Baby, It's Christmas & Hold Me, Cowboy

by Susan Mallery

  “Stop it,” she said, walking faster.

  “Like I said, it doesn’t matter to me...”

  She whirled around. “You keep saying it doesn’t matter to you, and then you keep pushing the issue. So I would say that it does matter to you. Whatever complex you have about not being good enough, this is digging at that. But it isn’t my problem. Because it isn’t about you. Nobody would care if they knew that we were sleeping together. I mean, they would talk about it, but they wouldn’t care. But it makes it something more. And I just... I can’t have more. Not more than this.”

  He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, neither can I. That was hardly an invitation for something deeper.”

  “Good. Because I don’t have anything deeper to give.”

  The very idea made her feel like she was going into a free fall. The idea of trusting somebody again...

  The betrayals she had dealt with back when she was seventeen had made it so that trusting another human being was almost unfathomable. When she had told Sam that the sex was the least of it, she had been telling the truth.

  It had very little to do with her body, and everything to do with the battering her soul had taken.

  “Neither do I.”

  “Then why are you... Why are you pushing me like this?”

  He looked stunned by the question, his face frozen. “I just... I don’t want to leave you broken.”

  Something inside her softened, cracked a little bit. “I’m not sure that you have a choice. It kind of is what it is, you know?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t have to be.”

  “Did you think you were going to fix me, Sam?”

  “No,” he said, his voice rough.

  But she knew he was lying. “Don’t put that on yourself. Two broken people can’t fix each other.”

  She was certain in that moment that he was broken too, even though she wasn’t quite sure how.

  “We only have twelve days. Any kind of fixing was a bit ambitious anyway,” he said.

  “Eleven days,” she reminded him. “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “Yeah. See you then.”

  And then she turned and walked away from Sam McCormack for all the town to see, as if he were just a casual acquaintance and nothing more. And she tried to ignore the ache in the center of her chest that didn’t seem to go away, even after she got in the car and drove home.

  Chapter 8

  Seven days after beginning the affair with Maddy, she called and asked him if he could come down and check the shoes on one of the horses. It was the middle of the afternoon, so if it was her version of a booty call, he thought it was kind of an odd time. And since their entire relationship was a series of those, he didn’t exactly see why she wouldn’t be up front about it.

  But when he showed up, she was waiting for him outside the stall.

  “What are you up to?”

  She lifted her shoulder. “I just wanted you to come and check on the horse.”

  “Something you couldn’t check yourself?”

  She looked slightly rueful. “Okay, maybe I could have checked it myself. But she really is walking a little bit funny, and I’m wondering if something is off.”

  She opened the stall door, clipped a lead rope to the horse’s harness and brought her out into the main part of the barn.

  He looked at her, then pushed up the sleeves on his thermal shirt and knelt down in front of the large animal, drawing his hand slowly down her leg and lifting it gently. Then he did the same to the next before moving to her hindquarters and repeating the motion again.

  He stole a glance up at Maddy, who was staring at him with rapt attention.

  “What?”

  “I like watching you work,” she said. “I’ve always liked watching you work. That’s why I used to come down here and give orders. Okay, honestly? I wanted to give myself permission to watch you and enjoy it.” She swallowed hard. “You’re right. I’ve been punishing myself. So, I thought I might indulge myself.”

  “I’m going to have to charge your dad for this visit,” he said.

  “He won’t notice,” she said. “Trust me.”

  “I don’t believe that. Your father is a pretty well-known businessman.” He straightened, petting the horse on its haunches. “Everything looks fine.”

  Maddy looked sheepish. “Great.”

  “Why don’t you think your dad would notice?”

  “A lot of stuff has come out over the past few months. You know he had a stroke three months ago or so, and while he’s recovered pretty well since then, it changed things. I mean, it didn’t change him. It’s not like he miraculously became some soft, easy man. Though, I think he’s maybe a little bit more in touch with his mortality. Not happily, mind you. I think he always saw himself as something of a god.”

  “Well,” Sam said, “what man doesn’t?” At least, until he was set firmly back down to earth and reminded of just how badly he could mess things up. How badly things could hurt.

  “Yet another difference between men and women,” Maddy said drily. “But after he had his stroke, the control of the finances went to my brother Gage. That was why he came back to town initially. He discovered that there was a lot of debt. I mean, I know you’ve heard about how many properties we’ve had to sell downtown.”

  Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets, lifting his shoulders. “Not really. But then, I don’t exactly keep up on that kind of stuff. That’s Chase’s arena. Businesses and the real estate market. That’s not me. I just screw around with metal.”

  “You downplay what you do,” she returned. “From the art to the physical labor. I’ve watched you do it. I don’t know why you do it, only that you do. You’re always acting like your brother is smarter than you, but he can’t do what you do either.”

