Wild West Christmas: A Family for the RancherDance with a CowboyChristmas in Smoke River

by Jenna Kernan

  I headed off toward the river, keeping my eye on Lady behind me until Lilah spoke.

  “What is that building over there?”

  “That’s my cabin. I live there.”

  “Can I go see it?”

  “Nope.” Didn’t mean to sound so sharp, but in all the years I’d been foreman at the Rocking K, I’d never invited anyone to my cabin.

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t ask why, Lilah.”

  She was quiet all the way to the riverbank. I showed her how to dismount, and then I boosted her back up into the saddle again and we headed back to the corral. She didn’t want to stop, but I knew she’d be plenty sore after her first time on horseback.

  And anyway, I was having a real hard time keeping my hands off her. Figured I could only take so much.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lilah

  I did not like riding a horse nearly as much as I liked playing poker with Gale, but after watching him tame that wild horse with such gentleness and skill, I knew I was in good hands.

  And I was. I made “horse friends” with the mare Lady and I enjoyed the experience more than I thought I would. Possibly that was because of Gale. I appreciated that he did not allow the ranch hands to observe my fumbling first attempt and...well, just because it was Gale.

  I like the man. I like him more than I thought I could ever like a man. I blush to admit it, but I especially like it when he kisses me. Mama would have an attack of the vapors at such an admission, but I think Aunt Carrie would cheer. Aunt Carrie lived life to its fullest, even though it cost her dearly in the end.

  That afternoon Ernesto drove me back to town in the buggy, and I will never forget the gallant and thoughtful thing he did. When he pulled the horse to a stop in front of my house, he dipped his hand into the pocket of his worn leather vest and pulled out what looked like a man’s sock. The top was knotted and something was tied up inside it.

  He pressed it into my hand and gave me a shy smile. “For you, señorita.”

  Inside were thousands of tiny black seeds. “Flowers,” he explained in his softly accented voice. “From the land.”

  “Wildflowers! Oh, Ernesto, thank you!”

  He studied my garden, where drifts of daisies and baby’s breath mingled in riot of color, like a painting. “Muy bonita. You grow more.”

  I was so touched I leaned over and kissed his wrinkled cheek, which embarrassed him. A flush colored his skin until he bid me goodbye and drove off down the road.

  I was so excited I stripped off my riding skirt and donned the jeans I wore to work in the garden, dragged out the shovel from the shed off the back porch and started that very afternoon to spade up more ground.

  The next morning I was so stiff and sore I could scarcely hobble downstairs for my marmalade toast and coffee. All the spading, no doubt. Or two hours on horseback. Gale had warned me to soak in a hot tub before bed, but in my excitement over Ernesto’s wildflower seeds I forgot to follow his advice.

  The next three days I spent sowing my new seeds and wondering when I would see Gale again. But when he did finally appear on my porch, it was unexpected. And terrible.

  It was late afternoon on a beautiful fall day. I had just finished up a new story and addressed it to the publisher of a lady’s magazine when I heard someone calling my name through the front screen door.

  Gale. His voice sounded harsh. I clattered downstairs with a sudden knot of apprehension in my stomach.

  “Gale! Come in.” I pushed open the screen.

  “I’d rather you came outside,” he said. His face looked odd and tight. He sat me down in the swing and began pacing back and forth from one end of the porch to the other, his hands jammed in the back pockets of his dusty jeans.

  “Lilah...” His voice caught. Something was very wrong.

  “What is it? Tell me.”

  “Don’t really know how.” He turned toward me, snatched off his hat, and crowded close to me on the swing.

  “Ernesto...” He stopped and swallowed, then started again. “Ernesto was moving some of those mustangs from the holding pen into the corral when one of ’em went kinda crazy. Kicked Ernesto in the head pretty bad.”

  He jerked to his feet and walked to the front steps, stood for a moment staring down at my newly spaded-up garden, then came back and sat down again.

  “Doc came out. Said it was a concussion. Bad one.” He drew in a rough breath. “Ernesto’s dead, Lilah. He never woke up.”

  For a moment I felt nothing. This was not real, not happening. But when Gale reached his arms around me I knew it was true.

  I cried and cried. Gale finally went into the kitchen and brought me a cup of wine. “Whiskey’d be better,” he said. “Couldn’t find any.”

  “I-in the hutch,” I said, sobbing.

  He brought that, too, and I drank all that he poured into my glass. After a while he poured himself half a glass and tossed it down.

  “Funeral’s tomorrow. I’ll come get you with the buggy.”

  I could only nod and mop at my eyes with my skirt hem. Gale reached over and squeezed my shoulder, then untied his horse and mounted. He forgot his hat, but my throat ached so much I couldn’t tell him.

  * * *

  We didn’t talk much on the way out to the ranch. Every time my gaze lit on the clumps of goldenweed and wild sunflowers Ernesto had pointed out to me, my tears started in again. Both my handkerchiefs were sodden before we had gone three miles. Gale pulled his out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me; when I noticed that it, too, was tear damp, I started in again.

  Alice met me on the porch. “We have an hour before the boys load the...” She stopped short. “Would you like something to drink? Lemonade?”

