Chapter One
Daniel Kilcannon descended the stairs as a snowy late afternoon slipped into deep winter darkness. He took a moment to peek into the formal living room. The parlor, as it had been called when he was a child growing up on Waterford Farm, was rarely used now. But in December, that changed. Every square inch was festooned with gold and red and way too many twinkling white lights. They filled one corner with a nine-foot tree weighed down with a lifetime of collected ornaments, topped by a cherub they called Johnny Angel, who sported battery-powered wings that fluttered incessantly all season long.
Daniel tried to stand back and drink it all in, but the only thing he wanted to drink was a straight shot of Jameson’s.
At his feet, Rusty gave a low grumble, as if he was not a fan of the hollow holiday, either.
“Hush, boy,” he mumbled to his setter. “It’s our secret.”
He would never let his Christmas-loving clan know that of the very few things he hated in this world, the holidays topped the list. At least they had since Annie died.
Forcing himself into the room he’d avoided for the past few weeks as his daughters, granddaughter, and mother gleefully overdecorated, he went to the fireplace to add a log and stoke the dying flames back to life.
Rusty padded next to him and nuzzled his nose against Daniel’s leg, always in tune with his master’s emotions. Daniel absently rubbed the dog’s head in a silent apology for having the blues on Christmas Eve.
He took a few steps closer to the tree, a sturdy and thick fir his sons had cut from the north end of Waterford Farm. Getting the tree from their own land was another tradition that hadn’t died with Annie.
The fact was, his family seemed to be taking great pains to make Christmas like it had always been, and Daniel had no desire to stop them. Three of his sons were married or about to be. One had a stepchild now and a new baby on the way. His grief shouldn’t stop this family from making new memories.
Speaking of memories, this tree had so many hanging on it, he could barely home in on just one. Some ornaments dated back forty years, like the glass globe engraved with “Baby from Heaven in ’77” that his mother had given Annie when she was expecting Liam. And there was a cute little dog house with six doors, each with a different hand-painted name under a sign that read “The Kilcannon Kids 1990.”
Next to that hung a small porcelain frame with a close-up of Annie and Daniel on their wedding day. He touched the filigreed edge, his gaze locked on his beautiful wife’s face. So young, so scared, so damn perfect.
“Oh, Annie girl. How I miss you.”
Rusty huffed out a dog sigh and settled on the floor, staring at the glittering gift wrap, no doubt picturing the upcoming mayhem that always ended with the boys making paper balls and the dogs going crazy trying to play catch in the house.
Then, Daniel would work to cover his sadness, but only so his family could have joy, laughter, teasing, the annual stupid T-shirts from Shane, and tears from Darcy when she got overwhelmed with emotion. He’d roll his eyes with them as Gramma presented her Irish proverbs on cross-stitch pillows and laugh when his sons teased each other about their abysmal wrapping skills.
Well, not all his sons. No Aidan at home this year. His youngest son was in Afghanistan, he now knew, after months of a more secretive assignment in the military. Hopefully, Aidan was having some sort of Christmas cheer courtesy of the US Army. He sighed as disappointment battled with grief and erased any chance of peace, joy, or much goodwill toward men in Daniel’s heart.
“It’s nothing short of sinful to be sad on Christmas Eve, lad.”
He turned at the sound of his mother’s voice. She stood in the entryway holding up a metal lantern darn near half the size of her tiny frame.
“I’m not sad.”
She gave a look that reminded him that Finnie Kilcannon had known him for every minute of his sixty years and certainly knew when he was lying.
“Look at this.” She shimmied the lantern back and forth to show off the unlit candle inside. “Found it at the antiques fair last summer, and I’ve been savin’ it for this very night. Isn’t she a beauty? Best we’ve ever had.”
“If you want the Bitter Bark Fire Department to stop by.” He took the glass and metal contraption from her hands and angled his head toward the picture window. “The usual place?”
“The biggest window in the house, that’s what the Irish tradition commands,” she said, nudging him that way. “And yes, we want the fire department, and friends, family, neighbors, and a priest, if he happens by. That’s the whole reason of the Christmas candle, as you know.”
“Oh, I know.” He’d heard his mother recite the Irish folklore surrounding the placement of the candle for all of his Christmas Eves, and he would again tonight. “Should we light it now?”
She drew her brows together, adding to the many lines on her eighty-six-year-old parchment-soft face. “And deny me the chance to bore my entire family with the annual story of why we light it?”
He laughed softly. “Why wreck tradition now?”
