Rancher's Christmas Storm--A Western snowbound romance

by Maisey Yates

  And he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

  “Honey... No. We can’t do this.”

  And her face crumpled. And he felt like an absolute ass.

  But there was nothing he could do about it. Sitting there, lost in every bad feeling that he’d ever had in his life, every grief that he never contended with, he simply couldn’t do it. She got up, and she walked out of the room.

  And it took him a few minutes to realize that she wasn’t just leaving the room. She was leaving.

  A car pulled up to get her some fifteen minutes later. And then she was gone. And he was left. Crushed beneath the weight of damn near everything.

  He looked outside the cabin window and he saw the Christmas tree shining through the window of the main house. And he nearly choked.

  Merry Christmas.

  This was what Christmas was all about. At least what it always had been for him.

  Being given a taste of something, something brilliant and beautiful and hopeful, the light of the damned world.

  Knowing that darkness hovered around the edges, knowing that this feeling could never really be his.

  That was what Christmas was to him.

  Apparently, it was what it always would be.

  Twelve

  Honey didn’t collapse until she got home and climbed into bed.

  Then she wept like she was dying.

  It was two o’clock in the morning by the time she got back to Gold Valley, and she was a whole disaster mess.

  She cried and cried, and then slept for about two hours before climbing out of bed and putting on clothes to go to the Maxfields. Because even though she didn’t want to see anybody, she figured she had to go do it. Because it was Christmas.

  But she felt devastated. Horrendously.

  And she hoped that she could pull it together for the celebrations.

  But what if you didn’t? What if you let them know that you were hurt?

  The idea made her shiver slightly.

  But still, she got dressed and went into the house.

  “Honey,” Emerson said. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “I’m here,” she said, looking around the Tuscan-style villa, feeling as hideously out of place there as she always did.

  The Maxfields were fancy. Fancy fancy, and she had never really felt comfortable with it.

  But why? She supposed it was because she was afraid of what they might think. That she might not blend.

  That she might stand out.

  Well, who cared.

  She wasn’t fancy.

  Neither was Cricket.

  And all the worries that she had about connecting with Cricket were based around what Cricket might think too. Because she was just so... She was so consumed by that. By making everybody comfortable, and not exposing them to her weirdness.

  Except Jericho. She had been 100 percent herself with him, and it had not gone well.

  But who cared.

  She was done. She was tired.

  “I figured I should spend Christmas with all of you. So here I am.”

  “You don’t have any presents here,” her dad said. “I was planning on mailing them.”

  “It’s fine, Dad. I don’t really need any presents. And you won’t have to mail them, because I’m not leaving.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing.”

  She looked awkwardly at her dad’s girlfriend.

  Lucinda Maxfield was supernaturally beautiful. But smooth like a doll, and a bit unapproachable in Honey’s opinion. Though the other woman had warmed a lot recently.

  “It’s good to have you here, Honey,” she said.

  “Thanks.”

  She still didn’t really know how to interact with her.

  It was Jackson who looked at her with the hardest eyes.

  And she chose to ignore him.

  Instead, she helped herself to the pastries that were set out and took her position around the tree while the others began to open gifts.

  “And do you care to give a full accounting for your whereabouts?” Jackson said, succumbing to sit beside her.

  “No,” she said.

  “You were going to leave?”

  “I was,” she said.

  But you didn’t. “I didn’t.”

  “But you’ve been gone.”

  “Well, I got stuck in the snow.”

  “Dad mentioned something about that. He mentioned that you and Jericho stayed in...a cabin?”

  “I mean, it was a massive vacation rental. But yes.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “But I also heard that you were staying with Jericho while he dealt with the Daltons.”

  “Things change.” She sniffed.

  “What exactly changed?”

  “I didn’t want to stay with him anymore?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she said.

  “You have had the biggest crush on him for as long as I can remember,” Jackson said.

  Honey’s mouth dropped open as a mortified blush spread over her face. She had been prepared to own this and shock them all, and they’d known she had feelings for him! “Now that’s not fair...”

  “Look, just tell me if I have to go kill him or not.”

  “I don’t want you to kill him,” she said, stamping her foot.

  “Who are we killing?” Creed asked.

  That seemed to get her father’s attention too.

  “I’m trying to find out about killing Jericho.”

  “You are not killing him,” Honey said.

  “Why?” Creed asked.

  “Because she’s upset about something,” Jackson said.

  “And?” Creed asked, his tone getting dangerous.

  Cricket punched Jackson in the arm. “What is your problem? If you’re going to interrogate your sister, at least do it privately. Don’t make a dick out of yourself in public.”

  It was especially funny coming from a woman who was roundly pregnant.

  “I’m not being a dick,” Jackson said. “I’m trying to figure out if my best friend did something to her. Because I will kill him.”

