A True Cowboy Christmas

by Caitlin Crews

  “I can see why you want to stick your fingers in my first marriage and tear it apart, or dig into this proposal and make it something it’s not. But I’m not hiding anything. I’m not crazy, I’m not grief-stricken, and I’m nothing if not practical myself. This is simple.” His gaze was direct and uncompromising, as if he could convince her simply by looking at her. And her heart pounded against her ribs because it felt as if he really could. “Just marry me. We’ll keep on doing what we already do, we’ll just do it together. It’s a perfect solution.”

  It was that word that got to her. Solution.

  “Oh.” The word came out like a sigh, and she didn’t know if it was relief or despair. “Is this one of those will situations where you have to marry someone to save the ranch or something?”

  “No.” Gray’s head canted slightly to one side. “This isn’t a soap opera, Abby.”

  His tone was reproving, and Abby didn’t like the way it made her feel so … bright hot and melty, all at once.

  Or maybe she liked it too much.

  “It must be the out-of-the-blue marriage proposal from a man who’s never spoken more than a handful of complete sentences to me in his entire life.” She waved a hand. “I’m seeing soap operas everywhere.”

  Gray sat back at that. And then he … lounged, as if his entire body became his own low drawl. “You keep saying things like that. But what I can’t help noticing is that you’re still sitting here. Talking about the details of a marriage you can’t seem to decide if you want or don’t.”

  “Details you haven’t shared with me.”

  “What details do you want? Be precise. And stop talking about furniture and appliances.”

  Abby didn’t see any reason to hold herself back further in the face of such insanity. “Will it be a marriage in name only?”

  “Name only?” he echoed.

  Her courage waned the hotter her face got, it turned out. But she pushed on. “Are you looking to pretend or do you want it to be real?”

  That seemed to hum in the air between them, hanging over the hooked oval rug in the center of the floor where Abby had played board games when she was a child. Or maybe it was just that she couldn’t seem to breathe when she saw the arrested, amused expression on his face.

  “You’re talking about sex,” Gray said after what seemed like a thousand years, his voice a low rumble. And Abby’s wild pulse took over her whole body. His eyes were particularly green, then, and the longer he looked at her, the more intense his gaze got. “Yes, Abby. I want there to be sex in my marriage.”

  3

  Gray didn’t know what he’d been expecting.

  The whole thing had gone a lot smoother in his head. He’d figured that he’d come over, state his case, and that would be that. Practical, dependable Abby would see the wisdom in it and give her agreement, and everything would fall into place.

  Except now they were talking about sex.

  And Abby Douglas was staring back at him, her face flushed in a way that made it impossible not to notice how intriguingly red her cheeks could get. Which got him wondering all kinds of things that made him … restless. Her eyes, which he couldn’t recall ever noticing before the other day, were even more gold than before, and more, he couldn’t seem to stop noticing them.

  That was disconcerting enough.

  In fact, everything about Abby Douglas was disconcerting. The way she looked, the way she looked at him, the things she said—it should have been all the reason he needed to call this off and get the hell out of the Douglas farmhouse.

  But he didn’t make a move for the door. It was almost as if he couldn’t tear himself away, though that didn’t make any sense.

  There was something about the way she fired questions at him. As if she was interviewing him for the position of husband. And he was amazed how interested he was in getting that job when he’d been so sure she’d act grateful and pleased that he’d proposed to her in the first place.

  But it was more than that. Gray felt very nearly agitated, and he didn’t like that at all.

  He focused on her instead, not her eyes or all that rosy color on her cheeks. “You keep saying I don’t know you, Abby, but I do. I watched you grow up. You’re nice to my kid the same way you’re nice to your grandmother’s friends. No one in this town has a bad word to say about you, and you know as well as I do that there’s more than a few who have nothing but bad words to say about everyone and everything. You were even nice to my father, no matter how raucous he got, and there’s not a lot of folks who could say the same. Including me.”

