Christmas with a Cowboy

by Brown, Carolyn

  “Maybe so, but that kind of woman isn’t the kind that you form a permanent relationship with.” Alana sighed. “You and Maverick have chemistry. Someday I hope to find someone that makes my eyes sparkle like he does yours. And Laela loves him, so that’s a plus.”

  “She loves him now, but she won’t remember him a month if we go back to Ireland,” Bridget argued.

  “Then y’all have to recognize the vibes between you and get to building on them, because the way I see it, you need to stay in Texas.” Alana got to her feet and sat down on the sofa. “Want to hear my theory about Maverick?”

  “Yes, tell me your theory.” Bridget nodded.

  “He’s lived in the shadow of the superwealthy Baker brothers his whole life. Iris is a distant cousin to Tag and Hud’s grandmother, so they were back and forth between this little spread and that huge one down south of us. Don’t get me wrong, Tag and Hud are good men, and they’d never deliberately lord it over Maverick and Paxton.”

  “So even though they lived on this lovely ranch, they were like the country cousins?” Bridget asked.

  “That’s right,” Alana went on. “The Baker brothers wanted to buy a ranch on the other side of the state, and their folks gave them part of their inheritance to do it. It’s twice as big as this place. They needed help to get it up and running, so Maverick and Paxton agreed to go out there as foremen for the place.”

  With just that much explanation, Bridget was beginning to understand Maverick a little better. “Are Maverick and his brother ever planning to come back to this area? Like maybe when the Bakers get their place in shape.”

  “Iris has always said that she didn’t want them to feel like they have to help her. She sent them to work on the big spread so they’d be out on their own. She’s just waitin’ for them to get the wild oats out of their systems and settle down before she hands this place over to them.” Alana stood up. “I’ll take you up on something to drink now if you’ve got some tea made up.”

  “Then let’s go to the kitchen. I can brew a pot in just a few minutes.” Bridget led the way with Laela crawling behind them and Dolly coming along behind the baby.

  “I want five or six of those.” Alana nodded at the baby. “Iris and my dad thought Maverick and I’d have at least two by now. Trouble is, there was no chemistry between us—not ever. Now, it could be different with Paxton. I could work up a little heat for him, but he goes for the short, busty little brunettes. A tall, gangly blonde isn’t nearly frilly enough for him.”

  “I understand.” Bridget went to the stove and put on a pan of water to boil. “My grandmother had it all planned that I would marry my friend Sean. I love him. I really do, but more as a little brother.”

  “We need those breathless moments that make a woman’s life complete, don’t we?” Alana glanced at the cookie jar. “Mind if I get into the cookies?”

  “Not a bit,” Bridget said. “This can be our midmorning tea.”

  “We just call it a snack.” Alana opened the jar and put several cookies on a plate. “Should I put the baby in the high chair?”

  “Yes, please.” Bridget’s mind was whipping around so fast, thinking about what Alana had said about breathless moments and the offer of a job right there on the next ranch over, that she almost forgot to take the lid off the teapot before she poured the hot water into it.

  “Well, damn it to bloody hell,” she swore as she grabbed a tea towel to mop up the water on the cabinet. “You’ll be wanting to take back that offer to work for you if I can’t even get the water into the teapot.”

  “Not damn likely. You could even burn the biscuits occasionally, and I wouldn’t gripe.” Alana put the baby in the chair and then got a wet washcloth to wipe her hands and face. “You do realize that Maverick won’t always be just a foreman on somebody else’s ranch, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t care if he was. If anything should ever come of this crazy situation, all I would want would be his heart. It would not matter to me if I had to work to help support us.” Bridget refilled the pan with water to boil and got down two cups.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Alana said. “I’d rather live in a one-room cabin on the Red River with lots of passion than live in a lukewarm relationship in a mansion on a hill.”

  Looking at Alana, Bridget realized she was as different from Deidre as night and day, but talking to her was easy—like it had been with Deidre. She had never thought she would find a friend like that again.

  * * *

  That first part of Saturday morning went fine for Maverick. He had gotten a lot done right up until the middle of the morning. Then things took a turn for the worse. If things could go wrong, they did. Even things that seemed there was no way on God’s great green Earth that could possibly go wrong, they managed to find a way to do it somehow. Maverick hit his thumb with a hammer and had to drill a small hole in the nail to ease the pressure of the blood building up under it. On his way to the house for dinner the wind blew his favorite old work hat into a mud puddle and then rolled it on over into a fresh pile of cow manure. It was old and just about worn-out, but he liked that hat. Then Granny’s prize bull got out on the road at the backside of the ranch. When he tried to get the sorry bastard back into the pasture, the animal charged him and knocked him into a ditch filled with icy cold water left over from the recent rain.

  When he had finally gotten the bull back into the pasture and shored up the fence, it was well past noon. Maverick was cold, wet, hungry, and tired. All he wanted was a hot shower. He damn sure wasn’t looking forward to going to a nursing home with a bunch of kids and passing out cookies to the elderly.

  He walked into the house to a woman at her wits’ end with a bawling baby, the smell of something burning on the stove, and the house phone ringing. He grabbed the extension hanging on the utility room wall, and said, “Hello.”

