Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday FamilySugar Plum SeasonHer Cowboy HeroSmall-Town Fireman

by Ruth Logan Herne

  He pulled up a stool to get closer to her, hoping she would understand.

  “You know how David died, didn’t you?”

  “I only heard it was an accident with a truck.”

  Tanner threaded his fingers together, the old guilt still so quick to haunt him. “I was supposed to drive him back to the hotel that night.” He stopped a moment, trying to put the situation in perspective but still struggling to find an emotional distance. So quickly those agonizing “what-ifs” tormented him and pulled him back to that horrible night when he got the news. “But I didn’t and he died. I carry the burden of that. It was my fault. And I feel like the only way I can get rid of that is to finish what David had started.”

  “How do you think his death was your fault?”

  Tanner paused, going back, yet again, to that night he wished he could relive. Redo.

  “We had been at a rodeo after-party,” he said, sinking back into a past where he spent far too much time. “David had just had a big win and was excited. I got tangled up in the saddle in my last competition. I got hurt and wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep. Things had been tense between us that day. In spite of his win, David had been acting strange. Distant. Like he was ticked at me for something.” Tanner paused, sighing as his thoughts slipped back to that tragic night, forever etched in his memory. “Fights seem to be a common theme between me and the people I care about,” he said. “Anyway, David got all snarly and when I asked him what was wrong, he told me that he found out about the lawyer I hired to contest my dad’s will. I don’t know how he knew. I had just been feeling out my options. Alice had made it pretty clear David was getting the ranch if something happened to her. I felt marginalized. Pushed aside. I needed to know my rights.”

  “Must have been hard for David to know that if you got anything from the settlement, David would lose something,” she said quietly. “He didn’t like losing. Ever.”

  “You knew David as well as I did.”

  “But the ranch was your father’s. You should have inherited half of it. David should not have been promised it all.”

  He easily heard the bitter note in her voice and, for a moment, wondered if something else had happened between her and David. He didn’t want to think that his brother, who not only stood to inherit his father’s ranch, had also staked some claim on Keira’s heart.

  He pushed the treacherous thoughts aside and continued.

  “David and I fought and he said he was staying behind to party instead of coming to the hotel with me. He wanted to take some girl out and asked for my truck. I said no. Told him he’d been drinking. He got mad, one thing led to another and then he yelled at me. Told me that I wasn’t his real brother. That a real brother wouldn’t try to take his ranch away, which I suspect had been eating at him for a while. Well, that made me angrier. I gave him some money for a cab and left. On my way out I stopped a friend of ours and asked if he could make sure David got to the hotel on time.”

  Once again Tanner relived that moment just before he left David, that tug of hesitation, of wondering if David would listen to his warnings. “I shouldn’t have left him. I should have stayed and driven him back to the hotel myself.”

  Keira stopped sewing and turned toward him, listening, David’s saddle forgotten.

  “David stayed at the party too long,” Tanner continued, his attention focused on his thumbs tapping together. “Of course, he drank too much and used the cab money I gave him to buy more drinks. He couldn’t find anyone to drive him back, wouldn’t call me and the buddy who was supposed to watch out for him was long gone. So David started walking back to the hotel. He wandered out into the street and was hit by a truck. He was killed instantly.” Tanner stopped there, too easily remembering that early-morning phone call that had destroyed Tanner’s world.

  And dropped a burden on his shoulders he couldn’t budge.

  To his surprise he felt Keira put her hand on his arm. “It wasn’t your fault,” Keira said, echoing the words that everyone from his rodeo buddies to Monty and Ellen had tried to reassure him with.

  The only one who didn’t say them was Alice. Her silence clearly told him that she did, indeed, blame him for David’s death. Her reproach was wordless but potent, and it only served to stoke the remorse haunting Tanner from that day on.

  “David always made his own choices. Always went his own way,” Keira said, the sharp tone in her voice catching his attention.

  “I should have stayed, though,” he said, dragging his gaze up to hers. “I should have made sure he got home okay.”

  “You did what you could. You gave him cab money. You made sure someone was watching him. Knowing David, he was probably drunk, especially if he spent the money you gave him, as well. All of those were his decisions. His choices. None of them had anything to do with you.” Her voice rose with each sentence, her anger, somehow, giving him some small comfort. It was the same anger he had dealt with over and over with no resolution. Except to finish this season for David.

  He released a humorless laugh. “Yeah. I try to tell myself the same thing.”

  “So why don’t you listen? You’ve always been a levelheaded guy. You’re not a selfish, self-centered person. You’ve always cared about David. Everyone knows that.”

  Somehow Keira’s praise was like a balm to a wound that had chafed for years. Keira, of all people, knew David as well as he had. Had grown up with him.

  Had dated him.

  He pushed that thought aside. That was in the past.

  As was David’s accident.

  “Thanks,” he said, looking up at her, holding her intent gaze.

  “I mean it,” she said, her voice quiet but fervent. “You’re a good man. I’ve always thought that.”

  “Even after we broke up?”

