The Cowboy's Christmas Bride

by Patricia Johns

  “So what do you plan to do about it?” Andy asked after a moment.

  “I’m going to talk to her.”

  “I thought you did already,” Dakota said, pulling her attention back to the conversation.

  “No, I got kicked out. That’s not a conversation. That’s shutting down.” Harley shook his head. “I won’t clear out until she and I have sat down together and talked. Until then, I’m sticking around.”

  Dakota felt mildly sorry for Holly. Explaining herself to her family wasn’t going to be easy, and in this Dakota could empathize. She had a tight family, too, and the thing with tight families was that while you could always count on them to be there for you, they also expected something in return—transparency. You didn’t get to crawl into a hole to figure out how you were feeling, because they’d dig you right out and demand an explanation. They worried. They tried to help. In Holly’s situation, they’d followed her all the way to Hope. Sometimes a girl didn’t want to admit that she had no idea how she felt or that she didn’t have a plan yet. Sometimes a girl just wanted to hunker down and lick her wounds. Holly wasn’t going to get that freedom.

  There was one thing she was certain of, however, and that was that Elliot had his own sense of pride, and Harley’s presence had wounded it. Ranch wisdom said you should never back something meaner than you into a corner, and frankly, Elliot was the meaner of the two.

  She sighed. “You think Elliot is going to be okay with all of that?”

  “Quite honestly,” Harley replied, “I don’t think he cares all that much about keeping her.”

  Maybe Harley was right and maybe he was dead wrong. Every act of betrayal—and if Harley broke up his sister’s relationship, she’d most definitely see it as betrayal—seemed to start with only the best of intentions. I was only trying to help.

  Harley had good intentions and she could understand those good intentions, because her family had the same good intentions. They took care of their own, too. They tramped over boundaries and dug people out of their holes and helped them whether they liked it or not. That’s what family did—and, hopefully, you lived to appreciate it.

  Dakota could only hope that Brody would understand that, because whether she came clean now or two months from now when March rolled ’round and Brody came home on leave, she was still part of that deception—at the very heart of it. And Brody would see what they’d done as a betrayal, too.

  * * *

  HARLEY TOOK THE first patrol that night. He hummed to himself as he cantered off into the darkness, his voice mingled with the soft lowing of the cattle. He had a surprisingly smooth baritone and he sang an old Christmas carol that tugged at Andy’s heart. “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”—one of his mother’s favorites.

  Beside him, Dakota shivered, and Andy moved closer and put his arm around her. She startled.

  “Just keeping you warm,” he said.

  She leaned into him, fitting neatly under his arm, and they both sat in silence for a long time, listening to Harley’s voice as he sang to the cattle on his rounds.

  “What were you thinking about?” Dakota asked, rubbing her hands together.

  “When?” he asked.

  “When Harley was talking about his sister,” she said. “You got this faraway look in your eye.”

  “Oh.” Had she noticed that? He’d thought he’d managed to hide his feelings, but apparently not from her. He shrugged. “I’m not much better than Elliot.”

  “What?” She laughed and shook her head. “I think you might be too hard on yourself.”

  “I was with Ida for four years before we broke up,” he said. “She wanted to get married and I—” His mind went back to the life he’d shared with Ida in Billings. She’d been a good woman—there was no denying that. He’d proposed, but he’d also had a hundred good excuses to keep putting that wedding off. “I knew she was a really great woman and, in theory, I couldn’t do better, but I wasn’t sure about marrying her. So instead of proposing, I asked her to move in with me. We lived together for a year before I proposed, but I wasn’t in any hurry to get married. It didn’t feel right.”

  “You broke up pretty close to the wedding, didn’t you?” she asked quietly.

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “And the main issue was that I’d never really wanted to get married—not like she had. And Ida figured that out. She was smart enough to call it off because she didn’t want to be married to someone who didn’t want to be there heart and soul.”

  Dakota leaned forward toward the fire and he let his arm drop away from her shoulder.

  “Breakups happen, Andy.”

  “They do, but I should have been man enough to face what I was really feeling. Instead of dodging marriage by asking her to move in with me, I should have told her the truth. Elliot’s not a bad guy, but he’s doing the same thing I did—dodging a marriage he doesn’t want deep down. And that ends up hurting everyone.”

  He glanced toward her, expecting to see judgment on her face, but instead he found her watching him. Her expression was sad and gentle.

  “I don’t know, Andy,” she said. “Marrying the wrong woman would have been a far sight worse.”

  He smiled. “You’re quite pragmatic, aren’t you?”

  “A cattlewoman has to be.” She shot him a grin. “You’re a good guy, Andy. That’s the thing—you hide it well. You manage to convince everyone that you don’t care, but you do. And you’re a better man than you pretend to be.”

  A good guy. Dakota, who never minced words and always saw through him, saw some good. It softened him and he cleared his throat, looking away.

  “Coming from you, that’s high praise,” he said ruefully.

  “Flattery is a time waster.” She pushed a half-burned stick back into the fire.

