A Cheyenne Christmas Homecoming (The Sweet Cheyenne Quartet Book 4)

by Caroline Lee

  “Wendy…?”

  She turned to him, and he cringed at the confusion and fear in those eyes. “Why are you here, Nate?” She took a deep breath. “Why did you come?”

  And the words that he’d been preparing, the lies that he’d carefully considered on those long hours on the train, were lost.

  Frankly, Wendy was impressed that she’d managed to reign in her tears. They were still there, threatening to overflow, but she thought she’d done a good enough job of blinking them back so that Nate wouldn’t see them.

  But nothing could have held back those words. The question she’d wanted to ask since he’d first arrived on the Blakelys’ doorstep. Being with him, today, had made the question impossible to ignore.

  Today, she’d seen the way things had been; the way things could have been. Nate was a wonderful man—strong and caring and thoughtful, not to mention so beautiful he made her ache—and a good friend. She’d been lucky to call him ‘hers’ for a short time, and he deserved someone so much better than herself.

  Being with him had been beautiful torture. Laughing, reminiscing with him, and being reminded of how much she enjoyed his company, his touch… The experience had made her simultaneously thrilled and devastated. He—his company—made her feel like she could fly, all giddy and bubbly and breathless. But knowing that she couldn’t have him, that she couldn’t do that to him, that she didn’t even deserve to be spending so much time enjoying his company… that had been painful.

  The whole experience had been painful. Standing beside him, wanting him, wanting what he could give her and make her feel, but knowing she couldn’t.

  It was a miracle she hadn’t broken down into tears earlier, but she knew that she was sturdier than that. When she’d lived in Cheyenne, Nate had been the only one who knew that she didn’t possess the self-control she pretended. She wondered if he was able to see through her carefully-constructed façade even now.

  And now that she’d asked the question, she couldn’t turn away. She couldn’t hide her reaction from him, because she needed to be looking into his gorgeous eyes when he explained.

  Because she was, she saw the hesitation, the lie forming. And he saw that she saw, because his expression carefully neutral, he gestured to the stupid stuffed mountain lion. “Coming here was your idea, Wendy.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, saw the muscles along his jaw harden. They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. He had the most remarkable eyes; a mossy color ringed in brown that Molly had always called hazel, but Wendy knew was green. A beautiful green that blinked now and looked away.

  Even as kids she’d been able to tell when he’d been about to lie.

  “The truth, please. You owe me that.”

  “I owe…?”

  He turned away in frustration, and faced the gray wall. Wendy wondered what he was really seeing.

  “Nate?”

  “Shit.” The whispered curse was followed by a few others she pretended not to hear, as he ran one brown hand through his hair. His hair that now hung past his nape, much longer than hers. The hair that she knew was silky and soft as a black cloud, and that she itched to touch even now. The way she used to scratch his head while he listened to her read aloud, half-asleep on her lap in front of the winter fire, a small smile on those beautiful lips.

  Oh God, she missed those days. Missed the way she could touch him casually, and have him touch her, and not ache with remorse.

  Missed him.

  “Please, Nate.” Her voice caught on her whisper, and she wasn’t even sure he heard it.

  “Because we all missed you, Wendy. Molls knew something was wrong, so Ash volunteered me to come find out. You still write to your sisters and Serena, but even they’d figured out you were hiding something.” His back was still to her, so he thankfully missed her wince. “So I came to find out what it was.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Came to bring you home.”

  She didn’t have a response. Couldn’t say You made the trip for nothing. Couldn’t say Things can never go back the way they were.

  She contented herself with just “I’m sorry.”

  It wasn’t enough. He whirled back to her then, and she saw the man he rarely showed anyone anymore. The fighter. The bundle of lean, coiled muscles. The little bit of wild Indian she’d always melted for.

  “What is it, Wendy? What are you hiding? Why are you hiding?”

