Rancher's Christmas Storm--A Western snowbound romance

by Maisey Yates

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Do I meet with your approval?”

  “Hell yeah,” he responded.

  She smiled.

  “Is that why you hid from me?”

  “Well, yes. I wanted there to be a little bit of a surprise.”

  “You are a surprise, Honey. Every day. In a thousand different ways.”

  He linked arms with her, and led her out of the cabin. It was dark out, but it was easy to navigate their way from there to the main house, which he knew Hank and the rest of the family were in.

  He had been told to just come in when they arrived, so he did. Pushing the door open and revealing a glittering Christmas scene. A huge tree that had to be eighteen feet high at least, stretching up to the top ceiling beam, casting a warm glow over the room. There were garlands and big velvet bows. On the big mezzanine floor that overlooked the living area. No one was here, but he could hear voices coming from what he assumed might be the dining room.

  He took Honey’s hand. Without even thinking.

  They walked down the short hallway and went to the left, and there it was. There everyone was. The table was massive, laden with food, huge candelabras in the center, along with tiered trays of meats and desserts. It was the gaudiest, tackiest thing he’d ever seen this side of the Harry Potter movies, and it was incredible.

  And around that table was... Everyone.

  Hank at the head, wearing a white cowboy hat and suit, along with a bolero tie. Tammy at the foot of the table with big hair and a big smile.

  And filling in the middle part... His half siblings and their spouses. Everyone went around the table for a quick intro.

  West, who he’d met, and his wife, Pansy. Gabe, Jacob and Caleb, with their wives and kids. Logan and his wife, and McKenna, the lone sister, and her husband.

  He knew who they all were, but he hadn’t... Had never really thought that he’d be part of the family. Not ever.

  But here they were. And here he was.

  At a crowded table, and he had the strangest ache at the center of his chest that he ever felt.

  “Jericho,” Hank said. “We thought you decided not to come.”

  “I got waylaid by the snowstorm. We had to wait it out in a cabin on the way here.”

  “No shit,” Hank said, laughing. “That must be quite a story. Pull up a chair. Who is this?”

  “Honey,” he said. “She’s a...a family friend.”

  “He’s not calling me honey,” she said. “My first name is Honey.”

  Hank laughed at that too. “I love it.”

  “My parents are...were...are eccentric,” Honey said.

  “Eccentric,” he said. “I like it. I can definitely understand eccentric.”

  It was Tammy, though, who stood.

  There was a strange, soft note in her eyes, and Jericho couldn’t say that he liked it much.

  It was too much like pity. Or sorrow.

  “I’m glad you could come,” she said, walking forward and reaching her hand out.

  It was Honey took it. “Thank you,” she said.

  And he realized that Honey was protecting him. That she had sensed his hesitance and put herself right in Tammy’s path.

  “Have a seat,” Hank said. “The food’s getting cold.”

  “Thanks,” Jericho said.

  They added another chair for Honey quickly, and they sat down beside each other. Honey made quick work of putting her plate together, then jumped right into the chatting.

  And he had never been more grateful to have someone he knew at his side than he was right at this moment.

  Because she was covering the awkwardness with ease, and he had never really thought that Honey was the kind of person who would do that.

  “So what is it you do?” This question came from Grant, who he supposed was his half brother-in-law.

  “I own Cowboy Wines.”

  “Are you familiar with Grassroots Winery?”

  “Yeah,” Jericho said.

  “That’s my sister-in-law’s. She’s great. If you like to do any kind of collaborating, you should have a chat with Lindy.”

  The family connections just kept growing. But he supposed that was the nature of something like this.

  He wasn’t clear on everyone’s stories or circumstances, but as the evening wore on, he began to get filled in with bits and pieces of conversation. Grant and McKenna had met and married several years ago when she had come to town looking for Hank. Grant had lost his wife several years before and had never really thought about getting married again.

  West was an ex-convict, and as opposite to his wife—a good girl police officer—as it was possible to get.

  But they seemed completely crazy about each other.

  Gabe Dalton’s wife was a total horse girl, and had plenty in common with Honey, who took up easy chatting with her over dessert.

  Jacob and Caleb were married to teachers—who taught at the school for troubled kids that was apparently now on Dalton land. Logan and his wife were ranchers.

  They were an interesting group, all with completely different stories. Though loss was something most of them had dealt with in one form or another. McKenna had been abandoned by her mother, while Logan’s had died.

  He felt an immediate kinship to him.

  He vaguely remembered Logan from high school, though they weren’t in the same year. And he’d been too caught up in his own grief to think about a kid younger than him dealing with anything similar.

  The fact was, tragedy was more commonplace than anybody really liked to think.

  It made your aches and pains feel like garden-variety stuff, when it felt absolutely significant to you.

  He wasn’t sure if it made it worse or better. He had lived in a cloistered version of this experience for most of his life. What he wasn’t used to was having casual conversations about things like this with people he didn’t even really know all that well.

