A True Cowboy Christmas

by Caitlin Crews

  He wanted to blame her. But he had the lowering notion that there was no one to blame but him.

  “My apologies,” Abby said stiffly.

  And it made him feel even worse when all she did was walk out of the room. No stomping feet. No slammed doors. The house was quiet until he heard the dryer go on in the laundry room off the kitchen, suggesting that no matter how pissed she was, Abby wasn’t planning to shrug off the domestic labor they’d agreed to split up between them.

  Gray felt like a jackass.

  He tried to concentrate on the stacks of papers before him, but he kept going over and over the night in his head. The fact that Becca had set them up. The fact that Abby hadn’t backed down. What was he supposed to make of that?

  He shoved the papers away and sat back in his chair. This was exactly what he didn’t want. This was what marrying Abby had been meant to circumvent. He couldn’t count the number of hours he’d sat in this very chair, trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do about Cristina. He didn’t like the flashback. But it was more than a flashback, because he was … antsier. And this was a lot sooner in the marriage. Cristina had fooled him for a good long while.

  Abby is not Cristina, he growled at himself.

  He didn’t believe in ghosts. And he had no intention of retreading old ground.

  But here he was. Sitting up in the office, letting his wife interfere with his work. Exactly what he wanted to avoid.

  Sounds like the common denominator is you, whispered a rough voice deep inside him that sounded a hell of a lot like Amos.

  But Gray wanted to think about his father even less that he wanted to think about his late wife.

  He didn’t like Christmas. He didn’t get why that needed to be a federal case. He had no warm, fuzzy Christmas memories rattling around inside of him. The holidays had always been an opportunity for the adults in this house to act even worse than they normally did. He remembered his mother’s attempts to pull off a decent Christmas and the way they’d failed, time and again. They’d either been filled with nearly unbearable tension as everyone tiptoed around Amos and counted his drinks, or Amos had started the whole thing off drunk, ruining it before it started. Whatever happened, it was always awful.

  The best part about Amos’s last ten years or so was that they’d all stopped pretending.

  Gray rubbed his hands over his face. Once, then again. But that didn’t help. He was still raw. There was that dark thing inside him, but then there was the look on Abby’s face. He didn’t want to feel like this. He didn’t want to feel.

  The whole point of this marriage was to get around the weight of the relationships Gray had witnessed, disliked, and lived through himself. It wasn’t supposed to be weighty at all. It wasn’t supposed to divert his attention.

  Much less make him feel like his own, rotten father.

  He reached out and jabbed his finger on the flashing message light on his phone. Two robocalls, one political and one claiming he’d won some kind of cruise. Gray rolled his eyes and deleted each one.

  “Jonathan Townes here,” came the final message. “I’m calling from Townes Realty down here in Denver. We represent high-end, once-in-a-lifetime properties, and I’ve had a nice chat with your brother Brady about the family ranch.”

  Gray didn’t hear the rest of the message. He was too busy noting that it was actually, physically possible to see red. He had the vague impression of a request for a return call, an invitation to view a website, but all he really heard was his brother’s name.

  He pushed back from his desk and stopped pretending he was going to get any more work done that night.

  Temper stormed through him, mixing with something less sharp and more painful, deep inside him. He left his office, not sure if he was happy or further irritated that Abby was nowhere to be seen. Wasn’t that how this went? He’d done this before. It started with a few sharp words. Then, like tonight, Abby had already gone upstairs rather than reading on the couch until he was finished.

  He knew where it ended. He knew it all too well.

  Instead of heading up to his bedroom, he blew out a breath and went into the kitchen.

  He expected to find it empty, so he had to take a minute when he saw the figure bent over the open refrigerator door.

  “You don’t have to forage, Ty,” he said, aware that he was letting his pent-up temper get the best of him. “You’re welcome at dinner anytime. Of course, that would mean you’d have to put down the bottle long enough to sit at the table with the rest of us.”

  It seemed to take Ty a long time to straighten. And even longer to shut the refrigerator door and turn around.

  But he was wearing that damn smile of his when he did.

  “Spoiling for a fight, big brother?” he asked, his drawl more pronounced than usual to Gray’s ears.

  “Just pointing out that you’ve been here for a month already and, as far as I can tell, you drink all day, sneak into my kitchen at night, and then do it all over again.”

  Ty’s smile got broader. But it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “That sounds like vacation to me. I didn’t realize I needed to report in for duty.”

  “Of course not.” Gray regretted this conversation already. He could have let Ty eat in peace. His brother’s choice to drink his life away had nothing to do with him. But here he was, standing in his own kitchen with his arms folded over his chest, doing his best to be his brother’s keeper. And he couldn’t stop talking. “Why would you bother to help out? Brady’s down in Denver selling our land out from under our feet. You’re up here drinking like you want to fill the hole Dad left behind. I guess we’re not really the Everetts if one of us isn’t falling down drunk all the time.”

  Ty ran his tongue over his teeth. There was a spark of something in his brother’s gaze—temper, feeling, something—but Ty never dropped that affable expression of his.