  “Art was never particularly useful as far as my father was concerned,” Sam said. “I imagine he would be pretty damned upset to see that it’s the art that keeps the ranch afloat so nicely. He would have wanted us to do it the way our ancestors did. Making leatherwork and pounding nails. Of course, it was always hard for him to understand that mass production was inevitably going to win out against more expensive handmade things. Unless we targeted our products and people who could afford what we did. Which is what we did. What we’ve been successful with far beyond what we even imagined.”

  “Dads,” she said, her voice soft. “They do get in your head, don’t they?”

  “I mean, my father didn’t have gambling debts and a secret child, but he was kind of a difficult bastard. I still wish he wasn’t dead.” He laughed. “It would kind of be nice to have him wandering around the place shaking his head disapprovingly as I loaded up that art installation to take down to the Mercantile.”

  “I don’t know, having your dad hanging around disapproving is kind of overrated.” Suddenly, her face contorted with horror. “I’m sorry—I had no business saying something like that. It isn’t fair. I shouldn’t make light of your loss.”

  “It was a long time ago. And anyway, I do it all the time. I think it’s the way the emotionally crippled deal with things.” Anger. Laughter. It was all better than hurt.

  “Yeah,” she said, laughing uneasily. “That sounds about right.”

  “What exactly does your dad disapprove of, Madison?” he asked, reverting back to her full name. He kind of liked it, because nobody else called her that. And she had gone from looking like she wanted to claw his eyes out when he used it to responding. There was something that felt deep about that. Connected. He shouldn’t care. If anything, it should entice him not to do it. But it didn’t.

  “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “No,” he returned. “I’ve done a lot of work on this ranch over the years. You’re always busy. You have students scheduled all day every day—except today,
apparently—and it is a major part of both the reputation and the income of this facility. You’ve poured everything you have into reinforcing his legacy while letting your own take a backseat.”

  “Well, when you put it like that,” she said, the smile on her lips obviously forced, “I am kind of amazing.”

  “What exactly does he disapprove of?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Does it all come back to that? Something you did when you were seventeen?” The hypocrisy of the outrage in his tone wasn’t lost on him.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, the words biting. “I’m really not.” She grabbed hold of the horse’s lead rope, taking her back into the stall before clipping the rope and coming back out, shutting the door firmly.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  She growled, making her way out of the barn and walking down the paved path that led toward one of the covered arenas. “I don’t know. Feel free to choose your own adventure with that one.”

  “Come on, Maddy,” he said, closing the distance between them and lowering his voice. “I’ve tasted parts of you that most other people have never seen. A little bit of honesty isn’t going to hurt you.”

  She whipped around, her eyes bright. “Maybe it isn’t him. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the one that can’t look at him the same way.”

  * * *

  Maddy felt rage simmering over her skin like heat waves. She had not intended to have this conversation—not with Sam, not with anyone.

  But now she had started, she didn’t know if she could stop. “The night that he found out about my affair with David was the night I found out about Jack.”

  “So, it isn’t a recent revelation to all of you?”

  “No,” she said. “Colton and Sierra didn’t know. I’m sure of that. But I found out that Gage did. I didn’t know who it was, I should clarify. I just found out that he had another child.” She looked away from Sam, trying to ignore the burning sensation in her stomach. Like there was molten lava rolling around in there. She associated that feeling with being called into her father’s home office.

  It had always given her anxiety, even before everything had happened with David. Even before she had ever seriously disappointed him.

  Nathan West was exacting, and Maddy had wanted nothing more than to please him. That desire took up much more of her life than she had ever wanted it to. But then, she knew that was true in some way or another for all of her siblings. It was why Sierra had gone to school for business. Why Colton had taken over the construction company. It was even what had driven Gage to leave.

  It was the reason Maddy had poured all of her focus into dressage. Because she had anticipated becoming great. Going to the Olympics. And she knew her father had anticipated that. Then she had ruined all of it.

  But not as badly as he had ruined the relationship between the two of them.

  “Like I told you, one of David’s other students caught us together. Down at the barn where he gave his lessons. We were just kissing, but it was definitely enough. That girl told her father, who in turn went to mine as a courtesy.”

  Sam laughed, a hard, bitter sound. “A courtesy to who?”

  “Not to me,” Maddy said. “Or maybe it was. I don’t know. It was so awful. The whole situation. I wish there had been a less painful way for it to end. But it had to end, whether it ended that way or some other way, so...so I guess that worked as well as anything.”

  “Except you had to deal with your father. And then rumors were spread anyway.”

  She looked away from Sam. “Well, the rumors I kind of blame on David. Because once his wife knew, there was really no reason for the whole world not to know. And I think it suited him to paint me in an unflattering light. He took a gamble. A gamble that the man in the situation would come out of it all just fine. It was not a bad gamble, it turned out.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Full house. Douche bag takes the pot.”

  She was avoiding the point of this conversation. Avoiding the truth of it. She didn’t even know why she should tell him. She didn’t know why anything. Except that she had never confided any of this to anyone before. She was close to her sister, and Sierra had shared almost everything about her relationship with Ace with Maddy, and here Maddy was keeping more secrets from her.

