Her Christmas Cowboy

by Jessica Clare

  She eyed him and then went and sat on the edge of the bed. Was it deliberate? Just a little. Did she like how he watched her move with those hungry, avid eyes? Oh yes, she absolutely did. She even crossed her legs slowly because she wanted his attention. She was being a little ridiculous, and she knew it . . . and didn’t much care. “I like your place.”

  Caleb shrugged, pulling his hat off and tossing it perfectly so it landed on a hook on the wall, a move she suspected he’d done many, many times in the past. “When we were in Alaska, me and Hank and Jack all lived in a one-bedroom cabin with a dirt floor. So I know this doesn’t look like much, but I figure a guy like me doesn’t need much.” He paused for a moment. “For now.”

  “For now?” she prompted.

  He fixed those long-lashed eyes on her. “At some point a man wants to get married and start a family.”

  She felt herself getting warm, because he was looking at her so intently she knew he was referring to her. He was direct, Caleb Watson.

  “What made you decide to move down here?”

  He sat down in the chair and kicked his boots off, getting comfortable. His socks were thick wool, and she was oddly disappointed that she didn’t get to see his bare feet. “Uncle Ennis said his ranch was in trouble. Needed help running things, and we’d come here several times as teenagers to spend the summer and make money. We knew how to do the basics. We were just coming off of a hard winter up north and it seemed like all our equipment broke at once—the septic pump system at the house, the solar panels, the snowmobile—and we were sick of each other and a little stir-crazy to boot. It made sense to come down here for a year, save up some cash and help Uncle Ennis, and then go back.”

  Go back.

  Amy stiffened, disappointment crashing through her. She realized that if he came last year, he wouldn’t be here much longer. “You’re leaving?”

  He shook his head. “That was the plan before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before I met you. Once I saw you, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  Her lips parted. She gaped at him, just a little, but she could see that Caleb was utterly and completely serious. Her breath caught in her throat. “You changed your plans . . . last week?”

  He shook his head. “That wasn’t the first time we met.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “The first time I saw you was this summer.”

  She opened her mouth to protest. She didn’t remember that. Surely she would have remembered him? A big, handsome, utterly silent cowboy? But then a wisp of a memory drifted through her head. Of Hank showing up to enroll his daughter in her class and instead quizzing her about Becca. He’d had someone with him, someone she’d barely paid attention to. All she remembered was that he’d brayed with laughter every time she spoke . . . “That was you? The laugher?”

  He grimaced.

  “Oh my god, I didn’t remember that until just now.” She put a hand to her mouth, surprised. “That one meeting made you decide to stay?”

  “You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen,” Caleb told her in a somber voice. “Still are.”

  She melted. Utterly melted. “Oh, Caleb.”

  A ghost of a smile brushed over his mouth. “I’m gonna remind you of my intentions.”

  Marriage. Right. She smiled, deciding to tease him. “Just in case you change your mind?”

  His expression remained deadly serious. “I won’t ever change my mind about you.”

  And now she was in danger of melting through the floor. Good lord, and this man thought he had a problem with words? He was so sincere, so utterly heartfelt, that she wanted to fling her dress off and crawl into his lap. She gave him a shy smile and tried to change the subject—because what could you say to that? She liked him. A lot. But after a week she wasn’t quite ready to declare never-ending love, either. That just seemed far too fast. Though if he made every day as wonderful as the last week had been, she could absolutely see falling head over heels in love with him. It was just . . . after her marriage, she was a little more cautious about happily ever after. So . . . a subject change. “I had a nice time tonight.”

  Caleb arched an eyebrow. “Did you? You didn’t seem like you were having fun.”

  Was she so obvious? “I did have a good time! It was just . . . I didn’t feel like I belonged. Everyone knew everyone except me.”

  “You knew Becca. And Hank. And Libby. And me.”

  “It’s different, though.” Amy bit her lip. “I just . . . I thought when I moved here I’d work really hard to become part of the community and get accepted, and I feel like I’m still that weird outsider. Sometimes it feels lonely.”

  “I’m not from here,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, but you already knew everyone. You have family here. Your brothers.” She shook her head. “It’s different. I’m here alone.”

  He gave her an assessing look. “Which brings me to something I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s the holidays . . . where’s your family?”

  Ugh. That awful, anxious knot that her family always brought on was forming in the pit of her belly, just from thinking about them. But he had a right to ask. “Well,” she said slowly. “They didn’t approve of my divorce. They made it quite clear that when I divorced my ex, I wasn’t going to be able to ‘crawl back to them and expect handouts.’ I think they liked him more than they liked me.” She gave him a weak smile. “My father always did want a son.”

  Caleb frowned fiercely at that. “They took his side?”

  “Oh yeah.” She huffed a laugh. “They thought I was being ridiculous and hysterical. That I was making a huge mistake and that he was in the right about everything. My parents were cut from the same cloth that Blake was, you know? Took me a while to realize that what they wanted for me wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “Blake,” Caleb echoed. “That his name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds like a jackass.”

  She chuckled. “He is.”

  “Can I ask why you got divorced? You said it wasn’t cheating . . .” He trailed off, waiting to see if she’d answer.