“Speaking of tradition.” She adjusted her bright red and white Christmas cardigan and leaned a little closer. “’Tis this time that Seamus and I would break out a wee bit of Jameson’s. What do you say that we have one for old times?”
“I say I was just thinking that.” He went to the bar they’d already set up in the kitchen and took two of the family shot glasses. The Waterford crystal was heavy, a reminder that the company that made it had been the source of his father’s small fortune, and the reason Seamus Kilcannon could move his wife and son to America. Of course, they’d named this land in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains Waterford Farm as a nod to the glass empire that had helped build another. No glass blowing here, though. Just a lot of dogs.
“But it’s hardly like old times, Gramma.” He’d long ago given up calling her Mom. This little woman was Gramma Finnie to his children, the townsfolk, and the ever-growing audience of blog followers that she attracted with her whimsical musings online.
She settled in at the counter, her petite red velvet shoes dangling from under a black skirt. “Because our better halves are gone?” she asked.
Straight to the quick, that’s where his mother cut, usually followed by one of her favorite sayings from the old country.
“Those who leave us don’t go away,” she said with a lilting Irish accent. “They walk beside us every day.”
Smiling with a burst of love for this rock of dependability, he poured shots and brought one to her.
“Sláinte.” They said it in unison, but neither drank. Instead, his mother stared at him from behind her bifocals, then she lowered them as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
“What?” he asked.
“Oh, you just sounded so much like Seamus when you said that.”
“’Cause there was nothing my father liked more than a shot of whiskey.”
“There you’d be wrong, child. He loved you and Colleen and…” Her gaze drifted away, to the candle. “You know.”
He knew. His uncle Liam, who died as a child. “This is not a good night to wallow in the children who aren’t here.”
“Amen to that.” She took a deep drink, then asked, “Any word from Afghanistan?”
He shook his head. “‘Peacekeeping’ missions are harder than they sound, but Aidan is fine.”
“Of course he is. Your youngest son is an invincible warrior.”
God, he hoped so. “He’ll call tomorrow, I’m sure, and that’ll be the best Christmas present I’ll get.”
“Enough for you to let go of that bag of sorrow you’re cartin’ around like Santa’s pack?”
He drew back. “I am not.”
“I see through ya, laddie.”
“Well, you’re my mother.”
She grinned, pounded back the Jameson’s, and put the glass down hard on the granite. “Aye, I am, and happy to be.” She leaned forward and air-kissed his cheek. “Don’t worry, no one can tell but me. You’re doing this family a favor by keeping the traditions alive even though the real keeper of the flame left us far too soon.”
Everyone knew Annie Kilcannon was a Christmas fanatic.
He finished the dregs of his shot and pushed the glass aside, not wanting another, grateful for the sight of headlights in the driveway. “Looks like Colleen and the kids are here.”
Daniel rose to greet his sister and her family, none of whom were technically “kids” anymore. Opening the kitchen door, since they’d never come to the front, he braced for a blast of cold North Carolina air and a warm hug from every one of the Mahoneys he loved so dearly.
Colleen and her youngest, Ella, came in first, shivering and laden with gifts.
“Hey, Uncle Daniel.” Ella breezed in, aimed an air kiss his way and moved on. “Is Darcy upstairs?” Of course, Ella wouldn’t spend a minute in this house without her beloved cousin. The two of them had been glued at the hip since they were born days apart thirty years earlier.
“She’s over at her workroom, grooming a dog,” Daniel said.
“She’s working on Christmas Eve?” Colleen asked, brushing back a lock of thick dark hair that escaped the same waist-long braid she’d worn since high school. The only person who hated change more than Daniel was his younger sister, even though a better hairstyle would have probably suited her attractive features and fifty-four years.
“We got a new rescue in today, and oh, that poor thing was a hot mess,” Daniel replied. “A little terrier that’s skittish as heck, definitely abused and abandoned.”
“Oh!” Ella put her hands over her mouth, drawing her brows in a frown. “How can you bear it?”
“We bear it because not only did Darcy give him the perfect name of Jack Frost, we’ve already found him a loving home.”
“You have?” That question came from Braden, the middle Mahoney and the quietest of Colleen’s crew. At thirty-three, he was as strapping as his older brothers, Declan and Connor, and as good-looking as Daniel’s own sons, but Braden was never the center of attention.
Daniel greeted all three young men with hugs and pats on their strong backs. “Remember a few weeks ago when Chloe organized the Santa Paws Pet Adoption in Bushrod Square?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” Colleen said. “I darn near came away with another Saint Bernard.”
