Longing for a Cowboy Christmas

by Leigh Greenwood

  Maggie moved her head back and looked into his eyes…eyes that could not lie.

  “I trust you.”

  “Do you trust that I love that baby you’re carrying?”

  “Yes. I just wish so much it was yours, Sage.”

  “It is mine, just like the babies after this one will sure as hell be mine. I’m claiming this baby as my own, Maggie, not just in words, but legally. He or she will carry my name, and that’s the end of it. No more discussion.”

  Maggie leaned closer again and reached around his neck. “I love you so much.”

  “Yeah?” Sage moved on top of her. “How about showing me? Nothing calms me down more than being right here in this bed with you, especially when you’re underneath me.”

  Maggie smiled through tears as he met her mouth in a deep kiss that told her everything she needed to know. She closed her eyes as Sage moved down and nuzzled her breasts through her soft flannel gown. He moved a hand up her leg, pushing her gown up as he did so. Maggie rose up and let him pull off her drawers.

  “You okay with this?” he asked. “You worked hard today, too. And now I’ve upset you.”

  “I’m just upset over you having to hear what those people said,” Maggie answered softly.

  Sage grinned, sadness in his eyes at the same time. “I’m part Indian, Maggie girl, found abandoned in the desert and raised in a wealthy neighborhood in San Francisco by Christian people who I thought loved me…till I dared to kiss a white girl. I’ve seen and heard it all. Nothing could hurt me more than what my own family and that white girl did to me.” He kissed her eyes. “I know the goodness of your soul, so nothing anyone says about you can hurt me. The only thing that could hurt me is not having you in this bed every night. And I’ll always protect you against people like the ones I chased out of here today.”

  Another deep kiss erased it all as Sage again worked his magic, making Maggie ache to take this man who always filled her every need.

  For the next stretch of time, she was lost beneath him, breathing in his kisses while he pushed deep inside her, branding her, sealing their love. She pressed her fingers against hard muscle, bracing herself by keeping hold of his arms while she offered herself to him like a royal feast to a king. This man had risked his life hunting down those who had so horribly abused her, and now he loved her and had accepted the child she carried.

  She realized he well understood how it felt to be adopted and supposedly loved, only to be cruelly rejected later. The sudden revelation of why he’d vowed to love her baby as his own brought a wave of relief to her heart. Sage Lightfoot would never treat a child he accepted as his own the way he’d been treated. He’d been rejected because of his Indian blood. He would never allow her baby to be rejected for not knowing who his father was. He wouldn’t allow her baby to suffer that kind of hurt.

  The sheets were damp by the time they finished. Sage stayed on top of her, grasping her face in his hands. “I almost forgot… I have a wedding gift for you.”

  “A wedding gift? Sage, you didn’t need—”

  “Yes, I did. We had such a simple wedding, with a preacher coming here and just the men to witness.”

  “But living here in Paradise Valley is the most wonderful gift a woman could ask for, especially in this big, beautiful home you built. I’m perfectly happy, Sage. You are my wedding gift. Your love—accepting my baby.”

  He kissed her lightly. “A woman should have a true wedding gift. I got you something I know a woman like you will appreciate much more than a house and fancy dishes, something that’s truly all your own.”

  Maggie smiled, getting excited. She scooted back and pulled a sheet over herself. “What is it?”

  “Did you like the looks of that black mare Julio brought in?”

  “Oh, she’s beautiful! She’s one of the prettiest—” Maggie hesitated. “The mare?”

  “The mare. I’ll have Roland break her in for you, but I can already tell it won’t take much. She seems pretty gentle, even in her wild state.”

  “Oh, Sage, thank you! It’s a wonderful gift! As soon as we get up in the morning, I want to go out and see her!”

  “Just be careful. You are carrying, you know. I don’t want you on that horse until Roland has her fully broken in. Even then, I want him or me to be there the first time you ride her. Promise me that. I know how stubborn you can be.”

