Wild Western Women Mistletoe, Montana: Sweet Western Historical Holiday Box Set

by Caroline Clemmons

  “Once,” Randall answered, his voice tight with concern. “When we hit a calm out in the Pacific after the voyage to Hawaii.”

  Miranda pursed her lips, a wave of irrational irritation snapping at her. “You have a story for everything,” she grumbled.

  Randall turned away from the world of white to stare at her in indignation. “You asked.”

  “You didn’t need to batter me with reminders of how much more exciting your life has been than mine.”

  He blinked, mouth hanging open for a moment before he said, “I’ve told you that none of that was what I wanted, that—” He pressed his lips shut and turned away with a sharp exhale.

  Miranda swallowed and ducked back into the attic, stepping carefully down the stairs. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. It was like her skin was itching so badly it was coming loose. And she had felt so naughty and squiggly where Randall was concerned yesterday. The problem wasn’t that she had stopped feeling so titillated, the problem was that she felt even more hot and bothered. But she also wanted to slap him for not sweeping her into his arms and kissing her senseless…for giving her heated looks…for smiling…for teasing her about the contents of the attic…for…

  She huffed out a breath and headed for the stairs. The easy answer to what was wrong with her was that she’d been trapped alone in the saloon with Randall for so many days that she’d lost track. She turned in a useless circle in the spotless, scrubbed attic. They’d finished cleaning it that morning, putting heaps of restless, dangerous energy into work instead of flying scandalously at each other. The second floor was spotless too. The saloon’s main room was so clean they could have eaten off the floor. They’d manufactured Christmas decorations, set them around the saloon and the apartment, rearranged them, and exhausted themselves making more. There was simply nothing at all left to do in the entire building.

  Miranda had finally met her match, and its name was Cabin Fever.

  “I think there might be people moving around in town,” Randall said as he climbed down the stairs and shut the trapdoor. “I can’t tell for sure, though. Not without climbing all the way out onto the roof.”

  “Why not step out on the roof? It’ll be another adventure for you to add to your collection.” Miranda’s snippishness made her writhe on the inside. Nothing left to do, nothing left to do. Nothing left but throwing herself at Randall and ripping the clothes from his—

  Dear heavens, she needed to get a hold of herself!

  “If you’re so concerned about, it, why don’t you climb up there and dance around.” Randall marched across the attic to her, hands planted at his waist, fire in his eyes. “Seeing as you’re so worked up about adventures.”

  “Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Randy.” She pointed a scolding finger at him.

  “I always take that tone of voice with people who are being unreasonable,” he fired back, stepping to within a few feet of her.

  Miranda’s chest heaved with unspent anger and bristling confusion. Randall had long since stopped wearing his full suit. He stood before her in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a woolen vest. His hair needed brushing, but he’d shaved every morning that the two of them had been trapped together. She knew. She’d watched him through a crack in her bedroom wall as he stripped down to just his drawers by her washstand and gone through his entire scrubbing up routine.

  “In that case,” she floundered for a way to aggravate him as much as she was aggravated, “do you speak to your father that way?”

  She knew she’d scored a point on him as soon as his face darkened. “Don’t bring my father into this,” he mumbled and marched past her to the stairs, grabbing his lantern as he went.

  Miranda snatched up her own lantern and rushed after him. “Ah ha! So we’ve found something that gets under your skin after all, have we?” She hated herself for nagging and stinging him, but if she didn’t get some sort of a reaction from him, if she didn’t find a way to bring him as close to the brink of pent-up madness as she was, she’d—

  He stopped abruptly at the bottom of the stairs in the second floor hall, whirling to face her. “Plenty of things get under my skin, Miranda.”

  She held her breath, certain it would happen then. Heat radiated from him, and not all of it anger. Frustration, yes, but a delicious, new kind of frustration that painted his cheeks scarlet and made his hazel eyes bright with desire. Five days ago, she would have been shocked to her toes at the blatant sensuality in that gaze, if she would even have recognized what it was. Now, trapped in the bubble they had spun around themselves, all she could do was sway closer to him, mind scattering, chest heaving, and…yearn.

  “My father has spent his life taking advantage of people.” Randall jerked away from her, stomping on down the hall. “He sets his eyes on the prize and goes after it with ferocity. He doesn’t care whose life he ruins in the process. I will not be like my father.”

  His…what? What did his father have to do with the distracting ache that filled her? She stormed after him, the two of them making far more noise than they needed to as they headed to the ground floor and on to the apartment. Miranda’s apartment was several degrees warmer than the rest of the saloon, since they’d decided to consolidate warmth there.

  Randall set his lantern on the table and marched to the window over the washstand. It was still caked with snow, even after they’d tried to pry it open to see if it was just drifts or if they had indeed had that many feet of snow. Unfortunately, the window had frozen shut. All of the windows in the saloon had. It was just another sign of how trapped they were.

  Miranda set her lantern on the mantel above the fireplace, but moved away quickly. Standing so close to fire when she was already burning in the inside only made things worse. She had to do something, had to expend all the sizzling energy building up inside of her, like the air before lightning struck, somehow.

