A Cowboy for Christmas

by Sara Richardson

  “Mind if I take the next dance?” Rhett appeared next to them, and she expected Ty to bristle like he did whenever his brother looked at her, but instead he clapped Rhett on the shoulder.

  “Sure. I’ll go grab a drink.” Ty let his gaze linger on her for a minute. “Be right back, darlin’.” He brushed a kiss over her lips and then walked away. She watched him all the way to the bar.

  “I might not be as good of a dancer as my brother.” Rhett offered his hand and Darla took it, feigning a shocked expression.

  “I thought you did everything better than Ty,” she joked.

  He grinned. “Not everything. Just most things.” A slower song played on the speaker, so they swayed back and forth, with Rhett thankfully keeping a respectable distance.

  “I was wrong before,” he said. “Based on the drive home, I assumed he didn’t know how to treat you, but he’s clearly head over heels.”

  “What makes you say that?” Her dance with Ty had been fun and spirited and they’d laughed, but it hadn’t been overly romantic. At least it hadn’t seemed that way. The kiss on the other hand…

  “I can tell how much he loves you.” Rhett changed their direction. “It’s obvious when he looks at you. He looks at you like he still can’t believe he found you.”

  This was exactly what she wanted—for Rhett to believe they were together and happy and in love. But Ty wasn’t really falling for her, was he? It was only an act. She’d told him on the way to Denver that she’d never be able to give her heart to someone else.

  Ty’s brother stopped moving and stared down at her. “Do me a favor. Don’t hurt him.”

  “What?” She couldn’t hide her shock. Rhett was actually concerned about Ty?

  “I don’t want to see him get hurt.”

  Darla found it hard hold his gaze. “I don’t want to hurt him.” But would she? Was he really simply selling their relationship, or did he want it to go somewhere else? “I mean, I won’t hurt him. He’s such a good person.” She searched the room for Ty, and finally spotted him over by the bar with Lance and Lucas.

  “He’s one of the best,” his brother said, starting up their dance again. “But don’t you dare tell him I said that.”

  Her smile grew weighted. “Maybe you should tell him.”

  “And ruin our perfectly good brotherly competition? Not a chance.” Rhett lost the cocky grin. “I know I’ve always been tough on him, but I’m happy for you two. Really. Ty deserves someone who’ll treat him right.”

  “He does. He deserves the best.” And she already knew the best wasn’t her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ty always made it a point to look a bull directly in the eyes. It was a practice he’d started after his first ride when he’d been all of seventeen years old—a cocky kid who was about to learn a little respect for those bovine athletes. That ride, he’d only made it two seconds before the bull had launched him face-first into the dirt.

  You have to learn to respect the animal, Gunner had told him afterward. You don’t stare them down to intimidate them, you do it so you learn to read them. You look ’em in the eyes so you can build a connection before the ride.

  “What’d you think, Primo?” From outside the chute, Ty kept his gaze steady with the champion bull he’d be riding for his training run.

  Primo watched him, his eyes still placidly black for now, glassy and serene. But when he tore out into the arena, they’d get wider—so wide you’d be able to see the whites of them.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Forrester.” Tucker McGrath, who they’d contracted to distract the bulls after the rider is thrown, stood on the other side of the chute ready to lead Primo to the gate.

  Ha. Ty was never ready. In his humble opinion, climbing aboard a 1,500-pound animal and holding on with one hand knowing you’ll eventually get tossed required as little logical thought as possible. There was no preparation. It was best to go with instinct and adrenaline instead.

  “You two clowns want to run my time?” he called to Levi and Mateo. They stood outside the arena, getting loose for their own training runs. The main event wasn’t until the end of the weekend, but given that it was the off-season, none of them had been training as regularly as they did spring through fall. They figured they’d better get a few rides in so they could give the crowd a good show.

  “I’ve got it.” Mateo pulled out his phone and leaned in to the fence standing at the ready.

