A Cowboy for Christmas

by Rachel Lee

  She scratched his huge head. His tail wagged, but only a little. Was he hungry? Regina always fed him at dinnertime and it was still too early. Maybe a treat?

  The melody still drifted from the living room, but the dog’s intervention broke the spell and she rose. There were treats in the pantry, and no one had told her she couldn’t give one to the dog. A soft bacon chew settled him down, then she leaned against the doorway listening to the music.

  She could hear the stops and restarts as Rory seemed to be searching for something just right. She heard no voices, just the music. It would have been nice to keep on listening, but inevitably she remembered she had a job and needed to figure out a fast dinner.

  Sighing, she began to hunt in the refrigerator and pantry when she would have vastly preferred to creep into the living room and just sit and listen.

  Magic was being created out there, and she wished she could be part of it.

  Dinner was a tossed-together affair. Rory didn’t return to his studio, but instead staked out the living room and piano. Eventually Regina popped into the kitchen to say good-night. That was Abby’s cue to head for her apartment.

  But just as she was turning out the light, Rory’s voice startled her from across the foyer. “What do you think?”

  She paused, her hand on the switch. “The music?”

  He smiled faintly. “The almost music, yes.”

  “It’s beautiful. I love it.”

  “It’s mournful.” He paused. “Sometimes I guess you need to mourn. Unless you’re busy, come and sit with me. I’d like your reactions.”

  Her reactions? She knew nothing about music at all. But the desire to be with him overrode every other consideration. “Coffee?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll probably be up most of the night. Thanks.”

  So she brewed another pot and ten minutes later carried two hot mugs into the living room. He was sitting at the piano, staring into space, noodling some keys. She wondered where to put his coffee, but he pointed to a nearby end table without saying anything. Then she sat in one of those huge chairs with hers.

  He continued to stare at nothing, probably more involved with what was going on inside him as he touched occasional keys as if trying them out. He seemed lost in another world, and she wondered why he needed her at all.

  She rested her coffee on the end table, then closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Interrupted though the music was, often changing to random notes as if he were seeking something, she found it easy to let it carry her away. A while later he spoke.

  “Abby?”

  She opened her eyes without moving her head. “Yes?”

  “Were you sleeping?”

  “No, I was listening.” She turned her head just enough to see him, thinking how gorgeous he was. She hadn’t met many men who looked like a feast for the eyes. This one did.

  “What do you think? Is it like a dirge?”

  That popped her head up. “Not at all. It’s melancholy, but a beautiful melancholy. It’s kind of like...” She hesitated. “I shouldn’t say anything. I don’t know music.”

  “Most of the people I play and sing for don’t know music. They know what they like is all. I’m not asking a technical question. I want to know how it makes you feel.”

  She rolled her head a little more. “Play the melody part again. With the chords.”

  So he did, letting the notes ripple through the room. It stopped too soon.

  “So?” he asked.

  “It makes me feel like I’m drifting on a warm, slow river all by myself. It’s pretty, but kind of lonely.” Making those statements seemed awfully bold, but they were as true an expression as she could find.

  He nodded. “It’s not my usual,” he admitted. “But it’s my heart.”

  Touched, she felt an unexpected sadness for him. So he felt lonesome, too? But then she wondered if everyone didn’t at times. As if something was lacking or missing. She gathered her courage. “It’s like looking for something you can’t quite remember.”

  His smile grew. “That’s it. That’s what I was trying for.”

  “Then you succeeded because I think it’s going to follow me into my dreams. It’s...haunting.”

  “It’ll drive my manager and agent crazy.” He sighed and turned back to the keyboard, running through it again, his fingers delicate on the keys. A rippling current of music and magic ran through the room.

  “There’s a part of me,” he said as he played, “that vanished a long time ago. That’s what I came back here to find.” As he spoke, his baritone began to echo the music. Not lyrics, not yet, but she guessed they were starting to come to him.

  He stopped playing and held out an arm toward her. “Come sit over here with me,” he said. “I think we’re both a little mournful and wistful.”

  Nervously, but feeling a kind of hope anyway, she rose and walked over. He drew her down on the bench beside him until their shoulders were touching.

  “Lost long ago. Homesickness for something we can’t quite remember. Dreams?”

  She wasn’t sure how to answer. He began playing again, and she watched his hands glide over the keys. This time he played the haunting melody more strongly, and this time he didn’t pause as missing notes seemed to spring from his fingertips. When he finished, the last notes trailed slowly away.

  Then he smiled at her, causing her heart to leap. “You’re a great Muse,” he said. “And I’ve stolen your evening. Sorry.”

  “You just gave me a wonderful gift. I loved it.” The words came straight from her heart. She felt blessed to have shared this with him, to have entered however briefly into his creative process and to have been one of the first to hear a truly incredible piece of music.

  Much as she didn’t want to, she rose to go to her rooms. She sensed he wanted to be alone now. The haunting notes of the melody followed her all the way down the hall to her quarters. She was reluctant to leave them behind, but since she’d taken to leaving her door open a few inches since Regina’s arrival, she didn’t entirely close out the music.