  Elliot might not be able to stand him, but Andy could empathize with the rugged cowboy because he’d been there. Maybe Andy had been a little more polished, but the drive was the same. When it wasn’t the right fit, a man dreaded getting hitched. And now Elliot had a baby on the way to complicate things further. What if he’d gotten Ida pregnant? He’d have married her, of course, and done the right thing by her. He’d have raised his family. But that wouldn’t have changed the fact that they weren’t the right match. They lacked that unexplainable spark that really great couples seemed to have—couples like Chet and Mackenzie, like Ida and Calvin.

  The fire popped an explosion of sparks and Andy leaned forward to put another bundle of sticks onto the blaze. The wind was getting colder and it whistled through the trees in a low moan. No one would get much sleep tonight. As he settled back next to Dakota, he slid his arm around her again, nudging her closer. She followed his encouragement and settled against his side. She felt good tucked under his arm like that, like she was made for it. There was something about having Dakota next to him that made him more alert, more aware of his surroundings. The wind whipped up again, leaves swirling and the fire nearly going out before the wind changed direction again.

  Dakota shivered.

  “Cold?” he murmured.

  She nodded and he rubbed his hand over her jacketed arm. Andy would be surprised if there wasn’t snow in the morning. She leaned her head against his shoulder and when he leaned his cheek against the top of her head he could feel the silkiness of her hair against his three-day stubble.

  Back in Hope, he’d been faced with public opinion about his mistakes, and no one seemed terribly interested in understanding his side of things. A good guy. They could have been empty words, meant only to be polite, except Dakota had never been the type to offer empty platitudes. That was one of the things he respected about her.

  “Did you mean it?” he asked quietly.

  “Hmm?” She straightened and looked up at him.

  “You honestly think I’m a good guy, in spite of it all?�
� he asked quietly. “I’m the rat who sold out, you remember.”

  She met his gaze evenly. “You’re a good man, Andy.”

  She wiped a hair away from her face and she was so close that he could feel the warmth of her breath against his cheek. Neither of them moved away. He’d always trusted Dakota to see through him and he realized there was nothing quite so comforting as having a woman see right down to the heart of him. His gaze flickered from her brown eyes down to her pink lips and, before he could think better of it, he lowered his lips onto hers.

  She wasn’t surprised this time when he kissed her, and she leaned into him. He cupped her face with one hand and pulled her closer still with the other. The kiss quickly deepened as she moved against him, closing the cold out as his heart sped up to meet hers. He knew they shouldn’t be doing this again, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember why against the blood pounding in his ears.

  Dakota put a hand against his chest and pushed him back. She sucked in a breath and laughed shakily.

  “We’ve got to stop doing that.”

  “Yeah, we do,” he agreed, closing his eyes, willing his blood to calm. “Sorry about that.”

  “It was me, too,” she said.

  Far away, they could hear Harley’s voice singing “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful.” His mom had liked that one, too. Every Christmas Eve she’d insisted they go to church, and those old carols had shaken that little church with the fervent voices of friends and neighbors.

  “I’m feeling things I haven’t felt before,” he admitted after a moment. “I know it’s no help, and it’s not possible, but I’ve never felt—” He swallowed.

  “Me, too.” She pulled back and he dropped his hands. She felt too far away. “We should stop this before someone gets hurt, Andy.”

  He knew she was right. This couldn’t work for a hundred different reasons. Why was it that the women who were available and appropriate didn’t do this to him, but the one woman completely out of reach made his head empty of every logical thought, made him want to hold her again, no matter the consequences to his heart later on? In the moment, it always seemed worth it.

  But she was right. If they didn’t have a future, they were tormenting themselves for nothing, and while he might be willing to risk his own torment, he wasn’t willing to risk hers.

  “My family will never accept you,” she said quietly, as if reading his mind.

  Was she trying to think of a way to make it work? Or was that just wishful thinking on his part? But he knew better than to ask her to cross that line. That step outside the family circle tended to be a permanent one. When he’d sold that land and gone to Billings, it had solidified something that had been in process for years. The once malleable boundaries hardened and he was officially an outsider. Was he still a Granger? In name, maybe.

  “I think I understand why Holly doesn’t want to go home,” Andy said, trying to pull his thoughts together again. “There are points in your life, steps that you take, that change you. There isn’t any going back. Harley wants her to go home, but maybe she knows better. Maybe she knows that the door is already closed and it’ll never be the same again.”

  “Like you,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, like me.” He gave her a sad smile. “It can be lonely out here on the outside.”

  She slid her hand into his and he squeezed her fingers, listening to Harley’s distant singing.

  “My mom used to sing that song,” Andy said softly. “She was a real stickler for the real meaning of Christmas and all that.”

  “You’re missing her,” she said.

  “I miss her most at Christmas.” He inhaled deeply. “It’s funny, though. She made sure I knew about the angels and the wise men and the baby in the stable. That mattered to her because it was what Christmas was all about in our home. Even when she was dying, when she’d ask us to sing carols with her, she believed. Oh, how she believed. She was going to a better place. But for me—” his voice broke and he swallowed hard “—the meaning of Christmas for me was listening to the angels in her voice. I was a boy losing his mother.”

