A True Cowboy Christmas

by Caitlin Crews

  Abby hardly knew what to say. He knew the story of her mother, the way everybody did in Cold River. That didn’t mean she wanted to discuss it. Not with this man who she still couldn’t quite believe she would be calling her husband in a matter of days. This man who she desperately wanted to like her. To think highly of her.

  To want her.

  The idea that he’d imagine she’d back out of this now made those same frustrated tears prick at the back of her eyes. Because like hell would she let Lily ruin this too. Like hell would she let her mother strangle all the possibility out of this fragile, magical dream Abby hardly believed in herself.

  “Oh no,” she said, with maybe too much fervor. But she didn’t rein it in. “I’m not having any second thoughts. Are you?”

  “None.”

  He sounded certain. Absolute.

  And Abby dared to imagine she wasn’t the only one who sat there a minute after they hung up, smiling into her empty room.

  Still, she slept badly and woke up cranky, and it wasn’t because she had Gray on the brain. Because she always had Gray on the brain. She sleepwalked her way through her usual morning routine, almost burst into tears when her car choked as she tried to start it in the frigid predawn, and failed to see the usual magic as she drove in to town.

  One more thing to blame on her mother. One more reason to wish that one of these days, Lily really would just disappear for good. She didn’t only ruin lives, she cast a black cloud over otherwise perfectly happy days too, and she didn’t have to be in the vicinity to do it.

  Abby hated that she had such ugliness in her head, no matter if it was warranted. Whether she liked it or not, Lily was her mother, and surely she should find a way to have some kind of feeling for the woman inside of her. Or maybe that was the problem. She had too much feeling inside her. Too much feeling, too much experience with Lily’s broken promises, and entirely too many memories of Lily’s casual cruelty.

  “It doesn’t really seem fair that I have to put up with Lily in the middle of all this,” she blurted out to Rae in the coffeehouse’s back office some hours later.

  It was getting on lunchtime, and her friend was in town before her own shift at her family’s florist shop down the street. The Flowerpot sourced all its flowers from the Trujillo family plant and flower farms north of town, with a number of largescale greenhouses and deep, deep roots in the valley. Rae was all about roots—though no one was allowed to talk about the kind of roots she’d married into and then cut off, so abruptly that she was still barely on speaking terms with the whole, sprawling, historic Kittredge family who roamed all over the valley. And in the case of Amanda Kittredge, the youngest of the big family, who worked right here in Cold River Coffee.

  Today was not the day to test the water on Rae’s current feelings about her brief marriage to Riley Kittredge and all the ill will it had caused ever since. Especially when Abby could see that Rae hadn’t ordered herself a coffee drink, which meant she was quietly avoiding having to interact with Amanda.

  Still.

  “Nothing about your mother is fair,” Rae said. She folded her arms over her chest, which made the bright red shirt she had to wear at the florist’s stretch over the figure Abby had envied since the day in seventh grade Rae had woken up with it. Rae raised a dramatic dark brow. “There’s a lot of unfairness going around, now that you mention it.”

  “I’m talking about my pain, Rae. Why are you interrupting me to give me a hard time?”

  Rae waved a hand. “Pain comes and goes, Abby. But the agony of not being asked to be a bridesmaid in your best friend’s wedding? That lasts forever. In the wedding pictures, particularly.”

  “It’s not that kind of wedding.”

  “Every wedding is that kind of wedding. Maybe you’ve forgotten mine. It was like a parade.”

  Abby hadn’t forgotten. That awful iridescent dress lived in her memory like a virus and was right there in her closet should the awful details get fuzzy. But Rae’s short, unhappy marriage was so sensitive a subject that neither she nor Hope had dared bring it up directly in years. If Rae couldn’t manage a civil exchange with Amanda here in the coffeehouse, the mention of Riley Kittredge himself might send Rae right over the edge.

