The Last Christmas Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  But even after Lark’s grandfather had passed, Addie had never lived in it. A couple of times Lark’s uncles had stayed there when they’d come to town for visits, but for the past two years it had been largely closed up. And the attic had clearly been used as her grandmother’s preferred storage unit.

  It was The Miner’s House that her grandmother had called home. She had made a little candy shop in the front, and had kept a bedroom in the back. The yard had a small dining set and the porch had rocking chairs. That, she’d said, was all she needed.

  But as a result, The Dowell House was in a bit of disrepair, and in bad need of a good dusting.

  Lark walked through the sitting room, and into the kitchen. The two rooms were divided by a red brick wall with another stained glass window set into it, and a large arched doorway. At one time, it had been an external wall and door, the change just part of one of the many expansions and remodels that had taken place over the years.

  Another thing Lark had never given a whole lot of thought to. Because it was simply how Grandpa’s house had looked. Now, she saw it for the slight architectural oddity that it was.

  She could see her sister through the window, the pane cutting across her face, the top of her head green, and the bottom half purple. Lark walked into the kitchen, where her mother was already seated at the table, and her sister was in the process of wiping it off. She had brought... They looked like insulated bags, which Lark could only assume had food in them.

  “I figured you guys would be pretty hungry by now.”

  “I’m always hungry,” Lark said. “And hi.” She closed the space between herself and her sister and drew her in for a hug.

  “Good to see you.” Avery dropped a kiss on to her head.

  Lark took a step back. Avery looked tired, her blond hair piled on top of her head, an oversized sweater covering her always thin frame. She had on a pair of black leggings and a pair of black athletic shoes. She looked every inch the classic image of the supermom that she was.

  Avery had all the self possession and poise of their mother and the effortless femininity of their grandmother. She’d been popular and stylish with ease and Lark had envied her. When Lark had reacted to things it had always been big, and often messy. Until she’d learned to get a grip on herself. Until she’d finally learned her lesson about what could happen when you acted, and didn’t think it through.

  “But what food did you bring?” Lark asked.

  “I had a potpie in the freezer. I also brought salad and rolls. I figured Hannah would probably be hungry too, after flying cross country.”

  Her sister had also brought wine, and sparkling water. Lark helped herself to the water. Without asking for assistance, Avery finished cleaning off the table, then produced paper plates. “I didn’t know what kind of a state the dishes would be in. And I didn’t know which appliances in the house were functional. I don’t hand wash.”

  “No. Why would anyone? It’s why God gave us dishwashers.”

  “Agree. Mom?” Avery asked. “How much potpie do you want?”

  “I can serve myself.”

  “No,” Avery said. “You don’t have to. Just sit. I’ll get you some wine.” Avery was a flurry of movement, and even when Lark and Mary had their food, Avery didn’t sit. She opened up the cupboards and looked in each of them, frowning. Lark could almost see an inventory building in her sister’s head.

  “What exactly are you doing?”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Avery said. “Didn’t you talk to Hannah at all about what her idea was for this place?”

  “No.” Lark felt vaguely wounded by that. There was a plan, and Hannah hadn’t said anything to her?

  That made her feel more like the baby sister than anything had for a while.

  “Finally!” Laden with suitcases, Hannah pushed the door open with her shoulder, her bright red hair, a shade or two down the aisle from the color their grandmother had used, covering her face. “I couldn’t seem to get a car. I had to rent one.”

  Her suitcases were flung out in front of her, her violin in a black case slung over her shoulder. Lark didn’t see a purse. She was sure her sister had one, but the violin was obviously her most important possession.

  “Yeah, I don’t think ridesharing has really caught on around here,” Lark said.

  “Do you mean those apps? Aren’t all the drivers serial killers or something?” Avery asked. Everyone looked at her. “One of my friends shared a post about it online.”

  Hannah and Lark exchanged a glance.

  “Well, I’ve managed to use it for about five years now and not get serial killed. But I’m keeping my fingers crossed,” Hannah said. “It will be good to have a car, but I don’t really want to pay for a rental for the next three months.”

  “Dad said you could borrow the car,” Mary said.

  “Thanks,” Hannah responded.

  “I drove,” Lark said, only then registering that her sister had not in fact asked if she needed the car. “So I have my car,” she finished lamely.

  Dad and Hannah had always had their own special thing. Not that Lark thought he loved Hannah more. She just wasn’t shocked that he’d set the car aside for her.

  “That smells good,” Hannah said. She grabbed a paper plate and served herself a large portion of salad, and a small wedge of pie, passing on the wine and taking a sparkling water the same as Lark.

  Soon they were all sitting around the table, except Avery, who was standing, leaning against the kitchen counter, holding a glass of wine.

  “Do you want to sit?”

  Avery blinked. “Oh,” she said. “I just get so used to not having a chance to sit.”

  But she didn’t move from her position.

  “Avery says you have an idea?” Lark pointed that statement at Hannah.

