A Texas Christmas

by Thomas, Jodi Jodi Thomas

  For friends, she had also picked up a list of merchandise meant to be used for the Christmas holiday. She couldn’t let them down. Her friends in Kasota Springs weren’t all that many, and disappointing them didn’t set well with her. Anna flicked the reins and set her jaw to the task, giving the dog a quick wink. “Got to get these presents home, don’t we, Jack? If Saint Nick can do it, so can we . . . huh, boy?”

  Jack barked, making her laugh and easing some of the tension that gripped her. Jack might be all of five pounds, his head bigger than the rest of him, but he had the heart of a longhorn.

  “You make one scrawny-looking reindeer, and I suppose with my red nose,” she wiggled her nose trying to keep it from feeling so numb, “I could probably lead the team in the night sky. Do you think Santa would go for that, boy?”

  Jack barked again, this time louder and with more intensity. Suddenly it became a continuous yapping that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He sprang to all four feet, then sailed off the wagon seat and into the air as if he were a bird taking flight.

  “Jack, come back!” she yelled, jerking the team to a grounding halt. “You’ll kill yourself out there!”

  She could barely secure the reins and jump down herself before she lost sight of his tiny body bouncing through the drifts like some kind of crazed jackrabbit.

  Anna thumbed up her slouch hat just enough to see better where he was headed. A lone tree in the distance seemed to be her pet’s intended destination. Of all times for him to need to relieve himself. Jack wouldn’t hike his leg to mark his territory anywhere it was cold and didn’t have plenty of bark. Leave it to him to find the only tree for a hundred miles.

  She chased after him, fearing he would land in some high drift and be unable to bounce his way out. Thankfully, she’d worn a riding skirt for the return journey home, so her legs weren’t as encumbered as they might have been. Still, they were getting colder by the minute as she trudged her way across the prairie after him. Good thing the dog had legs the size of buttonholes, or she’d never catch him. “Fool dog. When I get hold of you, I’m going to strap reins around you and make you lead the . . .”

  The exaggerated threat died in her throat as she caught sight of the heap of snow where Jack had stopped, yards away from the tree, still yapping away. A horse lay on its side, its feet hobbled. Frosty air billowed from its nostrils with every breath. The snow around it was stained with blood. A whinny erupted from its throat and dark eyes stared at Anna as if asking for help.

  “Be quiet, Jack. He’s scared,” she instructed, trying to take measure of the animal’s injuries but, from this distance away, not finding any clue of why it was bleeding. A closer look would help if the horse would let her. “Move away, Jack. Let me see why he’s down.”

  The tiny dog would not budge but quit yapping. Then Jack did something totally out of character. He stuck his nose in the snow and started digging. Jack hated cold. Sometimes shivered on even a warm day. Something under that drift of bloodstained snow near the horse had the dog’s full attention.

  All of a sudden the drift moved. Jack began to whine and dig more. A man’s bloody hand reached out, patted the dog, then fell back down and lay perfectly still.

  Jack hiked his leg and peed on the man, marking his find.

  “Oh my Lord.” Anna bounced forward in the snow to reach the stranger’s side and started brushing the snow away from him. How long had he been out here? How much blood had he lost? “Mister, can you hear me? Can you stand? How bad are you hurt?”

  Her battery of questions was met with a groan and a shake of his head, but he managed to sit up just enough to brace his body with one palm. “My hand,” he said in an accent that sounded from back East. “I cut my hand when I was trying to free the roan from the hobble.” He shook his head, as if trying to gather his wits. “Don’t know how much blood I lost. Must have gotten dizzy and lost consciousness.”

  He wasn’t a line rider from the XIT, as she first suspected. The men who rode each twenty-five-mile stretch that made up the two-hundred-mile cattle fence would have greater skills than this man. They wouldn’t have been so careless.