  “So she’s a friend?” West asked, looking at him pointedly, then over at Honey, who was chatting with Jamie and Rose.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Actually, my friends’ sister...”

  At that, Gabe and Logan laughed. They laughed.

  “What?”

  “Been there,” Logan said.

  “Married that,” Gabe added.

  “Well, I’m not getting married.”

  “Why not?” West asked. “I recommend the institution, actually, and I never did think that I would.”

  “Nice for you,” Jericho said. “But...”

  “Oh, have you had a hard life?” West asked.

  “Too bad,” Logan said.

  “Are we talking about hard lives?” McKenna came over to them, hands on her hips. “I’d like to play. Who had ten homes in four years?”

  “You win that game,” West said. “I had way less. Well, not way less.”

  “But who has the most half siblings?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” McKenna said. “Because I don’t know my mom.”

  “I only have the one other half sibling that I know of.” West looked at Jericho. “No relation to us. My mom’s kid.”

  “Just you people,” Gabe said.

  “Same,” Logan added.

  “You all seem pretty...relaxed about this.”

  “No point getting wound up about it at this point,” Gabe said. “Now, that wasn’t true back when it all first... Back when it all first happened.”

  “Yeah, it was not the best when I showed up,” McKenna said. “Everyone was trying to put all the unpleasantness of the past behind them, and there I was, a big reminder of the way things had been before.”

  “No one blames you for that,” Gabe said.

  “I know you don’t,” McKenna said. “And I’m glad that I came here. If I hadn’t.
.. I wouldn’t have all of you. Or Grant.”

  “I think you like Grant best,” Logan said.

  “I do,” McKenna said. And that made her brothers laugh.

  Her brothers. He supposed they were his brothers. And he was her brother.

  Growing up an only child, that was a strange thing to wrap his head around. Sure, he had been brought into the Cooper family, but it wasn’t quite the same. And he’d been sixteen when he had been.

  Of course, he was thirty-four now.

  “I think you like her,” McKenna said.

  “Well, you don’t know me,” Jericho answered.

  “Oh good,” McKenna said, smiling. “You have a chip on your shoulder. You really will fit in nicely. I was feral when I first came here.”

  “I’m not exactly feral,” he said.

  “But not exactly not,” McKenna said.

  All right, that was a fair enough characterization of him in the entire situation. But he wasn’t going to let her know.

  “Well, it’s getting late.”

  “You have to make sure you get back here bright and early,” McKenna said. “They take the present opening very seriously.”

  “We do,” said his brother Caleb’s wife, Ellie, holding a baby and hanging on to her seven-year-old, who was looking terribly sleepy.

  “Yeah, and Amelia isn’t going to wait,” Caleb said, indicating the child.

  He stood up, and Honey stiffened. She wasn’t even looking at him, but she seemed to sense his move to leave. He couldn’t begin to figure out how she was so in tune with him. It was just the strangest thing. The way she seemed to know what he felt. The fact that she was here at all.

  “I’m going to head back to the cabin,” Honey said. “I need to call my dad. I’ll see you in, like, ten minutes.”

  That surprised him. Because he thought that she had sensed his readiness to leave. But then she was scampering out, saying good-night to everybody, and Hank was looking at him. And he realized she had done that on purpose.

  She was sensing things, but she wasn’t on his team.

  “Hey there, son,” Hank said. “I wanted to have a talk with you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t have to do what?”

  “Call me son.”

  “Maybe I don’t have to. But I want to.”

  Maybe I don’t want you to. But he didn’t say that. Because he was here to see Hank, after all, so what was the point of being hostile. At least overtly.

  Hank stood, and he followed him out of the room, back into the grand dining room, which was now empty. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “I didn’t think you would. But you know... Whether you believe it or not, I’ve known you were out there for a while. I just didn’t know your name. And her last name made it tricky to track you down. I had never gotten your first name, and your mother, Letty Smith, it was a common name. And when I finally did find her... And I found out she was gone...”

  “Yeah. She died when I was sixteen.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “I know you didn’t, Hank.”

  “You thought I did though. For your whole life, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. But you know... It’s good to have an enemy. Good to have a bad object that you can fight against. It’s probably why I have been so successful.” There he was, giving him credit for something that he had been bound and determined not to give him credit for. Even if he had said it as a joke, it was closer to acknowledging the role that Hank had played in his life than he wanted.

  “Sure,” Hank said. “I know a little something about that. I ran from my demons for a long time. And they took me to dark places. I wasn’t a good husband to Tammy. And I failed a lot of other women as a result too. McKenna is working on teaching me about feminism.”

  “Is she?” Jericho asked, and that was truly the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Because of the patriarchy and power imbalances and things, what I did was especially wrong. But at the time it just felt like... I didn’t feel particularly powerful. I felt like a dumb kid that was out of control. I felt like a fool. Someone who didn’t deserve any of the things that he had. Who was just trying to feel alive. But at some point, you have to feel more than alive, and you have to work at feeling more than good. What you have to do is learn to sit on your bad feelings. That’s a hell of a thing.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had enough bad feelings to get me through for a long time.”

