A Cowboy for Christmas

by Rachel Lee

But reality had come back, apparently with a bang.

  Sighing, she sipped coffee and tried to think about what Rory had said about love dying, and about how facing that had indeed freed her somehow. She wasn’t dealing with Porter anymore. She was dealing with demons of her own design.

  Which meant she might be able to do something about them.

  A little while later, she heard a quiet knock on her door. “Come in.”

  “Do you mind?” he asked.

  She swiveled the chair around. “I’ve been trying not to chew my fingers down to the knuckles. Is Regina all right?”

  “For now.” He carried his coffee, too, and sat on the love seat. “You’re a great person to talk to, Miss Abby. I hope I’m not driving you nuts.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “I like that you can talk to me. That I can talk to you. I haven’t been doing a lot of that, or listening, either, I guess. I kind of closed up on everything.”

  Unidentifiable emotions chased across his face. “If you’d rather not get involved...”

  “I’m already involved. I care. So there.”

  Again he gave her that half smile. “So do I,” he said quietly. “Now for Regina.”

  “Let me guess. Her mother called her.”

  “Got it in one.” He leaned back, splaying his legs, and rested his mug on one denim-covered thigh. Again the picture of perfect masculinity, but right now she had bigger things on her mind. “She told Regina she’s taking her back.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes. Regina was pretty upset, but I managed to calm her down. I offered to come get her, but she decided to stay. Other than that call, she and Betsy Nash are having a lot of fun.”

  Abby relaxed a shade or two. “So she’s really all right?”

  “For now. I convinced her that this time I was going to win no matter what her mother did. The devil of it is that she believes me.”

  An icy trickle of shock ran through Abby. “Don’t you believe it?”

  “As much as I can.” He closed his eyes briefly, but when they snapped open again they looked like twin gas flames. “You can get kicked by a mule just so many times before you’d be a fool to believe it won’t happen again. Worst of it was, she said nasty things about me. Which doesn’t trouble me, but it troubles Regina. Then Regina...” He paused. “Damn it! That girl knows more about her mother’s carryings-on than any girl her age should. I thought I was protecting her from that crap, but she’s heard some of it. If I find out where from...” He let the implied threat go unspoken.

  Horror filled Abby. Just from Rory’s brief description, she could well understand why he didn’t want Regina to know about any of that. He’d walked through fire in the divorce to protect her from the knowledge, and all but lost his daughter. Now he was facing it all over again.

  To her surprise, he smiled faintly. “Regina takes after me a bit, I guess. She’s ready to walk into a courtroom and spill it all to a judge. But I don’t want her to have to do that.”

  “Of course you don’t.” Moved beyond words, forgetting common sense, reticence, painfully learned lessons, everything but the suffering of the man facing her, she put her coffee aside and went to sit by him on the love seat.

  When he stretched out an arm and hugged her to his side, she went willingly, letting her head rest on his shoulder. He smelled so good, she thought as she inhaled him. As good as he looked. And somehow leaning against him this way felt comforting.

  For a long time, the only sound was the keening wind and the rattle of icy crystals against the window glass.

  “Some storm,” he remarked eventually.

  She wondered which storm he meant.

  “Regina said her mother claimed I’d forced her to sign over custody. That I’d threatened her. Regina’s not buying it.”

  “Good.”

  “I guess she knows Stella even better than I thought.”

  “Or maybe she knows you better than you think.”

  “Maybe.” He sighed, tightened his arm around her briefly, then relaxed again. “I got everything in life I ever wanted and then some. Now I’m fighting for the one thing I wanted more than anything else and it keeps trying to slip away. My kid. She’s the only thing that matters.”

