A Cowboy for Christmas

by Rachel Lee

  He figured Abby’s ex and her boss ought to be the ones feeling humiliation, but apparently that wasn’t the case. “I don’t know why you blame yourself for what they did.”

  She looked at him again, and the hollow pain in her gaze reached out and squeezed his heart. “Because something must be wrong with me. I must have been an awful lover, or an awful wife. I mean...we were only married a couple of years!”

  Oh, boy. He stared down at the mug in his hands, facing her honest pain, wanting somehow to ease it, but sure there wasn’t much he could do. She seemed to have fixated on her own failures, which he suspected had little enough to do with it.

  “Did you cheat on your wife?” she asked.

  The question startled him. They were talking about her, not him. But then he made a connection and decided to be blunt. “You’ve been awfully sheltered.”

  “Sheltered?” A note of anger crept into her voice.

  “Sheltered,” he repeated firmly. “Nothing wrong with it. You’d be shocked by the world I live in. No, I never cheated on Stella.”

  “See?”

  He shook his head sharply. “Let me finish. I was pretty experienced by the time I married her. I sowed my wild oats beforehand. You know what that means, right?”

  She nodded, her face still pinched.

  “I had my share of affairs and even one-night stands. Maybe more than my share. I had women throwing themselves at me. It went to my head. And besides, I’m just a man. Just flesh and blood. I gave in to temptation and I’m not proud of it. But by the time I married Stella I was really ready to settle down. I wanted the whole family gig, and I wanted it to work. All that other stuff... I woke up one day and realized to my very core that it was unsatisfying. Nothing but a pure ego stroke. I even got a little upset with myself for behaving like a bull in a pasture full of cows. But yeah, that was over and done with when I decided to marry Stella. I didn’t want it anymore. I needed something deeper.”

  She absorbed his words but her pinched look didn’t go away. “Porter running off with Joan was a little more than wild oats.”

  “Probably. But his getting involved with her to begin with was probably exactly that. How old was he when all this started?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “So he probably hadn’t finished sowing his wild oats. I’m not talking about your boss here. I don’t know her and she’s not what’s making you feel so bad. Porter made you feel like a failure. All I’m saying is maybe he started off thinking with his small head. The thrill of it all. Something new and different. I walked into that honey trap more than once. It’s easy enough. Guys are especially weak about sex.”

  “But when you got married...”

  “Slow down,” he said gently. “I told you I was done with all that. I sometimes even felt sick about how I behaved. But it was the newness and freshness of it all that sucked me in as much as anything until I realized I was being an ass. One morning I woke up, literally one morning, looked at the stranger in bed beside me, and I wanted to scrub my soul clean. That’s the only way I can describe it.”

  Something in her face softened. “Wow,” she murmured.

  “Yeah. I had an epiphany at twenty-eight. About time I grew up.” He knew he was smiling a bit, but he wasn’t at all amused with himself. “A good thing it happened, too, because next thing I knew, Stella was pregnant with Regina and I was more than eager to settle down.”

  She nodded, but lowered her head again, hiding behind that soft brown curtain of hair. He wished he could brush it aside and see her pretty face, but touching her even in such a simple way would be a huge mistake. He was her boss, her employer, and he wanted her right now until he ached with it. He wanted to show her that the only bad lovers were those who weren’t loved properly. Not his place, and all the more dangerous because she worked for him. He might want her, but he wanted her to come to him freely, and he didn’t want her to feel trapped by her need for work into something she didn’t want.

  Besides, everything else aside, he felt trust had been burned right out of him. The only person he trusted anymore was Regina. Everyone else wanted something from him, and he had no way to be sure Abby wouldn’t turn out the same, one way or another. Nice lady, but what did he know about her? Zip.

  So he kept talking. The only thing he could do for this woman was try to reassure her a bit and hope she started seeing things a bit differently.

  “Some guys,” he said, “can marry young. My dad did.”

  He had her attention again, and the curtain of hair slipped away.

  “Really?” she asked.

  “Twenty-one when he married my mom. They’re still married.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Living in Jamaica, if you can believe it. That surprised me. All their lives spent here on a ranch. Then I send them on a vacation, and the next thing they’re talking about wanting to retire to Jamaica. At least I could help with that. But they were faithful all along to each other, and they sure didn’t raise me to act like a rutting bull. I guess that’s why I was capable of feeling some shame eventually. But I’m trying to get to Porter here. He was young. Some guys grow up faster, some don’t. Apparently he didn’t. Men are like a bunch of cats. Dangle something shiny and new in front of them and they want it.”

  At long last, he drew a small smile from her. “I like that,” she said.

  “It’s true. So here’s Porter, living the steady life with a pretty wife. Ought to be grateful. Instead something shiny and new dangles herself his way. He starts off thinking, what can one time hurt? Abby will never know. Well, apparently, it didn’t end with one time. I’m real sorry about that, Abby, but Porter did you wrong, not the other way around.”

  “But I...”