  “What does your father have to do with anything anyhow?” She crossed her arms and stepped closer to him. “If you’re so clever, why don’t you live your own life?”

  He spun to face her, eyebrows rising high. “This from the woman who’s idling away in her uncle’s saloon because she’s afraid she’s too dull for any man to take an interest in.”

  She flinched. Flinched as if he’d raised a hand to her. Because up until that moment, she hadn’t realized that what he’d just said was true. He’d just given form to the cankerous thought that had floated under the surface of those ingrained habits of respectability she’d clung to for so long.

  “Yes, well, at least I’m not wasting my talents doing someone else’s bidding,” she snapped.

  “Oh no?” He took another large step closer to her. “You don’t even know what your talents are.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Yes I do!”

  “Then what are they?” He loosened his arms, gesturing wildly.

  “I’m…” She stopped, clenching her jaw, mind racing. “I’m very good at…” It was all this blasted confinement, the restlessness and the helplessness. “I’ve always been an excellent…”

  “Don’t say cook,” he warned her. “Because I can assure you, you’re not.”

  Miranda froze, mouth open. Froze because her immediate reaction to his comment was to laugh. Not just a polite giggle either. He’d hit the nail right on the head, and in her addled state, she had no idea what to do. She could only stand there gaping. Maybe if she tore her own clothes off, then the rest would take care of itself.

  The air between them crackled as they stood just a few feet away from each other, no words remaining between them. Should she kiss him? Would that make things better? Or would it make them immeasurably worse? At least it would ease the relentless itching under her skin.

  Without warning, Randall let out a breath, shoulders sagging. He rubbed his hands over his face. “It’s the boredom,” he mumbled. Miranda wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or only himself. He growled as he scrubbed his face hard, then just as suddenly dropped his hands and
stared piercingly at her. “We’ve got to do something about this.”

  “We…do,” Miranda said, halfway between agreement and questioning.

  “We’re only jabbing at each other because we can’t do anything else. We can’t do what we want to do.”

  She was uncertain whether he meant because every task and chore in the saloon was already done or because the thing that they could have done to ease the tension was not strictly acceptable.

  He sighed again. “It needs to stop. I care about you and value your friendship far too much to continue this…”

  She would have given anything for him to finish his sentence. He cared about her? Valued her? Had anyone truly valued her before.

  “I don’t want to fight with you.” She spoke quietly, lowering her eyes and wringing her hands. “It doesn’t feel right. But then, nothing feels right anymore.” She lifted her eyes to meet his. “I want to…” If she couldn’t feel right, maybe she should just give in and do things that were very, very wrong. “I really want to…”

  He met and held her eyes as if he was having the same thoughts. The sizzle returned to the room. Lightning was about to strike, she could feel it.

  “I know what we need,” he said at last. With a burst of energy, he launched into motion, striding right past her.

  Miranda turned as he swept by and headed for the door and out into the hall. Was he trying to leave her? But no, that was physically impossible.

  “What do we need?” she called after him, but he was already gone.

  If Randall didn’t find a way to discharge the energy that had been building in him for the past few days as he and Miranda circled closer and closer, he would likely spend the rest of his life walking funny. He marched into the saloon proper, snatching a bottle of whiskey from behind the bar and a pack of playing cards from one of the tables in the corner. Days-worth of hovering in the scintillating space between respectability and notoriety had left him aching and exhausted. It was time to make a choice one way or another. But for that, they needed a little bit of social lubrication.

  “What do we need?” Miranda demanded, more than a little frazzled, as he stomped back into the apartment.

  Instead of answering, he plopped the bottle of whiskey on the table, followed by the deck of cards. “Poker. Five card stud is simplest.”

  Miranda blinked at the whiskey and the cards, then blinked at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “We’ve done all of the responsible, productive things there are to do in this building. There’s nothing left. We’ve done it all. It’s time we worked our way through all of the idle, irresponsible ones.”

  “With whiskey and cards?” She took a step closer to the table.

  “Do you know how to play poker?” he asked, pulling out a chair.

  Pink-faced, Miranda sat with him. “Uncle Buford taught me to play.”

  He nodded. “Have you ever had whiskey?”

  Her pinkness deepened. “I sampled some of what the saloon has in stock just to see what it tastes like when I first got here. But only just a little.”

  He nodded a second time, then set to work shuffling the cards. This idea of his was still unformed and half crazy, but if he didn’t do something with his hands and his mind…then he’d end up doing other things with his hands and his mind.

  Miranda watched him, perched anxiously on the edge of her chair, cheeks staying as pink as roses. “Will we…will we need glasses for the whiskey?”

  Randall shook his head. “We’ll drink out of the bottle.”

  She glanced from the bottle to him. “Both of us?”

  “Yep.”

  She just sat there in stunned silence, rippling with tension. The kind of tension that made him certain they were headed for a point of no return. That’s the only reason he could think of for her to have suddenly turned so peevish with him. She wanted what he wanted, and she wanted it bad. Now he needed something along the lines of a coin toss to figure out if he was going to give in and pull her along with him. He finished shuffling and dealt them each five cards, then set the deck to one side.