  She could push it off. Tell him she wasn’t ready to talk about that sort of thing yet. But . . . wasn’t she here tonight with condoms in her purse and wearing a backless cocktail dress and sitting on the edge of his bed? Because she was an adult and she could do what she wanted, and what she wanted was to hook up with this gorgeous man that made her feel so pretty and special. She supposed that if he wanted to know about her divorce, she could at least talk about it.

  “Well . . .” She wet her lips, feeling incredibly nervous. It was like talking about Blake would somehow summon him to her side. “I met Blake when I was nineteen. He was the son of a golfing friend of my father’s and they suggested we go out. Next thing I knew, I was being encouraged to quit college and get married to Blake. When you’re pressured from all sides, it’s hard to say no. My mother never understood, though. She never went to college. Just married my dad right out of high school. He was the one who worked and handled all the money. I remember my mom never even had a car. She didn’t understand why she needed one. Dad would take care of everything for her.” She made a face at the thought. “We had money, so I guess she never worried about that sort of thing. I didn’t, either. And when I got older and Blake started to take over things for me, it just made sense that he would. He was older than I was, and very strong-willed and smart. Very willing to take risks on start-up companies, and they tended to pay off. He was good with people and knew how to work a room, and he was always dressed to the nines. I thought he was dazzling when I met him.” Her mouth twisted sourly. “Looking back, I was an idiot. But I thought I was in love, so I handed over more and more of my life because I just wanted to make him happy.”

  “Handed over your life? How?”

  Amy plucked at one of
the sequins on the front of her dress. “Well, for example, I was going to college when we started dating, and then my classes started interfering with things. He wanted me with him on business trips and I couldn’t go. Or he’d want to do something in the middle of the day and I had class. He pressured me so, so many times to drop everything. What did I need a degree for, right? He was going to take care of me when we got married. So I ended up dropping out with a semester left and became Mrs. Blake Todd in a wedding that filled an entire church full of people, and none of them were my friends. Blake didn’t like my friends, you see. So they got slowly edged out of my life, too. I stayed at home—Blake’s house, mind you—and talked to the staff, but other than that, I had nothing to do. I was expected to just sit around and be a wife. Looking back, it’s very 1950s.” She chuckled, trying to see the humor in the situation. “I didn’t even have a checkbook. He would just give me an allowance if I needed cash. If I wanted to go somewhere, I had to make sure his driver was available. All the credit cards were in his name. Things like that. I wore the clothes that Blake liked. I had the chef make the food Blake liked. I read books that Blake approved of and listened to music that he thought was appropriate. I never cussed because Blake thought it was fucking unladylike.” She couldn’t resist tossing that in.

  “He sounds like a real creep.”

  “He didn’t want a wife. He wanted a Barbie doll,” she agreed lightly, her fingers worrying at that stupid sequin. “Really, it was just a matter of expectations. My father had led him to think that I was going to be pliable and just so darn happy to marry him. And when I was starry-eyed in the beginning of the relationship, I thought so, too. But after we got married and I sat around a beautiful house all day with nothing to do, I was bored. I couldn’t decorate because I had to run everything past Blake. I couldn’t cook, because Blake had a chef that handled everything. I couldn’t drive anywhere. I was just living in this little bubble and it felt smaller and smaller every day.”

  Even now, just thinking about it, she felt smothered. Choked. She closed her eyes, took a steeling breath.

  “So after a few months of that, I started to ask for things to do. For money. For opportunities. I think I even asked him at one point to give me a job at his start-up. He was creating all kinds of apps, you see, and things were very exciting. But Blake just wanted me to stay at home.” Her mouth twisted. “I would have been fine with being at home, except . . . it wasn’t my home. It was his. I was just another decorative piece.”

  “But you got your degree,” Caleb prompted after a long moment of silence.

  She nodded, ripping the annoying sequin free from her dress finally. “I did. I saved my allowance for months and opened a bank account in secret. I took the classes online and did my course work on the days that he wasn’t there, or I’d wake up in the middle of the night to do them. I got my degree.” She cast a triumphant look in Caleb’s direction. “And after that, I realized I didn’t like my life. It was like I could see how it would turn out in another five years, another ten years, another fifteen . . . and the thought was horrible. So I saved more of my allowance, and when I had about five grand saved, I left in the middle of the night and filed for divorce.”

  “Middle of the night?” His brows went up in surprise.

  “It was easiest,” she agreed. “Cowardly, but easiest. Blake was really, really good at running me down and making me feel stupid. Like if bad things happened, they were somehow my fault. It was all manipulation, but that’s why I left without saying a thing. I didn’t want him to change my mind for me.” She laughed, tugging at the thread her sequin dismemberment had left. “And I knew if I talked to him, he’d just bully me into seeing things his way. So I left and had the lawyers handle it.”

  “Good for you.”