  Rae tipped her head to one side, and Abby tried to stop thinking the name of her ex, in case Rae could somehow sense it in the air between them. “Are you forbidden to have a wedding party? Is that part of the deal with this whole whirlwind thing—he gets to make all the rules?”

  Abby threw a ball point pen across her desk, and Rae laughed as she batted it aside.

  “Don’t make this into something it’s not. Gray doesn’t forbid me to do anything. This isn’t a romantic thing, that’s all.” She lifted her chin. “I don’t see why it has to be.”

  “He might not think it’s romantic because he’s a man and he’s him and sometimes it looks like a smile might kill him, much less a romance. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find it romantic, right?”

  “No. I don’t know.” Abby rubbed at her overly dry eyes, wishing she’d slept for more than fifteen minutes here and there. “He isn’t the one who’s had a crush on me all these years. And I don’t…”

  She didn’t want to finish that sentence.

  “You don’t want to tell him because you’re afraid he’d change his mind about marrying you if he knew.”

  Abby realized she should have expected Rae to deliver a punch like that, straight to her heart. Because that was Rae in a nutshell. A delicate creature, all anime eyes and Pied Piper laughter, and yet so direct sometimes it left scars.

  “It is what it is,” Abby heard herself say, in as measured a tone as she could manage.

  Rae made a small noise. “I’ve never understood that expression. Why is it what it is? Can you change it? Why can’t it be something else if that’s what you want? It is what it is always sounds like defeat.”

  “In this case, you know exactly what it is and so do I. He might as well have advertised for a position in the Longhorn Valley Tribune. It happens to be a position I want to fill, that’s all.”

  “And one you can quit if you want.” Rae’s voice was dark then, which Abby suspected was another reference to the marriage she ordinarily pretended hadn’t happened.

  “I’m not going to quit,” Abby said, and it felt like a vow. Because everything felt like a vow this week. Maybe she was getting prepared. “Some people go through their whole lives looking for their place in the world, but not me. It’s mapped out for me, and I think that’s a good thing.”

  “I think he’s an idiot.”

  “He’s not an idiot. You know he’s not an idiot.”

  “You deserve to be loved, Abby,” Rae said with a sudden rush of ferocity. “You deserve everything. You don’t have to prove yourself—”

  “What I deserve doesn’t matter,” Abby said fiercely in return. “Because this is what I have. And it’s what I want.”

  “Are you sure?” Rae sighed when Abby glared at her. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time. But I have to wonder if having part of him is worse than having nothing at all.”

  Thanks for that, Abby thought and would have said if her throat didn’t feel sealed up. Thanks for articulating my absolute worst fear.

  She had surrounded herself with direct, take-no-prisoners people in this life. Usually this was something she treasured. Because it had never occurred to her before these past few weeks that there were very good reasons most people preferred some gauze and self-deception wrapped around their lives.

  “I guess I’ll find out,” she said. Maybe too grimly.

  Rae’s eyes widened. “I didn’t mean—”

  “I really do know what I’m doing, okay?” That was a lie, but she was doing it anyway. And she would keep doing it, because this was the path she was on now. There was no going back. She didn’t want any going back. “We’re not having any kind of bridal party. Grandma has insisted on a party after the courthouse, though. That’s going to h
ave to do.”

  “I love you, Abby,” Rae said, her dark eyes filled with distress. “I don’t want to hurt you. That’s the last thing I want.”

  “I know.” Abby pushed back from the desk and stood. Then she made herself smile because she didn’t want to hurt Rae either. Not when all her friend wanted was to protect her. “I really do know.”

  But what she knew wasn’t the same as what she felt, Abby reflected as she took a shift at the cash register up front. This close to the holiday, Cold River Coffee was packed full of familiar local faces, college students back home for the rest of the week, and old friends who only turned up at this time of year.

  Abby lost herself in the familiar hustle of a busy day slinging coffee drinks. The sun came up late and set early this time of year, and contending with that required a whole lot of caffeine and sugar. One of the things she liked about working here was being out front during rushes like the one today. Making drinks, making change, so it was impossible to do anything but concentrate on the task at hand.

