The Wrangler’s Christmas Gift (The Malones of Grand, Montana #4)

Chapter Fifteen

H eather believed she’d put JP Malone far enough out of her mind that she could file away any information about him as something that satisfied an age-old curiosity but couldn’t possibly touch the life she had now.

She’d been wrong.

Whatever she might learn, whether he left her intentionally or not, whether he’d really loved her or she’d been nothing more than a pleasant diversion for him, she wasn’t ready to know it. She’d just relived the worst time in her life and she couldn’t take anything more, not until she’d had a chance to regain her equilibrium.

When she left Brade and Kendall’s house, insisting that she could walk the few blocks back to the Yellowstone, she didn’t know what she needed, only that she needed to be alone while she figured it out.

The night air was soothing, the air dusted with fat, fluffy flakes that drifted lazily down from the sky.

Mack had found him. JP Malone was alive. She hadn’t been wrong.

She tightened the belt on her coat, wrapped the scarf around her neck and walked down the main street, not caring which way she went or where she ended up. She was tired, down to her bones. This time in Grand was taking a toll. She’d known it would and thought she’d been prepared for it, but the reality was still harder than expected. These people had full lives without her. They’d wondered about their origins, but they hadn’t missed her or longed for her the way she’d longed for them. Their arms hadn’t ached with emptiness. Their bodies hadn’t wept blood and tears and milk meant for the infants she’d carried alone those long months.

And now, she was about to learn about JP Malone.

She drew the cold air deep into her lungs, and breathed it out slowly, hoping the nervous energy swirling inside her would leave with it.

Was she heading down a bad road again? It had been years since her last anxiety attack. She touched the back of her neck where, beneath the scarf, the small tattoo of a semicolon reminded her that she’d survived worse. She could manage this. Nothing was over until it was over.

Then she moved her hand to the pendant.

Remember who the fuck you are.

Trust Em to wrap her powerful message in a bit of snark.

Her footsteps made silent prints in the freshly snow-covered boardwalk, and she barely saw the lights and garlands strung on the lampposts. A group of carolers were moving from storefront to storefront, part of the Christmas festival activities, and she lowered her head so they couldn’t make eye contact with her. The smell of apple cider and roasting chestnuts drifted over from a stand somewhere nearby. She ducked into a side street that had been roped off from traffic and found herself, suddenly, at a wooden fence.

She looked up, then higher, until she met the dark, heavy-lashed gaze of a very tall animal.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Hello.”

It was a camel. A second one came over and whuffled softly, the warm breath puffing into the cold air. Behind them, in a second area, a donkey and three woolly white sheep stood blinking at her.

She’d stumbled onto the nativity scene Sue Anne Nyland had spoken about when they’d met that first night. Apparently the priest had come through for her. With Colt’s help.

The priest, who was also JP Malone.

They’d done a lovely job of it. The simple lean-to effectively conveyed the impression of a barn, complete with stalls thickly padded with straw. Racks of hay added a sweet scent to the clean, earthy animal smells. A rough manger sat in the center, with two mannequins bowing over it, a man and a woman, both draped in heavy blue gowns with rope belts at their waists. In the manger, surrounded by more straw, lay a doll—the Christ child.

From a distance, she heard the carolers singing “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and the words eased the turmoil in her soul. In this season of rebirth, surely if anyone might understand her complicated feelings, it would be another mother, another woman who’d been misunderstood, who’d been given a burden seemingly too great for her young shoulders. She’d also no doubt borne the stigma of conceiving a child out of wedlock. But Mary hadn’t lost Jesus as a child; instead, she’d watched him grow up and be handed one of the worst deaths imaginable.

In a clear, bell-like soprano, one of the carolers began singing “Mary, Did You Know?”

Heather bent forward, clutching her middle, and let the words wash over her. She hadn’t been religious for many years, but when she heard the line about kissing the face of God in her newborn infant, she came undone. It seemed as if all the events of the past year had brought her to this place to finally make peace with her past and now that it was happening, she didn’t know what to do with it.

“How, Mary?” she whispered. “How did you do it? It’s so…much. My heart can’t hold it all. And now…to learn that JP has been alive, all this time, that he left me, how can I bear it? The not knowing has been bad but now I’m afraid that learning the truth will be worse.”

Mary had survived. She’d accepted the tasks before her and stayed the course. Like Heather, she’d loved and lost and grieved and survived to see her child returned to her most miraculously.

“Excuse me?”

Heather jumped.

That voice. And the scent of…something old and familiar but vague, like, like…summer air drifted over her. A zipper caught the base of her stomach, pulling blood from her extremities, making her hands tingly and all these strange sensations at once told her something important was happening, something…unbelievable.

She swallowed. “Yes?”

The man stood in the shadows, his face hidden by the hood of his jacket.

“Are you…Heather Malone?”

“Yes.” Her breath was coming too fast and yet it wasn’t going down into her lungs.

