A Cowboy for Christmas

by Stella Bagwell

  Yes, she would see him again at breakfast, she thought as she stared out at the early dawn sky, and she would be waiting for that time to come.

  The admission frightened Lucinda. Sooner or later, she would have to head down the highway and get on with her life. She didn’t want it to hurt when she left this place. She’d already dealt with enough pain in her life. She didn’t think she could survive any more.

  *

  Later that morning, after learning the main highway was reasonably clear enough to travel, Dee and Sarah Jane headed to Hereford to do some last-minute Christmas shopping.

  Lucinda declined their invitation to join them. Her ankle was better, but she didn’t think it was quite up to that much exercise. Instead, she used the time to work on a pantsuit she’d started for Sarah Jane.

  A few minutes before noon, the two women returned with a carful of presents. After everything was carried in, Dee began preparing lunch while Lucinda offered to help Sarah Jane wrap the gifts the two women had purchased this morning.

  “How do you like these?” Sarah Jane asked Lucinda as they worked at the breakfast counter.

  Lucinda looked at the earrings dangling from Sarah Jane’s fingers. They were at least four inches long and made of pink, orange and red plastic beads. Lucinda figured whoever wore them had to be bold or crazy—or both.

  “Well, they’re—uh, bright,” she said, trying her best to be polite and honest at the same time.

  Across the room, Dee burst out laughing. “Lucy, you don’t have to be so nice. They’re the gaudiest things Sarah Jane could find.”

  “And believe me, I hunted hard,” Sarah Jane said with a giggle.

  “I’m almost afraid to ask who the earrings are for,” Lucinda said, unable to keep from joining in on their laughter.

  Sarah Jane carefully arranged the jewelry in a small box and fastened down the lid. “These are for Great-Aunt Bess. She’ll love them.”

  “She’s my aunt, on my mother’s side,” Dee spoke up. “She’s a spry eighty-five and she loves dressing up. The wilder looking, the better.”

  “Sounds like a lady with fashion sense,” Lucinda said.

  Laughing, Sarah Jane handed the box to Lucinda. “Just wait until Christmas Day. You’ll get to meet her then.”

  One by one the gifts were wrapped in bright foil paper and tagged with a name. A tie for one cousin and a bottle of Scotch for another, a box of candy for the closest neighbors and a furry stuffed kitten for their foster daughter. Each name had a story behind it and Lucinda enjoyed hearing Dee and Sarah Jane describe their friends and relatives. It made her feel a part of the family somehow.

  “I wish you could have gone shopping with us this morning,” Sarah Jane said as they worked their way through the gifts to be wrapped. “You might have found something you wanted to buy.”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Lucinda replied. “But I enjoy looking.”

  “Do you do much Christmas shopping?” Dee asked as she carried a bowl of salad to the table.

  The question jerked Lucinda back to reality and the life she’d led back in Chicago. She’d never had the family and friends that the Delacroix had. But at one time she’d had a fairly large circle of friends and acquaintances. Yet Richard had changed that for her. Slowly and methodically, he’d cut her away from anyone close to her until finally her life had centered solely around him.

  Now that Lucinda was away from him, it was easy to see that he’d been doing what nearly every abuser tried to do. Isolate the victim. Yet back then she’d been blinded to the fact of what he was doing to her life. She’d so desperately needed, wanted someone to love her that she’d ignored the first warning signals pointing to Richard’s possessive behavior.

  “I don’t have much shopping to do,” she answered Dee’s question, unaware that Chance had walked into the room. “I gave my friends their gifts before I left Chicago.”

  “Don’t you have distant family living somewhere in the States?”

  Lucinda shook her head as she wound a red ribbon around the box in her hands. “No. My mother was killed in an accident when I was small and since I was placed in an orphanage I can only assume that she had no family.”

  “I told Lucinda she was lucky,” Chance said as he walked up behind Lucinda and his sister. “She doesn’t have to buy a lot of gifts. Like these.”

  With a curious smile on his face, he picked up a pair of red long johns and held them out in front of him.