  She took off the bandanna she wore around her neck and tied a makeshift tourniquet over the cut, stemming the flow. Anna reached out and raised the stranger’s beardless chin, urging him to look up at her. Eyes the color of fine whiskey stared back at her, slightly glazed and surrounded by a forest of dark lashes. Though he was pale from being out in the elements too long with no coat and no gloves, his strong jaw and solid cheekbones carved his features handsomely. She had to force herself to look at his hand to keep from staring too intently at his face.

  This was no time for the heat of attraction that instantly ignited in her bloodstream and raced to quell the chill bumps that had frosted her skin for hours now. The man was hurt. She needed to get all of them to safety. “Can you walk by yourself?”

  He nodded. “I think so. But first . . .” He motioned toward the horse. “Can you see if he can? I can’t let him die out here. It would be my fault.”

  Anna moved to the roan and took a good look at the hobble. The beast had almost chewed it in half trying to finish the job the stranger had started with the knife. They must have been out here quite a while for the animal to have taken ground.

  “Where’s your knife?” she asked, looking around the snow but not finding it.

  “It’s got to be somewhere close by. I passed out almost immediately from the cut.” He carefully brushed at the snow around him. “The sight of blood and I don’t mix well.”

  That fact relieved Anna somewhat. Maybe he had merely been out for minutes. Maybe he was stronger than his pale face promised. Maybe he hadn’t lost so much blood that she could still get him to safety in time. She couldn’t be sure how tall he was until he stood, but she had to make sure he could stand on his own. Getting him, the horse, Jack, and herself back to the team was going to be hard enough without her having to carry him.

  “If you don’t mind getting my spectacles out of the saddlebags,” the man requested, “I’ll be more help trying to find the knife. Or maybe we can use one of the other tools in the bag.”

  Anna moved toward the saddlebags, whispering low words of reassurance to the roan that she didn’t mean him any harm. “Better hope your luck is improving, mister. If they’re not on this side of the bags, you can forget about those spectacles. They’ll be crushed beneath all that weight. Why aren’t you wearing them anyway?”

  “I should have been but made an unfortunate choice. Still . . . my luck’s already improved. You came along. They’ll be all right.”

  Anna searched through the bag and found an odd assortment of tools and, sure enough, the spectacles and some gloves. A long coat was rolled up behind the saddlebags. She grabbed it as well.

  When she offered him the spectacles, he lifted his injured hand. “Would you mind putting them on me? I’m not sure I could do it at the moment and not get blood all over them. My hands are awfully cold.”

  She opened the wire frames and carefully slid them over his ears, intimately aware of how close their faces were now so she could make sure she didn’t stick the frames inside his ear instead of over them. Their breaths mingled in a frosty dance and she had to gulp hers back when a glorious smile stretched across his lips. Yes, lips, jaw, cheeks, and pearly white teeth all added up to one fine-looking stranger.

  “Thank you,” those lips said, offering his gratitude.

  “You’re welcome,” hers replied while Anna’s mind tried to think of something to focus on other than the way his mouth moved. “How about the gloves? You want me to put at least one on you? I don’t imagine you can fit one over that hand.”

  Whiskey-colored eyes darted to stare at the blood-soaked bandanna. All of a sudden the stranger’s grin sank into a grim line.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded, watching what little color he had drain from his face.

  “Excuse me a moment, miss. I think I’m going to pass ou
t again.”

  And he did.

  Chapter 2

  The amount of time and effort it had taken to get the horse on its feet, help the weakened man mount the roan, trudge their way back to the team, tie off the horse behind the wagon, and situate the stranger safely on the driver’s seat so he wouldn’t fall had almost proven Anna’s undoing. She was so exhausted she could barely hold the reins.

  But there was no time for exhaustion. The harder the team plowed through the snow, the more Anna realized that they could not possibly make it back to Kasota Springs in time. That meant they were going to have to take shelter somewhere before they found town. But where?

  The tarpaulin that covered the whiskey cases and merchandise wouldn’t be enough to provide any kind of relief from a blizzard. She couldn’t use it for a makeshift tent. They’d freeze to death. She remembered one of her saloon patrons telling of a line rider caught out in last January’s blizzard who had cut open the bowels of a beef and climbed inside the carcass to stay alive. She’d do that if she had to, but the prospect of taking an animal’s life to save her own would be her last choice. There had to be another way.

