Maverick Christmas Surprise

by Brenda Harlen

  In response to her question, he held up the bottle of beer in his hand. “I’ve already got one.”

  “Then I guess you should buy me one,” she said.

  Even if he wasn’t interested, it wasn’t in his nature to be rude. So he put his hand on her back and led her to the bar, where she ordered some kind of froufrou cocktail that set him back twenty bucks. A small price to pay for a man interested in what she was obviously offering. But he wasn’t that man. Not tonight.

  She introduced herself as Simone and told him that she lived in Billings but had come to Rust Creek Falls to visit a friend from college who’d recently split from a longtime boyfriend. Except that the longtime boyfriend had apparently seen the error of his ways and showed up with an engagement ring in hand, leaving Simone to celebrate on her own.

  “Or maybe not entirely alone,” she said hopefully.

  “You’re never really alone in a crowd like this,” he remarked, looking around for one of his brothers in the vague and futile hope someone might come to his rescue.

  He caught a glimpse of Logan, snuggled up with Sarah, oblivious to the world around them. Of course, even if he managed to snag Logan’s attention, his brother would never guess that Wilder wanted to be rescued.

  “Is something wrong?” Simone asked, licking her lips to remove the pink sugar that had transferred from the rim of her glass.

  “What?”

  “You’re frowning,” she told him.

  “Sorry.” He smoothed his brow. “I guess my mind was wandering.”

  “Not something a woman wants to hear when she’s flirting with a handsome man,” she chided, stroking a long, painted fingernail down his arm.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

  The warmth in those blue eyes immediately chilled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. Too many times.” She stepped back then. “Thanks for the drink.”

  Then she turned and walked away.

  He could have called her back. He knew how to turn on the charm and, with a wink and a smile, he could have smoothed her ruffled feathers and been kissing her at the stroke of midnight.

  But he didn’t want her to come back. He had no interest in yet another meaningless encounter with a virtual stranger.

  A movement caught the corner of his eye, and he glanced over to see his brother Knox flying his hand through the air like a makeshift plane, then tipping his fingers to dive down and spreading them apart.

  Wilder lifted a brow. “Are you having fun?”

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Knox said. “Because not only am I here with the sexiest woman in all of Rust Creek Falls, but I just watched my little brother—the one that no woman can apparently resist—crash and burn.”

  “I didn’t crash and burn,” he denied.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Xander asked, unapologetically shoving his way into their conversation.

  “Our baby brother just crashed and burned,” Knox said.

  “You wish,” Wilder retorted.

  “So the sexy brunette with the mile-long legs in the skintight dress didn’t just walk away from you?” Knox challenged.

  “She walked away,” he confirmed. “But only because I didn’t want her to stay.”

  Xander frowned, feigning concern. “Did you hit your head when you crashed?”

  “I didn’t—” Wilder huffed out a breath. “You know what? I don’t care. If you want to believe I crashed and burned, fine.”

  His brothers exchanged a glance.

  “Okay, now I’m seriously starting to worry that there’s something wrong with you,” Knox said.

  “There’s nothing wrong,” Wilder assured them. “I’m just not in the mood to spend the night with a woman who doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “But isn’t that your whole MO?” Xander asked.

  “If you stop having sex with women who don’t mean anything, you won’t be having sex with anyone,” Knox warned.

  “Unless he’s met a woman who could actually mean something,” Xander mused thoughtfully.

  “Wilder?” Knox snorted. “As if.”

  “If you’d focus your attention on your own woman, you might realize that she’s trying to snag your attention before she waves her arm right out of its socket,” he replied.

  Thankfully, the distraction worked in shifting the topic of conversation, but his brothers flanked him and maneuvered him over to the big table occupied by his siblings and their partners.

  “What’s going on?” Knox asked, when he’d lowered himself into the vacant seat beside Gen.

  “Lily was just telling us the most recent news about the mystery lover in the Abernathy diary,” she said, referring to the jewel-encrusted book they’d found hidden in the floorboards shortly after moving to the Ambling A.

  “Am I the only one who feels uncomfortable about reading someone’s diary?” Avery wondered aloud.

  “Yes,” Lily said. “I mean, a person’s privacy should be respected, of course, but this diary is practically a historical document. And I believe Josiah Abernathy put his innermost thoughts on paper because he expected—or maybe even hoped—that someone else would read his words someday.”

  “Maybe the mysterious ‘W,’” Sarah chimed in.

  “Plus, there are some really steamy passages,” Xander noted.

  “Not trashy,” his wife hastened to clarify. “But definitely passionate.”

  “I think he really loved her,” Knox said.

  “Who?” Logan asked.

  Knox shrugged. “Whoever ‘W’ is.”

  “Are there any clues about her identity?”

  “Asks the person who didn’t think we should be reading the diary,” Finn noted dryly.

  Avery shrugged. “But since it is being read, are there any clues?” she pressed.