He was as still as the mannequins at the manger, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “I was told you were looking for me.”

This could not be true, but her skin prickled as something electric flared between them.

“Who…who are you?”

“I’m…” he hesitated “…Father Patrick.”

It was true, then. The voice was deeper, with the roughness of age. No doubt her own voice was different from what he remembered, also.

But surely the flesh crying out in recognition was mistaken! Surely she and JP Malone couldn’t have been in the same town these past weeks without knowing it. Surely he hadn’t been interacting, unbeknownst, with his own daughter—oh, Leila!— for years! Surely he’d heard about the triplets’ search, their discovery of Heather Malone…the timing of everything and wondered…

But she’d been Heather Hudson when he knew her. Father Patrick hadn’t been in Grand during her brief marriage to Weldon Scott and he had no reason to connect the two.

“JP?” she whispered.

He pushed off his hood and stepped out of the shadows, into the soft circle of light. In a broken voice, he replied, “Honey Hudson?”

There, beneath the ravages of time and fresh knowledge, was the face she knew. Instantly, she saw her children. Had she met Father Patrick before this, surely she’d have known him as JP. She’d been seeing him in the line between Brade’s eyebrows, the curl of Leila’s hair, the tilt of Lucas’s head. How had no one else seen it?

But he was a priest. Brade and Lucas were newcomers to Grand. Only Leila might have guessed…and she hadn’t been looking.

“JP,” she said again. Her voice shook and her chest was hot. Her JP, the love of her life, the man who nearly destroyed her, was here, after all these years. She couldn’t feel her hands. It seemed as though her head was floating above her body. This couldn’t be. She tried to find words to ask the questions she so desperately wanted answers to but could barely get them out.

“You’re the…” He made a gesture that encompassed a lifetime that couldn’t be put into words. “The triplets…they’re…all this is because of…me?”

She reached out, then pulled her hand back as the flood of joy slowed to a trickle. He was real, but after thirty years, he wasn’t the JP she remembered. She didn’t know this man.

“They’re yours, yes,” she said, tucking her hands against her sides.

“I’m so, so sorry.” He crossed himself, then sank onto the bale she’d stepped away from. He was trembling and, against her will, she felt sympathy.

She backed away until she felt the fence against her hip. “It was a long time ago.”

“But everything you went through—”

His pity stung. “I did what I had to do. We’re all fine.”

She heard the tick of his throat when he swallowed.

“I’m glad to hear it. But I should have been there for you.”

“Yes, you should have. But you weren’t.” She looked up at the star representing the light that led the wise men to Bethlehem. “I’m not the first woman to fall for a smooth-talking cowboy just looking for a good time.”

A small sound came from his throat. “Is…is that what you believe of me?”

“What else should I believe? You didn’t just leave, JP. You disappeared. I looked everywhere for you. I needed you. We needed you. And you were gone.” She shrugged. “Obviously, I overestimated our relationship.”

He lifted his gaze. “No,” he said softly. “Don’t say that.”

“Then, what happened?” she cried.

He ran a weathered hand over his face, as if he wanted to crush thoughts and memories out of existence. “I don’t know where to start.”

“How about your name? If you’re Father Patrick Keane, then who’s JP Malone?”

“My name is Joseph Patrick Keane. At the time I knew you—” he stopped to clear his throat “—I wasn’t a good man. I was running from a lot of things. I didn’t want to be associated with my past. So, I used my mother’s maiden name. And you…you’re a Malone, now, too?”

She cringed, thinking of all the time she’d believed in him, how she’d wanted to stay connected with him, even if only by an imaginary name.

“I guess we both used it to hide the truth, didn’t we?”

He hung his head. “You searched for me?”

“For over a year.” She wanted to feel angry but the devastation she saw on his face cracked the rage and told her that nothing would be gained by blaming him for anything. But she did want answers.

“JP,” she began. “Wait. What do I call you?”

She wasn’t going to call him Father Patrick.

“JP is fine,” he said. “Honey—”

“Heather,” she corrected.

“Heather,” he said quietly. “We have a great deal to discuss. This is a big shock for both of us. I assume your children…our children…know?”

“Safe assumption. Brade’s detective told us all tonight.”

“Who else knows?”

“If you’re asking who else knows that you fathered my triplets, the answer is nobody, as far as I know. But that won’t last long.”

That her JP Malone turned out to be a Catholic priest felt like a great cosmic joke. How could she be angry with him for leaving her when he’d given his life to God? But how could she not be angry when the events that had almost destroyed her had left him not just untouched, but in a position of honor?

“We do have much to discuss,” she said, getting up again. “I need to figure out how to help my children process the fact that their biological father has been here, under their noses, all this time. But tomorrow is Christmas and four days later is Brade and Kendall’s wedding. That’s what I came here for. That’s what’s important. Everything else will have to wait.”

She flipped her collar up against the cold wind that had risen and walked into the dark night.