Christmas Cowboy Kisses

by Carolyn Davidson / Carol Arens / Lauri Robinson

  Turning to the stone-faced Tanner beside her, she asked, “Did you hear my father remarried?”

  “No, I can’t say I did.”

  He never took his eyes off the road ahead of them, and his aloofness could have tainted her contentment, but she wouldn’t allow that. “Well, he did. Two months ago. Her name is Virginia and they’re very happy.”

  Tanner nodded, which was about all she could expect. Grandpa must not have mentioned the marriage. She’d written him all about the wedding, even though her father had told her not to bother. It wasn’t a bother to her, but a milestone. The end of her having to choose between the two men she loved unconditionally.

  Noting the blanket covering her and John wasn’t spread across Tanner’s legs, she found the corner and flipped it across his thighs, then, as the impulse appeared, she went with it and gave his midsection a big hug. “I’m just so happy to be home,” she declared. “I could hug everything in sight.”

  “Well, I’m right here, darling, and you can hug me all you want,” John said, tugging her back toward him.

  She hugged him in return. Without John she wouldn’t be here, and she was appreciative of that.

  His hold tightened. “With this wind, I’d appreciate all the hugs you can give.”

  Unable not to, she giggled. John was attentive by nature but had grown more so during their travels, using endearments, which, considering some of the characters on the train, she’d grown to appreciate and had found herself using them in return. It did seem wrong to carry on so now, though, and she’d have to tell John that when the opportunity arose. Remind him the engagement, no matter how contrite, had been her only choice. “You’re going to love the ranch,” she told him now instead. “There’s no place like it on earth.”

  Immediately full of ranch thoughts, she turned to Tanner. “Fill me in on what’s happened since I left. Is Slim still cooking for the boys in the bunkhouse?”

  “Yes, he’s still cooking,” Tanner answered, shifting the reins in his gloved hands.

  “And Merilee? Is she still cooking for Grandpa?”

  Tanner answered affirmatively and she turned to John. “Wait until you try her spice bars. She only makes them at Christmastime and they are so delicious. Truly wonderful.”

  “About like you,” John said.

  “Oh, you,” she answered, playfully slapping his shoulder. She grinned, too, for John’s agreement to accompany her had ended her father’s protests; therefore, here she was. Home.

  She twisted and wrapped both hands around Tanner’s arm. It was solid, full of muscles from working every day, and she held on tighter. She’d always admired Tanner’s strength and endurance. Even that once, when he’d used it against her. That was in the past, though, and she’d learned not to dwell on it. “Tell me Thunder is still at the ranch. She is, isn’t she?”

  His gaze was on her hold, and it was a moment before he lifted his eyes. They were as brown as his hair, and how he kept them so expressionless was beyond her. No one ever knew what Tanner Maxwell was thinking unless he wanted them to. Which was never.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “She’s still at the ranch. Had another foal this spring.”

  Her excitement doubled. “Is it a buckskin, too?”

  He nodded, but then with his low, slow drawl, he said, “Thunder hasn’t been ridden much the past few years, so you’d best be careful if you take her out.”

  At one time the horse had been her best friend, her only friend, and Anna was as excited to see the animal as she was her grandfather. “I will,” she assured him.

  “You haven’t asked about Walter,” he said then, snapping the reins.

  An inkling of fear appeared through her joy. “He’s doing all right, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’s doing all right.”

  Tanner was staring at the road again, and the stillness of his profile had the fear inside her growing a bit more. “You’re scaring me, Tanner,” she admitted, close to a whisper.

  “Walter’s missed you,” he said rather coarsely. “And he’s been disappointed when you kept promising to come but never did.”

  She couldn’t fault his infinite loyalty to her grandfather—it had always been there, and knowing Tanner was with Walter while she couldn’t be had helped each time her plans to return home had fallen through. But watching his profile, noting the twitch in his cheek, Anna had to wonder exactly why Tanner was so mad she’d finally come home. Her father claimed if anyone inherited the Double Bar, it would be Tanner. She’d thought that was just talk—her father’s way of holding on to the bitterness he felt toward the Double Bar. Surely he was wrong.

