A Creed Country Christmas

by Linda Lael Miller

  He chuckled, a low, rumbling sound, entirely masculine and not entirely polite. “That’s very generous of you, Mrs. Creed,” he answered. “Especially since I was trying to look out for your best interests, and if anybody ought to be apologizing around here, it’s you.”

  “You were looking out for your own interests, not mine!” she whispered accusingly.

  He patted the mattress. “Get into bed, Juliana. I’m tired and I won’t be able to sleep with you standing there like you’ve got a ramrod stuck down the back of your nightgown.”

  Since her side of the bed was against the wall, she would have to crawl over him to get there, perhaps even straddling his limbs in the awkward effort. She wasn’t about to do any such thing.

  “Juliana,” he repeated.

  “The least you could do is get up and allow me to obey your orders with some semblance of dignity!”

  He laughed then, though quietly. “You really want me to throw back the covers and stand up?” he teased. “Under the circumstances, that might be more than you bargained for.”

  Juliana reasoned that if she couldn’t see Lincoln’s face, he couldn’t see hers, either, and that was a mercy, since she knew she was blushing again. It was the curse of redheaded women. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she blurted, going to the side of the bed and scrambling over him, trying to keep her nightgown from riding up in the process.

  Lincoln chortled at her predicament, and that made her want to pause long enough to pummel him with her fists. Once she’d crossed him, like some mountain range, she plopped down hard on her back and hugged her arms tightly across her chest, staring up at the ceiling.

  He rolled onto his side, his face only inches from hers. “I’d like to propose a truce,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you, Juliana.”

  She didn’t turn her head, but she did slant her eyes in his direction. “Do you apologize?”

  Lincoln rose onto one elbow, cupping the side of his head in his palm. “Hell, no, I don’t apologize. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She turned away from him, onto her side.

  He turned her back.

  “All right,” he growled. “I’m sorry.”

  “You are not!”

  That was when he kissed her again. She struggled at first, out of pure obstinacy, but he just kissed her harder and more deeply, and she melted, driven by instincts that came from some uncontrollable part of her being. Plunged her fingers into his hair and kissed him right back.

  She felt his manhood pressed against her thigh as he shifted on the mattress, and the sheer size of it caused her eyes to pop open in alarm, but then that strange, weighted heat suffused her again. She sank into helpless wanting.

  “God help me,” he murmured, almost tearing his mouth from hers.

  Juliana ran her hands up and down his back, loving the feel of hard, warm muscle under her palms.

  Lincoln let his forehead rest against hers. “Woman,” he said, “if you don’t stop doing that, I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

  She raised her head, nibbled at his bare shoulder and then the side of his neck.

  With a groan, Lincoln shifted again, poised above her now, resting on his forearms to keep from crushing her. “Juliana,” he ground out, but if he’d been planning to say more, the words died in his throat.

  He kissed her tenderly this time, tugging at her lower lip, wringing a soft moan from her. Then, with one hand, he caught hold of her nightgown and hauled it upward, past her thighs, past her waist, past her breasts—and then over her head.

  Casting the gown aside, Lincoln sat back on his haunches, the covers falling away behind him.

  He moved to straddle her now, his knees on either side of her hips. Firelight danced over her skin, and he seemed spellbound as he looked at her.

  When he took her breasts gently into his hands and chafed the nipples with the sides of his thumbs, Juliana was lost, already transported far beyond the borders of common sense.

  She couldn’t bear too much waiting, not this first time, when she was in such terrible, wonderful suspense, and he seemed to know that.

  He deftly dispensed with her undergarments, parted her legs, and she felt that most intimate part of him, pressed against her.

  “You’re sure, Juliana?” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  He eased inside her, in a long, slow stroke, and there was pain, but the pleasure was so much greater, a fiery friction, inflaming her more with every motion of their bodies, blazing like a little sun at her core. She clutched at Lincoln, gasping, rising to meet him, and he soothed her with gruff murmurings even as he drove her mad.

  She was straining for something, wild with the need of it, and then it was upon her, and at the same time, it was as though she’d somehow escaped herself, given herself up entirely to sensation.