  “I promise.”

  Sage pulled her close again. “I’ll let you name that mare whatever you want…the baby, too.” He furrowed his brow. “When in hell do you think you are you due, anyway? I just realized we haven’t talked about that.”

  Maggie counted—hating the fact that she had to start with that awful night in mid-May. She hoped once she held the baby in her arms, it would help her forget the horror of how he or she was conceived. “Sometime in February,” she answered.

  “Dead of winter,” Sage said, looking concerned. “Heavy snows could make it hard to get a doctor here. I think I’ll hire the doctor from Cheyenne to come here to live the first or second week of February, just to be sure someone is here who knows what the hell he’s doing if anything goes wrong.” He pushed a red curl behind her ear. “I don’t want to lose the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “I’m healthy, far as I know. My first birth went just fine, in spite of how young I was.” Maggie’s heart tightened at the memory of burying her little one-year-old daughter, who’d died from fever back in Missouri. It seemed as though she’d already lived a lifetime in the twenty years she’d lived. At fifteen she’d practically been sold by her drunken father to James, a neighbor who wanted a wife. James was decent to her, but not a truly loving husband. She was pregnant by sixteen, had her baby at seventeen, and buried her at eighteen. When she was nineteen, James, fifteen years older than her, decided to head west. She turned twenty before they reached Wyoming, where outlaws murdered James and had their way with her.

  Then Sage came along and taught her what being loved was supposed to be like. Yes, it was possible to fall in love at first sight…first touch. “This baby has to live, Sage. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to bury another child.”

  “That’s why I intend to make sure a doctor is here.” He kissed her forehead. “And not just for the baby’s sake, but for you, too. I don’t know what I would do without you in my life.” Another kiss. “But let’s not think about bad things, Maggie. Let’s think about that mare and what you want to name her.”

  Maggie smiled. “I have to see her close up first.” She ran a hand over his arm and shoulder. “Thank you for wanting to give me a gift, Sage. It only shows how much you love me.”

  “You bet.” He settled beside her and pulled the covers over them. Even in summer, the evenings were cool in high Wyoming country.

  Big country, Maggie thought. Filled with big men that fit it. She couldn’t be more in love, and she loved every man on this ranch for accepting and loving her as Sage Lightfoot’s woman. She loved that term—not just his wife, but his woman. The man owned her, heart and soul…and body, and that was fine with her. But oh, how it hurt to think of the things that preacher and the woman with him had said to Sage, and in front of Joe.

  “I’m so sorry, Sage, for what those people said.”

  He settled next to her. “Don’t be sorry, Maggie—not ever. Sorry is for people who’ve done something wrong, and you’ve never done anything wrong in your whole life. Men like me, we’re the ones who have things to be sorry for. I don’t deserve something as loving and generous as you. The only thing more perfect is that baby you’re carrying.” He ran a hand over her belly again. “This kid had no choice in how he or she was conceived, so no man has a right to ever judge or refuse to love him or her, especially not that snooty Mrs. Hart or that hypocrite of a preacher who drove her out here. I’d better not see either of them again. I might not be able to hold my temper the next time.
”

  Eight

  Late September

  Maggie rode Patches at a gentle pace. She’d never loved a horse more than this beautiful gift from Sage. The white patches on the mare’s chest and forehead and around all four hooves had prompted the name Maggie gave her. The markings were distinctive and different from any of the other horses. Even the horse’s black tail and mane were mixed with white hairs.

  Bill Summers rode beside her as she pulled Patches to a halt at the top of what she liked to call Lavender Hill. Intensely purple flowers bloomed in the valley below during late summer and early fall. “It feels good to get out of the house and enjoy some cool, fresh air,” Maggie told Bill. “It won’t be long before the snows will be too deep to do this—at least that’s what Sage tells me. This will be my first Wyoming winter.”

