A Cowboy's Christmas Promise

by Maggie McGinnis

  “You didn’t give me much choice,” she huffed.

  “May I take your coat?”

  “I think I’ll leave it on, thank you.”

  “Suit yourself. I want to show you something. Follow me.” He led her to the dining room, where the cupcakes and hearts were laid neatly on the table.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “This is your granddaughters celebrating their mother’s birthday yesterday. With Hayley.”

  Evelyn took a quick breath. “What?”

  “I thought you should see this. I imagine you didn’t when you were here yesterday, trying to make it clear that she could never measure up to Katie.”

  Evelyn looked scared.

  “She told you about our visit?”

  “No. She didn’t even tell me you’d been here.”

  “Then how—”

  “The girls told me. They were sitting on the stairs, listening to yet another conversation that seven-year-olds should never have had to hear.”

  Evelyn blanched. “Let me expla—”

  “No. No explanations. This has to stop. Now. Today. It wasn’t fair of you to involve Hayley. She’s innocent in all this. It’s not about her.”

  He pointed to the hearts. “Look at these. She worked with the girls to write little messages they could tie to balloons and send toward Heaven. Does that sound like someone who’s trying to step in and erase Katie from our lives?”

  Evelyn stayed silent, fingering a couple of the hearts the girls had written. Daniel leaned over the table and picked one up. “Look at this one.”

  Evelyn shook her head slowly, but her shoulders dropped.

  “Daniel—”

  “Here. Read a couple.” He handed her two of the hearts Hayley had written, daring her not to take them. She reluctantly reached out and took the tissue paper, but didn’t immediately look at them.

  Daniel pointed at the notes. “This is a woman who has fallen in love with the girls—and possibly even with me—but is heading back to Boston in two days rather than take a chance on admitting it, in no small part because of your machinations.”

  “She told you this?”

  “No.” He pointed to the hearts in Evelyn’s hand. “These hearts told me this. I’m one hundred percent sure she planned for these little slips of tissue to be heading toward Heaven long before I got home, so me finding them was not intentional on her part.”

  Evelyn leaned her hand on the back of a chair, looking a bit like a deer in the headlights. Good.

  “Read the hearts, Evelyn.” Daniel left her in the dining room and headed for the kitchen.

  Two minutes later, Evelyn appeared in the arched doorway. Her eyes were red and the tissue paper shook in her hand before she carefully set the hearts down on the counter.

  “Did you read them?”

  She nodded.

  “And?”

  “I…I don’t know what to think.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what to think. When Hayley found out that yesterday was Katie’s birthday, she could have handled it any number of ways. But what did she do? She baked Katie cupcakes and spent the morning helping the girls remember happy times with their mother. Then she cut out a gazillion tissue hearts so they could send her messages.

  “She has no delusions about replacing Katie, Evelyn. She has no intention of replacing her. She isn’t the girls’ mother, and she never will be, but she loves Bryn and Gracie. And the feeling’s completely mutual. You can’t be with the three of them for five minutes without seeing it.”

  Evelyn took a deep, shaky breath. “So what do you plan to do?”

  “I’m still working that out. For two years now, I’ve thought I would never find someone I could love like I did Katie, and I didn’t ever intend to look. But here’s what I know now. I won’t ever love someone like I did Katie. She was one of a kind, and our marriage was one of a kind. I’ll never—ever—have that again.

  “But that’s where Hayley finally brought clarity. What Katie and I had…could never be the same with anyone else, but that’s okay. It shouldn’t be. What I’ve maybe found with Hayley is different. Amazing and—different.”

  Evelyn’s shoulders shook and she reached her other hand for the counter.

  Daniel took a breath. “Katie would want me to decide where and how Gracie and Bryn are raised—and I think you know that, Evelyn. I think beneath the bluster and the threats and the anger, you know that I will make the right decisions for them, and what scares you most is that those decisions might not include you.”

  “I—I—” Her hand went to her throat.

