Once Upon a Cowboy Christmas--A River Ranch Novel

by Soraya Lane

  “Speaking of my son, I’d better go check on your father and then wait for the school bus to arrive,” she said, relieved to leave the kitchen and the Ford family for the rest of the day. “I might see you when I stop by after dinner to give Walter his meds.”

  Everyone called out goodbye, but as she walked away, it felt like Cody’s eyes were burning a hole into the back of her head. She kept putting one foot in front of the other until she was at the door, wishing they were alone and she had the courage to march back and demand to know how he’d treated her the way he had. But they weren’t alone and she doubted she would ever have the nerve to properly confront him anyway.

  She looked in on Walter, not disturbing him when she saw he was resting, and walking quietly down the hallway instead. She reached for her coat and scarf, buttoned up, and walked out the door. She needed to see Harrison, to snuggle him and soak up everything about him, to listen to him give her the blow-by-blow account of his day at school. Because then she’d remember why Cody leaving had been the best thing that had ever happened to her, because without Cody, she’d have never had her son.

  She took her phone out of her pocket as she made her way over to the converted barn she was living in to get her car. The driveway was almost a mile long, so she always drove to the gate. The only message she’d missed was from her mom, and just reading it sent waves of anxiety through her.

  A letter just came and I have four weeks to move. I don’t understand.

  She couldn’t read the rest. Her eyes just kept going back and forth over the first line, her breath shuddering from her as everything came crashing down around her.

  Four weeks to move her mom from her assisted-care facility. Four weeks to find someone to care for a woman with Alzheimer’s. Four weeks.

  She blinked away tears and fumbled in her pocket for her keys, trying not to let them spill. Harry always knew when she was sad, could tell from the second he looked at her if she’d been crying, and the last thing she wanted was for her sweet little boy to know what was going on.

  Lexi got in the driver’s seat and fell forward, her head against the steering wheel, trying to breathe, trying not to let the weight of everything suffocate her. It’d been hard enough when she’d had a little boy to look after on her own, even when her mom had been helping out, but now it was all on her. In the cruel twist of fate that had taken her mother’s mind from her, leaving her swinging from normal, smart-thinking mom to messed-up, forgetful mom, Lexi had ended up being responsible for everyone. Her mother thought she was still capable sometimes, but was confused periodically about why she was even in assisted living, and she certainly didn’t seem to remember or understand that her daughter was having to pay most of her monthly bills to keep her there. The financial strain was suffocating—it woke her up many nights in a hot sweat, sheets tangled frantically around her as she gulped for air and saw the digits in her dwindling bank account in her mind’s eye. Her every decision was fraught with fear, that spending too much at the supermarket could start a downward spiral that she wouldn’t be able to claw her way out from.

  It’s going to be fine, she told herself as she started the car. You have to believe that it’s all going to be fine.

  She lifted her head and breathed, focusing on each inhale, holding the air in her lungs for four counts before slowly letting it go, then repeating the pattern. Without her job caring for Walter, and the perk of having her accommodation paid for, she could lose everything. And then she’d have a mother with Alzheimer’s to care for on her own, no place to live, and a little boy who needed so much of her. All she wanted was to keep him safe and happy, to know her mom was being cared for, and to somehow find the joy she’d once had in her life. Only it seemed like a very, very long time ago that she’d even known the meaning of joy, unless it was to do with her son’s smile and the way she felt whenever he was in the room.

  And now Cody was home. Cody Ford. Cody who’d broken her heart. Cody who she knew, deep down, that she’d never, ever stopped loving.

  Cody who’d left Texas—and her—behind like he was running from the Devil himself.

  Chapter 3

  CODY left his siblings in the kitchen and walked down the hall and upstairs, stopping as he always did when he was home to look at the photographs lining the walls. Their mom had been all about capturing every single image on camera, and he still remembered the sound of her humming a tune as she sorted through images and put them in frames, adding them to the never-ending collection on the walls. Upstairs, there was virtually no wall space left, and even though he knew all the photos from memory, he always stopped, without fail, to study them.

  There were chubby baby photos and toddlers playing naked, family shots of them out on the ranch or away on vacation, their entire family smiling at the rodeo and at a local fair. There was every sort of family photo and pictures of every child, but the collection ended abruptly during Cody’s senior year of high school.

  He moved on, not wanting to think about their mom. A lot of things had ended when she’d died, and for him, that included wanting to stay at home. The house had never felt the same without her in it, and although he knew that was cruel to his younger siblings who’d had no choice but to stay, at a time when they’d probably needed their big brother around, it had been easier to start his own life and stay far, far away from the pain.

  Cody walked into his bedroom, which was more or less the same as he’d left it. The high-school trophies had been cleared away, probably for the sake of whomever was dusting the house each week, and the posters had come down from the walls long ago, but it still felt familiar. The same feel, the same look, the same smell. He closed the door behind him and stood beside the bed, unbuttoning his shirt and then taking off the rest of his clothes, until he was standing in his briefs. He hung his trousers up and put his shoes away, before staring into his closet and feeling the pull down memory lane, the clothes alone enough to bring him crashing headfirst back into the life he’d left behind.