  They both picked up their cards. Randall’s hand was nothing impressive. But in all the poker games he’d played all throughout the country with all sorts of opponents, he’d learned that most poker hands weren’t impressive. The game was partially the luck of the draw, but more about bluffing the other guy. Or girl.

  Miranda arranged the cards in her hands with fingers that trembled just slightly. She licked her lips, squirmed in her seat. “Okay, I’m ready.” She met his eyes across the table. A moment later, her determined expression faltered. “Hold on, what are we playing for? We don’t have any chips. I could go fetch some from the saloon.” She started to put her cards face down on the table.

  “No,” he stopped her. “We’ll play for something else.”

  Her brow crinkled into a frown, all of her exasperation back. “What? Honestly, Randall, I have no idea what you’re thinking or what you’re aiming for right now.”

  A roguish grin pulled at the corners of his lips. “We’re playing to uncover the truth.”

  “What truth?” Her voice rose a few notes, grew stronger.

  “The truth of what’s going on here.”

  “What is going on here?” She grew more frustrated still.

  “The highest stakes you could possibly imagine.”

  She burst with a growl of frustration. “I swear to you, Randall Sinclair, if you don’t tell me what we’re playing this silly game for, then I’m going to march out into that snow, and believe me, I’m angry enough right now that I’d melt a path all the way down Main Street to the church!”

  His grin widened to a more genuine smile. He had no doubt that she would.

  “We’re playing to find out how we really feel about each other.” He tipped his hand…the metaphorical one, at least.

  “We’re…what?” She shook her head, puffing out a breath of frustration. But her eyes told him that she was fascinated with what they might find.

  Randall took hold of the whiskey bottle with one hand and moved it to the center of the table between them. “Every time we lose a hand, we take a drink.”

  Her brow flew up.

  “Some people call alcohol truth serum. The more you ingest, the more likely you are to say what’s in your heart.”

  She shook her head and waved the idea away with one hand. “I don’t need whiskey to say what’s in my heart.”

  “No?” He leaned closer to her across the table. “Prove it.”

  She pursed her lips and stared flatly at him. “I think you’re a very nice man—most of the time—and a fine friend, and I…I wish you lived here in Mistletoe.” She lowered her head, lashes fluttering.

  “Any stranger, any traveling salesman waltzing through the saloon right now, could see that much.” He set his cards down and grabbed the whiskey bottle to pull the cork out. It released with a pop.

  Miranda’s gaze jumped up to meet his, frown still in place. “Just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t true. I would have thought you’d be flattered that I’ve grown so fond of you so quickly.”

  “As I’ve grown fond of you.” He nodded, pointing the cork at her. “Really fond of you. But that’s just the point. People do things when they’re fond of one another. Men and women do things.”

  She broke eye contact with him, picking up her cards. “Now you’re beginning to sound like Starla or my Uncle Buford.”

  He wasn’t quite sure what, but something about her statement made him think he’d stumbled across the heart of the matter. “Why? What do Starla and your Uncle Buford sound like?” With only a brief pause, he went on with, “How many cards do you want?”

  “Three.” She took three cards out of her hand and put them on the table.

  Randall dealt her three from the deck and watched as her face twitched with excitement and thought. “I’m taking two.” He discarded two cards and took two more from the deck.

  Her gla
nce flickered up to meet his. “Now what do we do? We’re supposed to make bets and raise and hold and fold, but we’re not playing that way.”

  He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Simple poker, then. Do you stay or do you fold?”

  She peeked at her cards, then at him again. “I stay.”

  He nodded. “Me too. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  With an uncertain arch of her eyebrow, she set her cards down. The best she had was a pair of nines. Randall grinned with unexpected relief and laid down his pair of jacks. “I win.”

  A disappointed, then anxious look came over her. “So?”

  He nodded to the bottle. “So drink.”

  She stared at him for a long time, then reached for the bottle.

  “Remember, it’s clear glass, even if it’s tinted brown. So I can see if you fake it.”

  “I’m not going to fake taking a drink,” she informed him with haughty indignation, then lifted the bottle to her perfect, rosy lips.

  She tipped the bottle up, her throat rippled with a swallow, and then she nearly dropped the bottle as she was seized with a gasping, choking cough. Her eyes began to water.

  “Easy there.” Randle chuckled, his humor returning. “No need to lose and prove me right in one hand.”

  “What?” she choked. “Prove you right about what?”

  “About why you’re so twisted around the axle right now.”

  “I am not twisted around the axle.” Her voice and her breathing slowly returned to normal. She pushed the bottle back to the center of the table as Randall gathered the cards and shuffled for another hand.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said as he dealt them each five cards once more.

  She let out a breath, brushing her skirts under the table, then picked up her cards. “Honestly, Randall, I can’t keep track of any of your questions or your train of thought anymore.”

  He huffed a laugh. She was probably right about that. His mind was so clouded with boredom and anxiety and lust and the longing for an adventure different from any of the cockamamie schemes his father had sent him off on that he wasn’t sure he was making sense to himself.