A Cowboy Under the Mistletoe

by Jessica Clare

  Sage turned, leaned against the opposite counter while the coffee dripped into the pot, and grinned at him. “I love Christmas. Adore it. But there’s no reason to decorate everything when it’s just me out here. Even the cleaning lady only comes once a month now, and that’s just to dust everything. I concentrated all of my Christmas cheer in the direction of the office and the town itself. All those wreaths on the mailboxes and light posts? The garlands? I did those. And I’m working on preparations for the town Christmas party next week, too.”

  “You need a date for that as well?”

  Her eyes went wide. “You’d do that for me?”

  Jason shrugged. “I don’t have plans, and I’m gonna feel like I owe you big-time if you can help me get on my feet with this whole ranching thing.”

  Her expression softened, and those dark, liquid eyes looked so deep that he was entranced. “I would love that,” she whispered. “Even if it’s just for pretend. So everyone doesn’t look at me like I’m pathetic.”

  “You’re not pathetic. It’s hard to meet people when you’re trying.” Heck, he’d tried real hard to get another job, and it was like the moment people smelled desperation, they backed away. He could relate to her search for a date in the same way. “I’m still not entirely sure why you’re helping me, but I’m grateful.”

  “Why wouldn’t I help you?” Sage gave him another gentle smile and then poured two cups of black coffee. “I don’t have any plans for the weekend other than driving Greg’s mail to Casper, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

  “Greg? Coworker?”

  “No, just a friend. The one getting married.” She smiled into her cup. “You want cream and sugar?”

  He shook his head and took a gulp of the coffee. Strong as hell, but she was drinking it plain and he would, too. He’d have thought she was the type to fuss up her coffee, but she drank it just as dark as he did. Interesting. There were things about Sage that made him curious, and it had been a long time since he’d been curious about a woman. She was just being friendly, though. He couldn’t forget that he’d shown up on her office doorstep sweating and in a panic. No woman would be attracted to that, even one as cheery as Sage. Disgusted with himself for being such a mess, he gulped down the rest of the scalding coffee and then set his mug down. “I guess I’m ready to get started if you are.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jason’s mood was unreadable as she led him out to her barn. Once it was full of horses and livestock, back when her father’s ranch was a working one and the small adjacent cabins had working cowboys that lived in them. Now it was just her, and it was a lonely place. Most of the barn was completely empty, and only two stalls were currently in use, both of them with old, rangy cattle that no one would be interested in except maybe the slaughterhouse.

  “Say hello to Ethel and Lucy,” she told him as they paused outside the two stalls. “The last two cattle of the Flat C Ranch.” She pointed at her father’s old brand, with a slanted, encircled “C.” Just the sight of it made her ache, because it reminded her of her father, his big, boisterous smile and oversize hat, and the way he’d hugged her close and led her through this barn a million times as a child. The ache of loss never went away, she was learning. She was just getting better at living with it.

  “These are the cows you kept?” he asked, glancing over at her.

  She nodded. “Our cattle were beef cattle, so you learned not to get too attached. But when I was a kid, I bottle-fed a baby that was sick, and that baby learned to follow me around because she thought she’d get fed. We joked that Lucy was more like a dog than a cow, and my father always found an excuse not to sell her, because he knew it’d break my heart.” She smiled at the memory. “Ethel was my high school 4-H project, and we never sold her for the same reason. Now they’re both so old that they’d be immediately sent to the slaughterhouse, so I kept them here. I’m going to put a clause in the ranch sale that they’re both allowed to live out the rest of their natural lives here. I can’t bear for them to be killed just because I’ve moved on.” She glanced over at him. “You’re not supposed to be sentimental with ranching, but it’s something I’ve struggled with.”

  “I get that.” Jason glanced over at her, and that reluctant smile that made her heart flutter was back. Distracted, she smiled back at him, and then when he glanced at Lucy’s pen, she remembered why they were here. Right. Cattle.

  “Okay! So,” she began, flustered. It was embarrassing to get so distracted. He was just a nice man who really needed to learn ranching. That was all. She had to stop mooning over him, no matter how endearing his smiles were. “I figured we’d start out with the most important thing—handling cattle. You stay right where you are and don’t move, and I’ll get Lucy in place.” When he nodded, she opened the stall door and then moved toward Lucy at an angle, murmuring a greeting. “Hello there, my sweet Lucy. Look at how pretty you are. Aren’t you just the prettiest little side of beef? Yes, you are. You’re my sweet girl, aren’t you?” As she cooed at the animal, she carefully moved into the flight zone and extended her hands slowly, so the cow would head forward. She did, and then when Lucy was out of the stall and in the middle of the big barn, nosing through the loose hay on the floor, Sage moved over to Jason’s side.

  He was rubbing his jaw and doing his best not to grin as he glanced over at her. “Do I have to use the baby voice?”

  She chuckled. “It’s a bad habit of mine, I know. I’m attached to Lucy and Ethel, but no, you don’t have to use a baby voice. You do want to talk to them, though.” She tapped the sides of her face. “Their eyes are spread wide apart, right? So they have a massive blind spot behind them, and you never want to approach from behind. You never want to startle a cow, either, because one nervous cow will make another nervous, and then you have a whole herd of nervous, and that’s just bad news all around.”