“Well, there was a little girl with her heart set on a Jack Russell, but someone else got it,” Daniel said. “Then we got a call this afternoon from the fire station. Someone abandoned one, and we picked him up immediately.”
“Oh, I’m going to go see,” Ella said, back out into the chilly night before anyone could stop her.
While the other boys greeted their Gramma Finnie, Colleen inched closer to Daniel.
“I went to the square for Chloe’s event, and I have to say, our Shane is marrying one dog lover of a great woman,” Colleen said.
Daniel had to laugh. “Sure didn’t start out that way when those two met.”
“You mean when you orchestrated their meeting.”
He rolled his eyes. “You, too, little sister?”
“Says the Dogfather.” She winked. “Why deny it? You’re a masterful, string-pulling matchmaker. Three down, three to go.”
“I just give nudges, Collie. My kids do their own romancing.” Of course, he gave great nudges.
Colleen turned so that her sons didn’t hear her whisper, “Wish you’d work some of your matchmaking magic on my kids. At this rate, I’m never going to be a grandmother.”
“Get in line. I still have Molly and Darcy to work on.”
“And Aidan,” Colleen reminded him. “Any word?” she added, hope in her voice.
“He’s good and will call tomorrow.”
The next set of lights brightened the drive and more right behind it, heralding the arrival of Daniel’s kids, their significant others, and the few who made up the next generation.
In a matter of minutes, the kitchen was filled almost to capacity, the noise rising to the usual Christmas Eve frenzy, interrupted by barks as Rusty greeted his dog cousins Jag, Ruby, and Lola. Darcy’s insane Shih Tzu, Kookie, ran circles around them all, adding to the chaos.
“Hi, Grandpa!” Pru, his thirteen-year-old granddaughter, gave Daniel a big kiss, followed by her mother, Molly.
“Merry Christmas, Dad,” Molly murmured into a peck on his cheek.
He hugged his daughter extra tight and ran a hand over her thick brown waves, sensing that she’d been as restless lately as he had. Did Molly have the Christmas blues, too? “How’s my girl?” he asked.
“Good, but what’s this I hear about a Jack Russell left at the fire station?”
“He’s being groomed.”
“Without a complete physical?”
Daniel tipped his head and resisted a smile. “I think you forget who was the first veterinarian in this family.”
“Oh yeah. You’re just so, you know, retired. I mean from being a vet.”
“I’m running the largest canine rescue and training facility in the state,” he reminded her. “But I can check out a newbie. He’s healthy, at least physically. But he’s…” He shook his head, remembering how the pup had flinched at any touch. “Timid and agitated enough to make me suspect whoever left him should be punished. Severely.”
She cringed, as they all would at the thought of an abused dog.
“All right, all right.” Gramma Finnie clapped and raised her aging voice, but it was enough to bring down the volume and have everyone turn to their wee grandmother, the Irish lass who had started it all when she moved from County Waterford to Bitter Bark, North Carolina. “You all know what happens tonight.”
“If you don’t, I have the whole thing scheduled out,” Pru said, sliding an arm around her grandmother, both of them about the same height and almost always next to each other at any family gathering.
“We know what to do on Christmas Eve,” Liam, Daniel’s oldest son, said.
“Yeah,” Shane agreed. “You don’t need to give marching orders, General Pru.”
Pru’s eyes, the same hazel color as her mother’s and her “Grannie Annie” as she’d called her grandmother, widened at the peanut gallery comments. “We have some new people since last Christmas, thanks to some of the men in the family.” She stood on her tiptoes and beamed at the three women who’d fallen for Liam, Shane, and Garrett.
“That was thoughtful of you, Pru,” Garrett added, putting an arm around Jessie, the woman he’d be marrying on New Year’s Eve. “I couldn’t remember the exact order of events to tell Jessie.”
“I suspected as much,” Pru said, her gentle tease reminding them she might be the next generation and younger than all but Liam’s new stepson, but she was probably the most organized and in control out of the whole lot. “First we light the Christmas candle and Gramma Finnie will tell us the entire Irish folklore behind it.”
Someone groaned. Someone named Shane.
He earned a nudge from his fiancée, Chloe, and a sharp look from his grandmother.
“That means you want the long version, laddie?” Gramma demanded.
“Shut up, Shane,” Liam mumbled to his brother, making their broad shoulders shake with laugher.
Pru waved off the interruption. “Then we have the gift exchange, my personal favorite part.”
