Christmas with My Cowboy

by Diana Palmer

  She grimaced. “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought the same thing, Travis. But it’s real. We’re real.” She held out the set of rings to him. “Slip the engagement ring on my finger?”

  “With pleasure.” He eased the emerald encrusted ring out of the box. “This is platinum, by the way. Maud has a jeweler in New York City and I went to her a week ago, asking her if a woman could have emeralds for a wedding ring instead of diamonds.” He slid the ring on her finger. It went easily, as if always meant for her hand. “She laughed and said yes, took me to her jeweler’s website and showed me several wedding ring sets. When I saw this one? I knew it was for you.” He lifted her hand, pressing a kiss to the back of it and then releasing it. “You look beautiful wearing it, Kass.”

  Disbelievingly, she held it up to the row of lights above them. “They are so gorgeous, Travis. Yes, I love them!” She turned, kissing him long and hard, letting him know how happy she was.

  Snuggling with him, Kass laid her head on his shoulder, content as never before. “This has been just the best Christmas of my life, Travis. And it’s because of you.”

  “I feel the same way, Darling.” He slid his fingers through her strands, revealing her temple and ear. “We’ve got a long way to go, but I’ve never been more hopeful than with you at my side.”

  Sighing, she whispered, “Happy New Year, Travis. Maybe by next New Year, we might be welcoming our child into our lives.”

  He nodded, kissing her brow. “I’d like that, Kass, and I know you would, too.”

  “First,” she said, laughing a little, “we have to get married!”

  “Let’s go to bed and talk about that.”

  She gave him a teasing look, easing out of his arms and standing before him. “Come on, cowboy, let’s get a nice, hot shower together and then race one another to the bed. Last one in is a rotten egg!”

  Her Outback Husband

  MARGARET WAY

  Dear Reader,

  I have always had a special love for Christmas, walking hand in hand with my father beneath a starstruck sky to Midnight Mass, wearing the prettiest dress in the world, a present from my darling Irish grandmother, Margaret Fleming. Born on her birthday, August 7, and named after her, I always called her “Mags.” It was Mags who passed on to me her love of language and her gift of the gab.

  These days Christmas has become a time of remembrance. Remembrance of the loved ones I’ve lost, the empty seats at the table. “Remembrance like a candle burns brightest at Christmas.” Dickens, I think. Hearts can and do soften in an irrepressible outpouring of good will, setting the scene for reconciliation as in my Christmas novella, where hero and heroine once again get caught up in the season’s celebration of love.

  The very best to you and your family,

  Margaret Way

  Prologue

  The sky was so intense a blue it was said to be the most beautiful sky on the planet. Queensland Blue, it was called. Darcey, who had travelled much of the world—a marvellous twenty-first birthday present from her father—had no quarrel with that. Queensland Blue every time. Blue skies, after all, were part of the state’s character.

  She stood on the open terrace of the MacArthurs’ riverfront apartment, half imagining herself in heaven. This was Brisbane, the state capital of the vast state of Queensland, well over a thousand kilometres from Planet Downs, the MacArthur historic cattle station in the Channel Country in the far South-west. The Channel Country was a vast area, covering a quarter of Queensland. It had been, in days gone by, the heart of the great Sir Sydney Kidman’s pastoral empire. With a prehistory of the fabled inland sea, the Channel Country, criss-crossed with innumerable water courses, was the most distinctive landscape on the continent.

  This was the place where the legendary explorers perished so tragically trying to find that inland sea. It was still in the twenty-first century an extremely daunting area, with the mighty Simpson Desert right on the doorstep. It was also the home of the nation’s glamorous cattle kings, like her beloved husband of eighteen blissful months, Scott MacArthur.

  Her face glossed over with sunlight, she raised her arms to the sky as if she could pull down some of that glorious blue on herself. It was another perfect day in early November. What passed for winter in subtropical Brisbane had been so mild it had slipped imperceptibly into spring. The golden wattles, the nation’s emblem, had finished blooming and now it was the time of the jacarandas. Within a week, the jacarandas would be joined by the crimson flaunting of the poincianas. Both great shade trees when in blossom created near-unworldly beauty throughout the city. The jacarandas, the first to unfold, dazzled the eye with blossoms. Darcey could see the purplish blue haze that hovered over the opposite bank of the river and as far as the eye could see.