  “On what grounds?” Cricket asked, eyeing him closely.

  “She’s twenty-two.”

  “And?” Cricket asked, squarely in the same age bracket.

  “She’s...inexperienced.”

  Cricket narrowed her eyes. “And?”

  “He’s my best friend,” Jackson said, pointing at Cricket as if that ended things completely.

  “Fine. Something happened between myself and Jericho.”

  That earned her a shocked gasp, and she decided that was pretty satisfying. “And I’m upset about it. But so what? I’m allowed to be upset. You can’t protect me from every bad feeling, any more than you can just order me not to have them. I’m going to live life.”

  “He didn’t need to help you do it,” Creed said.

  “I wanted him to,” Honey said. “Because I love him. Okay?” She was saying it. Saying it all. If she’d gotten one gift from Jericho over this time, it hadn’t been losing her virginity or the winery. It had been this. This path to honesty. To figuring out that she wanted to share her emotions, whether it made others comfortable or not. To having the confidence to be true to herself, no matter what.

  “I don’t have a crush on him. I am in love with him. And he can’t handle it. That’s fine, it wouldn’t be my problem, except that I’m in love with him, so it de facto becomes my problem, because he hasn’t sorted his shit out yet. But I love him. And that’s just... It’s the way it is. I don’t need any of you getting up in my grill and meddling. I don’t need any of you to tell me not to be upset. Because I am. I’m upset. And I’m just... I’m going to be upset for a
while. That’s how it is.”

  “Honey, he should never have...”

  “He should never what? No, I’m part of this. It wasn’t him. It was me too. I wanted it. I want him. And everybody needs to listen to me and to what I want for a minute. Because I have done a pretty terrible job of making myself seen these last few years of my life, and I’m over it. I want him. I want to own the winery. I’m not a kid. I’m a woman. And I want to be treated like one.”

  “Nobody means to treat you like a kid...”

  “No, you do. Because it makes you more comfortable. And I have been all about making sure that you guys are as comfortable as possible. And I’m done with it. So yeah, I’m hurt. And I’m going to be hurt for a little while. And maybe I’m going to have to navigate working with Jericho while I also sort through dealing with the fact that he broke my heart. But I have to deal with it. Not you. You don’t get to go and punch him in the face just to make yourselves feel better. Because that’s all it would be.”

  “I aim to kill him,” Jackson said, which earned him another slug from his wife.

  “Your sister just told you not to. So who would you be doing it for?”

  “Me,” Creed and Jackson said together.

  “I am sorry,” her dad said slowly, shaking his head. “I haven’t stopped thinking about what you said about your mother’s funeral. Not since you mentioned that to me last night. I knew I’d handled that badly, but honestly... I had not been able to remember it. So much of those days are a blur.”

  “It affected us all,” Creed said, taking a step closer to her. “We should have recognized you needed more.”

  “No, you were grieving too,” Honey said.

  “Yeah, of course we were,” Jackson said. “None of us were ready to lose her. But you were thirteen.”

  “I didn’t handle it well, Honey, and I’m just so sorry,” her dad said.

  “Dad, I don’t need you to apologize to me.”

  “But I need to,” he said. “Your tears hurt me, Honey. And I couldn’t stand them. I tried to make myself comfortable, you’re right. And I never meant to teach you to do that for the whole rest of your life. That’s not what I wanted. I don’t want you to be hurt by Jericho. It makes me angry enough to go ask him how the hell he could betray me after I did so much for him. But you’re right. It was your choice. And it’s your choice what you do going forward. Because heartbreak happens. It just does. And there’s nothing anyone can do to shield us from it. I wish I could, but I didn’t protect you when it mattered most, so I have no right to go meddling in your business now.”

  “But you did protect me, Dad. You loved me, and you gave me a place to live. You didn’t fail me across the board just because I have some issues. We all have issues.”

  At this, Lucinda laughed. “Yes, we really do.”

  Emerson raised her glass, and next to her, so did her husband Holden. “Amen,” Emerson said.

  “I don’t know what any of you are talking about,” Wren said. “I am a shining example of being perfectly adjusted.”

  “Yeah, your choice of husband says otherwise,” Emerson pointed out.

  “What’s wrong with Creed?”

  “It’s not Creed himself,” Emerson said. “It’s the fact that you literally thought you hated him so much you wanted to tear his throat out with your teeth before you hooked up with him.”

  Creed shrugged. “She does have a point. That’s not exactly the act of a well-balanced person.”

  “You’re all terrible.”

  But they weren’t. They were her family. And it was a little bit of a strange mess. And so was she. And she wasn’t entirely comfortable here still. But... She would be. Because she would figure it out. She wasn’t afraid of trying and failing. She wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted.

  She had done it, and it had backfired spectacularly. But now there was basically nowhere left to go.

