Christmastime Cowboy

by Maisey Yates

  They stood and faced each other, naked and ridiculously angry with each other. He could honestly say he’d never had a screaming match with a woman when they were both naked.

  Hell, he hadn’t been with any woman long enough to have a screaming match period.

  Arousal began to work its way through into his anger. He didn’t get mad, that wasn’t what he did. He was a problem solver, and he was way too guarded to let himself lose his shit like this. But there was something about her. Something about this.

  And there was most certainly no control.

  He started to collect his clothes, pulling them on quickly and stalking out of the bedroom. He heard scrambling and shuffling behind him and realized that she was doing the same. He didn’t stop. He didn’t care.

  “Are you just going to run away again?” she demanded.

  He turned back around and faced her. She was standing in the doorway wearing nothing but a T-shirt and panties. He wanted to throw her down on the bed. To stop this talking nonsense and just get back to sex. Because at least that felt good. This felt like hell.

  “I’m leaving because you’re acting like a crazy person,” he responded.

  Leaving because the alternative really was having her again, and he had a feeling she didn’t actually want that.

  “Not because you’re scared?” she asked, her chin jutting out, her expression defiant.

  “No,” he said.

  “Because you know what all those tattoos tell me? You have every bit the amount of poison and pain that I do inside of me, but you don’t want to deal with it. You shove it down deep. You put it on your skin. You just move it to the outside so that you can pretend that it’s over. But you haven’t forgotten it. I cannot believe you have me on your back. And you’ve slept with other women and... How did they never ask you about it?”

  “I was never with anyone long enough for them to earn the right to ask me questions like that.”

  “Well, since I’m the girl in the back tattoo I suppose I have the right to question you.”

  He stalked closer to her. “I’m done being questioned.”

  “Why?” She planted her hands on her hips. “Because you don’t like the answers?”

  “How about you? How about you and your great martyrdom? How does that look from where you’re standing on your high horse?”

  Her face twitched, her lips pulling tight on either side. “Get out of my house.”

  “Too real for you?”

  “I just gave you my virginity, asshole. I’m done with you acting like somehow you have this great perspective on my life, and on yours when I know that you don’t. You’re a liar, Liam. And I think you lie to yourself just as much as you’ve lied to me. I don’t have any reason to stand here and talk to a liar.”

  He grabbed his truck keys off the counter and headed out the front door, realizing as he started the engine that she didn’t have a car there.

  Oh fucking well.

  She would have to deal with that herself. She would have to sort it all out for herself. It was not his job. Not even remotely.

  When he leaned back against the driver seat, the tattoo felt like it was burning.

  She was right. She was. There was no getting around that. Especially not when he had just had it shouted at him. He had tattooed her on him so that he wouldn’t forget. Because there was something about her he couldn’t let go.

  The scent of vanilla made him ache and when he smelled it on another woman he could never bring himself to touch her.

  Because there was more young love bullshit involved in his feelings for her than he wanted to admit. Then or now.

  What was the point? What was the damned point of any of it?

  Of gaining perspective on something it was too late to change, too late to fix.

  Then he was just mad. As he drove back down the highway toward Copper Ridge and toward the Laughing Irish Ranch, he was just pissed. Because Sabrina Leighton had finally been his. And it had ended in recrimination and shouting. Just like last time.

  He didn’t know why she had to dig in like that. Why she had to make it about anything other than the orgasms they had just had. He could never forget.

  And somehow, it hit him then that she still hadn’t taken down her hair for him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE NEXT MORNING Sabrina woke up feeling stiff, awful and sore. Her entire body ached, her chest ached, her heart ached. She didn’t quite know what to do about any of it.

  Damned Liam Donnelly. Everything from the night before came flooding back as she padded gingerly into her living room and started the coffee maker.

  She looked out the window and saw that there was no car in her driveway.

  Dammit. She was going to have to get a ride to work, and she was going to have to explain herself.

  She mentally cataloged who she wanted to come and get her. She was going to owe them an explanation, that was certain. And she didn’t particularly want to give one.

  She needed a nonjudgmental driver, and she wasn’t sure that person existed. But she did know somebody she thought might be able to give good advice. Talk her down.

  Someone who had certainly been disappointed by a man before.

  She groaned, grabbed her cell phone off the counter and dialed her sister-in-law. “Lin? Are you busy?”

  “I’m still in bed,” Lindy said, her voice muffled. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need a ride to work.”

  “What?” She heard the sound of rustling covers and she imagined Lindy sitting bolt upright.

  “I’m fine. I’m at home. I just don’t have a car. I left it in town last night.”

  “I can give you a ride to your car,” Lindy said, sounding more urgent than sleepy now.

  “Maybe after work. But I just want to get in and get started on the day.”

  She just wanted something to feel normal. Anything.

  “Okay,” Lindy said, her tone hesitant. “It will take me about half an hour to get ready and get down there. Is that okay?”

