Christmas Cowboy Kisses

by Carolyn Davidson / Carol Arens / Lauri Robinson

  “Really?” Tanner paused long enough to eye her squarely. “The daughter he’d abandoned two years before.”

  Why was she the only one who understood and forgave her father for his behavior while mourning her mother? “We all make mistakes, Tanner.” In order to contain other memories from sneaking forward, she concentrated her efforts on defending her father. “I was the only person my father had who would support him. Walter—”

  “Walter,” Tanner interrupted, “left the bench because of you. Retired from being the best judge the courts ever had to take care of you when your father deserted you, and he never went back after you left, hoping you’d come home.”

  “Walter had you, Tanner,” she said, fighting hard to stay focused. “He didn’t need me.”

  Tanner shook his head.

  “It’s true, ask anyone. From the time you moved in here, you became his favorite.” She’d been nine, and with both parents alive and happy, her life had been too full to notice the young cowhand. Three years later, though, when her mother died, her world had turned inside out. Tanner might not remember it, but she remembered how he’d comforted her, told her how sorry he was. He’d held her hand, too, while they placed her mother in the ground on the hill north of the house. And later, when her father disappeared, Tanner had become her friend, or perhaps idol. Until two years later when out of the blue her father had returned and told her they were moving to Kansas City, where he was enrolled in school to become a doctor. She’d protested, but—

  “Anyone?” The repulsion on Tanner’s face was as strong as any she’d ever seen. “Don’t you mean ask you or your father?” he continued. “That’s what it comes down to. He hated me from the minute I stepped foot on Walter’s land.”

  “No, he didn’t,” she replied, frustrated by his accusation.

  “I recall it differently.”

  There had been a terrible row, and her father had lashed out at Tanner, calling him an outlaw and other nasty names, but he’d been despondent, full of grief and taking it out on anyone nearby. “My fath—”

  Tanner stepped forward, glaring at her with more aversion. “Your father never let anyone forget moving here wasn’t my choice. That it was court ordered. In place of going to prison, I had to serve seven years on Walter’s ranch.”

  Anna’s insides trembled with anger. Somehow he’d turned this all around. She’d hoped that now that her father was happy, living his life as a doctor, she could start living hers. But she couldn’t put the past behind, where it belonged, if Tanner refused to. Right now, he was acting so mean and hateful she didn’t want to share the air she breathed with him.

  “Your seven years were up three years ago,” she snapped. “Why are you still here?”

  His laugh was bitter and cold. “So the truth comes out. The real reason you finally came home.”

  She gave her head a single shake, trying to catch his exact meaning. “Which is?”

  “To get rid of me.”

  He stepped forward, which caused her to step back. His proximity, for he was a tall and muscular man, was somewhat suffocating and had her heart beating frantically. The first stall was right behind her, and her back bumped into it, preventing her from moving any farther away. He kept coming, though, and trapped her by placing both hands on the rail behind her. His brown eyes held no compassion, no concern for how cornered she was. He was not the Tanner she remembered.

  “Let me assure you,” he all but growled inches from her face, “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Why? Because you think you deserve this place?”

  “No.” He grasped her chin with one hand, held it firmly. “Because that old man’s going to need someone when you leave again.”

  She wanted the laugh to come out sounding as if she knew exactly what she was doing. Instead, it sounded as if she was being strangled. All the same, she answered, “I’m not going anywhere. This is my home and I’m staying.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  The challenge in his eyes ignited determination in her. This was her home, and this time she was old enough that nothing and no one would stand in her way. “Yes, we will.” Fueled by the fight inside her, she added, “We’ll also see how long you last once I’m in charge.”

  He threw back his head and let out a harsh laugh before he brought his nose inches from hers again. “This place would fall apart with you in charge of it.”

  Anna wasn’t exactly sure what snapped inside her. For five years she’d catered to her father, and though she loved him dearly, and was happy for him, she’d never again put her desires and dreams in second place. Her dreams—more like the one memory all her dreams were based upon—blasted forward, propelled by all the emotions she’d buried with it so many years ago. The day Tanner had found her here in the barn, crying.

  She’d felt torn in two that day. Her father insisting she leave with him and her grandfather worrying if she went, her father might abandon her again. She’d wanted to please them both.

  Tanner had hugged her and asked her what she wanted—something no else had done—and then, not so different from right now, a deep-centered desire had burst forth inside her.

  She’d acted upon it. Kissed Tanner. Not a simple peck on the cheek. Oh, no, back then she’d never done anything halfhearted. With all the ferocity of a snake sinking its fangs into an innocent bystander, she’d planted her lips on Tanner’s.

  The heat that had exploded between their lips had shocked her. Even now, the sheer memory instilled other sensations. Those of wanting more. Of wanting Tanner to kiss her the way he had all those years ago.

  He’d responded to her kiss that day, returned it as hotly and fiercely as she’d begun the action. His fingers had dug into her hair and kept her from pulling away. Not that she’d wanted to, even when his tongue had slid along the line between her lips before entering her mouth to create a firestorm she’d never known before, or since.

