A Texas Rescue Christmas

by Caro Carson

  Kendry started to hook up Rebecca’s ECG again in a far more discreet way than the first woman had done it.

  “Now I see how you were able to get Dr. MacDowell to come see me when the other doctor was held up,” Rebecca said.

  Kendry winked. “I try not to throw my weight around, but sometimes, I just need to get things done.”

  Trey raised an eyebrow at Jamie. “Your ER? Your rules?”

  Jamie shrugged. “Happy wife, happy life.” He clapped Jamie on the shoulder and opened the door to leave. “You’ll see.”

  All that new, friendly easiness left Trey’s expression. Rebecca wondered where it went.

  * * *

  Sit up straight, Becky, for God’s sake. Never behave like you think you are an imposition. Act like you belong here. Of course we should be included.

  Her mother’s advice was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Becky felt as if she was imposing—no, not Becky; it’s Rebecca now. Rebecca felt as if she was imposing because she was imposing. She was an uninvited guest, no matter how gracious her hosts were being.

  She had no choice but to accept their hospitality. She had absolutely nowhere to go, except the ranch house. She had nowhere she wanted to be, except with Trey, so she sat quietly, squashed in the backseat of Aunt June’s car. She could do this, even without her mother. She’d done it so many times before.

  Aunt June drove through the rain. Temperatures were above freezing, so the rain stayed wet and didn’t turn to treacherous ice. June chatted away, pointing out a winery and raving about its gourmet olive oil as if Rebecca had come to Texas Hill Country to see the sights. At last, they passed the first of the simple crossbar gates that marked the highway that led to the James Hill Ranch.

  “I don’t mind telling you, young man,” June began, glancing at Trey, “that it’s a good thing your parents left on their own cruise after seeing Luke and Patricia off on theirs. When they check in, they’ll find out you’re already safe at the same time they hear you were missing overnight. You gave me enough gray hairs, charging out into that awful weather the way you did. I’m glad we’ll spare your mother some.”

  She glanced in the rearview mirror at Rebecca. “How about you, honey? Do you need to tell your folks that you’re safe now, or did they let you make a call from the hospital?”

  Rebecca folded her hands in her lap. “Everything is just fine, thank you.”

  Trey was riding shotgun next to his aunt because he could not fit in the backseat. He was simply too large. In the cold light of day, Rebecca could see that he was at least six-four, with broad shoulders and long, strong legs that had carried her with long, strong strides across frozen ground. She loved the size of him, but it prevented him from sitting with her, so she was in the backseat, smiling politely at Emily’s sincere attempts to carry on a conversation. Inside, however, her mother’s warnings were relentless.

  You must find out who really owns this house. Who was the last woman to stay here, and how long did she last? Why did she leave, or was she kicked out?

  June and Emily had been the ones who’d insisted Rebecca come back to the house. Trey had been silent, wrapping the Navajo blanket around her before carrying her to the wheelchair so her feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Her feet looked normal, but the next few days would tell how bad any frostbite had been. Her feet might blister. They might peel, and if they did, it would pass. But they might turn green or black, and if that happened, she was to return to the ER immediately.

  June and Emily had practically given her the socks off their feet when they heard that. They really couldn’t be nicer people. The problem was, they didn’t own the house, and Trey, who hadn’t said a word, lived in Oklahoma.

  Rebecca felt uneasy. She and her mother had settled in with a man in Virginia once, in an area full of mansions and equestrian facilities. Rebecca had loved her new school and was looking forward to an entire semester in one place...maybe more. Maybe for a year or two, if Mother’s boyfriend popped the question.

  Then the boyfriend’s mother had found out that he’d let them move in, and Rebecca’s mother had found out that although he lived there alone, he didn’t own the house. His mother did. Becky and her mother had come home in the boyfriend’s car from a shopping excursion to find their bags packed and lined up in the driveway.

  Her mother had kept the car and the shopping bags, but never again did they move into a house without the owner’s invitation. The real owner.

  They were still a long way from the James Hill Ranch. Rebecca was smiling politely and worrying silently. Emily was telling her she’d already brought her suitcases in from her rental car, so she could just jump into a warm shower when they got home. June was describing all the catered wedding food that could be heated up without any problem at all.

  Trey said, “A rescue swimmer.”

  Silence filled the little car.

  I say things without thinking, Trey had told her in the dark. She’d thought he meant something different.

  “Did you say swimmer, honey?” his aunt asked.

  Trey cleared his throat and made a vague gesture out the window toward a distant barn. “Texas Rescue sent a rescue swimmer to get us. All this ice and snow and rain are going to cause flash floods and drownings. That’s why they sent a rescue swimmer. In case...”

  In case my corpse was floating downstream somewhere.

  “James Waterson the third, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Don’t even say things like that. Look at Becky’s face. She’s as white as a ghost.”

  “I am?” Rebecca was startled to be the topic of conversation when she’d been being good, which meant being silent.

  Trey turned around in his seat to see her. “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged, the good guest. “I was so busy being cold, drowning never crossed my mind.”

  Trey shot a look at his aunt. “I was thinking about cattle, not Rebecca.”