  “All right.” Ty gave Tucker a nod, and the bullfighter led Primo to the gate. That small signal was all it took to change the bull’s eyes. They widened slightly and shifted, searching out that space beyond the gate. Almost looked like the bull was visualizing what special brand of torture he could inflict on Ty today.

  Oh, yeah. This was gonna be one wild ride. Ty double-checked to make sure his helmet was secure and then climbed up the fence. At Tucker’s count he slid onto the bull and the gate swung open. The empty stands whizzed past and then started to spin in circles. Ty picked a focal point and held his form—keeping that left hand raised above his head.

  Beneath him, Primo bucked and wrenched his powerful body, flinging Ty back and forth with a series of forceful kicks. Pain calcified the knuckles on Ty’s right hand, which only made him reinforce his grip. Some riders said time moved faster when they rode, but for Ty it always seemed to slow—or maybe he existed outside of time for those few seconds when all he could do was hold on. Hold on…

  And then that moment came when his grip always weakened. When the flesh and sinew in his hand started to give out.

  “Eight!” Mateo was yelling, letting him know he’d made it, giving him permission to embrace the dismount he’d fought so hard to avoid.

  Primo reared up again, Ty felt the kick coming. He loosened his grip and flung his body off to the side just as the bull’s back end rose. His boots hit the ground first, skidding and stumbling, but he managed to stick the landing, earning hoots and whistles from his friends.

  Tucker was already luring Primo back to the chute, so Ty took his time sauntering over to Mateo and Levi.

  “What a ride,” Mateo said, pocketing his phone. “You pull that off at the rodeo, and you’ll be crowned the king.”

  Ty brushed the dust from his jeans. “That’s the plan.” Even if his parents refused to watch him ride, maybe they’d clear their busy schedule so they could make it to the award ceremony. Maybe they’d finally realize what he did was worthwhile. Maybe he wasn’t out there tackling wide receivers and saving touchdowns on television, but he was good at what he did, and he could use that to raise money to help a friend. That meant more than his brother’s multi-million-dollar paychecks. Besides all of that, Darla would be there for him. Watching him. Last night he’d done what she asked. He’d sold their engagement. Darla had laughed while they’d danced, and she’d kissed him back every time his lips touched hers. Maybe he was wrong, but it hadn’t felt much like pretending.

  “Does that grin have anything to do with how you were dancing with Darla last night?” Levi asked with a smirk.

  Was he grinning? Huh. He hadn’t noticed. Apparently that was his natural response when he thought about Darla.

  “Dancing?” Mateo snorted out a laugh. “The two of them were tongue-wrestling every time I looked over at them.”

  “Not every time.” They’d talked too. He’d eaten some truffles while she’d told him about how she melded the different flavors. She’d even paired a truffle with an IPA for him. “We’re supposed to be engaged,” he reminded his friends.

  “Uh-huh.” Mateo shot him a skeptical look. “So on a scale of one to ten—one being completely bogus—how fake is this relationship?”

  “I don’t know.” But maybe he didn’t have to know right now.

  “Okay, how fake do you want it to be?” Levi never knew when to let anything drop.

  “She doesn’t want anything real.” She didn’t want anything that would involve her heart. That was the truth of it. But for the first time in his
life, he did.

  * * *

  Darla scrubbed the rag over the bar top for what had to be the five hundredth time that morning. She’d already wiped down every shelf and cabinet, done all of the inventory, and polished every spot off her expansive collection of wineglasses, and it wasn’t even noon. When Maureen had invited her to go out to breakfast and Christmas shopping, she’d politely declined, saying she had gotten behind on things at work. But truthfully, she couldn’t spend the morning with Ty’s mom. Darla liked her too much. She liked all of them, actually—even Rhett, ever since he’d revealed that he did have a heart underneath all that ego.

  And she liked Ty. She liked dancing with him. She liked kissing him. She liked the way he made her forget her pain for a while. But after she’d gotten home last night, the spell had broken and she’d sat down on her couch and cried. She might forget Gray for a few hours, but truthfully, the fear of losing someone was always there, simmering beneath the surface of every emotion, every thought. And it wasn’t fair to lead Ty to believe she could ever love anyone so deeply again.