  “Shh,” he said. “You weren’t responsible for his decisions. Marriage is a hard job. It needs a lot of work. If he was dissatisfied with you in some way, part of the deal is that he tells you so you can work on it together. Did he ever do that?”

  Again she vanished behind her hair, and spoke in a thick voice, “Not until we split.”

  “Aha.”

  “Aha?” That brought her head up again.

  “Aha,” he repeated. “So he justified his own rottenness by blaming you. Typical.”

  She just shook her head a little, whether in denial or surprise he couldn’t tell. He decided he’d poked around in her enough for one night and stood up.

  “I’m going out to the barn to work. I’ll make you a disc of that music you want. In the meantime, ask yourself how you were supposed to be a mind reader. I’ll bet Porter felt guilty enough to be sweet as punch until he decided to split. I’ll bet he never let on he was unhappy with you in any way. But when the time came, he had plenty of good reasons built up in his head to excuse himself. And I’ll also bet that most of them weren’t even true. Self-justification. We all do it.”

  He paused just long enough to brush the top of her head lightly with his hand. “Thanks for talking with me. You’re a good woman, a kind woman, and attractive as all get-out. A man would be lucky to have your love.”

  He exited quickly, sure he wouldn’t be able to endure listening to her object to a simple compliment. Now not only did he feel protective of her in some way, he wanted to punch Porter in the face.

  The man was the rump end of a mule.

  Chapter Four

  Abby felt as if her conversation with Rory that night had started some kind of internal shift in her. A month later she still wasn’t sure what it was. All she knew was that there seemed to be a gradual improvement in how she felt about herself.

  Which was not being aided at all by the fact that Rory had once again retreated into his creative fog. He spent all day in the barn. Regina popped in to say hi before heading out to join him, and she was left to her own devices except for dinner, wh
ich both Rory and Regina still ate with her in the kitchen, time spent talking mostly about Regina’s days and current school activities and gossip. They seemed to have reached some kind of stasis or equilibrium, where each day was like the next.

  Rory had given her the CD she had requested, and sometimes she played it repeatedly while she was cleaning, or browsing the web trying to figure out a future for herself.

  But other than that, he seemed to have dropped some kind of bomb into the middle of her emotional morass, then retreated.

  She wondered if that as her fault. After all, she’d heard Regina’s succinct comments about people wanting things from her because of her father. He probably felt the same. Maybe by asking for the CD she had crossed some kind of line into the taker class.

  How would she know?

  But regardless, changes were happening inside of her. She made a lunch date with her friends finally, and found the divorce was off the conversational menu. She listened to them talk about their families and their kids and simply felt wistful. She also endured questions about Rory, but refused to answer their curiosity with anything except she didn’t see much of him and he seemed like an okay guy.

  They didn’t believe the “okay” part, not about a man like that who left women all over the country drooling, but they accepted her reticence in good part.

  The weekend arrived, and Regina went over to spend it with a friend. Rory remembered the family from his youth, spoke to them about the visit, then on Friday afternoon Regina took the school bus to their place, to be picked up on Sunday afternoon.

  Good for Regina maybe, but Abby was surprised at how acutely she felt the girl’s absence. Rally had been left behind, and as it dawned on him that Regina wasn’t coming home, he became the personification of moping.

  Rory hardly emerged from his studio that night, showing himself only once as he took the dog out for a long run. Then back into the barn.

  Abby watched enviously, wishing she was part of that club. But she hadn’t really been invited inside. Sighing, she retired to her room and tried to bury herself in a book or in the TV. She wasn’t exactly surprised that when Rory eventually came back to the house in the wee hours the dog crept into bed with her. This time she hugged him back, falling asleep with her face buried in his fur.

  * * *

  The following morning, everything blew up. Rory came back to the house from the barn and announced he was going back to Nashville. Her stomach started to sink even before he asked, “Do you mind getting Regina tomorrow?”

  “Of course not. Is something wrong?”

  His expression was furious and tension crackled almost visibly around him. “Oh, yeah. Stella wants Regina back.”

  Shock rippled through Abby, so strong that for a moment she felt she had left her body. She grabbed the kitchen counter and asked hoarsely, “Can she do that?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. My lawyer had her sign over custody. Signed, sealed, notarized.”

  “Then...”

  He waved a hand. “She’s claiming she signed under duress.”

  The room seemed to darken. “But...why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. She hates me? Free publicity from another custody fight that makes her look like a good mama? She’s always used Regina like a pawn. Where’s the dog?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He gave a whistle. Soon paws thumped down the stairs. “We’re going for a run. A long one. When I get back maybe I won’t feel like smashing something.”

  Once again she watched man and dog disappear into the distance, but this time it was no easy lope. Rory ran as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.

  Over the mountains, storm clouds were beginning to boil. There might be snow soon.

  Not knowing what else to do, Regina put on her oldest T-shirt and bleach-spotted jeans and went on another cleaning binge to work off her anxiety. This wasn’t fair, not to Rory nor Regina.

  But fairness, she reminded herself, was rarely part of life.

  * * *

  Man and dog returned two hours later. Abby heard them and went to the top of the stairs, her hands still in rubber gloves. “Rory? Are you okay?”