  “You know I’m a good father. You know it the same way you’ve always known it. Yes, there are days when they come with me to the barns; and yes, there are nights when they stay with my mother because I’m on a late call. But Evelyn, you must be able to see how well Gracie and Bryn are doing. They laugh. They smile. They crack ridiculous knock-knock jokes—just like seven-year-olds are supposed to do.”

  He pointed toward the refrigerator, covered with drawings of pinks and purples and yellows. “They’re happy, Ev. Happy. And could we really ask for any more than that right now?”

  “But—Katie.” Her voice was pathetically small now.

  He sighed, gentling his voice. “I didn’t move here to try to lose Katie. I moved here to find myself. She’s not coming back, Ev. We can’t have her back, but she left us these two precious little girls. I will never let them forget their mother, and I would never ever invite another woman into our lives who would be a threat to Katie’s memory. That I can promise you.”

  Evelyn stayed silent, but he could see her chin quivering.

  Just then his phone chirped with a text message, and he felt his forehead crease into disbelief as he read the words.

  “News?”

  He lifted his eyes from the phone. “You already know what this message is, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Evelyn sat down on a stool, unsteady. “I talked with my attorney this morning.”

  “And withdrew your petition?”

  She closed her eyes. “I told him I wanted to see if we could work things out ourselves.”

  Daniel felt his shoulders sag in relief, but he didn’t quite dare to trust the feeling. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  “It’s not that sudden.” She shook her head, looking through the archway to the dining room and then into the living room where he could see toys scattered all over the floor. “I hate that this is true, but I was so scared you were going to take these babies away from me, I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Why would you ever think I’d do that?”

  “Because! There you went, hundreds of miles away, as soon as you could see clearly enough to pack. How was I to know you wouldn’t go further? Or get sick of making the trip to Denver every month? The girls are getting older. They’re going to start having activities that make it harder to find a free weekend. They’re going to stop wanting to come.”

  “I never—”

  “I know. I lashed out because I was hurting, and in the end—I just hurt everybody even more.” Tears licked at the inside corners of her eyes, but she dabbed them quickly with her finger. “And then I came here for Christmas, and there’s this gorgeous girl who’s obviously falling head-over-heels for the whole lot of you, and I panicked.”

  She sniffed delicately. “She loves you, Daniel. I didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to know it, and I most certainly didn’t want to admit it. But more than that, it was the girls. They—they adore her like they adored Katie. They nestle up to her, they laugh with her, they—they just love her.”

  She tapped her manicured nails on the counter. “I was awful to her yesterday, and she stood her ground. She had every right to give me a piece of her mind.”

  Daniel felt an arc of pride zing through his midsection. He was dying to know what she’d said.

  Evelyn took a deep breath. “But do you want to know what really convinced me?”

 
; “Absolutely.”

  She pointed out the front windows. “The snowmen.” She stood up, folding the paper and putting it in her purse. “Come look.”

  He followed her out the front door and out into the yard, mystified. He ran his eyes over the four figures, trying to determine what she was talking about. One of them was tall and had Daniel’s scarf draped around it. Two little ones came next, and the girls had put their own hats on them. Then there was one with a scarf he’d seen Hayley wear. In front of each of the snowmen, Gracie and Bryn had scratched a name in the snow. Daddy, Bryn, Gracie, Hayley.

  He looked at the little snow family his children had created, feeling a warmth seep from the center of his chest out to his fingertips and toes. It looked so—right.

  “Look over there.” Evelyn pointed off to the left side of the snowmen, toward the ground next to the one wearing his scarf.

  Daniel swallowed hard when he saw the snow angel with Mommy written on its skirt.

  “It’s a kicker, isn’t it?” Evelyn bit her lip as she stared down at the angel. “That angel is smiling.”

