A True Cowboy Christmas

by Caitlin Crews

  * * *

  Abby sat with that all the way home, on that long, usually peaceful drive around the side of the cold mountain and out into the winter fields that seemed to spread out before her like a warning tonight.

  She turned it over in her head as she and Grandma moved around the kitchen in their usual easy dance, the lights bright and happy against the wall of brooding night outside, but not quite bright enough to calm the turmoil inside of her.

  It rolled around inside her while Grandma went off to take her evening bath, leaving Abby to settle down with her book, there on the sofa where she could trace the familiar cabbages with her fingertips as she lost herself in the pages.

  But tonight, she didn’t open her book. She stared at her phone instead, as if it might leap to life before her eyes. As if it might sprout horns or perform gymnastics on the sofa cushion beside her.

  She thought about what Hope had said. About Tate Bishop, of all people, who Hope and Rae had stoutly maintained throughout the years was a perfect representative of all the boys Abby didn’t see or even notice had interest in her.

  Her friends were being kind, but it didn’t matter. Because even if they were absolutely correct and Abby had been careening through her life with blinders on, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Then or now.

  Because there had only ever been room in her heart for one.

  She’d always believed she’d been made defective, but maybe she’d been made for this.

  And the whole town might whisper about her. They might cluck their tongues and call her names behind her back. Sad, for example. Pathetic. Poor, plain Abby Douglas and a man who wanted a woman in his house—so any old woman would do.

  But she couldn’t control what people said about her. She knew it was more than likely they said all of those things already.

  And if Gray was going to go ahead with this plan of his to locate a wife based on her ability to fit seamlessly into his life with a minimum of fuss or unruly emotions or any of that mess—and she hadn’t seen anything to suggest he was kidding—Abby couldn’t really see why she should step aside and let him fill that slot with someone else.

  If he was going to go ahead and marry just anyone, why shouldn’t she be that anyone?

  Because she already knew what it was like to yearn at him from afar. She’d already experienced what it was like to watch him marry another woman. She was familiar with that ache and the way it sat on her, until she felt pale with all the frustrated longing and the self-hatred that went along with having feelings for another woman’s husband. She’d already lived through it once.

  If she was being as reasonable and rational as she liked to imagine she was, she knew that if she turned Gray down, it would very likely turn out that he did, in fact, have a list. And that he would move right along to the next name on it.

  He wasn’t in love with her. But then, she’d loved him for so long and with such single-mindedness that she had to believe it was possible she could love enough for both of them.

  And while she was busy loving Gray from close by, for a change, she could try to be the mother figure for Becca that she’d always wished someone had been for her. She could try to help.

  Maybe it wasn’t ideal. But what was?

  And Abby would rather be needed and useful in some way, like an appliance after all, than ignored.

  She picked up her phone and scrolled to the name he’d programmed in himself, then told herself it was silly to have butterflies in her stomach. True, she hadn’t practiced this like everyone else she knew had in middle school, horrifying her grandmother by calling up boys. She told herself the only reason she was so nervous was because it was new. And because all of this was so crazy.

  If there was craziness going around, she might as well try being crazy with Gray for a change rather than the solitary crazy she knew too well.

  She hit the button to dial his number and held her breath as the phone rang. And rang.

  “Hello, Abby,” came Gray’s unmistakable drawl, sending a ribbon of textured heat winding through her. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to call me at all.”

  She was sweating. She was afraid she might drop her phone. She had no idea what she was doing. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”

  “It’s eight o’clock at night.” There was that dark current in his voice again, the way there had been in the coffeehouse earlier. Laughter, Abby thought, dazed. “You really do think I’m a geriatric, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think you’re a geriatric.” Not with that body. She paused for a moment, unable to tell if she’d said that out loud or not, God help her. When he didn’t respond, she made herself keep going. “I do think you’re a rancher, who probably gets up at the crack of dawn to tend to all your land and livestock. Don’t you?”

  “I don’t go to bed at eight.”

  There was something so intimate about his voice in her ear like that.

  Abby had never given a lot of thought to the intimacy of telephone calls before. But then, she’d never had a phone call with Gray. She’d never found herself sitting in a quiet room, able to do nothing at all but press herself back against the couch and imagine what he might be doing on the other side of the fields that separated them.

  She’d never considered how … dangerous it could be to tell herself stories about what he was doing. Was he sitting at his kitchen table? Helping Becca with her homework? Crashed out on his own sofa, which she knew was made of faded leather, wide and masculine and perfectly him?

  Was he … fully dressed?

  Abby had never felt more like a vestal virgin than she did then, when the very idea of Gray Everett in a state of undress threatened to give her the vapors.

  “The fact I don’t have a geriatric bedtime seems to have thrown you for a loop,” Gray said after a moment. “Not sure I know how to take that.”

  “I was considering how bizarre phones are. If you really think about it.”

  “I’d be surprised if anyone thinks about it. This century.”

  Abby squeezed her eyes shut, but her mouth had a mind of its own. “Isn’t it strange that you hold this thing in your hand that can let you sit somewhere and have conversations with people as if they’re sitting next to you, when they’re not?”