  Jason nodded, his expression grave. He’d leaned in, as if he could soak in every word she told him. He was really tall, she noticed again, and she got flustered once more.

  Right, cattle. Focus, Sage. “Do you know anything about a cow’s point of balance?” At his blank look, she went on. “Flight zone? Pressure zone? Do you know what a bull looks like versus a cow?” When he shook his head again, she tried to fight back a sinking feeling. He really didn’t know anything at all about ranching or animals.

  This . . . was going to be more than she thought.

  Okay, then. She could do this. Beaming him another confident smile, she went to work. She talked as she approached Lucy again, and gave Jason a quick anatomy lesson—not about hooves or withers, but about where a cow’s point of balance was and where to stand in the flight zone to make the cattle move where you wanted them to. It was as natural as breathing to her, but she’d also been around cattle all her life. She could tell it was a lot for Jason to remember, and after a while, she felt guilty for all the instructions she was spouting at him. Make sure to walk tall when approaching the cattle. Give a new mother space. Never go directly at a cow. If the head’s lowered, that’s a bad sign. Watch the tail to see placement. Avoid bulls. Stand here but not there. Look strong but not aggressive. On and on it went until she could practically see his frustration bubbling. He was sweating. More than that, he was distracted. He kept eyeing the empty stalls and looking around as if the barn bothered him. She couldn’t figure it out, but his agitation was affecting the cattle, and both Lucy and Ethel were starting to stamp their feet.

  When his first attempt at herding ended up driving Lucy directly for her, he swore under his breath and swiped a hand over his sweating brow.

  “Maybe we should stop for now,” Sage suggested delicately as he began to pace.

  “No. I’m going to get this right. I am.” He raked a hand through his sweaty hair. “I just . . . I need to do something first.”

  She watched, a little mystified, as he walked away from her and headed to the far
end of the barn. For a moment, she thought he was leaving, but when he swung the stall door open and scanned the interior and then moved to the next and did the exact same thing, she knew it was something else. He was . . . looking for something. But what?

  This wasn’t agoraphobia after all.

  Curious, Sage watched him as he moved around the barn. She herded Lucy off to the side so he could continue uninterrupted, and by the time he was done, he’d checked the entire place out, top to bottom. He’d even gone up the ladder to the hayloft, kicked the hay around, and then come back down.

  Of course, all of this was making Lucy incredibly nervous, so Sage guided her back into her stall and gave her fresh feed, rubbed her ears, and then turned and looked at Jason, who’d finally finished his rounds of . . . whatever it was he was doing.

  His face was flushed and he was still sweating, but more than that, he looked utterly miserable. Her heart squeezed with sympathy. She waited for him to explain what he’d been doing, so she could understand.

  She didn’t get an explanation, though. “I should probably go,” was all he said.

  “No.”

  He looked surprised. “No?”

  Whatever it was that he was going through, leaving wouldn’t help. It wasn’t agoraphobia, but it was definitely something, and she wasn’t so awful of a person to send him home when it was clear he needed to get out of his head for a bit. “I could use some more coffee,” she said, and extended her hand toward him. “And dinner. Should we go wash up? I’ve made enough for two.”

  Jason hesitated a moment and then put his hand in hers. It was clammy, but she just gave it a comforting squeeze and then led him toward the house. He was completely silent, but Sage didn’t press him. She knew he needed time to figure out whatever was going through his head. Instead, she released his hand the moment she went inside and then told him all about the taco casserole she’d made and how she’d been eating it for two days already and could he please eat a ton of it so she wouldn’t have to eat it all week? She kept up a stream of lively chatter as they washed up and kept it going as she heated the casserole in the microwave, plated it, and then poured two more cups of coffee and set the dining table. They ate in silence for a few moments, and Sage peeked up to study him. He wasn’t sweating any longer, which was a good sign. The corners of his mouth were turned down as if he were disgusted at something—himself? But his color was normal, and he was eating with vigor. So there was that.

  “Can I ask you something?” She kept her tone light and took another bite of her food. She was going to push him, and she knew that was probably a bad idea, but she had to know what was going on if she was going to help him.

  He gave her a wary look and pushed his plate away.

  Sage put a hand up. “I’m not asking to judge. I just need to figure out what we’re working with so I know how to help you. I can tell you all kinds of embarrassing things about me to use as blackmail material so you won’t feel like I’m going to blab your secrets all over town.”

  He stared down at his near-empty plate, then looked up at her. Wariness—and exhaustion—was all over his handsome face. “Like?”

  She thought for a moment, turning her fork on a casserole noodle. “Like . . . you know how I said everyone thought I had a crush on the guy getting married next week? I really did.” She paused. “For like . . . ten years.” Her cheeks were getting hot at the thought. Not because of unrequited feelings, but just because she’d mooned after Greg like an idiot and he’d gone and gotten engaged to someone else. “It’s a real fuck,” she said, deciding a cuss word would be placed nicely at the end of that statement.

