Millie Criswell, Mary McBride, Liz Ireland

by A Western Family Christmas Christmas Eve; Season of Bounty; Cowboy Scrooge

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I traded my gold watch to old man Davidson for this lumber. You don’t owe him a penny for it, and don’t let him try to tell you any different.”

  “No. Not that.” She waved her hand like a teacher erasing a cuss word from a blackboard, a woman trying to erase words she didn’t want to hear from the air in front of her face. “What do you mean, you’re leaving?”

  Will forced the most engaging smile he could. “It’s time to move on to greener pastures, Matty. Or maybe I should say greener pockets. You haven’t forgotten I’m a gambler, have you?”

  “No. Of course, I haven’t forgotten,” she snapped. “How could I forget?”

  Annoyance flared in her eyes for a second, but then her expression changed to one Will had never seen before and her blue eyes brimmed with tears even as she began to laugh. Or cry. He couldn’t tell exactly what she was doing.

  “And here I was going to fire you this morning,” she managed to say. “Only now I won’t have that satisfaction.”

  “Fire me!”

  Unable to speak now for the chuckles or sobs or whatever the hell they were, she just nodded her head.

  Fire him! Why the devil would she do that? What had he done but help her here in this den of disorganization, this mercantile mess? Fire him! He’d been invited to leave gaming parlors, sometimes politely and sometimes not so politely. He’d even been escorted to the city limits once. That was back in Joplin, Missouri, as he recalled. But nobody had ever fired him.

  Didn’t she hear him say he’d traded his goddamn watch for the lumber her precious Charlie was too cheap to buy? Couldn’t she see he’d do anything for her, including walk away?

  “Why the devil were you going to fire me?” he shouted.

  Matty was wiping away tears now and dabbing a hankie at her wet nose. “It really doesn’t matter now, does it? You’re leaving.” She glared at him, the moisture in her eyes nearly boiling. “I knew you wouldn’t last till Christmas.”

  “You knew that, did you?” Will kicked a board out of his way, then crossed the room in a few long strides and grabbed her by the shoulders. But all of a sudden, just touching her drained the anger from him. Instead of shouting at her, he whispered roughly, “Matty, don’t you know I’d stay here for a thousand Christmasses if you were free? Don’t you know I’d stay forever if you didn’t belong to another man.”

  She made a tiny gulping sound as her wet gaze flicked up to meet his. She knew! She felt the same way Will did. God help him, he could see it shining there, like a treasure of diamonds in her eyes.

  His heart slowed ponderously. Had Caroline looked at Matthew this way? he wondered. For a painful moment, Will almost sympathized with his brother and very nearly forgave him. Perhaps to deny these feelings was a sin far worse than any other. Surely being in hell for loving Matty would be the closest to heaven he’d ever get. He had one foot in brimstone already, but he’d be damned if he’d take this beautiful woman with him.

  He traced a finger down her soft, moist cheek while he slid a hand beneath her hair and curved it around her neck. Her pulse leaped beneath his thumb like a spark that could so easily set him on fire if he allowed it.

  “One kiss, Matty, my love,” he whispered. “Just one. For goodbye.”

  Hello or goodbye, right or wrong, sweetest of blessings or blackest of sins, Matty might have let Will Cade kiss her forever if the front door hadn’t opened just then and Lottie Crane’s cheerfully raucous voice hadn’t boomed out, “Good morning, all!”

  Will breathed a soft curse against her lips before he pulled away and then stepped back from her so fast that Matty felt a rush of cold air slice between them, one that seemed to penetrate all the way to her hammering heart. The fact that he felt compelled to protect her reputation made it hurt all the more.

  “Morning,” Will said, sounding almost like his affable self again as he returned to his shelves. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Crane? How’s young Hamuel today?”

  If Lottie had witnessed their illicit kiss, she wasn’t letting on. She gazed at Will as soulfully as always when she answered, “My sweet boy’s doing just fine, thanks to you, Will. And don’t you dare ask what you can do for me. Why, I sat up half last night wondering what I could do for you to show my gratitude.”