  “I don’t believe I’m falling over,” he said, mildly enough. “Just like I don’t believe it’s your business how much I drink.”

  “There are no answers at the bottom of a bottle, Ty. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Who says I’m looking for answers? Maybe I like the journey.”

  “Great. You’re on a journey. You might want to stop and ask yourself what’s going to happen when this land is all condos and you don’t have a rent-free place to enjoy your downward spiral.”

  “What’s rent-free?” And this time, that smile of his had an edge. “This conversation feels a whole lot like rent.”

  “What the hell happened to you?” Gray demanded.

  “About two thousand pounds of pissed-off bull.”

  “I know that’s the excuse. But you were just as drunk a year ago when you came home for Christmas. Or do you not remember?”

  Ty’s eyes glittered, and for the first time in as long as Gray could remember, he didn’t even pretend to smile. “Maybe you should worry less about me and more about your own crap.”

  “My crap? You mean, like the ranch that’s up and running entirely because of me? That crap, Ty?”

  “Climb on down from your cross, Gray. No one asked you to take on responsibility for everything in the whole damn world.”

  “You’re right. I should have run away from this place like you. Dad could have run it straight into the ground, and the bank could have foreclosed years ago. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  He heard his own voice. Too loud. Too rough. Too much like he was the one reenacting the life and times of Amos Everett, not Ty.

  And that burned in his gut like a whole new shame.

  “I may be a drunk,” Ty said quietly. “I’m not going to deny I like my whiskey. But one thing I don’t do, big brother, is stand around having fights with drunk people who aren’t in the room. You should think about doing the same.”

  He offered Gray a sardonic salute, then turned to walk back out of the kitchen into the night.

  Leaving Gray in this mess he’d made.

&n
bsp; He didn’t know how long he stood there, Ty’s unwelcome words echoing around inside his head. He knew his brother was right. Gray was spoiling for a fight—but not with Ty. He wasn’t sure he was even all that mad at Abby. Or, for that matter, Cristina, who’d paid a pretty high price for her inability to deal with the toxic atmosphere in this house.

  But Amos was another story.

  Take Christmas. Gray felt like an alien that he couldn’t even fake his enjoyment of something that seemed to bring every other person he knew so much happiness. What kind of messed-up, bitter creature was he that he couldn’t put up a stocking? Throw some plastic lights on a tree?

  But he knew why the very idea made his stomach turn.

  There was the Christmas that Amos had gotten wasted and thrown all the presents under the tree into the fire. There was the Christmas Amos ran their mother off, throwing her clothes out into the snowy yard while A Christmas Story played on an endless, mocking loop on the television in the living room. The Christmases where pretending Santa existed couldn’t make up for the sense of dread that choked all of them as they waited to see when, not if, a table would get flipped. Or when, not if, Amos would use his fists. Or any combination of those holiday treats.

  He’d tried with Cristina when Becca had been young. Amos had been too old to be an actual threat, but that hadn’t kept the old man from shooting off his mouth.

  It’d been a relief to stop.

  Abby standing there in front of him talking about cookies and sugar and Christmas trees made his chest hurt. He wasn’t the one who’d ruined Christmas. He was a survivor of too many terrible holidays to count.

  But he didn’t want to be this guy. The one standing in his kitchen, alone, fuming at things that could never be fixed or changed.

  Gray forced himself to slap the lights off, then head upstairs. And if he had a moment when he considered bunking down on the couch, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

  But he refused to accept that his shiny, new, deliberately practical marriage had already ended up there. No matter Abby’s feelings about his position on Christmas.

  He expected the lights to be off, so it was a surprise to see light under the door when he made it to the second floor. He set his jaw as he walked toward it, bracing himself. He should have known that Abby’s quiet, dignified retreat wasn’t the end of it.

  When he opened the door and walked in, she was sitting up in bed with one of her books. Gray busied himself with his usual bedtime ritual, telling himself that just because she was quiet didn’t mean there was a problem. She was reading. Maybe he should take that at face value.

  When he walked over to crawl into the bed, she set the book down and fixed her gaze on his.

  “Did you wait up so we can keep fighting about this?” he asked.

  Her eyes narrowed at his tone, but she didn’t say anything when he threw himself down. Or when he tucked his hands beneath his head. Gray stared at the ceiling, much too aware of her beside him. The silence stretched out. Abby reached over and extinguished her light, but Gray knew she was as wide awake as he was.

  Wide awake. Tense. Ready for the next shoe to drop.

  Welcome to your marital bed, jackass, he gritted out at himself.

  “I don’t know how this works,” she said into the dark of the room, approximately twelve years later.

  “Which this is it now? Because I don’t care how mad you are me, Abby, I can’t stay up all night fighting about nothing.” He sounded angrier than he was. Much angrier than he wanted to sound. “Even if I wanted to.”

  At first he couldn’t comprehend what happened. She moved fast, and it took him too long to understand that she’d actually rolled over and swatted him.

  With her book.

  “Did you just … hit me?”

  “Your arm can take it. You have enough muscles.”

  “I didn’t say it hurt. I’m wondering if this is really the road you want to go down. You might want to think it through.”