  Darla sank her elbows down to the bar, watching out the window. Josie appeared from across the street and headed for the Chocolate Therapist’s main door. It had been a few weeks since their last bereavement group meeting, and she’d never invited any of her Glenwood friends to town, but this happened to be an emergency.

  Darla rushed to open the door for her.

  “What’s going on?” her friend asked with no greeting. “You said on your message you had a crisis, and I nearly got myself arrested speeding all the way over here.”

  “Sorry. Did anyone see you come in?” Darla scanned the mostly empty street and locked the door. Thankfully she didn’t have to open the bar for another three hours.

  “How should I know if anyone saw me?” Josie shed her coat and shook off the snowflakes. “Maybe the lady working at the bakery. She kind of looked at me funny as I walked past.”

  “Ginny Eckles?” Oh great. No stranger ever passed through Topaz Falls without answering to Ginny. For all they teased her, the woman really did care about the town. If you asked anyone, they would say Ginny held things together. Most days Darla appreciated it, but today she didn’t feel like explaining she’d been part of a secret grief group for ten years. “Come on.” Darla tugged on Josie’s arm and led her to the back room where she had something of a living room configuration—a couch, a couple of overstuffed chairs and lamps.

  “When you invited me to come to your bar, I about had a heart attack. All these years and I’ve never been here.” Josie looked around. “You don’t live here too, do you?”

  “No. This is my event room. I host meetings here.” This was where she hosted book club and the chamber meetings, and sometimes she did special wine-tasting events. “I don’t want Ginny to see us chatting.”

  “So this is like a secret rendezvous.” Her friend pronounced the word with a French accent, the smart aleck.

  “Sure. It’s a secret.” Right now she had a lot of secrets and it was getting harder to keep them all straight. “I put out some truffles for you.” She gestured to the coffee table in front of the couch. “Thought you’d like to try the new gingerbread and eggnog recipes.” That ought to make up for her asking Josie to drive all the way here. Darla had hated to ask, but most of her staff had the day off, so she had to work. She didn’t have an extra three hours to spend in the car.

  “Well why didn’t you say there’d be truffles?” Josie tossed her coat onto a chair and made a beeline for the couch. “I would’ve led the cop who pulled me over on a high-speed chase. At least he didn’t give me a ticket. Must’ve been my charm.” She picked up one of the eggnog truffles. “Did you add a splash of dark rum like I suggested?”

  “Taste it and see for yourself.” Darla happened to know they were melt-in-your-mouth-and-all-the-way-down-to-your-toes delicious. She’d eaten half the batch for breakfast.

  Josie popped the whole thing in her mouth and flung herself back onto the couch. “Mmmm. Enough of these and I won’t be able to drive home.”

  “I’ll box some up so you can take them with you,” Darla promised, sitting in the chair across from her friend.

  “So it’s a truffle emergency?” Josie straightened herself up and snatched a gingerbread truffle. “That’s why you called me out here? Were you afraid you were going to eat them all yourself?”

  “I might’ve, but that’s not why I asked you to come.” She’d been desperate to talk to someone about Ty—someone who didn’t know him, who didn’t have any vested interest in the two of them. She knew her Topaz Falls friends would love it if she and Ty were an item in real life, and she needed an objective opinion. “I have a situation. A dilemma, if you will, and I’m not sure what to do about it.”

  Josie finished chewing the truffle and blotted her mouth with a napkin. “Well this sounds intriguing.”

  “I can’t talk to my other friends.” Because they wouldn’t understand. They’d all experienced loss in some form or another, but Josie shared the loss of widowhood. Their loss wasn’t necessarily more painful than any other kind of loss, but it did seem to be more consuming. Gray was the only one she’d ever shared her life with, the one who she still shared her life with in some ways.

  “You okay?” Josie’s face had sobered, and she set down her half-eaten truffle on the coffee table.

