wrinkled his eyebrows. Cuz? He wasn’t up on teen slang, but he hoped it was a compliment.
“Glad you could join us,” said Aunt Shirley.
Oren spoke next. “She didn’t twist your arm, did she? Shirley is the bossiest woman I’ve ever had the misfortune to know.”
Rather than coming to her defense, the others smiled and nodded their agreement. Aunt Shirley smiled, too, as if she were proud of the distinction.
“No,” Tucker said, “my arms are just fine.” It was his brain he had to work on. He had come here to be alone, so why on earth was he standing amid ten strangers with the intent of celebrating the very holiday he’d been trying to avoid?
“Good,” said Aunt Shirley, “then you can climb that ladder and use those arms to string the electric lights on the tree.”
“There she goes again,” Oren griped. Turning to the proprietress of the inn, he added, “The least you could do is introduce him to everybody before you start bossing him around.”
The brunette stepped closer to Tucker. “That’s okay, I’ll take care of it.” Then she rattled off their names, pointing to each as she did so.
Aunt Shirley, he already knew, and her boyfriend Boris Schmidt. Then Oren Cooper and his wife Ada May. And their son, Dewey, who appeared to be in his fifties. Eldon and Rosemary Givens, and Brooke, their teenage daughter. The brunette’s sister, Vivian Marsh, with blue eyes so enormous she reminded him of a Siamese cat.
And, finally, the brunette.
“I’m Ruth,” she said, extending her hand.
Her hand was small yet strong. Just like the rest of her, he suspected. He couldn’t help wanting to get to know her better. Much better.
“Any of these names ring a bell?” she asked, sweeping a hand to indicate the people she’d just introduced.
Schmidt, Cooper, Givens, Marsh. He didn’t recognize the family names, but it had been a long time since he’d been home to Willow Glen. Even so, most of these people were older than his own thirty-one years, save the Marsh sisters, who appeared to be about his age or a little younger. And Brooke. Tucker shrugged, giving a gentle shake of his head.
A question niggled at the back of his mind. Assuming these people were all from Willow Glen, which was what Ruth had led him to believe by her implication that he should know them, why were they here instead of celebrating Christmas in their own homes?
Well, they’d been grilling him about his family. Now it was his turn to ask a question or two. “I’ve heard of people whose Thanksgiving tradition is to drive to the Checkered Tablecloth on the other side of town for a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Is gathering at Willow Glen Plantation a new Christmas tradition around here?”
Ruth quirked her mouth, her lips pressing firmly together as if she weren’t satisfied with his negative response. Or the question he’d lobbed at her. “Something like that,” she said as if he should have known.
In the next few minutes, the previously tidy parlor was strewn with ornaments, bows, lights and tinsel. Ruth reeled out the seemingly endless strings of lights as he attached them to the tree. The task threatened to overwhelm him with memories of the Newland family decorating a fresh-cut tree in this room so many years ago. Stringing the lights had been Mr. Newland’s job, and he and Chris had hung the ornaments while Mrs. Newland stood back and pointed out bare spots. The only thing that kept him from bolting from the room was the woman who stood at his elbow, patiently handing up lights. And every time their hands touched, he had to fight the urge to pull her to him and kiss her breathless.
All the while, she kept firing questions at him. The only explanation he could imagine was that she thought he looked familiar and was trying to establish how they may have first met.
He could have come right out and told her they’d never seen each other before this evening, but he liked the sound of her voice. Despite his earlier need for solitude, he found himself enjoying the company of the tiny woman with the giant curiosity.
When he claimed no knowledge of the various names she threw at him, her attitude seemed to change from curiosity to misgiving. Maybe she was finally figuring out that, although he might look familiar, they’d never met before today.
By the time they finished the tree, they’d settled into an uneasy silence. Tucker didn’t know what had derailed their conversation. He didn’t think he’d said anything out of the way. He’d tried asking her a few questions, like what part of Willow Glen she was from, but that seemed to make her even more edgy. So he turned his attention to the other guests and surprised himself by having a good time. For a brief while, the laughter and joking made him forget why he’d come to Willow Glen…and Willow Glen Plantation in particular. After the tree was finished and he’d helped put away the excess decorations, he excused himself and returned to his room.
Ruth watched him go up the stairs.
“The rear view is just as interesting as the front, eh?” Vivian teased.
“Yeah, but he has no business being here.”
“Are you still on that?” Vivian put a hand to her perfectly styled bottle-blond hair. “Why can’t you just leave the guy alone? He seems really nice. Very charming, if you ask me.”
“So did Ted Bundy, but I wouldn’t want him crashing my family reunion.”
“Who’s crashing our family reunion?” Brooke demanded. “Cousin Tucker?”
“He’s not our cousin,” Ruth insisted.
Brooke smiled broadly. “Cool. I call dibsies on him.”
Ruth rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. For all we know, he could be an escaped convict.”
“Or maybe he’s with the Internal Revenue Service, and he’s snooping around for unreported income,” Vivian suggested. She smoothed her soft red sweater over her slim hips. “I wouldn’t mind him looking over my form. In fact, he can audit me anytime.”
Brooke giggled, but Ruth wasn’t amused. “You two may think it’s funny, but something about that guy bugs me.” He seemed to her like a man on a quest, but she wasn’t sure what he wanted from them. She glanced up the stairs, wondering what would motivate a perfect stranger to insinuate himself into their home for the holidays. Well, the others might be willing to swallow the notion that he was a family member, but Ruth knew otherwise. And she was determined to get to the bottom of it. “I’m going up there and see exactly what he’s doing.”
Vivian laughed. “Probably changing his clothes, if you’re lucky.”
Ignoring the laughter of her sister and young cousin, Ruth mounted the steps, taking care to avoid the creaky ones. If Tucker Maddock was truly up to no good, she doubted he’d be so careless as to let her catch him at it. Even so, the least she could do was confront him about his identity and his intentions. She hadn’t wanted to do so downstairs in front of the others, partly to keep from putting him on the spot in case he actually was related in a way she had overlooked, and partly because she knew her gullible family would rise to his defense even if he was an imposter as she suspected. After he’d charmed his way into her family members’ hearts, joking and laughing while decorating the tree, they were convinced he could do no wrong.
