Hometown Holiday

by Caro Carson

  Jesse had laughed. “Generally speaking, horses are patient creatures. They’ll put up with a lot when they know you’re trying.”

  “Generally speaking?”

  “Good luck.”

  Ryan’s first step into the barn startled a cat that bolted across his path and headed up a pile of hay bales to the safety of the rafters.

  “I know how you feel,” Ryan said under his breath. He wished he could dodge potential danger as effectively, but helping Kristen with her morning chores was a minefield he had to negotiate. He’d considered changing their plans. He could pick her up once she’d returned to her house and take her out for a nice lunch. Dinner and a movie. But he couldn’t sleep in the plush bedding at Maverick Manor knowing Kristen was working hard in the cold November dawn. It offended some sense of chivalry or manhood deep down, concepts that were probably outdated, but he felt them nonetheless.

  His first sight of Kristen Dalton in her natural element forced him to be more honest with himself. She looked like his most cherished Montana fantasy come true. This wasn’t about helping a damsel in distress; this was about spending every possible moment with this woman, period. Full stop. If Kristen wanted to be with him, he wanted to be with her, wherever, whenever and doing whatever.

  Her back was to him as she hung a pitchfork on a wall hook. Despite the barn’s temperature being nearly the same as outside, Kristen wore only a faded pink sweatshirt and blue jeans. Her glorious hair, something that could easily become a fetish of his, hung in one long braid down her back, bouncing with each step as she pushed a wheelbarrow away from him, heading for the open door at the opposite end of the barn.

  “Just cool your jets, tough guy. I’ll get to you in a minute.”

  Ryan stopped in surprise, until a black horse stuck its head out of the stall she’d just passed and snorted at her, shaking its mane impatiently. Kristen continued out the wide door without stopping.

  Ryan slowly walked down the center aisle of the barn, absorbing the feel of the place. It was spacious and organized, and smelled equally of animals and hay. Most of the stalls were empty, so he assumed they normally held the horses that he’d seen milling about in a fenced-in grassy area adjacent to the barn. As Ryan reached the door through which Kristen had taken her wheelbarrow, the black horse and three others stuck their massive heads over their half doors and looked at him with knowing, dark eyes.

  He wondered if he should have brought carrots or some other bribe. He held his palm up to the brown beauty closest to him. “Sorry, I’ve got nothing.”

  The horse snuffled his palm, anyway. He petted its nose, the softness as surprising now as it had been in eighth grade. Ryan moved to the next stall and repeated the greeting with the next horse. He could see what Jesse had meant about being able to get a feel for the horses’ attitude. Ryan could tell these animals were content and cared for. It didn’t take a lifetime of ranch experience to recognize good health and a friendly disposition.

  The black horse across the aisle bit at his door’s latch and bobbed his head in a demanding way. The name plate over his stall identified him as Zorro. “Everyone’s patient except you, son. You need to work on your attitude. You heard Kristen. Don’t rush the woman.”

  “That’s right, Zorro. I hope you’re paying attention.” Kristen’s voice had a laugh in it. She let go of her empty wheelbarrow and came toward Ryan with her arms open for a hug, but she stopped short. “You look too nice. I’ll get you all dirty.”

  Ryan took the final step toward her and scooped her against him. “You look fantastic.”

  “Oh, yes. Like a mucker of stalls.”

  “The braid and boots thing is definitely working for me.” He lingered for a few dangerous seconds longer than he should have as he kissed the happy curve of her mouth, and set her down again.

  “If braids and boots are your fetish, you’ll be in heaven here in Rust Creek Falls. Put it in your plus column.”

  He couldn’t resist touching the fine bones of her face, trailing his fingers over her cheekbone and along her jawline. Such delicate features for a woman as strong as she was. “The braid and boots only turn me on when your pretty face is part of the package.”

  Her gaze flickered over his shoulder. “I told you that you’d be in heaven. There are two women in Rust Creek Falls who meet your criteria.”

