“Take me home,” she said, then realized with a stab to her heart what she had said.
In spite of the fact that she would carry the name of Mrs. Joe Landon for a while, this lovely ranch would never be her home.
And just because she believed he was sincere in what he said tonight, that didn’t mean he would feel the same way three years from now.
Even though it broke her heart in a dozen ways, Joe would never truly be her husband.
Chapter Nine
She was leaving him and there was not a single damned thing he could do to prevent it.
It shouldn’t be a surprise. He’d agreed to her terms. Sure hadn’t been sincere in doing it, though. His hope had been that she would see his home, meet his family and then decide this was where she ought to be.
Hell, this was where she ought to be. It felt like corralling a cat getting her to see it that way, though.
Joe brushed a snowflake from his nose. The storm was coming in fast. They’d be lucky to make it back to the house before the snow was too dense to see through.
“What’s that down there on the path?” Mary asked. She’d slid over to the far side of the bench and it felt as though she’d already gone to Virginia. “It looks like a lantern.”
“It is.” It shouldn’t be, but there it was, bobbing up and down as though someone were carrying it past the barn toward the pasture. “Hold on tight.”
He snapped the whip over the horses’ ears. The sleigh jolted forward, the blades half slipping on the ice.
Within moments, the dependable team had delivered them to the paddock.
“Ma!” He tossed the reins to Mary, then leaped from the wagon before it had come to a full stop. “What’s wrong?”
Something had to be, to bring her out into the cold in the middle of the night.
“Oh, Joe!” She lifted her skirt and hurried toward him through the deepening curtain of white. “Maudie has gone to look for Santa!”
“How long ago?”
“I don’t know. It must have been some time ago, though. Clay woke me. Seems he wanted to go, too, but she told him she needed to go alone. I guess he stewed for a while before he came in to have me dress him proper so that he could follow her.”
“Why would she do such a thing?” Mary asked, scrambling down from the sled.
Joe knew why and he guessed Mary did, as well.
“According to Clay, she wants a mother sitting under the tree on Christmas morning.”
The stricken look on Mary’s face sliced his heart open. Still, there was no time for comforting.
“Send out the dog!” he called behind him on the run back to the sleigh.
How long had his little girl been gone? How long could she last in the storm?
He’d give his life to feel her warm little body in his arms right now, to see her smile...to hear her giggle.
In this awful moment, the ripping of his gut reaffirmed the one thing he knew to be true.
He would not love Maudie more had he implanted her seed, had he felt her move in her mother’s womb and heard her first cries.
Maudie was his daughter no matter how she had come to him.
* * *
Standing on the front porch, Mary shivered. She gazed past the snowfall and into the darkness beyond the barn until her eyes hurt. Where could a small child possibly go to keep warm?
No place, was where.
The front door hinges squeaked, sounding loud in the silent, aching night.
“Come inside, dear.” Cornelia slipped an arm about her waist and urged her back toward the warmth of the parlor.
“This is all my fault,” she admitted.
“It’s no more your fault than it is Santa Claus’s. Come now, before you catch your death.”
Like poor sweet Maudie? And like her Joe?
She knew him well enough to believe that he would not return until he found the child.
Once inside, the heat wrapped around her, but the comfort of it made her feel guilty. She ought to be out there looking along with Joe.
She went to the parlor window and, once again, began her vigil.
All of a sudden Cornelia was standing next to her, pressing a comforting cup of tea into her hand.
“Have faith, dear. Joe will find her. Now tell me, why do you think this is your fault?”
“Maudie wants a mother.”
“And don’t I see one standing here?”
Mary shook her head. How did she tell Cornelia, who was clearly a far better woman than she was, the truth?
“No...not really.” She set the tea aside and wrapped her arms about her middle. “The truth is, I married Joe so that he could adopt the children. The day after tomorrow...well, I’m leaving.”
“And yet you love my boy.” Tipping her head to one side, Joe’s mother considered her.
There was no way to answer that, so she stared hopelessly, silently, at the whirling snow.
“Mary.” She heard the clink when Cornelia set her cup down, felt the strength when the woman placed her hands on her shoulders and turned her. “Daughter, tell me why you feel that you need to leave a man who you obviously love?”
“Because I’m barren.” For a moment, she surprised herself, blurting that out, but as she thought about it, Cornelia might be the one person to understand.
“Of course you aren’t!” Joe’s mother’s expression softened, a wealth of compassion warming her eyes. “You’ve as fertile a heart as any I’ve seen. Surely you’ve noticed how the children look at you...and my son, well, he’s gone quite barmy.” Cornelia touched her cheek in the same way that Mary’s own mother would. “Oh, my dear, it takes more than the inability to carry a child to make one barren.”
“I believe that of you. It’s just that I do love Joe. I want better for him than an infertile wife.”
“Maybe it would be best to leave that decision up to him. But I understand how you feel.”
“I thought you might.”
“There was a time...oh, six years into my marriage, it had to have been, when I actually left my husband because I thought the same thing as you do now. He found me, of course, and set me straight. It was later that I came upon Joe...”
