The Christmas Challenge

by Sinclair Jayne

  “Don’t be a pussy,” Colt said.

  “Foul! Time out!” Tucker advanced across the floor. “You can’t use that word to mean cowardice, Colt. Name one woman you know on this ranch who doesn’t have symbolic balls of steel. Talon stepping in to happily raise Parker and offer him a childhood filled with love on her own while working full time and going to school and opening her heart to you without a qualm. My sister, who recovered from a devastating injury that changed her life as she knew it, quit school to come home and take care of our dad and run the ranch without any fear or complaints and actually improved the stock and price of Triple T bulls? Your mother who raised two boys on her own and put herself through law school but never forgot the baby she’d never gotten to meet? Me who barrel races for a successful living and came home to help my sister even though I knew I was the last person she wanted to see and that everyone in town would watch each move I’d made. Then I went after Laird in a dress even though I’ve never driven a snowmobile in my life? Oh. No. You don’t get the throw the P-word around.”

  She crossed her arms. “Pussies are amazing. They bring life into the world. They can make a man feel like he’s in heaven. Really? That’s going to be an insult word?”

  Laird closed the distance between them, one arm snaking around Tucker’s waist, claiming her, but he stayed on the balls of his feet because he didn’t know Colt enough to trust him yet. He admired him. Felt a tenuous connection. Tucker leaned back against him, and he liked how she always responded to him as a man. Connected then.

  Colt watched her impassively, his golden eyes cool and watchful, mostly looking at Laird.

  He saw him as a threat. Good. Compliment. Understanding.

  “You made your point,” he said. “What word should I use for someone who’s ball-less?” He looked at Laird, just the slightest bit of challenge in his eyes, and everything inside Laird rose up.

  Tucker thought about it. Her mouth quirked.

  “Limp dick,” she said. She turned her head to look back at him, her green eyes dancing. “And you don’t want me thinking that, Laird, since it’s officially Christmas Eve in about,” she grabbed his wrist and turned it so she could see his watch. “Two hours. And I have plans.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They sat in the stripped down living room. Furniture only. And Christmas decorations. The tree loomed large. Laird hadn’t wanted to come back, but he’d manned up. This was why he’d come to Marietta. To learn. To understand. To meet his twin if he or she had survived.

  That was a massive understatement.

  “Explain,” Samara Wilder said, her hands folded in her lap like she was a kid in church.

  Laird didn’t know where to start.

  “Start at the beginning,” Tucker said, her feet tucked under his butt.

  “I was born on Christmas Eve in Marietta thirty years ago.”

  Colt’s head came up, his golden eyes pierced through Laird, searching for something. “An OR nurse at the hospital, Elizabeth Anderson, ended up adopting me. She moved to Bend, Oregon, where she was from as soon as the adoption was finalized. She said that I was a fraternal twin. She didn’t know the name of my birth mother. She hadn’t asked. The girl had been a minor, a Jane Doe who’d been in a car accident on a mountain highway outside of town. One of the placentas had separated and she nearly died on the way to the hospital and the other twin nearly died as well. That twin was airlifted to a larger, more advanced hospital.”

  Laird felt like a newscaster. Like it was someone else’s story. Tucker slipped her hand in his and he held on, but still stared at the fire, not at any of them.

  “My adoptive mom was kind. She’d wanted children but had never married. But she was not curious. She never found out if the other baby had survived. She never tried to meet the birth mother. I think she knew what she was doing was wrong, a quick adoption signed off by the girl’s father who said the father was unknown and that the girl hadn’t planned to keep the babies.”

  “That’s a lie,” Samara leaned forward. “Of course I would never give my baby away. That’s why when I realized I was pregnant, I contacted Heli and he came for me and we ran away. My father was cruel. We fought always. Heli wanted to take me away from all of that. He left town to follow the rodeo to earn money so we could be together. He wanted me to finish high school, but when my periods stopped I told him we had to go now. Heli wanted to get married, but I was too young. No judge would do it, not even in Vegas, so he wanted to come back to Marietta to talk to my dad. He thought with it being Christmas Eve my father would be more willing to agree and sign off on the marriage. I argued. I knew my dad never budged, and he’d never forgive Heli’s father for running off with his wife.”

  Laird finally looked at her. His birth mother. She had to be. She was beautiful. Looked nothing like him. But he did look like Colt. And Luke. Kane as well, although he looked more like his mom than any of them.

  “Heliodoro Aleixo deSilva. Luke and Colt’s father. He was not a criminal although everyone said he was. He was the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and he was magic on the back of any horse or any bull. His name meant ‘gift from the sun’ in Portuguese, and he was my light, and he said he couldn’t breathe without me.”

  Samara lifted the ring in her clenched fist and pressed the ring to her lips.

  “I still don’t know how you got my ring. Your mother stole it from me. Heli made it as a promise ring.”