  Ryan turned to see a duplicate of Kristen walking toward them. It was disconcerting for a second, like seeing a special effect from a movie, although he’d known she had an identical twin. On the Fourth of July, they’d passed her sister a few times on the dance floor, but there’d been clear differences in their clothing and hair and the way they moved. Now, in jeans and boots and the braid he supposed was practical for working in a barn, they were startlingly identical.

  “You must be Kayla,” he said, extending his hand.

  She dropped her gaze but took his hand, then looked up at him again with a shy duck of her chin. She was so unlike Kristen in her actions Ryan doubted he’d ever be fooled for more than a second.

  “And you must be Ryan Michaels.” Her voice was quiet in the cavernous barn.

  Kristen jumped in. “It’s Ryan Roarke, actually. My mistake. That’s why I couldn’t find him in any rodeo results.”

  “Roarke?” Kayla looked at him more directly. “Are you related to Lissa Roarke, then?”

  Ryan released her hand, but not before she must have felt his little jolt of surprise. She knew maiden names, obviously. This was an unexpected mine that needed to be carefully defused.

  “Lissa who?” Kristen asked.

  “Lissa Christensen,” her sister explained patiently. “The sheriff’s wife. She was Lissa Roarke when she came here from New York and wrote that blog about the flood, remember?”

  “Oh.” Kristen turned to him and made a little gesture toward her sister. “If it has to do with writing or newspapers, she’s into it. English major.”

  Ryan smiled, ignoring his racing heart. “Lissa is my cousin. She grew up in New York, though, while I was in…”

  “California,” Kristen finished for him, and she turned to her sister. “He’s from California.”

  Ryan knew instinctively that Kristen was anxious to prove that she knew him well, although she hadn’t made the connection with Lissa.

  “Is that why you were here for the Fourth of July, then?” Kristen asked, phrasing her question like her sister. “You were visiting Lissa? That makes so much sense.”

  “Lissa was in New York because Gage was on duty for the whole holiday weekend.” Ryan hadn’t lied about his intention that day in the park, and he wasn’t going to start now. “I came to look into relocating to Rust Creek Falls, remember?”

  Kristen’s expression brightened. “But now I know how you heard of Rust Creek Falls in the first place. A cousin has to go in the plus column. Being far from your parents is a bigger minus, but at least you’ll have some family in town.”

  She was still so certain that the plus column would win. Whether or not Lissa lived in town didn’t change the fact that the full responsibility for Roarke and Associates was being laid on his shoulders by his parents’ impending retirement. Once he explained the situation fully, he hoped Kristen would understand. The dream he’d toyed with in July about living here couldn’t become a reality. They’d have to be a long-distance couple, or she’d have to move to LA.

  The black horse chose that moment to remind them all that he was not where he wanted to be.

  “Okay, Zorro. Chill out. Let me check your feet before I turn you out.” With efficient movements and a grace that Ryan was certain could only come from a lifetime of working with horses, Kristen put a halter on the black horse and led him out of his stall, then tied him to a railing in the aisle with some kind of knot that Ryan had probably failed at tying back in his scouting days. She grabbed a small too
l from a bucket that hung on the wall, and crouched down to lift the massive animal’s front hoof. With a series of soothing “good boys,” she started working on Zorro’s hoof.

  Kayla picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow. “I’ll be mucking stalls if you need me.”

  “I’ll help.” Ryan was confident he could master a pitchfork faster than the two-step, and he’d mastered that in less than one verse of a country-western song.

  “You’ll ruin your clothes,” Kayla said. “That overcoat is just too nice for chores.”

  “It’s all I brought on this trip. It can be cleaned.”

  Kristen looked up from her crouch on the floor. “Just put on another coat. I think Eli left that one here.” She pointed with her pick to a beige canvas coat that hung on a wall with a cluster of leather straps and ropes.