  Changes had begun to happen inside her, she realized. They frightened her a bit. Little by little she was exposing her heart again, to a man and his daughter.

  She ought to know better after Porter. She thought she had known better, but apparently not. Somehow she had to quell her growing desire for him.

  If there was one thing she was sure about, it was that there could be no future with Rory McLane, so why have a messy present?

  * * *

  Rory was sorry to see her go, but he knew he’d intruded on her evening. He’d never meant for her to be at his beck and call round the clock, and considered her evening hours to be sacrosanct. Yet tonight he’d intruded.

  It wasn’t just the music, although that had been part of it. He occasionally liked some feedback from a naive listener, and from what she’d said, he gathered Abby didn’t know much about who he was or his music.

  That was fine by him. Running back to Conard County he had hoped to escape a lot of that. Oh, he had friends in the business, people who shared all the highs and lows, the stresses, the good times and bad. But it was like a closed loop, and one day he’d realized that it had closed him in and cut off part of him.

  Maybe it was ridiculous of him to want to reach back in time to a boy he’d once been. After all, life happened to everyone, changed everyone, and twenty years had happened to him, for better or worse.

  But that feeling of being homesick for something you couldn’t quite remember—that was a powerful feeling. Abby had nailed that one. It had been troubling him more and more until he had decided that he needed to get away for a while.

  But even here in his hidey-hole, life wasn’t what it had been when he was sharing a ranch with his parents as a kid. No, he was surrounded by luxury,
living a self-indulgent life. How many people had the choice of throwing over their work for months to take a sabbatical? Not many.

  He was a lucky man and he knew it. Luckier now that he had custody of Regina. Lucky that for the first time since the divorce he’d have her for both upcoming holidays.

  At least Abby hadn’t seemed to mind being called upon to be his audience for a while. He wondered if the song was going to be about her, because he sensed in her many of the same discontents and sorrows he knew. Undoubtedly a different degree, undoubtedly not exactly the same, but still he felt an emotional recognition of something in her.

  The little bit she’d said about her marriage made him wonder about her. Deserted by her husband for her former boss? Ugly. Wounding. He couldn’t imagine the skein of bad feelings that must have left her with. At least with Stella, he hadn’t been either surprised or especially wounded when she decided to move on. Except for Regina it would have been a clean, cheerful split.

  He frowned a little as he thought about Stella, though. She’d used him like a ladder, and he’d been a young fool, full of himself and his success, when she’d leaped aboard. Through him she’d managed to get enough exposure to leapfrog over some of the dues most folks had to pay.

  But that was okay, too. Lots of people did that. Well, okay except for Regina. Stella had used the girl as she used everything else in life, and for that Rory felt a deep, unforgiving anger.

  He realized angry notes were coming out of the piano now. Well, there was another song on the way, he guessed. But he didn’t want to wake everyone up, so he closed the keyboard, grabbed his mug and went to get some fresh coffee. Maybe it was time to head out to the studio again, where he could bang away all he wanted. If he could turn anger into sarcasm, he might have another winner on his hands.

  But winning was no longer his primary goal. He needed a deeper satisfaction, and that need had grown with the years, rather than diminishing.

  Coffee in hand, he paused in the T-shaped hallway. In one direction lay Abby’s rooms. In the other the back door.

  The more he was around that woman, the more he wanted her. Nothing about her was plastic, as far as he could see. A wounded soul, but a genuine one. So maybe he should be kind to her and keep his heated thoughts to himself. She didn’t need any more wounding. Come to think of it, neither did he.

  He noted that her door was open a few inches, although he could see no light inside. Whether she wanted to or not, she had begun in small ways to look after Regina, and he suspected leaving her door open like that was an invitation to his daughter should she need something during the night. Also a signal that he needn’t worry about the girl if he went out to the barn at night.

  A kindly heart. He hoped he wasn’t imagining it. Life had taught him to be distrustful of people’s motives. They often wanted something from him. Most of the time he didn’t mind. If it was within his power, he liked to help. What he didn’t like was feeling that he’d been used. He’d much rather a man come up to him and flat-out ask him for an audition at a studio than have someone fawn all over him, pretending to be a friend when it truth he wanted Rory to take his audition tape to his manager.

  It wasn’t always possible to tell when friendships were real until some stress revealed that reality behind the false smiles. Like Stella. He’d honestly thought that woman had loved him. If she ever had, it was so long ago that he’d no longer be willing to testify to it.

  And of course he had groupies throwing themselves at him all the time. Women interested in Rory McLane the star, not Rory McLane the man.

  Abby didn’t seem to fit in that group at all. If anything, she’d given him the space he’d asked for and then some. She hadn’t even pretended to be thrilled at the idea of having his daughter around, and although it seemed to be working out, he’d appreciated her bald honesty.

  But now that door stood open like an invitation. For Regina he was sure, because he had noted how little intimacy Abby had seemed to want with him. Oh, he could occasionally see sexual response in her gaze, but just as quickly she would wipe it away.