  Scott, an experienced pilot, had flown the Beech Baron home the day before. He could never be long away from the top job. It had only taken an extra day before Aunt Rachael rang to ask if she could come to lunch when Darcey had all but given up on inviting her.

  “But of course! That will be lovely!” Darcey’s answer was more courteous than strictly honest. No one could accuse her aunt Rachael of being a fun person. Fun was pretty much a curse word to her aunt, but family harmony was important. From time to time she and her aunt had lunch at one of the city’s expensive restaurants. It was always her aunt’s choice, for if the decision were left to Darcey, they would finish up at the nearest accredited McDonald’s.

  “Something light, perhaps a salad?” Darcey suggested. She ran through the contents of the fridge in her mind. Cold meats, ham and turkey, smoked salmon. Leafy greens for the salad, plump red tomatoes, cucumber, capsicum, fennel, and always Queensland’s superb avocados dressed with virgin olive oil and lemon, a dollop of mild American mustard. She wasn’t about to run out for truffles and other delicacies her aunt fancied. Fresh raspberries and strawberries for dessert with whipped cream would be fine, she decided.

  “That will have to do, my dear!” A groan of forbearance. Her aunt’s voice, though cultured, could sometimes sound like a mechanical device about to start up.

  “I’ll see you at one p.m. sharp!”

  Darcey only just stopped herself from saying aye aye! She was used to her aunt’s peremptory style, though she had seen any number of people reel away from it. Sophie, her mother-in-law, had very early on observed Aunt Rachael had “all the warmth of a fridge.” Most people would agree. Be that as it may, her aunt always acted with rigorous integrity, and to hell with those who disliked her.

  With Scott’s blessing, Darcey had remained in the city to attend a piano recital by a visiting virtuoso she greatly admired. Once her aunt found out, she invited herself along. The two of them had become close in a difficult-to-describe way since Darcey’s mother, Ysobel, Rachael’s younger sister, had died in a tragic accident eight years before. Up until that terrible day Darcey had lived a wonderful life with a great certainty to it. Tragedy played out. She was aware of that. But far from home. She had been in grade 12, her final year before university, head girl at her prestigious all-girls school. Her ultimate goal was to become an architect like her multiple-award-winning father. Both her parents were highly artistic. Everything had been planned.

  Only all her plans fell apart in a single violent incident. Nothing mattered after that. No joy. No laughter. A great silence. Anyone who understood grief understood that. Ever since her mother’s death she had begun preparing herself for future disastrous events. She had naively thought there would be warnings in life. Only warnings didn’t come over a period of time—sometimes they struck from a clear blue sky. As important to her as was her much loved and respected father, Paul Gilmore, mothers were irreplaceable.

  “Mummy!”

  Was there another word in any language to match it? Was there another word more primal?

  “Mummy, I want to speak to you!”

  Never again. Not even in her dream-riddled sleep when she saw her mother walking away from her, farther and f
arther, though she cried out to her to stop.

  Resignation. Acceptance. That was all that was on offer.

  And torment.

  * * *

  Aunt Rachael, the elder by nearly ten years, was childless, an unmarried woman by choice.

  “Some guy had a lucky break!”

  The irrepressible Sophie again.

  Even so, it had to be remembered Aunt Rachael had done her very best to take her sister’s place. Even the people who thoroughly disliked her gave her credit for that. Up until then Aunt Rachael had not been what one could call a loving aunt. Hitherto distant, overnight she became the closest relative Darcey had, except for her father, who after four years of surviving an avalanche of pain and grief had married a longtime colleague and family friend Anne Matheson, a lovely woman. Darcey had thoroughly approved of the marriage. Her father had suffered enough.

  Life went on. There were no options but to fight or fold. Life was chaos; governed by chance. There was good fortune and appalling bad luck. Bad things happened to bad people. Bad things happened to good people.