  “And because I’m so nice, we should marry each other for very, very practical reasons. And also have sex. Will that also be for practical reasons?”

  Gray hadn’t given a lot of thought to the fact that Abby was likely to have a whole host of her own opinions. About appliances, apparently. About what marriage ought to be. About his previous marriage. And, it seemed, about his method in proposing to her.

  There was an itch deep inside him that he knew he couldn’t reach. That he had to sit with. That was how it felt to sit here and talk to Abby about something he’d expected to go sweet and easy, no complications at all. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

  He hadn’t really expected to feel.

  “The great thing about sex is that it’s fun whether it’s practical or just practice,” he heard himself say, in the kind of voice he would have said wasn’t him at all. It was better suited to one of his brothers, low and loaded, like he was flirting.

  Of course he wasn’t flirting.

  “Oh.” Abby breathed more than said that, and Gray found himself looking at her mouth, of all things. And there was something wrong about that, he knew there was, because this was Abby Douglas, for God’s sake. But her mouth was another part of her that, once noticed, couldn’t be unseen. It was as full as it was soft, and Gray wondered how he had gone every year of his life so far without noticing it.

  And yeah. Maybe he was flirting.

  It made him feel lightheaded, all these years after he’d figured flirting was something he’d buried with his ex.

  “Oh?” he echoed. Because apparently he was picking it right up after a decade. “Are you opposed to sex? Or fun? Or are you not the marrying kind?”

  It occurred to him then that the peculiar feeling inside him was enjoyment, and that was the funniest thing yet in this strange afternoon. Because despite the numerous comments he’d suffered from his brothers over the past few days, Gray did, in fact, know how to enjoy himself. Or he had. It was just that his enjoyment usually came in the form of pride in his daughter or his land or in his sheer survival year after year without going under.

  People tended to mistake a man who kept his own counsel as some kind of grim reaper. But Gray wasn’t grim. He considered himself a pragmatist who preferred the company of his horses and the enduring quiet of the mountains, that was all.

  Abby was much more entertaining than he’d anticipated. And that had to be a good thing. It opened up all kinds of possibilities.

  “I support sex and marriage, generally speaking,” Abby said, carefully, as if she had to give the matter some thought.

  Gray tapped the wide brim of his hat against his leg as he sat there, watching her. Everything had shifted when he’d looked up in his own backyard and seen her there in the doorway. He’d decided he ought to marry her there and then. And just like that, he’d started seeing her for the first time. That mouth, for one thing. Those pretty eyes.

  When he’d always considered Abby nice enough, like he’d told her, but he’d never looked twice.

  He was having trouble remembering why that was.

  “You support sex and marriage generally. How about specifically?” His fingers were too tight on his hat. “As in, specifically you and me. Because yes, I’m going to want to make babies the old-fashioned way. And likely do a lot of that practicing while we’re at it.”

  Sex had been the only decent thing about his first marriag
e. Gray had imagined that he’d sleep with this woman he was proposing to, sure. But somehow it hadn’t occurred to him until right now how much better than decent things could be.

  She swallowed. He could see her throat move, and that was another thing about Abby he’d failed to notice before. It turned out he liked the line of her neck. He liked the droopy collar of the sweatshirt she wore that slid down one rounded shoulder in a manner he could only call inviting.

  Had she always been inviting? Gray had dropped by today with no warning, so he knew he’d caught her off guard. It meant she was just … like this. And he didn’t know what it said about him that he’d never noticed either way.

  Nothing good.

  Maybe it was true, as Brady had suggested more than once since the funeral, that Gray had spent too much time brooding around the ranch these past ten years. Brady was sure it was because Gray had been mourning his marriage, or at least Cristina’s death. Gray figured everyone thought that, and he hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to disabuse anyone of that notion.

  Are you mourning? Ty had asked the other night, his gaze too shrewd. Or do you just really like the taste of martyrdom with your ranching?

