Cowboy Christmas Blues

by Maisey Yates

  She wasn’t sure what had made her press. It was funny. He had always seemed above her in some way. Because he was older. Because she had admired him so very much. But there was something about being naked with a person. It was an equalizer.

  Even that was kind of funny when she thought about it, because his body was perfect by the standards of the world. Honed, muscular, not a spare ounce of fat anywhere. And she was...well, she was not perfect by those same standards.

  But he was here, when he could be...well, anywhere else in town. With anyone else. And that made her feel like maybe there wasn’t so much wrong with her after all.

  He had been inside her. He had wanted her. Still did. That made her feel like she deserved some answers. Like in these quiet moments in her living room, with the lights from her Christmas tree shining softly around them, they could share more than just their bodies.

  “Just moving. Continually. Sometimes more quickly than others.” His lips turned up slightly, his smile rueful.

  “Is it hard to be back here?” She hated asking him about Lindsay. Mostly because she knew he couldn’t escape it. She had witnessed it earlier when she had talked to her father. That loss was what was most closely associated with Cooper and his family.

  But she wanted...she wanted to talk to him, not about him. And that, she thought, might be different enough to make him open up.

  “It’s hard to be anywhere,” he said. “Eight years and it gets a little bit easier, I guess. But there’s always a hole. Out there... Lindsay was never part of that life. I made a life that she had never been in, so that I wouldn’t be so aware of her absence. Here... I only know Gold Valley with her in it. And I don’t like it as much without her. I know our family home with her. Christmas and Thanksgiving, when we were kids, and then when she and Grant got married. We walked to school together every day. She was my big sister. She taught me how to tie my shoes. She protected me. And I couldn’t protect her when it mattered most. And sometimes it hits me, like a punch in the gut. As fresh as it was the day she died. As fresh as it was when I fully understood what it meant that my sister had cancer. When the cancer came back, and back again.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It must be tough to be reminded all the time.”

  “And it’s hard to remind everybody around me.”

  She didn’t say anything. She simply looked at him.

  “I feel like being here stirs it up. For me, for everyone. When I’m gone, life kind of goes on. When I’m here...it seems to me that it’s all fresher. I’m sure that if Grant ran across me I would remind him of her. It’s not like Grant hangs out around our family homestead. And I know it’s for a reason.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I know I remind my parents of her.”

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “There’s nothing fair about any of this. But I’m not complaining. I’m here. Lindsay is gone. It would be pretty damn selfish of me to complain about the fallout of her death when I get to go on living, wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Annabelle said. “Maybe. Except you are alive, and being selfish is part of being alive. So it seems fair enough.”

  “It’s just easier. Easier to stay away. Because out there...nobody knows my story. And here, everybody does.”

  “It’s not your story,” she said quietly. “It’s something that happened in your family. Something that happened to your sister. It’s a loss that you experienced, but it’s not your story. If that’s your story, then I have to be an abandoned daughter. And I don’t want to be that. I don’t want somebody else’s issues to be mine.”

  “Life doesn’t give you a choice,” he said. “That’s the tricky thing. You just have to keep going.”

  “Keep running, you mean.”

  “It’s served me well enough.”

  “Don’t you ever get lonely?”

  He appraised her, his blue eyes growing hard. “Lonely is sitting in a room with two people that you love, having something hard that you share between you and not being able to talk about it. Lonely is walking down the street knowing people would rather talk about your past to their friends than talk to you about how you feel. Lonely is playing at looking fine all the time so that your parents don’t worry about you. Lonely is what happens when I’m in Gold Valley. Not when I’m anywhere else.”

  She could feel it then, the distance beginning to stretch between them, and she wanted to reach out and do something to close it. Wanted to get beneath his skin.

  Hero worship was one thing. That was what she had felt when she had been a little girl, and he had been so tall and strong and perfect. Like a superhero in a cowboy hat.

  But now that she was with him like this, she could see that he wasn’t a superhero. He was something better—he was a man. A man that she could touch. A man who wasn’t invulnerable, but who went on anyway in spite of all he had been through.

  But he was alone, and she wished that he weren’t.

  She wished he would let her be there for him.

  And she fought against the feeling that she wasn’t pretty enough, or compelling enough, or special enough to be the one he needed. She was here. And she wanted to make herself into that person. That was the person she wanted to be, not just now. Not just for him. But forever. For when he left.

  She didn’t want Parker to define who she was. She didn’t want the mother who had given her away without ever knowing her to define the way she thought of herself. Not anymore.

  “I don’t want you to be lonely,” she said, leaning in and brushing her fingertips over that beautiful sculpted face.

  He wrapped his fingers around her wrist, holding her steady. “I’m not right now.”