  Abby dared to slip her arm across his waist, feeling the solid muscle beneath. The desire for him that she struggled to keep at bay rose swiftly. She pushed it down, aware that more important matters were on the table and she needed to give them her full attention. “Then you fight with all you have. Even if it gets ugly.” She knew about fighting with everything she had to keep Porter, but she’d failed. She could understand why Rory might fear the same thing. She was lucky in a way, though. As they’d talked about earlier, her heart had switched off. She suspected there wasn’t any switch in Rory that would turn off his love for Regina.

  He spoke a while later. “Running this around in my head like a hamster on a wheel isn’t going to help anything. I’ve done all I can for right now, so maybe I’d better start thinking about something else. I’m buzzing in circles.”

  She felt him coiling and decided he must want to move. He hadn’t asked her to cling to him this way, although he certainly hadn’t rejected her when he’d wound his arm around her shoulders. Finding it surprisingly hard to do, she eased away.

  “I should cook dinner,” she said. “It’s getting late.”

  “I could do without,” he admitted. “So don’t go to any trouble. I know I should eat something, but...” He shrugged.

  “Nothing fancy,” she promised. “I have some stuff in the freezer to make quick meals. My emergency backup plan.”

  He’d been right about not going out to the barn. It wasn’t even visible in the blowing snow now, although it didn’t seem to be deepening rapidly from what she could see from the windows...which wasn’t much. It was impossible to tell whether there was still light or if night had begun to fall because the snow caught and reflected every little bit of light. The outdoors had become a light gray swirl.

  Rory followed her to the kitchen to get more coffee. Just as he appeared to be going back to the living room, the phone rang. He snagged it immediately, said hello, then passed the phone to her. He was frowning faintly. “Regina wants to talk to you.”

  Oh, that couldn’t make him feel good, she thought as she held the receiver and watched him disappear into the living room. She raised the receiver to her ear. “Hi, Regina. What’s up?”

  “Did Dad tell you what’s going on?”

  “Sort of.” Her heart began to tap nervously. She had no place in the middle of this, no right to say much to the girl, and Rory would have every right to get furious with her if she said the wrong thing.

  “Well, I’m going to be turning my cell phone off because I don’t want my mom calling me again. Let me give you Betsy’s number in case he needs to call me.”

  “You couldn’t tell your dad?” Abby wasn’t sure she liked this. What was going on?

  “Oh, I could have, but mainly I wanted to ask you something he wouldn’t tell me the truth about. Is he okay?”

  Regina’s concern for her father touched Abby deeply. She closed her eyes a moment, appreciating the bond between those two and hoping that someday she’d find the same thing. “He’s okay,” she said finally. “Furious, worried about you, but okay.”

  “I kinda feel the same. Do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “Take care of him, Abby. Nobody takes care of my dad.”

  Oh, wow. After she wrote down Betsy’s phone number and hung up, she plopped in a chair at the kitchen table. Nobody takes care of Rory? Astonishment held her riveted. She’d just assumed...

  What had she assumed? That people who worked for him could provide the kind of caring only family or really close friends could? And for a man w
ho had learned to be suspicious, how little real comfort could he find?

  She heard Rally come into the kitchen, and got her head together enough to look at him and his bowls. No food, no water. Immediately she rose to take care of the dog. He’d been moping all day except for his run with Rory, hiding out somewhere, probably in Regina’s room where he’d be surrounded by her smells.

  She filled the bowls, then scratched him behind the ears as he ate and drank. “I get it, boy. You’re lonely. There’s a lot of loneliness in this house. But Regina’s coming back.” She doubted he understood a thing she said, although his tail wagged a little when she mentioned Regina.

  She pulled a few things out of the freezer, veggies and a packaged pasta dinner that she knew from experience was good. However troubled they might feel, a meal from time to time was essential.

  Then Rally barked. He rarely did so. She turned from the counter to find him looking at her expectantly. Almost at once Rory appeared. “I need to walk him.”

  “In this?” She looked out the window.

  “I won’t need to step off the porch, and he’ll go only as far as he needs to do his business. He’s not a stupid pooch.”

