He blew out a breath, rubbed his hands together because they were cold even with his work gloves on, and only then turned and started back toward the house.
Toward his life, not his grave.
He trudged his way back over the snow. And as he climbed the gentle hill, it seemed, for a moment, that his eyes were deceiving him. He blinked. But the two figures waiting for him at the top of the hill didn’t go anywhere the closer he got.
“Well, what to my wandering eyes does appear but my very own big brother,” Ty drawled. “Visiting cemeteries on Christmas Eve, like you do.”
“I think that makes him the ghost of Christmas past, Ty,” Brady said from beside him.
“What are you two idiots doing out here?” Gray asked gruffly.
“What are you doing here?” Brady fired back. “Stomping around in the dark with a death wish, or is the graveyard a coincidence?”
Gray made it to the top of the hill, and then they were all standing there, the three remaining Everett men with the moon cascading all over them and nothing but Everett land for miles.
Everett land around them and between them, as it always had been. But Gray reminded himself that was his father talking.
“It turned out I had something to say,” Gray muttered, feeling exposed. Silly. But he guessed that as long as he was feeling something, that was what mattered. “To Dad.”
Neither of his brothers said anything to that. But all the same, it felt as if something eased between them.
Or maybe, Gray thought acidly, it just eased in you, and that makes all the difference.
“I heard you and Abby fighting,” Brady said with studied indifference, when it seemed another December or two had come and gone with them out here in the cold, like the born and bred Coloradoans they were.
“And you figured you could fix a marital fight?” Gray shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “You obviously learned nothing while growing up in Dad’s house. I admire your optimism.”
“Then you came out here,” Brady continued. “I couldn’t tell if maybe you decided that instead of acting like Dad you’d come on out here, stretch yourself out on his grave, and be him. Melodrama and all.”
Gray didn’t know what had changed in him, but something had. Because he knew that before tonight, a comment like that would have had that violent thing inside him clenched in a fist, battering at his rib cage, demanding he teach Brady a lesson.
But tonight, he laughed. A real laugh that surprised him as much as he could see it surprised his brothers when they exchanged a quick look.
“It’s kind of cold for that.” He could feel the wind chill biting at his face as he said it. “But you go ahead, Denver. I can see you got that extra fancy, microdown, whatever the hell parka on.”
“It’s a special jacket,” Ty interjected, all drawl and more of that same laughter. “A very special ski jacket, handcrafted for life in subzero weather by people who want to look like they could stay outside all day without having to actually do it.”
Brady snorted, but there was no temper in it. “Don’t blame me that you were so jealous you went and looked it up. If you ask nicely, Santa might just give you one for Christmas, Ty.”
“Everybody wants a special jacket, of course,” Ty said blandly. “We have to walk around in expensive uniforms that tell everyone how fancy we are or people might forget to be envious.”
Gray felt himself smile as Brady gave Ty the finger. He waited until they were both looking at him.
“I don’t want to sell,” he said, but he wasn’t growling it out this time, all dark and furious. He just said it. And he met Brady’s gaze. “But I know that’s not my call to make. I have a proposition for the both of you.”
“That sounds racy,” Ty drawled. “But I’m betting it’s not.”
“I want you both to give me a year,” Gray said. “And I mean a full year. Not just living here, tying one on in the outbuildings.” He waited until Ty’s expression changed, then looked at Brady. “I’m not talking about weekends up from Denver when you feel like it. I mean a full year, working on this ranch, acting like the full partners you are without Dad around to cause trouble.”
“Full partners,” Brady said, his tone surprisingly even, “except you’re the boss.”
“I’m the boss because this has been my job since I was eighteen,” Gray said, and he was uncompromising on that point. “But it’s our ranch. We’re it. We’re the same Everetts who’ve been here since the eighteen hundreds. If you two are willing to really, truly dedicate yourself to this family’s legacy, and this land, for a year, then at the end of it, I’ll give the same amount of respect to the idea of selling. I can’t say that I’ll be for it. But I promise I’ll listen to what you have to say. And we’ll figure it out together.”
That word seemed to sit hard and heavy there between the three of them.
Together.
“A year is a long time,” Brady said. But he didn’t say it hotly or angrily.
Gray shrugged. “It doesn’t seem like a lot of time to me. Not next to all the years this ranch has been in our family.”
“Seems fair,” Ty said, in that amiable way of his. As if he’d just been waiting on an invitation to help out.
It occurred to Gray that it was entirely possible Ty really had been. Something Gray never would have noticed because Brady had been right the other night. They were all programmed to think of each other the way Amos had always thought of them.
They’d been taught to distrust each other. But that had only ever served one member of this family, and he was dead.
“I don’t want to be a martyr,” Gray told his brothers. “And I’m sure as hell not a saint. I don’t know the first thing about working with anyone, but it seems to me that we’re brothers. We have that going for us already. We might as well figure out who we are when we’re not playing roles the old man assigned us.”