  She could never tell him. Couldn’t stand to lose his friendship—what little remained for her— or his admiration. So she forced a smile that must have looked as brittle as she felt. “Nothing.”

  He stepped closer. They stood almost nose-to-nose; she wasn’t as tall as Molly, but tall enough to feel his breath on her lips. She swallowed, and tried not to focus on his eyes, so close. Instead, she cataloged the rest of his face, his smooth skin marred by new scars. Where had that pale white one under his eye come from? What had the last few years been like for him?

  He whispered her name, and she felt her breath hitch. Felt his voice clear down into the pit of her stomach.

  “Why’d you leave me?”

  The question sounded like it had been wrenched from him, and her heart tightened at the pain in his voice. She could no more ignore it than she could stop living. She swallowed.

  “I told you why. And then my letters…”

  “No. I know why you came to St. Louis. I think.” He lowered his brows in frustration, and hurt, and she felt like the lowest kind of bug, to put him through that. “Why’d you cut me off? Why’d you stop writing to me? I thought we were friends.”

  She might have been able to lie to him, had it not been for that last whispered confession. She owed him at least part of the truth. No, she owed him all of the truth, but couldn’t force herself to give it to him. Couldn’t stand the thought of watching his regard for her fade from those beautiful eyes…

  She lifted one hand to his cheek, pleased that she’d left her gloves with her coat. She could finally touch him, feel his smooth skin beneath her fingertips. She used to tease him about not being able to grow a beard, but she’d always loved the feel of his skin.

  He shuddered and closed his eyes, and Wendy wondered if he was remembering other touches. Other times. Other easy moments together, lost to the past.

  She swallowed. “Because… because you deserve to be happy. And you couldn’t be happy with someone like me.” Mossy green eyes flashed open, and she saw the disbelief. She hastened to explain. “I know that we were just friends, but you deserve to find love with someone. Someone better than me. More worthy.” Now it was her turn to squeeze her eyes shut, hoping he hadn’t seen the tears threatening again. “You deserve love and a wife and a family and a home. And I can’t…” she swallowed again, forcing the words past a stricken throat. “I can’t give you that.”

  “Let me get this straight.” He took her hand in his, and stepped back, so that she could see more of him when she peeked in his direction. She could breathe again. “You didn’t cut me out of your life… you cut yourself out of my life?” She thought she might have nodded. “Because you decided it was a good idea? Because you thought you weren’t worthy…?”

  She risked looking at him then. The anger was gone from his eyes. Now his expression was carefully blank, and if she hadn’t known him so well—used to know him so well—she would have missed the confusion in his gaze.

  “…worthy of me?”

  Oh God, he sounded so lost, it was nearly her undoing. After all these years, he still didn’t understand that he was a good man, worthy of happiness.

  How to explain? How to convince him? “Nate, I…” He blinked, and the lost-boy look was gone, replaced by something akin to determination.

  “Shut up,” he growled, as he used his grip on her hand to pull her closer. What was he…?

  And then she stopped thinking, because he was kissing her.

  Eight years. She’d known him for eight years. And not a day had passed that she hadn’t thought about kissing
him. Sometimes wishfully, sometimes with detached curiosity, wondering what he would taste like. Eight years of wondering how it would feel to be kissed back, to feel him beneath her skin and breathe the same breath as him.

  It was better than she could have possibly imagined.

  The same muscles that she’d admired years ago when he’d race shirtless across the hills after a mustang now held her enthralled. Tightly corded arms wrapped around her, pulling her against a chest that she shouldn’t be thinking about.

  And the kiss. Dear Lord the kiss. She felt it to her toes, and down each arm and out to each finger that wrapped around the flannel of his shirt to stay upright. This was Nate. This was the kiss she’d been imagining for years. And it was nothing like she could have imagined.

  Despite how gentle he’d always been to her, she’d been able to see the passion, the frustration that simmered right below the surface. It had come out when he’d wrestled wild horses, beautifully wild himself. But now… Oh God now that passion came close to overwhelming her.

