Lone Star Christmas

by Delores Fossen

  Fire in the hole.

  A warning that some kind of big explosion was about to happen.

  Callen probably wouldn’t like that he was part of that particular metaphor, but he was. Because he wouldn’t have agreed to stay the night unless something was truly wrong with her father.

  Of course, she’d known something was wrong, but she’d hoped—God, she’d hoped—that she had blown it out of proportion. But now it was right there in her face, as glaring and disturbing as the mooning Santa had been.

  Elvira opened her green, already-narrowed eyes and made a feline grunting sound that smacked of give it a rest already and go to sleep. Shelby would. As soon as she managed to turn off her brain and not replay every second of the past hours.

  Had Buck told Callen what was wrong? she wondered.

  Maybe. If so, then Callen had the most pokered of poker faces because he hadn’t given her any hints whatsoever. Then again, they hadn’t had a minute to themselves so she could pump him for information, either. She could thank Rayna and her constant whining for that, and Rosy, who’d decided to pull out all the stops and create even more of a dinner feast—one that she’d wanted Shelby to help her prepare while Buck and Callen went out riding with Mateo.

  She could thank her father for the horseback riding suggestion that had also robbed her of any pumping time with Callen. Buck had claimed he wanted to show Callen the mineral springs that weren’t far from the ranch. Springs that had been there for eons and that hadn’t changed in the fourteen years since Callen had left. But those eons-old springs had apparently become so riveting that Buck had insisted on the ride. The fact that Callen had agreed likely meant he knew whatever bad gloom and doom stuff that Buck hadn’t been willing to tell her.

  Tomorrow, before Callen could drive away again, she would go back for another pumping attempt.

  In the darkness, she frowned. Why the heck did that suddenly sound so sexual? Maybe because of all the lingering lust that hung between Callen and her, that was why. The info she needed from him was critical, top-of-the-list kind of thing, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt if she gave him that goodbye kiss that she’d been storing up for fourteen years. Maybe this time, he’d give her a glance in the rearview mirror.

  Yes.

  Nothing could go wrong with that.

  “Fire in the hole,” Shelby whispered as she drifted off to sleep.

  * * *

  SHELBY WAS GUZZLING her third cup of coffee when she heard the vehicle approaching her house.

  Her first thought was Callen.

  Of course, he had pretty much been her first or second thought throughout the entire restless night, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. That was why she’d already tended to the horses and got dressed so she could drive over and have that chat with him. But maybe he’d come to her.

  Or not.

  When she sprinted to the door and looked out, she saw Rosy sitting behind the wheel of her truck, motioning for Shelby as she rolled down the window. “Hurry. We have to decide between the cowboy-cowgirl, the matching bunny rabbits or the rearing horse.”

  Shelby was certain she gave Rosy a blank stare. That was before she remembered that today was the day they were supposed to make a final decision on the wedding cake—and the plastic or floral topper. And to do that they needed to see Jaylene Winters, the owner of Patty Cakes.

  If the decision had been left up to Shelby, it wouldn’t have been any of those choices Rosy had just mentioned, but at least she’d managed to talk Rosy out of using a figurine of Billy the Armadillo. The sight of the likeness of the stuffed critter would have squelched even the heartiest of appetites at the reception.

  “Hurry,” Rosy repeated, causing Shelby to finish the last gulps of coffee, grab her purse and go out to meet the woman. “I got a late start,” Rosy added, “and Jaylene can only give us a half hour or so. She’s running a special on snickerdoodles, and she’ll have to get started baking.”

  Shelby got in the truck and managed to hold off a good twenty seconds before she asked, “How’s Callen?”

  “Right as rain. I’m not sure if he got much sleep, though, because he was working on a laptop and talking on the phone when I got there this morning. It seems to me that he’d been working most of the night. Buck said Callen had some business stuff to take care of, and he didn’t come down for breakfast, so I left him some French toast and bacon warming in the oven.”

  While Rosy drove into town, Shelby took her time to figure out how to best word her next question. “Did Buck and Callen get to spend any time together? You know, talking?”