  Chapter Two

  The ride home had proved long and cold, yet the chill in Tanner’s bones had little to do with the weather. He stayed clear of the homecoming, other than to watch Anna fly into Walter’s open arms after John darling had lifted her out of the wagon.

  As soon as a couple of cowhands had unloaded the trunks and carpetbags, Tanner drove the wagon away from the house, unhitched the horses and led them into the barn.

  He’d just finished giving the second horse a good rubdown when the barn door opened. Along with a solid blast of frigid air, Walter Hagen walked in, brushing snowflakes off the arms and shoulders of his buffalo-hide coat. “Good thing you got home when you did. It’s really coming down out there.”

  Tanner nodded. “Saw it coming.” He gave the horse a pat on its rump, sending it into its stall. “The horses did, too. Had a heck of a time keeping them from running most of the way home.”

  Age hadn’t altered the judge much. He was still big and burly, and though some thought he was past his prime because he no longer oversaw the wild courts of most of Wyoming, Tanner knew differently.

  “Smart critters,” Walter said, leaning against the top rail of a stall. “Smarter than some men.”

  Tanner fought not to grin. It had been this way between him and Walter practically since the day the judge had hauled his fourteen-year-old butt home rather than send him to jail as he had the rest of the Taylor gang. “I’m assuming you mean me.”

  “Who else?”

  “Why?”

  “I told you to fetch my granddaughter.”

  “That’s what I did.”

  “Well, what’s that other thing you dragged home?”

  Tanner did grin when he caught the one on Walter’s face. “That,” he said pointedly, “is her fiancé.”

  “You don’t say.” With an exaggerated shudder Walter added, “Darling.”

  The rapport between the two of them had always been dry, and Tanner enjoyed it. Besides giving him a chance, the judge—outside his mother and a few youngsters way back when—had been the first person not to hate him on sight, and Tanner had appreciated that since day one. He crossed his arms and set both elbows on the stall. “What did you want me to do, dear, leave him at the station?”

  Walter guffawed before he pulled up a disgruntled frown. “That would have suited me fine.”

  “Yeah, well, it wouldn’t have suited Anna fine,” Tanner answered.

  The judge took a few steps in order to pat the nose of a very coveted horse. Thunder was not only an excellent broodmare, she’d been Anna’s favorite, therefore Walter’s favorite, too. “She told me she was bringing a friend with her,” the man said. “I assumed it would be a girl. You know, a companion of sorts.”

  “Considering they’re engaged, I guess you could call him a companion,” Tanner said. “Soon to be a lifelong one.” That galled him in ways it shouldn’t.

  Walter spun around and the squint of his eyes flared something else inside Tanner.

  In the ten years he’d known the judge, Tanner had learned how to read him well. The man had waited five years for his granddaughter to return home and the thought of sharing her—with anyone—i
rked him. That wasn’t new, though. Years ago Tanner figured out any man who tried to come between Walter and his granddaughter had a good chance of finding himself at the end of a gun barrel. “The way I see it...” Tanner began, having no qualms about pointing out the truth. The judge expected that of him. “There’s not a lot you can do about it. She’s a grown woman.”

  “Maybe, but she’s still my granddaughter.”

  Tanner pointed out something else. “You couldn’t tell her what to do when she was a child, so do you think you can now?”

  Walter tipped back his Stetson before he folded his arms across his barrel chest. “I’m not going to tell her what to do.”

  “That’s good,” Tanner said, already imagining a showdown between two of the most stubborn people on earth. Anna may have grown up, but the way she’d cajoled her soon-to-be husband on the trip home, Tanner was set to bet half the time she called John darling she was acting, using the man to get her way.

  “You are,” the judge said.

  Caught only half listening, Tanner stuttered, “Wh-what?”

  The judge nodded.