  He pulled out a pair of well-worn jeans and put them on, followed by a white T-shirt and a plaid shirt, another old favorite that he’d never parted with. As he was doing the buttons he crossed to the big window that faced the driveway, but instead of staring at the landscape he saw the tail end of Lexi as she got into a car. He moved to the next window to get a better look, wondering what she was doing when the car never moved. And then he saw her lean forward, her arms on the steering wheel as he her head came down, and she just sat there, immobile, as he watched on.

  She was crying. Either that or she was so exhausted she couldn’t move; but she hadn’t looked exhausted in the kitchen before. Something had upset her.

  “Hey, you want to come finish moving the bulls with me?”

  Cody jumped back from the window and found Tanner standing in his doorway.

  “Ah, yeah, sure,” he said. “Just give me a sec to find some socks.”

  “What’re you looking at out there?” Tanner asked.

  Cody didn’t answer, he just crossed the room and opened a drawer, pulling out a thick wooly pair so his toes wouldn’t freeze in his boots.

  “That’s Lexi’s car,” Tanner said. “What’s she doing in there like that?”

  Cody looked out the window again, wishing his brother hadn’t seen. “She looks upset. She’s been like that a while.” He sighed. “You don’t think it was seeing me again do you?”

  Tanner laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself. She’s got a lot more to worry about than a shitty ex-boyfriend coming back to town.”

  Cody scowled back at him. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

  Tanner shrugged and gestured for him to follow, and Cody did, leaving the rest of his city clothes on the bed and padding down the hall after his brother. “We’ve got to get a move on before it’s dark. Last thing we need is a herd of young bulls acting up because we’ve left it too late.”

  “Why are you doing all the work? Don’t we have our foreman and ranch hands
to keep the place running smoothly?” He stopped short of saying that they paid people so none of them had to do the grunt work.

  “Yeah, we do, but they’ve all worked their asses off for us for years, so I told most of them to take some time off this Christmas, go see their families,” Tanner said, pulling on his boots at the back door. Cody hunted around for his and tipped them upside down to check for mice and any other critters that might have nestled in there since last year. “I knew you were going to be home, so I figured there was nothing we couldn’t handle, right?”

  “Right.” Except Cody hadn’t expected to spend his time at home working like a dog on the ranch. “Going back to Lexi, what did you mean she has more going on than me coming back?”

  Tanner grunted. “She’s real quiet about her personal life, unless it’s to do with her son, Harry. He’s a real little dude, loves being on the ranch, and you can tell he means the world to her.”

  Cody waited, wanting to hear the rest. “But?”

  “But Dad did a little digging, when she applied for the job. Just routine stuff, contacted old references and talked to some former employers.” Tanner leaned on a post and looked back at him. “Turns out her mom’s got Alzheimer’s—she must have been pretty young to get it—and Lexi’s working her ass off to pay for her care. Not to mention she’s raising her boy all on her own.”

  “Some asshole left her holding the baby?”

  Tanner scowled. “Some asshole doesn’t pay his child support I’d say, but she never talks about it. Trust me, I’d have done something about it if she’d told me enough to figure it out, but she’s a pretty closed book on that subject.”

  “So Dad gave her the job because he felt sorry for her? Is that it?”

  “Hell no! She was the most qualified nurse for the job, overqualified in fact, but the hours suited her and he wanted her. She brings out something in him, I don’t know what, but he seems to light up around her, you can see that she makes him feel better just by being with him. She has a way with him that a lot of other women wouldn’t.”

  Cody had noticed that himself, the way his father had smiled at Lexi. Or maybe he’d imagined it when he was trying to figure out who the hell she was.

  “After she started, Dad asked her a few questions, wanted to know how she was getting on, and he told her to give up the lease on her place and move in. He was deteriorating and he wanted her close, and she couldn’t afford her rent, so it was a win-win situation for both of them.”

  Tanner started to walk again, his long stride eating up the dirt, and Cody followed him, inhaling the smell of the ranch, noticing the way even the air felt different in Texas compared to New York. It filled his lungs, made him feel lighter somehow, had a different bite to the taste of city air tinged with car fumes and the scent of a hundred things wafting together at once. Maybe that’s what scared him about the ranch—the pace was too slow for him, the memories always flooding back because there weren’t enough other things happening to distract him. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to see Lexi, how he felt about being near her again. He didn’t want to be reminded of what he’d left or how he’d behaved, but then he should have been used to women making him feel like an asshole when it came to relationships. He hadn’t gotten any better at it.

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell me about her?” Cody asked.

  “You knew her a long time ago, it never really crossed my mind. Besides, you don’t exactly come home often.”

  Cody wasn’t buying it. More likely his brother wanted to see the look on his face when he realized that his ex-girlfriend had turned into one of the most stunning, sexy women he’d ever laid eyes on. If Tanner hadn’t proposed to Lauren, he’d have thought his little brother wanted to keep Lexi all to himself.

  “You gonna help me with these bulls or daydream about your pretty little ex?” Tanner asked.

