A Cowboy for Christmas (Mills & Boon Love Inspired Historical) (Wyoming Legacy - Book 5)

by Lacy Williams

  It reminded him of the home he’d left behind.

  But he couldn’t think about that now.

  He reached out for a piece of the cake, even though his stomach flip-flopped in protest. At the last second, he changed from his left hand to his right, realizing she would be able to see the scar on the back of his wrist. Not wanting anything to remind her of that night.

  “Howdy, miss.”

  She didn’t look directly at him, just nodded with her eyes on his third button.

  “I’m Ricky White. Started working for your pa a couple months ago.”

  She nodded again.

  He’d just seen her talking to her sister. Her voice box must work.

  Did she just not want to talk to him? Her shoulders were hunched up around her ears. Either she was shy, or she had taken an instant dislike to him.

  He’d never had to try so hard for a single word before. Before, he’d seen her around town, known she was someone who would never give a troublemaker like him a second glance.

  “It was a nice wedding,” he said, scrambling for something to say that might get her to look at him. “Friend of mine had an outdoor wedding a couple of years ago...”

  The memory of Sam and Emily’s wedding, and Maxwell and Hattie’s, several years back...cutting up with his brothers...his pa’s affirming hand on his shoulder...all of the memories were a whiplash of hurt that he quickly shook away.

  More color rose in her cheeks, but her lips pinched until they were white around the edges. She still didn’t say anything. Voices rose and fell in the parlor, but here in the kitchen, he could hear the crackle of the fire in the stove.

  Then she turned her profile to him and gave him an unhindered view of her right sleeve, pinned between her shoulder and elbow.

  As if to ward him off.

  He didn’t mind the injury. He’d seen worse as he’d traveled the state, boxing and spending time in saloons and places good girls didn’t go.

  It certainly didn’t detract from her looks.

  It was the memory of how it happened, his part in it, that made him wince. He tried to disguise it by chomping a bite of the cake.

  He didn’t know if she expected him to just walk away, and she didn’t know him from Adam, but she’d soon learn he was about the stubbornest cowboy she’d ever meet.

  He kept his feet planted right where they were. He’d waited through the last of the summer and all of fall to even get a chance to speak to her.

  For once, he was right where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing.

  He couldn’t mess this up.

  She still didn’t look directly at him. She looked past him, into the other room. He let his eyes wander over his shoulder and saw her sister in conversation with Ned and Beau, his boss and the cowboy who’d become a close friend during the months they’d worked together.

  The fact that she wouldn’t say a word to him was starting to make him nervous, and he reached up to stick a finger in the collar of his shirt.

  And forgot that it was his burned hand.

  Her eyes tracked to the scarring on the back of his wrist. Her face paled.

  He saw her lips part and a silent gasp emerge. Her eyes went unfocused, as if she got lost in a memory. And he could guess what she was thinking about. That night. He’d been drunk, gotten into a brawl that had spilled from the saloon out into the street—where he’d spooked the horses tethered to her wagon. The animals had bolted and the wagon had overturned. And she’d been caught beneath it.

  Her pa had said she didn’t remember everything about that night. She didn’t seem to recognize him at all or know that he’d had a part in the accident.

  Now she made a sound like a hurt animal, some kind of soft cry.

  His gut constricted. What if he’d done the wrong thing, coming in here today? But it would’ve looked suspicious, him not coming to the boss’s wedding when the cowboys were invited.

  A glance over his shoulder showed no one from the parlor had even noticed her distress. He didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing.

  He had to shake her out of the memory, if he could.

  He stepped between her and the doorway, giving her a modicum of privacy and asked, as calm as he could, “You want some punch?”

  Her panicked eyes rose to meet his, and he tried to give off the same confidence that his older brother Oscar had taught him when they trained horses together.

  “Punch?” she asked tremulously.

  There. He’d gotten a word out of her. Only the thin sound wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind when he’d come inside the ranch house today.