  Which was what he ought to be doing. She wasn’t made for his life, the kind he led back in Nashville and on the road. But not many were. She’d been hurt enough, and he didn’t need to add to that.

  And maybe he was romanticizing the whole damn situation. She’d survived some real ugliness, and while he felt the tension, the sorrow, the anxiety in her at times, she was doing a fine job of carrying on. A tough woman in her own way.

  Apparently he’d stood there too long. Her door opened wider and she peered out from the darkness within. He could see that she was wearing a gray fleece sweatshirt and pants, with socks on her feet. Her dark brown hair was down and tousled.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Caught by a thought,” he said. “Just standing here thinking.”

  He watched her bite her lower lip, and wished he could do that. Idiot. Stop now. But the hunger for her just kept thrumming in his veins.

  Finally she said with a tentativeness that troubled him, “Bring your coffee in?”

  He looked down at the mug he still held, then walked toward her. Maybe she needed to talk. God knew, sometimes he sure did. The problem was knowing who you could trust. He didn’t share much of himself anymore, except in his music. It was the only place that was reasonably safe.

  He hadn’t really seen her little apartment, but it was nice enough if you weren’t hungry for a lot of space. She switched on a lamp, low light, and settled into a yellow-upholstered rocker, leaving the love seat to him.

  “You happy with this?” he asked, indicating the apartment with a wave of his hand.

  “Very much.” Her smile seemed shy, which surprised him. He thought she’d been getting past that.

  “Good. I told the lady I wanted a retreat that a woman could enjoy while she was stuck here.”

  “Stuck?” She surprised him with a small laugh. “Hardly stuck. You give me an awful lot of freedom.”

  He returned her smile. “I’m glad you feel that way. I know I need help, but I don’t have to be mean about it. And here I am intruding on your private time again.”

  She shook her head, almost too quickly. “I don’t feel that way. I wouldn’t have asked you in. I was reading in bed, but I couldn’t concentrate.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated visibly. “Well...it’s a huge favor I’d like to ask.”

  “Ask away.” As usual, he felt his defenses start to slam into place, then reminded himself that he didn’t know he’d need any with this woman. Nothing she’d done so far would seem to indicate it.

  “Well...” Again she hesitated, then tipped her head shyly until she was hiding behind her hair.

  He wondered just what hell she had been through to make her reluctant to ask for something. That just plain wasn’t right. “I don’t bite,” he reminded her. “And I am familiar with how to say no.”

  A sigh escaped her. “I couldn’t concentrate because that song you played earlier is running through my head. I’m sure you don’t consider it finished by any means but I was wondering... Could you make me a recording of it? The way you played it on the piano? I promise not to let anyone else hear it.”

  His chest swelled. Whether she knew it or not, she had just paid him the best compliment in the world. She had been touched by something he’d created, enough to want to keep listening to it. That was better than any award by far.

  “Sure,” he said. “And that’s the nicest favor anyone’s ever asked of me.”

  “Really?” Her head lifted. “But people love your music. Obviously.”

  “But nobody before has ever wanted a personal copy of a hardly finished piece. So I’m honored.” He thought he saw her blush, but in the dim light he couldn’t be absolutely sure.

  “Thank you,
” she said quietly, then smiled. Really smiled. He felt like he was seeing her for the first time.

  “Abby?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Can I get a little personal?”

  Her smile faded, and he was sorry to see it go, but he needed to know more about this woman. She was invading his thoughts more and more, and maybe if he got some questions answered, his curiosity might ease. At least he supposed it was curiosity. Sexual desire didn’t have any deep questions, it just was. A natural, innate reaction to a beautiful woman. Somehow he needed to put all this to rest in his own mind, because if this kept up he was going to be thinking about her more than his music.

  “Can I refuse to answer?” she asked.

  “Of course. I also understand the word no.”

  A nervous, quiet laugh escaped her. “Okay, ask away.”

  “I just want to know more about you. I get that you went through a bad divorce. But that can mean a lot of different things. I would have tap-danced when Stella left me, except for Regina. You don’t feel like that.”

  “No,” she admitted. “I was hurt. Very hurt.” She looked away. “Sometimes I tell myself they deserve each other, but it doesn’t help. It was so humiliating, Rory. Painful and humiliating.”

  “Why humiliating?” He tried to ask gently, not wanting her to think he was judging.

  “Because we were married only a couple of years. Because he was carrying on behind my back with my boss. Because I think everyone in town knew except me. Because people can still hardly look at me. Because I feel like there must be something terribly wrong with me for him to do that.”

  It came out of her quickly, as if a dam had been breached, and he sat there quietly, wishing he could ease her pain somehow. What she’d been through was a helluva lot worse than what he’d experienced with Stella. Had Stella cheated on him? Of course she had. He’d never doubted it. After Regina was born, and when she became secure in her own successful career and no longer needed his help to keep rising, he’d have bet she had quite a few lovers. The temptations in their business were huge, and being on the road so much provided countless opportunities.