A True Cowboy Christmas

by Caitlin Crews

  Abby frowned at him. It felt weird—likely because it was the first time in her entire life she hadn’t beamed at this man, hoping against hope that he might finally return her smile. Or better yet, her feelings. He never had.

  “Not impenetrable, necessarily. But consider the other things you find uncomplicated. A tractor, I’m guessing. A cow. Your barn. Most of your appliances.”

  “I like things I can depend on.”

  Abby wanted nothing more than to be one of those things, even if that meant he lumped her in with his washing machine or his John Deere, but … not like this. Not this … offhanded chat as if they were discussing livestock.

  It occurred to her that they were. Or he was, anyway. That unless she’d had an aneurysm when she’d answered the door and was even now in a coma, hovering close to death and making things up again, Gray Everett had come over to inquire after her as if she were some kind of … broodmare.

  “You don’t know if you can depend on me or not,” she pointed out.

  Politely. So politely. As if this were as normal as the way they’d all sat around in Gray’s house last week, pretending to eat something because that was what people did around death to prove they were alive. The way everyone had made awkward conversation that steered clear of potentially thorny topics like why none of Amos’s exes had turned up to pay their respects, what was going to become of the ranch everyone knew Amos had left to all three of his sons instead of just Gray, and the simple fact that didn’t require discussing that most folks in the valley weren’t expecting to miss Amos and his drunken nonsense much.

  “Everybody in Cold River knows they can depend on you,” Gray was saying, in the same calm, unbothered way he’d talked about the annual snow pack and the proposed new residential developments out on the county line in his own living room. “You live with your grandmother when you could have moved out on your own. And you’re the only reason anyone knows the current name of that coffee shop in town.”

  He said that as if the very notion of a coffee shop was newfangled and odd. As if he was in his seventies instead of his thirties. But then again, she’d always considered that a part of his charm. Before now.

  “It’s called Cold River Coffee, again, the way it was fifteen years ago when they first put a coffee shop in the old feed store building,” she supplied, as if he cared. Or that was the point of this conversations. “It was Human Beans for a while there, but apparently there was a copyright issue.”

  “You’re a local girl. More than that, you’re a Douglas. A lot of folks head out of here as soon as they graduate from high school, but you stayed. You know your own roots.”

  “My grandparents raised me,” she replied, feeling unduly stung by his list of facts about her life, all of which she suspected he knew, the way people just knew things about each other here. It was all part of the scenery, really. Meaning Gray certainly hadn’t had to pay any particular attention to her to learn any of those things. “After Grandpa died, I didn’t see leaving my grandmother all alone.”

  “Like I said. Dependable.”

  “I could have a secret life as a phone sex operator for all you know,” Abby blurted out.

  Where did that even come from? And had she really just mentioned phone sex to Gray Everett?

  His green gaze was steady on hers. Her cheeks burned. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I think we’ll muddle through.”

  “Muddle through … a marriage?”

  There was something besides patience in that green gaze of his. And Abby didn’t understand why her throat was dry, or worse, why there was a kind of tight grip around her chest.

  “You’re asking a lot of questions,” Gray pointed out, all drawl and that unwavering gaze. “But you haven’t said no.”

  “Haven’t I? I feel certain that I have.”

  “You haven’t.”

  “Oh. Well. That’s really just an oversight.”

  He leaned forward. He rested his elbows on his knees, and Abby couldn’t seem to tear her gaze away from his hands. They were a rancher’s hands, that was for sure. Big, tough. A couple of nicks here and there, which only made her imagine what those callused fingers might feel like against her skin.

  She jerked her gaze back to his and sat there, mortified. Because for some reason, she was sure he knew exactly what she’d been imagining.

  He didn’t smile. But there was something in his gaze that made her feel as if he had.

  “Here’s what I think, Abby. I suspect you’re as practical as you seem. Salt of the earth, through and through.”

  “Does anyone actually want to be called salt of the earth? Isn’t that a lot like saying, ‘you’re deeply boring and easily ignored, but you’re always there, so I’ll use the word salt because it sounds less offensive’?”

  “I need a wife. Becca needs a mother. I’d like it to be you.” Gray held her gaze. “I’m not a man given to compliments, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a good thing when I see it.”

  Abby felt like the pig in that kid’s movie. Two gruff words from a farmer, and she was contemplating flinging herself on the floor and pressing her face against his boot.

  Not really, she assured herself.

  Or anyway, she didn’t think she would actually do something like that.

  But the worrying thing was what she wasn’t doing. She wasn’t kicking him out. She wasn’t gathering her tattered dignity around her like a cloak and sweeping out of the room, refusing to entertain the madness that he was throwing at her. She wasn’t laughing in his face.

  He might imagine that was because she was the salt of the earth, since he apparently imagined it was every girl’s dream to be compared to condiments and dirt, but she knew better.

  She knew the real dirty secret was how tempted she was to say yes, no thought required. As if it were still the 1880s and she was a pioneer woman preparing to head out to the frontier in the company of any old stranger she tripped over in Boston Harbor. Which she was pretty sure was the actual true story of how her Douglas ancestors had made it out to Colorado.