  “She said another nurse gave it to her. Mauri Price. She was an OB nurse and she was very sweet and romantic and spiritual. She was upset that the teenage mom wouldn’t get to see her babies,” Laird wanted to finish the story. Get it out. Figure out what it meant. “The girl in the accident was bleeding heavily and rushed into surgery for a C-section to try to save her life and the baby’s life, but when they opened her womb, she was carrying twins. They’d had to take off the jewelry she was wearing, a necklace with the ring and a pendant.”

  He heard Talon suck in her breath.

  “The pendant was the same style as the ring. The nurse gave the jewelry to the girl’s father, but he didn’t even look at it. He threw it in the trash. She retrieved it, and then when she learned that the other baby was going to be Life Flighted, she put the envelope with the pendant with the baby’s paperwork. She gave my mom the necklace and the ring. My mom said that Mauri then said a prayer over both pieces of the jewelry that they would reunite both of the children with their mother someday. My mom never told me I was adopted. I only learned when I tried to donate a kidney after she had a severe car accident. My mom finally confessed and then, when I was caring for her during hospice, she gave me the ring and told me the story. She’d wanted to throw the ring away, but she was very religious and was afraid because of the prayer that her friend had said.”

  Tucker now had both arms around him.

  Samara stared at him, shaking her head back and forth. “Colt had the pendant. He gave it to his wife when he had to go away and wasn’t sure he could come back.”

  Talon pulled a necklace out from the bodice of her wedding dress. Laird looked around at the entire group. His family. He’d come to Marietta for answers and the first person he’d met he’d fallen in love with, and she had led him to his family.

  “Colt got this as a child hidden in a wooden puzzle box. He didn’t know it had this inside until he was fourteen. It has an inscription.”

  “‘You are my world. You are my blood,’” Samara didn’t even look at it. “It’s Portuguese. The ring says, ‘Our blood bonds through eternity.’

  “But there was only one baby,” Samara whispered. “I was so scared to eat until Heli came in case my dad guessed. Even when I was getting close to what I thought was my due date, I wasn’t that big. I couldn’t have been carrying twins.”

  “Mom,” Luke finally spoke. “Did you go to a doctor when you were pregnant?”

  “Of course not. My dad would have found out. And then Heli was riding so hard, so many rodeos and then going
to fights at night where men would bet on him to earn extra money, I was not going to ask him for money for a doctor. I was young. Let nature takes its course. His fighting scared me to death. I hated him getting hurt even though he was an amazing fighter.” For a moment her eyes softened, went dreamy. Then she stiffened. “I was so sick all the time. Couldn’t keep anything down. No fun at all, but he always was so kind and took care of me. Did things he didn’t want to do to take care of us. He was so happy about the baby, but other teenage boys would have been mad. He was only nineteen. All the cowboys told him to dump me. Laughed at him for dragging me around to all the rodeos. He didn’t care. He wanted to get married. He was stubborn. Finally wore me down. And then we went to Marietta. I remember a car in front of us hit ice, spun around, and hit a guard rail, and Heli steered our truck out of the danger, but the car bounced back and hit us into another car. I remember the sound of metal and brakes and lights and then Heli pulling me out into the snow. He wrapped me in his coat, and he had blood all over him. He was holding me and the snow was falling and then I woke up days later, and I had no Heli, no baby, and my jewelry was gone.”

  Laird suddenly found himself fighting the urge to laugh. “My adoptive mother always said it was the hand of God who brought me to her. She was so religious I felt like she was being literal. It was really a car skidding on ice.”

  “It was the hand of my father,” Samara sat forward, her face suddenly animated by fury. “He gave you away. Both of you. His own blood. And lied. And cheated all of us. And stole. All the things he accused Heli of. He ruined his reputation. Dragged his name through the dirt and mud and mine too. Tried to have him arrested for sexual misconduct with a minor when I was thirteen when Heli had done nothing more than talk to me.

  “My father told me Heli had died in the crash. And the baby too. He stole our lives,” she whispered. “He’s a thief of lives. And there he sits. Alone on his ranch. A thief of love and of life. I didn’t even know what had happened to Heli for almost a year. My father had had him arrested at the hospital for domestic violence. Then he was deported. It took him a year to get back to me. We ran away again to try to find our baby. Heli had gone to the hospital and saw the baby alive but before he could hold our child, the police arrested him. But at least he knew our child was alive. We just didn’t know there had been two.”

  She shot to her feet. “I am going to kill him.”

  “Not tonight, Mom,” Luke put his arms around her and sat her down again. “Tonight you are going to sit with all of your sons.”

  *

  Laird stood in the center of the room, a magnum of champagne in his hand that was not yet empty. The Christmas Eve celebration had started off somber, but Tucker had pulled out the champagne magnum after the first awkward stabs at conversation and soon the conversation relaxed a little. Laird still felt stunned. He’d hugged his mom. She’d hugged him back and cried. They’d all made a small dinner, opened a few presents, and then had staggered off to an early bed. Luke and Tanner had planned to sleep at the Graff, but wanted to stay with the family.