  “Actually, there is something,” Lily said. “Whoever she was, she was apparently pregnant with Josiah’s baby.”

  Avery gasped. “He had a child with his mystery lady?”

  Lily shook her head. “Apparently the baby was stillborn.”

  “Oh.” The expectant mom instinctively touched a hand to the slight curve of her belly, as if to protect her own unborn child from such a tragic fate. “That’s so sad.”

  Lily winced. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking—”

  Avery shook her head. “There’s no need to apologize. And I am as curious as everyone else about Josiah and the history of the Ambling A.”

  “Well, apparently ‘W’ was so devastated by the loss of her child that she went crazy.”

  “Literally or figuratively crazy?” Sarah asked curiously.

  Her friend and sister-in-law shrugged. “I can only tell you what’s written in the book.”

  “I asked because I’d heard that Winona Cobbs apparently spent some time in an asylum after the Abernathys left town,” Logan’s wife explained.

  “The definitely eccentric and questionably clairvoyant Winona Cobbs?”

  “The one and only,” Sarah confirmed.

  “But I’ve lived in Rust Creek Falls my whole life and I’ve never heard so much as a whisper of a rumor that Winona Cobbs was ever pregnant,” Gen said.

  “She wouldn’t be the first woman to keep an out-of-wedlock baby a secret,” Sarah remarked. “Especially so many years ago.”

  “Except that Winona isn’t exactly known for her ability to keep secrets,” Lily commented.

  “And if the diary is as old as we think, she would have been a teenager at the time,” Knox chimed in.

  “On the other hand, if she did lose a child, well, that might explain why she’s always been a little...odd,” Gen acknowledged.

  The mystery was admittedly intriguing, but as Wilder had nothing to add to the conversation, he decided to abandon the party and retur
n to the place where it all started.

  * * *

  Max watched his youngest son slip away from the gathering and head out alone. Though Wilder had always enjoyed a party, he wasn’t surprised to see him go. His life had been turned upside down since he’d found Cody on the doorstep, and though he’d yet to acknowledge the child as his own, over the past week, Wilder’s denials of paternity had become less frequent and less adamant.

  Max didn’t blame him for not embracing the baby with open arms, because he knew it wasn’t just the responsibilities of fatherhood that Wilder found daunting. It was the memories that had been stirred up by the realization that Cody’s mother had walked out on him. Just like Sheila had walked out on her children when Wilder wasn’t much older than Cody was now.

  Of course, his youngest son had no real recollection of Sheila leaving, but he’d grown up believing that she’d chosen a life with another man over her children. Because that was what Max had wanted him to believe. What he’d wanted all his children to believe. Because admitting the truth would mean admitting that it was his fault his six sons had grown up without their mother.

  “That’s gotta be one of your boys,” his female companion said, following the direction of his gaze.

  Max nodded. “My youngest.”

  “He’s a lucky boy,” she remarked, with a bold wink. “Because he’s almost as handsome as his daddy.”

  He smiled, appreciating her company and her flattery.

  Of course, Max had always appreciated beautiful women, and Estelle fit the bill well enough. Blond curls framed a flawless face with thickly lashed blue eyes, a pert nose and slickly painted lips. He suspected she’d paid a price to retain—or maybe even enhance—her natural attributes, but he had no objections to hair dyes or face paint or even a little nip and tuck. Not when the results were so appealing.

  Though she was barely five feet tall without the skinny heels that added several inches to her height, and probably not more than ninety pounds, she would never be described as diminutive. She was bossy and opinionated and didn’t know the meaning of the word quit.

  Some eighteen months earlier, she’d sold her wedding planning business to Vivienne Dalton—the same woman he’d hired as a matchmaker for his sons, though she’d been Vivienne Shuster at the time and the business had been located in Kalispell. Then Estelle had moved down to Phoenix to work with her sister in the funeral business. Six months later, she’d decided that the Grand Canyon State wasn’t for her and returned to Kalispell.

  “I’m not overly fond of cowboys,” she’d said at their first meeting—set up by Vivienne Dalton—at a bar in her neighborhood. “But you don’t look like the kind who buys his jeans at the same place he gets feed for his horses.”

  “I’m not overly fond of outspoken women,” he’d replied, more amused than insulted by her blunt assessment. “And you do look like the kind who has an opinion about everything and not enough sense to know when to keep it to herself.”

  She’d smiled then. “You going to buy me a drink?”

  “You going to order something ridiculously girly?”

  She asked the bartender for Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel Select, straight up. He’d had the same, and they’d chatted some more while they’d sipped the smooth whiskey.

  Tonight, she was drinking champagne, as most of the other guests in attendance were doing. She lifted her glass to her lips now and swallowed the last mouthful of bubbly, then opened the clasp of her handbag and frowned as she examined its contents.

  “Did you lose something?” he asked.

  “I keep forgetting that I don’t smoke anymore,” she confided.

  “Smoking’s a bad habit,” he said.