  Ryan hung his long overcoat in its place. The battered canvas coat was the same temperature as the crisp November air that filled the barn from the open doors. He’d barely shrugged into it when gentle Kayla took another tool out of the bucket and lobbed it not so gently at Ryan. He caught it by the wood handle, thankfully, because the rest of it looked like a loop made from a metal saw.

  “Zorro has sensitive feet. If you brush him at the same time, he won’t be so fussy for Kristen.” She took the wheelbarrow and headed down the aisle to an empty stall.

  Ryan thought the tool in his hand looked more likely to torture than soothe. He walked up to the horse, struck anew at just how large the beast was. He scraped the teeth of the metal loop lightly along Zorro’s side. The horse didn’t object, so he did it again, a little more firmly.

  Kristen moved to the other front hoof, so Ryan kept running the brush along the horse, resting his free hand on the horse’s neck as he worked, appreciating the heat and power contained in the muscles under the black coat. Although Zorro’s hair had seemed to be too short to be brushed, the shades of black varied after each stroke as the nap of the hair reflected light at a new angle. Ryan kept the brush moving in a methodical pattern over the black gloss.

  “I can see why he finds this soothing.” Immediately, Ryan realized he’d said something that revealed this was a new experience for him. Too soon, don’t shatter—but he couldn’t cover the mistake without lying, and he couldn’t lie to Kristen.

  “Zorro’s one of those that really love it. Of course, Snoopy over there really hates it. You know how it is. What works with one horse has the opposite effect on another.” She moved to another hoof. “Good boy. You boys like to keep us guessing, don’t you, Zorro?”

  Ryan relaxed again. The sky outside the double doors began to lighten with the coming dawn. Incredibly, despite his blunder, Kristen assumed he knew horses. Then again, growing up on a ranch in Montana, maybe a person who didn’t know horses was as foreign to her as an alien from a UFO.

  He chose his words with care. “Kristen, I never told you I was in the rodeo. What makes you think I am?”

  She stood up, finished with that hoof, and looked at him over Zorro’s back. She rested her arm on the horse as she talked, like one would lean on a piece of furniture. She was completely comfortable around an animal that weighed one thousand pounds. Her unconscious confidence was sexy.

  “Every once in a while, someone at the picnic would recognize you. I knew right away that you couldn’t be just another hand making the rounds of the ranches, looking for work. You carry yourself like you are used to being in charge. Besides, and please don’t think I’m materialistic or anything, you don’t dress like the average ranch hand. You must be doing something that’s a little more lucrative than a standard cowboy paycheck. I put two and two together.”

  She disappeared again, crouching down to pick up the last hoof.

  Ryan kept brushing. It had been that simple, then. For a woman who only knew cowboys, there was only one kind of cowboy who would get recognized at the town picnic.

  “Have you ever not dated a cowboy?”

  The scraping sounds stopped for a moment.

  “Once.”

  The scraping started again.

  “He was from the city.”

  She said the word city like it was a curse. She referred to Kalispell as a city, with its population of how many? Twenty thousand? Los Angeles was a city of fifteen or sixteen million. If she thought a place like Kalispell was too big, she’d hate Ryan Roarke’s reality.

  “He was based in Denver.”

  A bigger city, then, but still small compared to Ryan’s.

  “A pilot.”

  The bitterness in that simple word snapped his attention from his own sorry worries back to Kristen. Bitterness was rare from her, but he’d heard it once before, during last night’s conversation on the porch. Her one experience with a non-cowboy had been a bad one.

  Ryan worked his way around to her side of the horse, brushing as he went, staying calm. “This was the guy who didn’t understand that some things go without saying.”

  In her crouched position, her head was bowed, and her hands went still. “He was in the shower, getting ready to go back to work after his layover. His phone was right next to me on the nightstand. The screen lit up that he’d gotten a text, with a little preview of the message. There was this tiny thumbnail photo of a topless girl, and the first line said, See you at five. The current time was in big numbers, 10:16. That will be stuck in my brain for a long time.”