  Rebecca felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. “I feel another cow analogy coming on.”

  Trey briefly smiled at her.

  She fell silent again, shy because she’d teased Trey in front of the two women.

  He looked back out the window at the passing ranch land. “The cattle were herded into the gullies to get out of the wind. Now they gotta get driven right back out, before the water rises, or we’ll be lassoing a bunch of heifers and hauling them out of the water. This time of year, they’re heavy with calves. It’ll be hard on the horses.”

  June started to laugh. “Oh, Trey, you’re such a rancher. You’re as bad as my father, always tyin’ every lovin’ thing back to his ranch.”

  Rebecca kept her gaze on his profile, devouring the sight of him when she couldn’t touch him, although his expression was hard, his mouth tight.

  “I’m sure Gus is on it,” he said. “They’re probably out there right now, driving them in this rain.”

  That sounded like some of the hardest, coldest, most miserable work Rebecca could imagine, yet Trey sounded almost wistful.

  “Not you, Trey,” Aunt June said, patting his knee after she turned on her blinker to turn into the James Hill. “You’re going to eat some hot food and take a hot shower and get some sleep. You’ve already rescued your heifer for the day.”

  Rebecca liked his aunt’s maternal tone, as sweetly bossy as anything she’d ever heard on a wholesome television show, but Emily slapped her palm into her forehead.

  “Mom! You just called Becky a heifer.”

  The women chuckled, Rebecca being sure to chuckle politely, too, as the good guest who didn’t take offense, but Trey said, “She goes by Rebecca.”

  His hard expression didn’t change as they rattled over the cattle guard and headed to someone else’s home.

  Chapter Twelve

  The house belonged to Patricia Cargill and
Luke Waterson.

  One look at the new master bedroom suite, and Rebecca knew whose elegance it reflected. This had to be Patricia’s home.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Emily said. “My aunt and uncle—Luke’s parents—were going to switch rooms with Luke when he got engaged. Since he lives here all the time, they were going to give him the master bedroom suite, and they were going to move into his bedroom. They’re only here for roundup and Christmas and such, you know. But your sister, she insisted they keep the master, and she and Luke built this addition for themselves. That’s one smart woman. I could live in here.”

  She’s not really my sister, Rebecca almost said.

  When someone has a good impression of you, for God’s sake, don’t correct them. Her mother had trained her too well. Letting people assume she was a Cargill was how Becky survived.

  Rebecca didn’t know any other way to get a free place to stay. Rebecca had no job, no money and only a few blue suitcases. Rebecca would have to continue being Becky for a while.

  She showered under a rainfall spout, blew her hair dry at a vanity that reminded her of Dr Pepper and red lipstick, and then opened her suitcase to find clean clothes.

  Christmas was only a few days away, but her mother had packed her for a tropical island vacation, if entertaining Hector Ferrique was a vacation. Rebecca craved holiday chic, a sultry red sweater and black leather boots, but those clothes hung in Patricia’s closet. She didn’t feel right, using a woman’s things without her permission. All Becky had at her disposal were white capris and a pineapple print blouse that Audrey Hepburn would have looked girlishly adorable in.

  She pulled ballerina flats gingerly over her once-frozen toes, and tip-toed into the kitchen, ready to eat politely and stay invisible, so that no one would remember that she should really be looking for her own place to live.

  That’s how it’s done, Mother, I know.

  Emily had thoughtfully plugged Rebecca’s phone into a bedside radio that charged it, but Rebecca didn’t turn it on, and she didn’t check for messages. She already knew everything her mother had to tell her.

  * * *

  Trey was disappointed in Rebecca.

  He hadn’t known it was possible to think so highly of another person and yet be so disappointed. The Rebecca he thought so highly of, the Rebecca he would have loved for his aunt and uncle and cousin to meet, was hiding herself away.

  They called her Becky all day, and she never corrected them. She smiled a lot and said practically nothing, a pretty mouse of a woman, easy on the eyes, for certain, but easily overlooked.

  He was furious with her. Jamie had said she was in survival mode, but Trey knew there was no possible way her pulse was still one hundred and twenty. Hell, if she took a Valium to calm down, she’d be so sedate she might as well be that porcelain Christmas angel who never moved.

  She’d gone to bed hours ago in the pristine new bedroom Luke had built for himself and Patricia. Aunt June and her husband were in his parents’ master suite. Emily had taken Luke’s old bedroom, which meant Trey was back after a ten-year absence in the same room he’d always known.

  Company had obviously been using his bedroom over the past decade. His mother had converted it into a guest bedroom, taking down the Dallas Cowboys cheerleader posters and packing away the detritus of a teenage life. It was clean and masculine and comfortable, but she’d left the trophy shelf.

  Trey lay on top of the navy bedding, warm enough in a pair of loose flannel pants to go without a shirt. With his hands tucked underneath his head and his feet crossed at the ankles, he glared at the shapes of those trophies in the dark. Potential was what they’d represented. Nothing more, no guarantees. That potential was no more.

