Christmas at Colts Creek

by Delores Fossen

  Janessa thought about that as Teagan carefully loosened the tape on the gift-wrap. Obviously, the girl wasn’t a ripper the way Janessa was.

  “There might be some old pictures of your mom and him,” Velma Sue added.

  Now, that was something Janessa might want if for no other reason so she could see that they’d once been happy. “Thanks, I’ll do that.”

  When Teagan finally eased off the wrapping, Janessa saw the dollhouse. No ordinary one, of course. Apparently, Abe hadn’t wanted to give his daughter a trendy house of whatever doll had been popular at the time. This appeared to be custom-made and was a replica of Abe’s own house. Well, minus some renovations that probably hadn’t been done yet when the dollhouse was built.

  “Look at all the little furniture,” Teagan said, lightly touching her fingers to a tiny Tiffany lamp in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  Janessa hadn’t been in that particular room, but she was betting the actual lamp was in there. The living room and library certainly were a match to the real deal. It was the same for the bedroom she used, though the bedding was different. It must have cost Abe a small fortune to have this done.

  And, damn it, Janessa felt the little tug in her heart.

  Maybe Abe had spent only a few seconds commissioning the job and writing a check for it and maybe it wasn’t at all appropriate for a one-year-old, but he’d put some thought into it. Thoughts about her.

  Janessa was scowling at the possibility of that when she heard the footsteps, and she whirled around, her body bracing for Riggs. But then her body had a whole different reaction when she saw it was Brody.

  She could feel her entire body sigh.

  He was in full-cowboy mode today. Those great fitting jeans, boots and long-sleeved blue work shirt that was partially unbuttoned. He smelled like fresh winter wind and saddle leather, apparently a scent combo that caused her to stop scowling. Not Brody, though. He kept his somewhat stern I’m-pissed expression on that dreamy face.

  Brody glanced at the dollhouse and the other presents. “Got a minute?” he asked her.

  “Sure.” Since he headed toward the door, Janessa got a big clue that he wanted this conversation to be just between them and that he wanted it to happen now. “Open any of the gifts you want,” she told Teagan. “I’ll probably get some work done after I talk with Brody.”

  As she’d done with Velma Sue, Janessa followed Brody down the hall and to what was obviously his office. It was like stepping into another world. One with at least some color. The love seat and chairs in the small sitting area were merlot leather. The rug, a muted mix of soft blues, greens and various shades of the wine color.

  There were no portraits of Brody in here. No impressive mantel with trophies and awards. However, he did have framed photos of some of the champion quarter horses.

  She turned to tell him she was impressed that he’d bucked Abe on his decor choice, but she hadn’t realized just how close he was to her. She bumped into him.

  And felt it in multiple parts of her.

  “Yeah,” he grumbled as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. What he didn’t do was act on those feelings in multiple parts of her.

  “I heard our mothers were here earlier,” Brody said as he moved away from her to the door behind them.

  “Wow, gossip is faster than texting around here.” And in this case, Janessa wished they’d held off on that specific gossip until she’d had the chance to talk to Brody about it.

  “I had some hands watching the place and told them to text me if anyone came and went,” he explained.

  She nodded. “Sophia came to confirm that she was indeed staying and that she might be making a play for Curt Dayton. Thought I’d throw that in so when you hear it, you won’t be surprised.”

  Judging from his stony expression, he wouldn’t be surprised by anything Sophia did.

  “And as for your mother,” Janessa went on, “she wants me to tell Rowan to stop doing research on Abe. Any idea how Rowan will take that news?”

  “Badly,” Brody snarled, but then he seemed to rein in other snarls. He groaned, scrubbed his hand over his face. “My mother is way too protective of Rowan and me. I can usually find a respectful way to tell her to butt out of my business, but Rowan hasn’t developed that skill set yet.”

  “A lot of teenagers haven’t.”

  “My mother has panic attacks,” Brody added before she could say more. “She works herself up when she’s worried about one of us, and anything to do with Abe worries her.”