  Still keeping himself between her and a view of everyone else, he stepped up to the counter and used the silver dipper from the punch bowl to get some of the pink liquid into a cup. He pressed it into her hand, and she inhaled, probably because the glass was cold.

  But it seemed to break into her thoughts.

  She flicked a glance over his shoulder, seemed to calm the slightest bit. Her breathing steadied.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  And she shook her head slightly. “No. No, I am not okay.”

  With that, she swept past him and through the parlor. He turned in time to see her skirts swish as she climbed the stairs in the front hallway.

  That hadn’t gone anything close to the way he’d planned.

  Chapter Two

  “Daisy?”

  Not long after her escape from the cowboy, a knock at her bedroom door startled Daisy as she sat at the small writing desk. Her arm jerked, pushing the nib of the pen in a squiggly line across the paper.

  Not that the jagged line looked much better than the childish letters she had painstakingly formed moments before. Frustrated with her inability to make her left hand work the way her right hand had done easily, Daisy smacked several sheets of paper, sending them across the desk and covering her failure.

  Shaking, she stood up and turned away from the afternoon sunlight streaming through her bedroom window. The interior of the room was simple. A quilt her mother had made stretched across the bed; a bureau and hanging mirror the only other furniture in the room.

  Her father stood in the doorway, expression serious. Had he seen her silent outburst? She couldn’t tell. Behind him, through the open doorway, she could hear voices and activity from downstairs. Things were already changing from the quiet life she’d lived here with Papa and Belinda.

  She didn’t like it.

  “Audra and I are leaving now.”

  She nodded. She knew they planned to stay the night in the hotel in town before taking the train to their final honeymoon destination.

  “I’m trusting you to take care of the boys while we’re gone.”

  Why? Daisy wanted to ask. But she didn’t dare. Her father was used to running his successful spread. Not used to disobedience.

  Daisy forced a faint smile for him. “With Uncle Ned and Belinda to help, I’m certain we’ll keep them out of trouble. Somewhat.”

  He nodded, his gaze passing her to go to the window, where outside the wagon had been loaded.

  She couldn’t quite say that everything would be fine without him here. She wished she could be certain of it, but nothing had been fine since that night five months ago.

  He embraced her, the familiar scent of the horseradish candies he kept on his desk downstairs bringing tears to her eyes. Not for the first time, she felt the emptiness of a one-armed hug.

  Out in the hall there was a rush of footsteps. Over Papa’s shoulder she saw two blond heads peering at her from the top of the staircase. The twins.

  She must’ve stiffened, and her papa turned to see why. The boys skittered back down the stairs the way they’d come.

  But her stomach knotted.

  “If the boys cause too much trouble, send them out to your uncle.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” she agreed. Her mind had already gone to locking her door and keeping them out of her room, her private domain.

  H
er only solace since the accident.

  But her father was asking her to leave her room behind—come outside of herself enough to take care of the two boys. And she didn’t want to.

  She didn’t want to face the twins’ scrutiny, the curious gazes. The rude, inevitable questions that only a child could get away with asking.

  It couldn’t be as difficult as she imagined. Could it?

  *

  Three days later, Daisy wished she’d put up more of a fight.

  The twins created chaos everywhere. They left muddy boots in the hall and socks strewn up and down the stairs. They frequently dissolved into shouting matches with each other. And the wrestling! They’d nearly broken one of the parlor lamps in one of their grappling contests.

  Anytime that Daisy asked them to stop or to pick up after themselves, they balked. Not outright refusing, but sometimes challenging her with a look to see what she’d do if they didn’t comply.

  They complained all the time. About the taste of the food Belinda had cooked. That they didn’t get to see their town friends.

  Even now, Todd whined, “I’m bored...” The boy jumped up from the sofa and began circling the parlor.

  Terrance looked up from the checkerboard they’d been engrossed in for the past half hour after lunch.