  Bill pushed his hat back a little. “Well, ma’am, you’ll be surprised how cold it gets here, and how deep the snow piles up. I can already smell snow in the air, and you’ve seen new snow on the tops of the mountains. We always worry about how many cattle we’ll lose to blizzards and such. You’ll be wantin’ to stay in that house for sure. We generally tie ropes from the house to the barns and from the barns to the bunkhouse—somethin’ we can hang on to and find our way when it’s snowin’ so hard you can hardly see your hand in front of you. Men have been known to die out here just a few feet from their own front door. You can get confused real fast in a heavy snowstorm.”

  “My goodness!” Maggie sighed. “I expect by then I’ll stay inside anyway because of the baby.” She studied the valley below. “But for today I’ll enjoy this crisp, clear weather. I just wish things weren’t still so dry.”

  “Well, ma’am, it’s like that all over—everything dry as a bone. We actually pray we do get some snow cover soon. We moved the cattle to that northeast quarter about three weeks ago. It’s all that’s left. We saw signs of other cattle grazin’ there, but we didn’t catch who was doin’ it. Sage is there now, figurin’ how we can protect what’s there.”

  “It cost Sage a lot of money to order all those extra oats and hay from Omaha,” Maggie told him. “I feel so sorry for him.”

  Bill, a rather short, slender man who’d never revealed anything about his past, glanced over at her. “I expect if he hadn’t given another wad of money to that damned first wife of his last spring, it wouldn’t be so bad. You sure are a breath of fresh air compared to her.”

  Maggie smiled and pulled her sheepskin-lined corduroy jacket closer around her neck. “Thank you, Bill.” She took another deep breath and realized Bill was right. She, too, smelled snow in the air. Such weather came early to the mountains and high plains.

  “You sure you should be out here ridin’ all over the place in your condition?” Bill asked with a frown.

  Maggie shifted in her saddle. She didn’t want to let on to a ranch hand, but she seemed to be bigger than she should be for only about five months along. She’d thrown a blanket over her lap and legs for warmth and to help hide her belly. “I’m fine. Men seem to think a woman should go to bed as soon as she knows she’s carrying and stay there until the baby comes. It’s not like that at all. I can do all the things I normally do.” She smiled at Bill. “Thank you for taking your day off to ride with me. I just had to get out and enjoy this beautiful valley before the snow gets too deep for it.”

  “You know Sage. If I let you ride off alone, he’d tan my hide.”

  “And I wouldn’t hear the end of it for a week,” Maggie added. “But I can handle Sage Lightfoot.”

  They both laughed. “That’s more than any of us can do,” Bill told her. He lit a thin cigar. “I’m told Indian women do all their hard chores right up till the baby comes, then just stop and have the kid and keep goin’.”

  Maggie sniffed. “I’ve already had one child, Bill Summers, and I can assure you, no woman just sits down and has a baby and then keeps going. It’s a pain no man would ever understand, but it’s soon forgotten once a woman holds that baby in her arms.”

  Bill looked away.

  “Shit,” Maggie heard him mutter. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I didn’t mean to remind you of the one you lost.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll soon have another baby to hold.”

  They both remained quiet for several minutes. Maggie wondered if Bill was thinking about how this baby came to be. None of the men ever mentioned it, and none seemed bothered by it. “I think I’ll make another big batch of that chicken stew you and the men like,” she told Bill. “A great big pot that Julio can take to the bunkhouse for all of you to share.”

  Bill chuckled. “You know how much we all like that stew. It’s a lot of work makin’ so much of it, though. Maybe you shouldn’t bother.”

  “It’s not so bad. I’ll just need Rosa to help me boil and pluck the chickens and peel the potatoes. Once everything is in the pot, there isn’t much to do but keep stirring it and let it simmer for a good, long time. The longer it cooks, the better it tastes.” Maggie noticed Bill stiffen a little as he gazed across the valley. “What is it?” she asked.