  Her body dissolved first, and then her mind, and then their very souls seemed to collide. Lincoln covered her mouth with his own, muffling both their cries.

  When it was over—it seemed to go on for an eternity, that melting and melding of so much more than their bodies—Lincoln collapsed beside her, gathered her in his arms. Propped his chin on the top of her head.

  After a long time, he asked hoarsely, “Did it hurt?”

  “Yes,” she told him honestly. Surely he’d been aware of her responses, of the pleasure he’d given her. She felt transformed, even powerful.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Juliana turned onto her side, facing him. Touched his cheek. “Don’t be sorry, Lincoln,” she said. “It was the most wondeful thing.”

  He chuckled, kissed her lightly. “Now will you go to sleep?”

  She laughed. Kissed him back. “Now I will go to sleep,” she conceded.

  With his arms still around her, Lincoln soon drifted off, his breathing deep and slow, his flesh warm. Perfectly content, Juliana lay there in the fire-lit darkness, marveling at all she had not known before this night.

  AFTER THE CATTLE HAD BEEN FED the next morning—the weather remained mild, though Lincoln felt a rancher’s wariness and made good use of it while he could—he rode to town.

  At the mercantile, he mailed Juliana’s letter to her brother and bought presents—a wedding band for his wife, along with several ready-made dresses and a bright green woolen cloak with a hood. He chose coats for the four children, too, guessing at their sizes, and because he’d so often seen Theresa reading, he added a thick book to the pile. There were other things, as well—a stick horse with a yarn mane for little Bill, a music box for Daisy, good pipe tobacco for Tom and a few things for the Gainers and their new baby.

  While Fred Willand was wrapping it all in tissue paper, Lincoln crossed to the newspaper office, found it locked up and made for the Diamond Buckle Saloon.

  Since it was early in the day, and Christmas Eve to boot, there were no customers. Kate, with her too-blond hair and low-cut dress, sat at one of the card tables, drinking coffee.

  “Lincoln!” she said, beaming, starting to rise.

  He motioned for her to stay in her chair, joined her at the table after placing a brotherly kiss on her rouged cheek. Like Wes, Kate was something worse for wear, a little tattered around the edges, but there was a remarkably pretty woman under all that paint and pretense.

  “Is my brother around?”

  Kate made a face. “He was up late, skinning honest working people out of their wages at five-card stud,” she said. “Then he decided to write a piece for the paper on how the Bureau of Indian Affairs does more harm than good. Last time I saw him, he was under the blankets, snoring for all he was worth.”

  Lincoln chuckled at that. Wes had always been more alive at night—daylight was something he tended to wait out, like a case of the grippe—while Lincoln, a born rancher, wrung all the use he could from the hours between sunrise and sunset. “My new bride tells me you and Wes will be at the home place for Christmas Day,” he said.

  Kate looked worried now, as though he’d forced
her into a corner and started poking at her with a cue stick from the rack next to the pool table. “Wes shouldn’t have said we’d come,” she said, her voice small and sad. She looked down at her gold satin dress, and the cleavage bulging above and behind her bodice. “I don’t have anything proper to wear.”

  Lincoln reached out, took her hand. She wore a lot of cheap rings, and a row of bracelets that made a clinking sound whenever she moved her arm. “Juliana is going to be mighty disappointed if you don’t come,” he told her. “Gracie, too. It doesn’t matter what you wear, Kate.”

  “What do you know? You’re a man.”

  He sighed. “All right, then. There are trunks full of dresses out at the ranch, up in the attic. Take your pick.”

  “Beth’s dresses,” Kate scoffed, but there was hope in her hazel-colored eyes. “Lincoln, she was a little bitty thing and you know it. I’d never fit into anything she wore.”

  That, Lincoln thought, was probably true. “How about something of Ma’s, then?” he suggested.

  Wes appeared on the stairway just then, shirt untucked, feet bare, hair rumpled from sleep. He plunged his hands through it a lot when he was composing one of his hide-blistering opinion pieces for the Courier.