  “Those are for Doc,” Dee spoke up before he could ask. “He’s always telling me he’s cold. I figure those will warm him up.”

  Laughing, Chance draped the underwear around his sister’s neck. “Mother, he wants you to warm him up. Not a pair of long johns.”

  Dee snorted. “Well, he can stay cold till spring then.”

  “He wants to marry you, Mother,” Sarah Jane pointed out.

  “The old man doesn’t know what he wants,” Dee said with a wave of her hand. “He’s got to convince me all that sweet talk of his is for real before he ever gets a yes out of me.”

  Lucinda glanced up from her task to see Chance grinning at his mother. After a moment, he looked at Lucinda and winked.

  Why did he have to do that? she silently groaned as she jerked her eyes back on the ribbon she was tying. It made her feel flustered and even more foolish. Because for some reason, when Chance looked at her and winked, it made Lucinda believe she was special to him. And that kind of thinking was crazy. Lucinda Lambert wasn’t special to anybody.

  “Well, who’s getting this for Christmas?” Chance asked, picking up a coiled lariat rope from the pile of gifts on the counter. “Me?”

  “No. That’s for Tim,” Dee told him. Then to Lucinda, she said, “He’s one of Chance’s hired hands. Roping calves is his hobby.”

  In the flash of an eye, Chance built a loop then began twirling it about a foot or two off the floor.

  “Chance! Quit!” Dee shouted at him.

  Amazed, Lucinda watched as Chance jumped agilely inside the whirling loop, then back out again. She’d seen such a thing done in western movies before, but she’d believed it was probably done with a trick of the camera.

  Waving a metal spatula, Dee ran at him. “Damn your hide, Chance, you’re going to knock over my poinsettias! Now stop it!”

  Laughing at his mother’s scolding, he allowed the lariat rope to settle on the floor around his boots. As he coiled the braided nylon back together, he said, “I want Lucinda to know she’s in West Texas, where the cowboys are real.”

  Sarah Jane groaned. “The cowboys are not only real, they love to show off, too.”

  Lucinda met his eyes and suddenly she was smiling at him. Whether he’d been showing off for her or not hardly mattered. She’d enjoyed seeing his playful antics.

  “Can you do anything special with those other gifts?” Lucinda asked him, her smile turning impish.

  He glanced at the pile of things the two women hadn’t yet wrapped. “No. I’ll leave those to you and Sarah Jane. Otherwise, Mother might send me out to the doghouse.”

  “No. I’m sending everyone to the table,” Dee corrected her son. “Come on, girls, we’ll finish all that wrapping later. It’s time to eat.”

  *

  After lunch, the three women finished the gift wrapping, then Lucinda went back to working on the designs for Sarah Jane’s clothes. Normally she had plenty of time to allow her imagination to dwell upon certain styles and fabrics. But in this case, she only had a few days to complete her work. She was going to have to hurry in order to have everything ready to hand over to a seamstress before she left the ranch. Although Sarah Jane still had a few months before the wedding, Lucinda didn’t want to mail anything back and leave a trail for someone to follow.

  Even so, when Chance came for her later that afternoon, she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her coat and mittens and followed him outside.

  The sun had steadily grown warmer throughout the day, and now melting snow dripped off the roof an
d left mushy puddles along the track leading down to the barns.

  As the two of them stepped off the porch, Chance nodded toward a horse tied at the backyard gate.

  “I brought taxi service,” he told her.

  Lucinda’s mouth fell open as she looked at the horse, then her eyes swung back to Chance and she burst out laughing. “You can’t expect me to ride a horse!”

  “You don’t want to strain your ankle by walking all the way down to the horse barn. And even though you don’t weigh very much, Traveler can carry you a lot easier than I can.”

  Lucinda’s gaze whipped from him to the sorrel horse standing quietly by the fence. He seemed docile enough. But she’d never been on a horse in her life!

  “I know. But Chance, the closest I’ve ever been to a horse was in the grandstands at Maywood Park!”

  Chance chuckled. “Well, Traveler is hardly a racehorse. He won’t go anywhere unless I tell him to. And he’s got one pace. Slow.”