  “I’m not meaning to lecture you. I’m just... I’m glad that you’re here, I hope that I’ll see you past Christmas. I hope that you give this family thing a chance.”

  “Then that would give you a happy ending, wouldn’t it? It would make all of it seem like it had a meaning? If you could get all of your wayward kids here and happy to be with you. Everybody forgiving everybody else and getting along. I guess that would go a long way in soothing your guilt.”

  Guilt.

  He was more familiar with the concept than he’d like.

  Especially in regards to Honey.

  Not touching her. He couldn’t feel guilty about that.

  But because of all he could never give her.

  “Sure,” he said. “But you know, it’s a lot of guilt, Jericho. Because McKenna was in foster care for all of her life. And Logan lost his mother. And you lost yours. And you boys were alone. McKenna was alone. There’s a lot of guilt with that. It’s not easy to live with.”

  “Well, we’ll see what happens. But whatever happens, I’m not making the decision for the purpose of saving your soul. I enjoyed tonight. But I have a life. I have family.” The Coopers, whom he was drastically betraying with his dalliance with Honey. But he wasn’t going to think about that.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to,” Hank said. “I wouldn’t ask you to do anything for the purpose of appeasing me. But sure, the side effect is that it probably will. If that stops you then... Not much I can do about it.”

  “Sorry,” Jericho said. “It’s been a hell of a trip up here. It’s been a hell of a few days. I don’t know if I’m coming or going. But I’ll be here for Christmas morning.”

  “Merry Christmas,” Hank said. Then as Jericho turned to go, he added, “Son.”

  Hank was pushing. Jericho should be furious and yet...

  He’d been a boy with no one. When he’d been sixteen and people had complained about annoying parents... He’d been nothing but jealous.

  Something in him... Something in him wanted this and he couldn’t deny it, even as the wounded part of him wanted to pull away from it.

  Jericho turned. “You couldn’t resist.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “You did it because I told you not to.”

  “Maybe. Look. I might’ve tried to better myself, but I’m still a no-good jackass. I just keep it managed now.”

  “Well, see that you do.”

  “Also, I’m going to have to build the bridge between us,” Hank said, his voice full of gravity. “No matter how wide the valley is, I’m committed to it, Jericho, I promise you. But I’m the one that should have to work for it. I’m the one who messed up. I just hope you’ll stick out waiting for me to get to the other side.”

  Jericho’s throat went tight. “Yeah. Sure.”

  Which wasn’t enough, but there were no other words.

  He turned and walked down the long hall, out the front door, managing to slide by everybody without having to say a string of long messy good-nights.

  He didn’t think he could face that level of family.

  Outside it was crisp and cold and the sky was clear, the stars twinkling above, the trees inky black with spots of white snow a shout in the dark.

  He had a family back in that house. A family.

  And a woman waiting for him at his
cabin.

  And suddenly, his life felt fuller than it ever had.

  Eleven

  “I’m okay, Dad,” she said, pacing back and forth in the living room. It was a little bit dastardly that she had left Jericho to talk to Hank. She had realized at some point that Hank was itching to do it, and she knew that unless she did something like this, Jericho was going to come back to the cabin with her.

  But, she needed to talk to her dad. He needed to talk to his.

  “I wish you would’ve talked to me about leaving in the first place. By the time I found out you’d gone up north, you were already gone, and then I had no way of knowing that you were trapped in a snowstorm.”

  “Jericho found me,” she said. “We found a vacation rental. We hunkered down there.” And the less she said about it the better. “And then I decided to come up with him to support him while he met with his dad.”

  “You’re not usually all that friendly with him.”

  “Well, he saved my life. I mean, really, if I hadn’t been with him I don’t know what would’ve happened. And I’m not moving. I changed my mind.”

  She’d left it all in her note. Well, nothing about her virginity of course.

  “Really?” her dad said.

  “Yeah. Really. I talked to Jericho, and he said that he’s going to sell me a portion of the vineyard back.”

  “Did you... Did you want some of the vineyard?”

  “Yes, Dad. I wanted it desperately. It’s why I’ve been furious for the last few months.”

  “You’ve been furious?”

  She’d been so honest with Jericho. And the walls she’d always felt existed between herself and the world felt thinner now. And she liked it that way.

  So why not speak?

  Why not now?

  She’d been ready to leave. Which was so extreme in hindsight. More ready to run than have a conversation.

  But being with him had changed her.

  And this was her moment to live in that change.

  “Yes. Furious. Absolutely incensed that you would do that to me. That you would sell the winery out from under me without talking to me first. It’s why I decided to move away. But, Jericho saved me from the snowstorm, and we talked about my future.”