  Cody snapped out of it and followed him into the field, suddenly not thinking of anything else as fifty young, testosterone-fueled bulls stared him down, their wide brown eyes sizing him up, just as he was doing to them.

  “I’m going to get on the quad and they should follow me straight through; they know the drill,” Tanner called out. “I just need you to keep an eye on any stragglers and get the gate shut behind them.”

  Cody nodded and watched as his brother gunned the quad to life and set off, most of the bulls happily following him in the knowledge that there would be food in the next part of the field for them. But one stared back at him, unblinking, as if trying to figure out who he was and what he was going to do to him.

  He raised a hand and tried to encourage him on, but still the cattle beast didn’t move. And all of a sudden, Cody wondered how different his life might have been if his mom hadn’t died and he hadn’t felt the sudden urge to flee the ranch and never look back.

  * * *

  That night, Cody sat in the library with his dad in front of a big fire, listening to the sounds of his sister in the kitchen. He had his niece curled asleep in his arms, and his father was holding baby Isobel, bouncing her on his knee to keep her from crying. He would have helped Mia clean up, but when Sophia had fallen asleep on him she’d insisted he stay still and not move a muscle—and he knew better than to disobey his sister. She might be the youngest, but she’d always been able to boss her brothers around. Besides, he was guessing it was a relief to have someone else mind the children for a bit.

  His dad turned the television down and shifted in his chair. “So how’s work going? You’re usually straight into talking shop with me, but you haven’t said a word yet.”

  “Work’s good,” he replied, realizing how caught up he’d been in his thoughts. “I’ve hired some new people so I can be out there doing deals instead of being stuck in my office so much.”

  Walter chuckled. “I’ve never thought of you as being stuck in your office. Strikes me that you love every minute you spend in there.”

  “Takes one to know one,” Cody replied.

  They both laughed, but his dad’s expression changed then. “You look tired, son. Your mom used to tell me that sometimes, and I hated to hear it, but it’s true. Sometimes we need a break. Take it from someone who never took one and wishes he had.”

  Cody shifted his weight slightly, glancing down at Sophia. She was so blissfully asleep, her lips parted as she breathed quietly in slumber. “I am tired,” he admitted. “I mean, I’m always tired—sleeping’s not exactly my thing—but I’ve had a lot of deals to close, money to raise, a never-ending number of investors wanting face-to-face meetings. It’s been one hell of a big year but I can’t exactly complain.”

  “I hope you’re staying a few days then,” his father said. “We like to think we’re invincible, but we can’t burn the candle at both ends forever without paying for it.”

  Cody watched his father, saw the stiff way he moved, noticed the slight grimace that bracketed his mouth whenever he had to strain too much. Even holding the baby was probably pushing it for him, having to jiggle her all the time to stop her from fussing, but he wasn’t game enough to tell his father, the man who’d run their family dynasty for so many years without so much as a chink in his armor, that he wasn’t capable of holding an infant.

  “I find it hard to shut off. There’s always more to do, my head’s always spinning,” Cody admitted. “It’s goddamn exhausting being me sometimes.”

  “Son, I know. Trust me, I know.”

  “You’re damn hard to live up to, Dad.” He chuckled. “It’s tough having an old man who’s trodden the path before and done it so well.”

  “I don’t think Fortune magazine would agree with that,” his dad said with a deep laugh that turned to a cough.

  Cody waited for him to catch his breath. “You saw that? I was hoping it had stayed under the radar.”

  “When your son’s named on Fortune magazine’s 40 Under 40 list, you don’t miss it. Besides, I have more time for reading these days, so there’s no chance of me missing anything.”
>
  Cody couldn’t help the smile that spread slowly across his lips. “Pretty insane, huh?”

  “I’d like to think the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. But I sure as hell wouldn’t be worrying about not living up to your old man.”

  They both laughed at the same time as a knock echoed out against the open door behind them.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” came a soft voice.

  Cody turned and saw Lexi standing there, her hair pulled back into a ponytail and an oversize cashmere cardigan wrapped around her body. He gulped. Seeing her like that took him straight back to high school—a look on her face that was more innocent than the guarded expression earlier, and her hair so similar to how she’d once worn it every day back then. If he’d walked in on her looking like that earlier in the day, she’d have stolen his breath away with how familiar she looked, and there wasn’t a chance he wouldn’t have recognized her. And then he saw a little boy peeking from around his mother’s legs, and he grinned when those eyes connected with his.

  “You’re not interrupting at all,” Walter said, at the same moment as Mia came back in and took the baby from him, as if on cue. “You should know by now that seeing you is my favorite part of the day.”

  “Come on,” Mia said, cooing at her little daughter. “Time to get you to sleep. Cody, when you’re ready can you carry Sophia up to bed?”

  He nodded but his focus was on the woman in the room who wasn’t his sister. He watched the way she moved, the way she smiled at his father as she sat down beside him, taking his hand and putting his finger into a machine. The way she pointed to the chair in the corner for her son to sit in, and the way he obediently did as he was told.

  “What are you doing?” Cody asked, giving the boy a wink as he turned his attention back to Lexi.