  Lucinda wasn’t a coward. But she knew if she didn’t climb on Chance’s horse, he would peg her as one. “Then I guess I’ll put myself in your hands. Just remember I’m no Dale Evans.”

  “What? You mean you can’t sing?” Chance joked as the two of them walked toward the horse.

  She shot him a dry look. “No. I can’t sing. Nor can I ride.”

  “Sure you can. Just because you’ve watched some old western movies on late-night TV, you think all horses rear straight up on their hind legs, whinny, then take off in a wild gallop. Believe me, Lucy, if they really did act that way, there wouldn’t be any cowboys left. We’d all have broken necks.”

  “Well, now that I’m finally seeing you in the sunlight, yours does look a little bent,” she said while studying him with exaggerated concern.

  So Lucy did have a little humor in her, he thought, a smile tilting the corners of his roughly hewn lips. He liked that about her. But then Chance had to admit he was beginning to like quite a few things about her.

  After untying Traveler’s reins, Chance linked his fingers together and held them, palms up, near the stirrup.

  “Give me your foot. The good one,” he instructed. “And I’ll help you into the saddle.”

  “If you insist.” Taking a deep breath, Lucinda put the toe of her boot into his hands.

  “I do insist. Now, when I lift, you grab hold of the horn and slide your leg over the saddle.”

  “What’s the horn?” she asked frantically.

  He patted a round thing wrapped with black rubber.

  “Here we go,” he warned, then gave her a boost upward.

  Before Lucinda could figure out how she’d done it, she was sitting astride the big red horse. Chance quickly swung himself up behind her, then reined the horse away from the fence and toward the horse barn.

  Lucinda was immediately swamped with sensations. The rhythm of the horse’s walk rocked her gently from side to side and the ground looked to be a long way down. But it was Chance’s nearness that was affecting her the most. His chest was brushing against her back and his thighs felt molded to the back of hers. If she turned her head slightly to the right, her forehead would bump into his chin. He didn’t have to be that close, did he?

  “Now what do you think about horseback riding?” he asked, his voice little more than a murmur in her ear. “Not nearly as scary as you thought it would be, is it?”

  Lucinda wanted to groan as a shiver ran through her body. How could she think about the horse, or riding it, when he was touching her like this? “Oh, no. I’m not scared.”

  That much was the truth. She knew Chance could control the animal and he’d never allow her to fall. But riding a horse with a man who turned her senses haywire was not what she’d planned to do when she left Chicago.

  “That’s good. I like a woman who isn’t afraid. I’ve tried for years to get Mother to ride. But she’s terrified of horses. She’s lived her life on this ranch for thirty-five years and never has been in the saddle. That’s frustratin’. Real frustratin’.”

  I like a woman who isn’t afraid. Well, he certainly wouldn’t like her, Lucinda thought dismally. Not if he really knew her. If he knew how many nights she’d spent shaking in the darkness of her bedroom, afraid to close her eyes and sleep, he’d probably label her a helpless coward.

  Maybe she was. Leaving Chicago certainly made her look that way. But she’d tried to confront Richard. She’d even tried getting help from the police. She’d personally gone down to the station to file a complaint. They had eyed the whole thing in a different light. To the police, she’d simply been an angry ex-fiancée out for revenge. Richard Winthrop was one of their own, a real asset to the homicide division, he would never stalk a woman!

  Lucinda had come away from the whole thing looking foolish and even more embarrassed. After that, she’d never looked to the law for help. She’d realized it would be as useless as trying to climb a brick wall without any toeholds.

  Chance pulled the horse up beside a long barn, slid off Traveler, then reached up to help Lucinda down. Seeing no other way to get to the ground, she placed her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to lift her from the saddle. As he set her to one side of him and the animal, Lucinda’s hands slid off his shoulders and lingered on his forearms.

  “Thanks,” she murmured, her eyes carefully avoiding his.

  “You’re welcome, Lucy.”