  Much to Darla’s horror, fat tears formed, transforming the room into a watery blur. No. She sniffed them away. She didn’t cry in front of people. “I’m pretending to be engaged to Ty. That guy you met on the street a few weeks ago. It’s a long story, but his family is here and he needed a fake fiancée and so I volunteered…”

  With each word she spoke, Josie’s eyebrows inched farther and farther toward her hairline.

  “But now I think Ty has feelings for me. I mean, I’m pretty sure he has feelings for me. Last night, I had a party for his family and we danced and kissed and laughed.” Exactly the way a loving couple would.

  “And that’s bad because…?” Josie waited for her to fill in the blank.

  “His brother told me Ty has never looked at anyone the way he looks at me. He said he thinks he’s head over heels.” And then Ty had gone on to prove it all night. He’d been the perfect fiancé—chivalrous and attentive and fun. But…“I don’t want him to fall for me. He can’t fall for me.” An expanding emptiness rumbled her stomach. She leaned forward and picked up a truffle, taking a tiny nibble at one of the corners.

  Meanwhile, Josie seemed to take her time assessing the situation. She tapped her fingers against her knee, letting her gaze drift up to the ceiling. “So let me get this straight. You volunteered to act like the man’s fiancée, but now when he treats you like his fiancée you’re freaking out.”

  Leave it to Josie to say things like they were. “Yeah, but I didn’t think it through. I didn’t think he’d develop real feelings for me. We’ve always just been friends with benefits.”

  The woman’s laugh seemed to come straight up from her belly. “This gets better and better. You’re telling me you and Ty have hooked up?”

  “Only a few times.” She devoured another truffle.

  “And you didn’t think there was any danger in agreeing to be his fiancée?” the woman demanded. “After you’d already slept with him?”

  A defensive energy flushed her face. “It’s for a good cause. His brother Rhett is a famous football player, and we needed him to come out for our bachelor auction. So we could raise money for our friends who lost everything in a fire.” At the time it had seemed like the best solution, but that was before. Before Ty had smeared frosting over her lips so he could kiss her. Before he’d made her tea to help her feel better. Before he’d kissed her senseless while wearing that Santa hat. Before she’d felt that kindling in her heart when he touched her—something warm and stirring and at the same time terrifying. It was the awakening of a need she’d buried a long time ago.

  Josie sat back and studied her
in only the way she alone could—somehow seeing right through everything. “What are you afraid of, Darla?”

  Her friend never failed to ask the tough questions either. “I’m afraid he’s falling in love with me.” Like his brother had said.

  “Are you sure that’s what you’re worried about? Or are you more afraid you’ll fall in love with him?”

  “I can’t fall in love with him.” She might have feelings for him, she might love being with him, but she wasn’t capable of loving him. She wasn’t capable of loving anyone.

  “It wouldn’t be cheating on Gray,” Josie said gently. “Falling in love with someone else can’t hurt him, honey.”

  “I know that.” But it could hurt her. She’d been lost after Gray had died—lost and stumbling and blind, and she would never ever admit it to anyone else, but there were even days she’d wished she’d never met him. Because then she wouldn’t have known. She wouldn’t have known how empty life was without him. Since then, she’d rebuilt her entire world to guarantee she didn’t need anyone. That way she would never have to risk losing everything again. “Gray knew I would hide.” She took the letter out of her pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the table for Josie to read.

  Her friend read the words silently, tears welling in her eyes. “He knew you well.”

  “Better than anyone has ever known me.”

  Josie pushed the letter back across the table. “Maybe it’s time to let someone know you again.”

  “Ty needs more than I can ever give him. I’m too afraid.” She could never admit that to anyone else, but Josie already knew.

  “I’m afraid too.” Empathy softened Josie’s face. “I fear putting everything into a relationship that might not work out. I fear losing another person I love.” She took a deep breath as though choosing her next words carefully. “But do you want to know what scares me more than that?”

  No. She didn’t. Those were Darla’s deepest fears. “What?”