  “Best wedding night ever,” Luke had said after they’d switched to beer. “In a weird Wilder way.” The four brothers had toasted and then just stared at each other. Like awkward teens.

  He felt sad and happy at the same time.

  “Hey, Wilder,” Tucker came out of the bathroom wearing a sheer emerald green robe that seemed to float around her body and he could catch glimpses of a matching lacy bra and panties. “Can I call you that?”

  “Hell yeah,” he said, staring at her. “Damn, Tucker, you don’t even look real you are so beautiful.”

  Tucker took the champagne bottle, took a swig, offered him one, and then put it down on the table.

  “You’re cut off for the rest of tonight because I need you sober in three minutes.”

  “Mostly sober,” he said. “But why three minutes?” he asked, closing the distance and reaching for her, but she held her hand up. Stop. Shook her head making her curls tumble around her shoulders invitingly.

  “You need to wait,” she said.

  He swore. Tucker laughed. “Two minutes yet?”

  He looked at his watch. “I could lie.”

  “Better never lie to me.”

  “I won’t.”

  She reached for his shirt and pulled it off. She sucked in a breath and her hands drifted over him.

  “Definitely promising,” he said reaching for her again.

  “Nope. This is my gig.” She traced his muscles with her tongue while her hands palmed down him, settled on the buttons of his jeans and pulled them apart one by one.

  He moaned her name and hissed when his underwear followed.

  “Is this my present?” he asked.

  Tucker smiled. “You have to find it.”

  He looked at her. His eyes flared and his freed cock jerked in anticipation. Moisture beaded and Tucker swirled it around the tip of his erection, her eyes holding his.

  “Are you my present?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He looked over her shoulder then back at her. “Is it on you?”

  She nodded and smiled.

  Confusion rippled across his features, quickly replaced with lust and curiosity.

  “Can I touch now?”

  “How much time?”

  “Fuck, Tucker.” His hands shook and he had to restrain himself. The cords on his neck were more prominent.

  “No. You and I will make love. Always.”

  Tucker reached under her underwear and touched herself and drew her slick finger out. It glistened in the soft light of the apartment.

  He took her finger and brought it to his mouth. Licked her clean.

  “I want more,” he said. “All of it.”

  She watched the digital signal count down, slowly shrugging out of her robe. Then she slipped off her bra straps. Laird made a sound deep in his throat, and she could see him strain toward her.

  “Are you ready for your gift?”

  “Yes.”

  “On your knees.”

  Laird dropped. His hands already ripping off the fragile panties. He stopped. Stared. Very close to her pubis was a tattoo in red ink. Yes. In cursive. And today’s date, actually yesterday’s date.

  “Tucker?” With trembling fingers he traced the word and then his hand cupped her mound, his thumb stroked her sensitive nub, and now Tucker started to tremble.

  “What are you saying?” He looked up at her, his face raw with emotion.

  “I’m saying yes to you now. I figured a tattoo was a pretty definitive statement.”

  Still on his knees he pulled her close, pressed his face against her abdomen.

  “I love you Tucker. I promise…” She put a finger against his lips.

  “You don’t need to promise me anything. Just give me your best effort each day, and I’ll give you mine.”

  He began to press kisses against her stomach and lower.

  “Laird, ask me again.”

  She lowered her hand and opened it. In her palm lay the ring that had been his birth mother’s promise ring.

  “She gave it back to me. She said that even though the pendant and ring had been given in love and had been hers, they had brought you and Colt back to her so they were yours to pass on so you would always have the love.”

  “Tucker will you marry me?”

  She dropped down beside him. Let him put the ring back on her finger.

  “Yes,” she said. “I want to be your always and forever.”

  The End

  If you enjoyed The Christmas Challenge, you’ll love the next book in the….

  Wilder Brother series

  Book 1: Seducing the Bachelor

  Buy Now!

  Book 2: Want Me, Cowboy

  Buy Now!

  Book 3: The Christmas Challenge

  View the entire series here

  Book 4: Coming soon

  About the Author

  Sinclair Jayne has loved reading r
omance novels since she discovered Barbara Cartland historical romances when she was in sixth grade. By seventh grade, she was haunting the library shelves looking to fall in love over and over again with the heroes born from the imaginations of her favorite authors. After teaching writing classes and workshops to adults and teens for many years in Seattle and Portland, she returned to her first love of reading romances and became an editor for Tule Publishing last year.

  Sinclair lives in Oregon’s wine country where she and her family own a small vineyard of Pinot Noir and where she dreams of being able to write at a desk like Jane Austen instead of in parking lots waiting for her kids to finish one of their 12,000 extracurricular activities. …

  Find her on Twitter@SinclairJayne1

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