  Gray didn’t want Abby to think he was in mourning. And he refused to consider himself any kind of martyr.

  “We really have to talk about the fact that you should probably be having this discussion with a therapist,” Abby said after a moment, sitting straighter in her seat.

  “I have to say, I didn’t see that one coming. A therapist?”

  “A therapist, yes. You need one. Badly.”

  “The only therapist in town is Bobby Garcia, and I’m pretty sure his focus is on traumatized children. And anyway, I don’t want to marry Bobby. He’s much too old for me.”

  Abby let out a small, frustrated noise that Gray was surprised he found … cute.

  It was a slippery slope. He was noticing her mouth. He was fixating on where the collar of her sweatshirt moved down her upper arm and the soft skin beneath. He was thinking of her as cute, everywhere.

  Not that it was a bad thing to decide he lusted after Abby Douglas. Especially when he wanted to marry her. He was thrown by how fast it all had happened. Was happening. Because he could feel a whole lot of interest in the situation, suddenly, heavy and hot enough to make him shift where he sat.

  “We’re sitting here talking about sex,” she said, turning a brighter shade of that red as she said it. But she lifted her chin and kept going. “That’s crazy. You and I don’t sit around. Or have discussions. And certainly not about sex. People don’t sit around discussing sexual exploits with people they hardly know.”

  He studied her for a moment that turned into two, and that flush rolled down her neck toward the dropped shoulder. “Some people don’t talk about it all. They just do it. Other people hold out for a few dates before the topic comes up. I’m offering marriage from the get-go.”

  Abby looked flustered, but she still frowned at him. “You can’t expect me to believe you think it’s normal to wander next door one afternoon and proposition the first person you see. Marriage, sex, children. What kind of person wants to jump into all of that blind? You have no idea if we would get along with each other. On any level. I would say there’s a ninety-nine point nine percent chance that we won’t. At all. Are you prepared to discuss the divorce right now too?”

  “I’m not a big believer in divorce. When I make promises, I intend to keep them.”

  She didn’t say Cristina’s name. But it still seemed to hang there between them, because that was the curse of a small, remote valley like this one. Everybody knew everybody’s business. Whether people wanted them to know it or not.

  Abby looked away, as if she was filing the information somewhere in that fascinating head of hers while she gazed out the window toward the old apple orchard that had been her grandfather’s pride and joy.

  “I’m not crazy,” Gray found himself saying gruffly, though he had never believed in explaining himself. He had always wanted to be known for his actions, not the words he strung together to clarify them. “I want what everyone with acreage out here wants. I want my land to stay in my family, and I want that family to work it the way Everetts always have. I don’t want to sell it off into tidy, manicured condos so rich city people like my brother Brady can come up here on the weekends. There’s only two ways to do that. A whole lot of legal nonsense or a big family. Seemed like it was a good time to start working on the latter.”

  “You want a wife.” She kept her eyes trained on the gnarled apple trees, stark and bare this time of year despite the November sun that made them gleam. “Any wife at all. It’s a role you need filled. It isn’t personal. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “It’s not … not personal.” Gray felt a different kind of agitation settle in against his sternum, and he didn’t like that at all. This whole thing was supposed to be a path toward getting rid of his agitation, not making it worse. “I didn’t pick a name out of a hat, Abby. I picked you, specifically. I watched you grow up a lot kinder and sweeter than you had to. Everyone knows how your mother went off the rails, but you didn’t use that as an excuse to follow her example the way a lot of folks might have. You’re a pillar of the community, and you’re barely thirty.”

  “A pillar of salt? What a compliment. Or am I getting my romantic metaphors confused in all these … condiments?”

  “I don’t have a list of other women I’m going to propose to if you say no.”

  He hadn’t exactly meant to say that. But something changed once he did. Abby turned back to him and regarded him solemnly, the red gone from her cheeks and those golden eyes of hers unreadable.

  Gray decided to take that as a good sign.

