I told you I’m working on a name,” Trinity said. “It has to be perfect.”

“You’re kidding, right? She’s six weeks old already. Just pick one,” Dawn said.

There it was, the constant nagging. Dawn just didn’t get the fact that Trinity needed to take her time. She couldn’t be pushed. As with learning to swim, she couldn’t jump in the deep end of the pool; she needed to wade in carefully to make sure nothing could go wrong.

“Stop pushing, Dawn,” she said. “I already told you I’ll be there. You don’t need to come and get me. I just need to shower and grab some coffee…” And pack up any clean clothes she could find, considering having a new baby meant no laundry was getting done.

She would be driving right into the lion’s den, so to speak. She’d avoided Idaho Falls for just that reason. First, Garrett was there, and second, she knew when her parents found out about the baby, they would have a lot of questions she didn’t want to answer. Her dad would likely sit her down and start in with his cop interrogation until he found out the real reason she had wanted no one to know.

“So you promise this time you’re coming?” Dawn said.

What was it about being put on the spot that made her want to say no?

“Yes, even though I want nothing more than a Christmas alone with my baby without having to sit through Dad’s interrogation or Mom’s freak-out over the fact that I had a baby and didn’t tell them. You said everyone’s going to be there, right? All Dad’s brothers, and Gram and Gramps and… That’s a lot of people, and they’re all going to be asking me the one thing I don’t want anyone to know: who the father is. You know, maybe Christmas isn’t the time for this.”

“Don’t you dare,” Dawn said, and Trinity could feel the bite in her voice. Someone spoke in the background—she wasn’t sure who—before Dawn lowered her voice and said in a loud whisper, “You pack up that baby right now, and figure out a name for her by the time you get here. You get in that four by four and drive, because if you don’t, I will tell Mom and Dad…and then there’s Garrett.”

Trinity didn’t miss the threat in her words. “Dawn, don’t tell Garrett,” she snapped. “You promised me you wouldn’t say anything, and I’m holding you to it. I do not want him to know.”

“Fine,” Dawn replied. “I know what you said, but you can’t keep the baby a secret forever. You know that, and I know that. I can’t believe I let you talk me into saying nothing. A baby is a really big deal, and the thing about babies is that you can’t keep them a secret forever. You know it’s not going to take anyone, especially Garrett, too long to figure out from the timeframe that the baby is his. You’d best take the bull by the horns and come clean. He has a right to know, Trinity, no matter what. And then there’re Mom and Dad. You know they won’t let it go.”

She squeezed the phone, furious at her sister, just as she heard the first cry and knew her shower was now going to have to wait. “Fine, but I’m not telling Garrett,” she said. “The baby’s awake now. I have to go…”

She could hear her sister still talking as she disconnected the phone, furious at the guilt that she didn’t want to feel. After all, Garrett was her dad’s deputy, and hadn’t she heard that he was already hooking up with a friend of Dawn’s now?

As she took in her quiet cabin, she wanted nothing more than to have a few more hours of peace and quiet alone with her baby before all hell broke loose and she had to face her mom and dad’s inquisition. Worse, she was dreading the minute her dad found out his deputy was in fact the baby’s father.