  I wanted some whiskey, but I wouldn’t dare ask. Consuelo brought out two glasses, and we sat in silence except for Alice’s occasional shuddery breath.

  The burial plot was a small square on top of a gentle hill, fenced in black wrought iron. There were two graves beside the deep hole that awaited Ernesto’s remains. One headstone read Timothy Kearns Kingman, aged eleven. The other was for Charles Randolph Kingman, aged twenty. Alice studied each grave for a long moment before turning her attention to the coffin the men carried up.

  Charlie read some verses from the Bible, but I could not listen. Consuelo blotted away at her streaming eyes with the sleeves of her black silk dress. Juan stood beside her, thin lipped but dry-eyed.

  I felt sick and strange, as if I were wrapped in thick cotton. Skip and Jason and Alice bowed their heads for the Lord’s Prayer, but I could not, and Gale did not. His face looked ravaged.

  When it was over, the dirt shoveled over the coffin and the grave filled in, I stepped forward and laid the bunch of goldenweed daisies Gale had let me pick on the drive in from town on top of the mound of fresh dirt and numbly turned away.

  Alice and Charlie walked back to the ranch house holding hands. The buggy stood at the porch. “Consuelo has made a light supper,” Alice began. “If you would stay?”

  I could not answer. I shook my head and pressed her hand. Then Charlie spoke. “Thank you for coming. Ernesto thought you were really something.” He bent and kissed my cheek. “Gale will drive you home.”

  Oh, thank God. I could not stand being with anyone but Gale. I climbed up into the buggy, clenched my hands in my lap and waited.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Gale

  The minute we left ranch property I reined up the horse, stopped the buggy and pulled Lilah into my arms. She wasn’t crying, exactly, but she wasn’t acting normal, either.

  “You all right?”

  “No,” she whispered. “Take me home.”

  I whipped the horse into a trot. I never whip a horse, but I could see something wasn’t right w
ith her. I pulled the buggy around in back of her house. Didn’t know why, really, just thought I might be there for a while and I didn’t want to start any talk.

  She didn’t seem to notice. Seemed kind of as if she was sleepwalking. I felt pretty low myself. Inside the house she went straight to the hutch for the whiskey, snagged two glasses from the top shelf and uncorked the bottle. She started to pour it out, then stopped and looked over at me.

  “Do you want some of this?”

  I lifted the whiskey out of her hand. “Nope. Do you?”

  “No.”

  I stuffed the cork back in and we just stood there looking at each other. Her face was bone-white, and her eyelids were red and swollen. Her mouth...oh, God, her mouth was all twisted.

  I reached for her. “Lilah.”

  “Kiss me, Gale.” Her voice was so soft I wasn’t sure I heard right.

  “What?”

  “Kiss me.” She wound both arms around my neck and held on tight. “I need you to kiss me.”

  I needed her, too, but maybe this wasn’t the right time. I knew if I kissed her I wouldn’t be able to stop.

  And I guess she didn’t want me to. I kissed her until I couldn’t breathe, and her mouth told me things I wasn’t sure I could believe. I held her until her knees gave way, and then I gathered her up and climbed the stairs with her in my arms, pushed through her bedroom door and laid her down on the bed.

  She moaned and pulled me down beside her. “Don’t leave,” she whispered.

  I walked over to the china basin on her chest of drawers, poured in water from the pitcher and wet a square of linen and wrung it out. When I returned to the bed, she rolled toward me. I sponged off her face and neck and pressed my lips against her reddened eyelids.

  “More,” she murmured.

  I unbuttoned the top seven buttons of her shirtwaist and ran the cloth over her upper chest. I was right—no corset. Might explain why my hand started to shake.

  “Gale?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you stay with me?”

  I sure couldn’t answer right away. When I trusted my voice, I tried to say something sensible. “You don’t know what you’re sayin’, really.”

  “I know exactly what I am saying.”

  “Lilah...”

  “Don’t stop me, Gale. I want you to stay.”

  “That’s grief talking, right?”

  “Yes. And more.”

  Oh, lordy. I undid all the rest of the buttons and undressed her slowly, all the way down to her camisole and lacy drawers, thinking she’d stop me any minute. But she didn’t.

  So I stretched out beside her and stared up at the blue-painted ceiling. I wanted her like I’d never wanted another woman, and I wrestled with it a long time. Finally she rose up on one elbow and began unbuttoning my shirt. When she reached for the belt buckle at my waist, I caught her wrist.

  “Don’t, unless you’re real sure about this.”

  “I am sure.” She smiled for the first time that day.

  I rolled off the bed and stripped while she watched. Standing in front of her stark naked made the state of my need more than obvious.

  “Gale, you are a handsome man.”

  “That’s not what’s important, is it?”

  “Of course not.”

  I lay down beside her and tugged the ribbon on her camisole free, wishing like hell my fingers weren’t shaking. She laid her hands against my bare chest.

  “This is the most wonderful thing I have ever known,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “Spending time with you.”

  “You know something, Lilah? Everywhere I go, everything I do, I think about you.”