  She knew that regardless of her reassurance Lindy had not entirely bought the promise that she was okay.

  “That’s fine.”

  She hung up the phone with her sister-in-law and paced the length of her house. She was waiting for the coffee. She needed the coffee. First would come coffee, and then perhaps clarity.

  Except she ached between her legs, and she knew exactly why that was. And that was an overriding bit of panic that seemed to defy the idea that clarity was anywhere to be found.

  Finally, the coffee was done, and she downed her first cup, then moved on to the second. She was halfway through that one when Lindy arrived at the front door and walked inside without knocking.

  Her sister-in-law had her keys held between her knuckles, her expression one of near comical suspicion. She was not her usual pulled-together self, but wearing leggings and a denim shirt, her hair slightly ruffled. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” Sabrina said, eyeballing the keys.

  “Blink twice if something is really wrong.”

  “There are no intruders in my house,” Sabrina said, deadpan.

  Lindy relaxed her stance and looked around shiftily. “It was just very weird to have you call me that early.”

  “I know,” Sabrina said, curving her fingers around her coffee mug and leaning over the counter.

  “You look...kind of a mess.”

  She nodded glumly. “I know. I did my best, but apparently regret is incredibly hard to wash off of your face.”

  “Oh, Sabrina. What did you do?” Sabrina made a strangled sound. “Who did you do?” Lindy corrected herself.

  “Three guesses,” Sabrina said, taking another sip of coffee.

  “Liam Donne
lly?”

  “Not even a fair game, really.”

  “Oh, Sabrina.”

  Lindy sidled up to her and wrapped her arm around her shoulders.

  “It was stupid,” Sabrina said.

  “We are often stupid where good-looking men are concerned. All of us.” She squeezed her and then released her hold on her.

  “I was supposed to be cured.”

  “In my experience that isn’t so simple as you’d like it to be. Especially when there’s a history.”

  “My brother?” Sabrina asked, wondering if that was what Lindy was referring to.

  “Oh, trust me, once I knew that he had put his hands on another woman, they were certainly not getting anywhere near me. But he begged me to take him back, Sabrina, and it was really hard not to feel tempted to do that. Ten years. That’s so much of a life. And part of me really wanted to fix it. When he accused me of destroying us over a mistake...”

  “It made you wonder if that’s what you were doing?”

  “Hell no,” she said, waving her hand like she was clearing the air. “That was when the moment of clarity came. When it slapped me. He cheated on me, and he was going to put the blame on the end of our marriage on me. And I knew that it was basically the sum total of all of our years together. Damien wiggling out of whatever problems we had. Trying to make sure we shared equal blame even when he was the one messing around on the side. And I just... I couldn’t do it. Not anymore. No freaking way.”

  “Well, Liam never did anything like that to me. And we don’t have near ten years’ worth of history either. I’m trying to excuse myself. A thousand different ways. That until I knew what it was like to sleep with him I was never going to be able to let him go. But I think I just hurt myself more.” She hunched over the counter, trying to ignore the stabbing feeling in her heart. “It hurts. It hurts so bad.”

  “What happened?”

  “It’s all of our past stuff. I know that you’re well aware that my dad and I had a falling-out before you and Damien started dating.”

  “Right. But Damien and I dating just about caused a falling-out between him and your dad too. Because your dad is ridiculous.”

  “He is,” Sabrina agreed. “I don’t know if Damien ever told you what I did.”

  “No,” Lindy said.

  So Sabrina took it upon herself to regale her sister-in-law with the stories about her transgression, and Lindy listened, not saying anything.

  “Jamison is an idiot,” she said finally. “I can’t believe he’s been mad at you all that time for that.”

  “I humiliated him.”

  “He was a grown man and you are his daughter,” Lindy said. “And the only person who did anything wrong was his wife. You made a mistake, and I know it was embarrassing. But you were hurt. Your dad interfered with your relationship.”

  “I was seventeen. It wasn’t love, it shouldn’t have mattered.”

  “But it was love,” Lindy insisted. “And it did matter. It mattered to you.”

  “Seventeen-year-olds don’t know what love is.”

  “I disagree,” Lindy said. “I think seventeen-year-olds can feel love exactly the way that they can. That first time. That kind of wonderful, weightless, innocent way where you don’t know how to protect yourself at all. It’s a different kind of falling in love, sure. But don’t dismiss your feelings.”

  Some of what Liam had shouted at her last night echoed inside of her. That she was more than ready and happy to blame him for her choices and blame herself for the pain of her family. That she seemed to be in some kind of deep denial where her own feelings were concerned.

  And it made her wonder. What she might have done if she didn’t have somebody else to blame. If she hadn’t had the pain caused by Liam to hide behind.

  If she had actually dealt with her own feelings, her own fears, rather than hiding behind her martyrdom, as he had called it.

  “I did love him,” she said. “You know, in that way. And losing him hurt me. And I got mileage out of that for a long time.”

  “What you mean by that?”