  “My doctor spent years telling me the same thing,” she confided. “But it wasn’t until my sister lost her husband to lung cancer that I finally managed to kick it.”

  He nodded, only half listening to what she was saying.

  But apparently Estelle was more intuitive than he’d given her credit for, because she stopped rambling about the treatments that had taken as much of a toll on her brother-in-law as the disease and asked, “What’s got you so worried about your son?”

  “He’s going through some stuff right now,” Max answered vaguely.

  “In other words, none of my business,” she guessed.

  “More that it’s not my place to tell,” he said.

  “Well, then, why don’t we take ourselves to my place where I’ll be better able to help you forget your worries?”

  Max wasn’t convinced anything could make him forget his worries, but he was willing to let her try.

  * * *

  The house was quiet after Wilder and Max had gone.

  Too quiet.

  Or maybe it was the isolation of the ranch that made Beth a little uneasy.

  She was a city girl born and bred, accustomed to the lights and noises of an urban setting. Here, it was so quiet she’d be able to hear crickets if the insects hadn’t entered into a state of complete dormancy to survive the frigid winter season.

  She turned on the television to provide some background noise. Because being alone with the baby, she found herself jumping at every creak and groan of the big old house. She wouldn’t be so uneasy if there was a dog around—and wasn’t having a dog a prerequisite of being a rancher?

  They’d had a German shepherd named Rowdy for almost thirteen years, Wilder had confided when she’d asked him the question. But they’d had to put him down only a few months before making the move from Dallas, and Max had vowed that he’d never get another dog. Wilder didn’t really believe it was true, especially considering how Max fussed over Harry and Dobby—the two dachshunds that belonged to Xander and Lily, but for now, he was without a canine companion.

  And Beth was a great big fraidycat, she acknowledged to herself as she plugged in the lights of the Christmas tree to enjoy the holiday display—and because she hoped more lights would make her less likely to jump at shadows.

  Wilder had told her that they always went out to cut down a tree two weeks before Christmas and took it out of the house again on New Year’s Day. Which reminded her that she’d have to deal with her own holiday decorations when she got home. So maybe it was fortunate that she didn’t have a real tree. If she did, it would likely be nothing more than a bare trunk surrounded by a pile of dry needles by the time she returned.

  After Cody had his cereal and his bath, Beth read him a couple of the books he’d got for Christmas. She guided his fingertips over the textured pages so he could feel soft and rough, bumpy and slippery, scaly and furry. By the time she closed the cover, his eyes were drifting shut.

  “Look, Cody, they’re having a big party in New York City. See all the people?” She pointed to the TV screen to direct his attention.

  Though she knew television wasn’t recommended for babies so young, she wasn’t yet ready to take him upstairs and face the reality of spending yet another New Year’s Eve alone. But Cody’s eyes were closed before the ball dropped in Times Square, so she finally put him in his crib and turned on the baby monitor.

  When she returned to the company of the television in the family room, she scrolled through the channels until she found another station that was counting down to the New Year, this time in Chicago. She’d just started to relax on the sofa when she heard what sounded like footsteps on the porch.

  She froze, straining to hear over the thundering of her heart, even as she tried to assure herself it was nothing but her own overactive imagination.

  But then she heard it again. A sound like feet stomping outside the door. Definitely not her imagination.

  It might have occurred to her that an intruder wouldn’t likely make so much noise, but at the moment, the rational part of her brain didn’t seem to be communicating with the rest of her.

  She pressed the mute button on the remote a
nd strained her ears. It was a click this time, like the dead bolt being released, then a creak, as if the door had opened.

  She dropped the remote to grab for her cell phone, ready to dial 9-1-1 and trying not to speculate about the length of time it would take the local police to arrive at her isolated location.

  “Beth?”

  All the air trapped in her lungs whooshed out in a single breath as she recognized Wilder’s voice. She set her phone aside and willed her heart rate to return to something approximating normal.

  “In the family room,” she said, picking up the remote again to unmute the television so that she could pretend his unexpected early return hadn’t scared ten years off her life.

  “What are you doing home already?” she asked, when he appeared in the doorway.

  He shrugged. “The party was a little too noisy and crowded for my liking.”

  “Aren’t those the usual prerequisites of a party?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” he acknowledged. “But tonight I just wanted to be home.”

  “I’m not judging,” she assured him.

  He glanced at the baby monitor on the table beside her. “Cody asleep?”

  She nodded. “He just went down.”

  He checked his watch. “It’s a little late for him, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but it’s New Year’s Eve and he wanted to watch some of the celebration in New York City with me,” she explained.

  One side of his mouth tipped up in a half smile that never failed to do crazy things to her insides. “He did, did he?”

  “He did,” she confirmed, unwilling to admit that she’d deliberately tried to keep her nephew awake because she hadn’t wanted to be alone.

  But now she was alone with Wilder, and she wasn’t sure if that was better or worse.

  Then he loosened his tie and opened the top button of his shirt, and she decided it was both better and worse.