A Christmas Cowboy to Keep

by Hebby Roman

  “Hi, Lilah. Please come in.”

  Callie came into the room ahead of her mother and the two of them stopped at the foot of the bed. Lilah held up Liberty’s suitcase. “I brought your things, so you’d have something to wear today . . . Lordy, I hope you feel better than you look.”

  “I do and thank you.” And wasn’t that great? Her newest friend now knew she’d spent the night with a man she barely knew and had ended up at the hospital wearing hardly any clothes. Awesome!

  Callie cleared her throat. “Miss Liberty, may I ask you something?”

  “Of course, sweetheart, what is it?”

  “My friend, little Bryan . . . part of the money raised will go to help him fight DIPG. I’d like to sing a song for him at the event on Saturday. May I?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” she said. “You know with your mom, you were in like Flint, right?”

  “She has to let me, since she’s my mom. I wanted to clear it with you.”

  “Callie McCommas, you are on the schedule and you have my sincere thanks for volunteering.”

  She patted Liberty’s foot through the coverlet on the bed. “Thank you, now I’m going to visit Bryan.” She turned to her mother. “Come get me when you’re ready.”

  “I will.” Lilah waited until after her daughter had left the room before she spoke. “Thanks, Liberty. I knew it would be okay, but she wanted to ask you herself.”

  “You and Jack are lucky. She’s beautiful inside and out.”

  “I know. When I met Jack a couple of years ago, I wondered how she and I would get along. We’ve never had so much as a hiccup.”

  “I didn’t know. What happened to her mother?”

  “Vanessa, Jack’s wife and Meg’s daughter, lost her battle with cancer a few years ago. Callie’s a great big sister to Baby John, too.”

  “You are blessed.”

  Lilah looked wistful. “Yes, I sure am.” She went to give Liberty a hug and said, “Oh, I hope you don’t mind, you’ve been moved to stay with Daniel, and I’ve packed most of your things.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You won’t believe the response we’re having from your phone calls the other day. Pam Blackstock called back with her confirmation and she’s bringing Gunner Carr and his wife Barbara, Mary Fay, Kelly, Michele, and JR. Also Brad, Alan, Toby, Lisa, and Jessie Duke. There are some others I’m forgetting, I’m sure.

  “Some of them will be bringing their tour busses, but the others will need a place to stay. My house is packed.”

  “Have you asked Daniel? He has plenty of space to put people. That house is ginormous.” Liberty remembered the number of bedrooms plus the huge family room.

  “Daniel is very private and doesn’t like a lot of people hanging around.” Lilah stated. “I respect his privacy. Callie and John will stay with friends in town.”

  “I’ll hit the ground running this afternoon. Will you share a copy of your list?”

  “No, Daniel has asked us to leave you alone for a day or two, so you can rest. I have to say we’re doing great. Tara has stepped up and organized things really well.”

  “I’ll ask him anyway,” she said. “It’s crazy not to utilize all that square footage.”

  After Lilah left, Liberty decided to get to the bottom of what was going on beneath the surface with Daniel. If they were going to have a relationship – friend or otherwise – she had to find out what it was.

  Chapter Nine

  Daniel grabbed Liberty’s suitcase and swung around the rear of the truck, to help her out of the passenger side and into the house. When he went to open the door, though, she was already walking toward the front door.

  “I wanted to help you,” he said, catching up to her.

  “Thanks, but you carried me out of here, and I intend to return under my own power.”

  He sprinted ahead of her and opened the door.

  “Thank you, again, sir.”

  “If you’d like to go lie down, the room is picked up, and the bed’s been made.”

  She lifted her head and sniffed the air. As she walked further inside she looked around and recognition lit her face.

  “You got a Christmas tree!”

  It pleased him to see her happy and excited about the tree.

  “When did you get it?”

  “I drove by the lot in town last night, after I left the hospital, and I stopped. They had a few left so I bought the best looking one.” He set down her suitcase and walked over to the tree where there was a big box, sitting on the floor. “Here’s a box of decorations that belonged to us when we were growing up. I thought, if you were up to it, we could trim the tree later.”

  “Yes! Do you have any popcorn?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact I do, got some hot chocolate, too.”

  They ate a quick dinner he’d picked up from Meg’s on the way back to the ranch, and then migrated to the family room and the tree.

  She sat on the floor and began to go through the box of decorations. He watched as she sorted through the decorations, realizing it had been more than a few years since he’d seen them. He didn’t know what was in there or how the memories would affect him, but he hoped his recollections were pleasant and that he handled them well.

  He tried to remember the last time the contents had seen the light of day and his best guess was maybe twenty or so years ago, the Christmas before his mother had died. His father had followed her six months later. He and his brother hadn’t bothered to put up their own tree after they’d lost their parents.

  Liberty sat cross-legged, surrounded by colorful glass balls, cradled in folded pieces of tissue paper, yellowed from age. She unwrapped a hand-blown glass ball, and whispered, “These are so beautiful, Daniel.”

  “Thank you. They were like prized jewels to my mother. Christmas was her favorite time of year.”