“Who knows?” Ty said, a grin in his voice. “We might actually like each other. We might turn out to be friends.”
Brady made a scoffing sound. “Let’s not get carried away.”
They all laughed at that. Even Gray.
Maybe especially Gray.
Then, out there in the dark, December chill of a frigid, silent night, with the moon shining down and their ancestors listening in, the last three Everett brothers shook hands.
Which was only the first of the Christmas miracles Gray intended to work before morning.
22
Abby woke alone in the big bed upstairs, and that was the first kick of disappointment.
Then she sat up, and what had happened last night poured through her. The things Gray had said. And more humiliating, all the things she had said.
She took a long time staring at the clear evidence of the unmarked pillow beside her that told her he hadn’t come to bed at all. For the first time since their wedding night, they hadn’t shared a bed.
It was ridiculous, really, to feel the slap of that.
Abby had been okay with all of this when they’d both said a lot less, even if the silence was sometimes painful, and then came together in this bed at night.
She hardly knew what to do with this new version of her supposedly practical marriage, which was filled with painful things and no sex in the middle of the night to smooth it over.
Whoever told you love wasn’t supposed to hurt? Grandma had asked.
Abby rubbed her hands against her chest, pressing hard against that aching, hollow spot.
Maybe she should have asked her grandmother how much it was supposed to hurt. And whether or not that ever went away.
She rolled out of bed, only realizing as her feet hit the floor that there was a different scent in the air.
Bacon, something in her whispered in sheer delight. And something else that smelled a lot like coffee cake.
Smells that Abby would have loved to attribute to Christmas morning, but this was the Everett ranch house. There was no Christmas here.
May
be not, she told herself briskly, because she wasn’t one for too much self-pity. It made her feel thick and sullen, and she didn’t like it. But you get bacon and coffee cake of some kind or another, and that’s a nice morning either way.
She fixed her hair, pulling it back into her usual ponytail, which always made her feel better. More in control. She pulled on her favorite cozy leggings, her scrunchy boot slippers with the fleece linings, and the thick, comfortable wrap sweater she used as a robe. Or a blanket, depending on her mood.
Becca, she told herself as she hit the stairs. It would be Becca doing some kind of Christmas morning breakfast, though maybe she’d call it something else to spare her father’s feelings.
Not that Abby really wanted to think about Becca’s father at the moment. Because if she did, she would cry. And there was no point crying over the spilt milk that was her marriage.
Abby had known exactly what she was signing up for, as she kept reminding herself and anyone else who would listen. She’d been the one doing the signing. It was her own fault, and no one else’s, if it turned out she was feeling ever so slightly dairy intolerant these days.
That was what she’d told herself last night, curled up in that empty bed in a miserable little ball. That was what she’d told herself, again and again, because that was what she had to believe.
The truth was, it was perfectly possible to live without hope.
It just wasn’t pleasant.
But no one had promised her pleasant. Or a rose garden. Or happiness, or love, or any of the other things it turned out she wanted.
Her broken heart was her own damn fault.
She was so lost in her own head, so busy trying to box up all her hurt feelings and shove them somewhere else, that when she got to the bottom of the stairs, it took her a moment to notice that everything was … different.
Abby looked up. Then she looked around the living room.
Then she did it again, more slowly, her jaw dropping open of its own accord.
“Merry Christmas, Abby,” Gray said, gravelly and grave from one of the leather sofas.
Abby had to reach out and grab the banister before her legs gave out from under her.
Her heart, which she would have said was smashed to smithereens and entirely useless, was whole enough to pound at her. Hard. Then again. And again.
Because when she’d gone up to bed last night, the living room had looked the way it always did. Cozy, masculine, a lot like a fantasy Western ranch house, but in no way Christmasy.
So what she was looking at now didn’t make sense.
There were lights everywhere. White lights over the mantel and down the sides of the fireplace. Colored lights hanging from all corners of the room. There were evergreen boughs on seemingly every surface. There were even stockings hung over the fire, wrapped in more lights.
And there, in the corner between the fireplace and the window, there was a tree.
A tall, bright green Christmas tree, covered in lights. And thick with ornaments—that when she looked closer, Abby could see weren’t real ornaments.
In fact, it looked like someone had emptied all the cabinets in the kitchen, found as many small utensils as possible, and then attached them somehow to the branches. She saw ribbons from the spools of ribbon she’d had in the dining room. And what looked like balled up wrapping paper, as if someone had been trying to make traditional Christmas ball ornaments.
It was the most beautiful thing Abby had ever seen.
“We all helped,” Gray told her from the middle of the transformed room. Where Abby could hear Christmas carols playing from the tiny speaker on the mantel. “Ty, Brady, Becca. Me.”
Abby’s heart beat a little harder. A little faster.
“I don’t understand what’s happening…” she whispered, still holding onto the banister for dear life.
She looked at him, but looking at Gray was even more overwhelming than looking at the tree. The stockings. Actual presents nestled beneath the tree.
