Clay ate at his own pace, the way he did everything, and seemed to savor the food Dara Rose had put aside for him, with no real conviction that he’d be around to eat it.
Once he’d finished, Dara Rose offered coffee, but Clay shook his head, said, “No thank you,” and started for the front room. When Dara Rose lingered to clear the table, Clay shook his head a second time and beckoned politely for her to follow.
Edrina and Harriet had been busy, Dara Rose discovered. They’d taken every single ornament out of the boxes and laid them in neat rows on the settee.
Later, out in the woodshed behind the house, working by lantern light and supervised by two very lively little girls and an eager dog—Dara Rose spent the time fussing over her chickens—Clay cobbled together a stand to support the small tree and they all went back inside.
To Dara Rose, the thing looked more like a shrub than a tree, but both Edrina’s and Harriet’s eyes glowed with awe as one decoration after another was reverently added to this bough or that one. The homemade ornaments held their own against the store-bought ones, in Dara Rose’s opinion, and she had to admit that, when finished, the effect was very nearly magical—especially when the porcelain angel with the wire halo and the feather wings seemed to hover over the whole of it, offering a blessing.
“Thunderation,” Edrina breathed, reflected light from the colorful blown-glass ornaments shining on her face.
“It’s bee-you-tee-ful,” Harriet pronounced.
Even Chester, sitting between the children and gazing at the shining display, seemed spellbound.
“It’s enough to make a person believe in St. Nicholas,” Clay said quietly, for Dara Rose alone to hear. “Isn’t it?”
“No,” she said promptly, but without her usual conviction.
Only days ago, Dara Rose reflected dizzily, she’d been alone in the world, with two children to support, winter coming on and the threat of eviction hanging over her head. She might well have lost Edrina and Harriet forever, the way things were going.
But then Clay McKettrick had arrived by train, with his handsome horse, and pinned on the marshal’s badge, and turned her entire life upside down.
The man had even managed to turn a scrub pine into a more-than-respectable Christmas tree.
It was hard, under such circumstances, not to believe in magic.
Christmas Eve
THE CLOCK ON THE FRONT room wall chimed ten times, and the lantern light wavered as Clay came out of the bedroom, shaking his head.
“Not yet,” he said to Dara Rose, who was waiting to fill the pair of small stockings she’d allowed the girls to hang from the knobs on the side table. She’d sent him in to see if Edrina and Harriet were really asleep, or just pretending. “Those two are playing possum, for sure.”
Dara Rose had an orange to drop into the toe of each stocking, thanks to the box from Clay’s people up north, along with a bright copper penny and the new mittens she’d bought at the mercantile a few days before.
These things alone would delight the children, she knew, but there was so much more; she’d splurged on shoes and ready-made coats for her daughters, and Clay’s packages—still wrapped in their brown paper and tucked beneath the lowest boughs of the tree—contained numerous mysteries.
They retreated into the kitchen, Clay drinking luke warm coffee left over from supper, and Dara Rose sipping tea. She’d felt downright reckless, spending Piper’s ten dollars so freely, and it still made her breath lurch to think how she’d spent some of it.
Idly, Clay took a small package from the pocket of his shirt, and set it down next to Dara Rose’s teacup.
She looked up at him, but she didn’t—couldn’t—speak.
“Open it,” he urged, with that crooked grin tilting his mouth upward at one side, in the way she’d come to love.
Dara Rose hesitated, drew a folded sheet of paper from her skirt pocket and handed it to Clay. “This is for you,” she said, so softly that he cocked his head slightly in her direction to catch the words.
“You go first,” he said, holding the paper between fingers calloused from working practically every spare moment to prepare for the arrival of the Sears, Roebuck and Company house, all while tending to his duties as town marshal.
Dara Rose’s fingers trembled as she opened the little packet, folding back its edges.
A golden wedding band gleamed inside, sturdy and full of promise.
“Will you wear my wedding band, Dara Rose?” Clay asked.