  She liked to lose herself in the rhythm of it, especially when there were so very many things she didn’t want to think about.

  Abby was so busy focusing on getting a round of drinks out to a pack of chattering tourists who’d day-tripped over from Aspen that it took her a moment to understand the girl standing there at the bar, trying to catch her eye, wasn’t waiting for a drink.

  It was Becca.

  Gray’s daughter, Becca.

  “Hi,” Becca said when Abby’s gaze collided with hers, with more self-possession than most thirty-year-olds. Or this thirty-year-old, anyway. Abby had to remind herself the girl was fifteen. “I had the idea we should get to know each other better before tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Abby echoed through the sudden panic that gripped her.

  “Thanksgiving.” Becca’s mouth curved into a smile a lot like her father’s. “My dad said you were coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. Did he get that wrong?”

  It hit Abby then that she was messing up her first interaction with Gray’s daughter now they both knew Abby was set to become her stepmother.

  Stepmother. The word had never seemed quite so heavy as it did then.

  “Yes,” she said, trying to sound as if she’d never heard of anything heavy in her life. “Tomorrow. He didn’t get that wrong. I’m out of it today.”

  Abby wiped her hands on her apron, then indicated with the tilt of her head and a grateful smile that the barista next to her should take over. She walked out from behind the bar, smiled at Becca like the kind of mature and easy-tempered stepmother she hoped she would be, and led the teenager over to a table.

  Not far from where Abby had sat with her father.

  Except this time she might be even more nervous.

  “I hope this is okay,” Becca said as they both sat down, with a bright, wide smile that wasn’t like Gray at all. “We got out of school early, and I thought it would be fun to swing by. I know we’ve met before, but, you know. This is different.”

  “I hope you’re okay with this,” Abby said. And then wished she hadn’t, because what if she’d opened a door she wouldn’t know how to close?

  “I love Thanksgiving. The more, the merrier.” Becca wrinkled her nose to show she was kidding. “And yes, I’m more than okay with it.”

  Something about that scraped at Abby, no matter how much she wanted to take it at face value. She tried to shove it aside. They’d all have ample time to get to know each other after Saturday, wouldn’t they?

  “I’ve never been anybody’s stepmother before,” she said after a moment. “Between you and me, I don’t want to mess it up.”

  Becca smiled at her again, and she suddenly looked so much like her mother it made Abby’s breath catch. All that glossy dark hair cascading down her back. The flashing dark eyes, the graceful, easy smile. Abby had never seen pictures of Cristina as a teenager, but she would bet money she’d looked exactly like this.

  She couldn’t help but wonder if Gray saw a ghost when he looked his daughter.

  Then hated herself for the thought. Gray saw his own daughter when he looked at Becca, she was sure. It was Abby who saw Cristina everywhere.

  “It’s going to be great,” Becca told her in the same tone. It took Abby a moment to realize she sounded determined. “I’ve wanted my dad to get married again for a long time. And I’m so glad it’s you, because I already know you. It would probably be weirder if it was a stranger.”

  Weirder, but not insurmountable. Noted. Becca clearly wanted him married. To anyone.

  “Why do you want your dad to get married?” Abby heard herself ask, which was a prime example of bad stepmothering because she was so obviously fishing. But she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  “Because he’s so lonely. Don’t you think?”

  “I think he’s solitary,” Abby said carefully. “But that’s not the same thing.”

  Becca smiled again, and there was something about it that tugged at Abby. It was too practiced, maybe. Too studied. There was no fifteen-year-old girl on the planet who was quite so self-possessed with the random adults in her orbit. Especially when said adults were marrying into the family.

  Not without reason, anyway. She couldn’t think of very many good reasons.

  “I know that sometimes stepparent things are, like, intense,” Becca said. “I want you to know we’re not going to have any friction. Not on my end.”

  “We’re not? I mean, that’s great.”

  “I want my dad to be happy, and if you make him happy, then I’m happy.”