  The intimacy of it, or maybe the wildness, had thrilled her.

  She may have only been fourteen, him eighteen, but Tanner Maxwell had ruined her that day, with that kiss, for all other men.

  He about broke her again right now, by letting out a low growl that shattered her treasured memory into a million little crystallized pieces that flashed behind her closed lids like a constellation of stars being cast away by some mighty beast.

  She opened her eyes and knew Tanner had been remembering the incident, as well. He was breathing as hard as she was, and they were staring at each other as if on a battlefield, defending their very lives. Perhaps they were. She was, anyway. The life she now wanted. Had earned, and wouldn’t give up for anyone. This time she was prepared to fight. Whether Tanner knew it or not, she’d heard him that night, all those years ago, when her grandfather asked for his advice and Tanner had said letting her go to Kansas City with her father was the best thing for everyone.

  He’d told her something that day, too. That she’d better never act so foolish again. She was too young to be kissing men, he’d said, before he’d stormed out of the barn. That kiss—Tanner’s anger afterward—had fueled something inside her. She’d gone to Kansas City then because her father had needed her, with the goal of returning, grown up and old enough that no one would tell her what to do again.

  She had grown up. Had returned. And now had to wonder if Tanner had tried to scare her into leaving with that kiss so he could lay claim to the Double Bar.

  He took a step back, and removed his hat to comb back his somewhat long and unruly brown hair with one hand before he returned the Stetson to his head. “Isn’t it time for you to see what John darling’s doing?”

  Locked precariously between the past and present, Anna asked, “Who?”

  “John Hampton. Your fiancé. The man Walter is showing his gun collection to.”

  “What about him?”


  “Shouldn’t you be in the house with him?”

  Her father’s insistence that she couldn’t travel alone, then that she couldn’t travel with John unless they were engaged hadn’t stopped her from coming, and it wouldn’t stop her from staying, either. But it might give her the protection she needed. The desire to kiss Tanner again, just to prove she had grown up, was building much too strongly inside her.

  Anna stepped away from the stall and flipped her hood up, as if that might conceal the deception of her engagement. “John comes from a family of lawyers and has taken on women’s rights as his specialty. Especially those when it comes to inheritance, and he understands how important the Double Bar is to me.”

  Tanner didn’t so much as blink. He may be acting as if nothing mattered, that the past hadn’t been dredged up, but it had been, and her original plan of working the Double Bar alongside him was growing more impossible by the minute.

  Lifting her chin, she said, “The Double Bar is my home, Tanner, and it’ll take more than a Christmas miracle for you to remain here.”

  His gaze roamed from her toes to her nose. “I never said I wanted a Christmas miracle.” The glare in his eyes was deadly serious when it met hers. “But you might want to start praying for one.”

  Chapter Four

  Anna Hagen had returned home, all right, and it galled Tanner she was the reason he hadn’t been able to sleep. Thoughts of that one, stupid, youthful hormone-driven kiss hadn’t kept him up at night for years. He’d known the exact moment the memory had entered her mind. It had hit him at the same time. Like a shotgun blast. So had the desperation he’d seen in her eyes. She wanted something—badly—and he couldn’t quite figure out what. The ranch was already hers. It was her birthright, and she certainly didn’t need a lawyer fiancé to get it for her, so what exactly was she after? Why had she come home? It couldn’t be money. Walter sent a goodly sum to her and Will monthly.

  Following the smell of coffee brewing, Tanner made his way down the back stairs. It was early; the sun had yet to rise, but the judge and Merilee, the other person who lived in the ranch house, would be up. Merilee had moved in more than thirty years ago, shortly after her husband and Walter’s wife had died during an Indian attack, to take care of Will. Walter had become a judge then. He’d claimed the law was the only thing that could tame the territory and had taken it upon himself to see it happened.

  Tanner thought it a bit ironic how the women in Walter’s family had been pivotal in putting him on the bench and pulling him off it. To say Tanner liked that was wrong, but to say it taught him just how much influence women held over men was dead right. Before stepping into the kitchen, Tanner reminded himself that he and his wife—when he found her—would be equal partners.

  When the image of Anna flashed before his eyes, he shook his head. No way; his wife wouldn’t have an overbearing father, either. Or be the light of her grandfather’s eye.

  “I expected you at the dinner table last night,” Walter grumbled as Tanner entered the room.

  The judge was never cheerful in the morning, no matter what the season, and his gruffness rarely bothered Tanner. He shared a grin with Merilee, who was rising from her chair at the table. Only three people knew exactly whose bed the older woman slept in most nights, and they were all in this room. It was little things like that that Tanner liked. They made him feel as if he belonged here, yet the thoughts that had kept him up last night were still banging away inside his head, telling him he really didn’t.

  Belong, that is. Will Hagen had told him that on numerous occasions, and Tanner was more than a bit put out he’d let that bother him again yesterday while talking—arguing—with Anna. She’d got to him, though, defending her father as she had. The man had treated her like a slave instead of a daughter, and Tanner, having been treated like that at one time, didn’t like it.