In some ways, it would always seem to both of them that that was the moment they were truly married, there at the kitchen table, in the light of a single lantern, on Christmas Eve.
She nodded, murmured, “Yes,” all the while blinking back tears, and allowed him to slip the ring onto her finger. It was a perfect fit.
Clay sat watching her for a few moments, his gaze like a caress, and then, very slowly, he opened the sheet of paper she’d given him.
His eyebrows rose slightly as he read, and then a grin spread across his face, lighting him up from within.
She’d given him a receipt for a night’s lodging at the Texas Arms Hotel—for two.
“Does this mean what I hope it does?” Clay asked.
Dara Rose had been blushing a lot since she met Clay McKettrick, but at that moment, she outdid herself. Her whole face caught fire as she nodded.
Clay still didn’t seem convinced. “You’re giving me a wedding night for a Christmas gift?”
She blushed even harder. As her legal husband, he was entitled to a wedding night, their bargain notwithstanding. Maybe she should have waited, given him socks or a book or perhaps a fishing pole….
Meanwhile, his golden band gleamed on her left ring finger, simple but heavy.
“Yes,” she forced herself to say.
“Hallelujah!” Clay replied, and then he got up from his chair and pulled her into his arms—clear off her feet, in fact—and kissed her so thoroughly that she was gasping when he let her go.
Dara Rose dashed out of the kitchen, afraid of her own scandalous tendencies, and went to look in on the children.
Certain that Edrina and Harriet were at last asleep, she returned to the front room just in time to see Clay set the exquisite doll from the mercantile window squarely in front of the Christmas tree, next to a stack of story-books that must have been meant for Edrina.
Dara Rose drew in her breath.
“Oh, Clay,” she whispered. She’d hadn’t dared think, or hope, that he’d been the one to buy Florence.
But he had.
He waggled an index finger at her and spoke gruffly. “Don’t you dare tell me I shouldn’t have done this, Mrs. McKettrick. I might not be Edrina and Harriet’s real father, but I couldn’t love them more if I were, and besides, after all they’ve been through in their short lives, they deserve a special Christmas.”
Dara Rose was fresh out of arguments. She simply went to Clay, slipped her arms around his lean waist and let her head rest against his chest. She could feel his steady, regular heartbeat under her cheekbone.
“I love you, Clay McKettrick,” she heard herself say.
Clay drew back just far enough to tilt her face upward with one curved finger. “Do you mean it, Dara Rose?”
“I never say anything I don’t mean,” she replied, quite truthfully.
He grinned. “I meant to be the first one to say ‘I love you,’” he told her, “and darned if you didn’t beat me to it.”
“Hold me,” Dara Rose said. “Hold me tightly, so I know this isn’t a dream.”
“It isn’t a dream,” he told her. His breath was warm in her hair. “I love you, Dara Rose. I think I have since I first laid eyes on you that first day, when I brought Edrina home on Outlaw and you were so riled up, you were practically standing next to yourself.”
She clung to him, with both arms, and her body ached to receive his, but that would have to wait.
Still, it was Christmas Eve, and Clay was holding her, and
in a few weeks, they’d be settled in their new house, with a room to themselves and all the privacy a married couple could want.
She’d waited a long time for Clay McKettrick, and she could wait a little longer.
ON CHRISTMAS DAY, in the early afternoon, members of the community began arriving at Blue River’s one-room schoolhouse, some on foot, some on horseback, others riding in wagons or buggies.
Miss Alvira Krenshaw had done a fine job decorating the place with paper chains and the like, and everyone who could afford to brought food to share with their neighbors. Clay carefully carried in the huge ham, arranged on a scrubbed slab of wood and draped in clean dish towels, and set it on top of one of the bookcases, with the mounds of fried chicken and the beef roasts and various other dishes already provided by earlier arrivals.
Edrina, preening a little in her new coat and shoes, carried another of her gifts, a game of checkers in a sturdy wooden box, under one arm, hoping, Dara Rose supposed, to find some unsuspecting child to challenge to a game.