  “Oh,” Hannah said. “Yes. I do. Well, we’re doing a scaled back concert series this summer, and I wasn’t needed for the next three months.” Lark couldn’t read her sister’s emotions. She was laying it out matter-of-factly, but Lark had the sense she wasn’t all that happy to have three months off. “I’m clear until end of August.”

  “You can just...leave for a few months?” Avery asked.

  “I don’t even have a houseplant,” Hannah said. “Easily mobile by design, thanks.” Lark knew that sometimes the orchestra sent people to other orchestras on loan. Her sister had spent seasons in New York, London and Moscow.

  On paper, she and Hannah were pretty similar. Creative professions, the chance to move around. But there was a tenacity and intensity to Hannah that had skipped Lark. Avery had it too. She just channeled it into school events.

  But Hannah was an island. An island of isolated, locked down emotion. Whatever her sister really felt about things was tough to get a handle on. She might be outspoken, but that wasn’t the same as sharing feelings.

  Hannah was allergic to feelings.

  “I have the summer, free and clear. And I thought I could spend that time helping revamp everything here and... When it’s over we can turn this into a vacation rental.”

  “It’s a great idea,” Avery said, using her school meeting voice. “Because none of us want to live here, right?”

  “No,” Mary said. “I’m not antsy to move back into my childhood home.”

  “David hates this house,” Avery said. “The last thing he wants to do is fuss with potentially faulty plumbing on a day-to-day basis. Old houses are charming and wonderful, but they can also be a pain in the butt. Hannah isn’t staying. Lark, I assume you’re going back to New Mexico.”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Lark said, bypassing the question she’d been asked. She was happy to linger over their plans for a moment, which would give her more space to address her own next. “A vacation rental. The house is famous. I think people will really enjoy staying here.” She took a deep breat
h. “I want to stay here. In town. Permanently.”

  Avery and Hannah looked shocked. Her mother’s expression was smooth, except one divot on the right side of her mouth, which suggested pleasure.

  “Have you ever been to a Craft Café?”

  That earned her a couple more blank stares.

  “They’re these cafés where you can come in and work on crafts. I think that’s pretty self-explanatory.”

  “Does anyone do that?” Avery asked.

  “Yes. They’re getting more popular in places, and I think it could work here. We get all the tourism in the summer, and the kinds of people who move here are... Well, they have a lot of leisure time on their hands. They’re either retired, or they have family money of some kind.”

  “What about your illustrations?”

  Her heart squeezed uncomfortably. “I... I’m taking a break from it. But I have the money to put into the place. I don’t need to use Gram’s. But we all own The Miner’s House and I am proposing that I use it for business. So, I need all of you to be on board with it.”

  “I don’t have plans for it but...”

  “Do you have a business plan?”

  Her mom and Hannah spoke at the same time.

  “I do have a business plan,” Lark said.

  And she was thankful for her friend Rusty who had told her in no uncertain terms that “starting a crowdfunding campaign is not a business plan.”

  Then had helped her make an actual business plan.

  “And I know it’s going to take some time and money to rehab the place, but, if we’re working on the house here, I can easily get the same crew to go down the street and do some work there too. Two houses, one stone. Or one phone call.”

  She took a breath. “I sold everything. I mean, all my furniture. And my lease was up. I... I want a fresh start here.”

  The deep irony of looking for a fresh start here. This place that had made her, then unmade her. Tearing out each and every stitch that had held her together so she’d been forced to go off in pieces and find a way to repair what was.

  It wasn’t holding. That was the problem.

  All these years later. Nothing was healed, just hidden.

  She felt like she’d left pieces splintered of herself all over the country. On rivers and lakes in the Midwest, in the Atlantic Ocean. In different towns and different cities, different jobs and groups of friends.

  She’d been searching for things there, but it had only left her more fragmented. And none of it had brought her healing.

  She’d been everywhere else looking for it. But she hadn’t been back home, not really. Visits with her parents, the will reading, the funeral, that wasn’t the same as really being here. When she came back she didn’t spend time on Main Street in town, didn’t visit old friends. She usually holed up in her parents’ house and went between there and The Miner’s House to spend time with Gram.

  “If you can open this shop, you’ll stay?” Her mother’s expression was neutral, and Lark couldn’t really tell what her feelings were on the subject.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Then try it,” Mary said. “Why not?”

  “A ringing endorsement,” Lark said. “What about you two?”

  “I figured I’d just line up the renovations for The Dowell House,” Hannah said, in her typical, straightforward fashion. “Avery and I have already gone back and forth on furniture, and I ordered some.”

  “You didn’t ask me?” Lark asked.

  Avery and Hannah both had the decency to look slightly guilty. “I didn’t think you’d care,” Avery said.

  But they hadn’t asked.

  Their skepticism about her ability to run a business combined with this felt...

  Like something you’ve earned?

  She ignored that. Even if it was true.