  For her part, Matty didn’t know whether she felt furious or grateful, or whether this silly woman had just robbed her of heaven or rescued her from perdition. Both, she supposed.

  She took off her cloak, shook it and gave a little sniff. “Well, if you’re going to do something for Will, you’d best do it fast, Lottie, because he’s leaving today.”

  The woman’s face went pale except for her plump pink cheeks. Her little brown eyes rounded in distress. “Today! Oh, no! You can’t do that, Will. You just can’t! Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving Day! I’ve come to invite you to dinner.”

  Brushing past Lottie, Matty slung her cloak on the hook on the front door. Thanksgiving! She’d completely forgotten about the holiday, but why should that surprise her? What on earth did she have to be thankful for? Will’s imminent departure? Freedom from sweet temptation? The aching heart she undeniably deserved? A kiss goodbye? Right now, with the taste of Will’s kiss still on her lips, she felt churlishly ungrateful.

  On the other side of the counter, the gambler was making polite, deferential noises about why he couldn’t accept Lottie’s very kind and generous invitation, but Lottie was having none of it.

  “Oh, but you must come,” she insisted. “I’m cooking two turkeys, a ham, a huge roast of beef and three kinds of pie. There’s enough food for a cavalry troop. Matty, you must come, too. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  “Yeah, and don’t forget good old Charlie,” Will said, the affability gone from his tone and the honey in his voice suddenly turned to vinegar. “Hell, if anybody in this town appreciates a free meal, I’m sure it’s Charlie Favor.”

  Lottie stood there looking confused all of a sudden, as if Will had just been speaking in Chinese. Matty wished he had been speaking in some foreign language or that Lottie had gone instantly deaf.

  “Charlie Favor?” the woman exclaimed. “Did I hear you right, Will? Did you say Charlie Favor?” She turned toward Matty then, shook her head, and said, “Oh, Lord, you’re not still going on about him, are you?”

  “Never mind that,” Matty snapped. “I’ll come to dinner. What time? Five? Six? Just tell me when.”

  “Whoa now.” Will came around the counter. “Wait just a minute here. Still going on about him? What do you mean, Lottie?”

  Lottie was still looking at Matty with an expression that wavered between veiled disgust and undisguised pity while she shook her head slowly back and forth.

  “I had no idea,” she said. “I thought…well, I thought you were better, Matty. Truly 1 did. Everybody in town thought so.”

  Matty knew that look although she hadn’t witnessed it in a long time. Oh, how she knew that look. Poor Matty, Poor, daft Matty. And she knew that “poor thing” tone of voice, too. As always, it made her see bloodred.

  “I don’t care what you or anybody else thought, Lottie Crane,” she snapped. “And you can just stop looking at me that way. Right now. If you’re here to make a purchase, do it. Otherwise—” Matty stabbed a finger in the direction of the door “—get out. Go on. And don’t come back, either. Do you hear me? You or those two ungovernable young savages of yours.”

  Lottie’s jaw, which had gone rather slack during Matty’s tirade, snapped shut, but not for nearly long enough. The woman opened her mouth to draw in a shocked and aggrieved breath, and then she let it out in a torrent of words punctuated by flashing eyes, jabbing fingers and flecks of spittle.

  “I wouldn’t come back here if you were selling everything for a penny! Not even if you were paying customers to take your ratty merchandise away! And as for you…you ought to be carted off to an asylum, Matty Favor, and locked away till the end of your days. It’s downright
crazy, talking to a ghost the way you do and making believe he’s alive! Why, it’s just not natural! Consulting a corpse! The very idea!”

  Lottie’s face had gone a frightening purple, forcing her to drag in a deep gulp of air before she could continue. “If you ask me, I bet there never was any

  Charlie Favor, dead or alive. The man never existed anywhere but in your addled head. I think you made him up when you came to town just so nobody would take you for what you really are. A dried-up old spinster. “

  Matty felt her own face flaming all the way up to the roots of her hair. Her hands were fisted at her sides, and it was all she could do not to pull out Lottie’s tongue and tie it around the woman’s neck.

  “Get out of my store,” she told her.