  He scowled at Lincoln, even as Kate gave a throaty little chuckle. “Wouldn’t that stick under the old lady’s saddle like a spiky burr?” Lincoln remarked.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” Wes grumbled at Lincoln, reaching the table, hauling back a chair next to Kate and falling into it as heavily as a sack of feed thrown from the back of a wagon. He winced when he landed, and closed his eyes for a moment, probably suffering his just deserts after a night passed drinking, gambling and puffing on cigars.

  “I came to tell you that you were right about what you said yesterday,” Lincoln said, enjoying the visible impact this announcement had on Wes.

  He opened his eyes, narrowed them suspiciously. Kate got up to head for the kitchen and fetch coffee for both of them. Lincoln could have done without, but Wes was plainly in dire need.

  “Hold it,” Wes ground out, grinning a little and working his right temple with the fingertips of one hand. “You just said I was right. Will you swear to it in front of witnesses?”

  “Kate was a witness,” Lincoln pointed out.

  “I’m putting it on the front page. Two-inch headline. This is the biggest thing since McKinley’s assassination, if not Honest Abe’s.”

  Lincoln smiled, picked up a stray poker chip left behind after some previous game and turned it between his fingers. When he spoke, though, he looked serious, and he sounded that way, too. “I’m in love with Juliana, Wes,” he confided. “And I’ll be damned if I know how to tell her.”

  Wes leaned a little, laid a hand on Lincoln’s shoulder, squeezed. “Same way you told Beth,” he said quietly. “You just look her in the eye, open your mouth and say ‘I love you.’”

  Lincoln shifted uncomfortably in his chair, wishing Kate would come back with that coffee, even though he didn’t want it, so the conversation might turn in some easier direction.

  “You did tell Beth you loved her, didn’t you?” Wes challenged, looking worried.

  “I thought she knew it,” Lincoln confessed. “By the things I did, I mean.”

  “Keeping a roof over her head? Buying her geegaws and putting food on the table? Sweet Jesus, Lincoln, you’re even more of a lunkhead than I thought you were.”

  Kate returned, a mug of steaming coffee in each hand and a big smile on her face—he’d struck home with that suggestion that she wear one of his ma’s dresses to Christmas dinner, evidently—but her arrival didn’t change the course of the conversation the way Lincoln had hoped it would.

  She set a cup in front of each of them, and Wes scooted back his chair, caught hold of her hand and tugged hard so she landed, giggling like a girl, on his lap.

  “I love you, Katie-did,” he said.

  “So you claim,” Kate joked, blushing right down to the neckline of her faded dress. “But you’ve yet to put a gold band on my finger, Weston Creed.”

  He feigned surprise. “You’d actually hitch yourself to a waster like me?”

  “You know I would,” Kate said softly, looking and sounding wistful now.

  “Then the next time the reverend comes through, we’ll throw a wedding.”

  Lincoln, though pleased, wished he was elsewhere. The trouble with Wes was, he had no idea what was appropriate and what wasn’t, but he seemed to be sincere enough, all things considered.

  “Is that a promise?” Kate asked cautiously.

  “It’s a promise,” Wes replied, setting her on her feet again, swatting her once on the bottom for emphasis. That done, he pivoted on his chair seat to look straight at Lincoln. “See, little brother? That’s how you tell a woman you love her.”

  Lincoln merely shook his head. He reckoned Fred had the presents wrapped by then, and he was eager to get back out to the ranch. After all, Christmas was coming, and this one was special.

  He stood. “You might want to ride out with me,” he told his brother. “Kate’s going to borrow one of Ma’s dresses, and she’ll need time to take it in a little first.”

  Wes gave a guffaw of laughter that made Kate jump and got to his feet. “That,” he said, “will be worth seeing. But I’ll meet you at the ranch later on—I’ve got to put on boots and get my horse saddled, and I don’t want to hold you up.”

  “See you there,” Lincoln agreed with a nod. He was halfway home, with his sack of presents tied behind his saddle, when Wes rode up alongside him.