  Dakota tipped her head onto his shoulder. “Don’t you keep any of the traditions in her memory?”

  “One,” he admitted. “My mom used to hang mistletoe around the house when we were kids, and you’d have to walk around watching the ceiling, because she kept moving it. And if you stopped anywhere around the mistletoe, she’d descend on you and smother you with kisses.”

  “That’s so sweet.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled at the memory. “I’d put up a fight for appearances, but I liked it. Do you know what it’s like to be loved by someone that fiercely? When she died, I lost seventy-five percent of the love in my life in one fell swoop. So I hang mistletoe in my apartment in Billings,” he said. “For her.”

  He could see tears in her eyes. She wrapped her arms around herself and when he squeezed her hand, she met his gaze again.

  “Keep your foot in the door,” he said softly. “I can’t ask you to give up your family. I wouldn’t be much of a man if I did that. When the ones who love you are gone, you realize just how much you lost.”

  What he wanted to do was to take advantage of these last couple of hours of privacy, pull her into his arms and show her exactly how she made him feel, but that would be selfish. It would comfort him in the moment, but at her expense.

  Besides, once they returned to Hope, it would be harder to then have her realize anything between them had only been a fantasy, instead of seeing it now. It would hurt more to watch the realization dawn on her, to watch the change in her eyes when she looked at him.

  He didn’t want to mess with her heart but, frankly, he had a heart to protect, too. And while Andy had been able to break things off with other women without too much scarring, he knew for a fact that Dakota would be a different story, and no man walked into that willingly.

  Chapter Ten

  Half a mile downstream the river widened and slowed—the perfect place for eighty head of cattle to get across, and when the sun was still low and golden, Dakota ignored the empty gnaw in her stomach as they herded the cattle through the hip-deep water to the other side. Morning brought frost, covering the countryside in white lace that crept back as the sun warmed the ground. Their breath hung in the air and, as the morning progressed, Dakota was grateful for the warmth of the sun on her shoulders.

  The night hadn’t been a restful one. They’d kept the fire going and leaned against each other for support and warmth. Leaning against Andy had made her feel more of the same things she didn’t want to feel. Hating him was easier. As was judging him. But understanding his perspective and realizing their attraction to each other was both mutual and powerful—that was difficult.

  When Andy went on patrol, she’d lain next to the fire, and she and Harley had attempted to get some sleep. They’d need any rest so they could manage the long day coming. And when Dakota took her turn at patrol, she’d been relieved to have some solitude to try to sort out the anxiety that wormed up inside her.

  They got up and saddled their horses the next morning. There was no breakfast, no coffee, and they all wanted to get moving as quickly as possible. The sooner they started out, the sooner they’d get back to the rest of the group—and food.

  Things were getting complicated and she knew it. While they were out on the drive, she could push aside all the other burdens and expectations waiting for her back at the ranch, but the closer they got to home, the less she could ignore it all. She was falling for the cowboy who’d ruined her family’s land.

  “We’ll be home tomorrow,” Andy said. “Back to normal.”

  Normal. Did she really want everything to be normal again? Normal included a massive family secret they’d been hiding from her brother. It included her father’s heavy heart as he struggled to make ends meet on a ranc
h that was costing more and more to run. Normal also meant being alone—no stolen kisses, no leaning into that space underneath Andy’s arm that was the warmest nook she’d ever found. Normal certainly came with a price.

  “We’ll both be busy, I’m sure,” she said. And they would be. She’d be working with their own cattle. She had a line of fencing to fix and she and her mother had plans to build a new chicken coop before winter. And then there was Brody...

  She hadn’t decided yet how she’d deal with him. She’d never forgive herself if she went against the family plan and he died over there. She took off her hat and pulled her hand through her hair. It would feel good to get home and shower.

  The freedom to feel all these tumultuous feelings would come to an end in precisely two days, and they’d be back to obligation and responsibility. They’d be back to “normal.”

  “About Dwight...” Andy said. “I’m going to have a talk with him before I leave.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m fine.”

  “Who said it was for you?” he retorted.

  When she looked over at him, she saw a teasing smile on his lips.

  “That’s all over now,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Let it go.”

  “Thing is,” Andy said, “he lied to me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Ahead of them, Harley kicked his horse into a trot to head off a wandering cow and Dakota looked at Andy. The joking was gone from his face and his jaw was clenched. The morning sun glistened on the auburn stubble on his chin and when his gaze cut toward her, she felt warmth rising in her cheeks.

  “When I asked you out and you turned me down, Dwight told me that you and he were starting things up, and I understood that. I did the honorable thing and backed off.” He shot her a rueful smile. “Well, I didn’t think you’d actually choose me over him, anyway. If I thought I had a chance, I probably would have been significantly less honorable. You always saw right through my attempts to be cool and collected. What can I say?”