  Not stupid at all, Abby thought as she listened to them go down the hallway to the back door. Rory was talking quietly to the dog and his paws began to dance noisily on the floor. He was eager to get out, all right.

  The door closed behind them as she began to put the frozen dinner in a skillet to heat. Then, despite the closed door, the noises of the storm, she heard Rory laugh.

  The sound did her heart good. Just a couple of minutes later, they came back in.

  Rory rejoined her, grinning. “You should have seen that dog. Never have I seen an animal look that offended. One sniff of the air, one blast of the wind and he couldn’t hurry fast enough. Guess he’s not a Wyoming dog.”

  She laughed. “Not yet.”

  “He’ll get there.” He paused. “What did Regina want?”

  “To tell me she’s turning off her cell phone because she doesn’t want to talk to her mother again this weekend. She gave me Betsy’s number.”

  A troubled expression came to his face. “She didn’t think she could tell me that? I’m not too absent-minded to write down a phone number.”

  Abby didn’t know what to say. Would she be betraying Regina’s confidence in some way? Would the truth insult Rory? “Well, she did say she couldn’t count on you to tell her the truth about how you were doing. I said you were okay.”

  At that his face relaxed, and he laughed again, quietly. “Apparently she can’t count on you to tell the truth, either.”

  Abby frowned at him. “What was I going to say? That you were madder than all get-out, ready to punch holes in walls and planning a war of attrition?”

  “I reckon not.” But he was still staring at her, waiting. As if he knew that wasn’t all of it. Darn, did she wear a sign of some kind?

  She turned to stir the food in the skillet. “Chicken marsala,” she said, hoping to change the subject.

  “What else?” said Rory. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Abby pushed her hair back from her face, wishing she’d remembered to put it up. How was she supposed to answer that?

  “Abby, please.”

  “It’s really a little thing,” she answered hesitantly.

  “Hardly,” he said sarcastically. “If it were, you’d tell me. Look, this is about my daughter. I have a right to know.”

  It was that argument that did it. Maybe he wouldn’t like hearing that his daughter believed he needed someone to take care of him, but on the other hand...when she viewed it from his perspective, it was important. He needed to know Regina worried about him. Maybe he could do something about it.

  “All right,” she said, facing him, spoon still in hand. “She asked me to take care of you. She said you don’t have anyone to take care of you.”

  Rory’s face slid through a range of emotions, followed by a quiet cuss word. “My daughter is worrying about me?”

  “Apparently so.” Abby turned back to the stove.

  “She doesn’t need to do that. I can take care of myself. At her age she shouldn’t be worrying about that.”

  Abby sighed. She wasn’t so old herself that she had completely forgotten being Regina’s age. She put down the spoon and turned toward him again.

  “She’s ten,” she said. “Still a child, but slowly emerging into adulthood. She’s got a measure of what’s going on, she knows it’s upsetting you and she can’t do a darn thing about any of it. But she can still worry, and apparently she is. It’s a sign of how much she loves you.”

  “Ah, hell,” he breathed. “I didn’t want her to know about any of this. Damn Stella.”

  “I know,” she said, sympathy welling in her. “I was here. And I will never understand any woman who would drag her child into the middle of this.”

  She turned quickly back to her dinner preparations, disturbed by how deeply she was getting involved here. She could deal with her sexual attraction to Rory. Nothing would ever come of it anyway. He didn’t trust people, probably mostly women, and she didn’t trust men, so it was best to ignore it.

  Besides, she couldn’t possibly be the kind of woman who would attract a man like Rory McLane. He was used to beautiful long-stemmed roses, not women with real curves, women with a little flesh. Not only could this man have his pick of the most beautiful women in the world, he probably had a whole bunch of cute young groupies after him, as well. So why should he even notice her?

  She was his housekeeper, an employee, probably mostly part of the wallpaper to him. Yes, he was nice to her, but he seemed to be a nice man for the most part.