  “Well?” the judge said expectantly.

  Tanner grasped the cup Merilee handed him, took a sip and sat down at the table before answering. “I figured you’d like some time alone with your family.”

  Walter snorted like a bull, but it was the sound of Merilee slamming a pan against the stove top Tanner reacted to. Guilt that he’d eaten in the bunkhouse last night had him glancing her way, silently apologizing.

  Her gray hair was tucked into a bun at the back of her head as usual, and she wore a familiar blue dress covered with a long white apron, but there was something different about her this morning. It was in her eyes. They were still green, but they weren’t twinkling like normal. Instead, they sent a plea, telling Tanner he couldn’t let the judge down now.

  An eerie sensation crept up his spine.

  “John darling’s a lawyer,” Walter said.

  The nickname they’d shared yesterday was no longer humorous. “I heard that.”

  “I want him gone, Tanner.”

  Tanner didn’t. John Hampton was the barrier he needed, which he wasn’t going to speculate upon. Five years ago, he’d stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong, told the judge to send Anna to Kansas City with her father, and had regretted it every day since. Not that he was stupid enough to think he’d influenced the judge’s thinking—or Anna’s decision. No one had that ability. They were both too bullheaded. Tanner set down his cup. “Walter—”

  “Before Christmas,” the judge interrupted.

  Another thing that had kept Tanner up last night was one poignant statement Anna had made. His seven years were up. Had been for three years.

  He hadn’t labored until his hands bled putting up barbed-wire fences, or caught pneumonia driving cattle through a blizzard three years ago, or taken a bullet in the shoulder while defending the ranch’s borders from cattle rustlers just for himself.

  All that had been for Walter. He owed the man for his freedom, for the very life he knew. Admitting he respected Walter, loved him like the father he’d never known, or that he loved Merilee in much the same way didn’t change the fact they weren’t his family. That the Double Bar wasn’t his home. He had no God-given right to claim it was. He hadn’t forgotten that, knew it without Anna’s reminder yesterday, yet it held more weight this morning.

  Tanner spun his coffee cup in a circle. Walter still needed him, but the man needed his family more, and the ranch wasn’t big enough for him to hide from Anna. “Maybe,” Tanner finally said, “you just need to get to know him.”

  “Who?” Walter demanded. “John darling?” Snorting again, he continued, “I had supper with him last night.”

  “That’s not enough time to get to know someone,” Tanner insisted.

  “How do you know?” Walter asked dryly. “You weren’t at the table.” Waggling a finger, he continued, “It takes me less than thirty seconds to know what’s inside a man.”

  The judge was excellent at pinpointing a person’s character, but this time his emotions were involved. Not to mention his age. Tanner, of course, couldn’t and wouldn’t point either of those things out. Instead, he said, “Anna must like him.”

  “What does she know?”

  Not answering was his best choice, so Tanner took a long swig of coffee.

  “I’ll tell you what else she doesn’t know,” Walter continued. “Ranching. What my granddaughter knows about this ranch could fit in this coffee cup.”

  * * *

  Anna froze in her approach to the kitchen, both her feet and her heart. The harshness of her grandfather’s words, floating on the quiet morning air, shocked her. Easing her way to the wall to hear more without being discovered, she held her breath.

  “If she loved this place like she claims to, she’d have stayed here five years ago, or at the very least come home now and again.”

  That statement stung, too, and told her Walter didn’t understand why she hadn’t returned even though she’d explained time and time again in her letters.


  “You don’t mean that, Walter.”

  Anna snapped her head up, astonished to hear Tanner’s reply.

  “Yes, I do. My wife died defending this land, and I’ll die defending it, too.”

  “Well, you’re not going to die anytime soon. Now eat your breakfast.”

  That was Merilee’s voice, and Anna wasn’t sure she was glad the conversation had been interrupted. Who was her grandfather defending the ranch from?

  When the only sound became forks clinking on plates, she pushed off the wall.

  Convincing her grandfather she did love this place, and that what she didn’t know she was willing to learn, might not be easy. He might never understand how badly her father had needed her, for he was stubborn and set in his ways, but he was happy she was here. That had been evident on his face last night. She just had to convince him she’d never leave again, and that she, too, would defend the Double Bar to the death.

  Planting a smile on her lips, she marched the rest of the way down the hall and around the corner. “I haven’t slept that well in years.”

  Anna didn’t miss the scowl on Tanner’s face or that the tension in the air was thicker than gravy, yet head up, she crossed the room and kissed Walter’s cheek. “Good morning, Grandpa.” Glancing to Merilee, she produced another bright smile. “Breakfast smells wonderful.”

  Tanner had the good grace to stand and pull out a chair for her, which, rightfully, caused her to pause briefly. She hadn’t expected such gallantry from him. Then again, he was probably putting on as much of a show as she was. With a single nod, she acknowledged his courtesy and sat.

  “Where’s the lawyer?” her grandfather asked gruffly.