  He made a low sound, a kind of dark laughter that echoed inside of her like fire. “Maybe I’m not the one who’s secretly geriatric.”

  “I’m not saying I’m preoccupied with telephones. Or a technophobe or anything. It’s one of those things that hits you every now and again when you—”

  “Abby.”

  And God, the way he said her name.

  Maybe she could be forgiven for changing her whole life to hear him keep saying it. Just like that. Amused and faintly frustrated, low and deep.

  “Yes,” she whispered, sealing her fate.

  Because it was better than the alternative.

  Because it was better. Because anything that was with him had to be better, she was sure of it. “Yes, Gray. I’ll marry you.”

  7

  “What do you mean, you’re getting married?”

  It was too early in the morning for this. Gray cupped his hands around the mug of coffee he’d just filled and congratulated himself on keeping them to himself. Instead of planting them in his little brother’s face.

  Because Brady was annoying. And the most annoying thing about him currently was that he was here.

  Cluttering up Gray’s kitchen and more than that, his life. Brady had claimed he wasn’t moving home—that he had no intention of ever living on the backside of beyond again—and yet here he was, up from his fabulous, fantastic life in Denver that he professed to love so much. Again. He’d come in late last night, uninvited as usual. Gray had already been in bed, but the headlights crossing over his ceiling had kept him wide awake and glowering at the walls.

  He should have known better than to answer honestly when his brother had asked him how he was doing. Especially at 4:45 in the mo
rning, according to the old clock on the wall, when a man wanted silence and caffeine to get his head on right.

  “Not sure why the concept needs explaining, Brady,” he drawled, his gaze out the kitchen window toward the barn and the outbuildings he couldn’t see at this hour. His mind was on all the things he had to get done that day, before and after he ran Becca to school—a job he’d decided long ago he’d take on himself unless there was a legitimate emergency, because he refused to raise his kid the way his father had raised him. Meaning, with total indifference punctuated by occasional bouts of violent, drunken rage. “Pretty sure it explains itself. Or maybe they do things different down in Denver these days.”

  Brady was pushed back in one of the old wooden chairs at the solid kitchen table made from a slab of wood that had once been part of a barn door and still had marks from all Amos’s red-pen will rewriting. His fancy laptop that he carted around like it was made of solid gold was cracked open before him. He was wearing a faded Colorado sweatshirt with the CU insignia on it, reminding Gray of Brady’s college years the same way his presence here did. It was another thing that made Gray want to clip him one. It wasn’t bad enough that his little brother had taken it upon himself to treat the ranch house like his own personal hotel. He had to loom around in the kitchen every morning, as if it was his goal in life to disrupt Gray’s peace of mind and beloved schedule.

  If memory served, he’d done the same thing when he’d been home from college. Underfoot and mouthy, then and now.

  “Since when did you start seriously dating? Or dating at all?” Brady demanded, that scoffing note in his voice rubbing Gray the wrong way. “As far as I know, you’ve been doing the same monk impression since Cristina died.”

  Gray didn’t know what was worse. That Brady felt comfortable talking about Cristina’s death like that, as if it weren’t a touchy subject that was better tiptoed around and treated carefully. Or that … it wasn’t a touchy subject any longer. Gray felt nothing when her name came up, or her death was mentioned, except the same old sadness that he and the woman he’d married had done nothing but hurt each other. If it weren’t for Becca, he doubted he’d think about Cristina at all these days—and he had the sneaking suspicion that said some pretty dire things about him.

  But he wasn’t about to share that with his obnoxious brother.

  “I didn’t realize I was expected to clear my dating schedule with you.”

  “You have a dating schedule?”

  “Had I known you were so interested in how to date a woman, I would have invited you along. You should have told me you needed help.”

  “And this isn’t even dating you’re talking about,” Brady continued in the same scandalized voice, ignoring the swipe Gray had taken at him. Though Gray could see his eyes glittering in the window’s reflection and knew it had hit him all the same. Good. “Marriage? Really?”

  In a tone that suggested marriage was crazy in general but particularly insane for Gray.

  It was possible he was projecting that last part. It was also possible Brady was enough of a jackass to believe he could go there.

  Either way it wasn’t yet 5:00 in the morning and this conversation was like slamming his head into the nearest wall, except less fun.

  “Brady.” Gray turned. He fixed his gaze on his brother directly and didn’t much care that the longer he looked at him, the more Brady scowled. “You’re confused. I wasn’t asking your permission. You asked me what was up with me and I told you.”

  “Have you told Ty?”

  “Not real interested in his opinion either,” Gray replied, fighting back his temper. “But if the rodeo princess wakes up before noon one of these days, sure, I’ll tell him. Assuming you don’t race out there and tell him first, because apparently what you do now is run your mouth like it’s your job.”

  Brady raked his hands through his dark hair as if he was also having trouble keeping them to himself.

  Try it, Gray urged him silently. Almost gleefully. See what happens.