  He kissed her then. Kissed her until she couldn’t think, until she couldn’t catch her breath. Until she felt the distance melting between them. She didn’t know all the right things to say. She had never lost anyone to death the way he had. But she knew what it was like to feel isolated. To feel like the people around you couldn’t understand what you had been through.

  She knew what it was like to feel like she wasn’t strong enough. Like she didn’t have any control. Cooper hadn’t said those things, but she could sense it. Somehow. He had lost his sister, and there had been nothing he could do about it. She couldn’t imagine how that must’ve felt. But probably even worse than knowing she never had a chance to try to convince her mother to stay.

  You won’t be able to convince him to stay.

  She ignored that voice whispering in her ear. She didn’t need to convince him to stay. She only needed this week. It was all she expected. She knew that it would end. She knew what to expect. She wouldn’t be upset at the end of this.

  He was giving her the kind of pleasure she had never experienced before, and he was already making her feel stronger. She just wanted to do the same for him. That was all.

  As he moved their glasses of wine to the side and picked her up, carrying her toward the bedroom they hadn’t made it to earlier, she repeated those words over and over again. As if that would make them true.

  She needed them to be true.

  After Christmas Cooper would be gone, and she would have to find a way to live with that.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS THREE days before Christmas when Annabelle reminded Cooper that it would probably be a good idea to acquire gifts for his family. She had to get some things for her father, and she had convinced him that the two of them should go together.

  As much as he didn’t relish the idea of the town seeing them together as a couple, he supposed that the two of them being together in a general sense wasn’t all that strange.

  Well, no stranger than Cooper being back in town to begin with.

  Carolers dressed in Victorian clothing were walking on the opposite side of the street. A horse and cart, decked wit
h boughs of evergreen and red bows, were parked near the town Christmas tree, waiting to offer rides to people who had come to enjoy the Victorian Christmas festivities the town held every year.

  There was a dusting of snow on the ground, the lights twinkling against the frosted brick as the temperatures stayed persistently low in spite of the fact that the sky was clear and the sun was shining. It didn’t matter. It was still frozen.

  Annabelle, meanwhile, glowed brighter than anything on the main street of Gold Valley. Her long dark hair was loose, covered by a knit cap, and her cheeks were rosy. She was smiling and greeting people easily as they walked down the street. He admired that easiness. Didn’t envy it, necessarily, but wanted to keep on being close to it.

  That was the thing about her. They had spent the last couple of nights together, and it wasn’t a problem for him. Didn’t make him feel itchy. Didn’t make him feel as though he needed to get some distance anytime soon.

  No, there was something peaceful about being with her. A feeling he hadn’t known he could possess. One he hadn’t known he wanted.

  The other thing that was changing after the past couple of days was the way he saw her. Not as two separate entities. Not as the girl he had known and the woman she was, but as both of those things. Like now, with her practically skipping down the sidewalk, exhilarated to be out in the cold air, happy to be greeting townspeople...

  That was when he saw the girl who used to run across the fields. Climb trees. Pick apples. Like she had never once fallen and scraped her knee. The same woman who drove him crazy at night, who put on a show for him with that gorgeous body like she had never been hurt by her jackass ex.

  And he liked both parts of her. He liked her quite a lot, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had liked anyone.

  Particularly not someone he was sleeping with.

  “I guess you can’t get your mom jewelry,” she said.

  “I can’t?”

  “She makes her own.”

  “Yeah. True. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t enjoy someone else’s.” He paused and looked inside one of the shop windows, at a set of topaz earrings on display. “It isn’t like artists only hang their own paintings up in their houses, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Annabelle said, frowning. “I’ll have to ask some of the artists that sell their work to the shop.”

  “When did you buy the shop, anyway?”

  “Oh, that was a breakup gift to myself.”

  “Quite a big gift.”

  “Yes. But it was kind of a big breakup. And it was something that I really wanted. Something that he didn’t think I could do. I wanted to prove that he was wrong.”

  “I would say that you have,” he commented.

  “I hope so. And you know...the longer I have it—the longer I have this whole life without him—the less it’s about proving anything to anyone. It’s just about enjoying myself, really.”

  “You should enjoy yourself,” he said. “God knows without you I wouldn’t be enjoying myself this week.”

  “Well...that’s nice.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Your smile lights everything up. This street...me. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  She looked down, a slightly embarrassed expression on her face. Hell, he was a little embarrassed, too. He was practically spouting poetry on a public sidewalk. “I make you feel happy?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Out of the bedroom?” She tossed him a saucy smile as she stepped inside the little shop and walked over to the earrings he had been considering a moment ago.

  “I’m smiling now, right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “You are.”

  “I’m happy.” He was. Not in an easy throwaway fashion either. This was something new. Something he’d forgotten he could feel.

  She looked down for a moment, a small smile playing at the corner of her lips.