Cornelia was silent for a moment, her gaze distant while she smiled. No doubt she was reliving the moment she’d found him, the same as a woman might do when reliving the moment of giving birth to her infant.
“It was the best moment of my life,” she said at last. “Remember what the Good Book says, Mary? ‘And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ Hear me, child, it’s not giving birth...it’s giving love that counts.”
“I think I see something!” Mary went up on her toes, squinting her eyes as though it would make the objects moving toward the house more clear. “It’s Joe and the dog!”
She began to run for the door, but Cornelia constrained her.
“He’ll bring Maudie in just as quickly if you stay inside. Gather up those blankets and warm them by the fire while I get our girl something hot to drink.”
She dashed for the blankets while Cornelia rushed toward the kitchen.
“One more thing, Mary.” Cornelia paused in the kitchen doorway. “If you don’t mind an old woman’s preaching. I believe that with your barrenness, the good Lord gave you a gift...please think about what it might be before you leave us.”
With that, the front door burst open and Joe rushed in with Maudie in his arms, her lips pale and her skin blanched.
Chapter Ten
Mary spent all day, then into the evening, at Maudie’s bedside, warming and then replacing blankets. Even though the child’s temperature had been stable for a while now, she could not stop tucking freshly heated covers over the small mound in the bed.
She did this for her own sake, she reckoned, more than Maudie’s. Somehow she could not get the picture out of her head of Joe carrying the child inside, limp, unconscious.
She had been so still and cold, Mary hadn�
�t known if Maudie was even alive.
If it hadn’t been for Joe’s dogged determination to find her, she would not have been.
After such a long time outside, frost had turned his eyebrows white and stiffened the dark curls poking out from under his hat. It had taken a long time for him to quit shivering.
After all these hours, Maudie still had not regained consciousness. But at least her cheeks were pink. After changing the blanket one last time, Mary decided it might be safe to sit down on the chair beside the bed. The room was warm enough, with all the wood Joe had been feeding the fire.
How did other mothers get through this sort of thing? How did they—
Mary froze with her hand reaching toward Maudie’s cheek.
Other mothers? What had made her think that? She was not a mother, she was a temporary caregiver...she was only passing through Maudie’s life...
She was...hopelessly in love with the child.
She glanced at the chair beside the fireplace where Joe had fallen asleep, his legs stretched long and his arms crossed over his chest.
She was hopelessly in love with him, too.
Crossing the room, she stood beside his chair and watched him sleep. Poor man, he could only be exhausted.
If she didn’t think she would wake him, she would smooth the weary shadows under his eyes. She would bend over and kiss him, then curl up on his lap, rest her head on his chest and stay there forever.
Cornelia had told her to think about something...a gift that God had given her along with her affliction. She’d been so worried and so busy that she hadn’t given it a thought.
Now that she took a moment to reflect on things, she realized that the past several hours had revealed to her what the gift was. She didn’t need to think any further on it.
The greatest gift one could give a man was to love his children, whether they be of his body or of his heart...this was everything.
“I saw him,” Maudie said, her voice low, as though she might be talking in her sleep.
“Maudie.” Mary spun about, then rushed to the bedside. Kneeling on the floor, she stroked the small forehead and brushed the curls away from her face.
Apparently Joe sensed her movement. He rose from the chair with a lurch. It scraped backward across the wood floor.
He knelt down on the other side of the bed, placed his hand on Maudie’s head. When he did, his fingers covered Mary’s.
“We were so worried, sweeting. Why would you go out into the snow?” Joe asked.
“I needed to find Santa Claus.”
“He expects little girls to write letters to him,” Joe murmured.
“But I had to tell him I needed a ma.” Joe squeezed Mary’s hand. Clearly, he didn’t want her to feel that Maudie’s misadventure was her fault. It was, though. No display of absolution on Joe’s part would change that. “The boys already got what they wanted...and now I’m getting a ma.”
Maudie smiled, her expression showing complete confidence that what she said was fact.
“Santa can’t bring everything we ask for,” Joe said, his voice tight. No doubt he would give his daughter the world if he could.
“That’s what he said, too. But he did tell me he’s bringing me a ma. She’ll be sitting under the tree in the morning. There’s another surprise, too, but I’m not supposed to tell what it is even though he showed it to me.”
“I didn’t see Santa when I found you, love.”
“Well, Pa, he is magic. He just didn’t want you to see him ’cause you’re a grown-up.”
Mary looked at Joe and returned his smile, because who dared to argue with that?
* * *
The very moment that Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day, the snow clouds gave way to the moon. From his bedroom window, Joe watched the stars glittering like ice crystals.
Only six hours until Maudie’s faith would be crushed...until his own heart would be broken.
There would be no mother under the tree for his child. No lifelong love waiting for him with open arms.
He began to pace his room and kept at it for three hours, gathering the fortitude to face the situation with the courage that a father needed.
Come morning it would not be his broken heart that would be comforted, but his daughter’s.
Tomorrow, after he escorted Mary to the train, then he’d grieve.
