Smiling, he told himself she might be headed home to Montana. If he was right... Well, what were the chances they might cross paths again?
* * *
TJ HAD WONDERED what it would be like seeing her sisters again. The last time they’d been together they’d argued. Well, that is, she and Chloe had argued with their younger sister Annabelle over their grandmother’s house.
Grandmother Frannie Clementine had died a few months ago. In her will, she’d left everything she had—basically her house in Whitehorse—to Annabelle.
“Did you know she was going to do that?” they’d demanded.
“No, I swear I didn’t,” Annabelle had said on the phone since she hadn’t attended the funeral or seen the will.
“Why would she do that?” Chloe had demanded.
“I have no idea,” their sister had said. “Except...well, I always got the impression that she liked me the best.” She’d tried to pass that off as a joke, but they’d all hung up angry.
Now as TJ stepped off the plane, she felt bad about the argument. The house had turned out to be a whole lot of work—and had held some surprises that neither TJ nor Chloe would have wanted to handle. It had been clear why Grandma Frannie had left the house to Annabelle, who they all agreed was more like Frannie than either TJ or Chloe.
The Billings, Montana, airport was small by most airport standards and sat on rimrocks overlooking the state’s largest city. She hadn’t gone far when she saw her sisters waving at her from the bottom of the escalator.
TJ couldn’t help but grin. They were both wearing elf hats. She groaned. “This has to have been Annabelle’s idea,” she said under her breath. But the sight of them in those hats had definitely broken the ice.
She laughed as she reached them, hugging one and then the other. As she pulled back, she felt such a surge of love for her sisters that it brought tears to her eyes.
“We didn’t want you to feel left out,” Annabelle said, and whipped an elf hat from her bag and settled it on TJ’s blonde head. She grinned and put her arm around them. “We look like triplets.”
“Heaven forbid,” Chloe said.
“I’m starving,” Annabelle said, surprising no one. Since she’d quit modeling for a living, she was always hungry. “Ray J’s barbecue when we get home, eat here or just get snacks like we used to for the ride home?”
“Snacks!” TJ and Chloe said together.
“Did I mention I bought your favorite bottles of wine?” Annabelle asked. “Or we can go out and party tonight.”
TJ and Chloe groaned in unison and then laughed. It felt good being around them again, TJ thought, and felt her eyes burn again with tears. Coming home for the holidays had been the right choice. She realized this was the best she’d felt in a very long time.
Annabelle chattered as they walked through the terminal toward the exit. TJ half listened, thankful that the trouble between them had blown over. They were all three back in Montana just like when they were growing up. They were sisters and she couldn’t have been more delighted to be with them, even though people stared.
She laughed. She’d forgotten they were all now wearing elf hats. For a few minutes, she’d completely forgotten her near-death experience this morning in the city and True Fan’s threats.
But as she and her sisters passed a group waiting in one of the departure lines, she saw a woman raise her phone and take a photo of the three of them. Glancing back, TJ saw the woman quickly begin texting someone.
“Wow,” Chloe cried from the front seat of the SUV as she showed TJ her phone. “It’s already all over social media.” There was the photograph of the three of them in their elf hats. Just as she’d feared, the woman had recognized her, tagging the photo with her pen name. “Ah the life of the rich and famous.”
TJ groaned. “Now everyone will know that I’ve come home to Whitehorse for Christmas.”
“It isn’t like it was a secret, right?” Annabelle asked as she drove. “Everyone knows you’re from Whitehorse, Montana. Not much of a leap that you would be going home for Christmas.” She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Seriously, is it a problem?”
“No,” TJ lied. “It’s fine. Sometimes it would be nice to be anonymous though, but I don’t have to tell you about that.”
Annabelle sighed. “Yep, but when now faced with being anonymous the rest of my life... Well, it’s an adjustment. I have to admit, it was fun seeing my photo on the front of magazines—even if it was a doctored photo of me. Nothing is all that real with modeling.”
“So you’re not going back to it?” Chloe asked their baby sister. “You’re just going to marry Dawson Rogers, become a ranchwoman—”
“And live happily ever after,” Annabelle said with a giggle. “Yep, that’s the plan.”
They began discussing people they knew in Whitehorse and how things had or hadn’t changed.
TJ only half listened to their conversation. She hadn’t told either sister about the threatening letters—let alone what had happened in the city only hours ago. The more she’d thought about it on the plane ride back to Montana, the more unsure she was that she’d been pushed in front of that truck. Could it have been an accident? Or had it been deliberate? Either way, if that man hadn’t grabbed her...
She shivered and looked out at the snowy landscape. If that man was her True Fan, he’d been watching her apartment. When the light had gone off in her living room, he would have known she would be coming downstairs. Or he might have been a stranger passing by.
TJ shook her head, determined not to think about it. She was safe now. At least for a while.
“So we’re talking wedding bells,” Chloe was saying.
“Wait, I must have missed something,” TJ said, sitting forward to hear. “You and Dawson? When?”
“We haven’t set a date yet. I know it’s quick, but I would love a Christmas wedding, something small and intimate,” Annabelle said, sounding dreamy. Both Chloe and TJ groaned and then laughed.
“Love,” Chloe said with a shake of her head.
“Actually,” TJ said, settling back into her seat, “I always thought you and Dawson were a good match.”
They talked about weddings, growing up in Whitehorse, people they knew who’d left—and those who had stayed. The time passed quickly on the drive to their hometown.
As they pulled up in front of the house they’d grown up in after their parents had died, Annabelle cut the engine. Conversation died. They all looked in the direction of Grandmother Frannie’s house. Even though Frannie had left the house to Annabelle, TJ would always think of it as their grandmother’s. None of them spoke. The only sound was the tick, tick, tick as the motor cooled.
“Are you two all right?” Annabelle asked.
TJ hadn’t realized it when they’d met her at the airport, but Chloe had flown in only thirty minutes before she had. Which meant that like her, she hadn’t been to the house where they were raised since the funeral.
“It’s like it was when we were kids,” Annabelle said, as if trying to reassure them.
From the back seat, TJ glanced at her sister in the rearview mirror. All three of them knew the house would never be like that again. Not after their grandmother’s secrets had been unearthed,