Harriet, also sporting a new coat and lace-up shoes—the first pair she’d ever owned that hadn’t belonged to Edrina first—held Florence tightly against her side. The doll came with a small wardrobe, neatly folded inside a travel trunk, and Harriet had changed its clothes three times before they left home.
Everyone was there, including Dr. Howard, his wife, Eloise, and little Madeline, the newcomers.
People laughed and talked, often-lonely country folks crowded together in small quarters, and eventually Miss Krenshaw sat down at the out-of-tune piano and launched into a lively version of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
Just about everybody sang along; though, of course, some voices were better than others. Some hearty, some thin and wavering.
“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” followed, and then “Silent Night.”
Snow began drifting past the windows, and Ezra Maddox showed up, along with Peg O’Reilly, her two boys and little Addie, bundled warmly in a quilt.
Holding the child in his strong farmer’s arms, Mr. Maddox looked around at the assemblage, as though daring anyone to question his presence.
“Come in, come in,” Miss Krenshaw sang out, from the piano seat, “we’re just about to start supper.”
Dara Rose immediately approached Peg, though she gave Mr. Maddox a wide berth, and hugged her friend warmly. Peg had obviously made an effort to dress up, and the children looked clean and eager to share in festivities.
“Happy Christmas, Peg,” Dara Rose said, smiling.
“Ezra didn’t say we ought to bring food,” Peg whispered, looking fretful, as though she might be poised to flee.
“Never mind that,” Dara Rose assured the other woman. “There’s plenty to go around. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we wound up with as many leftovers as the Lord’s disciples gathered up after the feast of the loaves and fishes.”
Peg managed a tentative smile. “Addie shouldn’t be out—she’s been running a fever. But the little ones were so pleased to have some kind of Christmas…”
Dara Rose couldn’t help seeing some of herself in Peg O’Reilly. After her husband’s desertion, and all the struggles to keep body and soul together, for her children and herself, Peg barely believed in good fortune anymore, or human generosity. If, indeed, she’d ever believed.
Putting a hand on the small of Peg’s bony back, she steered her friend toward the part of the schoolhouse where the food awaited, helped her to fill plates for Addie and the little boys and find places for them to sit.
After that, everyone sort of stampeded forward, and there was much merriment and laughter as the people of Blue River, Texas, shared a simple Christmas.
Although she made sure Edrina and Harriet had sup per, Dara Rose barely saw her husband for the rest of the evening. He was always on the other side of the crowded schoolhouse, it seemed, but each time she found him with her eyes, he smiled and winked and made her blush.
They finally converged at the cloakroom—Clay and Dara Rose, Edrina and Harriet—and the girls, probably exhausted, seemed unusually reticent.
Harriet tugged at Dara Rose’s skirt and said, “Mama, bend down so I can speak to you.”
Smiling, Dara Rose leaned to look directly into her youngest daughter’s face.
“We have lots of presents at home,” Harriet said, with a rueful glance at her lovely doll, which was now looking a bit rumpled from being clenched so tightly in her arms.
“And the O’Reillys didn’t get anything at all,” Edrina added, shifting her checkers game from one arm to the other. “They didn’t even have a tree.”
Clay had joined them by then, and he’d managed to collect their coats from the conglomeration in the cloak room, but he didn’t say anything.
“Do you think St. Nicholas would be sad if I gave Florence to Addie?” Harriet asked, her eyes luminous as she searched Dara Rose’s face.
“And her brothers would probably like this checkers game,” Edrina added.
Dara Rose’s vision blurred.
She looked helplessly up at Clay.
He laid a hand on Edrina’s shoulder, smiled down at Harriet. “I think a thing like that would make St. Nicholas mighty happy,” he said.
Both girls shifted their gazes to Dara Rose.
She could only nod, since her throat had tightened around any words she might have said, cinching them inside her.
Edrina and Harriet raced off, beaming, to give away their Christmas presents.