  She should have been scared, overcome by his power. But instead, she wanted to pull him closer, to demand more. The more that she knew she could never have again, despite being sure that his man was unlike any other. She wanted all of his touch, all of his self.

  All of him.

  All of his love.

  With that thought, she was able to push herself away. It took every last bit of willpower, and left her feeling like an oyster she’d once eaten—naked and weak and wiggly. She gasped, and then gasped again, trying to decide if she was mortified at the thought of kissing him in a museum where anyone could have seen them , or at the realization that she wanted nothing more than to go back into his arms to do it again.

  She couldn’t. She couldn’t do it to him.

  It was bad enough that he’d come, and had spent a beautiful day with her. It was bad enough to be reminded of all that she’d lost, lost for both of them. It was bad enough to see how badly he’d been hurt. By her.

  But now she knew what it felt like to be kissed by him. To kiss him back. She knew, and that knowing made what she had to do even harder. That kiss had made her dream impossible dreams about the way things could have been. Things that couldn’t be because of her stupidity, of her self-centered refusal to admit that she might not know best.

  Suddenly, she couldn’t stand the loss. Whereas minutes before his nearness had made her stomach turn over in anticipation, now it clenched in sorrow. She was going to be sick.

  Backing away, trying not to see his frustrated expression and the desire behind those eyes, she raised her hand to her lips. Felt the warmth and delicious bruising he’d caused.

  “Excuse me.” She tried to say more, but the words caught in her throat. She turned and fled the room then, leaving him standing there.

  Alone.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Damn. She’d left him. She’d gone all soft against him, and then ran off and left him, before he’d had a chance to put words to all of his thoughts. Before he’d had the chance to tell her what he was feeling.

  Exactly like when she’d left him in Cheyenne.

  That kiss, though. That kiss had been something else. He was glad that she’d been the one to push away, to break it off…because he didn’t think that he could have ended it. As it was, her desertion had given him the time he’d needed to get his raging arousal under control, by taking deep breaths and thinking about snow and ice and other extremely cold things. It didn’t do a lot of good. He’d found a bench in an out-of-the-way corner—not that there were many people in all of the museum, a small favor he was thankful for—and let his head fall back against the smooth stone.

  It took quite a while before he figured he could face her again, without grabbing her and kissing the daylights out of her. Again. By that time, he figured she should have been composed too. He had a vague plan of taking her out to dinner before returning her to the Blakely house. He figured he could handle it, as long as they sat on opposite sides of the table. And he tried not to look into those amazing eyes of hers. And he thought about blizzards and snowbanks and whatnot.

  When another ten minutes had passed, and she still hadn’t returned, Nate gave up waiting. He was making his way towards the women’s washroom—not that he had any idea what to do once he got there—when a horrible suspicion entered his mind, and he detoured to the front of the museum. Sure enough, her coat, hat and muff were gone from the attendant’s room.

  “The young lady with the blue coat; when did she leave?”

  The skinny little man behind the counter looked down his nose at Nate—which was impressive, considering Nate stood half a head taller—and sneered slightly. “Almost a half-hour ago, sir.”

  Despite his disdain, Nate tipped the man for his duster and hat. He’d discovered long ago that being rude to people who scorned him for his skin color just confirmed their opinion.

  Of course there was no sign of Wendy out on the street, but the streetcar track told him that she could have easily escaped back to the Blakelys’. She was independent enough, stubborn enough, to go alone. That realization didn’t stop him from cursing and kicking a snowbank in frustration… a move he regretted when he had to ride back to the boardinghouse with a wet pant leg.

  He decided against going to the Blakelys’ house. He didn’t know if he could face her again so soon after that kiss, and he wanted to have some time to think about what she’d told him. About that ridiculous idea that she wasn’t worthy of him, for some reason.