  “When I decided I wanted to get married,” Gray said, more gruffly than necessary, “the only one I considered was you.”

  Her lips parted, her cheeks lit up again, and there was something glassy in her gaze that suggested there was a lot going on beneath her surface. Gray found himself surprisingly focused on her, as if the moment he looked away, he would break the spell, and she’d laugh in his face.

  Something it hadn’t occurred to him she might very well do until he’d been knocking on the door.

  He watched her closely, and he couldn’t decide if she looked stricken or intrigued. Both, maybe.

  But then she was the one who broke the spell—not that Gray believed in things like spells anyway—by surging to her feet so she was standing there before him.

  He was still stuck on sex. Marital sex. Long and lazy. Unhurried. No need to cram it all into a night or pretend it was anything other than what it was. No need to do anything but slow down, take his time, and learn every last thing about her.

  He had only vague memories of Abby’s mother over the years. She’d always been much too glamorous—which was an insult, to Gray’s way of thinking. Lily had taken after her father. Richard Douglas had been tall and thin, no matter how many pies his wife baked from his apples or how he liked his steak and eggs in the morning. Gray had distinct memories of Richard putting away more pancakes than the high school boys at those firehouse breakfasts, but the man had always been as gnarled and skinny as the trees in his orchard.

  But Abby was built like her grandmother. Martha Douglas was no-nonsense from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Solid. Not skinny, not fat. Broad farmer’s shoulders as befit a woman who’d lived on a farm every day of her life. Martha’s people were still dairy farmers a few valleys over, which meant Abby was rooted deep into Colorado soil on both sides.

  “You’re forgetting that I knew your first wife,” Abby was saying, crossing her arms in front of her as if she was warding him off. While Gray was imagining all the ways he could enjoy a woman who wasn’t likely to break in half if he touched her. He had to shift in his chair, again, to pay attention. “And at least three of your previous girlfriends. I’m not your type.”

  “I don’t have a type.”

&n
bsp; “Of course you have a type. Everybody has a type.”

  “What’s your type?” he asked, genuinely curious.

  She scowled at him, and he had no idea why it made him want to laugh. “The girls you like are all hip bones and gleaming, glossy dark hair. They’re usually three to five inches shorter than me, and looked like delicate little dolls next to all your—”

  She cut herself off.

  Gray raised a brow. “My what?”

  Abby sighed. “Your … whole thing.”

  He didn’t know what that meant. “I know what you look like, Abby. I’m sitting here, looking at you.”

  “I’ve never been married before, so I’m clutching at straws here, but surely you have to be more than neighbors. You have to have more in common than an address on the same dirt road. It’s easy to sit around in my grandmother’s living room and talk about sex and children, I guess, no matter how bizarre it might be. But relationships are year after year after year. Children don’t make them any easier. And I don’t see how you jump into that if you don’t have a few really important secret weapons already.” She started ticking them off on her fingers. “Attraction. Some kind of shared sense of humor, I hope. And an actual relationship, with real tests and history. Without those things, I don’t see how you could possibly last.”

  Gray wasn’t losing his patience, exactly. But she wasn’t even slightly excited by the idea. Or even faintly intrigued. He could work with intrigued.

  “I think you’re attractive,” he told her, shortly. The strange thing was that he’d never thought about her attractiveness one way or the other before, but now it seemed so laughably obvious to him that he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t noticed. “You’re entertaining, though I don’t know that I need a stand-up routine, if that’s what you mean by a shared sense of humor. And our families have been tangled together since the eighteen hundreds. What more could you want?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Chemistry, maybe?”

  There was temper in her voice and splashed all over her face, and that should have been a red flag. He’d had enough rocky weather to last him a lifetime. He’d vowed that he’d never tolerate that crap again. That he’d find the sweetest, quietest, most biddable and even-keeled female who’d ever existed if he ever went down this road again—but maybe Gray really didn’t like them all that biddable.