The Cowboy Who Saved Christmas

by Jodi Thomas

  And not just because she had felt divine under my touch, all responsive and reactive and warm. Not just because my dick knew exactly where it wanted to be as it nestled against her hot core. But because being in her radius yanked me back in time to the twenty-two-year-old I’d been, hanging on her every word and wanting to listen for hours. Falling hard for the one person I had no business even thinking about.

  I didn’t have the luxury of being that guy again. I was a father, and a rancher. I didn’t have time for that. But, God, the way Josie looked at me—nothing woke up the man in me more than one glance from her. And nothing made me crazier than any of the random conversations we’d had in the last few days.

  In short, she’d awakened the beast I’d buried. The damning, burning need for the love I’d found, lost, and would never have again. I’d come to terms with that, and made peace with it. I was good, wasn’t I? Content. Then she’d shown up out of nowhere, and I had to go and cross that line as if no time had passed. I’d tasted heaven again, and damn if I could untaste it now.

  What did I want for Christmas? Josie Bancroft. In every way.

  So, what did I do? The one thing that would royally piss her off and ensure that she’d never want me back. Help her.

  “Daddy?” Abigail’s voice brought me back from my torturous ride through hell.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, baby, what did you say?”

  “What did you ask Santa for?” she asked.

  I twisted one of her blond ringlets around my finger and tugged, making her giggle.

  “It’s a secret,” I whispered conspiratorially. “I sent him a secret wish, and I’ll just have to wait till tomorrow to see if he grants it.”

  “Why wouldn’t he?” she breathed.

  “Well, those are rare,” I said, gazing toward the beautiful tree that she and I had decorated together, all the ornaments clustered at her level. “So all I can do is send the wish, and not be disappointed if it doesn’t happen.”

  I was babbling my way down an impossible hole. What the hell was wrong with me? Secret wishes? Now my daughter would grab onto that idea next year and not tell me what she wanted, thinking this secret thing was something special. Good job, Dad.

  “Do those come wrapped in sparkly white packages that glow?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  The deep sound of the heavy metal knocker landing against the hard oak of my front door rescued me from spiraling further into lunacy, and Theodore was there before I could get all the way to my feet.

  I knew who it was.

  It was just a matter of time.

  “Miss Josie!” Abigail exclaimed, stopping Josie in her tracks as she rounded into the living room ahead of Theodore. “Did you know that today is Christmas Eve?”

  I bit back a smirk. Any other time, Josie’s expression at being waylaid by a four-year-old would have doubled me over with laughter, but I had to restrain. She looked just this side of enraged.

  Everything she had on her lips, ready to throw at me, she swallowed back at the sight of Abigail, grinning hugely up at her.

  “I—do,” she said stiffly, gripping her coat tighter around her when Theodore caught up and offered to take it. “Hello, Abigail.”

  “Merry Christmas Eve!” Abigail sang, bouncing on her toes.

  I should have stopped her, but her antics were both entertaining and diverting, and just laying eyes on Josie left me with the need for the extra few seconds. Even angry and windblown, Josie was breathtaking. Hell, yesterday she’d been a drowned rat, and I’d damn near taken her against a tree. I was doomed.

  “Happy birthday, Josie,” I said, resting my hands in the pockets of my trousers, as if I wasn’t wound tighter than a drum.

  Abigail sucked in a melodramatic breath.

  “It’s your birthday?” she breathed. “Happy birthday, too!”

  Josie smiled gratefully, but I noticed that it didn’t reach her eyes, nor did it slow the shallow rises and falls of her chest.

  “Thank you, sweet girl,” she said. “Can I have—”

  “So, do you get double presents?” Abigail asked. “Because you have to wait all year?”

  Josie’s gaze met mine, and I knew her ire wasn’t going to be thwarted with more questions.

  “You paid my debt,” she whispered under her breath, her lips barely moving.

  “Happy birthday,” I repeated, just as softly.

  She scoffed. “I can’t be indebted to you.”

  “You aren’t indebted to anyone,” I said. “It was a gift.”

  “A gift,” she echoed.

  “A present?” Abigail chimed in. Josie smiled down at her again, and reached out to stroke her cheek. My heart squeezed so painfully I had to clench my jaw.

  “No,” Josie said, answering her but looking at me. “It’s not. I can’t take a gift like that. It comes with strings.”

  “Like bows?” Abigail asked.

  Josie’s head was shaking. “No,” she said. “Like reins. You can’t do this, Mr. Mason.”

  I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “Mr. Mason is it again?”

  “I don’t care what I call you,” she said, attempting in vain to keep the smile affixed. “You cannot do this—”

  “I can, and I did,” I said, stepping closer.

  The fury in her eyes was mesmerizing.

  “You are infuriating,” she said through her teeth, raising her chin defiantly as I stepped closer again.

  “I—” I clamped my mouth closed and flexed my fingers, knowing that what I wanted to do and what I had to do didn’t match. Spinning on my heel, I knelt in front of Abigail. “Baby girl, I need to have a very grown-up conversation with Miss Josie for a minute,” I said, squeezing her tiny hands in mine. “Can you go help Mrs. Shannon with the cookies?”