  “What in the hell is going on?” Iris asked. “I haven’t been able to reach anybody all day.”

  “Chaos,” Maverick said. “It’s been one of those days. I’m wet, cold, and in bad need of a shower. Talk to Bridget.” He handed the phone off to Bridget and headed straight for the bathroom.

  The last thing he heard before he closed the door was Bridget explaining that Laela had been throwing a fit for half an hour, the battery in her phone needed charging, and she had no idea what was wrong with Maverick.

  He stood under the shower long after he’d lathered up and rinsed the soap from his body. The hot water beating down on his shoulders felt good after that roll in the dirty ditch water. When he’d finally gotten out of the shower, dried off, and dressed in clean jeans and a soft T-shirt, he could still hear the baby whining. He took time to put a clean Band-Aid on his thumb, and wished that he didn’t have to load cookies into the truck for the singing that afternoon.

  When he finally made it to the living room, Laela was sitting on the floor in front of the Christmas tree. She took one look at him, slapped the lowest ornament, and sent it rolling across the floor. Dolly chased after it and batted it around the floor like a ball.

  “Looks like she’s punishing me for being late,” Maverick said.

  Bridget popped her hands on her hips. “You could have called. Your dinner is on the stove. You’ll have to heat it up in the microwave and eat fast. We only have an hour before we’ve got to be at the nursing home for our rehearsal with the children.”

  “I might have called if my phone had been workin’. I fell in a ditch with a foot of cold water in the bottom. If I can’t get my phone dried out, I’ll have to buy a new one.” Maverick told her about his horrible afternoon.

  “Well, you’d best go eat while I get Laela ready to go, and then we’ll have to get the cookies all loaded up,” she told him.

  She disappeared from the room, and he ate his food standing up at the kitchen counter, washed it down with a glass of sweet tea, and then loaded all the boxes of cookies into the backseat of the truck. As he was going back into the house, Dolly got under his fe
et and tripped him up. He threw out his hands to keep from falling and hit the glass window in the door so hard that it broke.

  “What have you done?” Bridget asked.

  “Damn cat,” he muttered. “I’ll put a plastic garbage bag over it until we can get home and fix it.”

  “Are you hurt?” she asked.

  “My best pair of gloves is cut up and ruined, but I’m fine,” he grumbled.

  “Thank God you had them on,” she said on her way out to the truck. “Laela and I’ll be waiting for you.”

  He mumbled the whole time he duct-taped a black bag over the window to keep the cold out, and was still cussin’ hammers and cats when he got into the truck. Surely nothing else would go wrong.

  “What’s happened to your thumb?” Bridget asked before he could even get the truck engine started.

  “I had an argument with a hammer and it won,” he said. “Tell me about your day.” Maybe listening to her would put him in a better mood.

  “Alana came over and offered me a job after Iris comes home and heals up. She says I’d be doing the same thing over there that I do now, and I can keep Laela with me rather than sending her off to a sitter,” she said.

  Well, that was just grand. He grimaced. He thought Alana was his friend and there she was stealing Bridget.

  “And Sean called,” Bridget went on to say, “and if his girlfriend, Kelly, moves in with him, then her flat will be up for rent. I could possibly get my job back at the bakery. Deidre worked there”—Bridget reminded him—“and the owner let her bring Laela to work with her, so there’s that. What would you do?”

  “It’s your choice, not mine,” he snapped at her.

  “I’d be asking for your advice, but if you’re going to be a jackass, then I don’t even want it.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared out the side window. “I’ll be making my own decisions and not bothering you with them anymore.”

  The trip from ranch to nursing home was only a five-minute drive, and by the time he’d parked not far from the door, he was sorry he’d snapped at her. If he hadn’t been tired, maybe it wouldn’t have rubbed him wrong.

  But it did.

  “Right now I don’t even want to hear about Sean,” he said.

  “What bee has gotten into your knickers?” Bridget asked him.

  “It’s been a bad day.” He opened his door.

  “Those come along,” she told him when he got around to her side, “but did you ever think that it might be a test to teach you a lesson?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he growled. “Like how to hit my thumb with a hammer, or put my hands through the door window.”

  “Well, you can sure enough get over this mood in the same knickers that you got into it, but it better be soon,” she told him.

  “Are you threatening me?” He stacked three boxes on his shoulder and started across the lot.

  “No, I’d just be stating facts, but if you drop those cookies, it could be a threat,” she told him as she got Laela out of the car seat and slung the diaper bag over her shoulder.

  Seven mothers trying to keep control of their kids met them at the door. They turned the kids over to Bridget and escaped for the next hour. Maverick wished he could go with them rather than staying in a place with old people and rowdy kids, but Iris would have his hide—and besides, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own that he was in a grumpy mood. Truth be told, most of it was brought on from thinking about Bridget going back to Ireland as he worked that morning, and then she’d talked to her friend and to Alana.

  “Right this way,” a lady in pink scrubs said. “You can practice for fifteen minutes in the recreation room. When we get the patients in the lobby, we’ll come and get you. If you need a piano player, we’ve got an orderly who does an amazing job.”

