Wyoming Winter--A Small-Town Christmas Romance

by Diana Palmer

  Colie sat with him, bathed the sweat away, ladled the antibiotic and cough syrup the doctor had given him into him and ignored his weak protests that he didn’t need nursing.

  She knew he was lying. He looked at her as if she was Florence Nightingale, adoring her with those pale, glittery silver eyes as she fussed over him, fed him hot soup, made sure he had anything he needed to make him comfortable.

  He’d rarely ever been sick in his life. He only remembered having a virus once, and his mother and father had left him at home, because the household depended on both paychecks just to keep going.

  To be fair, his mother sat up with him at night, even so, feeding him chips of ice so that he didn’t get dehydrated. But it was nothing like this, with Colie caring for him so tenderly that he didn’t want to rush to get well again.

  That was a weakness. He was ashamed of himself. Not too ashamed, though. It felt very good to have someone love him. No woman ever had, until Colie came along. He’d never thought of himself as a lovable person. She made him feel different inside, of worth. She built him up.

  “I should be taking care of myself,” he protested, just once, while she fed him soup.

  She smiled. “You’re so self-sufficient, J.C. It makes me feel good to do things for you. Even if it’s just rarely.”

  He managed a laugh. “Ivy,” he accused. “You’re wrapping around me like ivy.”

  “Be careful,” she said with a mock taunt. “Ivy can even bring down big trees if it wraps around too tight.”

  He sighed. “Not a worry. Not right now, anyway.” He studied her. “Have you gone to the health clinic yet?”

  She flushed. They’d had this discussion about birth control. He said that what he used was risky. He wasn’t confident about the shot they gave women to prevent children; a fellow worker on Ren’s ranch had seen it cause terrible weight gain in his own wife. But the pill had been around for years and years.

  “I’ll go when you’re better,” she promised.

  “We’ve had one slip already,” he reminded her. His protection had torn. It had worried him, although she wasn’t showing any symptoms of pregnancy. He knew what they were, because Merrie had given birth a few months ago. He and Ren were friends, so he was around her a lot while she was carrying their son.

  “I know. But it wasn’t a good time to get pregnant,” she lied. She was very regular and it was dead center between periods; the very best time to get pregnant. She understood he didn’t want children. She wanted his child so much. She had this stupid, persistent hope that if she did get pregnant, he might change his mind about a lot of things.

  He read that thought in her face. “Colie, I won’t change my mind,” he said forcefully; at least, as forcefully as a sick man could sound. “I don’t want to settle down. I like training cops overseas. I might get a yen to go back in the military or join a merc group. I’ll only stay with you as long as I’m free to go where I please. I won’t settle down. And there’s no way in hell you’re getting pregnant. Give it up.”

  She drew in a wistful breath. “Hope springs eternal?” she ventured.

  “It will get strangled, here,” he promised.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go to the health department next week. It won’t matter,” she added. “You’re too sick to do anything right now, anyway.”

  He was. He didn’t like admitting it.

  He studied her quietly while she fed him. She still wasn’t getting anything out of intimacy. She tried to fake it, but he knew. She was uncomfortable, tight, strung out, every single time. He wanted her to go on birth control because he had a feeling what he used for protection was the problem. She’d complained of a rash, and he knew it wasn’t a disease he’d given her—unless another lover before him had given her something. But he didn’t think it was disease. She might have an allergy.

  “Colie, have you ever been tested for a latex allergy?” he asked out loud.

  The spoon jumped in her hand. Fortunately, it was empty at the time. “A latex allergy? You mean, like rubber gloves?”

  “I mean like the rubber things I use to keep you from getting pregnant,” he said starkly.

  She just stared at him. That had never occurred to her. She had a rash every time he made love to her.

  “I, well, I never was tested for any sort of allergy. I do break out every time...” She flushed.

  “It would explain a few things,” he remarked. “Next week. For sure.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t you have a family physician?”

  The flush got worse. “J.C., he goes to my dad’s church. In fact, he sings in the choir. I...couldn’t.”

  He really hadn’t considered how living with him was damaging her, and her father, in the small community. He’d lived in big cities for a long time, so long that modern attitudes had become commonplace to him. It was different in Catelow. And her father was a minister. He preached against what he considered immorality—like two people living together without the sanctity of marriage. He hated the sudden guilt he felt.

  “The health department is fine. Really,” he said.

  She nodded and fed him more soup.

  * * *

  SHE GOT A prescription for the pill, which she was to start at the beginning of her next period. She had J.C. drive her to Jackson Hole to get it filled, where there would be a pharmacist who didn’t know her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said when they were on the way back home.

  “I understand.” He caught her hand tight in his. “I really do, Colie.”

  “I guess I don’t understand things as well as I would, if I were older.”

  “Older,” he scoffed. “What are you? Twenty-two, twenty-three? Rod mentioned that you’d graduated from school last year. I assumed he meant college...”

  “I’m nineteen,” she said starkly.

  He stood on the brakes and stopped in the middle of the road. “What?”

  “I’m nineteen,” she repeated, wondering why he looked so devastated. “I graduated from high school last year. The graduation was in the papers, I thought Rod would have mentioned it to you?”

