The Cowboy's Christmas Family

by Donna Alward

  “Hey, hold up,” Tanner called, and Cole reined in a little, allowing Tanner to catch up to him.

  “A cup of coffee is sure gonna be good,” Tanner said, hunching his shoulders. “It’s a cold one today.” The white cloud of his breath seemed to hang in the air as he spoke.

  The mention of coffee reminded Cole that Maddy was going to be at the house when they went in. God, he was so mixed up about that. Not even twenty-four hours ago he’d resolved that nothing could happen. He’d been certain they would be just friends—and then he ended up kissing her under the mistletoe and asking her to dinner.

  Was it the challenge? Maybe Tanner was right and Cole was wrong. He looked over at his brother and took a deep breath. They didn’t usually talk about this sort of thing. But he found he needed a sounding board, and Tanner, for all his faults, was not one to judge.

  “Hey, Tanner? What you said yesterday, about me getting bored with women... Do you think I’m interested in Maddy just because she’s, well, she’s hard work?”

  “So she hasn’t fallen into your arms at the snap of your fingers?”

  Cole wondered if it was possible to blush when he was this cold. “Be serious.”

  “I am serious. This is about Roni, isn’t it? You never got over her leaving you.”

  The words stung. “That was a long time ago, Tanner. Granted, I’m not in a hurry to give someone the ammunition to hurt me, but there’s nothing wrong with being cautious.”

  Tanner started laughing. “Cole, this is the first time I’ve seen you tying yourself in knots over a woman in years.”

  “Glad you think it’s funny.” He wiggled his fingers inside his gloves, relieved when the barn came into view.

  “I think it’s awesome. What’s funny is that you don’t get it.”

  “Don’t get what?”

  “Why it’s so hard for you. Cole, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have a bit of a rescue complex.”

  Cole frowned and looked over at Tanner. His brother seemed serious now, no laughing at all. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Tanner sighed. “I know you loved Roni, but what you really loved was being her knight in shining armor. Or leather, as the case may be.” He smiled briefly at his own joke. “Roni’s life growing up was rough. We all know that. You swept in and tried to take care of her and make everything better. And for a while it worked and you guys were happy. But it wasn’t enough to base forever on, you know?”

  “What was I supposed to do, then? Not help?” Hell, Tanner knew little about it. Roni’s mom had been abused by her husband before they split up. They’d had hardly any money, and Roni hated being at home. She used to say that it smelled like stale cigarettes and disappointment.

  “Of course not. But it’s not your job to fix things for everyone, either. You can’t take all that on yourself. After a while it...”

  He hesitated.

  “It what?”

  The air was clear, so for a few moments the only sound on the wind was the steady but muffled clopping sound of hooves on hard-packed snow and dirt. “You mean well. But it can make the person on the receiving end feel like a burden. Or...well, incapable. Like you don’t trust them to fix things for themselves.”

  That was a little too insightful for it to be out of the blue or off-the-cuff. “Do I do that to you, Tan?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Maybe a little. I know you’re the responsible one and I’m the goof-off, but I can handle more than you think.”

  Cole didn’t know what to say. Tanner was younger than he was. He’d always felt protective and responsible for him, but maybe he’d been too protective. Looking back, he realized Tanner had tried a lot of unexpected things. Like his brief marriage, and doing his EMT training. “I’ve held you back, haven’t I?” He felt like a heel even asking.

  “Hell, Cole, you’re my big brother. You just... Well, you cast a long shadow sometimes. It makes it hard to live up to, so I acted out a bit from time to time.” Tanner’s sideways grin was back, though, and Cole felt relief slide through him. His brother didn’t harbor hard feelings, at least.

  “Anyway,” Tanner finished, “hopefully I’ve grown up enough to figure out it’s not a competition.”

  “I never realized,” Cole said, shifting in his saddle. The leather creaked in the cold.