  For his entire life, Nate had known that he was less than the people around him, because of his Indian blood. It was something he just lived with, had grown to accept. When he’d been younger, he’d complained to Ash—there hadn’t been anyone to listen to him before Ash had adopted him—that it wasn’t fair. He only had one Indian grandparent, but he looked the way he did. Ash had just shrugged, and rumpled his hair, and told him that life wasn’t fair.

  Nate smiled grimly. His big brother was right. If life were fair, he wouldn’t be sitting by himself, nursing a whiskey and thinking about the way she’d walked out on him again.

  “Penny for your thoughts, sugar?”

  Mrs. Gardner swept into the darkened parlor, and began to poke the embers of the fireplace back to life. She threw another log on the fire, and then, satisfied with the cheery blaze, turned to him, wiping her hands on her apron.

  When she realized he hadn’t answered, she narrowed her eyes at him. “I said—”

  “I heard you, ma’am.” Nate took another drink. “Just trying to decide if they’re worth a penny.”

  “Oh, don’t be so mopey, honey. Go on and tell Big Liz what’s wrong.” She winked at him, and pouring herself a glass of the whiskey, sat in the wingback chair beside his.

  Ash had always teased him about the way older women seemed to find Nate irresistible. Nate couldn’t argue; he was confounded himself. Between the Selkirk sisters’ coy banter, Eve’s decadent possessiveness, and “Big Liz” Gardner’s flirtation, he seemed like a magnet for well-meaning older ladies. Of course, Mrs. Gardner was a bit older than most. Still, from the moment he’d taken a room at her boardinghouse, she’d laid claim to him.

  “Just thinking.”

  “Let me guess.” She sat back and gave him a calculating stare, and he was a disconcerted at her attention. “It’s about a woman. You don’t understand her.”

  Nate narrowed his eyes. Mrs. Gardner was still beautiful, even after a lifetime of hard work, but there was no way she could have known that about him. Was there? “How’d you figure that?”

  Her bark of laughter was more of a guffaw, with none of Eve’s tinkling falseness. “Because, honey, the only reason a man drinks alone is a woman. And there’s not a man alive who really understands us.” She threw back the whiskey, and poured herself more. It came from her liquor cabinet, after all. She stared at the bottle for a moment, lost in thought. “But for some reason, you keep marrying us.”

  “You were ma
rried.”

  She blinked, and tossed him a smile that wrinkled the skin around her eyes. “Two and a half times, darlin’!”

  “And a half?”

  “Well, that last time he didn’t really do right by me, did he? But after almost twenty-five years with Mr. Gardner, I didn’t need another husband.”

  Nate couldn’t help but be drawn to the woman’s frankness. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Another laugh. “Don’t be! He’s still alive and kicking, out in that God-blessed land of Utah.” She smiled down at the liquor in her glass. “He and the rest of those Mormons didn’t really approve of my lifestyle, and he never gave me any kids.” She shrugged and took another drink. “Not from lack of trying, which I figure means it’s my fault. So I gave them all a fond farewell, and headed south with someone new. Then when he died, I came back this way—I was born and raised here, you know—to open this place. I like it, because after half a lifetime in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a bunch of other wives and their kids, it’s nice to meet new and interesting people.” She reached across the small table between them, and patted Nate’s leg. “And here I don’t have to share.”

  The twinkle in her eye caused Nate to burst into laughter. It felt good. He saluted her with his glass, and she smiled in response.

  “Now that I’ve dragged you from your melancholy, tell me what’s troubling you. Maybe I can help.” She winked. “I have had quite a lot of experience, you know.”

  He smiled, the laughter having eased some of the tightness in his chest. “I told you I was here to try to fetch my sister-in-law home.”

  “Back to Wyoming?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But that’s not the whole truth, is it?”

  The woman must really know a lot about human nature. Or be a good guesser. “No.” He sighed, and took another sip of the whiskey, liking the way it burned on the way down. “No, and she’s my sister-in-law’s sister, really. We grew up together, I’ve known her for years. And somewhere along the way, I went and fell in love with her.”