  There was no answer, and she looked up from her fork to see that Jason’s mouth was beginning to quirk in that smile again. Suddenly, she felt all hot and flustered for entirely different reasons.

  This . . . almost felt like a date. It was dinner, right? Cozy. Just the two of them.

  Oh my lord, she really was crazy and desperate, wasn’t she? Maybe the others in town were right. The thought was a depressing one.

  “You’re really not good at cussing,” Jason said dryly.

  “I’m really not.” She nodded. “That wasn’t natural?”

  “Not in the slightest.” But he was smiling at her, and oh, he was so handsome that it made her regret all those years crushing on Greg Wallace when she could have had someone like Jason smiling at her.

  He kept smiling at her without speaking, and she squirmed in her seat, flustered at the attention. This wasn’t a date. He wasn’t her boyfriend, and she needed to stop being so lonely and desperate that she was seeing things that weren’t there. Jason just wanted a tutor in ranching.

  Right. She needed to focus.

  Sage cleared her throat. “I need to know what it is about the barn that makes you nervous if we’re going to proceed. You said it was open spaces that bothered you, but the barn is definitely not open. And I know the Price Ranch has a barn. You’re not going to be able to avoid them, but maybe if you tell me what the deal is, I can help you work through it.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed, and she watched his throat work. He stared at her for a moment, then at a picture on the wall of her with her father and three of the ranch’s cowboys from back when she was a kid. She was sitting atop a horse while her father held the reins, all pigtails and dimples and childhood chubbiness . . . and sometimes she felt like the adult Sage was as dorkily invisible as that child. Gosh, and she was wearing a reindeer sweater. She touched her head and, yup, sure enough, she was still wearing antlers.

  No wonder he smiled when he looked at her. She didn’t look pretty or sexy.

  She looked like a festive idiot.

  “It’s not agoraphobia,” he said flatly, dragging her attention back to the situation at hand.

  “I guessed as much.”

  He hesitated for a long moment, staring at the picture (but she suspected not really seeing it), and finally said, “It’s not open spaces, either. Not really. It’s . . . a lot of things. Spots where snipers can hide. Ambush zones. Unsafe spaces where someone can hide with a gun or leap out at you and attack.”

  That hadn’t been what she was expecting, but it made sense. She nodded and took another bite of her food, silently encouraging him to continue speaking.

  It was as if the words were glue in his throat. They came out slowly, as if they didn’t want to come out at all. “I was in Afghanistan. Navy, so I shouldn’t have really seen much combat. But I was in security, and one outpost I was at was attacked. It was . . . bad.” He was silent for a long, long time.

  She chewed and chewed, but the food tasted like sawdust in her mouth. She kept chewing because it was impossible to swallow, but she had to do something.

  “I . . . Sometimes the memories catch up with me,” he finished.

  “Of course,” was all that she said. What could she say that would make it any better? Nothing. Nothing at all.

  “It’s been a problem with a few of my last employers. I’ve been fired or just quit. Kinda hard to hold down a job when you’re busy checking the perimeter instead of manning your workstation.” His mouth flexed, as if he was trying to smile, to make a joke, but the rest of him wouldn’t play along.

  “I would never say anything to anyone,” Sage promised. “You have my secret; I have yours.” She reached across the table impulsively and touched his hand. “If it helps, Wyoming is very safe. Painted Barrel has only had one real ‘crime’ since I started working for the mayor, and it was a couple of kids breaking into the hardware store to huff paint. It’s very quiet here.”

  The look on his face was wry. “It’s not about being safe. I know that here”—he thumped his heart. “But this part doesn’t know.” And he tapped a finger on his temple. “I’m sure it sounds silly to you—”

  “It doesn’t,” Sage told him quickly. “I had an uncle that was an agoraphobic, remembe
r? Don’t worry. I know it’s in your head and you can’t shut it off. I don’t think it’s silly at all. I just want to help you.”

  He seemed to relax a little at that. Jason touched his thumb to her hand and then pulled his away. “Just talking to you helps, you know. Knowing the area helps, too. And knowing what I’m doing when I show up for my job Monday will help, as well.”

  “Then I’ll show you the entire ranch after dinner,” she told him easily. “I don’t have plans.”

  “No hot Saturday-night date?”

  She pointed her fork at herself. “Sage Cooper, man-repellent.”

  He shook his head, a hint of a smile on his face again. “I don’t get that. Men around here must be blind . . . or they don’t like reindeer.” He gestured at her sweater.

  Was that a compliment? Or was he just being nice? She blushed. “I don’t wear this all the time.”

  “’Course not.” He nodded at the door. “I’d like to try again with the animals after dinner. Once I’ve calmed down. If that’s all right with you.”

  “You bet—”

  Sage’s phone rang, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra blasting through the kitchen.

  She grimaced and jumped to her feet. “Let me grab that. You keep eating.” She was too flustered to eat another bite. Men around here must be blind? Really? She didn’t know what to think. She crossed the room and picked up her phone from where it was sitting on the counter.

  Greg.