  “‘Couple of the men are comin’, ridin’ hard.” He looked at her with a frown. “You stay right here, no matter what, understand?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Right here. No hard ridin’. Somethin’ happens to you, I’m responsible, and I don’t intend to answer to Sage for it.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  “I’m ridin’ out there to see what’s goin’ on. They wouldn’t be ridin’ that hard unless there was some kind of trouble.”

  Bill charged down the massive hill into the valley to meet up with the riders. Maggie could hear shouting but not exact words. All three men galloped their horses up the hill then, and Maggie watched Julio and Hank charge past her toward the ranch, both glancing at her with deep concern on their faces. Bill returned and took hold of Patches’s bridle.

  “What are you doing?” Maggie asked.

  “Makin’ sure you go right to the house and stay there,” he answered. “There’s some shootin’ goin’ on out at the northeast quarter—drovers from the Grayson ranch tryin’ to horn in on Sage’s grass.”

  Maggie gasped. “But Sage is out there!”

  “That’s right—and some of the other men. Don’t you be worryin’ about Sage. You know damn well he can take care of himself. Julio and Hank came back to get more men and ammunition.”

  “But I should help! I could ride out there—”

  “No, you couldn’t! And I ain’t lettin’ you ride hard back to the house neither. We’ll just keep it at a gentle lope. Hank and Julio can take care of things.”

  “But Sage could get hurt!”

  “I’m takin’ you back to the house where you’ll wait for him, you hear me? Wait for him! If he were to get hurt, the last thing he would need is to worry about you, or for you to lose that kid and bleed to death or somethin’. He’d need you to be okay so’s to help him heal, understand? That’s the best way to help him.”

  “Are you saying he’s already hurt?”

  Bill didn’t answer.

  “Bill Summers, tell me the truth!”

  “Just a flesh wound,” Bill said. “Sage stayed out there, which means he’s good enough to keep up the fight. They’re just goin’ for more men.”

  “I should be with him!”

  “Do what I said, Maggie. Sage is proud of how you handle life out here. Obeyin’ his orders is part of it. Not obeyin’ could make things worse, so you wait at the house.”

  “Oh dear God!” Maggie fought to see through the tears that welled in her eyes. She clung to the saddle horn as Bill led Patches at a very gentle run back to the ranch house, which took a good half hour. Hank and Julio and both of Julio’s sons and two other men passed them on the way, all well armed and all riding hard.

  Maggie’s heart fell at the sight. Sage was hurt! Men were shooting at e
ach other!

  They reached the house, and Bill helped Maggie dismount. “You do like I said and wait here,” he told her. He remounted his own horse and charged away.

  Maggie watched after him. Please let Sage be all right, she prayed.

  Rosa came out of the house and walked up to her, moving an arm around Maggie’s back. “Julio told me,” she said. “They will be fine, señora. Sage has good men with him, and he is a man who can handle himself.”

  “I can’t lose him, Rosa.”

  “You won’t.” She urged Maggie toward the front door. “Come inside. Sit down and rest while you wait. Sage will need you when he comes back.”

  “Rosa, if I wasn’t carrying, I’d be riding out there with the rest of them.”

  “And your husband knows this, señora. And just knowing it is all he needs. But in your condition, he would be very worried if you did not stay here and wait. Do not forget your promises. Waiting here will help him more than trying to go there and help. This is how you can help him.”

  Maggie followed Rosa inside and reluctantly sat down to wait…and pray.

  Nine

  Maggie rushed out the door when Hank, Joe, and Sage rode in after dark. She noticed Sage stumble a little after dismounting. “You’re hurt!” she called out, coming down the steps to take his arm.

  “Just grazed my side,” Sage answered. “Lost some blood is all.”

  “All? A wound is a wound, Sage Lightfoot! It could get infected. What happened out there?”

  Sage grimaced as he climbed the steps to the veranda. “I’m okay, Maggie, but there is a lot of blood on my shirt and pants.” He pushed her a little to the side. “I don’t want to get blood on your dress.”