  She shifted in her place beside him, and he stopped pretending he was fascinated by his own ceiling.

  “That’s the thing, Gray. I don’t know how these fights work. I don’t usually fight with anyone besides my mother, and she tends to win. Do we just lie here? Does it take a few hours to feel better? Or do you never feel better?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “But—”

  “Freeze me out as long as you want, Abby,” he said, and he didn’t know if she could hear how bitter he sounded. But he could. “Feel free.”

  When he heard her move again, he braced himself. And again, he didn’t understand. Because this time, she wasn’t trying to beat him with the paperback. Instead, she’d rolled herself toward him, so he could feel that lush, long body of hers flush against his side.

  Or, he thought on another rush of bitterness, so she could torture him more by withholding herself.

  It was all well and good to claim this marriage wasn’t transactional. But he couldn’t actually make her quit bartering with whatever she imagined he’d want if that was how she played it. The very idea made him feel sick.

  “You’re not getting my point,” Abby said, and his eyes had adjusted to the dark then. She was frowning at him, but her hand was smoothing its way across his bare chest. “I don’t want to freeze you out.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I like what happens here, in this bed, when the lights go out.” Her voice was fierce. And he was a dimwit because it only just dawned on him that she was naked. “I don’t see why you being an authoritative ass should mean I have to miss out.”

  Gray’s heart kicked at him. In his chest and, far harder, in his sex.

  “I believe it’s called hate sex,” his untouched, virginal wife informed him, even as her hand move down his abdomen to grip him.

  Just the way he’d taught her.

  “That’s not what it’s called,” he told her, but he was already moving. “Not exactly.”

  He rolled her on top of him, lifting her so he could move the heat of her against him. He found her wet. Ready. His.

  “But we can practice if you want,” he growled, gripping her hips and bringing her down on him. Hard.

  Abby rode him as if she’d been born to move over him like this in the dark, temper and passion fusing into a white-hot, blistering kind of need that Gray wasn’t sure they’d both survive.

  He wouldn’t call it “hate.” It was too rich. Too furious.

  Too good, he thought, as they hit that edge and shot over into the flames he was sure would burn them both alive.

  But at least they’d turn to ash together.

  16

  It was almost two weeks later when Abby closed down the coffee shop at six p.m. as usual, which in the deep, inky dark of December felt more like eleven p.m. She did the last check and clean of all the machines and the kitchen, then bustled around between the tables to make sure they were wiped down and ready for the morning rush. She called goodbyes to her baristas as they made their way out into the night, the frigid blast of air from outside making her shiver, and locked up the front doors behind them.

  Everything was the same as it always had been. She might have changed addresses, but the core of who she was and what she did was the same.

  She chanted that to herself as she wound her way into the back room to collect Becca, who was doing her homework at Abby’s desk the way she did on the evenings Abby closed. She reminded herself that her life was great.

  Yes, she asserted inside her own head. Absolutely great in every way.

  She had her marriage now. A ranch house that was hers to change or keep as she liked, as long as it wasn’t Christmas-themed. She had a teenage stepdaughter who she genuinely liked and who seemed to like her in return. And she had a husband who, sure, was a touch uncompromising, but almost made up for that flaw every night in their bed. What more could anyone want?

  That was a question Hope had asked her directly earlier this afternoon when Abby had wond
ered, out loud, when she would stop blushing every time she heard Gray’s name.

  “You’re still in the newlywed stage,” Hope had said, rolling her coffee cup between her palms after Abby had pulled her drink. She hadn’t done much to hide her big grin at the bright red shade of Abby’s face. “I’m pretty sure that will wear off. The pheromones go, and then it’s all arguing over the television remote and lives of quiet despair, right?”

  Abby had rolled her eyes. “You know that from your great wealth of experience with marriages, I take it?”

  Hope had laughed, but a moment later had sobered. “Maybe it’s different for you. You’re married to the love of your life. What more could anyone want?”

  What indeed, Abby thought now. Maybe with unnecessary darkness.

  Because maybe she’d been a bit too cavalier about the idea she could love enough for the both of them. And maybe she should have listened to Rae when she’d suggested that some of Gray was actually not better than none at all.

  But she’d made her own bed, hadn’t she? And she decided to focus on what they did in it every night, no matter if they’d agreed with each other much ahead of time. Abby had heard people say that sex didn’t solve anything, but she figured they’d never had sex with Gray.

  He was the same in bed as he was out. Stern. Uncompromising. And very, very sure of himself.

  She shivered again, but this time, it had nothing to do with the cold.

  Last night, he’d taught her the fine art of taking the length of him into her mouth, and had then returned the favor, until Abby had not only been wrung out and beside herself—she’d been tempted to imagine she was as pretty as he made her feel.

  She shut that down hurriedly, and not only because it was inappropriate to think about such things while staring at Gray’s daughter.

  Abby cleared her throat. “Are you ready to go?” she asked Becca when the girl looked up. “I have to stop—” She almost said “home,” but caught herself at the last second. “I need to swing by my grandmother’s house on the way.”