“Before Santa comes?” That small voice belonged to Christian, comfortably held high above the others on Liam’s hip. Although he hadn’t been formally adopted yet, Andi Rivers’s six-year-old son was in every way Liam’s boy now, and it had been that way since Andi and Liam had married right here in this house back in September.
“Oh, don’t worry, Christian,” Andi assured him, shooting a friendly warning look around the group to remind them there was a Santa-believing child in their midst again.
“This is just the gift exchange with our cousins,” Liam told Christian. “Santa will come after we all go to sleep.”
Everyone enthusiastically agreed to that, calming Christian’s concerns.
“During gifts, we get a light snack,” Pru said. “And then we go to Midnight Mass.”
“Which is why we are all only allowed one drink during the first half,” Shane whispered loudly to Chloe.
“After that, we get dinner, even though it’s almost two in the morning!” Pru exclaimed, as if that was the most fun any family could possibly have.
And it had been at one time, Daniel thought as the unwanted grief bubbled up again. When Annie had been—
The kitchen door smacked open so hard, it felt like the old house shook. Darcy stood in the doorway, breathless, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans, a grooming brush still in one hand.
“Jack Frost is gone!” she exclaimed.
“It’s my fault!” Ella ran up behind her, swiping at the tears on her face. “I left the door to the grooming office open, and we turned and…”
“Shh, El. It’s okay.” Darcy, always the more mature of the two, quieted her cousin. “It’s only been five minutes. He couldn’t have gotten far.”
Except they all knew that in five minutes, a dog could get lost in the hundred acres of Waterford Farm.
For one split second, everyone looked at Daniel, all wearing different expressions. Expectant, worried, even a little curious as to what his reaction would be. As if there would be any question, regardless of the date on the calendar or the schedule of events.
A dog was lost, and that changed everything.
“Break into groups of two and three,” Daniel ordered, moving on instinct through a somewhat familiar drill. “Fan out over the entire property.”
“Give that brush to Jag for a scent, Darcy,” Liam added.
“Darcy, you patrol the kennel and central pen,” Shane said. “He’ll come to you before anyone else.”
“I’ll get treat bags,” Garrett said, taking Jessie’s hand to head out. “I can take a tractor down to the southern woods. Shane, you give Liam a ride on an ATV and take the northwest section. Mahoneys, circle the lake with Dad.”
“I’ll get flashlights.” Darcy dragged a not-yet-calm Ella with her. “Come with me and stop fretting.”
“Can I go?” Christian asked, hopping a bit as if he knew that request would be denied. “Jag’s going!”
“I need you here with me, lad,” Gramma said, scooting next to him. At his look of disappointment, she gave him a squeeze. “We man the central command center. It’s the most important job of all.”
“Oh…there’s a central command center?”
“Right here next to the cookies,” she said.
He stood a little straighter, appeased. “Okay. I can man that. What about Mommy?”
“She’ll stay, too,” Liam said.
Andi looked as stricken as her son at the idea. “I want to come with you.”
Liam glanced down at his wife’s stomach, still flat, but they all knew the precious cargo inside. “It’s snowy and icy out there.” He glanced to Shane for an assist and got one immediately.
“You three should stay,” Shane said, putting a hand on Chloe’s shoulder and nodding to Jessie. “You don’t know the property like we do, and—”
“Are you kidding?” Chloe choked. “Not help find a lost dog?”
“I designed a house to be built on Liam’s portion of the land,” Andi said. “I’ve been out there a dozen or more times in the last two months.”
“Of course we’re coming with you,” Jessie added, giving Garrett a look no man would argue with. “We’re family, or about to be in seven days.”
Liam, Shane, and Garrett shared silent looks, but Molly stepped in to referee. “Let them come along to each of your search sites,” she said with what seemed like a little more force than necessary. “That’s how my new sisters will learn the property and how to find a lost dog.”
Daniel couldn’t help noticing another exchange of looks between the three brothers, as if agreeing to something. To know how to pick their battles, Daniel hoped. It had been a bedrock of his happy marriage.
“All right,” Shane said first.
“That’s a plan,” Garrett agreed.
“Let’s go, then.” Liam reached for Andi’s hand, in concert with his brothers.
That decision made, everyone moved as a team, without a single complaint that Christmas took a backseat when a dog was lost. Ironically, no one would have appreciated or supported that more than Annie Kilcannon, Daniel thought.
Knowing she was watching down on her clan and her beloved farm, Daniel joined the Mahoney kids and headed into the snowy night to find Jack Frost.