  “Of course you didn’t. The thing is, Roni was young and at a disadvantage, and you were a little older and had your shit together. At first I bet it was really great. But in the end it was probably too much, you know? I know the breakup hurt you. You felt like you gave her everything and she threw it back in your face.”

  That was it exactly.

  “The problem is,” Tanner informed him, “that you’re doing the same thing with Maddy. Riding to her rescue. But you’re also guarding your heart and it’s creating this tug-of-war that’s driving you crazy.”

  Cole tugged on the reins and halted the horse. “Shit.”

  Tanner stopped, too. “What?”

  Cole let out a sigh, a cloud of breath puffing in the air before his face. “Do I really do that? Try to fix everything?”

  Tanner rested his reining hand on the saddle horn and lifted his other hand, raising his fingers as he itemized the list.

  “You offered her the job at the house, even though we could have managed just fine until Mom and Dad got home. You put new tires on her car. You bought her a Christmas tree. You bought her dinner and then went back to help her decorate the tree. I’m running out of fingers here, Cole, and it’s only been a few weeks.”

  “Am I wrong to want to help?” He suspected his brother had hit the nail on the head, too. Every time he found himself getting close to Maddy, he backed off in a hurry. Only to discover he couldn’t seem to stay away.

  Tanner nudged his mount, starting along the lane again. “Are you wrong? No, of course not. You’re a good, generous, upstanding guy. I like Maddy, and I told you that. But you might want to sort out why you’re doing it. Is it because you need to be needed? Or do you really, honestly care about her?”

  They were quiet for a while as they rode back to the ranch yard. They were nearly to the barn when Cole spoke up. “Hey, Tanner? How’d you get so smart about that stuff?”

  Tanner looked back at him, but the expression on his face was tight and grim. “We’re cut from the same cloth, or didn’t you realize that? You’re not the only one in the family to mistake how someone feels. For me it was Britt. For you it was Roni. It makes a man a little gun-shy.”

  Cole thought about Tanner’s most public mistake—his brief Vegas marriage a few years back. Now he volunteered as an EMT and helped people that way. Cole had always thought it was rather noble of his brother, but now he wondered if it was something else. A form of rebellion, perhaps, or Tanner’s way to help people while keeping himself detached from them on a personal level.

  Either way, Tanner had given him lots to think about.

  They were at the barn now and they halted, each dismounting quietly and gathering reins in their hands to lead the horses inside. “Hey, thanks for being a sounding board this morning,” Cole said as he tied the gelding and reached for the cinch strap.

  “That’s what brothers are for,” Tanner answered, and clapped a hand on Cole’s shoulder in solidarity before moving away. “But that’s enough of the touchy-feely crap for one day. When’s the farrier due out again?”

  The subject was changed and the focus returned to ranch operations—at least for the time being. When lunchtime arrived, the strange, weightless feeling returned to Cole’s stomach, simply from knowing that Maddy was waiting inside.

  And he still had no idea what he was going to do about it.

  Chapter Ten

  The morning at Cole’s was the most difficult Maddy had had yet.

  Luke appeared
to be teething, and his slight fever and whiny temperament grated on Maddy’s nerves. She tried cooling teething rings and numbing gel, which only created more drool until she simply left a bib around his neck all the time to keep his clothing dry. Baby acetaminophen helped after a while, and he crashed on the floor on the blanket, but by then Liam was bored of being by himself and begged for attention. Trying to get the sheets washed and the beds made up was nearly impossible, and she burned the first pan of cookies she baked and needed to open a window to let out the smoky stench. By noon she was ready to pull her hair out, but at least she’d managed the bedding and baked the rest of the cookies without incident, and there was a batch of spaghetti sauce on the stove so Cole and Tanner just had to make pasta for dinner.

  And then she realized she hadn’t made lunch. For anyone. And she had to get the boys to day care and be at work by one.

  When Cole came in, she was frantically flipping grilled cheese sandwiches on a griddle and stirring tomato soup on the stove. “I’m so sorry,” she said, pushing the hair off her face that had come out of her ponytail. “Luke is teething and Liam’s clingy and I lost track of time...”