  “Can Josie stay for Christmas, Daddy?” she whispered. Loudly.

  I searched my daughter’s eyes, and leaned forward so that we were head to head and nose to nose, my heartbeat thundering in my ears.

  “Would you be okay with her being around for more than that?” I whispered very low, so only she could hear. “Like maybe all the time?”

  Abigail nodded, her curls bouncing. She giggled as she skipped out of the room, and I took a deep breath as I pushed back to my feet. I knew my daughter only recognized the excitement of the moment and her permission wasn’t weighted in anything. That I needed to think of her first and probably much more in depth—but this wasn’t a fleeting thing. This wasn’t someone I’d just met or hadn’t already gone through this thought process about in painstaking detail.

  “Benjamin Mason,” Josie said, her words heavy with impatience as I stepped closer to her. “You are by far the most—”

  Whatever I was the most of, it was lost when my mouth landed on hers.

  Chapter 15

  1904

  Josie

  I couldn’t breathe as the lips I’d fantasized about since yesterday claimed my mouth, cutting off my words, my thoughts, my logic. His hands framed my face, holding me as he kissed me again. And again.

  But wait . . .

  “Ben,” I said, my voice husky, drunk on his taste.

  All the reasons I’d come here danced over my head, just out of reach. Anger. I was angry. He couldn’t just shut me up with—with—

  I pushed against his chest, curling my fingers into his shirt at the same time.

  “I love you,” he said, his voice thick and gravelly.

  Everything froze. My hands, my breathing, my heart.

  I leaned back a fraction and peered up into eyes so fiercely passionate that goose bumps peppered my entire body.

  “What did you say?” I whispered, the words barely forming.

  He didn’t blink, didn’t flinch, didn’t look for one microsecond like anything got away from him. My insides had gone rogue, my heart threatening a coup.

  “You heard me,” he said softly, his fingers trailing over my face as he slowly let me go and backed up a step.

&nbs
p; Pulling free of my grip on his shirt. Instantly missing the contact, I stepped forward to follow, cursing my body’s reaction to him. I forced my feet to stop, and I shook my head.

  “Don’t say things like that,” I said, my fingers going to my lips before I yanked them away and clasped my hands in front of me. “You don’t—that’s not love you feel, Ben. That’s chemistry.”

  “Oh really?” he said on a chuckle I wanted to smack right off his face.

  “And guilt.”

  The laughter faded from his eyes. “Still, with that?”

  “I’m not talking about history,” I said, the blood returning to my brain, logic within touching distance again. “I’m talking about this thing you call a gift, that’s just another pretty word for manipulation.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Do tell.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Buying out my tax debt so that I’m indebted to you. So that you can what? Win me over? Marry me so that my property goes to you?”

  “Let me tell you something,” he said, dropping his arms and stepping back into the space between us. His eyes flashed. “I’m perfectly fine over here. I don’t need anything of yours to complete my business or pad my land rights. I don’t give a shit about your ranch, Josie. And I don’t have time to win anyone’s affections with money.” He flung an arm in the direction Abigail had skipped away. “She’s everything,” he said. “My whole world. Everything with me and you might have gone to hell that day five years ago, but Winifred could have stayed in Colorado and never told me about her. I have my daughter because she came here and tore our world apart.”

  My hands shook at the palpable love that came over him at the mention of Abigail. It was a phenomenal thing to see on a man, and so beautiful. And he was right. In spite of all the drama with her mother, Abigail was no mistake or casualty of battle. She was the prize.

  “Then why did you—”

  “Help you?” he said incredulously. “My God, Josie, are you that jaded? That distrustful of me?”

  I wanted to say yes. To call on the days and weeks and months of anger and resentment that had built up these horrible walls. But the last two days with him had made those walls weak. Made me see a different perspective.

  “You apologized for not telling me what was going on back then,” I said. “For keeping it from me. And then the very next minute, go and do another thing that involves me—without telling me. Again. How would you feel?”

  He sighed wearily, nodding as he dropped his gaze to the wooden floor beneath our feet.

  “I helped you because I have never stopped loving you, and I have the means to do it,” he said with a slight shrug. “It’s just that simple.”

  That simple, and yet the words falling out of his mouth stole my breath. I reached for the nearby wingback chair to ground myself and keep my knees from giving way.

  “There are no complicated twists or hidden agendas.” He blew out a breath. “I’m not a complicated man. But I see your point, and I’ll try to do better.”

  I lifted my chin and gripped the chair’s fabric a little tighter. “Better?”

  He reached over to a nearby shelf at the same time, and plucked something from a basket, holding up a sprig of mistletoe. A bitter taste filled my mouth.

  “I started a conversation back then that I never got to finish.”

  It was my turn to sigh wearily. “Promises made under a silly plant mean nothing, Ben. Our lives have proven that.”

  “I proved exactly what I said,” he responded. “I promised you that I would love you for the rest of my life, and I will do exactly that. I don’t want your ranch,” he continued. “Yes, we can make something truly special by merging them if you ever want to, but that’s inconsequential.”

  His gaze was intense as he stared down at me and shrugged.

  “What’s yours would still be yours, Josie. I’d deed it right back to you.”