Gray was kicked back on one of those leather couches, looking every inch the same stern, uncompromising cowboy she’d been in love with all her life.
Even the glow of Christmas lights couldn’t take away the hurt she still felt. But Abby told herself it was okay. No one was guaranteed to get everything in life. She had this. She had a good home, and a decent marriage, even if it wasn’t the fantasy one in her head.
She vowed to herself that she would find a way to be okay with that too.
Because it was more than okay to call what she had enough. It was greedy to think she deserved everything. Especially when he’d done all of this for her.
“This is Christmas,” Gray told her, snapping her attention back to him. He held her gaze as he slowly rose to his feet. “The first of many, I’m imagining, so it might be a little rusty this time. We’ll get it right as we go along.”
“As we go along…?”
Abby felt frozen solid as he started toward her, even though every part of her seemed to be trembling at the same time. Her knees. Her belly. Even her mouth.
To say nothing of that soft place between her legs that was his. Ever and only his.
When he reached her, Gray only took her hand in his. She should have argued. Done something.
But instead, his hand was warm and hard around hers, and she let him pull her with him toward the fire. She stood there with the flames crackling merrily on one side, a decorated Christmas tree on the other, and Gray there before her.
Like everything she’d ever dreamed.
And then, to her complete surprise, he dropped down to his knees.
“What is this?” she asked nervously.
Gray took her hands in his again. More securely, if possible.
“I want you to listen to me,” Gray said, very solemnly.
He was her husband, and it was Christmas morning, and her heart was already so full she wasn’t sure how it could continue to function.
Abby nodded, not sure she was able to speak.
“I love you, Abby,” Gray said, in that stern, certain way of his that was better than heat as it washed through her. “I love you so much I’ll even try Christmas on for size if that makes you happy.”
“Gray.…”
She hadn’t meant his name to come out the way it sounded, with that hurt note so obvious in the middle of it.
Gray’s gaze searched hers, deep green and serious.
“We have a few things to cover here,” he told her, in the same way he’d laid out his reasons for why she should marry him in the first place. “First and foremost, I didn’t marry you out of pity. Let’s make that perfectly clear.”
Abby tried to pull her hands back, but he wouldn’t let her.
“We don’t need to talk about this.” She could feel her cheeks, hot and shameful, and she didn’t want to remember the things she’d thrown at him. She could feel them, humiliating and revealing, deep inside. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I haven’t done a single thing out of pity in my life.” Gray kept his gaze steady on hers until she couldn’t do anything but sigh, as if he’d gentled her from the inside. “I don’t know why you think I’d start with a marriage.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she managed to get out. “You don’t have to create this fake thing when we both know—”
“Abby. Baby. Look at me.”
She did, again, but only because there was a riot inside of her. And she didn’t know what to do except lose herself in him, because it still felt a whole lot like finding herself.
“We both know who got in your head a long time ago and told you that you were something less than pretty.” He made a rough, low sound. “She’s flat wrong. She’s always been wrong. You’d go to war for Becca without a second thought, but when it comes to you, you accept everything Lily ever told you as if it were the absolute truth.”
“You married me because I’m practical,” she whispered, horrified that she sounded so unsteady. So utterl
y impractical it should have hurt. “Rational. Well, I am. And I know what I look like.”
“I don’t think you do.” Gray’s gaze was so hot it hurt. It all hurt. She couldn’t understand why all of this hurt this much. “And I want to be very clear that this is objective. It’s not an opinion. You’re a beautiful woman. You’re tall and built with a mouth that gives a man ideas. The only person on this earth who thinks you’re plain is you.”
“And my own mother.”
“Your mother doesn’t think you’re ugly,” Gray said with that matter-of-fact certainty that made her feel … protected. Free. Both at once. “If she did, she wouldn’t comment on it.” When Abby started to protest, he shook his head. “Look at all the things you have. You’re the true love of your grandmother’s life. You have a home with her, always. Now you have a new one with me. You have roots and a future here. You’re happy with a life she doesn’t want to live, but keeps coming back to anyway. You’re all the things she couldn’t be, and she resents it. Lily doesn’t know how to have any of the things she left behind. But you do it effortlessly. If you believe nothing else I ever tell you, believe this. She’s jealous.”
Abby only realized she was breathing too heavily when Gray’s mouth curved in the corner.
“I don’t…”
But Abby couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. Maybe it was the wetness she could feel on her cheeks. Maybe it was the way her hands shook, despite the fact they were wrapped in Gray’s strong, callused ones.
“I didn’t marry you out of pity,” Gray said again, his expression even more severe. But his eyes burned. “I told you and myself a whole lot of things about why you were the only possible choice for me. And all of those things were true. I knew we’d make a good match. I wanted a practical, down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth woman, and yes, that’s a compliment. You’re not an appliance to me. You’re not a condiment. I … trust you.”
He said that as if it hurt. As if she wasn’t the only one hurting here. As if they got to share this ache the way they shared everything else.
Something about that made her heart flip over inside her.
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