AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Tell you what,” Sloan said quickly, breaking the awkward silence to address Chase. “As the patriarch, you deserve a photo with every member of the family, one by one, with a different quilt in the background for each. Plus one or two of you alone.”
Chase snorted. “The patriarch? Me? Guess I better grow a long white beard and exchange this damned cane for a shepherd’s crook.”
Jessy had to smile.
Her father-in-law had a twinkle in his eyes as he nodded his agreement, resting a gnarled hand on the quilt Sloan had just folded up. “Use this one for me. It’s plain. No fancy stuff.”
“You got it.”
Chapter 12
With Christmas only four days away, the countdown had begun. The youngsters were a bundle of eagerness. As far as they were concerned, the time couldn’t pass fast enough. For those who hadn’t finished their shopping, the holiday was approaching way too quickly. But everywhere, smiles abounded, marked by a certain cheeriness that made the season so merry.
Nowhere was it so apparent than at the Homestead, where Cat was busy, with the help of two teenaged girls on their winter break from school, getting the extra bedrooms cleaned and ready for the arriving members of the Calder family. To carry the Christmas spirit a step further, Cat added a holiday candle wreathed with holly to each room, along with childhood pictures of Laura and Quint taken at Christmas time, to their assigned rooms.
After placing a framed photo of Quint on a dresser, she stepped back to assess the dresser top arrangement. Anne Trumbo stuck her head out of the room’s adjoining bath.
“Miss Cat, there isn’t an extra set of bath towels in here.”
“There’s some in the laundry room downstairs,” Cat remembered. “I’ll go get them while you and Sarah finish up here.”
When she reached the top of the stairs, she heard the familiar strains of “Jingle Bells” coming from the den and guessed that her father had the radio on. As she started down the steps, she automatically began humming along with the song.
From the den came a slightly flat baritone voice singing, “Bells on bobtails ring, making spirits bright.”
Chase was singing! The towels could wait. This she had to see.
She ran lightly the rest of the way down the steps and crossed to the room’s open doorway. There was Chase standing at the fireplace, singing away, one hand braced on the head of his cane while he jabbed at the burning logs with a poker.
Cat waited until the final notes of the song died away before speaking. “You’re definitely in the holiday mood, Dad.”
With the cane for a pivot point he half-turned in surprise, then flashed a smile, eyes twinkling. “And why wouldn’t I be? It’s nearly Christmas.” He returned the poker to its stand. “And a good one it’s going to be, too.”
Cat smiled in agreement. “It is going to be good to have both Quint and Laura home for Christmas this year. Usually only one or the other can make it.”
“Indeed it will be.” He hobbled back to his chair behind the desk. “Do you have the rooms ready for them yet?”
“Almost. I was just on my way to the laundry room to fetch an extra set of towels for Quint and Dallas’s bath.”
“Better get an extra room ready,” he told her.
“Why? Who’s coming?”
“I just spoke to Wade a bit ago. He should be here on the twenty-third. The twenty-fourth at the latest. It’s liable to be late in the afternoon when he gets here, so I told him to plan on spending the night with us.” The twinkle in his eyes grew more pronounced. “I didn’t think you’d object to an extra guest, considering that I noticed there was a present under the tree with his name on it.”
Cat refused to be self-conscious about it. “You know when I bought that gift for him, I was concerned that I might be presuming too much. Now I’m so glad that I did it, even if it is just a little something.” She paused, then asked, “Do you know what I—”
“Quiet.” He almost barked the word and swiveled his chair to reach for the volume knob on the radio. Cat had been only vaguely aware of the disc jockeys talking in the background, but her father clearly had one ear tuned to their conversation.
“—being an old Grinch. Everyone wants a white Christmas,” one of them declared.
“A white Christmas would be fine, but a winter storm warning scheduled to blow into eastern Montana by the twenty-fourth! Who wants that?”
“Santa will have some dicey flying conditions, won’t he?”
There was more, but Chase snapped the radio off. “We need to call Quint and Laura so they can make sure to get here before the storm does.”
“I’ll call Quint on my cell while you ring Laura.” Cat started out of the room.