  “You sound very serious about this,” she said after a moment.

  “I don’t spend a lot of time talking about things I’m not serious about.”

  “Really? How funny. I’m pretty sure that’s one of those things people learn during a normal dating process. You know. Likes, dislikes. What to be serious about and what’s pure silliness. That’s Online Profile 101.”

  “I hardly trust a computer to do my banking. I’m not about to trust one to find me a wife.”

  “Do I need to tell you what year it is?”

  Another curve in the corner of his hard mouth. “Are you looking for a date, Abby?”

  Once again, that stung when it probably shouldn’t have. Gray wasn’t the type to get a dig in like that. But she was a bit touchy on the subject. It had never been her intention to become one of the vestal virgins of the Longhorn Valley. It had certainly never occurred to her back in high school that she would be one of those women whose lack of a dating life was discussed right in front of her with a side helping of pity and every now and again, the teensiest hint of scorn.

  “For all you know, I date all the time,” she told him, and ordered herself to unclench her jaw. “Maybe I juggle men like a circus sideshow and enjoy it so much I’ve never had the slightest inclination to settle down.”

  “I feel like I would’ve heard.”

  “Because you’re really tuned in to Cold River gossip? Why do I doubt that?”

  “I have a fifteen-year-old daughter. You’d be surprised the things she wants to talk to me about on those long drives to and from school.”

  “I wouldn’t describe myself as looking for dates, exactly,” Abby replied, rather than touching the topic of Becca. Lithe, lovely Becca, who looked like the ghost of her beautiful late mother and was exactly the sort of girl Abby had longed to be while in high school. And had not been. In any way, shape, or form. And who Gr
ay now claimed he wanted Abby to parent in some way. “But if you don’t do online dating, how do you date?”

  “I don’t date.”

  “You prefer to just show up on doorsteps and issue marriage proposals. Got it.”

  “Abby. You’re making this complicated. It’s a yes-or-no question.”

  Her throat went dry again, and her hands ached like the arthritis her grandma complained about on cold mornings. She frowned down into her lap and saw that she was still clenching her fingers together. Hard. She let go, then spread her hands out on the tops of her thighs in the hope that could make them stop throbbing.

  Or make Gray make sense.

  She hadn’t dressed for a marriage proposal today, that was for sure. She was wearing her favorite pair of leggings and a slouchy sort of sweatshirt that felt a bit like a wearable cave. It was the perfect outfit for a November day in this drafty old farmhouse that Grandma refused to heat much because she’d prefer to use the stove or build a fire. Abby’s hair was in its usual serviceable ponytail, and she never wore much makeup anyway, though when imagining marriage proposals, she’d always assumed that mascara would be involved. To top it all off, she was wearing an extra thick pair of bright orange socks emblazoned with foxes as a stand-in for curse words she didn’t utter in front of her grandmother.

  Actually, if she thought about how embarrassing it was to be sitting here with Gray Everett dressed in what her grandmother called her day pajamas, she might die.

  “It’s not a simple question,” she found herself saying. “You’re talking about marriage, not a ride into town.”

  “Okay. But it’s pretty easy to say no, Abby.” The way he was looking at her seemed to change then. It was as if he moved closer, though she could see he didn’t. But there was no air in the room. And even less in her chest. “It seems like what’s complicated here is that you don’t want to.”

  “What would you do if I did say no? Work your way down a handy list of appliance-like females in Cold River who you feel are equally dependable? How many others can there be?”

  And as soon as she said it, she realized she really did want to know the answer. Was she unique in her salt of the earthness? Or was that a quality Gray found everywhere he looked?

  You are pathetic, she lectured herself, but that was old news.

  “More questions. Still no answer, though.”

  He shifted in his chair then, and Abby still kind of wanted to kill him. She still didn’t understand why any of this was happening. She wasn’t sure she liked any of the things he’d said to her about why he would choose her for what sounded like an old-fashioned sort of frontier marriage that shouldn’t have appealed to her at all. She was sure she should have been significantly more outraged than she was.

  But she was suddenly terrified that he was going to get up and leave, and that struck her as much worse than all the rest.

  “Let’s assume I accepted this ridiculous proposal,” she said, frowning at him. “What would that look like?”

  “What do you think marriage is supposed to look like?”

  She stared back at him and very carefully did not mention what his first marriage had looked like, to every last soul in Longhorn Valley. Before and after its sad end.

  But something must have shown on her face, because his lips flattened. “Not looking to be cheated on again, if that’s what you mean.”

  Abby felt her face flame. Again. But almost as soon as that wave of embarrassment—or shame, really, that she’d brought up something so sensitive and upset him—passed, something else followed in its wake.

  Something a lot more like temper.

  Because if she’d actually been dating this man, these were the kinds of things she could and would ask about, surely. She might not have gone on a whole lot of dates herself, or any, but she’d read enough to know better.

  “I’m sorry,” she said stiffly. “Is your first marriage off-limits?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  His green gaze was cool. Steady.