  I blinked. “You’re—talking about—”

  “I want you,” he said, so close to me again now that we were almost touching. “I want to be the one to kiss you good night every night, and wake you up every morning.” He touched the mistletoe to my lips and then tossed it aside, lowering himself to one knee before me.

  A gasp escaped my throat, as my eyes burned and my mind raced back to the last time. His last proposal, also made on the fly, before his fiancée walked in.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered, the déjà vu of the moment making me dizzy.

  “I don’t need that thing to say what I want to say,” he said. “I asked you a question back then, before we were interrupted.”

  “Ben—”

  “I love you, Josephine Bancroft,” he said, looking up at me with an adoration I knew in my heart was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

  Suddenly, all that was spinning just—stopped. The noise cleared. The fog lifted. Regardless of all the heartache and chaos, I knew that nothing had ever, or would ever, be more amazing than that moment, as I gazed down at this man.

  “I’ve loved you from the first day I watched you ride up on that horse, bringing us water,” he said. “And you have owned my heart from the first time I kissed you. We may have been broken and lost, but we’re being given a second chance to—”

  “I love you.”

  The words tumbled out with no warning, no plan, as if my heart shoved them out to make room for all the emotion blowing up in there.

  Ben’s composure faltered, a rush of breath escaping his chest as he blinked rapidly and fought it back.

  “Will you be my wife, Josephine Bancroft?” he asked, his voice breaking on my name.

  A sob stole my breath, and I clapped a hand over my mouth. How had it—I came over here to blow my top and now—now my entire brain felt like it was going to explode, and yet nothing in my whole life had ever felt more right and more real than this.

  “Please, Josie,” he said. “Marry me. Today. On Christmas Eve.”

  Warm tears fell over my fingers, and a crazy bark of laughter choked out of my throat.

  “Today?” I squeaked.

  Because that was clearly the strangest part?

  “I’ll get the preacher here before dark—hell, I’ll go pick him up myself,” he said, rising to his feet, his eyes never leaving mine. Rough hands touched my cheeks and wiped away my tears. “I’ll marry you this very day and make Christmas Eve a day to make you smile. For once.”

  My thoughts jumbled over one another, screaming resounding yeses for every no I searched for.

  “But—Abigail,” I began. “Replacing her mother isn’t—”

  “She never knew her mother,” he said. “Any more than you did. She—” He spun quickly. “Abigail!”

  I jumped, startled. “Oh my, I—”

  Little feet bounded from the kitchen.

  “Yes, Daddy?”

  “Come here, bug,” he said, scooping her up with one arm and letting out a deep sigh. “I never thought I’d ever find anyone to live their lives with us,” he said, looking at her seriously as she matched his expression. “That anyone would ever be worthy of you. But what do you think of Miss Josie? Not just for Christmas, but in our family for real?”

  “Forever?”

  “Forever,” he echoed.

  Abigail slid her gaze to mine, full of so much personality, then back to her dad.

  “She didn’t know her mommy, either. She’s a half orphan, like me,” she said, making me dig my nails into my palms to keep it together. Oh, this girl would surely break my heart, too.

  He looked at me and swallowed, hard. “Trust me, Josie,” he said quietly, pleading with his eyes. “Trust this.”

  In front of me was what could be my future. My family. Ben looking at me so intently, my skin felt like it might catch fire.

  “Will you share your secret place with me?” she asked. “In the stable?”

  I chuckled and swiped under my eyes. “If I can come sit in the library with you sometimes?”

  Abigail nodded, h
er curls making it a full-motion activity.

  “Deal.”

  I started to laugh nervously, blinking more tears free and thinking I hadn’t cried this much in years, but the anxious, expectant look on his face was priceless. I shrugged at the sheer simplicity of it.

  “Deal,” I whispered.

  “Can I go back to the cookies, Daddy?” she whispered loudly.

  He set her down and crossed the space to me in seconds as the sound of her steps pattered away, and my hands could finally go up around his neck and into his hair.

  “Yes?” he breathed.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter 16

  1904

  Josie

  “Josephine Bancroft Mason,” I whispered, testing the sound of it on my tongue. “Josie Mason. Mrs. Benjamin Mason.”

  It was all very bizarre and exciting. This morning, as I’d awakened on my birthday to Lila bringing me breakfast, I’d hardly expected to be married by evening.

  I gazed down at my left hand, where my mother’s wedding band now resided. At the still beautiful white satin and lace dress that now lay across the chaise in Ben’s—in our bedroom.

  Our bedroom. In Ben’s house, that was my home now, too.

  Married.

  Me.

  On Christmas Eve.

  The very second I’d said yes, the day had turned into a whirlwind. Ben sent people to attend to every need. Theodore went for Lila, who then went back and forth twice more for my mother’s ring and wedding dress, not allowing me to help her in the name of my birthday. Another went to find someone to marry us. Yet another brought us food to stay in and snack on all day, and Mrs. Shannon—who I could already tell was Abigail’s very special version of my Lila—whipped us up a wedding cake. A simple one, granted, but in the midst of Christmas baking, I called it a miracle.

  Then I’d married Benjamin Mason.