Her Montana Christmas. Arlene James

is everything okay?”

      She sent him a quick, joyless smile. “Oh, you know how it is. Christmas can be a bittersweet time.”

      “Are you missing your family?”

      She turned to face him then looked down at her toes. “Yes and no. Sadly, I don’t miss the family I have, but I do miss the family I don’t have. Strange, isn’t it?”

      “I’m not sure I follow you,” he admitted.

      “You couldn’t,” she told him with a shake of her head. “But we ought to miss family, don’t you think?”

      “Yes,” he said simply, “but family is sometimes a burden.”

      Her round, blue gaze sharpened. “Is yours?”

      He wanted to tell her then, everything, about his losses and disappointments, his fears and heartbreaks, his hopes and needs, but he didn’t dare.

      “Some of them are,” he answered evasively. “I miss my sister and niece, though.”

      “Oh? Will they come for Christmas?”

      Sadness stabbed him. “I doubt it.” That was a half-truth at best, though, and he suddenly wanted very much to give Robin better, so he followed it with a flat “No.”

      For some reason, she seemed almost as disappointed as he felt. “That’s too bad.”

      “Will your family come here for Christmas?” he asked.

      She didn’t even pause to think. “Oh, no. They wouldn’t.”

      “Will you go there?” It hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment that she might, and he suddenly realized that all his plans would crumble without her.

      As was her custom, she mulled over her answer for a moment, but then she shook her head. “No, I won’t go there.”

      Ethan didn’t try to hide his relief. He let it beam out of him. “I am selfishly glad. I don’t think I could pull off this centennial Christmas without your help, and I wouldn’t want to try.”

      She smiled then, genuinely smiled. He clasped his hands behind his back, the sudden need to reach out and pull her against him shaking him to his toes. Instead, he offered to walk her to her car. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, after all, though he was having some trouble with the gentlemanly thing at the moment.

      As she drove away into the night, he prayed for guidance. And self-control. It had been a very long time since he’d felt anything like what Robin Frazier stirred in him.

      For a moment, long-dormant memory swamped him. Suddenly he was back in Los Angeles, standing on the curb in broad daylight, Theresa beside him. He heard the squeal of tires and the sharp, rapid staccato of gunshots. He felt himself flinch and throw up his arms, dropping to his knees as dust and bits of concrete stung his skin, and then as abruptly as it had begun, it was over, except that almost at once the iron-rich smell of blood rose into his nostrils, coating the back of his throat. He opened his eyes to find Theresa on her back with her dark hair spread across the sidewalk, her arms flung haphazardly across her slender body, a neat hole in her forehead and another in her neck, her dark eyes wide but unseeing, as he tried in his panic to keep her from leaving him. Some part of him had known from the first glimpse that she was already gone, but he’d had to try.

      He hadn’t tried to hold a woman since then, and he never meant to.

      “Ah, Lord,” he whispered, “don’t let me go back there. Give me courage, wisdom and guidance, the strength to realize all that You plan for me and to walk away from anything that is not Your will. Anything and anyone.”

      No matter how compelling.