  It was difficult to tell just exactly where they were along the road to Kasota unless she caught sight of something familiar in the distance. Piling drifts and blowing gusts made everything impossible to distinguish in the blinding fury of the storm. She’d thought she heard the train whistle once but couldn’t have been sure it wasn’t the wind misleading her. All Anna could do was keep the team moving as long as it would and pray it was headed the right way. Snow obliterated the rutted road in front of her, leaving nothing but a swirling white sheen.

  The stranger shifted next to her, his head leaning against her shoulder as he slept. Only Jack’s body shivering between them beneath the lap blanket they shared kept the man from any closer touch. At least she knew how tall he was now. He had to lean a considerable few inches to lie against her. At five feet, eight inches, she was taller than most women.

  “I don’t even know your name,” she said, not realizing she spoke her thought aloud.

  “James Elliott the Third. Yours?”

  He was awake! She almost wished that if they were meant to meet their Maker today, he could have drifted off to gentle sleep and never known any more suffering than a cut hand. Her only consolation was that, at least now, they wouldn’t die without knowing each other’s names. “Anna Ross.”

  “Very glad to meet you, Miss Ross . . . or is it Mrs.?” His head lifted from her shoulder at the prospect. “I do apologize. I must have dozed.”

  “It’s Miss, and you were exhausted,” she reminded, taking no offense at his closeness. “I’m glad you could rest. You may need your strength.”

  “The storm’s worsened.”

  “Quite a bit, but we seem to be staying ahead of it slightly. I’m hoping it veers off a little before we get where we’re going. At least give us a little time to get inside somewhere.” She did her best to reassure him. “I’ve seen storms bull their way for hours then, all of a sudden, turn gentle as a lamb. Let’s pray this particular temper tantrum is almost over.”

  His body shifted into a rigid alertness that hadn’t been there moments before. “May I help with the reins?”

  “Not with that hand you won’t, but thank you for offering.” She wished he could have. Her arms and shoulders were so tense from gripping the reins that she felt as if she’d tumbled down a cliff and somehow survived.

  “Then what can I do? I must be of some help.”

  Anna nodded. “Keep watch for something, anything that might tell us where we are. With the snow so deep now, I’m not sure we’re even on the road anymore.”

  “I’m new to the area,” he informed her, “as you can probably tell. Any clues as to what I should be seeing?”

  “A ranch house is what I’m hoping for. Maybe the train tracks that would at least tell me we’re close to the road. I could follow those all the way into town.” She didn’t say they probably wouldn’t make it that far in time. “Do you think you could turn around and open one of those crates?” She started to say without hurting yourself again, then thought better of it. No reason to die mean-mouthed.

  He managed to accomplish the task.

  “Now reach inside and get one of the bottles.”

  “Whiskey?” He shifted back around and held the bottle in his uninjured hand. “So that’s the tinkling I heard in my sleep. Bottles clicking together.”

  His chuckle filled the space between them, delighting Anna. She liked the sound of it, deep-throated and unrestrained. His laughter was contagious, making her smile. “What’s so funny?”

  “I kept hearing the creaking of the reins and wagon tethers, combined with those tinkling bottles. I dreamed Santa was taking me for a ride on his sleigh.”

  The old German story of the toymaker Nicholas Klaus and his wife who had delivered toys to the children of their town sprang into Anna’s mind. She started to laugh at the Third’s joke . . . What was his name? She was so bad with names. Hell, she’d just call him Trey. But the reality of how that story had ended made her smile fade.

  Klaus and his wife had died in a blizzard.

  “Open that bottle and hold it up to my lips,” she instructed him. “I need a drink and I don’t want to let go of the reins.”