  But as Gray watched, braced for a fistfight he’d dearly love to have and lessons he was dying to teach, a canny sort of look took over Brady’s face. As if he were sitting there running one of his money games, except this time it wasn’t some investment he couldn’t properly explain, it was Gray’s life he was planning to gamble away.

  “How did Becca take it?” Brady asked after a moment.

  Like Gray couldn’t read the deliberately even tone he used.

  “That’s not your business, little brother. My daughter is my responsibility, not yours.”

  Brady rolled his eyes. “Is there anything on this ranch or in the whole world that isn’t your sole responsibility? Am I allowed to be a member of the family, Gray? Or do you get to decide that too?”

  “Mom asked me my opinion on that when she was pregnant, and I said no, Ty was more than enough.” Gray shrugged, enjoying the fact that a memory he was more than half convinced he’d made up could still agitate his little brother. “No one listened to me then. Why should anything change now?”

  Brady’s gaze was darker and his expression a whole lot less canny. “You must practice this whole hard-bitten cowboy thing you have going on. In the mirror, I’m guessing, so you can make sure you look laconic.”

  “The sun hasn’t come up yet, and to be honest, this is way too much drama for me to take in with so many chores waiting for me.” Gray wanted more coffee, but he didn’t want this conversation. He put the mug down and grabbed his battered Stetson off the counter. “Feel free to jump in and help me with the chores, since you’re here all the time these days. Or is this like when you used to come home from college and acted as if you were doing us a favor by pretending you couldn’t remember how a ranch was run?”

  Brady responded to that with his middle finger.

  Gray nodded as if that was the response he’d expected and headed for the back door, because if he didn’t get outside and get a lungful of cold air, he might actually lose his cool. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d let his temper get the best of him, but it had always seemed like his baby brother had been put on this earth to test him.

  As far as he could tell, it was the one thing Brady was really good at.

  He walked out into the yard and stood there a minute, taking a deep breath. Then another. It was a sharp, sweet sort of shattering intake of air that instantly grounded him. It reminded him who he was. Why he was here, on this earth with his feet on this land. It told him, every morning, what the point of all this was.

  His upcoming marriage included.

  His upcoming marriage most of all, if he was honest. He was ready for the change. He was ready for the next phase.

  Hell, he was ready to get laid again.

  That Brady had called him a monk burned in his gut, but he forced himself to ignore it. What Brady didn’t know about Gray’s life could stretch across the whole of the Rocky Mountain range and back again, twice. Brady had never been married. He hadn’t had a baby. And he certainly hadn’t had to navigate life in Cold River with a daughter to raise and a ranch to run while Amos drank himself meaner than dirt, and the gossips in town tracked their every move.

  Of course Brady thought Gray was a monk. And more, that he’d chosen it. As if he’d woken up one day and decided what he’d really enjoy was all work, no sex, and a decade of knowing that even if he could wrangle a few days away somewhere, that would mean … what? Picking up random women in a bar and sneaking in and out of motel rooms while someone else watched his little girl? That had never been Gray’s style. Cristina had been the single spontaneous decision he’d ever made—and look how that had turned out.

  He tried to breathe all the old ugliness out in a great puff against the cold, dark air.

  There was a vague hint of the coming day high up over the mountains on the eastern side of the valley. The horses knew he was awake—they probably knew the minute his feet hit the floor beside of his bed, smart and attentive creatures that they were�
�and were already making their usual morning noises in the barn. There were clouds tossed here and there across the vast sky, slightly darker against the gradual creep of light like some kind of warning. Gray loved every part of ranch life, his life, but it might have been these quiet, still mornings that made him the most grateful that he got to be here. That he got to be him. That he got this life he’d always wanted, and he got to decide what made it better too. And do whatever he had to do to make it that way.

  Even live like a damned monk for ten years.

  But Brady wasn’t done. Gray heard the back door slam again behind him, and gritted his teeth. “Are you ever going to quit?” he asked without turning back around.

  Brady didn’t respond immediately. Gray heard his feet on the steps, then shuffling across the yard until he was standing there at Gray’s shoulder as if he’d been invited to come along.

  “Not everything is an attack on you,” Brady said in a low voice, with all kinds of his own temper in his tone.

  Gray slanted a look his way, but didn’t comment on the fact his brother wasn’t wearing a coat against the sharp morning air. Not his business. And it might even teach his citified baby brother a few pertinent lessons about the life up in these mountains he’d worked so hard to forget.

  “I can’t quite see the difference between you making conversation and you gearing up for another run at me,” he said instead. “I know it’s a big surprise to you that a man might take offense the idea that his brother wants to sell his land out from under him, but here we are.”

  “Hey. It’s my land too.”

  “So you and that damned will tell me.” Gray shook his head. “I guess I’ll continue to do all the work while you sit around comparing real estate prices and coming up with new and exciting ways to take everything I’ve worked for my whole life and turn it into what? Condos for pampered people who think a little dirt on their designer shoes makes them a cowboy?”

  “Jesus Christ, Gray,” Brady muttered beneath his breath, but Gray heard him. And didn’t jump on it, which made him feel purely virtuous from his head to his boots.