  “I mean, I was able to use it as an excuse. I’ve never... I was never with anyone before last night.” Her face heated.

  Lindy’s eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

  “Because I was hung up on him. Because I didn’t want to get hurt again. I blamed him. But I think mostly I’ve never wanted to risk myself. Not again. I can throw all that at his feet, but it’s more than that. I know it is. I just don’t know how to sort through it. I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Well, now you know. I guess that’s a start. It’s like Damien. Once I knew what our life was, and what it was going to continue to be if I gave in and agreed to a reconciliation, there was no going back. There was only going forward. That’s where you are. I mean, I guess you have two choices. You ignore everything that he told you, or you decide that there is no truth in it, even though I think we both know there is. So you either start making some changes, or you go back to how it was. But you won’t have an excuse this time. You won’t have anything to hide behind.”

  She nodded slowly. “He sucks.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Lindy said.

  “I was fine before he came back.”

  “I don’t think you were,” Lindy said. “But then, who is?”

  “I should have called Olivia,” Sabrina said. “She would have been so appalled by my behavior that she wouldn’t have been able to lecture me.”

  “She’s a funny girl, that one,” Lindy said.

  “Yes, and infinitely less annoying when push comes to shove, thank you very much.”

  Lindy snorted. “Come on, drama llama, let’s go.”

  Sabrina grudgingly followed her sister-in-law out of the house and out to her little red car, which they all called her midlife crisis car behind Lindy’s back. No one would dare say it to her face.

  It was definitely a cute car. And not one that Damien would have ever allowed her to spend money on. No. Damien liked big, new trucks that cost over fifty grand, and that he could pretend were practical in some way because they could haul heavy things. A zippy little car like that was not his thing.

  But Sabrina enjoyed it. She enjoyed it the whole drive back to Grassroots. They turned down the paved, heavily wooded road and Lindy parked in the lot closest to the main dining area.

  It was too early for the winery to be open, and yet Sabrina noticed that there was another truck in the lot. A very familiar truck.

  “No,” she moaned, pressing her head against the dashboard.

  “He wasn’t here when I left,” Lindy said, her tone nearly apologetic.

  “I’m not ready to deal with him.”

  “Well, see if you can come up with ways to make him less intimidating. Can you laugh at him? Was his penis unimpressive?”

  “No,” Sabrina said.

  “How do you know? You’ve never been with anyone else.”

  “I have the internet, Lindy,” Sabrina said.

  “Well, failing laughing at any kind of genital tragedy I don’t really have anything for you.”

  “The sex wasn’t even bad,” Sabrina wailed.

  “I’m very sorry,” Lindy said flatly.

  “It was actually great.”

  “Now I’m just jealous.”

  “Well, you can have him,” Sabrina said.

  “You don’t mean that. Do I need to put somebody else on this project?” She posed the question gently.

  “No,” Sabrina said. “I’m a professional. And Liam is a problem that I made for myself. I have to deal with it.”

  “Wow,” Lindy said, “look at you. Not hiding. And then, you know when he comes back at you with something terrible and insulting you can bring this up as evidence that y
ou aren’t the coward.”

  “I am one, though,” Sabrina said, her throat getting tight. “I wish I wasn’t. And actually knowing isn’t helpful at all because it means that I might have to do something about it.”

  “Yeah,” Lindy said, her tone dry. “I really do relate to that feeling. Like suspecting your husband might be cheating on you and wishing you could just ignore it for a while. Because once you know...”

  “I’m sorry,” Sabrina said.

  “It’s just life,” Lindy responded. “A sucky part, but we were never guaranteed a smooth ride. And good things have come from it. I guess that’s just what you have to trust too. That good things will come from this. That even if it isn’t a smooth ride it’s going to be good in the end.”

  “I trust none of that,” Sabrina said, opening the passenger door and getting out.

  “Well, you don’t have to trust it for it to be potentially true,” Lindy said.

  “You’re way too optimistic,” Sabrina said.

  “Better than being a pessimist. Then you’re angry about the bad things happening until they do happen, and you could have had a little bit of happiness in the meantime.”

  “Better than being blindsided,” Sabrina pointed out.

  “Is it? Would it make it hurt less?”

  “Stop being logical,” Sabrina groused.

  “I’m going back to the house to finish getting ready,” Lindy said. “Please don’t kill him.”

  “I’m not going to kill him,” Sabrina called back over her shoulder as she walked toward the dining area.

  “That is a relief,” a male voice said.

  Sabrina looked up and saw Liam standing in the doorway, his muscular arms crossed over his broad chest. He was wearing a T-shirt, probably because he had been inside and it was warm in there. But it just seemed mean, as she didn’t want to be harboring fantasies about licking those tattoos.

  “I’m not going to kill you now,” she clarified. “Later, much later when everyone has gone to sleep and I have an opportunity to hide the body...”

  “Nice to see your sense of humor is somewhat intact. Or at least that it’s made a reappearance this morning.”