  A minute later he appeared, still wearing his jacket. “Sort of. At least I don’t want to kill something. What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning. You run, I clean.”

  Just the merest hint of a smile crossed his face. “Cut it out and come down and join me.”

  So she put away her cleaning supplies, hurried to change into jeans and a sweater that didn’t smell like bleach and lye and joined him in the kitchen. Tension filled the air, and she felt it all the way to her core. Desperately she wished she could do something, but couldn’t think of a thing. All she knew was that she felt a deep pang for him and his daughter.

  Rory had just brewed fresh coffee and Rally was busy slurping down a bowl of water. When he finished, he flopped on the floor like a ragdoll, with a thump.

  “I think I wore him out,” Rory remarked. He brought coffee to the table. “Sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “It’s not your worry.”

  For the first time she felt genuine anger with him. It flared suddenly as if a match had been thrown in dry grasses. “How can you say that? She may not be my daughter, but I care about her and any fool can see she’s happy here. What kind of mother would want to pull her out of school just as she’s starting to settle in and make good friends? What kind of mother wants to pull her away from a father she clearly loves? I don’t know what kind of nannies she had, but Regina is absolutely no trouble at all. Bunch of cockamamy lies, if you ask me.”

  “And so the battle lines are drawn,” Rory said almost bitterly. He sat across from her, drumming his fingers on the table. Only when he did it, unlike most people, there was a rhythm to it as if he were marking the time to music.

  “Regina will say she wants to be here,” Abby said with certainty, hoping that might be enough. “Even I can see how happy she is.”

  “Regina doesn’t have anything to say about it, really. And regardless, I don’t want to drag her into the middle of this if I can avoid it. This is between Stella and me and a judge.”

  Abby blinked, astonished. She hadn’t considered how involved this might become, but then what did she know about these issues? Nothing except a little bit about bitter divorce. “A judge? Really?”

  “Well, not yet. Not until a hearing.”

  “And that’s why you have to go back right away?”

  He sighed and ruffled his hair. “Hell. No, it won’t happen that fast. I just want to do something, but racing back this instant won’t repair anything. It won’t hurry anything. I told my lawyer to find out what Stella really wants, if he can.”

  Another wave of shock passed through Abby. “My God,” she said quietly. “You think she doesn’t really want Regina?”

  “Yeah,” he said. His hand fisted on the table, then slowly relaxed. “Of course she doesn’t. She never has. Just a cute little girl to appear in pictures with her, so everyone can see Stella has a beautiful daughter and they’re so close. Except they never were. From the time that child came home from the hospital she’s been cared for by other people. Some of it you can excuse because of Stella’s job, but not all of it. Hell, I had the same job and I was able to make time for Regina. Stella never did unless there was a photographer around.”

  Anger rose in Abby again. She couldn’t imagine how that might have hurt Regina over the years. Eventually she must have noticed and felt it. No wonder she had wanted to come here. She wished she could wrap the girl in a tight hug and never let go. “Unreal.”

  “Nothing about Stella is real except her ambition, as I learned to my everlasting sorrow.” He cussed, leaned forward on his elbows, then leaned back as if he was having trouble holding still. “Sorry I
’m so agitated.”

  “It’s okay. I’m pretty agitated, too.”

  He smiled mirthlessly. “You’re doing a pretty good job of playing mama bear.”

  “I’m not playing,” she said hotly. “I told you, I care about Regina. It’s plain as anything she loves being with you and she’s settling in here. Why rip all that up?”

  “Good question.” He closed his blue eyes for a minute, and she could almost see him uncoiling. Forcing himself to relax. She wished she knew how to do the same. Certainly, her pain for him was matched and perhaps exceeded by the pain she felt for Regina. Imagine knowing your mother didn’t really love you. How did you deal with that?

  When his eyes opened again, the flares of anger in them seemed to have damped. “I’ve got to figure out what she wants. There’s something, and it isn’t Regina. Publicity? Always possible. But this could turn into a very ugly kind of publicity for her.”

  He looked out the window. “Storm’s coming.”

  “I saw. Snow, maybe.”

  “If I don’t fly out of here now, I’m not going.”

  “So hurry up.”

  His gaze came back to her and he shook his head. “I’m not going. Regina will want to know what’s going on, and I don’t want her to know. Besides, nothing can happen immediately.”

  Impulsively, she reached across the table and took his hand. The warmth of his skin reached out and ran through her like hot molasses. She wanted it to go on forever, then silently castigated herself. Awful timing for such feelings, given what was going on. “I’ll swear out a statement saying she’s happy here.”

  He turned his hand over and gripped hers. “Thanks, but I don’t think the word of someone I employ will have a lot of weight in this. No, I’ll have to go at this another way.”

  “How so?”

  But he didn’t answer immediately. He stood, stripping his jacket and revealing a dark blue western shirt that was tucked into his jeans. Even in her distress she couldn’t ignore the raw masculinity that seemed to emanate from him. An alarm bell tried to sound in her head, but it was strangely muffled.