A Wyoming Christmas to Remember

by Melissa Senate

  She wondered if she was a control taker in bed all the time or if she’d simply done what the moment had called for last night. And what an amazing moment it was. Sawyer had responded instantly, and the experience had been so emotional, so intimate, that Maddie had almost cried a time or two until ecstasy had won out. Sex with Sawyer was everything she’d imagined it would be the past several days. She was glad they hadn’t waited for her memory to return. She had two tiny memories back now, which meant more would be coming each day. She’d wanted to be with Sawyer as the woman she was now, the one who was getting this rare chance to fall in love with him all over again.

  Falling in love without all the history, though, she reminded herself. That wasn’t falling in love. That was fantasy.

  She frowned, wishing she could stop thinking for just a minute, but without a history to call from, her mind wasn’t exactly full. She had a lot of space to fill.

  The cry came harder, so Maddie reluctantly got out of bed and headed into the nursery.

  “What’s the matter, little guy?” she said, picking up Shane, whose shrieks instantly stopped as she cradled him against her and rubbed his back. “Let’s get you changed.”

  Once both infants had fresh diapers and pajamas, she brought them downstairs in their carriers to feed them in the living room. She had Shane in her arms when Sawyer came down the stairs, all rumpled and sexy. She blushed thinking about last night, which made her feel silly until she realized it was the first time for her.

  “I’ll admit I was hoping to wake up next to you and have a repeat of last night,” he said.

  She grinned. “Me too. But duty called.”

  “I know I said I didn’t think we should be intimate until your memory came back, but to be honest, I’ve felt so close to you, Maddie. Everything about last night felt so natural.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” she said, her heart doing somersaults.

  A shrill cry came from Max. Translation: Uh, what about my bottle?

  She smiled. “I made a bottle for Max, too—it’s in the kitchen.”

  He went to get it, then came back, scooped up Max and sat down beside her. She watched him coo at the baby, angling the bottle just so. What was also natural? The way Sawyer was with his nephews.

  When Max finished his bottle, Sawyer held him upright and patted his back, then repositioned him in his arms to let him stare out the big sliding glass doors to the deck, the snow still slightly clinging to the trees. “I’m going to look for Cole today,” he said.

  Maddie stared at him. “Really?”

  “I have to talk to him. I imagine him out there, tortured and going crazy, unable to live with himself for dropping off his babies and leaving, but unable to keep them either. That he came to the house to leave gifts tells me he cares—a lot.”

  Maddie nodded. “It’s clear that he cares. I want to come with you to look for him. I’ll ask my parents to watch the twins for the day. It’s probably better that you talk to him without Shane and Max right there. That might be too much for Cole.”

  “Agreed. And I’m glad you want to come, Maddie. You might not remember Cole yet, but he always liked you, and having you there will likely relax him. If we even find him.”

  “Have any ideas about where to look?”

  “A few,” Sawyer said. “I did a search online a couple days ago actually, but he moved out of the most recent address last Monday—just a few days before he showed up here with the twins.”

  “Was he evicted? That might help explain him feeling so desperate—alone with newborns, nowhere to live?”

  “I spoke to his landlord. Cole hadn’t paid rent in two months. He supposedly worked at the rodeo on the outskirts of town, mucking out stalls, that kind of thing, but he was let go. I haven’t been able to find a trace of him since, not with a place of employment or home address.”

  “I hope we find him.”

  “Me too,” Sawyer said, eyeing the bag with the baby cowboy hats on the coffee table.

  After two cups of coffee each and eggs and toast, Maddie called her mom, who was excited about babysitting the twins for the day. They were the new store mascots. Within an hour, Maddie and Sawyer had dropped them off, stopped back at the house to take Moose on a walk and were ready to start the search.

  “So where to?” Maddie asked as she buckled up. “Think he’s still in town?”

  “I’m not sure. I didn’t even know where he lived. Isn’t that crazy?”