  She pressed her lips together, as if experiencing the pain of that again.

  “I think we could have figured things out,” he said quietly. “I know I should have told you about Dad’s will. I was just angry about the ranch, and even though we were fighting, we had a good thing going. I know we did. I tried to make it up to you. I wanted us to get together again.”

  She slid her hand down and grabbed Tanner’s hands, holding them between hers, squeezing them tightly as she shook her head.

  “I know you did and...I’m sorry.” She bit her lip, then looked into his eyes, her own glistening. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay. I’m sorry...” Her voice broke off then.

  Tanner could only stare at her, the import of what she was saying taking root. The sincerity in her voice igniting a spark of hope. He squeezed her hands back, a thrill coursing through him at the contact. It had been so long since he’d touched her. Since he’d been close to her.

  And yet, he felt as if David still stood between them. After all, he had been the last person to see her before she left Saddlebank.

  “You didn’t love him, did you?” The words burst out of him. He had to know. “David. You didn’t love him?”

  Keira slowly shook her head, her eyes locked on their intertwined hands. “Never. I just dated him because he wouldn’t stop asking me. And...because he was your brother.”

  “What do you mean, because he was my brother?”

  Another pause, as if she was holding something back. Then her finger made a delicate circle on his. A small opening.

  “I guess, I hoped he would tell me something about you. Tell me what was happening in your life. It was a way of connecting with you, even if it was secondhand. I didn’t hear anything from anyone about you. My parents didn’t know and I wasn’t about to ask your stepmother.” She finally looked up and gave him a rueful smile. “I didn’t like her much right about then. But I knew you and David stayed in touch. I thought...he could tell me what was happening with you.”

  “Why did you need to know about me?” Th
e question sounded like something a kid in high school would say. A deliberate question that he guessed the answer to already.

  She didn’t reply, but in her eyes he saw regret tinged with sorrow. “I didn’t want us to be apart,” she said quietly. “In spite of what happened. In spite of me breaking up with you and then leaving Saddlebank, I still wanted to be with you.”

  Questions still remained about her hasty departure but somehow, sitting here with her, their hands intertwined, they were brushed aside as unnecessary. After many years of silence they were together now. They were talking. And they were alone.

  His sigh came from deep within his soul. “I missed you,” he said, dropping his pride, thinking back to the note she still had tucked in her Bible.

  “I missed you, too.” She spoke so quietly he wasn’t sure if she had actually spoken or if his own wishful thinking had created her words.

  Then she blinked and it was the sparkle of tears in her eyes, the glistening track that an escaping tear made on her cheek that unmanned him. He could handle her anger, her aloofness, but her tears always broke down his defenses.

  He gently brushed it away, his hand cupping her face, his thumb gently stroking her cheek. Her hand came up and she wrapped her fingers around his wrist.

  Then, slowly, as if to give her an opportunity to stop him, Tanner bent closer and so carefully, as if dealing with a skittish horse, he brushed his lips over hers.

  She pulled suddenly back, and he worried he had moved too quickly.

  Then she lifted her hand and touched her lips. Her fingers trembled as she held his gaze. She looked up at him and once again he caught the hint of sorrow blended with fear.

  “Can I kiss you again?” For some reason he felt he had to ask. The years apart, the silence; all combined to make him realize he couldn’t assume they would immediately take up where they had left off.

  “Maybe not yet?”

  The not was a disappointment but the yet gave him hope.

  But then she covered his hand with hers, a small sign of acceptance.

  For now, that was enough.

  * * *

  Bits of sun struggled to peek through the gray, ragged clouds scudding across the sky. The storm had eased for now, but according to the forecast, they were due for another pounding of snow tonight. No one was getting to the ranch and no one was leaving.

  Keira stood just outside the shop, the chill of the air still making itself known, but it didn’t matter.

  Tanner’s kiss still warmed her lips. It was a gentle, careful kiss, but it had rocked her to her core. As she had in the shop, she lifted her gloved fingers to her lips, as if testing the reality of that connection.

  She closed her eyes, wondering if she dared to hope that this could work. That they could start over.

  Dear Lord, she prayed, I’m scared. I hardly dare believe this could happen. Help me to trust that You’ll take care of us.

  Her thoughts slipped back to the Bible passage she had read this morning.

  “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” See, I am doing a new thing!

  A new thing.

  Keira slowly drew in a cleansing breath of cold air and then slowly released it. Then once more. Each exhale released some tension, each inhale refreshed her.

  A new thing. She had to stop dwelling on the past, and her reaction to Tanner’s kiss gave her hope that they could start over.

  At that, her thoughts moved to Alice. And for the first time since David’s death she wondered what Alice would do with the ranch. Would she ask Tanner to take over?

  Would Tanner leave his shop in Sheridan and come back to the ranch if Alice did ask?

  She pushed those tentative notions aside, pulling herself back to the present. Be in the moment, she reminded herself. Be content right here, right now.

  “Hey, you. Cows aren’t going to get fed just standing around.”