  “That’s a lot of happy,” Abby said, taken aback. Though she couldn’t put her finger on why.

  “Great!” Becca sat back in her chair and almost looked … relieved. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow at Thanksgiving. You’re coming with your grandmother, right?”

  “Yes.” Abby tried out her own self-possessed smile and felt silly. “And maybe my mother too. If she shows up.”

  The smooth, happy smile that Becca was aiming across the table slipped. “Your mother?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever met my mother, because she certainly isn’t one for visiting the neighbors. I can’t remember.”

  “But isn’t your mother…” Becca’s voice cracked on that last word and her cheeks got red. “Well, I mean, I heard she was…”

  “She’s never had the best maternal instincts,” Abby said judiciously. Because Becca was a fifteen-year-old. With her own mother issues. She didn’t need Abby’s on top of that. “But people change. In fairness, she could be waiting at home for me right now, filled with regret and desperate for my forgiveness. It’s possible, right?”

  “No.” Becca’s voice was flat, and there was no trace of a smile then, studied or otherwise. “It’s not possible. People don’t really change. Not that much.”

  “Hey.” Abby wanted to reach over and grab the teenager’s hand. She, who never wanted to grab anybody’s hand for any reason. But she didn’t know Becca that well and didn’t want to start off this new relationship of theirs too oddly, so she settled for sliding her palm across the surface of the table and stopping halfway, to indicate that she would have reached farther. If she could. If they were different people. “Fifteen is young to write people off for good, isn’t it?”

  “Not really.” Gone was the happy, outgoing, self-possessed creature who’d appeared at the coffee bar and asked for a meet-and-greet with her new almost-stepmother. And in her place was a child with a storm in her gaze and what Abby would have called too many bad experiences twisting her mouth. “Some people don’t deserve forgiveness.”

  “Becca…” Abby began.

  But it was as if a switch flipped. There was Christmas music playing and someone was crooning about snow and mistletoe. And Becca looked as if she took the caroling personally. Because she smiled again, even brighter than before, but Abby didn’t buy it this time. Then she pushed back her chair and stood.

  She was pretty like her mothe
r, but that self-possession was all her father. Abby wondered if Gray’s was as much an act as she suspected Becca’s was. She filed that away as Becca zipped up the down parka that made her look waifish—instead of the marshmallow roll Abby resembled when she wore a parka—and tugged on a bright hat with a pom-pom on the top.

  “I don’t want to keep you,” Becca said. “I know you’re working. I only wanted to officially welcome you to the family and make sure you knew that was coming from me, not because my dad, like, forces me to do it tomorrow.”

  She offered an awkward, yet adorable little wave. Then Abby watched Becca turn and head for the door, where a group of friends waited for her. The girl would be her stepdaughter come Saturday. They would be living together. And hopefully, Abby would find a way to be some kind of decent parental influence, whatever that looked like.

  For the first time, the enormity of what she was preparing to do crushed Abby where she sat. The coffeehouse was hopping all around her, conversations rising and falling, the whir of the espresso machines and the squeals of small children. Abby was aware of all of it, yet somehow miles away at the same time.

  What the hell was she doing?

  Rae was absolutely right. She was crazy, at the very least, to consider signing herself up for the kind of torment it was going to be to be close to Gray, and yet as far away as ever. She couldn’t pretend she wasn’t afraid of exactly that.

  Just as she couldn’t pretend that she was only risking herself. There was Becca to consider.

  Abby forced herself up and onto her feet, then worked the rest of her shift in a daze, not sure if she was grateful any longer that it didn’t give her time to think.

  She did the last of the Thanksgiving grocery shopping before she left town, and then drove out over the mountain. The fields opened up before her with only a few lights here and there, and she knew who’d lit every one of them.

  It felt as good as peace.

  She reminded herself she was choosing this. That there were people who married on a whole lot less than the number of things she and Gray shared, plus that one kiss.

  That one, life-altering, utterly devastating kiss.