  Lottie sniffed, lifted her meaty chin and narrowed her eyes. “I guess I know why you’re so eager to be alone here. I guess I know what’s on your mind. If I was a dried-up old prune of a spinster, I’d want to keep Will all to myself, too. I saw you kissing him, by the way. You should be ashamed of yourself, Matty.” She snorted now. “Why, whatever would your precious Charlie say?”

  Matty was shaking. “Get out!” she shrieked. “Get out and don’t you dare come back. Ever.”

  “With pleasure.”

  The floorboards quaked as the big woman stomped toward the door, and when Matty slammed it behind her, the penny candy rattled inside the glass jars on the counter.

  She stood there a moment, watching her cloak sway on the back of the door through a hot sheen of tears. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t! Dried up, maybe, and getting lonelier and very likely loonier by the year, but she wasn’t a spinster and she…

  Somewhere behind her she heard the soft clearing of a throat. Will! Matty had completely forgotten he was here to bear witness to her anger and humiliation.

  She whirled around, ready to lash out at him, too. No doubt he’d gotten a real kick out of the spectacle she’d just made of herself. This was better than the circus! Will Cade—damn his handsome hide—was probably trying not to laugh his head off.

  The look on his face was pretty much what Matty had expected. His head was cocked to one side, and there was a glitter of amusement in his green eyes while the corners of his mouth were toying with a grin. It made her furious and sad all at once, although it was the fury that got the better of her.

  “Well, go on if you’re going,” she said, swiping with both hands at the hot tears she couldn’t hold back any longer. “Go on like you planned. Get out of here.”

  Damn the man. He didn’t move a muscle, but just kept smiling at her that way.

  “I said get out,” she shrieked.

  “Tell me about Charlie,” he said, his voice as slow as molasses and sweeter than a Southern breeze.

  “There’s nothing to tell.” Matty whisked past him to take up her customary place behind the counter, feeling safer there somehow with three feet of wood between them. Safer, perhaps, but no less angry. “You heard what Lottie said. I’m a crazy person. A crazy, dried-up, prune of woman who should be locked up somewhere. She’s probably right. Anyway, it’s none of your business. You’re leaving, remember? Goodbye, Will.”

  Still, he didn’t move, but stood there grinning as if he were half crazy, too.

  “I believe I’ll stick around a while, Matty,” he said. “If that’s all right with you.”

  Chapter Six

  That it wasn’t all right with Matty didn’t come as a total surprise to Will. Lottie Crane hadn’t left her victim with much more than a few ounces of dignity and a shred or two of pride this morning, but the little redhead summoned up every one of those to lift a big glass jar of horehound candy and throw it halfway across the mercantile, just missing him by inches.

  “Get out!” she screamed, following up the horehound jar with containers of lemon drops and peppermint sticks.

  It was when she hurled her metal cash box at him that Will truly appreciated her distress. Standing in a sea of candy and coins and broken glass, he finally forced himself to wipe the grin from his face. It wasn’t an easy task, considering his elation.

  There was no Charlie Favor! Matty wasn’t married after all. She was free! Dear God, Will had almost leaped over the counter and kissed Lottie Crane’s red, ferocious face this morning when the woman had bellowed the astonishing news. Will couldn’t help but think that if Lottie had come into the mercantile just half an hour later, he would already have left town, never to learn that no one stood between him and the woman he so desired.

  Well, except for Matty herself.

  “Get out,” she screamed again, looking around for something else to hurl in his direction. “I mean it, Will.”

  He didn’t think she was crazy. Will would have bet his life on that. He’d seen demented people, mostly in the war, and Matty just didn’t fit in that same sad and misunderstood category. The crazy people he had encountered were either wildly agitated for no apparent reason, or they were motionless and mute as stones.

  Matty was agitated, no doubt about that, but she seemed to have her reasons. So, if she wasn’t crazy, what exactly was she, he wondered, other than beautiful and all of a sudden decidedly and deliciously unattached?

  On the other hand, it struck Will as quite possible, even highly probable, that he might be the crazy one for deciding to linger here in Ellsworth rather than move on in search of his wife stealing brother. His longtime pursuit of revenge, it seemed, had taken a sudden back seat to the pursuit of other, less bloodthirsty, but equally strong emotions.

