The Last Christmas Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  Except, Hank Dalton wouldn’t have used a condom.

  At least there was the condom.

  He went out to the barn, but Rose wasn’t there. And so he got to his chores, expecting that she would show up at some point.

  He didn’t see her. All day. Not until he came in the house at dinnertime, the smell of some kind of spicy baked good hitting him with force, right at the same time Rose appeared in the living room, making him crave a whole different kind of sweet.

  “Didn’t see you all day,” he said.

  “I was busy,” she said. “Ended up getting caught in the far pasture. Sorry about that.”

  He would’ve been tempted to think that everything was normal. Except for the set of her shoulders. Usually, Rose had a particular look to her. Stood defiant, her posture straight. Instead, she was bowed in slightly, and that was unusual.

  But almost the instant that he noticed it, she had corrected it, looking at him with defiance he couldn’t ignore.

  That little brat was going to pretend that nothing had happened.

  All of the nothing that they had done flashed into his mind. Naked skin and gasps of pleasure. The way that her skin tasted against his tongue. The way that soft body had felt beneath his hands.

  Yeah, there was a reason this had been something they couldn’t do. Shouldn’t do.

  It was just that he didn’t care anymore. It was done. And he wasn’t going to play around with it.

  Maybe because you’re thirty-three and not twenty-three.

  Well. Maybe. Wouldn’t hurt her to get a dose of maturity.

  But there was nothing he could say because then Iris was in the room, greeting her sister with a much warmer smile than they’d gotten yesterday.

  “Hi,” Iris said.

  “Hi,” Rose said, and if he didn’t know Rose, he would have said that her greeting was shy. Hell, he supposed it was.

  “I made your favorite,” Iris said. “Fried chicken and mashed potatoes.”

  Rose lit up. “You did? Thank you.” She looked hopeful.

  Food meant a lot to Rose. And in general, said a lot about the family. Iris and Sammy had been cooking for all of them for years. But particularly Iris, who had learned at a young age, and it made sure that things that had felt like home to them when their mom had been alive carried on.

  It made him think of his mom’s cookies. That conversation he’d had with Rose. He pushed it to the side.

  He couldn’t tell for sure if this was Iris’s attempt to bury the Elliott hatchet. Which, in Logan’s opinion, wasn’t even worth being a thing. That guy wasn’t anything to get worked up about.

  And it turned out that Logan did in fact have a position to criticize him from. He’d been sloppy, and he’d been lazy. He’d settled in the middle, had taken the non-committal route. And then Logan had taken the object of his desire’s virginity. That was what happened when you messed around.

  He cleared his throat and moved past both women into the kitchen. He ignored the faint scent of Rose that followed after him. Not the flower. She didn’t smell like a flower. She smelled like woman. Skin. Dust, hay, horse. Ranching was his passion, the land was in his blood. And Rose carried the scent of both on a body that was enough to drive him to sin.

  Had, in fact.

  Yeah, not responding to that scent, particularly now that he was even more in tune with the bit that was just her, was a damn miracle.

  But maybe this was his one Christmas miracle. Maybe God was granting him the strength to get through this dinner without losing vital body parts. Anything could happen, he supposed.

  Sammy was already sitting at a set table, the matching plates, which he still wasn’t used to, in place, along with serving bowls filled to the hilt with food.

  It was impossible for him to list all the ways this family had taken care of him. But food, home-cooked meals in the midst of tragedy, had been one of them, and it had been vital.

  A great time to think about everything they all meant to him. When he was in the middle of a very unrepentant fall from grace. Yeah, there was no part of him that was repentant. Not now. He had half a mind to turn Rose over his knee and spank her for being a little brat and pretending nothing had passed between them, that was for sure.

  And that idea sounded a hell of a lot more appealing than he had expected it to. But then, getting his hands on her in any way sounded appealing. One sex session had hardly dealt with five years’ worth of fantasies.

  No. Far from it. If anything, it had just whipped up more. A hell of a lot more.

  The coward sat at the far end of the table, keeping her distance from him. He hadn’t taken his seat yet, but when Ryder entered the room, he decided not to push it. Not just yet.

  Trust Sammy to go ahead and fill any silence, and she did, which Logan appreciated, since he and Rose clearly weren’t in talking moods. And if Sammy took a breath, the rest of them were bound to notice about Rose. Rose was typically pretty chatty. An understatement, really.

  Rose was the one who liked to interject a harebrained scheme or an innuendo. The idea of turning the tables on her and throwing an innuendo out there now that she might actually understand what one of them meant, really and truly, amused him. But then, it was Rose. And there was a very real danger she would get frustrated and announce to Ryder that Logan had despoiled her, which might end in his inglorious death by drowning in a bowl of gravy, right next to Iris’s famous mashed potatoes.

  He didn’t particularly want that for himself. Mostly because he wanted a chance to get another taste of Rose.

  He was less interested in the gravy.

  “Did you have a good night last night?” Sammy asked.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he looked at her, realizing she was directing the question to Rose.

  Rose fidgeted. “Yeah,” she said.

