Christmas At Cade Ranch

She was a damsel in distress, yet he couldn’t be her hero. He’d never get close to a wild card like Sofia. So why was he attracted to a woman he couldn’t trust? One with a child who might—or might not—be his nephew? Clearly, Jesse had cared about the child enough to sing him lullabies. That fact, however, didn’t make Javi his son.

Or a Cade.

To believe in Sofia, James needed solid proof. Without it, he’d put his mother at risk. His thoughts returned to Sofia and how she’d charmed him earlier.

Was his mother’s heart all he needed to worry about?

CHAPTER FIVE (#uf5b4362c-ec62-533f-b5d9-4cbadaa1af01)

“DOGGONE IT!”

At a clattering bang, Sofia stopped tossing a salad and whirled from her place at the ranch’s granite kitchen island. Javi peered up from a coloring book spread across an oval table before a bay window. Over his shoulder loomed Mount Sopris. The setting sun gilded its jagged, snow-covered peak gold.

Joy gaped at an upended kettle and cradled her Ace-wrapped wrist. Steaming brown stew spilled onto the red Native American–style rug covering the pine floor. The mouthwatering smell of bay leaves, cooked carrots and braised beef, already filling the vaulted kitchen, intensified.

“Let me help.” Sofia grabbed the pot and dropped it into one of the countertops’ built-in stainless-steel sinks. She flipped on the garbage disposal and dumped the ruined dinner down the grinding mechanism. James had mentioned looking forward to beef stew on the drive home earlier. Would he be disappointed? And why did she care?!

Clearly, he was suspicious of her. After she’d refused to visit the police, a trip that would have triggered bad memories and risked revealing her old felony, he’d barely spoken to her.

“I want to help!” Javi scampered over, his face glowing, his compact body practically vibrating with excitement.

Resistance was futile. The kid lived to help.

She ruffled his hair and handed him a couple of paper towels. “Get down with your bad self.”

“I’m using my superpowers.” Javi sank to the floor, the tip of his pink tongue clamped between his teeth as he concentrated. His long sweeps smeared the stew farther into the small spaces between the wood planks.

“Supper’s ruined.” Joy sighed when she returned from the laundry room, where she’d dropped off the rug. “I wanted to make tonight special for you.” She leaned against one of the natural wood cabinets that matched the floor and the exposed-beam, slanted ceiling. Her apron tie knot unraveled in her hands.

Javi sat back on his heels and waved a dripping towel. “I don’t like beef stew anyway. Celery is bleh.”

“Hush,” Sofia hissed, mortified. They were guests here, at least for one more night, while she figured out her options.

Her wallet couldn’t have just disappeared. Someone had to have it. Worse, Javi and Joy seemed to be joined at the hip already, spending every minute forming a bond that was becoming harder and harder to imagine severing when they left.

Was a lasting relationship with the Cades possible? At least from a distance? Joy seemed to be comforted by Javi, and Javi bloomed under his grandmother’s doting.

Or would staying in touch keep her chained to her past?

“It is kind of bleh,” Joy said, her tone conspiratorial. A sparkle brightened her eyes. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”

Javi moved close and dropped his voice. “It’s our secret?”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t like secrets.”

Sofia cringed inside.

Please, oh, please, don’t ever learn about mine.

“Honesty’s a good policy to have, young man. And you can put those paper towels outside in the trash.”

“What else can I throw out?” Javi picked up a chipped ceramic saltshaker. “This is old.”

“It is. It came all the way from Chicago when your great-great-great-great-grandfather ordered it from the Sears and Roebuck catalog over a hundred years ago.”

“What’s a catalog?”

“A book with pictures of different things you can buy.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Oh, anything back then. You name it. Rifles, chickens, fur coats, even a house. There’s one in town I can show you someday if you’re still here. They decorate it like it’s a Las Vegas casino. Blinking lights everywhere, a singing snowman and Santa on the roof.”

When her hopeful eyes met Sofia’s, Sofia hurried to the broom closet. She had plenty of reasons to stick around, the most disturbing of which was her sudden interest in James Cade. When he’d smiled at her bungled lyrics, her breath had caught for a second, long enough for interest in the man to take hold.

“Santa doesn’t like me.” Javi raced out the back door. A thunderclap of joyous howls rose from the Border collies.

“He thinks Santa doesn’t like him?”

“I’ve tried telling him that Santa loves all kids the same, even if they don’t get a visit, but...” Her words stumbled to a halt. It pained her to think of all the holidays they’d had to do without, the times she’d had to explain to Javi why Santa hadn’t come that year. Or the next.

“Well, now. That’s a sad enough thing.”

“We have each other. Plus, Javi’s never known anything different.”

“Christmas used to be Jesse’s favorite holiday.”

They smiled faintly at each other. “I remember.”

“Guess we haven’t done much celebrating here, either, not since...” Sadness weighed down Joy’s friendly face, making her seem older and less present somehow. It was like looking at a hologram. Sofia’s heart went out to her.

“Anyway,” Joy said, straightening, brisk. “Here I am thinking of myself, when you’ve only just learned about Jesse. I wish you hadn’t had to find out this way.”

“Yes.”

“Where did you and Jesse meet?”

Sofia glanced at the shut door and lowered her voice. Her heart pounded. How she hated dredging up this old stuff, but she couldn’t deny another mother details about her son. “At the Alano House.”

“Six years ago.”

“Yes.”

Joy’s chest rose and fell with the force of her sigh. “Jesse couldn’t stay sober. And Lord, but I couldn’t help him, either. He lived to assist others but couldn’t take care of himself.”

“He was good with Javi.”