  He wanted her. Here. Now. He wanted her more than he’d ever wanted a woman before. He wanted to turn the lock on the mercantile’s front door, sling Matty over his shoulder, carry her up the stairs to the bleak little attic, and then make love to her the way he’d dreamed of time and again. Sane. Crazy. It didn’t matter now that he knew she was free. Whether he was worthy of her wasn’t something he even wanted to consider at the moment while his body was nearly shaking with need. In an effort to control himself, he bent to begin extracting nickels and dimes from the broken glass and candies on the floor.

  “Don’t touch my money,” Matty said fiercely. She was beside him now, flourishing a broom. “Stop it, Will. I mean it. I want you out of here right now. I don’t need your help anymore. I don’t need anybody’s help.”

  To emphasize her point, she swatted him with the straw bristles. “And I especially don’t need you smirking at me.”

  “That wasn’t a smirk, Matty,” he said, dropping a handful of coins into the cash box while trying to deflect the relentless broom. “That was a smile of anticipation.”

  “Just what is it you’re anticipating?” She gave a less than dignified snort. “That I’ll start foaming at the mouth like any decent crazy woman should?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Will dropped a few more coins into the cash box, then stood, deliberately towering over Matty as he took the broom from her hands and let it fall to the floor. Then, before she could protest, he pulled her into his arms.

  “I was anticipating something more like this.”

  Will lowered his head and kissed Matty the way he’d been longing to do ever since laying eyes on her. A while ago he had kissed her goodbye, believing he’d never see her again. Now he was saying hello with a kiss meant just as much to ignite her as to claim her.

  He sampled the sweet warmth of her tongue and tested the soft give of her lips with his teeth, and the more he tasted her, the more he wanted her, the more urgent was his need to have her completely.

  Matty’s response was nearly as fierce as his. If she was crazy, then Will thanked God for her dementia. Her tongue met his almost feverishly while her body pressed against him, closer and closer, until he was forced to widen his stance in order to stay on his feet.

  Then it was Matty who moaned in protest when he finally broke the kiss.

  “I wanted you the moment I laid eyes on you, Matty,” he whispered, taking her lovely, flushed face in both his hands. “
I thought it was impossible. I was going to leave town before I made sinners of us both.

  But now…”

  He smiled as he kissed her shining eyes and the sweet shape of her nose. He skimmed his lips across her soft cheeks and teased the corners of her eager mouth again. “Now there’s no Charlie. Now you’re free, my love. There’s nobody, nothing keeping us apart. Let me stay, Matty. Let me love you. Everything’s different now.”

  ‘No, it isn’t,” she said, biting her lips and blinking back the tears that were gathering again in her eyes. “You don’t understand, Will. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s different. I shouldn’t have kissed you that way. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “What are you saying?”

  “It’s Charlie.”

  “Charlie!” He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, wanting to shake her in his frustration. “What the hell does he have to do with us? I thought the man was dead.”

  “He is dead, but that doesn’t make any difference.”

  Will clenched his teeth, seeking the patience he didn’t feel at the moment and making a conscious, even hard-won, effort not to exclaim “Are you crazy?”

  Matty stood before him looking as earnest as she was lovely while she searched for the proper words. He sensed that whatever she was about to tell him, she meant with all her heart, perhaps with all her soul as well.

  “Why doesn’t it make a difference?” he finally asked, taking her trembling hands in his. “Tell me.”

  Despite the tears in her eyes, her voice was unwavering when she replied. “Because dead or alive, Charlie Favor’s the only dependable thing in my life. Because he’s a good man and I trust him completely.” She shook her head sadly, then added, “Most of all, I trust him to stay. I don’t care if he is a ghost or a figment inside my head. I won’t betray him. I won’t. Because long after you’ve moved on, Will Cade, my Charlie will still be here with me.”

  “Matty, I…” Will started to argue, then realized there was nothing he could say. He wasn’t a good man anymore, but he had a shred or two of decency left, and as much as he wanted Matty, he couldn’t lie to her and promise that he’d stay.