  She felt nearly divided sometimes, into before and after. Before she’d left home, and after. When she’d been young she’d been...well, young. And probably a little bit spoiled because she was the youngest. She’d always wanted to have fun, to have good feelings because bad ones had been unbearable and she didn’t know how to keep them in, and when they came out it was always a whole meltdown.

  And then after...

  She’d just stopped letting herself show those feelings. She’d stopped...letting herself want so much. And if her family thought she was sort of a shiftless drifter then fine. It suited her. It kept her a little mysterious, which also suited her.

  Except now you’re mad about it. And hey, you’ve moved home. So much for your distance.

  “Do whatever you want with The Miner’s House,” Hannah said. “I can’t run a shop and I don’t need a little house.”

  “Same,” Avery said.

  It was, maybe, the most tepid unanimous yes of all time, but Lark would take it.

  She put her hand on top of the swatch book, and held the silver Christmas ornaments to it, looking at the silver glinting against the worn leather. Her grandmother would approve of the idea, she knew she would.

  Gram had loved art. And she had fostered the love of it in Lark. In all of them, really. The Miner’s House had been the only place the three of them had ever gotten along.

  “I’ll keep a bowl of candy on the counter,” she said.

  Because her Gram would want the kids to be able to come in for candy still.

  She just knew it.

  “What’s that?” Mary pointed to the book that was on the table next to Lark.

  “It’s not your business plan, is it?” Hannah asked.

  Lark rolled her eyes. “No. Even I’m not a big enough hipster to put my business plan in a leather bound book.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Avery said.

  “I don’t know what it is. I grabbed it off the top of the craft boxes before I came down. I wanted to see what was in it.”

  It was worn, the edges looking chewed and tattered. The leather cover was pale in the places where someone’s hands might have rested while holding it. She opened it up, and saw small, neat handwriting on the first page.

  Memory quilt.

  On the next page was a graph. A design for a quilt, with each piece laid out on the grid.

  “Grandma was making a quilt,” she said. “This is...”

  She turned the page. There was a scrap of lace affixed to it, and underneath it in that same handwriting it said: wedding dress.

  “It’s like a swatch book. With fabric for the quilt.”

  “That’s interesting,” Hannah said. She got up from her seat and move down to the end of the table, peering over Lark’s shoulder. “What else?”

  She flipped the page where there was a very colored fabric in silk and velvet. “‘Parlor curtains.’” She went to the next page, which had a fine, beaded silk. “‘Party dress.’”

  “There’s all kinds of stuff like this up in the attic,” she said. “Remember when Gram used to let us go through her collection and choose things to craft with? Broken earrings and old yarn and fabric. And always tons of unfinished projects lying around. Obviously she intended to make this quilt. Maybe she even started it. And it’s somewhere up there with all of the...the unfinished things.”

  Unfinished.

  That was the word that kept echoing inside of her.

  Because it was why she was here. She was one of the unfinished things.

  Being here, opening the café, it would give her a chance to finish some of what her grandmother had started.

  Maybe along the way she’d manage to join up some of the unfinished pieces inside her own soul.

  Don’t miss Confessions from the Quilting Circle

  Available May 2021 wherever HQN books and eBooks are sold.

  www.Harlequin.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Maisey Yates

  It’s Chri
stmas and rancher Creed Cooper must work with his rival, Wren Maxfield—and tempers flare! But animosity becomes passion and, now, Wren is pregnant. Creed wants a marriage in name only. But as desire takes over, this may be a vow neither can keep...

  Read on for a sneak peek at Claiming the Rancher’s Heir by New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates!

  Claiming the Rancher's Heir

  by Maisey Yates

  One

  Creed Cooper was a cowboy. A rich, successful cowboy from one of the most well-regarded families in Logan County. He also happened to be tall, muscular and in possession of the kind of good looks a lot of women liked.

  As a result, nearly nothing—or no one—was off-limits to him.

  No one except Wren Maxfield.

  Maybe that was why every time he looked at her his hands itched.

  To unwind that tight bun from her hair. To make that mouth, which was always flattened in disapproval—at least around him—get soft and sexy and get all over his body.

  And he had that itch a lot, considering he and Wren were the representatives for their respective families’ vineyards. Rivals, in fact.

  And she hated him.

  She hated him so much that when she saw him her eyes flared with a particular kind of fire.

  Fair enough, since he couldn’t really stand her either.

  But somehow, years ago, a piece of that dislike inside him had twisted and caught hard in his gut and turned into an intensity of another kind entirely.

  He was obsessed.

  Obsessed with the idea he might be able to use that fire in her eyes to burn up the sheets between them.

  Instead, he had to listen to her heels clicking on the floor as she paced around the showroom of Cowboy Wines, looking like a smug cat, making him wait to hear whatever plan it was she’d come to tell him about.

  “Are you listening to me?” she asked suddenly, her green cat eyes getting sharp.

  She was dressed in a tight-fitting red dress that fell to the top of her knees. It had a high, wide neck, and while it didn’t show a lot of skin, it hugged her full breasts so tight it didn’t leave a lot to the imagination.