  His quiet reply had her eyes darting up to his, and for a moment their gazes locked. Even with the coldness of the snowy ground all around them, Lucinda felt heat rise up within her, spread to her limbs and stain her cheeks with color. Something on his face, the strange light in his eyes told her that he hadn’t forgotten the kiss they’d shared and he knew she was still thinking about it, too.

  With one gloved forefinger, Chance reached out and touched her face. Lucinda trembled as the need to step closer to him argued with the sensible part of her that was screaming for her to move away.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever known a woman who blushes like you do.”

  “It’s—my skin. It’s very fair and sensitive to the cold,” she said, hating the breathy sound of her voice.

  Chance’s dark eyebrows cocked up in speculation. “And here I was thinking I’d caused all that,” he drawled.

  Was he flirting with her? After the way he’d reacted to Jolene’s name last night, it was hard to imagine Chance Delacroix flirting with any woman, much less Lucinda. There was nothing special about her. But he had kissed her, she mentally argued with herself. And that kiss had felt like a lot more than flirtation.

  The whole, scary idea had her quickly turning away from him and looking at the barn. “Are you ready to show me the horses?”

  No, Chance wasn’t ready to show her the horses. He was thinking more on the line of taking her into his arms right then and there, just to prove to her that she wasn’t as indifferent to him as she was trying to let on.

  But that wouldn’t be wise, he tried to tell himself. He hadn’t brought her here for that reason. He’d invited her to the stables because she’d intimated an interest in the horses and he’d wanted to show off his herd to her. Hell, he’d gone for more than ten years without a woman in his life. Just because Lucinda was giving him certain urges didn’t mean it was time to get another wife, or even a lover.

  Besides, the argument in his head went on, Lucinda was a woman on the move. She was young and unsettled and she had her own career to think about. She wasn’t his type of woman at all.

  The reminder had him grabbing her upper arm and guiding her toward the barn. “Yeah, Lucy, I’m as ready as you are,” he said.

  But as they stepped through the door and Lucy’s shoulder brushed against him, Chance wished like hell the hired hands hadn’t gone into town for a load of feed. Without them around, he didn’t know how he was going to keep his hands off her.

  Chapter Seven

  The first moment Lucinda stepped inside the huge structure, she noticed the pungent smell of alfalfa hay and
the unfamiliar scent of horses. Sunlight slanted through the roof where sheets of corrugated iron had been replaced with a white, lighter weight material to create skylights at regular intervals.

  Rows of stalls lined the back wall of the building, while to the front and the right of them was a closed-off room where, Lucinda guessed, feed and tack were stored. To the left of them were more empty stalls.

  “The only time I keep all the horses in the barn is when the weather is as bad as it has been the past couple of days,” Chance told her as he guided her over to the nearest group of animals.

  “Where do they stay in summer?” she asked.

  “In warm weather, all the horses are turned out to pastures. Except for the stud. He has to be separated from the rest for his own safety, as well as that of the herd.”

  She cast him a curious glance. “You raise horses, too?”

  He nodded. “I’ve got about six or seven new foals coming this spring. Not a great amount. What we don’t keep to use here on the ranch, I’ll take to Clovis and sell.”

  As she and Chance approached the stall nearest to them, a tall black horse with a blazed face hung his head over the metal gate that served as a door.

  Chance gave the animal’s jaw an affectionate pat. “This is Big John. He’s one of the smartest cow ponies here on the ranch. I wouldn’t sell him for any amount of money.”

  “What is a cow pony? He looks a lot bigger than a pony to me,” Lucinda said, carefully standing a good two feet away from Big John’s head.

  Chance chuckled and Lucinda shot him a defensive look. “Obviously my ignorance about ranch life amuses you.”

  Frowning, he shook his head. “I don’t think you’re ignorant about anything. I’d be just as lost if you showed me a dress pattern. As for your question about the cow pony, that’s just a term we cowboys use for a horse or mare that can be used on a ranch to head or cut cattle from another herd. Or if need be, we can rope off them.”

  Lucinda’s chin lifted a fraction higher. “Well, something is making you laugh.”

  Chance grabbed hold of her hand and pulled her toward him and the horse. “I’m laughing because you’re standing back there like Big John is going to take a bite out of you.”