  “I can see why, being able to display these gorgeous gems.” She dug deeper into the large box and pulled out a small silver box. She removed the lid to reveal a mass of old silver tinsel. When she turned the box upside down, the tinsel came out in a solid square block.

  She held it up in the palm of her hand and asked, “What’s this?”

  “That’s our tinsel . . . Dad called it tinfoil, as I recall.” He chuckled. “Every year, Mom bought a new box or two, but we always reused the old tinsel we’d removed from the year before. My brother and I sat for hours pulling strands from that little box and straightening them enough to hang on the tree limbs.

  “In the end, Dad would take the last bit of crunched foil and throw it at the tree, and then we were done.”

  She chuckled. “Wow, as a kid I would have liked your way a lot better, sounds like fun.” She opened another smaller box containing ornament hooks. She got to her feet and hung one of the glass, hand-painted balls mid-way between the top and the bottom limbs. “My mother insisted on all new tinsel every year, that had to be placed on each limb, from the tip to the back, an exact quarter inch apart. I hated and dreaded that part of Christmas.”

  “You weren’t kidding about her control issues.”

  “Mmm, that’s not something one fibs about.” She hung a metal pinecone ornament that he remembered had belonged to his mother. “How many siblings do you have, Daniel?”

  And, so it begins. How much did he want her to know? Could he trust her not to tell anyone? “I have, er had, one brother, David. He died almost ten years after our parents passed away.”

  “I’m so sorry. How did he die?”

  “Darin – I mean, David, never learned to handle things well and, over time, developed a drug and drinking problem.” He waited a breath to see if she’d caught his mistake, but she continued to untangle a twisted strand of garland.

  He’d worked so hard to keep his and David’s true identities hidden so he could forget, and yet . . . There was something about this woman that had him letting down his guard, allowing her to get close.

&nbs
p; He rubbed his thumb over his finger tips and the callouses that had formed from playing the guitar. A constant reminder of his past, that lately, hadn’t seemed as painful as it once had. Maybe it was time to open up to someone and let it go. Maybe Liberty Hart was that someone.

  “Daniel?”

  “Yes?”

  “You were saying?”

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “Early one morning, after he got off work, he lost control of his car and hit a semi head on. He and his passenger died instantly.”

  “How horrible. Again, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s how I ended up with this place.” He looked around the room and continued, “After David’s death, I brought him back to Texas and buried him with our folks. The house had been recently built, but he hadn’t moved in yet. I always figured I’d sell it one day, but never got around to it.”

  “That explains it, then.” She stood and handed him one end of the garland. “Here take this to the top and help me wind it around the tree. Will you?”

  “Explains what?” he asked, as he did her bidding.

  “This house isn’t you and you know it. Otherwise you would have a little more furniture, and you wouldn’t be sleeping in an empty room in a sleeping bag.”

  He smiled. Even though they’d made love in the king size bed in the master bedroom, she figured out he didn’t normally sleep there. “Quite the detective, aren’t you?”

  “At times, especially when the clues are right in front of my face. Like, anyone with half a brain could tell you aren’t living here, you’re merely sleeping here.

  “Also, you told me your brother’s name was David and then in the next breath you called him Darin. Everyone in Nashville, worth their salt, knows the story of Darin Kyle and how he died. I know the passenger was a woman. What aren’t you telling me, Daniel?”

  He took the end of the garland from her and placed it on a bottom limb. Picking up an ornament, he attached a hook and handed it to her to hang. Repeating the process, he did several more.

  Finally, he said, “The woman in the car with Darin was my wife. I found a note the next day, after the accident, telling me she was leaving me for the love of her life. Needless to say, that tidbit of information knocked the props out from under me.”

  “Well sure,” she said. “The two people you loved the most, screwed you without a kiss.” She took another ornament from him. “Who else knows?”

  “Only Lilah, Jack and the band members.”

  She reached into the box and pulled out another treasure in carefully folded tissue. He knew what it was by the gold stars stamped on the paper.

  “Oh, look,” she said, her eyes tearing up a bit. “It’s a star for the top.”

  “Here,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll put it up.”

  He grabbed a chair from the kitchen to climb on and anchored the star to the top. After a few minutes of finagling, he got down off the chair and plugged the electrical cord into the wall for the lights he’d strung this morning. The Douglas fir came alive with multi-colored lights.

  When he stood beside her, she elbowed him and said, “We done good. It’s beautiful!”

  “Are you ready to take me up on my offer of hot chocolate?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He realized on the way into the kitchen, he felt as if he’d lost a tremendous weight from his shoulders. It was the first time, in a long time, he felt like he could take a deep breath.

  * * *

  Liberty’s mind whirled, thinking about Daniel’s confession. He’d withstood so much, that would have broken or, at least, buckled most people. It wasn’t only that he’d lost his brother and his wife to a tragic accident, but to learn said brother and wife were cheating on him together. It was a miracle he wasn’t bitter.

  The other thing, Daniel Layman seemed like such a nice guy, and she, Liberty, hardly ever got the nice guy. Case in point, her ex, Eddie the ass-hat.