  An entirely different kind of chill rippled his spine. “Oh, no, I’m not.” Pushing off the stall, Tanner took a step closer, just to make his point clear. “She’s your granddaughter. I didn’t have anything to do with her when she lived here five years ago and I won’t have anything to do with her now.” That was the line he’d almost stumbled across years ago, and he had vowed it would never happen again. Without Walter, he’d most likely be dead by now, and he’d never forget that.

  Walter didn’t move. He didn’t square his shoulders or stretch on his toes, yet all of a sudden he seemed taller. The man had the ability to do that. With little more than a certain look, a gleam that appeared in his eyes, Walter could exude authority like no other. Tanner had seen it numerous times, but it was rarely directed toward him, which is how he wanted to keep it.

  “No way, Walter,” he said, shaking his head.

  “You’d still be rotting in jail if it weren’t for me,” the man said. That wasn’t anything Tanner hadn’t heard before, but the judge was usually joking when he said it.

  Not this time.

  That was something Tanner couldn’t quite believe, or accept, which had him wondering if Anna had told Walter about their encounter in the barn years before. That possibility didn’t take hold, so he said, “No judge would have sentenced a kid to prison for life just for holding horses.” Walter had told him that on more than one occasion.

  “You were holding the get-away horses while the Taylor gang robbed the bank.”

  “But they didn’t get away,” Tanner argued.

  “That’s beside the point.”

  “No, it’s not,” Tanner insisted. Walter knew the Taylor gang had more or less held him captive and for years, when it came up, this conversation had been flipped around, with Tanner accepting his guilt and the judge defending he’d been too young to know better. He’d been young, and he’d known better, which is why he’d knotted the reins together, made sure the getaway hadn’t happened.

  Walter turned to Thunder and stroked the horse’s elongated face. “You ever hope for a Christmas miracle, Tanner?”

  Understanding none of this conversation was really about him, the seriousness of Walter’s tone had Tanner’s nerves biting his skin. “Yeah, but I’ve got a feeling what you’re envisioning as a miracle others might call murder.”

  Hearing Walter laugh allowed Tanner once again to breathe freely.

  Walter stepped away from the stall and slapped him on the shoulder while walking to the door. “I don’t want you to kill John darling, just get him the hell off my property.”

  In all his twenty-four years of living, Tanner couldn’t recall being left speechless, yet it had happened twice today. Once by Anna with her fiancé proclamation, and now by Walter.

  Frustrated, Tanner set into the evening chores, but in what appeared to be a snail’s breath of time, cold air once again swirled around him. Frozen for a moment, he watched the wind whip the red velvet cape around her as Anna tried to pull the door shut.

  He’d planned on being long gone by the time she came out here. Blowing stale air from his lungs, Tanner moved forward and closed the heavy door for her.

  “Thank you,” she said, smiling brightly. “Grandpa said you were out here, that you’d show me which one was Thunder’s latest foal.”

  He’d known it wouldn’t take long before she’d visit the horse, and watched as she opened Thunder’s stall to walk in and hug the horse’s thick neck. The fur-lined hood had fallen from her head, and though her hair was still brown, there were no waist-long curls like before. Instead, it was neatly pinned into a smooth bun on the back of her head. He had an urge to pluck out those pins, see if the curls still fell over her shoulders and down her back, and he wondered—

  Stopping himself, he asked, “Where’s Joh—Mr. Hampton?”

  She flashed him a bright smile. “Don’t be getting all formal, now, Tanner. The only person you’ve ever called mister was Grandpa, years ago.” After planting a kiss on Thunder’s cheek, she rested the side of her face against the horse. “John is with Grandpa. He’s showing him his gun collection.”

  “Walter is showing John his gun collection,” Tanner repeated for himself. The judge was too smart to flat out shoot the fiancé, but he knew his guns, and an accidental shooting, that he could arrange.

  “Why are you frowning so?” Anna asked.

  “Oh, just thinking about Christmas miracles,” Tanner lied.

  Skepticism shimmered in her eyes as she shook her head. “You believe in Christmas miracles?”