  “Relax,” he said, walking into the kitchen and taking the spatula from her hands. “Tanner’s making a quick run into the hardware store, so it’s just me. And you’ve got four sandwiches on the go.” He checked his watch. “Besides, weren’t you supposed to be out of here soon?”

  She checked her watch. Twelve twenty. “Dammit,” she muttered, reaching for a plate. “I’m sorry, Cole. I should have had this done and cleaned up for you.”

  “Maddy. It’s fine. Have you and the boys eaten?”

  She shook her head as she rushed around, slamming things back into cupboards.

  “Here.” He shoved a sandwich into her hand. “Take two minutes and eat a sandwich. I can’t eat four. What do the boys need?”

  “I can leave their lunch at the day care. I don’t like to, but I can.”

  She looked at the sandwich. She shouldn’t, but it was a heck of a long time until dinner. She sighed, took a bite. Grilled cheese was perhaps the best comfort food on the planet. Something about crispy bread and butter and melted cheese just soothed.

  “See?” Cole took a bite and chewed about a quarter of one sandwich. “Food. Breathing. Necessities of life.”

  She swallowed. “Everything just seemed to work against me today.”

  He smiled. “Well, some days are like that. I can wash up from this. And there are cookies. And something in that pot over there. It’s all good.”

  She was chewing again. “Spaghetti sauce,” she said around her mouthful of sandwich. “And I stripped the beds and washed the sheets.”

  “Perfect. Finish that and I’ll dress the boys.”

  She wanted to protest, but he had already grabbed the blue and red suits and proceeded to put Liam’s on Luke. It didn’t matter. She shoved the rest of the sandwich into her mouth, wiped her hands and went to help.

  There was no time for anything remotely romantic or intimate or...anything. Maddy wasn’t sure if she was disappointed or relieved. She still had so many mixed feelings where Cole was concerned. Mostly that she liked him, probably too much, and felt as though she shouldn’t. And today he was acting as if nothing had ever happened between them. He was just being friendly and helpful and that was it.

  “There. All ready. Do you want some help getting them to the car?”

  “That’d be great, Cole. I really am sorry.”

  “Will you stop apologizing?” He shrugged into his coat and pulled on a pair of winter boots but left them untied. “Oh. And I forgot to pay you for last week.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some bills. “Here. Three days, right?”

  She hesitated, and he held out his hand. “Maddy, come on. You’re not cooking and cleaning in my house and not getting paid for it.” He shook the bills.

  When he put it like that, she couldn’t argue. It just felt strange and wrong, considering how they’d been kissing lately. Reluctantly she took the money and tucked it in her pocket. She swallowed against a tightness in her throat. It was almost as though those intimate moments between them had never happened at all.

  “Okay, slugger. Here we go.” Cole picked up Luke, shouldered the diaper bag and left Liam for Maddy. At the car he helped fasten them in and opened her door.

  It all happened so fast that she barely had time to breathe. At this rate she was going to get to work spooled up like a top.

  “Hey,” he said, standing in front of her door so she couldn’t get in. “Drive safely. Don’t speed, okay? Tanner’s been to too many accidents lately.”

  “I will.”

  “Nothing is so important that a few extra minutes will matter, you know?”

  Some of the tension left her body. “I know. This morning just got me all discombobulated.”

  “Okay. Oh, and you forgot something else, too.”

  “I did?” She ran her list through her mind. Yes, she’d hoped to do a bit more cleaning today, but what had she forgotten?

  He leaned forward and cupped his hand around her neck. “One of these,” he said, and touched his lips to hers.

  It only took a few seconds of delicious contact for her to melt against him. The tension in her muscles eased as he took his time, giving her a thorough goodbye kiss that would leave her body humming for a good long time.

  Their lips parted and she took a nice, slow breath. “That was nice.”

  “I know. You better now?”

  She looked up into his eyes, feeling slightly dazed but much calmer. “Yes, thank you.”