  She had kept David from her. She had kept Sam from her too. And she had kept this all to herself, as well.

  She knew why. In a blinding flash she knew why. She couldn’t stand being rejected, not again. She had been rejected by her first love; she had been rejected by an entire community. She had been rejected by her father with a few cold dismissive words in his beautifully appointed office in her childhood home.

  But maybe, just maybe, that was why she should confide in Sam. Because at the end of their affair it wouldn’t matter. Because then they would go back to sniping at each other or not talking to each other at all.

  Because he hadn’t rejected her yet.

  “When he called me into his office, I knew I was in trouble,” she said, rubbing her hand over her forehead. “He never did that for good things. Ever. If there was something good to discuss, we would talk about it around the dinner table. Only bad things were ever talked about in his office with the door firmly closed. He talked to Gage like that. Right before he left town. So, I always knew it had to be bad.”

  She cleared her throat, looking out across the arena, through the gap in the trees and at the distant view of the misty waves beyond. It was so very gray, the clouds hanging low in the sky, touching the top of the angry, steel-colored sea.

  “Anyway, I knew. As soon as I walked in, I knew. He looked grim. Like I’ve never seen him before. And he asked me what was going on with myself and David Smithson. Well, I knew there was no point in denying it. So I told him. He didn’t yell. I wish he had. He said... He said the worst thing you could ever do was get caught. That a man like David spent years building up his reputation, not to have it undone by the temptation of some young girl.” She blinked furiously. “He said that if a woman was going to present more temptation than a man could handle, the least she could do was keep it discreet.”

  “How could he say that to you? To his daughter? Look, my dad was a difficult son of a bitch, but if he’d had a daughter and some man had hurt her, he’d have ridden out on his meanest stallion with a pair of pliers to dole out the world’s least sterile castration.”

  Maddy choked out a laugh that was mixed with a sob. “That’s what I thought. It really was. I thought... I thought he would be angry, but one of the things that scared me most, at least initially, was the idea that he would take it out on David. And I still loved David then. But no. He was angry at me.”

  “I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

  “That was when he told me,” she choked out. “Told me that he had mistresses, that it was just something men did, but that the world didn’t run if the mistress didn’t know her place, and if I was intent on lowering myself to be that sort of woman when I could have easily been a wife, that was none of his business. He told me a woman had had his child and never betrayed him.” Her throat tightened, almost painfully, a tear sliding down her cheek. “Even he saw me as the villain. If my own father couldn’t stand up for me, if even he thought it was my fault somehow, how was I ever supposed to stand up for myself when other people accused me of being a whore?”

  “Maddy...”

  “That’s why,” she said, the words thin, barely making their way through her constricted throat. “That’s why it hurts so much. And that’s why I’m not over it. There were two men involved in that who said they loved me. There was David, the man I had given my heart to, the man I had given my body to, who had lied to me from the very beginning, who threw me under the bus the moment he got the opportunity. And then there was my own father. My own
father, who should have been on my side simply because I was born his. I loved them both. And they both let me down.” She blinked, a mist rolling over her insides, matching the setting all around them. “How do you ever trust anyone after that? If it had only been David, I think I would have been over it a long time ago.”

  Sam was looking at her, regarding her with dark, intense eyes. He looked like he was about to say something, his chest shifting as he took in a breath that seemed to contain purpose. But then he said nothing. He simply closed the distance between them, tugging her into his arms, holding her against his chest, his large, warm hand moving between her shoulder blades in a soothing rhythm.

  She hadn’t rested on anyone in longer than she could remember. Hadn’t been held like this in years. Her mother was too brittle to lean on. She would break beneath the weight of somebody else’s sorrow. Her father had never offered a word of comfort to anyone. And she had gotten in the habit of pretending she was tough so that Colton and Sierra wouldn’t worry about her. So that they wouldn’t look too deeply at how damaged she was still from the events of the past.

  So she put all her weight on him and total peace washed over her. She shouldn’t indulge in this. She shouldn’t allow herself this. It was dangerous. But she couldn’t stop. And she didn’t want to.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, a few more tears falling down her cheeks, soaking into his shirt. If anybody knew that Madison West had wept all over a man in the broad light of day, they wouldn’t believe it. But she didn’t care. This wasn’t about anyone else. It was just about her. About purging her soul of some of the poison that had taken up residence there ten years ago and never quite left.

  About dealing with some of the heavy longing that existed inside her for a time and a place she could never return to. For a Christmas when she had walked down Main Street with her father and seen him as a hero.

  But of course, when she was through crying, she felt exposed. Horribly. Hideously, and she knew this was why she didn’t make a habit out of confiding in people. Because now Sam McCormack knew too much about her. Knew more about her than maybe anybody else on earth. At least, he knew about parts of her that no one else did.