Weary with pacing, with daybreak still hours away, he slumped into his fireside chair. He wondered if his mother was awake. Sometimes the excitement of Christmas left her wakeful. He ought to speak with her about Mary’s plans to leave. In all that had happened, he hadn’t had the opportunity.
Coming out of his bedroom, he tiptoed down the hall toward his mother’s room.
He paused at the head of the stairs. A lamp glowed dimly below. He’d been certain that he’d snuffed them all out when he’d come up.
It popped into his mind that perhaps Santa was below leaving Maudie’s mother under the tree. In spite of his melancholy, he laughed silently at the picture it presented in his head.
He wasn’t laughing a moment later, when from the bottom of the stairs, he saw Mary asleep, tucked halfway under the branches of the big pine.
Approaching slowly, he touched his chest to make sure his heart remained inside, because it felt as though it wanted to beat right past his ribs.
Did this mean...it had to, didn’t it? Why else would she be lying there wrapped in her red robe and looking like the gift he had been praying for?
He squatted beside her, noticing the tracks of tears on her cheeks. If she regretted making the decision to stay, if it didn’t make her happy, he wasn’t sure he could take it.
As much as he loved her and wanted her love in return, he couldn’t keep her here because she felt guilty over breaking a child’s heart.
For a long time he watched her breathe, the rise and fall of her chest, the way her hand curled under her cheek.
“Mary,” he whispered, not meaning to wake her, but only to feel the shape of her name on his lips...hold the sound, the feel of it close to his heart.
Her eyes blinked open, foggy with confusion.
Then she smiled, reached her hand up to him. He wrapped his fingers about hers, pressed their joined hands to his heart.
“Look Joe, Santa came.”
“For Maudie...or for me?” He had to know even though the answer might slay him.
She tugged him down, cupped his face in her hands.
“For Maudie for as long as she needs me...for you...forever. I love you, Joe. Merry Christmas.”
He rolled on top of her, feeling the lush shape of her beneath him.
“You sure, Mary?” He felt her sigh, but she was smiling, so hope soared. Still, he had to say the rest. “I don’t want you to make a decision you’ll regret. Your staying—is it only for them?”
Her arms looped about his neck and she drew him down for a kiss, but stopped short of their lips meeting. “It’s only for you.”
Then she kissed him and it was like being kissed for the first time. In a sense it was, since this was the first time it ever meant happily-ever-after.
“I love the children...you know I do,” she said while she nibbled at his lips. “But Joe, it’s you I want a future with. One day the little ones will be grown, gone to live lives of their own... I’ll still be here loving you.”
“Well, then, Merry Christmas to us.”
The children were sound asleep—he’d checked. His mother was probably dreaming of sugarplums. Not even a mouse was stirring.
“As a rule, I don’t peek at gifts.” He wondered if she noticed that his hand trembled when he tugged on the belt of her robe. “But you are the prettiest package I’ve ever been given.”
“And only held together by this one little bow,” she said, stroking his fingers as he untied the belt at her waist.
The tie unraveled. The robe was the only garment she had on. Merry Christmas indeed.
There ought to be something said in this mom
ent of ultimate commitment. The next hour would be as binding as the legal vows had been...more so, even.
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh...he ought to say something of that nature, but at the sight of Mary’s naked body, words failed. Must be because the blood had drained from his brain and settled elsewhere.
He dipped his head, tasted the ambrosia of breast, then nipple. While he might not be able to use his mouth to speak, he could still use it to communicate.
He tasted the hollow of her throat, nibbled up her neck, felt the beat of life pulsing under his lips.
Finding her mouth, he took her lips. They tasted sweet, even salty as she arched up and pressed herself to him.
He drew back, looked into her eyes.
“Why were you crying, love?” His voice returned but his heart constricted. “You and I, we’ve found a miracle.”
“That’s exactly why. I never expected—” Her voice wavered. He flicked away a fresh tear with his thumb. “To be touched in this way.”
“Like this, you mean?”
To demonstrate, he traced a slow line down her belly with his finger. The hot, moist core of her femininity closed about his thumb. Her hips lifted to his stroke, shyly, but true to nature’s urging.
“Not in a million years,” she gasped.
“Expect it for a lifetime.” With a slow stroke and circle of his finger, he drew a throaty moan from her.
“I never expected to see a man naked, either,” she whispered, half-breathless. “Take off your clothes, husband.”
He couldn’t remember the motions of doing it, but all of a sudden his pants, shirt and everything else were gone. He only hoped that come morning, they wouldn’t find his red underwear at the top of the Christmas tree.
Cool air washed over his back. Mary smoothed her hands along his spine, over his backside, then his thighs where they braced on either side of her hips. The heat of her palms vanquished the goose pimples pebbling his flesh.
He dipped his head, taking her breast in his mouth, suckling and pulling as he entered her.
When she clenched about him, when he spilled within her, it was him who had tears in his eyes.
Lying on top of her, moisture dripped onto her chest.
Dreaming of a Western Christmas: His Christmas BelleThe Cowboy of Christmas PastSnowbound with the Cowboy Page 26