  And the thing was, Abby wanted to know everything. She’d been fifteen when he’d married Cristina. Fifteen and absolutely, utterly lovesick over twenty-three-year-old Gray. She had spent hours upon hours worrying over every last aspect of his marriage—or what she knew about it, anyway. She’d cried at his wedding. And then she’d viewed the next five years as an opportunity to keep a stern vigil over Gray’s happiness. She couldn’t have him, of course. She was just a kid. But Cristina did have him, and Cristina ought to have loved him the way he deserved.

  She still remembered exactly what she was doing the first time she’d heard the rumors that Gray Everett’s tempestuous wife, the one he’d met when he’d gone over to Colorado Springs to watch his brother ride some bulls and had brought back to tiny Cold River like some kind of prize, was stepping out on him. That was what gossipy old Charlie Dunn had said to one of the Winthrop girls, right there in the coffee shop where Abby had worked after school. Back when it had been called Grounds & Grace.

  She had to lock herself in the back room while she’d sobbed for Gray’s broken heart.

  But she didn’t share any of that with him. How could she?

  “You’ve had one marriage that didn’t work out,” she said. Carefully. “What makes you believe that this one would?”

  A crease appeared between his brows as if he hadn’t thought about that. Or hadn’t expected her to think about it. “You and I have a lot more in common.”

  “So far the only thing we appear to have in common is that we live here.”

  “That counts for a lot.”

  “And you still haven’t told me how you imagine a marriage between us would work. Practically speaking. For example, do you want more children?”

  She didn’t say anything about sex. Because the phone sex operator thing was still living inside her like its own kind of horror movie, thank you. She supposed she didn’t really have to say the word for it to shimmer there between them. Because as far as she was aware, there was only one direct way to have children.

  There was a gleam in his gaze that hadn’t been there before. “I’m open to the idea.”

  “Okay. Well, I do. Want more children. Or I just want them, I mean, because I don’t…” He knows you don’t have any children. She pushed forward. “And you’re asking me to step into the role of stepmother, as well. That’s not something you should do on a whim.”

  “Becca needs a solid family, but she’s fine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, she’s fine. It’ll be good for her to have you around, but you don’t have to worry about her.”

  Abby’s mouth was open. She shut it and shifted against the sofa, suddenly unable to get comfortable. “So in your conception of this marriage based on nothing except proximity, I wouldn’t actually be a stepmother to your only child? Or are you imagining a marriage where I’ll stay here with Grandma, and we’ll just say we’re married for tax purposes or something?”

  “What the hell kind of marriage is that?”

  “I don’t know. But then, I also don’t know any fifteen-year-old motherless girl who’s fine.”

  Abby had always loved where she lived. Cold River was beautiful, it was home, and the fact that so few people lived here seemed as much a bonus as a burden some days. But it was right here, sitting in the front room of the Douglas farmhouse with Gray Everett, that the true beauty of living in a place like this became clear to her as it never had before.

  Because she didn’t have to tell him why she was the expert on motherless fifteen-year-old girls in this room when he had one and she didn’t. He already knew. As many stories as Abby had heard about Gray and Cristina and their doomed marriage, she knew he couldn’t possibly have avoided hearing a similar number of stories about Lily.

  Lily, who had never liked Lillian, the name she’d been born with. Lily, who had always made it clear to Grandma and Grandpa and every last citizen of Cold River that she deserved bette
r—and that she, by God, would get it. Delicate, manipulative Lily, who had left home after high school and had taken herself off to whatever bright lights and big cities she could find, only to return a few years later, pregnant and seemingly abashed.

  It hadn’t lasted. Abby had been a baby the first time Lily took off and claimed she’d be back at the end of a long weekend, or so the story went, only to turn up weeks later. She’d been nearly ten by the time everyone involved stopped pretending. Lily wasn’t ever going to come home for long, and she was never, ever going to be any kind of parent to Abby.

  But sure. Abby had been fine. Still was.

  “Sounds like you and Becca can do a lot of bonding, then,” Gray said after a moment, as if this conversation was going exactly the way he’d planned it. “Something else in favor of you marrying me.”

  “I don’t…” Of course there were a million reasons people didn’t go around marrying their neighbors for the hell of it, but Abby couldn’t come up with any of them there and then. “You don’t really think something this sudden would work.”

  “Abby. Listen.”

  He didn’t move any closer. He didn’t take her hands in his or shift so he was gazing deep into her eyes. He stayed where he was, the wide brim of his hat in his hands and his elbows resting on his knees as if he could sit there all day. As if she was one more fractious animal he could soothe with the power of his voice and the force of his steady attention.

  She hated that he wasn’t wrong about that either.

  “I’ve always liked you,” he told her.

  And somehow—somehow—Abby didn’t let out the bitter laugh that crowded her throat then and made her wonder if she might choke.

  “You have?” she asked instead. Not bitterly. Not exactly. “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure you don’t know the difference between me and any piece of furniture in your house.”

  “I like all the furniture in my house.”

  Gray waited as if he expected her to respond to that, but it was as if something heavy were parked on her chest. And there were too many harsh words in her mouth that she didn’t want to say. Not because he couldn’t take it. But because it would be much too revealing.