  “Well, sure. You were there when they went out to the barn.”

  Yes, but that would have been only time enough for Buck to drop some health bombshell on Callen. It wouldn’t have been a long enough discussion for her father to get off his chest whatever was bothering him.

  “And they’ll get to spend some time together today,” Rosy continued. “Callen said he wouldn’t be going back until later this afternoon.”

  Good. That would give Shelby the chance to interrogate him. If that failed, then she was going to have to press her father. Of course, Buck wasn’t going to give up anything that he didn’t want her to know—which he’d already proved by dodging her questions about anything being wrong. That meant her best shot was with Callen.

  Since it was only seven thirty, there weren’t many people on Main Street, but they were delayed because they got behind the old school bus that belched out exhaust and creaked when the driver took the turn toward the school. Once it was out of the way, Rosy hurried to the parking spot directly in front of Patty Cakes.

  It wasn’t a big place. The bubble-shaped glass display cases divided the kitchen from a small seating area that would soon be packed with others jamming around those cases. It smelled like what Shelby figured heaven was like. Sugar, yeast and butter. Some cinnamon and chocolate, too.

  Shelby dragged in some long breaths, figuring each breath was at least a pound that would cling to her thighs.

  Jaylene Winters—who had bought the place from Patty Mervin, hence the name—was there, taking out a large tray of cookies from the gleaming stainless oven and then effortlessly sliding in another tray. She shot them a smile, emphasizing the copious amounts of killer red lipstick that she preferred. She definitely didn’t look like a baker with her Marilyn Monroe figure—the younger years—and her platinum blonde hair. The woman was a genius when it came to high-calorie, fat-saturated yummies.

  “Hi, Shelby, Rosy,” Jaylene said. “Let me get those toppers you wanted me to order for you. I can send back the ones you don’t like.” And she scurried off into her office.

  “I’m sorry,” Rosy whispered, catching onto Shelby’s hand. “When I asked you to come with me, I wasn’t thinking things through. Does this place give you bad memories? Because it reminds you of your engagement to Gavin?” Rosy added when Shelby gave her what had to be another blank stare.

  Oh, that.

  Shelby recalled asking Callen something similar about being back in Coldwater, but that was because she knew he had actual bad memories. He’d brought them with him from whatever circle of hell that he’d escaped. But Shelby had no such memories of Gavin and this place.

  “Gavin and I never got around to choosing a cake,” Shelby said. They’d never got around to choosing a lot of things. Like a wedding date, for instance.

  “Good. I know you’re down—I can see it all over your face—and I just didn’t want to make it worse.”

  The downer was for Buck, but since Shelby wanted to reciprocate and not make things worse for Rosy, she just stayed quiet.

  “Here they are,” Jaylene said. She was carrying a box that she set on one of the tables. “Option one.” She took out an overly cutesy cowboy and cowgirl in wedding clothes. The cowboy was bowlegged. The cowgirl appeared to be giggling with her non-bouquet-holding
hand pressed to her mouth.

  “I vote for that one,” Shelby commented, knowing there would be nothing better coming out of the box.

  She was right.

  “Option two.” Jaylene pulled out a bunny bride and groom. Not plastic. They were furry and reminded Shelby of the critters in Rosy’s shop. The bunny eyes were opened as if they’d been stapled in place, giving them a semi-zombie feel.

  “Option three,” Jaylene continued, and her blush let Shelby know that this one wasn’t going to get Jaylene’s vote.

  It was what Rosy had referred to as the rearing horse. Well, it was rearing, all right. The black stallion was standing on its hind legs, its forelegs high and pawing the air. The pose gave an unobstructed view of the genitalia, proving that it was indeed a stallion. A well-endowed one. Rosy either didn’t notice the endowment or else ignored it as she gave it a careful study and didn’t blush.

  “Oh, this is such a hard choice,” Rosy declared.

  “I vote for option one,” Shelby repeated, only to get what was definitely some hemming and hawing from Rosy.