  “That would be nice,” Bridget said.

  Maverick set the cookies down on a table and heaved a sigh of relief. The way his day had been going, it was a wonder he hadn’t dropped them and then fallen backward on the boxes.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “All right, kids,” Bridget said over the top of their excitement. “Let’s do a quick run-through of ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.’”

  “Can I hold the baby while we sing?” Lily Rose asked.

  “I’m bigger than you so I should get to hold her,” Katy argued.

  “I don’t even like babies, but if we’re going by who’s biggest, then I get to hold her,” Slade said.

  “I’ll hold Laela, and…” She shot a look toward Maverick. “Maverick is going to sing with you. Elijah can start the songs, but Maverick will be singing along with you.”

  “You’re bein’ a bit bossy today,” he whispered.

  “Singin’ is good for the soul. Maybe you’ll be in a better mood when you leave,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, and then raised her voice. “Elijah, you can begin.”

  The little boy tipped up his chin and started singing. Lily Rose, Lisa, and Katy were downright theatrical, shaking their fingers at the boys during the songs, and doing choreography through the whole song.

  “When did you three figure that out?” Bridget smiled.

  “We been workin’ on it since Sunday,” Lily Rose said. “Anybody can sing, but we’re performers.”

  “Yes, you are,” Bridget told them. “Your audience is going to love you.”

  The lady in pink knocked on the door and nodded at Bridget. The kids filed out behind her, one by one, with Maverick bringing up the rear. Men! Bridget thought. They always talk about women being moody, but an annoyed woman couldn’t hold a candle to a pissy man.

  “Oh, look at that precious baby.” One little lady on the front row of chairs reached out to touch Laela’s arm as they passed by. “How old is she?”

  “Seven months.” Bridget stopped and sat down beside the woman.

  “And these cute little kids.” An old guy poked his friend sitting next to him. “I hear they brought homemade cookies for after their singing.”

  Maverick waited for someone to step up behind the microphone to introduce them. When no one did, Bridget pointed and nodded at him.

  “What?” He frowned.

  “Say something. It’s time,” she mouthed.

  He took the microphone from the stand and tapped on it. There was plenty of sound coming from it, so he held it out a little. “Merry Christmas, everyone! Are all y’all ready for Santa Claus?”

  That brought on applause. While the old folks were clapping, an orderly rushed into the room and sat down behind the piano.

  “Looks like we’re ready to sing,” Maverick said. “We’re the Sunday school class from the Daisy Community Church, so give the kids a little more love before we start.”

  Another round of applause echoed down the halls. When it died down, Maverick leaned down and whispered all three songs into the piano man’s ear. He nodded and ran his fingers down the keyboard in Floyd Cramer style and then hit the first notes for “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”

  Maverick sang with the kids through all three songs, and by the end a wide smile covered his face, and he even lost a few words when he chuckled at the girls’ antics. When they finished and took a bow, Bridget followed the kids back to the recreation room, where they began to tear into the boxes of treats.

  “Whoa!” Maverick came in right behind them. “Let’s be organized about this, guys. Each of you take a plate in each hand. Start on the front row and work your way back. Make sure every one of the grannies and grandpas gets a plateful, and tell them—”

  “Merry Christmas!” Randy shouted. “That’s what Mama told me to say, and to be nice.”

  “That’s right,” Bridget said. “Walk, don’t run in the hall.” Then she turned to Maverick. “I’ll go up front with them and manage things from that end.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be up as soon as the last cookies leave out of here.”

  By the time the cookies were passed out, the mothers were trickling back into the lobby. Bridget was
right in there among them, talking to the elderly, discussing kids and recipes. Maverick stood to the side, and checked the time on his phone. When they’d been there more than an hour, Bridget caught his eye and nodded. She said a few words to the little lady who’d complimented her on Laela, and began to get Laela bundled up.

  “Wasn’t that just the cutest thing ever?” she said when they were outside. “The kids did great to have only that one practice last week. I bet the program at church is going to be smashing.”

  She was still talking about the program while she buckled Laela in her seat. Maverick had started around the truck when Randy came running across the parking lot. For a minute Bridget thought the child was going to hug him. Then she noticed how green the little guy was around the mouth and knew what was about to happen. She opened her mouth to yell at him but she wasn’t fast enough.

  The little guy leaned over at the waist and upchucked all over Maverick’s jeans and boots. The north wind picked up the scent and brought it right to her nose.

  “Sorry.” Randy looked up sheepishly, “Mama told me to run to the grass. I didn’t make it.”

  Randy’s mother came around the end of the truck apologizing. “We were in the car when he started to gag. I didn’t want it in the car. I’m so sorry. I’ll feel just horrible if he’s got a bug and gave it to those sweet old folks. I probably shouldn’t have let him come today because he was complaining with a stomachache at breakfast, but he pitched a fit, and he’d learned all his songs.” She picked him up and carried him back to her car, patting his back all the way.

  “I hope it’s just a stomachache and nothing serious,” Bridget said, but she wanted to scream that she should never bring a child with any possibility of sickness to the nursing home.