  Janessa had been around some residents when they’d had panic attacks so she knew how bad and terrifying they could be. “I take it that her job as a nurse isn’t a trigger for the stress?”

  “No. It always centers on Rowan or me, and this research with Abe paired with her worry over me losing my job could be a perfect storm.” Brody paused, and a sleek muscle tightened in his jaw. “On the other hand, I have no intention of telling Rowan to butt out of the research. And I don’t want you to tell him that, either. Unless you no longer want or need his help.”

  She certainly hadn’t expected him to say that. “Check both of those boxes on wanting and needing help, but I don’t want to cause trouble in your family.” Especially since Darcia already looked at her as if she were a fungus that needed treatment.

  “I want Rowan to make up his own mind about this,” Brody assured her, “and I’ll deal with the trouble and fallout from Mom.”

  Part of Janessa felt this was a small victory. Not for her but for Rowan. But then she thought of Darcia in the full throes of a panic attack.

  “Maybe a solution is for me to do the research ASAP,” she said. “That way, Rowan won’t be involved for long. Besides, I’m not sure Rowan will actually find anything.”

  “He already has,” Brody disagreed. The scowl returned, and he went to his desk, picked up several pieces of paper that’d been stapled together and he handed it to her. “Rowan went through old newspaper articles and internet searches and came up with that. He found it on a blog where people post their unresolved legal complaints.”

  That, she soon realized as she read through it, was definitely something.

  “Your father, Jimmy, filed a lawsuit against Abe,” Janessa summarized. “Why haven’t I heard any gossip about this?” But she stopped when she saw the answer to her own question. “Because Jimmy filed the lawsuit in San Antonio where he was living at the time.”

  She went further down the page, and holy moly, Jimmy had made some pretty startling claims in that lawsuit.

  “Yeah,” Brody repeated, no doubt interpreting the look on her face. “My father claimed Abe used his power and money to destroy his business, ruin his marriage and force him to leave town.”

  Janessa did some facial interpretation of Brody, too, and she saw this had given him a hard punch. “It might not be true,” she reminded him.

  “Go to the next page,” Brody instructed.

  She did, and Janessa groaned when she looked at the accusations. “Abe paid off the suppliers to your father’s hardware store to get them to stop doing business with him. Abe offered deep discounts of the same supplies until it forced your father into bankruptcy, and then Abe bought the store from the bank and had the building torn down and completely rebuilt.

  Janessa stopped to take a much-needed breath, but she continued to read. After Abe had ruined Jimmy, he’d made it next to impossible for him to get a job in Last Ride. Broke and with his marriage on the rocks, Abe had then offered Jimmy money if he’d leave Last Ride and never come back. Jimmy had taken the cash, given it to Darcia and left.

  “This happened when I was about ten,” Brody filled in for her.

  Oh, mercy. It was definitely an eyeful of the steps Abe had allegedly taken to get Jimmy out of town.

  She looked up, her gaze meeting his. “I’m guessing your father wrote this blo
g post?”

  “You’d think, but take a look at the last page.”

  Janessa’s ESP/facial reading failed her this time, but she turned to the last page, and her gaze zoomed to the bottom.

  Where she saw none other than her mother’s name.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BRODY CLIMBED ONTO the back of the Brahma bull named Foya. AKA Fall on Your Ass. And while Foya snorted beneath him, Brody began to question why the hell he’d agreed, once again, to do this particular ride. Yes, it’d add some money to the Abe Parkman Holiday Gala fund for various town charities, but there had to be an easier way to raise some cash.

  Then the adrenaline kicked in.

  So did Foya when the gate opened, and the bull charged out, bucking and tossing his muscled body around to fling off the rider he probably considered an idiot. Maybe Brody was indeed an idiot for letting himself just get slung around like this, but that adrenaline kick was something else. A good something else.