  “He said you graduated.” He was trying to catch his breath. No wonder her father had been so protective of her, so distant with J.C. She was barely out of high school. A teenager! Why hadn’t he realized...?

  “Now you’re going to torture yourself because you think you’re robbing the cradle. Listen, I’ll be twenty in a month,” she pointed out. “Lots of girls get married at eighteen.” She flushed. “I mean, live with people. Other people.”

  “Dear God.”

  “J.C.,” she began, worried because of the look on his face.

  He started the SUV moving again. He felt such guilt that it was choking him. Why hadn’t he known? Well, he lived on the ranch and he didn’t go into town much. He didn’t read the local paper or listen to the news, he didn’t go to church. He knew Rod, but they’d grown distant in the past few months since Rod mustered out of the military. He hadn’t known much about Rod’s little sister until he went to supper at their house. She worked at a law office and she’d mentioned taking courses in business.

  “You took business courses,” he mentioned, thinking out loud.

  “Sure. Just after I got the job with the law firm. I went at night. I only needed a couple of courses, just enough to help me learn the software they used and how to cope with dictation and stuff.”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Twenty next month,” she repeated. “I don’t understand why you’re so conflicted, J.C. I’m not a child.”

  “Colie, I’m thirty-two.”

  “Oh, yes, and you’ve got gray hair and you have to walk with a cane...”

  “I’m serious!” he shot back, more forcefully than he meant to. He grimaced when he saw
her hurt expression. He caught her hand again and held it tight. “Almost thirteen years between us. At your age, that’s a lot. I wish I’d known how old you were, before...”

  “But you didn’t. You don’t. I love you, you silly man,” she chided. “What has that got to do with age?”

  The words went through him like sugary sweet joy. He loved hearing her say it. But it didn’t assuage the guilt he felt. “No wonder your father didn’t like me.”

  “Daddy wouldn’t have liked you if I’d been thirty,” she pointed out. “You’re not a person of faith. I can accept that. He can’t. He has a different view of life than I do. Daddy lives in the past, J.C. It’s a new world.”

  “New.” He drew in a long breath. He glanced at her hungrily and knew that he’d die before he’d give her up, no matter her age. “Twenty next month, huh?”

  She grinned. “Twenty next month. I’ll try to get at least four or five gray hairs started, if that will help your conscience.”

  He laughed at the blunt statement. “Okay. We’ll muddle through somehow.”

  “That’s the spirit!”

  * * *

  THEY WERE STILL using the same thing for birth control that they’d started out with. They had to, because she couldn’t start the pill until her period. She told J.C.

  “You’re not enjoying this,” he pointed out when they were lying together. He was sated. She wasn’t.

  “I love being with you, any way at all,” she said. “You’re the most perfect man who ever lived, and I love you madly.”

  “But you don’t enjoy having sex with me,” he persisted worriedly.

  “When I start on the pill, it will change,” she promised, hoping it wasn’t going to be a lie. She was uncomfortable when he went into her. She wasn’t sure the lack of latex was going to solve the problem.

  His fingers tangled in her hair. “Maybe I need to read a few books.”

  She burst out laughing. “Maybe I do, too.”

  * * *

  SHE WAS JUST leaving the café after lunch. J.C. had gone to Jackson Hole to get some new equipment he’d ordered, so she was eating alone. She came face-to-face with old Mrs. Meyer, one of the elders of her father’s church.

  “Hi, Mrs. Meyer,” Colie said with a smile.

  The woman didn’t return the smile. She looked at Colie as if she was dirty. “Have you no pride?” she asked quietly. “Have you no shame? Your father is a minister. He stands in the pulpit and preaches morality while his own daughter lives openly with a man in this small community.”

  Colie flushed. “I love him...”

  “I married at twenty,” Mrs. Meyer went on. “He was a good, kind man. He said that any man who truly loved a woman would want to give her his name, give her children, become a part of the community.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “Your lover gives nothing to the community. He never goes to church. He’s an outsider who doesn’t want to fit in. You used to be a person of faith. What’s become of you, Colie? Your mother, God rest her soul, would be ashamed of you!”

  Before Colie could even think of a lukewarm comeback, the old woman turned and toddled away, leaning heavily on her cane.

  Colie went back to work and went through the motions, but she was eaten up with guilt. She’d felt it often enough, but to have one of her father’s congregation speak to her like that brought home just how much she was shaming Reverend Thompson with her behavior.

  “What’s wrong?” Lucy asked gently as they were getting ready to leave. “You’ve been unsettled all afternoon.”

  “My father is a minister and I’m living with a man,” she said quietly. “I didn’t realize how much I was shaming him.” She looked up. “We make decisions and never consider how our actions will affect the people we love.”

  Lucy drew in a breath. “Everything we do affects everybody who loves us, I guess,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can only imagine how conflicted you are.”

  “Conflicted,” she replied, “is a very good word.”

  * * *

  LATER, J.C. SAW the emotional upset and questioned her about it.