  “It happens. Families pull apart, relatives get estranged. It’s not crazy, just sad that it happens.”

  “I wish all families could be like yours,” he said. “That was the only thing I was ever really envious of as a kid. That my family—if you could call it that—wasn’t like yours.”

  “Of course your family was a family. Even just you and your dad and Cole from afar. That’s a family.”

  “I guess,” he said. He started the car and didn’t respond, and Maddie got the feeling he needed a break from the conversation. Seemed to her, though, that it was exactly the conversation Sawyer needed to have. Family meant something sad and scary to him, something he couldn’t count on. Seven years of marriage hadn’t changed that for him. A solid, happy marriage—until this past year when her biological clock began ticking away.

  She was pretty sure that was what had her—the Maddie she’d been—so upset. That their beautiful union hadn’t changed his notion of what a family was.

  Sawyer pulled onto the freeway, taking the exit for Brewer, which was a half hour from Wedlock Creek. “I’m going to start with the hospital where the twins were born. He might have left his new address when he filled out forms. If he filled out forms. Worth a try. He has to be living somewhere.”

  “Sawyer. I just realized something. We were likely in that hospital when Gigi gave birth. When Cole was there, pacing in front of the nursery—you were sitting by my bedside in the hospital, waiting for me to wake up from the car accident. I didn’t even think of that till just now.”

  He almost stopped short. “You’re right. That’s nuts.”

  Brewer County Hospital was in a stately old brick building. Maddie recalled leaving there the other day, although she had no memories about being there before.

  They followed signs for Labor and Delivery, which was on the fourth floor.

  “We were both born here,” Sawyer said in the elevator. Four months, three days apart. “I’m the older one.”

  She smiled. “Was Cole born here too?”

  “Yup. And now his children.”

  And maybe our children. If we have any. She was very sure they would. And not because Sawyer had made a bargain with God or the universe or whomever he’d been praying to when he’d kept his bedside vigil. They’d have a baby because he wanted to have a baby just as she did. Not for any other reason.

  She, Maddie-without-her-memory, believed that. Just as Maddie-with-her-memory believed all these years.

  Why she had faith in that, in him, she really wasn’t sure. The past seven years should have been telling her otherwise. But the man she’d come to know, this Sawyer since she’d come to in this very hospital, the Sawyer who was caring for his newborn nephews, was not the man he’d been before the accident, before the twins arrived. That she believed.

  As they approached the nurses’ station, a nurse came over and gave Maddie a hug. “Hi! Great to see you. Volunteering this week?”

  Maddie had volunteered here? She glanced at Sawyer, but he gave her something of a shrug. “I’m recuperating from a car accident so not totally on the mend yet, but give me a couple weeks and I’m sure I’ll be back.”

  “Good, because you’re wonderful with the NICU babies.” The woman smiled and headed toward a patient’s room.

  “I volunteered here?” she whispered to Sawyer. “In the neonatal intensive care unit? You didn’t mention that.”


  “I had no idea. But I’m not surprised. You love babies and you love to help. I do wonder why you didn’t tell me.” He looked toward the nursery window, where they could just see bassinets and a nurse holding a baby. “Actually, I guess I know why you didn’t tell me.”

  Maddie did too. Volunteering in the NICU must have felt like something she didn’t want to share with Sawyer—the man who was denying her a baby. She could see herself not thinking that Sawyer would get it or understand—including how bittersweet it must have been for her to be around the newborns.

  He dropped down onto a bench, and Maddie sat beside him. “I really pushed you away, didn’t I? I know you have no recollection of any of this. But I do. And I’m sorry.” He shook his head, seeming pretty disappointed in himself.

  She put a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. Let’s go ask about Cole,” she said gently.

  He nodded, and they stood and headed back over to the nurses’ station. “I’m Sawyer Wolfe, the chief of police in Wedlock Creek,” he said, holding up his identification. “This isn’t a police matter, but I just wanted you to know I’m a solid citizen. My brother, Cole Wolfe, is the father of male twins born here last Thursday. We’re caring for the twins for a while, but I’m wondering if Cole left behind an address.”