  He heard the cheers of the onlookers, and everything inside him pinpointed to moving with the bull, hanging on, knowing that at any second his ass could land hard on the ground. Brody didn’t consider himself an adrenaline junkie or thrill seeker, but he could appreciate this high. A high that went up many significant notches when the bell clanged to signal the end of the ride and that he hadn’t busted his butt after all.

  The rodeo clowns rushed forward to distract the bull so that Brody could slide off and head to the fence.

  Where he immediately spotted Janessa.

  Somehow, he was able to pick her out of the crowd of at least two hundred still-cheering people who’d plopped down ten bucks just to watch the three rides that’d taken place this evening. She was on the other side of the riding arena, her gaze glued to him, and she was eyeing him with interest and lust.

  Obviously, Brody was doing the same to her.

  Waving and responding to the cheers and whoops still going on, Brody walked toward her, telling himself that he needed to talk to her about Sophia and the blog Rowan had found. But the lust was definitely playing into the reason his boots were headed in her direction.

  She was wearing snug black jeans with really sparkly shoes, a red sweater and coat, and she’d pulled her hair back in a ponytail. Her face was a little rosy from the chilly temps, and all of that combined made one hell of a picture.

  “Great ride,” she said, smiling before she took a small bite from a brown ball of something on a stick. Nothing about it looked appetizing or even edible. “You’re the star attraction.”

  “The last ride of the night,” he corrected. He put on his jacket, which one of the ground assistants handed him. “There really aren’t any stars in an event this small.”

  She shrugged. “Looked like a star-quality ride to me.”

  Because Janessa’s rodeo knowledge was probably somewhat limited, Brody didn’t want to feel good about the praise. But he did. He rested his arms on the top of the fence between them, and he was well aware that they’d attracted a whole lot of attention.

  “What’s that you’re eating?” he asked.

  “Fried cotton candy.”

  Nothing about it sounded appetizing or edible, either, but he knew pretty much any gross-sounding food option was available at the festival. Some delicious ones, too. He planned to grab some nachos before the night was over.

  “I got it from a booth between the fried Oreos and fried beer,” she added, and her smile pumped up to a full-fledged grin when he scowled. “Better hurry if you want some because they’re selling out fast.”

  “I’ll pass. I want to hold on to as much of my stomach lining as possible.”

  She chuckled, had another nibble of the blob and pointed to the massive banner strung just above them. Abe Parkman Holiday Gala emblazoned in gold on a black background. Twin pictures of Abe graced both ends of the banner.

  “This is another penis deal,” she remarked. “Look at me, look at me. See how important I am.”

  He couldn’t argue that. Abe had definitely had an ego. “I take it you haven’t found anything in your research that proves Abe had redeeming qualities.”

  She looked straight into his eyes. “Well, he was good to you and was smart enough to give you free rein in running the ranch. So far, though, that’s about it. FYI, he has some ranching files in his office that you might want to move to yours.”

  Before Brody could issue a will do, someone called out his name.

  Alyssa Cooke.

  The tall brunette was sort of a penis deal, too, but in a womanly kind of way. Alyssa dressed to draw maximum attention, and tonight was no exception. Her purple jeans looked as if they could seriously restrict blood flow in her thighs and crotch. Ditto for the sparkly silver sweater that squeezed and pushed up her D-cups and made every movement seem as if it could quickly turn into a planned wardrobe malfunction. She was gorgeous, and she knew it.

  She also had made it plenty clear that she wanted him.

  Brody wasn’t biting, though. He preferred relationships that had a longer shelf life than deep-fried cotton candy. That wasn’t the popular view when it came to most cowboys, but sex—any sex—in a small town meant coming face-to-face with that sexual partner when things went south.

  Alyssa kept her attention locked on him while she licked her chocolate-covered banana. Yes, licked. And yes, it was also on a stick, completing the penis metaphor.

  “I’m sure she’s not doing that because it’s sexually suggestive or anything,” Janessa muttered.

  Brody bit back a laugh. Going the minimal politeness route, he gave Alyssa a quick wave to acknowledge he’d noticed her and heard her call out his name. What he didn’t do was give the woman any kind of signal that he wanted her to come closer with her mouth licking and sucking on that chocolate banana, and he turned back to Janessa.