  “It was Mrs. Meyer. She’s an elder in our church...” she hesitated. She hadn’t been to church since she moved in with J.C., another strike against her. “In Daddy’s church,” she amended. “She said that my behavior was shameful, that my father was having to live down what I was doing. He’s a minister, preaching against immorality, and his only daughter is living openly in sin.” She laughed hollowly, trying to make a joke of it.

  J.C. winced. She was so young. He gave a thought to her father, who’d never yelled at him or cursed him when he certainly must have felt like it. He was a forgiving man; something J.C. never had been. He held grudges. A few, he held for life.

  He took her into his arms and rocked her. “I’m sorry. I’ve never had to consider public opinion. But Catelow is a very small town. I’m sure it’s hard for your father to understand that not everybody follows a narrow path.”

  “I guess so.”

  He held her tighter. He knew he was going to regret this, but he valued Colie. He didn’t want her hurt. “You can tell people we’re engaged,” he said after a minute.

  She drew back and looked up at him with soft, worshipping green eyes. “What did you say?”

  “I said, you can tell people we’re engaged. It will keep gossip down, maybe,” he added. His face hardened. “I’m still not interested in marriage, Colie. But if you spread it around that I’m serious about you, it will make things easier for your father. He’s a good man,” he added heavily. “I don’t like hurting him any more than you do. But I am what I am. I’ve never seen a good marriage,” he added shortly. “I grew up more or less an orphan from the age of eleven. A settled, happy home is an illusion to me. It’s not real.”

  She searched his pale eyes and saw such pain there that she grimaced. “I had a happy one,” she said softly. “A mother who loved us, who took care of us, who loved my father deeply. He loved her. We had little tiffs now and again. Everyone does. But we loved each other. It was a happy childhood.”

  His face hardened even more. “We come from different worlds, different backgrounds,” he said. “Part of my ancestry is First Nations—Blackfoot. My father practiced his native religion until my mother died. She was buried under Catholic rites, because she was Roman Catholic. I’ve never been a person of faith. She took me to Mass every Sunday, but most of the foster homes where I lived were anything but religious.”

  There was something dark and cold in his eyes as he said that. She wondered if there had been an even worse experience than his mother dying because his father was drinking and got behind the wheel of a car.

  He held up a hand when she opened her mouth to ask. “I don’t talk about my childhood. That’s private.”

  Private. When they were living together, sleeping together. He was shutting her out. She realized belatedly that he almost never talked about his past, about any of his likes or dislikes. She knew so little about him.

  “My life is an open book,” she mused. “Yours is a mystery novel.”

  He laughed shortly. “Not bad.”

  She hugged him. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, except that I love you more than anyone in the world.”

  It made him glow inside when she said that. He ate it up like honey. He held her close and kissed her hungrily.

  “I have to go to Iraq next week,” he said at her ear.

  “So soon?” she wailed.

  “I’m sorry. I made a commitment months ago. I can’t cancel at this late date.” He smoothed back her hair. “When I come home, you’ll be on the pill and I’ll make sure you feel what I feel when we’re intimate. Missing each other will make the homecoming explosively passionate.”

  She laughed. “I like that. Explosively passionate.”

&nb
sp; He kissed her again. “I think the latex is the problem.”

  “We could not use it...?”

  “No.” He let her go. “I’m not taking any chances with you, Colie. You know that already.”

  She sighed. “I know it.”

  “You need to stay with your father and Rod while I’m gone,” he added quietly. His thick eyebrows met. “I’d worry myself sick if you stayed out here alone. It’s too deserted. We get all sorts of people on the ranch, part-timers and visitors alike. We do vet them, but there’s always that one who slips between the cracks.” He framed her face in his hands and studied her hungrily. “I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. All the color would go out of the world.”

  It was as close to a declaration of love as he’d ever come and she realized it. She reached up and kissed him so tenderly that he felt his heart run wild. He drew her close and deepened the kiss to intimacy.

  “I’ll stay at home while you’re gone,” she promised.

  He swung her up in his arms. “Meanwhile,” he whispered, “we can make some more memories...”

  Latex and all, she was thinking, but she gave in, as she always did, dreading the discomfort but loving the exquisite closeness. In bed was the only place she was ever allowed that close. J.C. was standoffish, aloof, quiet when they were around other people. In private, he was passionate and tender and almost loving.

  She enjoyed the intimacy, even if she didn’t enjoy the sex. Maybe he was right, she pondered. Maybe the pill would make all the difference, even though he’d be overseas when she started it. Nevertheless, he’d come home again.

  * * *

  SHE WORRIED. SHE COULDN’T hide it. He packed and she watched, her heart in her eyes.

  “It’s dangerous, where you’re going,” she pointed out.

  He chuckled. “It’s dangerous where I am,” he countered. He glanced at her. “Ever try to hold down a bull in a field while you’re treating an injury?”

  “Well, I know that,” she said. “But bulls don’t have guns.”

  He stopped what he was doing, pulled her up and kissed her softly. “I’ve been at this for a long time. I don’t take chances, and I know the people I’m working with. Yes, there are risks. But there are risks when you drive a car, walk up a hill. Life doesn’t come with guarantees. I live every single day as if it were my last day on earth. That’s how I get through it. Yesterday is a memory and tomorrow is a hope. All we really have is today.”