  Things just happened.

  The only solution was to keep moving or fall into limbo.

  She had tried and tried, but she had never been able to verbalize her loss. Not until she met Scott, who understood everything.

  Scott, my husband, my perfect lover, my soul mate.

  * * *

  Given such perfect weather, she had decided they would dine on the patio. There was a gentle breeze wafting from the east. She had opened up a blue and white striped beach umbrella, and it shaded the glass-topped circular wicker table with its four matching chairs. The handsome apartment had a bank of floor-to-ceiling glass doors to take in the view, high ceilings, large light-filled rooms, comfortable furnishings, and gleaming polished wooden floors with a scattering of Kashan rugs.

  Best of all, it overlooked the sparkling sheen of the Brisbane River. Everyone loved the river. It cut a swathe through the city, meandering mile after mile into the suburbs.

  The annual Riverfire festival centred round the river. Commuters travelled from one bank to the other in catamarans, the CityCats that plied up and down the river day and night. Brisbane was a city of some two million people with a diverse, highly educated, multicultural population. Third largest city in Australia, it was a great place to live, not the least of it being its wonderful climate. The country’s tourist destination, it was less than an hour’s drive to the fabulous beaches of the Gold Coast and a short plane trip to the World Heritage listed Daintree Rain Forest and the Great Barrier Reef.

  From her high vantage point, Darcey could see the flow of people strolling along the network of riverway pavements: parents with their children, couples holding hands, committed joggers, a teenager on roller skates, earphones plugged in, showing off his arabesque. Some were storing up the beauty around them in video cameras, the sun-spangled water and the ecstatic flowering of the great shade trees.

  Days like this, one wanted to shout with the joy of being alive.

  * * *

  The final table presentation looked good enough to please even her downright critical aunt. Radiant white linen and lace place mats and matching napkins, pretty china, sparkling glassware. She had placed vases everywhere filled with lovely sweet-smelling spring into summer flowers she had bought at the local market. Once she had thought catastrophe couldn’t happen when one was surrounded by flowers. Tragically it did, but she couldn’t live without flowers blooming all around her. Her mother had been the same. Her aunt favoured valuable sculptures in onyx or bronze, difficult to shift around. Everyone had their methods for getting through life.

  Her aunt arrived, and they ate lunch. The salad was fresh and crisp; the ham slices, thick and succulent; the dinner rolls, freshly baked, but her aunt was toying with the meal, showing none of the delicate gourmandising motions and tiny mews of appreciation she employed when savouring treats. Maybe she should have tried Peking duck? It was clear something was on her aunt’s mind, twisting and turning, desperate to get out.

  “You’ll have some berries and cream?” Darcey offered in her gentle, melodic voice.

  “No thank you, dear.” Rachael slumped back in her chair, rather rudely pushing her plate away. Thin as a rake and intensely proud of it, Rachael bore a striking resemblance—and one she played up—to the notorious Duchess of Windsor, wife of the abdicated King Edward VIII. She owned and ran a very successful art gallery which she had opened less than a year after her sister, Ysobel, had been killed. It was Rachael who had put Ysobel Gilmore’s name on the map, selling her paintings like hotcakes except for the best, which Paul Gilmore had kept for himself and his daughter.

  Few people liked Rachael Richardson, though oddly enough they fawned over her at showings and invited her to their dinner parties. Such was the level of social hypocrisy. Some called her a cold woman, if not full in her face, but all were ready to concede she was very good at what she did, finding promising young artists and pushing their work.

  “Something is obviously troubling you.” Darcey tried to catch her aunt’s deep-set dark eyes. The truly remarkable thing was her aunt in no way resembled Darcey’s physically beautiful, artistically gifted mother. They might have been a different species. No lighthearted chatterer, her aunt was rarely this quiet. Aunt Rachael was a woman who liked to talk when others were obliged to listen.