  Since Rosy appeared to be settling in for even more hawing and possibly some hemming, Shelby went over to the window. As she looked out, her gaze practically collided with Judd’s. Looking more cop than cowboy right now, he used two fingers to motion for her to come outside.

  Well, Judd was better than eyeing the disturbing cake toppers again, but not much. At least he was easier to look at. Of course, she could say that about all the Laramie brothers, who had apparently been created by the gods as some kind of benchmarks for hotness.

  Like his brothers, Judd had got the black hair, the handsome face and the mouth that made women sigh. Not her. She’d never had a single sigh over Judd. For whatever reason, Judd had never done it for her the way Callen had.

  Judd was scowling when she stepped outside with him. Then again, he usually scowled, and this morning his eyes were bloodshot. She hoped that was because he was coming off the night shift and not because he’d gone to bed with a bottle of the single malt he preferred.

  Callen wasn’t the only Laramie with demons.

  “Why is Callen back?” Judd demanded.

  He sounded like a cop, too. Not a surprise since he had been one for about ten years now, but since this wasn’t an official interrogation, she gently brushed her hand down his arm to remind him that she was in every way that counted his sister. And that she wasn’t going to take any crap from him.

  “Buck wanted him here, so I went to Dallas to talk him into coming,” she explained.

  For such a simple answer, it caused Judd to give her a long, pensive glare. “The wedding’s not for nearly four weeks,” he pointed out.

  “Buck wanted him here before the wedding,” she pointed out right back to him. Then she sighed. “I’m worried about Buck. And, no, I don’t have any details. For now, just call it a big cloudy ball of worry, and I thought Callen could help.”

  “Help? How? He washed his hands of us. He left,” Judd spit out.

  She heard the hurt in his voice, but he would have chowed down on Billy the Armadillo before admitting it existed. Or that it ate away at him like acid. Once, Callen and he had been so close. Thick as thieves, Rosy would have said. Whatever that meant. But Callen had tossed aside that closeness to try to outrun those demons.

  Of course, Judd had tried the outrunning approach, too. Or so Shelby suspected when he’d become a cop in Austin. It hadn’t lasted, though, and he’d come home. Probably after realizing that demons had a nasty habit of going wherever you went.

  “Callen’s leaving later today,” she added. “So, if you want to see him, you should do it soon.”

  “I’ve already seen him. I gave him a speeding ticket. Forty-one in a thirty zone.”

  She patted his arm again and considered going snarky. Something like thanks for keeping us safe from all those dangerous criminals. But Judd didn’t look as if he’d appreciate snark today, even from someone he tolerated more than others.

  “Is Buck sick?” Judd asked, and there it was. The worry.

  “Maybe.” Probably. “Maybe” sounded more optimistic, she thought, and she needed to hang on to that a while longer. “I don’t know for sure.”

  Now it was Judd who ran his hand down her arm. “Keep me posted,” he said as he walked away.

  She would. Ditto for Nico and Kace, and she made a mental note to call them on the outside chance that they knew what was actually going on with Buck.

  Shelby glanced in the bakery window to see that Rosy was still in the throes of making a decision. Thankfully, Jaylene had taken the stallion and was holding it partially behind her back. Maybe it was the baker’s attempt at out of sight, out of mind.

  Since Jaylene was no doubt eager to get back to those snickerdoodles, Shelby turned to make her way inside to see if she could hurry Rosy along. The sound of someone calling out her name stopped her. And she groaned—not silently this time. Because it was Gavin.

  It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him since he’d ended the engagement. She’d caught glimpses of him in town and on the road. However, it was the first time he’d sought her out, she realized, as he made his way over to her.

  For someone who seemed awfully interested in talking to her, Gavin clammed up once he reached her. He looked at her, and, yes, there was sympathy in his eyes, before he glanced at Rosy. It likely only took a glance for him to figure out what was going on inside and that he didn’t especially want to be part of it.