  She chewed her lip as she popped the frozen veggies into the microwave. She hadn’t heard Rory leave, but as music drifted to her from the living room, she was glad to realize she was again alone.

  She was definitely getting too involved, and she ought to know better. How many times had she thought one of her biggest mistakes with Porter had been becoming involved so fast? Well, she’d learned a lot from that experience and she’d be wise not to forget it.

  Even supposing that Rory ever noticed her as a woman, where would it get her? He’d be leaving here eventually, returning to his old life, and she’d just be so much dust for him to shake off his heels, the way Porter had shaken her loose.

  She mustn’t mistake the fact that right now he had only her to talk to about things, only her to listen to his music. That was temporary and meant nothing.

  Satisfied with her own self-scolding, quite sure she had put her most important walls back in place, she let Rory know dinner was ready.

  Then she sat down to eat, leaving it to him whether to join her or not.

  Chapter Five

  “What do you want?”

  The question came at Abby sideways. Rory had knocked on her bedroom door, then walked in as soon as he heard her voice. Startled, she looked at him from the rocking chair, book open in her lap. “What?”

  “Do you know what you want? You’re not going to be my housekeeper forever.”

  Was that a warning or something else? Her mouth turned dry as bone. He stood there, hands on his hips, but she couldn’t read his face. Too bad that some photographer wasn’t here to take a photo of him right now. His fans would swoon.

  “Are you firing me?” she finally asked, her voice cracking with the early stages of panic. She needed this job.

  “What?” Now she could read his expression, and he looked startled, as startled as he’d made her. “No. Absolutely no. Let me backtrack. Are there things you want in your future? Stuff you want to do, places you want to go. Dreams?”

  She let go of a pent breath. Okay, he wasn’t firing her. Panic began to ease and her scrambling thoughts settled a bit
. “That’s a pretty big question. Why?”

  “I know it’s a big question.” He paced the small space for a minute, then finally settled on the edge of the couch, hands clasped, knees splayed as he rested his elbows on his thighs.

  “What brought this on?”

  “Thinking about who I used to be, that long-lost kid and Regina. It struck me that the most important thing is life is having dreams and goals. It’s not the destination that matters, it’s the journey.”

  “Maybe so,” she answered cautiously, not sure where he was trying to take this.

  “No maybe about it. Take me. I’ve arrived. Everyone would agree, I’m sure. I’ve got a room full of awards at home in Tennessee to prove it. Top of my field, successful and lucky. So much more lucky than most.” He paused and shook his head. “You can walk into almost any place in Nashville and hear kids with the same dreams I had, most of them really good. Some maybe better than me by far. The question is, will they get their break? Will they hit at the right time and reach the right audience to set the world on fire? Nobody can answer that. It’s luck, not just talent.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. I’m wandering here. Sorry. The thing is, I’ve arrived by anyone’s measure. All it’s taught me is what I’ve lost along the way. What I could still lose. So I got to wondering what the point of it all is. And thinking about that made me wonder about you, about Regina. I’m sure she’s got dreams of some kind beyond having her own horse. But she’s probably too young to go far beyond that. Me, I’m thirty-nine. I have a lot of years left, and I’m wondering what I want to do with them. And that made me think of you. You’re young yet, the whole world in front of you, but kicked down by a nasty, selfish guy. Are you just marking time, or do you have hopes and dreams?”

  The panic began to stir in her again. “I’m still working through that,” she said weakly.

  He nodded slowly. “Fair enough. But...” He sighed and leaned back. “I’m acting like a crazy man. Sorry.”

  She didn’t think he was acting crazy, but she also thought that maybe he was asking the wrong questions. Clearly he was having some kind of life crisis. Coming out here to the back of beyond to find his music again, whatever that really meant. Maybe his music was a part of his soul he felt he’d lost. And maybe the real question was how Rory was going to deal with all of this, from his life crisis to his daughter and ex-wife crisis. What he wanted out of all this and where he might go with it.