  He smiled. “Then get going. I’ll call you later.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  She got in the car and he shut the door behind her, then headed back to the house, his untied boots scuffing in the snow. She refused to worry about the time as she drove away. Five or ten minutes wasn’t going to get her fired, and she went in early or stayed late often enough that it bought her some leeway. She dropped off the boys at Sunshine Smiles, leaving instructions to give Luke another dose of medicine if he needed it and their containers of lunch that they’d missed. Then on to the library, where she quickly stowed her coat and bag and joined Eloise in the day’s work.

  “You look frazzled,” Eloise noted. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah.” Maddy smiled. “Crazy morning. And Luke’s teething.” She didn’t mention anything about Cole. No one knew she was working for him and she’d like to keep it that way.

  “That’ll try anyone’s patience,” Eloise replied with a sympathetic smile. “Why don’t you take a few minutes, grab a tea from the lunchroom?” Her gaze darted to Maddy’s hair. “Redo your ponytail.”

  “Oh, am I a mess? Darn it...”

  “Like I said, just a little frazzled. I’ll man the desk for a few minutes. Go get some mint tea.”

  “Thanks, El.”

  The beverage and few moments in the staff bathroom were just what she needed. She came back to the front feeling slightly refreshed and much more relaxed. The mint tea was soothing and she went to work at the circulation desk with a renewed energy.

  At three-thirty there was an influx of people; school let out for the day and several students came in with textbooks in hand to find tables for study groups. A few parents came with kids to pick out new books, and several returns were dropped in the drop box. Maddy was in the process of issuing a new library card to a very excited first grader when a deliveryman came through the doors holding a big basket.

  She looked up. “Hi, can I help you?”

  “Are you Maddy Wallace?”

  “That’s me.” She looked at the basket in his arms. It was wrapped in clear cellophane with tiny snowflakes on it and tied with a sparkly silver ribbon.

  “Delive
ry for you. Can you sign for it, please?”

  “Excuse me just a moment,” she said to the mom and daughter. She took a pen and signed the delivery slip. “You’re sure this is for me?”

  “Positive. Says Maddy Wallace at the Gibson library. If that’s you, this is yours.” He gave a wide smile. “Merry Christmas.”

  “Thanks.”

  The basket sat on the corner of the desk and the little girl who was waiting for her library card looked at it eagerly. “Are you going to open it?”

  “Do you think I should?” Maddy asked.

  The girl nodded vigorously.

  There was no one waiting in line, so Maddy untied the ribbon and folded it carefully, then peeled back the plastic wrapping. Inside the basket was an assortment of her favorite things from the Daily Grind. There was a little pot with a built-in strainer for tea leaves, three small tins of different teas, a package of biscotti tied with a ribbon, a box of shortbread cookies, a bag of scone mix and four fresh pieces of strudel, the crisp pastry flaked with coarse sugar and with caramel and crimson fruit showing through the slits in the dough. Apple and cherry—her favorites.

  And a little card. But she already knew what it was going to say.

  “‘To Maddy, from your secret Santa,’” she read aloud, shaking her head with amazement.

  “That’s lovely,” said the girl’s mother. “What a gorgeous basket.”

  Maddy beamed. “I’ve got a secret Santa this year. This is the third present I’ve received.”

  “What’s a secret Santa?” the girl asked.

  “Well, someone is giving me early Christmas presents, and they aren’t telling me who they are. It’s a mystery.”

  “I like mysteries.”

  Maddy looked at the assortment of books the girl had chosen to check out and smiled. “I see that. So, I’ve been looking at clues and I’ve been trying to figure out who my secret Santa is. I’m pretty sure it’s my mom and dad. But it’s nice getting surprises.”

  “Presents are always fun,” she agreed.

  In the basket were some assorted individual chocolates, and Maddy took one out and looked at the mom for approval. “Is a chocolate okay?” She nodded and Maddy held it out. “I think sharing is fun, too. Would you like one?”