  Gavin wasn’t stupid. That was one of the things that she’d always liked about him. Plus, he was good-looking in a blond hair, blue-eyed sort of way. Definitely not the Laramie tall, dark and edgy. He was more the Nordic-god type. You almost expected him to sling mythical lightning bolts while wearing a toga only long enough to cover his manhood.

  “Uh, is it hard for you to be here?” he asked, tipping his head to the bakery. “To deal with Rosy and Buck’s wedding plans, I mean.”

  Yes, it was hard, but not in the way he probably thought. She didn’t want to look at the zombie bunnies on a wedding cake.

  “It’s okay,” she said, because that was the grown-up thing to say. And because they had drawn a small audience.

  She couldn’t miss the movement behind the glass front windows in the shops and businesses along Main Street, and Hattie Dapplemore was using binoculars in the parking lot of the diner. This encounter with Gavin, even when it was grown-up conversation, would generate plenty of gossip.

  Plenty more sympathy for her, too. Something Shelby absolutely didn’t want, but she was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. If she stayed quiet, folks assumed she was sulking and moping. If she smiled, then she was putting up a brave front to hide her broken heart.

  Which had barely been dinged.

  She had no broken heart. No sulking. Darn sure no moping. She was tough. She ran her own horse boarding and training business and was totally undeserving of the kid-glove treatment.

  “You know, I can load hay bales on the tractor bed all by myself,” she snarled.

  “Huh?” That came from Gavin.

  It was a reasonable reaction, considering it’d seemingly come out of nowhere, but Gavin hadn’t been privy to the conversation going on in her head about her being more than capable of surviving a broken engagement. That had morphed into blurting out the totally irrelevant skill set of being able to lift seventy-five pounds, more or less, and hoist it onto a flatbed.

  “I just wanted to point that out,” she mumbled.

  He nodded as if that’d made sense and glanced around at their audience before his attention came back to her. “Silla said Callen was back. The wedding’s nearly four weeks off. Why’d he come back to town so soon?”

  When Judd had posed that very question to her just five minutes ago, it hadn’t bothered her, but it bothered her now. “How the heck sh
ould I know? Why don’t you ask Callen?” The words came out with a heavy dosing of anger. Heavy. And it seemed as if they had taken on bullhorn volume.

  Gavin actually dropped back a step and held up his hand as if about to break into singing “Stop! In the Name of Love.” “I was just curious, that’s all.” He stared at her a moment longer. “Get some rest, Shelby. You sound and look...tired.”

  She wanted to smack him, or better yet throw a hay bale at him, but she reined in the un-grown-up, mean-girl things going on in her head and glared at him until he walked away.

  “Oh dear,” Rosy said as she came running out of the bakery. She had a small box in her hand. “I’m sorry. If I’d known you’d run into Gavin, I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me.” She slid her arm around Shelby and started leading her back to the truck. “Are you okay? Are you going to cry?”

  “Yes. No,” she answered, and hoped that Rosy could figure out the order of those responses. “I really am okay,” she added.

  Rosy muttered another “oh dear,” to indicate that she wasn’t buying it. She got Shelby in the truck and strapped on her seat belt as if she were a kid and not the strong hay-bale-lifting woman that she truly was. Then Rosy hurried to get behind the wheel to drive them away from prying eyes.

  “Here, I got you some snickerdoodles.” Rosy passed her the box. “Eat them. Then maybe a good cry would help you.”

  “No, it’ll just make my eyes puffy.” But the cookies weren’t off-limits. She plucked one from the box and bit in.

  God. A baked treat orgasm. It didn’t actually help, but that would have been asking a lot of flour, butter and such.

  With the hopes of changing the subject and deflecting a lecture from Rosy, Shelby asked, “So, which topper did you choose?”

  Rosy gave her a sheepish smile. “I bought all three. I figured one for the wedding cake, one for the groom’s cake and another can be table decoration.”

  Shelby hoped the stallion or bunnies didn’t end up at her table, but in the grand scheme of concerns and worries, either of those wouldn’t be a biggie. Ditto for Gavin. Everything else, though, was a biggie.