  “I’m starting to,” he mumbled, while his mind flashed images of the judge’s gun-lined office.

  “Why do I have a feeling we aren’t talking about the same thing?”

  Tanner shook his head. “Everyone’s miracles are different.” With a wave of one hand, he gestured toward the other end of the barn. “Thunder’s latest foal is in the last stall.”

  Anna waited until he walked past her, and then matched his footsteps. “What’s her name?”

  Irony settled in as he answered, “Your grandfather named her Little Darling.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet,” Anna cooed.

  “Isn’t it,” Tanner answered drily.

  Chapter Three

  The foal was a buckskin. With a coal-black mane and tail, and a hide as golden brown as freshly baked bread, Little Darling was as beautiful as her mother. Yet Anna had a hard time concentrating on the animal. “You don’t like me any more now than you did when I left, do you, Tanner?”

  “I don’t dislike you,” he said. “Never did.”

  By default—Tanner not liking her had won out when she’d moved to Kansas City. Before then, he’d been her friend, let her get away with things others hadn’t.

  On more than one occasion her grandfather had insisted she didn’t rule the roost, so to speak—usually when he’d sat her down for a lecture on something she’d done. An only child with thousands of acres at her disposal, she’d chapped more than one cowhand’s hide by getting in the way. Those were also her grandfather’s words.

  But things had changed. Her father had returned. Tanner hadn’t lived in the house then, not as he did now, and once again her father’s suggestion echoed in the back of her mind. John thought the same thing—he’d voiced how annoyed Tanner appeared to be about their arrival a short time ago when she’d showed him to his room. She’d ignored John’s statement, but ignoring Tanner had never been possible.

  Anna gave the horse a final pat, and then turned to face him. Her adversary. If that’s how it had to be, though she did hope differently. “I almost can’t believe I’m home.”

  With a look that said he didn’t believe her, Tanner huffed out a little
breath before he walked back up the row of stalls.

  She took a deep breath. Inhaled the aroma of horseflesh, hay and the lingering other scents that filled the barn. Some found it offensive. Not her. She thrived on it and had missed it with all her heart. “You have no idea how hard it was for me to leave this place.”

  “Seems to me you did it easy enough.” He was filling a can with oats when she arrived at his side, and then shouldered his way around her. “Never even bothered to visit.”

  Frustration wormed its way in, overshadowing some of her joy. “I wanted to visit, but it just didn’t work out. Not with Father’s schedule.”

  He was dumping the oats in a bucket for one of the horses and didn’t look her way. “What about Walter?”

  “He had you,” she answered honestly.

  “I’m not his family,” Tanner said, coming back for a second canful.

  “In his eyes you are.” She followed him this time, remained inches behind him as he dumped the oats. “In his eyes you’re the son he never had.” The years of letter writing, where her grandfather wrote of little else besides Tanner, had been bittersweet. As much as she was glad her grandfather wasn’t alone, she’d wanted to be here, be a part of the progress assuring the Double Bar thrived for future generations.

  “Walter Hagen has a son,” Tanner said as he walked past her again. His tone and attitude spoke volumes. “His name is Will, and he’s your father.”

  “Does reminding yourself help?” The sting her words created inside her was ugly, but maybe her father was right—that she’d been remembering things differently from how they’d really been. “My father never wanted to be a rancher. It wasn’t in his blood. Not like it is in Walter’s. Not like it is in yours. He wanted to be a doctor, was destined to be a doctor, and watching my mother die, not being able to save her, was more than he could take.”

  Her explanation, though it made her throat raw, didn’t seem to affect Tanner. His glare was as frosty as the single window next to the barn door.

  “That’s what he is now,” she said. “A doctor. And he’s happy. I know he and Virginia are going to have a wonderful life together.” His silence said her words still hadn’t got through, so she continued, “He wanted more for me, too. He wanted me to see the world outside this ranch.” She didn’t add that that world had mainly consisted of taking care of her father, cooking, cleaning and helping him study. It was over now and didn’t matter.