  She put her ex-husband out of her mind and sat on the couch to wait for Daniel and to enjoy the Christmas tree. The two of them had done an exceptional job with the small box of ornaments they’d had to work with. Lilah’s might beat this tree in a one-on-one contest for flash, but she’d always believed in the adage, less is more.

  There were so many things running around in her mind that it was hard to ping just one, yet one question forced its way to the front. She just had to put all the points in order and she would have the answer.

  Okay. Number one, David Layman was Darin Kyle. Number two, he had been the lead singer for the Dy Tryin’ Band. Number three, Darin’s brother, Dylan, and the other band members had retired after the accident and no one had seen or heard from them since. Number four, Daniel was Darin’s brother. Check. So far, she seemed to be clicking on all cylinders.

  Daniel came into the room carrying two mugs of steaming hot cocoa. He handed her one and joined her on the couch, saying, “I thought, since we were spending a night remembering my parents, Nancy and Harvey Layman, I would make the hot chocolate according to my mother’s recipe, as much as I could remember, anyway.”

  She sipped carefully but still singed her upper lip.

  “This is really good.” She ran her tongue across the burned area, and said, “You’ll have to write it down for the next time.”

  “I’ll do that. How are you feeling, by the way?”

  “Really good, I only have a dull headache that should be gone by tomorrow.” She took another sip of the hot cocoa, vaguely wondered about the calories, and added, “Whether it’s gone or not, I have to hit the ground running in the morning. Lilah said Tara has most things in place, but I need to see for myself.”

  “I’m sure you do.” Daniel shook his head. “I don’t know if you saw it, when we got here, but Jack drove your car over for you. The keys are on the nightstand.”

  “Thank you.” She tried to sneak a side glance, while he finished his drink. Her curiosity was running on overdrive. The more she looked, the surer of her instincts she became. Reaching across the space between them, she took his hand in hers and turned his palm upward. She ran her thumb across his fingers, looked at him and said, “You’re Dylan Kyle, aren’t you?”

  Daniel waited a couple of beats before he answered her . . . waited for the surprise, shock, or panic to settle into the pit of his stomach. He felt none of those.

  “Yes,” he answered. “I should have told you, especially after our talk. But I’ve avoided the music industry for so long, it’s second nature to keep it to myself.”

  “Well, I’ve always heard even a blind hog can find an acorn. And, here you are.” She shook her head from side to side, and said, “You’re half the reason I’m here.”

  “Let me guess, Connor sent you.”

  “I’m supposed to find out where Dylan is hiding, so Connor can talk him – you – into coming back into the fold.”

  “You know, I’ve been receiving letters from him for some time. I just haven’t opened any of them.”

  “I understand why you didn’t, but maybe if you had simply told him no, he might have left you alone.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Daniel said. “I’ve known him a lot longer than you have.”

  Despite her suggestion, he knew he was right to not start a conversation with his former manager/promoter. They would probably end up shouting at each other, and he didn’t want to make things worse for Liberty. “Tell you what, I’ll get in touch with him after Christmas and put this thing to bed, once and for all.”

  “Sounds good to me.” She yawned and sat up on the edge of the couch. “If you don’t mind, I believe I’m going to take a bath and get ready for bed.”

  “Give me this.” He took her mug, stood, and gave her a hand up. “Sleep as long as you want in the morning. I’ll have breakfast ready.”

  Moving closer, she slipped her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly, pulled away and then kissed him again. “Thank you, Daniel, for taking care of
me and for letting me stay here. See you in the morning.”

  He watched her disappear into the darkness of the hallway. Her going to bed early and alone hadn’t been what he’d hoped for this evening, but her health was more important than appeasing his libido. Although, after that kiss, his body was not in agreement with his thoughts.

  A cold shower was definitely in his near future.

  * * *

  The next morning Liberty got dressed and, like the other day, found herself alone in the house with a warm breakfast waiting for her in the kitchen. She almost went looking for him but decided to go on over to Lilah’s to check on the preparations for the event.

  Folding a couple of strips of bacon into a slice of buttered toast, she wrote Daniel a note explaining where she’d be and left it on the table under the salt shaker.

  A half an hour later, she turned onto the narrow road leading to Lilah’s house. Several cars were parked close to the house with people unloading suitcases and equipment. She parked her car off to the side and saw a tour bus slowly coming up the road behind her.

  She got closer to the house, weaving her way in and out of the cars and folks milling about like ants on an anthill.

  Lilah waved and met her halfway. “Morning. Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes,” Liberty answered and smiled. “Very much, thank you.” She gazed at the activity surrounding them. “The love and generosity of the country music community never ceases to amaze and impress me.”

  “I know. Looking out at all the hub-bub makes me think of the movie, ‘White Christmas’, where all the people come together to put on a show to save the inn.”

  “I wasn’t expecting so many performers to show up this early. I mean, we still have a couple of days, yet.”

  Lilah took her by the arm and led her to the rear of the house, toward the area of the recording studio. “Look . . .”

  Several buses were already parked side-by-side, with the most recent arrival joining the line.

  “Oh, my gosh, and you said yesterday your house was full.”

  “Yeah, we’ve become the local hostel.” Laughing she said, “Next, we’ll be hammering nails into the wall, so everyone will have a place to sleep.”