  “They are pretty,” she said, turning her focus to the jewelry, diffusing the tension.

  “They are,” he agreed. “I think Mom will like them.”

  “Can I ask... I don’t want to be nosy.”

  “I don’t believe that at all.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t want you to think I’m being nosy. But I want the answer.”

  He chuckled. “Of course.”

  “I see your mom quite a bit. She sells jewelry to the store, and she comes in a couple of times a month to collect her money. But sometimes...I can tell that it’s very hard for her. Sometimes she doesn’t stay and talk.”

  “And sometimes she doesn’t come when she says she will?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes.”

  “My mom has pretty intense anxiety. She’s always had it. But it got worse when Lindsay got sick. And then worse still when she passed. She said to me once that you think tragedy is something that happens to other people. And then when it happens to you...you lose all sense that there was ever a safety net there. I think that’s how she feels. Like she’s walking on a tightrope and there’s no safety net under there. Sometimes I think she’s more keenly aware of it than others are.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Nobody ever wants to ask about it. I think because no one wants to upset her, or me, or my dad. You know, my family does it to each other, too. We don’t talk about anything too deep so that we don’t upset each other. Sometimes I wonder if that does more harm than good.”

  “That makes sense to me,” she said. “All of it. I didn’t used to talk about things that were bothering me with Parker. I just... I thought that I was being sensitive. I thought it was me. I don’t think I would take that anymore.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes glittering. “I’m learning to ask for what I want. To say what I want.”

  “I sure appreciate it.”

  “Well. It’s easy with you.”

  “Why?” Suddenly he had to know. Why she liked being with him. Other than the fact that he made her feel good during sex. That was all that should matter. Except... More about her mattered to him. More than just how soft her skin was, and how wonderful it felt to lie naked beside her. Walking down the street with her felt just as good—hell, standing in this jewelry store felt just as good, and it shouldn’t.

  “I’m not really sure,” she said, a small smile touching her lips. “Maybe because... When I was a kid you were someone I could always...trust. If I ran, you ran after me. If I climbed a tree and I went too high and I fell down, you caught me. That time I got angry and ran away and went and hid in the hayloft...you were the one who found me. And...whatever you feel right now, about being here...you are here. It’s easy to feel secure with you. In you. And...that’s the most important thing I can think of.”

  Her words, so honest and simple, made his chest feel tight. He didn’t feel like the person she had just described. She made him sound steady and faithful. She made him want to be. But he had decided a long time ago to keep on moving, to keep connections to a minimum.

  But this connection he was finding with her was so different than he had imagined something like it might be. It made him wonder if the key to peace was really out there on the road.

  Or if it was somewhere much closer to home.

  She looked at him again with those soft brown eyes, and he did his best to ignore the hitch in his chest.

  “Let’s buy those earrings.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  “PLEASE, COOPER.” HIS mother’s voice was almost as unexpected as his phone ringing in the first place.

  Cooper was naked in bed with Annabelle, and he knew that he shouldn’t be. He’d spent the past few days with her, ignoring his responsibilities. He should have gone to visit his parents yesterday, and the day before. Because he was here to visit his parents, not screw himself into
oblivion at every opportunity. But here he was.

  His mother had called early this morning, her voice sounding distressed, and no matter how much he wanted to, he didn’t think he could deny her request.

  “I always bring flowers for Christmas. But for some reason I just... I don’t feel like I can make it this time. It’s supposed to get easier. But Lindsay is still gone. I can’t... I can’t face it. Not this year. But she needs her poinsettias.”

  He’d thought his mother had seemed agitated the other day, and he felt like this confirmed she was in an anxiety funk right now. It wasn’t something any of them verbalized, but his mother, the organized control freak who hadn’t been able to control a disease hell-bent on taking her daughter from her, had bouts of major anxiety that were often triggered by unexpected things.

  Not that Cooper would ever know what those things were, because she kept it all locked down until the moment she couldn’t.

  Until moments like these.

  Cooper had never returned to the place where they had sprinkled his sister’s ashes. Not since the ceremony. Not once. He knew where it was, though. The location was emblazoned in his memory like everything else from that horrible day. That day that was supposed to be a celebration of her life. A life that was gone.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said, keeping his tone measured.

  “I can’t go.” She sounded frozen, and it made him feel like there was a block of ice in his own chest. But there was nothing he could do but this. This one thing she’d asked of him. He could count on his hands everything his mother had asked him to do in the past eight years.

  Coming home for Christmas was one. This was another.

  He was here. How could he say no?

  “I’ll be by soon to pick up the flowers,” he said, his tone sounding wooden to his own ears, the words tasting like metal.

  He ended the call and looked to his side to find Annabelle studying him. He shifted uncomfortably, not quite sure what to tell her.

  Well, the truth, he supposed.