  Daisy was not bored. She willed the young man to sit back down. Of course, he couldn’t hear her internal thoughts and kept moving.

  Terrance hadn’t followed his brother up off his seat but now took a red rubber ball from one pocket and threw it against the wall, right near the fireplace.

  “Please don’t do that,” Daisy chided him. If he missed and the ball flew into the hearth, the burning log could possibly roll out onto the floor and ignite the rug.

  The boy pulled a face but didn’t throw the ball against the wall again. He tossed it up into the air and caught it. His eyes slid over to Daisy, but she was too weary to protest.

  Her patience was worn thin.

  She kept her focus on the basket of laundry Belinda had planted at the foot of the couch before she’d flounced off in a huff.

  It wasn’t Daisy’s fault that her missing arm prevented her from doing the things she’d done before. Or that Belinda had had to take over the lion’s share of the inside chores.

  She would switch in the blink of an eye, if given a chance.

  The simple job of sorting and folding the clothes would’ve been ridiculously easy before the loss of her arm. Now the task had Daisy frustrated, near tears and on edge. With no patience to deal with the Twin Terrors.

  She chose a shirt from the basket on the floor and attempted to shake it out. It was smaller than her father’s, so no doubt it belonged to one of the two young men in the room right now. The material fluttered but didn’t spread the way she wanted it to.

  Terrance missed his catch and the ball bounced on the floor, finally bumping her boot. She strove to ignore him as he scrambled to retrieve it.

  Todd passed behind the couch, and his breathing seemed overly loud in the confined room. Was he doing so just to annoy her?

  She draped the shirt over the arm of the sofa and folded the two sides of it together. Buttons were beyond her with only one usable hand, so she left them undone. She tucked the arms over the body of the shirt and halved the whole thing, then tucked it up into quarters.

  The entire process took much longer than it should’ve.

  “That’s not the way Ma folds our shirts,” Todd said as his pacing brought him past her, his words perilously like a whine.

  She hummed noncommittally and kept her eyes on the next item she pulled from the basket. One of Belinda’s dresses.

  “Todd!” Terrance whispered from his seat.

  She didn’t look up to see if the second brother was afraid of getting in trouble or was egging Todd on.

  “What?” Todd said, his tone taking on a bit too much innocence. “I think she’s doing it wrong a’purpose since she’s steamed at us already.”

  Daisy inhaled sharply and spun to face the child.

  He’d paused behind the sofa, too far for her to reach, if she would have even considered the action. His eyes sparked with merriment and perhaps he didn’t mean for his teasing to be so cruel, but Daisy’s own inadequacies made her sensitive.

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t talk so about someone unless you have been in their shoes,” she said.

  “Ma says you’re jest being a big baby—”

  She gasped.

  On the couch, Terrance began to look uncomfortable. Then he thumped the ball against the wall again.

  “Do you mind?” she asked, voice shaking as badly as she was. “I’d like to finish this task without interruption. Alone,” she clarified.

  “Dew yew mind?” Todd mocked her.

  “Todd—” Terrance warned.

  “What if we do mind?” Todd asked.

  She couldn’t stand his disrespectful, hurtful words another moment.

  Tears blinding her, she rushed out of the room. She could hear Belinda above stairs, but she knew her sister would be no help after the way she’d overreacted earlier about needing a break from the chores.

  Perhaps it was cowardly to run away, but Daisy couldn’t face the twins another moment. Where could she find a few moments of peace, of sanctuary?

  “Daisy! Don’t run off!” came Todd’s mocking voice behind her. “C’mon...”

  She didn’t wait for them to follow but rushed through the kitchen into the yard.

  *

  In the barn, Ricky mucked out the horses’ stalls with a vengeance. Muscles straining, he huffed with exertion. The task was one he’d done plenty of times at home. The movements were familiar, and he did it almost without thought.