  The nurse eyed him and his ID again, then clicked some keys on her computer. “I couldn’t give you his information even if it were here, but I can tell you it’s not. Only the mother’s address appears on the intake forms. I don’t see any information for the father, Cole Wolfe. But I do see him listed as the father and that he left with the discharged babies last Thursday.”

  So much for that. Sawyer thanked her, and they left the hospital, both of them quiet on the way to the car. They buckled up in silence, and Maddie’s gaze was drawn out the window while Sawyer drove back toward Wedlock Creek. He must have had a destination in mind.

  A glance out the window told her they were on the outskirts of town, heading toward the river, where she and Sawyer used to sneak into one of the abandoned, dilapidated old cabins after school and talk about life—

  She went stock-still. Another memory. This one was so vivid, so full. Her and Sawyer as teenagers, sharing the pistachio nuts she was addicted to in those days, sitting cross-legged beside each other, telling secrets. She’d share her crushes, trying to make hers on Sawyer go away. He never talked about his crushes, and she’d thought then that he was private about that stuff. She’d never had a clue he was as in love with her as she’d been with him. She waited for more of the memory, more knowledge of them, to come, but it all faded away.

  “Maddie? What’s wrong? You truly look like you saw ghost.”

  “Another memory,” she said. “I remember the cabin. Going there to share our secrets.”

  He gave her a warm smile. “I’m glad you’re remembering, Maddie. And so far all good times.”

  “That’s a lucky break,” she said. “For both of us. We kept the biggest secret of all from each other at that cabin, though. That we loved each other.”

  “Yup. I was bursting with it, but I couldn’t tell you.”

  “What’s the connection to Cole at the cabins?”

  “He’s the one who told me about the place. For three or four years when we were kids, the cabins were a mess. The owner abandoned the property, but there were legalities involved, so the bank couldn’t foreclose for a long time. I stopped going once the place was sold, but Cole told me he used to sneak there all the time in the off-season. He found comfort in the place and loved the river. I could see him renting a cabin for cheap in the weeks before Christmas when business is slow.”

  As Sawyer turned onto a dirt road, Maddie saw the sign for RiverView Cabins, 1.5 miles. A clearing came into view, and Maddie could see identical log structures a good distance apart, facing the river. He pulled up in front of the first cabin with a big Rental Office sign on it.

  A woman wearing a hunter-green sweatshirt with a RiverView Cabins logo and a name pin that read Joanna Miles stood and smiled at them. “Welcome! Interested in renting a cabin?”

  “Actually, we’re hoping if you can tell us if Cole Wolfe is staying here. I’m his brother, Chief Sawyer Wolfe of the Wedlock Creek PD.”

  “I thought you looked familiar,” Joanna said. “He was here, the past two nights, actually, but he checked out bright and early, just before eight a.m.”

  Maddie glanced at the clock on the wall. It was barely eight thirty. They’d just missed him. “Did he, by any chance, mention where he was headed?”

  “Only thing he said was that he was starting his new job this morning, and it came with room and board. Nice guy—he left a ten-dollar tip for the housekeeper when most folks leave only a couple bucks.”

  They thanked the woman and headed back to the car. Once they were inside, Sawyer turned to her, his eyes flashing. “I know where he is. Well, not exactly where. But I have a good idea where to look. One place where you can work for room and board and a small salary is a ranch. Those little cowboy hats meant more than I realized last night. He must have gotten himself a job as a ranch hand. No wonder the guy who skipped out on two months’ rent is suddenly leaving tips for the housekeeper—he feels flush right now because he has a job and a place to live.”

  “That makes total sense,” she said. “But there have to be hundreds of ranches in Wedlock Creek and environs. What’s the plan to find him? Call and ask if there’s a Cole Wolfe there?”