Epilogue
December 26, 1914
Clay gave Dara Rose plenty of time to settle into their room at the Texas Arms Hotel that evening, making his usual rounds as marshal, tending to Out law in his stall at the livery stable and the chickens in the backyard at home. The children were spending the night with Miss Krenshaw, in the teacher’s quarters be hind the schoolhouse, and the thought made her smile every time it came to her. After all the times Edrina had played hooky, it was ironic, her being so pleased by the idea of sleeping there.
At her leisure, Dara Rose unpacked her tattered carpetbag, took a long, luxurious bath in the gleaming cop per tub carried in, set down in front of the room’s simple fireplace, the hearth blazing with a crackling and fragrant fire, and filled with steaming, fragrant water. She soaked and scrubbed and dreamed, and when she heard Clay’s light knock at the door, she started.
She’d lost track of time. Meant to be properly clad in the lovely lace-trimmed nightgown and wrapper Clay had given her for a private Christmas gift, presented when the children were asleep and they were alone. Instead, though, here she was, stark naked, her skin slick with moisture, her hair still pinned up in a knot at the back of her neck. She stood, trembling, not with fear, but with anticipation, and reached for her towel.
“It’s me, Mrs. McKettrick,” Clay said, from the other side of the door. “May I come in?”
Dara Rose gulped hard. “Yes,” she said.
His key turned in the lock, and the door opened, and Clay stepped inside. His eyes drank her in even as he shut the door again. Slowly, he took off his hat and then his coat, with its star-shaped badge, unbuckled the ominous gun belt he wore when he was working, set it aside.
“Do you really need that towel?” he asked, with a hint of mischief in his eyes, as he ran a hand through his dark hair.
Dara Rose, feeling deliciously reckless, let the towel drop.
Clay looked at her frankly, his gaze touching her bare breasts, rousing her nipples to peaks, gliding like reverent hands down the sides of her waist and over her hips and even to the silk thatch at the juncture of her thighs.
He swallowed visibly. “Mrs. McKettrick,” he said, in a rumbling drawl, “you are unreasonably beautiful.”
What did one say to that? Dara Rose didn’t know, didn’t try.
She simply waited to be touched.
Clay approached her then, lifted her out of the tub by her waist and set her in front of him. Kissed her until she felt drunk with the sensation of
his mouth on hers, the radiant heat and hard substance of his body promising so much to her soft one.
“You have me at a disadvantage, Mr. McKettrick,” Dara Rose managed, free to be the temptress she was at long last, and exulting in that.
“How’s that?” he asked, arching one dark eyebrow and running his hands lightly up and down, along her ribs.
“You, sir,” she replied, breathless at his touch, wanting more, so much more, “are fully dressed, while I am quite naked.”
“Indeed you are,” he agreed huskily, using one hand to loosen her chignon and send her heavy hair spilling down her back.
In the next moment, Clay lifted her again and, secret vixen that she was, Dara Rose locked her bare legs around his hips, tilted her head back with a slight groan when she felt the length of his shaft against her. That made him chuckle, and find her mouth with his, and kiss her into another, even deeper daze of jubilant need.
Suddenly, she landed, with a soft but decisive bounce, on the hotel bed, looked up at Clay as he unbuttoned his shirt, tossed it aside. Instead of stretching out beside her, though, he knelt at the side of the bed, gently parted her legs and kissed his way, very lightly, up the inside of her right thigh.
She gasped and arched her back when he conquered that most intimate place, and took her fully into his mouth.
Suckled, lightly at first, and then with increasing hunger.
Dara Rose, twice married, had never been so deliciously ravished, never felt so beautiful or so womanly, never known such a wild and frantic greed for pleasure.
Instinctively, she arched her back, and Clay slipped his hands under her buttocks, now quivering with the strain of making an offering of her entire self, and feasted on her until her body buckled and undulated in fierce spasms of celebration and she cried out.
The sound was low and long and husky, part howl and full of triumph that must have sounded, instead, like agony.
“That—” Clay chuckled against her still-tingling flesh “—is why we need our own bedroom, Mrs. McKettrick. One with thick walls.”
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