  “I didn’t see you come home.”

  “I told you I might crash with Lacey,” Rose said, which he noticed was not an affirmative statement that she had crashed with Lacey.

  It was, though, the story that she had said she was going to give, the one she’d said she’d given Sammy on her way out.

  He could only give thanks that Pansy and West hadn’t come to dinner tonight. Because Pansy would have smelled the bullshit in this story. Sammy might, but Sammy didn’t know about the kiss. Of course, Sammy knew about his feelings. But Sammy would have confidence in his self-control where Rose was concerned.

  Sammy believed in the good in people. Lucky for him.

  “The cousins will be here in a couple of days,” Ryder commented. “Colt and Jake are going to sleep in the bunkhouse.”

  “Like old times,” Logan said.

  “Unless you want to put one of them up in your cabin,” Ryder said.

  Logan snorted. Okay, under normal circumstances, he would. Should. But he didn’t particularly want anybody staying in his cabin right now. Because he wanted the luxury of having Rose in his cabin when he felt like it. And having Colt or Jake adjacent was not going to work.

  “Yeah, I’ll pass,” Logan said. “Anyway, they’re only going to spend the night here half the time.”

  Classic. Turning it around on someone else. A go-to asshole move. Making it about the fact that they probably wanted to go out and get laid, not about the fact that he wanted to stay here and do it.

  “True enough,” Ryder said. “And I imagine you don’t want to share your sole bathroom.”

  Right. That would have been maybe the better excuse. That the cabin only had one bathroom, and wasn’t really suited to sharing with anyone that you weren’t pretty intimate with.

  The thought of intimacy brought him back to Rose, and he looked down at her end of the table.

  She was looking at him. But the minute that his eyes connected with hers, she looked away, studying her fried
chicken with deep interest. Her cheeks turned pink.

  She was very bad at this.

  Pretending that nothing had happened just enough to make him mad, but not actually managing to cover that something was up. Basically the worst person a man could ever sneak around with.

  And he intended to do a whole lot more sneaking.

  Hey, how else would she learn?

  “There’s going to be so much testosterone in this house,” Sammy grumbled.

  “Hey,” Ryder said. “It culminates in a wedding. I can’t think of anything more estrogen fueled.”

  “Really?” Sammy said sweetly. “Was it estrogen that drove you to build me a fairy canopy for our wedding, Ryder?”

  “That was love, woman. And you know it.”

  That actually did make his stomach turn over. But it wasn’t guilt. No, he had accepted that there wouldn’t be any of that. But there was something... Looking at that, the connection that Ryder and Sammy had, it was enough to make anyone ache.

  They’d spent their lives in this makeshift family, doing their best to fill the gaps left by dead or inadequate parents. But that was what it was. Filling gaps. The best that they all could. Ryder and Sammy had somehow found a piece that fit completely. And they’d found it in each other.

  Pansy had managed to find it with someone who hadn’t been part of their little clan. And still, they’d found a way to complete each other.

  He’d made a lot of decisions in his life, and they’d all served to make sure that he was off in his own corner, licking wounds that the rest of them didn’t even know about. He’d kept distance between himself and the rest of them.

  He didn’t regret it. Mostly. What he’d done had all been for good reason. A tangle of reasons that he could barely follow back to the beginning now. But the truth was, it had made him who he was. What he was. And there was no going back from that.

  He didn’t mind. Mostly.

  Until he saw things like that, like Ryder and Sammy, and he wondered what it might be like to have someone who knew you that way. Who knew all those things about you and wanted you just the same.

  He gritted his teeth and turned his focus to his meal.

  Rose didn’t say a single word to him. She managed to talk to everyone else, but she didn’t talk to him. And by the time they were finished, he was in a damned foul mood.

  “I’m tired,” she announced. “I’m going upstairs.”

  She pushed her chair back from the table and took her plate to the sink. He could feel the dare radiating from her body. The triumph. She thought she had escaped him. That she wasn’t going to have to answer to him at all. That was what she thought.

  He could read her well enough to know that.

  They might not fill all the gaps in each other, but he knew Rose Daniels. Better than just about anybody, he was sure.

  And she couldn’t go pulling things like this without him knowing exactly what it was she was doing. Running the hell away from him.

  And she figured that if she announced boldly to her family that she was going to bed, he was going to let her do it.

  But on the tail of Rose’s departure, dinner ended, and everyone began to disperse. And no one thought anything of him heading upstairs. Ryder wouldn’t have even noticed because a football game had started, and he was basically absorbed by that. Logan had never been into sports in quite the way his friend was. Ryder coached the local high school team now, and when he’d been younger, had been on a path to a college scholarship for football until his parents had died. Then he had to stay in Gold Valley and make sure everyone and everything was taken care of.

  Guilt arrived then.

  But not over what he’d expected it to. No. This was old guilt. The guilt that lived here in the Christmas season, woven all around him like strands of tinsel. Guilt that he never really thought about. Because it was like the blood in his veins. It was just there. Pumping through him. And he was rarely aware of it. But then, there were moments. Moments like this, when it hit. And then, it tended to hit with the intensity of a gale force wind.