  “To start,” he said, reaching for his phone.

  A half hour later and still in the lot of the RiverView Cabins, they’d learned he wasn’t employed at the Triple C or the Dowling Ranch, two of the biggest operations in Wedlock Creek. Sawyer called another large ranch, Great Bear Ranch, forty minutes away—no Cole Wolfe there.

  “Maybe he’s working a small ranch or farm, one of two or three hands,” Sawyer said. “That actually sounds more his speed and more on the down low.”

  But before Sawyer could even make a list of small ranches, Sergeant Theo Stark called requesting backup with strategy for a string of burglaries, and since Sawyer had been scarce around the department the past several days, he wanted to go in again.

  “I’ll make a list of possibilities,” he said. “And we can check out some ranches tomorrow. If your parents or sister don’t mind watching the twins again.”

  “I’m sure they won’t. When we were leaving, I heard my mom say that Jenna was going to be so jealous that they got to babysit the twins.”

  “Thank God for your family,” he said.

  Maddie hoped he took his own statement to heart. Sawyer Wolfe might think the MacLeods were outliers in the family dependability department, but all he had to do was look at himself in how he was stepping up with the twins—and looking for his brother now.

  She wouldn’t point that out just yet. He might just realize it himself.

  * * *

  Sawyer spent a few hours at work, strategizing on the burglary case with Theo Stark and dealing with yet another complaint against Annie Potterowski’s food-swiping beagle. It was close to five, so he decided to head over to the community center and see if Jake Russtower was there.

  He was.

  After a short orientation with the director on volunteering with the kids and introductions to the group and other volunteers, Sawyer headed out into the big main room. There was a section for basketball, a homework-studying station with cubbies and chairs, a lounge area with shelving units stacked with books, games and puzzles, where some kids were stretched out and talking, and a “track” around the perimeter, which no one was making use of at the moment. Sawyer glanced around for Jake. Short for his age and skinny, with auburn hair and dark brown eyes, he was easy to spot. He was sitting by himself on the bleachers, not particularly watching anything. He looked kind of miserable.

  Sawyer grabbed a basketball and went to sit next to him. “Hey,
I’m Sawyer, one of the new volunteers here. Want to play a game of one-on-one?”

  Jake looked over at Sawyer for a moment, his expression bored. “What’s the point? I never make a basket.”

  “Maybe you just need to perfect your shot,” Sawyer said.

  The kid all but rolled his eyes.

  “Come on. I’ll go first,” Sawyer said, giving the ball a bounce on the bleacher below. “No one misses more shots than I do.”

  “Well, you just met me.”

  Sawyer laughed, and the boy actually smiled. Score! Without even shooting.

  Jake trailed him to the hoop, and Sawyer bounced the ball a few times, eyeing the basket, hoping he wouldn’t make it in on some fluke—he truly stunk. He shot and missed. Sawyer chased after the ball and bounced it to Jake, who aimed and missed.

  “Try standing dead center of the hoop and fling it up with a little more gusto,” Sawyer said. “And believe that you’re gonna make the shot. That’s key. Believe.”

  “You could try that too,” Jake clapped back.

  Sawyer smiled. “Oh, I will.”

  Jake repositioned himself, and if Sawyer wasn’t mistaken, he closed his eyes for a second to talk himself into scoring the basket. He threw—and it went in! Thank you, universe. “Yeah!” Jake shouted.

  “Awesome!” Sawyer said. He got the ball and bounced it back to Jake, who threw again and got it in again.

  “This is nuts. I never make a basket. Now I made two?”

  Sawyer nodded. “You believed you could. I’m telling you, works almost every time.”

  “Guess it must.”

  “Have a hoop at home?” Sawyer asked, hoping Jake would open up a little.

  “Are you kidding? That would be too loud ‘for the baby.’” He scrunched up his face in disgust. “The baby, the baby. I’m so sick of what I can’t do because of ‘the baby,’” he added in a singsong voice.