  Chapter 34

  Daniel touched the petals of the yellow roses before he set them carefully on the base of Katie’s granite headstone. They were a splash of color in a cemetery filled with white and gray on this New Year’s Eve day. He knew they’d freeze by tonight, but he always brought yellow roses. Always.

  He needed to remember to tell the girls that Katie’s favorite color was yellow.

  His chest felt heavy as he ran his hand along the polished top of her stone. It was cold, lifeless, stark, reflecting the low, leaden sky above.

  He cleared his throat, looking around. Not another soul was in the graveyard this morning.

  “Hi, Katie,” he finally spoke, but his voice was gravelly. “I miss you.”

  It was the same way he’d greeted her every time he’d visited this stone over the past two years, and every time before today, the words had caught in his throat.

  He brushed snow from the granite bench next to Katie’s stone, then sat down, staring at her name and at the way-too-short time span between her first day and her last. Then, as he always had, he started talking about the girls. Told Katie what they’d been up to lately, about how they’d both lost the same exact tooth within twelve hours of each other last week, how they’d insisted on adopting Olaf the cat “because Mommy would have kept him.”

  And then he stopped and took a deep breath. The whole reason he’d jumped this flight this morning was because he needed to come here—to Denver—to Katie—before he went to Hayley. He’d felt like he had to visit Katie’s grave one more time—before he could truly think about making a future with someone else.

  “So, Katie.” He cleared his throat again. “You’re probably wondering why I’m really here, right?” He took a deep, shaky breath. “I…met a woman. She’s—she’s sweet, and she’s kind, and crazy, but the good kind. She can’t cook anything besides cupcakes, and she would rather live with a big, slobbery dog than a man. But I think she’s fallen for Gracie and Bryn, and maybe—maybe even for me.”

  He took another deep breath.

  “I wasn’t looking, Kate. I had every plan of going through the rest of my days just being a daddy, not a husband again, and I was grateful for all of it. I never, ever thought I’d find the kind of love we had again.”

  Daniel paused, staring up at the dull gray sky. The clouds were barely moving, and the first flakes of snow drifted down to land on his coat. He put his elbows on his knees, emotions roiling. “But here’s the thing I finally figured out. I won’t ever find our kind of love again, because it was me and you—you and me—us. I couldn’t ever find it again.

  “I think, though…I think I’ve found a different kind of love.”

  A chickadee landed on a low branch near her headstone, tipping its tiny head back and forth. His throat tightened when he saw it. Katie’s favorite bird. Evelyn would say it was a sign, but he didn’t believe in that stuff. He looked at the bird, now looking at him. Of course he didn’t.

  He shook his head, shifting his eyes back to the gravestone.

  “I—I think you’d like her, Katie. I think the two of you might actually have been friends, given the chance.” He paused, unsure of how to say the rest. “I’m thinking about asking her to stay. But I had to come here. Had to come tell you about her first. Had to—had to say good-bye.”

  He took a deep breath, let it out through his mouth. “I’ve never really said…good-bye.”

  He felt drops of moisture in the corners of his eyes, and took a frustrated swipe at them. “I loved you, Katie. Loved you so much it hurt. Loved you so much I wanted to lie down in this grave with you so I didn’t have to live without you.” He swiped at his eyes again. “Dammit. I still love you. I’ll always love you.

  “But—but I think maybe I can love someone else, too. I think what I finally realized is that falling in love with Hayley doesn’t mean I loved you any less. It doesn’t mean I’ll forget what we had. It just means—maybe I’m healing. And—I think that’s a good thing.”

  He took a catchy breath.

  “We’re not coming back to live here in Denver. Not now, not maybe ever. I don’t know. For now, Montana is working. I love it there, the girls love it there, and if I’m lucky, I’ll convince Hayley to fall in love with it as well.”

  He looked at his watch, then back up at the sky, where the flakes were falling faster. If he was going to make it back to Montana in time to get to Whisper Creek tonight, he needed to get to the airport.