  He did as told and she took a long draw. The whiskey burned like liquid fire going down but, chilled as it was, the liquor warmed her to the frosty tip of her nose. “Now you take one. It’ll help some with the cold.”

  He didn’t bother to wipe the rim before he took a swig, and she wondered if he could taste anything about her. The thought of tasting him made Anna want him to hurry with the bottle so she could have another go at it. When his tongue flicked out to lick the drops that stained his lips, she almost let go of the reins and jerked the bottle from his hands.

  “Easy, Miss Ross,” he warned, holding the bottle to her lips again. “Slower is better, don’t you think? We wouldn’t want to put ourselves in any danger here.”

  Were they talking sips or something else? Whoo-howdy, but she was getting warmer by the minute. And the taste of him was definitely on the bottle. Pure scrumptiousness. Liquid lust. Man, muscles, and something else uniquely the Third that she decided she would check out a little deeper if they lived through the storm.

  Anna girl, answer the man. “Frankly, slow never got me anywhere.” She met his gaze directly. “In my experience, the faster done, the less it’s gonna hurt.”

  Trey was gentleman enough to busy himself with another drink and not ask what she meant.

  James was surprised to discover what fast friends he and Anna became. Perhaps it was merely the amount of whiskey the two of them had shared in the past few hours. Maybe it was the fact that they both thought they might be living their last moments on earth and didn’t want to die with a stranger. She might not admit it, but he could see it in her face when she thought he wasn’t watching. He could hear it in the way she kept trying to find humor in their situation and joked about it. He hoped their friendship was more than their circumstances and the fact that both of them were tipsy, but he would take whatever had spurred on their need to become more than strangers.

  He never thought himself much of a talker but, apparently, Anna set him at ease like no other person in his life ever had. He always felt so on guard, so cautious of revealing anything about himself that might make him sound less than others. Mr. Must-Be-Perfect, he was, so he could prove his worth to those who had taken him in. So he could thank them for taking in the discarded.

  That’s why he had enjoyed himself here in Texas this past ten months. He was alone where no one knew him. Where he didn’t have to live up to the expectations of being an Elliott. He could make a mistake and it didn’t matter. He could discover his real self while he searched for the one thing that would, indeed, make him extraordinary among his adopted, well-accomplished family.

  The pink bluebonnet. He had almost forgotten abou
t his search. He’d been so intrigued with learning about Anna that he realized his search for the rosettes would now have to wait until the blizzard passed and possibly till spring.

  Just how much of himself had he told her? He couldn’t quite remember. Certainly not the fact that he’d been abandoned as a boy, or his need to prove himself to himself. The Elliotts loved him. He knew that in his heart. But he didn’t know if he was worth that love. How could he? All he knew was that he had been a very lucky boy found on the streets and taken in by good-hearted people. What kind of man didn’t know who he was? Have some sense of his own worth? He needed to prove himself worthy in some way and Anna, from what he could tell, was a woman of great confidence. She might laugh at his great secret. He had definitely not proven himself anything but a greenhorn to her.

  She seemed to be an amazing woman. She made her own living and had the knack to easily draw someone into trusting her. Anna could drive a team and wasn’t afraid to journey alone for her own supplies. She’d adeptly rescued him and his horse and maintained a calm certainty that they would survive their dour circumstances. James had always heard Texans had great bravado and tremendous strength of character, but he’d thought they were talking of their heroes. Now he could see that even their “ordinary” women were heroines in their own right.

  His own great wish in life was to be extraordinary in some way. Maybe if they survived the storm, he would trust his secret with her. Maybe, if he knew her enough, she would help him discover how to become more than what he was. Maybe, he chuckled inwardly, he could become half the man she seemed to be. For now, he would settle for more simple conversation.

  “You got awful quiet for a minute there, Trey.” Anna broke into his thoughts. “You’re not going to sleep again, are you? I need you to keep watching ahead.”

  “I’m awake. Just thinking.” James studied the distance and decided he needed to wipe off his spectacles again. He took them off his face and rubbed the snow from the glass. “My spectacles keep frosting up.”