  She was just going to survive it, because she had to.

  And that was—in the middle of a very bad Christmas—perhaps the brightest revelation of all.

  * * *

  When he arrived at Christmas breakfast without Honey, he got a lot of follow-up questions.

  “She had to go back home,” he said.

  And that was how he fended off every single one of them.

  They had only been his family for two seconds. They didn’t get to ask questions. They didn’t get to pass judgment on him. Even though he was neck-deep in passing judgment on himself. He just kept seeing Honey’s face in his mind’s eye. The way that she was crying.

  Yeah. He was a total dick.

  “How are you finding the family?”

  McKenna sidled up beside him, a big gooey cinnamon roll in hand.

  “Just fine.”

  “You seem...like you aren’t sure about all this.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  She nodded. “I get that. I do. You know, I was just going to try to get money out of Hank.” She tore a strip off the cinnamon roll and took a bite of it.

  “I don’t need his money.”

  “Well, nice for you. I sure did. I was homeless when I came here. Pretty much hated everyone and everything. I did a lot of rough living. I was just... I was really angry at the world. And it was really something meeting Grant, who experienced... Just such a sad loss. And yet he was him. Just unfailingly him. He’s a really good man. I don’t know that I was a good person when I showed up. I just wanted to get what I felt like Hank owed me. And go on my way. But in the end I got something a lot more.”

  “You sound like a holiday commercial for plastic wrap.”

  “Are they particularly sappy?”

  “Every holiday commercial is particularly sappy.”

  “Well, sorry I sound like an ad. I don’t intend to. But I don’t want you to just never come back.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we all need somebody. I really needed this family. I didn’t know it. And I really needed Grant.”

  “And why mention that?”

  “Because I don’t want you to let Honey get away either. I think you love her.”

  “Yeah, because you’ve known me for twelve hours?”

  “Maybe that’s how being your sister works. I don’t know. Maybe I just sense it.”

  “So, you’re psychic?”

  “Maybe I’m just not a dumbass.”

  “Right. Okay.” He started to move away from her, but she followed him. Was this what having a little sister was like? He couldn’t say that he loved it.

  “I think you love her, and I think you’re letting your baggage get in the way. I don’t think she just randomly left.”

  “So what? So what if something happened?”

  “I think it’s sad. Because I think she’s a sweetheart. And I think you’re probably a decent guy underneath all your rage at the unfairness of life.”

  “Look, you’ve been through some stuff,” he said. “Haven’t you ever just felt like love was too hard? Like it was too much work?” He shouldn’t have asked for that. Because it pushed at tender places inside of his soul that he didn’t want to acknowledge. Things he never wanted to deal with.

  “Sure,” she said. “And loving Grant wasn’t simple. Because he had to make room in his heart for me, because he... He’d been in love with someone else before. And she was a really neat woman. She changed him. Into the man who I needed. The man who could love me. Always be grateful to her for that. But that didn’t make our road easy, and yeah, I wondered if it was worth it. And why I had to work so hard for love. But you know... In the end, it’s worth it. In the end it gives more than it takes.”

  “Unless it takes everything.”

  “Are you really afraid of love being hard work? Or are you afraid of losing it? Because I have to tell you, I’m pretty sure it’s the second
one. And it seems to me that you’ve already lost her.”

  “I...”

  “The fact that it’s on your terms doesn’t make it any different.”

  And he didn’t know how to argue with that. Didn’t know what to say. Because yeah, he was sitting there, and he didn’t have Honey.

  He didn’t have her.

  The realization hit him with the force of a ton of bricks.

  She had said that she loved him and he chased her away.

  And she was...

  He never wanted that. That domestic life, because it reminded him of dark houses and struggle. Of illness.

  But not Honey.

  She was something else. She was a generic imagining of what marriage might be like. Of what love might be like. She was her. Utterly and uniquely her, and she had been brave enough to tell him how she felt and he had pushed her away.

  Did he love her?

  Yeah, he already did. He had for a long time, and he hadn’t known what to do about it. And he could see himself suddenly, clearly. A man at the top of his game, at the top of the world. Rich as fuck, but poor where it counted. He had come to his family to prove how together he was, but he wasn’t together. He just happened to own a lot of shit. That wasn’t the same as being successful. He didn’t know how to love.

  He didn’t know how to accept the love of the beautiful woman he had taken to bed last night. He didn’t know... You know how. You just got too selfish. Too scared to do it.

  The truth stretched before him, undeniable, like the clear harsh light of the sun. And he didn’t want to look directly at it. Because it burned him, that truth. That he was nothing. That he had nothing. That he would trade every ounce of success for a week in a cabin with her. No electricity, just Honey to keep him warm.

  Right then he felt bankrupt. As rich and successful as he’d ever been, and useless with it.