  Darcey couldn’t truthfully admit in her heart to loving her aunt. The difficulty arose because her aunt wasn’t a lovable woman. There was a certain voraciousness about her which inevitably brought to mind an image of a rapacious bird. That being said, Aunt Rachael was family—her beloved mother’s sister. Darcey felt a strong moral obligation to her aunt, and she trusted her implicitly. Her high regard was commensurate with the fact her aunt, whatever her deep personal grief over the loss of her younger sister, had always been there for her.

  It was Aunt Rachael who had held the fort until her architect father was located out on a home site. He had rushed home, shocked out of his mind by the news, hardly believing what he had been told. Darcey still remembered flying into his arms. They had closed strongly around her as the two of them wept torrents. That image would remain in her head forever.

  Aunt Rachael had been amazingly strong, but no one could say she was a demonstrative woman. No warm embraces. Even her rare pats were awkward. Darcey couldn’t even remember Aunt Rachael kissing her own sister. Some people just couldn’t abide hugging and kissing, Darcey always told herself. In the main they weren’t happy people. Happy times were strictly parcelled out.

  “Can we go inside, dear?”

  Her aunt was already rising before she had a chance to say yea or nay.

  “Of course. Coffee?”

  “Perhaps a good idea.”

  The tone would have shot arrows of concern into anyone.

  It took no time to have the freshly ground coffee in the French press. Her aunt sat silently, apparently buried in thought, until Darcey brought the coffee over and set it down on the long rectangular coffee table that separated the two ivory leather-upholstered sofas with their bright scatter of silk cushions.

  “The last thing I want is to upset you.” Rachael shifted a pretty ceramic pot filled with sweet peas well out of the way. For some reason she was puffing out her thin cheeks. “But it’s my duty, Darcey. My overwhelming duty . . .” She reached for her coffee, took a scalding gulp as if she were parched. When she finished that, she took another. She surely had to have an asbestos tongue?

  “Tell me.” Darcey who would never be completely free from anxiety, felt her stomach begin to tie itself in knots.

  “What is the best way?” Rachael debated, piercing the side of her hair with her long, red-lacquered fingernails. Diamond rings she wore on three fingers of her right hand and endlessly tinkered with gave off dazzling flashes of light.

  “You must have thought that out before you rang me.”

  “It couldn’t be worse for you.” Rachael’s brusque t
ones vibrated with anger. “I’ve waited for Scott to leave. I know how much you love him.”

  “Love him? I adore him.” Darcey was severely taken aback. “I thought you were very fond of him too.”

  “I am. I am!” Rachael’s voice rose steeply. “But there it is. You’re going to be devastated by what I have to say.”

  “Just say it,” Darcey urged, her whole being on guard. She was no good whatever at revelations.

  Rachael stared into Darcey’s face, speaking deliberately as if she were dealing with a nitwit. “Much as it grieves me to tell you, Darcey, Scott, your husband, had . . . a . . . one-night . . . stand . . . with . . . your . . . friend . . . Becky.”

  The pain she felt was so sudden and unexpected it was like being shot. She could hear her aunt’s baleful tones coming at her in s-l-o-o-w motion. Her whole body was giving way to a slow whoosh. The terrace floor seemed to be giving way beneath her. She was about to plunge to her death, forty feet below, her head and her body cracking against the concrete sidewalk. Seconds passed. It might have been hours.

  Scott, Becky!

  Then, like a gift from God, air rushed back into her parched lungs. Blessed clarity returned, dispelling the darkness around her.

  Easier to believe the pope gave up being Catholic.

  Scott had a one-night stand with her friend Becky? She had never heard such rubbish in her entire life. She was going to need an explanation right now. She had unerring faith in her husband. How dare anyone, Aunt Rachael included, say such a thing about Scott. She hated it. Hated it! Her feelings went far beyond resentment. She was outraged. She wanted to chase her Cassandra of an aunt right out the door. Then lock it. Have a whole bunch of new locks installed.

  “I have the perfect answer to that, Aunt Rachael,” she said in an angry, deeply offended voice. “It’s an abominable lie! Scott is a man of integrity respected by everyone who knows him. It could never have happened. Scott loves me. I love him. We couldn’t be happier. He would never betray me. I could never betray him. Never!”