  Tanner’s deep voice behind her sent her heart fluttering, and as she turned around, his crooked smile and gentle eyes made it speed up even more.

  They had just finished up their work on the saddle and now were heading out to feed the cows before going in for lunch.

  “Hey, yourself,” she returned, giving him a smile that sprang up from deep in her soul.

  He took a step closer, dropped his arm over her shoulder just like he used to and gave her a quick, one-armed hug. She tensed a moment at the close contact. She caught the fleeting reaction in his eyes and then made herself relax. The past was gone. She and Tanner were moving on.

  “You want me to drive?” he asked.

  “Sure. The steering gets tight in this weather. It’s not windy right now so I can walk behind you.”

  “You’re coming in the cab with me again,” Tanner said, not letting go of her shoulder as they ploughed through the snow toward the machine shed. He gave her another squeeze and this time it was easier to lean into him. To fall into the familiar patterns of their relationship.

  He wore a heavy winter coat and she had her parka on, but in spite of the layers between them, she felt the old connection slowly return.

  “Besides, you can sit on my lap,” he joked. “Like you used to.”

  “I was smaller then,” she returned.

  Tanner looked down at her then, his smile fading away. “I dunno. You look like you’ve lost weight to me.”

  “Don’t you know that saying something like that is exactly the way to a girl’s heart?”

  “That and noticing a haircut,” he returned, brushing her hair back from her face with a gloved hand.

  She laughed, surprised at how quickly they fell into the old rhythms. And yet, as she looked up into his face she saw lines that hadn’t been there six years ago. The stubble that he seemed to favor now, shading his lean jaw, giving him an edgier look.

  This was an older Tanner, and for an aching moment Keira felt the loss of the past six years.

  She shook off the feeling as she pulled on the chain to open the overhead door while he climbed in the cab of the tractor and started it up. He let it run a moment and when he backed out she lowered it again, the chain clanking loudly.

  Tanner stopped the tractor just out the door of the shop, leaned over and opened the cab door. She clambered up into the tractor, turned at an awkward angle to close the door behind her.

  And then he pulled her onto his lap as he had promised.

  “There’s not much room here,” she joked, wedged between him and the steering wheel. She tried to get up but he grabbed on to her with one arm while he moved the seat back.

  “There we go,” he grunted, shifting his weight on the seat, still hanging on to her. “Comfy as all get-out.”

  “No. Not really.” She pushed away from him and, thankfully, this time he let her. Things were moving too quickly. She needed some time to adjust to this new relationship.

  But as she managed to get off his lap in the lurching tractor, she steadied herself on his shoulder. Then kept her hand there. She caught the question in his eyes but stayed where she was. They hadn’t seen each other for six years. That time apart couldn’t be so quickly erased with just one kiss.

  She hoped he understood.

  But at the same time, a part of her wished she could sit on his lap like she used to. Act as if the breakup and all that had happened after that could simply be forgotten.

  One step at a time, she reminded herself, realizing that for the first time in those lonely years, she felt as if she had something to look forward to.

  She gave in to an impulse, lowered her head and brushed a quick kiss over his stubbled cheek. She caught his surprised expression in the mirror and then another one of his slow-release smiles that never failed to elicit a curl of awareness.

  “Why you saucy little minx,” Tanner teased, affec
ting an English accent the way he used to whenever he was feeling especially happy. “Distracting me while I’m driving. We could end up in a snowbank.”

  She grinned, thankful for his acceptance of her actions. “If that’s all it takes—”

  What she said was cut off by his sudden swinging of the tractor toward the snow.

  “Don’t get stuck,” she squealed, clinging to him while the tractor rode up the snowbank, tilting to one side. “We’ll never be able to pull this thing out.”

  “I won’t get stuck,” he said, manhandling it back onto the track. “I always know my limits.”

  “Like the time you ended up swimming that river, clinging to Hardisty’s saddle because you didn’t think the spring runoff was that strong,” she teased, her hand clinging tightly to his shoulder now.

  “I got me and that horse across, didn’t I?” he challenged her, his dark eyes sparkling at her in the mirror of the tractor.

  “About a mile farther downstream than you were supposed to.”

  “Mile is better than a miss,” he misquoted.

  Keira caught his answering grin.

  “We had some good times, didn’t we?”

  His voice held more than a question. It was as if he was seeking verification of the years they spent together.

  “We had a lot of good times,” she said with conviction. “The best years of my life so far were the ones I spent with you.”

  She caught the curiosity in his eyes. As if he was wondering, if her statement was true, what had she been doing with David. Why they had stayed apart.

  Her only answer was a careful smile, which he returned. It softened his features and she felt the all-too-familiar flip of her heart. Old emotions rose up, old feelings that pushed at the events of the past six years.

  They made quick work of feeding the cows as the sun struggled to streak through the breaking clouds. Tanner scraped some of the snowdrifts away from the feeders and made a path around them to make it easier for the cattle to eat. An hour later the tractor was parked back in the shop and they were headed back to the house.