  He stood up slowly, reluctant to leave, but anxious at the same time. “I’ll never forget you, Katie. And I’ll never, ever let your daughters forget you. That I promise.”

  He put his fingers to his lips and pressed a kiss there, then set his hand gently on the granite, holding it there for a long, long moment. “I have to go.”

  —

  “You okay?” Jess sidled up to Hayley near the French doors in the main lodge’s great room. The New Year’s Eve party was in full swing, with a deejay spinning music, the bar hopping, and the ceiling filled with what looked like a thousand silver balloons. It was a festive, happy scene, but all Hayley wanted to do was duck out the doors and go hide her tears in her cabin.

  Jess handed her a glass of wine, then did a double take when she saw her eyes. “Oh, no. What happened?”

  Hayley blinked her eyes hard a couple of times. “He’s not coming.”

  “I never thought he w—” Jess scrunched her eyebrows together. “Did you—expect him?”

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “I thought the plan was to get on the plane tomorrow and try to forget him.” Hayley couldn’t help but see Jess’s lips tipping upward at the edges. “Wasn’t that where you were at last night?”

  “It was! It is!” She looked out the doors toward the mountains. “Oh, God, Jess. What have I done?”

  “I don’t know. What have you done?”

  Hayley looked at her phone, thinking about Daniel’s voice mail, which, as of ten minutes ago, had told her it was full. “I might have left him a couple of messages.”

  Jess’s smile got bigger. “How many couple of messages?”

  “A few. Eighteen.”

  Jess laughed out loud. “You’ve left that man eighteen messages? Hayley Scampini?”

  “Yeah, well, turns out it was a stupid idea to do so.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I just talked to Evelyn. She’s at his house with the girls. Daniel’s not even—there. He went back to Denver.”

  Jess’s face fell. “Denver? Did she say why?”

  “She said it wasn’t for her to say.” Hayley handed her glass back to Jess. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this. I can’t be here right now. I dumped my pride right down the proverbial toilet and poured my heart out to that man—well, to his voice mail—and he hasn’t even had the decency to call back. And now he’s in Colorado, for God’s sake.”

  She sighe
d, looking down at the dress she’d picked especially for tonight. It was a subtle kaleidoscope of deep greens and blues, accented with golden threads, and the saleswoman had said it made her hair look like molten fire. She’d left a tip.

  When she’d gotten dressed tonight, having left only fifteen voice mails at that point, she’d entertained delusions of Daniel showing up at Whisper Creek in dress shirt and pants, hair maybe a little tousled, body hard and heated. He’d walk across the room, eyes only on her despite the hordes of people in the room, and then he’d take her hands in his. They’d laugh. They’d kiss. They’d dance. They’d move as one, and later, maybe they’d be one.

  Instead, she stood at the fringes of a party, one of a hundred people in the room, but except for Jess, completely alone.

  Just as she’d always said she wanted to be.

  Chapter 35

  “Is this gazebo taken?”

  Hayley jumped at the sound of Daniel’s deep, delicious voice an hour later, turning around to see him standing on the bottom step, hands buried in the pockets of his wool coat. In the glow of the tiny white lights, he looked like a proverbial Prince Charming, though with tired eyes.

  She turned her head away quickly, running her gloves over her face to catch any rogue tears. Then she turned back. “It’s not polite to sneak up on women having sulks in moonlit gazebos, Daniel.”

  “Oh, are you sulking? I can come back.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  “That’s okay. It’s a long walk. You can stay for a minute.” Her heart flipped into fifth gear as he slowly came up the steps.

  He’d come!

  “Why are you sulking?”

  She raised her chin, backing up against the railing, holding on to it with both hands so she could try to pretend she wasn’t shaking like one of the snowflakes fluttering around. “Well, I swallowed quite a load of pride today—and got no response. Thus, sulking.”

  He smiled as he took a step toward her, then stopped.

  “In my defense, I didn’t see your messages until about twenty minutes ago. I forgot my damn phone this morning.”