  Zorro threw his head up, objecting to the stroke of the brush. Ryan stopped until the first wave of jealousy and anger passed, then he crouched down next to Kristen.

  “I told him off, of course,” she said. “He put on his uniform and left me in the hotel. Seven hours after we’d been in bed together, I knew he was back in Denver, having sex with her. Breaking up with me didn’t hurt him for half a day. I’m sure I was just some dumb cowgirl from Montana to him. Another variety to add to his menu.”

  Ryan kept his fury at the unknown pilot under control, mindful of his tone of voice around the horse. “I know that type. He’ll never be faithful to anyone, ever, and it doesn’t matter how wonderful the woman is.”

  It was rare for Kristen not to look him in the eye, but she toyed with the pick in her hand for a moment, then ran her hand down Zorro’s leg, soothing the horse to soothe herself.

  “Believe me, Kristen. It wasn’t that you weren’t a good enough girlfriend. The fault is all his.”

  She nodded. “I get that. I do. It’s just that I’m ashamed of myself for believing his lies. I should have been able to see through them. I saw him every other week, and never questioned what he did or who he did it with between those times. He looked me right in the eye and lied to me, over and over, trip after trip.”

  She’s going to hate you when she finds out the truth.

  He couldn’t tell her about himself today. He couldn’t risk it. At that moment, he wanted, more than anything else in the world, to be a cowboy for Kristen, so she’d never doubt her own judgment again.

  “I made a promise to myself,” she said. “No more city slickers. I wished for a cowboy, and now here you are.”

  With regret, with tenderness, Ryan kissed her cheek. He hadn’t lied, but he hadn’t told her the complete truth. He stayed crouched beside her, wanting to tell her something true. “It goes without saying, I am with you and only you.”

  “I know. Cowboys get it.”

  “No. I get it. It’s got nothing to do with cowboys, and everything to do with you. Because you’re such an amazing person, there’s no room in my head or my heart for another woman.”

  The wheelbarrow came to a halt beside them. Kayla crouched down. “What is it? Does Zorro have a cracked hoof again?”

  Kristen barely glanced at her sister, but apparently, the look was enough between identical twins.

  “Never mind.” Kayla stood and pushed the wheelbarrow away.
/>   Ryan stood and resumed his brushing, hoping the motion would help him center himself and bring back that calm feeling.

  It didn’t. It couldn’t, because he hadn’t clarified anything with Kristen except his desire for her, and she had to have known that already.

  Kristen finished with whatever she’d been doing to the horse’s feet and started loving on the horse, petting his nose and telling him sweet nothings. “You are being spoiled today, aren’t you? Don’t get any ideas about leaving me for Ryan. You can’t run off to join the rodeo with him. No fame and fortune for you.”

  “Kristen.”

  He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t let her go on believing he was a rodeo star.

  Don’t risk it. Don’t let it shatter.

  He couldn’t rip the bandage off, but he had to make one point perfectly clear. “My name won’t ever be in your newspaper for winning a rodeo event. There will be no tour and no fame and glory. If that’s what you’re looking for in a relationship, I can’t offer it to you.”

  She left the horse’s side to walk up to him in that unhurried way ranchers seemed to move, but he didn’t reach for her, nor she for him. They stood in the open door of the barn, the sunrise coloring the sky beyond them, the cold air between them.

  “I didn’t ask you to.” Her blue-eyed gaze was unwavering. “It sounds like you haven’t had a great love life in the past, either. Instead of a two-timing pilot, I’m guessing there’s a woman who was more interested in getting close to fame than in getting close to you. Probably a lot of women over the years.”

  Every relationship. Some very intelligent women, some very talented, all of them beautiful and all of them, every single one, hoping to improve her Hollywood clout and connections. The up-and-coming actresses, the aging actresses, the models who wanted to be actresses. The pressure was constant in Hollywood; the game of who knew whom was crucial to landing parts. He didn’t blame them, but he was weary. Kristen’s complete lack of interest in Hollywood added to her small-town appeal.