  She laughed, wrapping that green thread around her finger. “You’re the first one that’s ever said that to me. I tell people about it and they always say something like, ‘You left a rich, handsome man who wanted you to just stay home and look pretty? Are you stupid?’ But I just . . . wasn’t happy. I felt so lonely. Even when Blake was there, he never really talked to me. He didn’t value my opinion. I was just . . .” She shrugged. “There. I think that’s one reason that moving here appealed to me so much. I came out for the job interview and someone joked that everyone here was in everyone else’s business and people grew up knowing the names of all their neighbors and I thought that sounded just lovely. Like instead of a town, you had one big happy family. But I’m here and I’m still on the outside. Maybe I always will be.” She shrugged, staring down at her hands. “Anyhow, that’s my loser sob story.”

  “You’re not a loser.” Caleb’s voice was harsh as he got to his feet. He crossed the small cabin and sat down next to her on the bed, and she could practically feel the tension vibrating through him. He was angry on her behalf, she realized. “They just pushed you into something without ever asking how you felt. That doesn’t make you a loser. It says that you trusted your parents.”

  “Yeah, well, Blake got them in the divorce.” She shook her head. “My father was so mad at me that he screamed until his face was purple. Like I’d somehow divorced him instead of Blake. And my mother looked at me like I was crazy.” Her throat got tight, still thinking of that horrible time. “I told myself I was never going to let anyone take over my life again, you know? That I was going to be independent if it killed me.”

  “I understand.”

  She managed a smile. “Everyone says that, but not many do. It’s kind of sad, how much I’ve had to learn recently. I actually had to hire an accountant when I got here because I didn’t know how to pay bills. She actually had to show me how to use a checkbook.”

  “Just because you didn’t have the opportunity to do something doesn’t mean you’re the problem.” His fingers brushed over hers. “I . . . missed out on some things myself.”

  She tilted her head back and looked at him. “Oh?”

  His fingers tightened on hers, and she could have sworn an uncomfortable look crossed his face. “I don’t want you to think less of me—”

  “Unless you tell me to quit teaching so I can stay home and sit on your couch, I won’t think less of you.”

  “I don’t have a couch,” he told her, gripping her fingers. “And let me finish. This is hard for me.”

  Surprised, she nodded.

  He cleared his throat, and he wouldn’t make eye contact with her. Instead, he gazed down at their joined hands, resting on her thigh. “I told you I grew up in Alaska. It was a real small town. Like . . . population forty or something. Foxtail, Alaska. You won’t find it on any maps, but it’s about an hour or two north of Fairbanks and there’s nothing out there but woods and a scatter of cabins. We owned enough land that you didn’t have to see neighbors for days—weeks—if you didn’t want to. Sometimes we didn’t see ours for months. In the winter, one of us might head into town on a snowmobile if we ran low on supplies, but the rest of the time, we were just living off the land. My dad was a big self-sufficiency guy, and after my mom passed, he made sure that we didn’t need anyone.” With his free hand, he rubbed at his beard. “But that meant I missed out on other stuff.”

  When he paused, she prompted him. “Like school? You said you missed out on school.”

  “On girls,” he blurted. “I was never around women. Like . . . ever. It was always Hank or Jack that went to town. And me, I’d get so tongue-tied if I was around a pretty woman that I could never say anything.” He swallowed hard. “You’re my first relationship, and I know I’m far too old to be confessing that sort of thing, but I figured you should know.”

  Amy stared at him in surprise. Caleb was handsome and smart. To think that he’d never had a relationship . . . and yet she thought of the way he’d brayed with laughter that first time she’d met him. She thought of the tongue-tied, ridiculous things he’d said when they’d first met, or the way he’d gone
so silent she was convinced he hated her.

  Okay, yeah, she could totally believe that he’d never had a relationship. This had to be hard for him to confess, too—a grown man without a romantic past? People would think there was something wrong with him.

  But there wasn’t, just intense shyness.

  Just like her own shortcomings didn’t make her an idiot. He’d told her as much. It wasn’t her fault.

  “I don’t know how to work the thermostat at my place,” she blurted.

  “Are we having a loser-off?” he asked, eyes narrowing. “You were my first kiss.”

  “I don’t know how to drive a stick shift. Or how to read a map. Or how to do my taxes.”

  “I can teach you. Did you miss the part where I said you were my first kiss?” He reached up and cupped the back of her neck, his thumb grazing over her skin as their eyes met. “You’re my first everything, Amy Mckinney. I’m telling you this because . . . if I’m no good at something, I want you to know why. I want you to know that it’s not you, it’s me.”

  She melted all over again. Was that why he was confessing this? So she wouldn’t worry that it was a problem with her? Amy’s heart swelled. She’d never met a man that was so utterly perfect in every way. A burst of enthusiasm rushed through her, and she flung her arms around his neck, kissing him fiercely and bearing them both to the mattress with Caleb under her.

  His mouth devoured hers, and for long moments, it was just tongues and lips and frantic breathing. He tasted like sweets, the baked goods that had been set out at the party, and when his tongue flicked against hers, it was the best thing ever.

  “What’s all this?” he asked between kisses, voice husky.

  “This is where you and I have sex,” Amy told him, then licked his mouth.

  He stiffened under her in surprise. “After all that?”

  “Especially after all that.” She kissed him again, then sat up and began to undo the buttons on his shirt.