  Sammy and Iris were in the kitchen still, having tea and eating cake. So, they weren’t going to notice anything, either. And the fox was in the henhouse. So, he did what any good fox would do.

  He played like a gentleman for one moment, knocking on Rose’s door.

  “What?”

  He took that as permission to enter. He pushed the door open and ignored her wide eyes.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  “Making sure you don’t forget.”

  He closed the door behind him, and then closed the distance between them. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in Rose’s room. At the moment, he couldn’t remember if he ever had been.

  It was just like her. Serviceable, but with touches of femininity. Some nice, classic furniture that he assumed had come from her parents. A full-size bed with a whole mound of pillows, mismatched pillowcases, though. But Rose would care a lot less about the pillowcases, and a lot more about having a lot of blankets and a lot of softness all around her.

  She was tough. And she worked harder than any man he’d ever known.

  But she liked her creature comforts. Didn’t like to be cold.

  Instantly, he pictured her with a cherry-red nose and a scowl on her face as she had been the other day, and all the arousal that he’d been holding at bay all evening flooded him.

  Because somehow, he wanted this woman almost especially when she was essentially her.

  She opened her mouth like she might protest, but he pulled her into his arms and stopped it with his mouth. He kissed her, kissed her with all of the frustration that had been building up inside of him through dinner. Kissed her hard and long and deep. Because maybe if he did, she would feel that great, empty thing inside of him that had opened up during dinner watching Ryder and Sammy together. Maybe she would understand.

  Logan wasn’t the half of anyone’s whole. He had worked for too long to whittle himself into a solitary shape that couldn’t much function with anyone else. But he wanted her.

  But he needed her to understand all the same.

  She whimpered, wrapped her arms around his neck and arched against him.

  But this was his hard limit.

  He wasn’t taking her down on that plush bed. Was not screwing her with her brother downstairs watching football.

  No. Even he had a line.

  He pulled away from her, and she looked up at him in irritated wonder.

  Yeah. She was irritated.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “You know full well what that was. I wasn’t going to let you pretend nothing happened between us.”

  “Why not? We should pretend that nothing happened between us. It happened. It’s done.” The jut of her chin was particularly stubborn just then, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to scold her or kiss her again. Maybe both.

  “It’s not done,” he bit out.

  “It should be,” she said. “Because we gotta get back to who we are. To what we do. I can’t sleep with you every night and then go sit at dinner like that. I can’t do it again. It’s fine. And I’m not hurt. But I don’t want to go sneaking around, either.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Only because you’re not used to sneaking around.”

  “And you are. I’m sure.”

  He hadn’t had to do a lot of sneaking around. His guardian had been an eighteen-year-old boy. Yeah, Ryder hadn’t wanted them screwing things up too badly when it came to school. And he hadn’t wanted them doing drugs or drinking too much or anything like that. But he’d look the other way when it came to a few beers because he had to, since he was always having a few of his own.

  And he’d definitely look the other way if there was a girl involved.

  Unless it was a school night. He been ki
nd of a stickler for that. But as he shouted at him once when his grades had been bad, he wasn’t going to support a deadbeat. So he had to do something to improve his own life.

  Logan had graduated from high school. But only barely. And anyway, his solution had been to become a rancher. Not that ranchers didn’t need or didn’t have smarts. It was only that given there was a whole lot of connections involved in the position he’d gotten, they hadn’t been necessary for him.

  “Doesn’t matter. This isn’t about anyone else,” he found himself saying. “It’s about you and me. And this is unfinished.”

  “It isn’t,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself. For about one second she looked vulnerable. And then, on a deep breath, she seemed to find herself again. “I’m good. I mean, I feel like I learned everything I set out to learn. Questions answered. Thank you.”

  “The thing is,” he said, “I didn’t have questions about sex. I had questions about you. I’ve wanted you. I still do.”

  “To what end?”

  The question stabbed him right through the chest, and twisted hard. “Does there have to be an end?”

  “There will be. Might as well be now.”

  “I don’t agree.”

  “Too bad. I didn’t ask you. Get out of my room.”

  He didn’t have to be asked twice. But he could see that she was lying. Lying about wanting it stopped. She didn’t. She wanted him, the same as he wanted her. But the thing with Rose was you could lock horns with her endlessly.

  And he had no desire to get into that again. He wouldn’t have to. He didn’t know how he knew it, only that he did.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “But I want you to remember one thing. I didn’t do this just to satisfy your curiosity. I did it because I’ve wanted you for the last five years. Because wanting you has kept me awake at night. Because for the last five years it’s been a damn struggle to work with you when all I wanted to do was pull you in my arms, pull you down underneath me. I tried to keep my distance, Rose. But in the end you wouldn’t let me. I have self-control to spare, and I could have gone on never touching you. You did this. You asked me for it. And now I just think you’re cutting it off because you don’t like the fact that you’re not in control. Because I made you feel things and you don’t like it. You think on that.”