  “I know,” she murmured.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What else do you know?”

  “I know that I like to be where I can talk to you.”

  “And kiss me?”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to. She shrugged off her camisole and I leaned over her. Her lips were warm and salty.

  And when I touched her breasts I heard her breath hitch in.

  Chapter Thirty

  Lilah

  Gale’s touch was soothing at first, and I sorely needed soothing. I was heartsick over Ernesto’s death, almost disoriented with grief. His hands were warm and slow as they moved over my body. Such a simple thing, really, to touch and comfort. He kissed my neck, the sensitive place behind my ear, my breasts. Heavens, what a wondrous thing it was, being with another human being. I felt him breathing with me while I struggled to put my sadness in perspective.

  And then his touching turned into something else. Something inside me flickered to life—a sweet, sweet hunger. I moved my body to face his and looked into his eyes. What I saw there was humbling.

  This man desired me. And he cared how I felt about what was happening. He put his mouth on me, on places that made me gasp and soar inside and beg for more. I gave myself up to the pleasure of it.

  When I cried out for more, he kissed me deeply and rose up over me, hesitated and then thrust deep inside me. I felt a momentary stab of pain, and then he began to move.

  I will never forget how it was between us. I have never known anything more glorious than the wave after wave of pleasure that swept me along. Gale called my name over and over, and at the end, when his body stilled and then convulsed, his face was wet with tears.

  This meant something to him, and I knew it was more than just pleasure. When our breathing returned to normal, I laid my head in the curve of his shoulder and slept.

  When I opened my eyes Gale’s arms were wrapped around me. We didn’t speak. After a while he began to remove the tortoiseshell hairpins that held my bun in place. He drew them out slowly, and one by one tossed them on the floor. He laced his fingers through my hair and brought his lips to my forehead.

  “Being with you is better than anything I’ve ever known.”

  His words startled me. Suddenly I wanted to know more about this man—not his physical self, but his inside self.

  “Gale, why did you never go back to Texas?”

  He thought a long time before he answered, “There was someone else before you. Someone that mattered to me.”

  I touched his hand. “Tell me.”

  “It’s not pretty, Lilah. Maybe you don’t want to know.”

  “I do want to know. Tell me.”

  Again he waited before he spoke again. “She was pretty. Real pretty. Too pretty. She was older than me. Almost twenty-six. I was just eighteen. I wanted her real bad, but I should have known.”

  “Known what? What happened?”

  “My father...” His voice turned hoarse. “My father got her pregnant. She married him instead of me.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Joined the Confederate Army. Fought at Antietam and Chancellorsville. Would have done more, but I took a minié ball in my chest and damn near died. There were days I wished I had. When I got out of the hospital, I was mustered out. That’s when I came north.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Gale

  Hell and damn. I’d never told a living soul about it, but all these years it’s been eating my insides like acid. For the first time I wanted to spill it all out, get rid of it. Maybe it would heal some of the broken places inside me.

  She traced the scar above my left nipple with her soft fingers. “Have you replaced her?”

  “No. I’m afraid of it. Not of you, Lilah. It.”

  God, I wanted Lilah like a thirsty man craves water. That wasn’t what scared me; what scared me was loving her.

  She sighed and curled up against me.

  “Lilah, I can’t stay. Hav
e to be at the ranch before sunup.”

  “It isn’t sunup yet.” Her voice was getting drowsy.

  “Takes an hour to get there. And Jase and Skip will sure as hell want to know where I’ve been all night.”

  “Tell them a lie. My aunt Carrie taught me that lies can be...lifesaving.”

  “But you don’t lie.”

  “Not to you, no.”

  I thought for a minute. “What happened to your Aunt Carrie?”

  She lifted her head and looked into my face. “Aunt Carrie was a spy for the Union Army. She was caught and hanged at Richmond.”

  “My God. My God.”

  She snuggled back down and draped her arm over my chest. “I was twelve. She was my favorite aunt.”

  “Makes me sad to think of that.”

  “It makes me sad to think of your father and what he did.”

  “Funny thing, Lilah. Right now, I feel worse about your aunt Carrie than I do about my father.”

  “Gale?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t leave. I don’t care about the ranch hands.”

  I edged away from her, stood up and walked across the room to dunk that linen washcloth in the basin. Then I sat down on the bed beside her and washed her gently.

  “You sore?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Why?”

  I leaned over and kissed her. “’Cause I’m stayin’. And before sunup, there’s gonna be more.”

  By the time I left Lilah that night, I knew I was running scared. Everyone at the ranch, except for Alice and Consuelo, was too hungover after the funeral to notice when I returned, even Juan, who never drank much because he couldn’t hold his liquor. Consuelo made a halfhearted attempt at bacon and eggs, and I noticed Charlie was sitting at the other end of the table, close to Alice, talking in low tones when I came in.

  Skip and Jase never even looked up. They all ate as if everything tasted like dust and I had to work to keep my appetite from showing. I’d honored Ernesto’s memory in a way he would have approved of, and I was grateful for the silence around the breakfast table. Gave me time to pull my head out of the clouds and get my bearings.