  They’d didn’t speak of serious things—there had been enough of that and it was almost Christmas—except when they reached the barn. Lincoln unsaddled his horse, Wes didn’t.

  “Are you really going to marry Kate?” Lincoln asked, half-afraid of the answer. She’d be mighty let down if Wes’s proposal turned out to be a joke, and by Lincoln’s reckoning, Kate had had more than her share of disappointments as it was.

  “Didn’t I say that I would?”

  “You say a lot of things, Wes.”

  “This time, I mean it.”

  Lincoln nodded. “I hope so,” he replied, and that was the end of the exchange.

  Inside the house, Wes was greeted with an armload of Gracie, launching herself from the floor like a stone from a catapult, while the other kids hung back, looking stalwart and shy.

  Wes noticed the way Juliana was glowing right away, and cast a sly look in Lincoln’s direction before kissing her soundly on the forehead.

  After that, the two brothers headed straight for their mother’s bedroom and plundered the big mahogany wardrobe for a dress that would suit Kate without too much tucking and pinning. Flummoxed by the choices, they finally consulted Juliana, who chose a dusty-rose velvet day dress with a short jacket, pearl buttons and a nipped-in waist.

  “Been a while since Ma could squeeze into this,” Wes observed, holding the getup against his front as if he meant to try it on himself.

  “It will look fine on Kate,” Lincoln said drily. “Personally, I think you’d look better in blue.”

  Juliana took the dress from Wes, carried it to the kitchen and proceeded to fold it neatly and wrap it up in leftover brown paper, tying the parcel closed with thick twine.

  Gracie, having worked out that her beloved uncle and Kate were coming out to the ranch to share in tomorrow’s celebration, issued an invitation of her very own. “Come early,” she pleaded, “because Papa probably won’t let us see what Saint Nicholas brought until you get here.”

  Wes laughed, tugged at a lock of her hair. “Just what time is ‘early’?” he asked. Of all the people in the world, Gracie was probably the only one he would have rolled out of the hay for. Lincoln had known him to sleep until four o’clock in the afternoon.

  Gracie considered. “Six o’clock,” she said.

  Wes gave a comical groan.

  “Uncle Wes,” Gracie said firmly, “it’s Christmas.”

/>   “You could come out tonight,” Lincoln suggested carefully. “Sleep in your old room.”

  Behind his grin, Wes went solemn, no doubt remembering how it had been when their father was still alive, and testy as an old bear with ear mites.

  “Bed’s wide enough for you and Kate,” Lincoln added. “Since you and Micah used to share it.”

  “Maybe,” Wes said thoughtfully.

  “Say yes,” Gracie ordered, hands resting on her hips.

  “Maybe,” Wes repeated. He glanced sidelong at Lincoln, an unspoken reminder of the warning he’d given out on the range the day before, probably. Gracie definitely did have a mind of her own, and as she grew up, she’d be a handful.

  Nothing much was said after that. Wes took the gown, wrapped in its brown paper, and left.

  Lincoln went to work on the adoption petition he’d been drafting, and Juliana visited the Gainers. The kids, having been given the day off from their lessons because it was Christmas Eve, chased one another all over the front yard until Juliana rounded them up on the way back from the cabin and brewed up another batch of hot cocoa.

  For the rest of the day, Lincoln had half his mind on the petition and half on Juliana. The way she moved. The way she hummed under her breath and looked like she was all lit up from the inside.

  Mentally, he rehearsed the words he wanted to say. I love you.

  By sunset, the children were all so excited—except for Joseph, who showed a manful disdain for the proceedings—they could barely sit still to eat supper.

  New snow drifted past the windows, and for once, Lincoln didn’t dread it.

  The dishes were done, the fires were stoked for a cold night.

  The kids were all in bed, asleep. Or so they wanted him to believe.

  Just as Lincoln was about to extinguish the lanterns and join Juliana in their bed—he’d been looking forward to that all day—he heard a rig roll up outside.

  He grinned, put on his coat and hat. There would be a wagon to unhitch, a team to put up in the barn.