  He’d already shed his coat and hung it over one of the interior stalls. The weather had actually warmed up past freezing temperatures today. The big double barn doors were open, allowing fresh air inside and stirring up smells of horse and manure.

  But nothing cooled him off.

  He’d had the nightmare again. Had every night since he’d talked to Daisy at her pa’s wedding. He’d wake up in the darkest part of night, sweating bullets with a cry on his lips, nostrils burning with smoke—ever since the event in his childhood, he hated fire—remembering exactly how he’d brawled his way in front of the horses hitched to her wagon, remembering the sight of them barreling down the dark street.

  Remembering her tumbling from the wagon seat and the wagon flipping on top of her.

  Even now, he shivered beneath the sweat he’d built up with his activity.

  He could have killed her.

  Instead, he’d just ruined her life. He’d witnessed her panic at the wedding, a small family event that shouldn’t have inspired such desperation. He’d wanted to help her but feared her seeing his scar had made it worse.

  He needed to make things right for her.

  Beau, the cowboy who’d hired on about the same time as him, had comforted Ricky at his most broken. Had told him the same things that Ricky’s pa and brothers had, but somehow, because of Ricky’s brokenness, it had finally sunk in.

  Now Beau daily encouraged him to seek God’s will.

  Ricky was trying, but why did it have to be so difficult to hear? Surely God wanted Daisy to heal, too, didn’t He?

  “What do you think, old girl?” he asked the huge black dog lying in an empty stall beside where he worked. “Have I lost all my charm?”

  The dog didn’t answer, of course, only panted through a wide doggy smile, tail flopping against the hay-strewn floor. Horses shifted in their stalls, sometimes softly whickering to a neighbor. None of them answered about Ricky’s charms, either.

  The women, too many young women, had been a distraction from the pain of Ricky’s past. Only each dalliance had proved a temporary diversion.

  Now he knew there was nothing to take away the pain. Nothing but the Lord, and he was still learning to trust Him.

  It seemed the Lord was on his side today, be
cause as Ricky mucked out the stalls, a glance out the open doors revealed the flaming head of hair that could only belong to Daisy, who was crossing the yard between the house and barn. Heading straight for him.

  Heart thudding, he pretended casualness and kept on shoveling.

  She swept inside the door.

  “Morning, miss.”

  She startled, raising her hand above her eyes as they must’ve been adjusting to the lower light inside of the barn. “Oh.”

  She hesitated, looked unsure if she wanted to come or go.

  There were shouts from outside, near the house, and she ducked into the first stall, disappearing from sight as she crouched inside it.

  What was she doing? His lips twitched, and a punch of curiosity hit him squarely in the gut.

  Her head popped up briefly. “I’m not here,” she whispered.

  Then she disappeared again.

  And he very quickly found out why.

  “Daisy!”

  “Oh, sister...”

  Two active twelve-year-old towheads rushed into the barn, looking around. One whistled, causing the nearest horse, a buckskin gelding, to bob its head and nicker.

  “Boys,” he warned.

  One had a smudge of something left over from lunch beside his mouth. It was the only discernible difference Ricky could see. They both had trousers that were an inch too short—likely they’d had a growth spurt and their ma hadn’t gotten around to sewing them each a new pair yet.

  Had they been harassing Daisy in the house? Then chased her out here? No wonder she’d hidden. Being an ornery male himself, he remembered plenty of times during his childhood with Jonas and Penny when he’d irritated the fire out of his ma.

  But that didn’t mean he wanted them bothering Daisy.

  “Did Daisy come in here?” one of them asked.

  “We thought we saw her...” The other one peeked over the top of a stall. Blessedly, he was on the opposite side from where she’d hidden.

  Several more horses began shifting in their stalls.

  “Hold it!” Ricky moved between the boys and clapped a hand on each of their shoulders.

  They froze, mouths gaping open at him.

  “What d’you think you’re doing?” he demanded in a firm voice that might just be an echo of his pa’s.