  “Did you ever get a chance to talk to your mother about the blog post that Rowan found?” Brody asked after he glanced around and made sure no one was close enough to hear.

  There wasn’t. Other than Alyssa, people had given them a wide-ish berth, but just in case anyone had bat hearing, he kept his voice low.

  “Not really. My mom’s a master at avoidance and has been holed up in her room at the inn. I haven’t pestered her about it too much because I don’t want to get mad and therefore give her a reason to leave town.”

  There was that. “I did some internet searches and didn’t find anything else.”

  “Same here,” Janessa admitted. “I also read the blog post multiple times, and if it’s true, Abe really did screw over your father. Do you remember any of this happening? Any talk about it? Anything?”

  Brody had already given this plenty of thought so he didn’t have to figure out an answer. “My dad left when I was ten, and most of the memories I have are of him working long hours at the store. He and my mom rarely mentioned Abe around me.”

  In private, though, they’d likely had some big-assed discussions about the man who’d once been his father’s best friend. And his mother’s boyfriend. Hard to totally omit something like that from marital conversations. Or maybe they had because it’d been such a touchy subject.

  “After my dad lost the store,” Brody went on, “I recall him drinking a lot. Being bitter. A lot. So, I’m not surprised at the bitterness in the blog.”

  “Abe could have done all those things, right?” Janessa asked after a long pause.

  Here he went, speaking ill of the dead, but he’d done some speaking ill of the living, too. “Abe could have, but it’s possible my father wasn’t a saint in all of this. What they were going through was an all-out feud, and I’m sure plenty of it splashed onto my mother. It’s one of the reasons she’s so bitter about Abe.”

  He’d cut his mother some slack. Because of the things she’d been through. But he wasn’t in a slack-cutting mood when it came to Abe and his father.
If all of the info in the blog had come to light when Abe was alive, Brody would have definitely confronted him about it, and it was highly likely that he wouldn’t have taken over running Abe’s ranch.

  “Sorry,” she murmured as if picking up on the bad vibes coming off him. There wasn’t much left of that adrenaline from the ride.

  “This might help.” She held out the ball of fried cotton candy for him to sample. “There’s a lot to be said about a sugar high that comes with absolutely zero nutritional benefits.”

  What the hell. It was possible he took a bite only to get the cheap thrill of touching something her mouth had just touched. Still, the taste wasn’t nearly as bad as it’d sounded. It was a little like strawberry shortcake.

  “We came here sixteen years ago,” Janessa remarked, glancing around. “Remember? It was for the Fourth of July festival.”

  Of course he remembered. He might forget a dental appointment or what he’d had for breakfast that very morning, but details about Janessa just seemed to stick in his mind.

  “We stayed for the fireworks,” she added a moment later. “Well, some of them anyway.”

  He remembered that, too. They’d left so they could go make out in his truck. Over the next weeks, the making out had continued, and continued, until they’d passed the threshold of holding onto their willpower and had sex.

  She kept glancing around, then stopped. Smiled. Brody followed her gaze and spotted Margo and Teagan coming toward them. Both had sticks with blobs on them. Brody also saw Sherry McKinnon, one of the ranch hands trailing along behind them. Sherry was on bodyguard duty tonight and would stay with Teagan until the girl was safely back at the ranch.

  “We saw your bull ride,” Margo immediately said. “We were on the other side of the arena. Don’t know how you kept that fine butt of yours on that Brahma, but you managed it. Great job.”

  He thanked her, and because Teagan was looking plenty uncomfortable, he made sure he kept an easygoing expression. “Fried cotton candy?” he asked, tipping his head to the blob.

  “Fried ice cream. Miss Margo got the fried cotton candy.” Teagan paused. “Thank you for having your ranch hand watch out for me.” She glanced at Sherry who’d stayed back a few feet. “No one has seen Riggs around, right?”