  But on the other side of the house, in a room built for a new marriage, lay a woman whose potential was limitless. She was young and smart and ready to break free from a bad situation, yet she was letting that potential go to waste. Since they’d returned to the house, she’d become a silent, decorative doll who wouldn’t assert herself, not even to ask people to call her by the right name.

  He was baffled. She had nothing to gain from hiding herself. Confusion fed his anger. The damned trophies fed his anger. The way his body ached for contact with Rebecca, the way his palms felt restless without her soft skin to soothe, fed his anger.

  The door opened, and an angel in a long white robe stepped inside. She shut the door and leaned back against it, glaring at him in the moonlight.

  “I can’t sleep,” Rebecca said, and it sounded like an accusation. “You put me in a room all by myself on the other side of the house.”

  She sounded as angry as he felt, and that fed his frustration, too.

  “You’re a big girl, Rebecca. You didn’t like the arrangements? Then you should have said something.”

  “I’m a guest.” She practically hissed the words at him. “Guests don’t refuse to sleep in the bed they’re offered. Was I supposed to tell your aunt that I wanted to shack up with you?”

  She had a point, but the fact that she did hardly helped Trey’s mood. “Did it occur to you to tell me you wanted to sleep with me? You’ve hardly said two words to me all evening.”

  “I’m a stranger here.”

  “Not to me. You could have talked to me.” Their time was limited, and Trey was mad that they’d wasted the afternoon and evening, nearly a whole day, not talking. “You barely made eye contact with me all evening, but now that you can’t sleep, you sneak in to see me.”

  “Oh!” Rebecca literally stamped her foot, whirled around and wrenched the door open. She was gone in a swirl of white fabric.

  Trey wasn’t sure he’d ever actually seen a woman mad enough to stamp her foot before. It had looked more adorable than fearsome on her, that perfect foot flashing through the fold of her robe, the foot that he’d warmed in his hands, the foot that might soon show signs of frostbite.

  His anger dissolved. What an idiot he was. By the time they’d arrived at the house, he’d been rattled by the chaos of the hospital, embarrassed by his screwups, infuriated by yet another normal CT scan and a doctor’s all-clear. He’d let his problems overshadow what mattered.

  Rebecca mattered, yet he’d made her angry enough to stamp that fragile foot.

  He headed after her, pulling on a T-shirt as he crossed the house. He was sure of where he was going, not only sure of where he was in the building, but sure that if Rebecca needed him, if she wanted him for any reason at all, he should be there for her. He burst into her room without knocking, catching her as she was about to turn off a bedside lamp by the four-poster bed.

  She turned to see him and left the lamp on.

  “I’m sorry,” Trey said. “Again. I swear, Rebecca, I’ve never needed to apologize to anyone more often than you, which sucks, because you are the one woman that I never want to hurt. I’m sorry. If you want to sleep with me, I’m all yours.”

  “Isn’t that magnanimous of you?” She lifted her chin at a haughty angle that would have fit the most regal queen. “I no longer require your services.”

  He looked at her, hard. “I think you do. I think you don’t want to be cold, and you don’t want to be alone, so we should sleep together, and that’s final.”

  She raised one brow and tapped her foot, that fragile foot, in irritation.

  Trey swallowed. “I’m not saying we have to have sex. We should share a bed to stay warm, because we’re used to that now. We’d both sleep better.”

  After a long moment, she untied her robe’s sash. “Fine, if that’s the way you want it.”

  She dropped the robe to the floor, and Trey almost went to his knees. She was dressed in a version of a Christmas baby doll nightie, an X-rated version. The red puffed sleeves were exaggerated, the ruffle on the edge of the hip-length dress was green, but the dress itself was sheer. The ti
nsel that tied under her breasts hid nothing. The outfit had a cute and innocent silhouette but revealed everything that would make a man want the opposite. It worked. Too well.

  “Where in the hell did you get that?” he demanded.

  “It was in my suitcase.”

  “Take it off.” It wasn’t a sensual request, not a bedroom demand. It was an order, barked out in anger.

  She frowned at him. “I thought you’d like it. It was meant to be an early Christmas present.”

  He drove his hand through his hair. “That’s a fantasy outfit chosen by someone else to please a different man with different tastes. I never want to see it on you again.”

  For one second, she looked devastated at his words. Before he could curse himself and apologize to her, she started advancing on him, anger replacing dismay in her expression. She poked him in the shoulder.

  “Listen. I’ve had a hard day. Make that two days. I’ve been scared out of my mind. I’ve been cold. I’ve been hungry. But the one bright spot has been you. I love being with you, but ever since we got to this house, you’ve been acting like you barely know me. Now you’re mad at me for wearing something I know good and well looks sexy. If you don’t want me anymore, Trey Waterson, just say so.”

  She’d never been more beautiful. This was sexy to him, this confidence, this will to challenge him.

  “I want you,” he growled. “I want you so bad it hurts, every minute.”

  “Then prove it.” She pushed him down on the bed and clambered over him. Within seconds, they were tearing off tinsel and T-shirts, breathing hard, kissing harder.

  Trey fought for clarity in the haze of desire. “Are you sure about this?”

  “About what?” she asked, backing off him to yank down his pants, her expression one of fierce concentration.