Wild West Christmas: A Family for the RancherDance with a CowboyChristmas in Smoke River

by Jenna Kernan

During my lunch of bread from the bakery and hard yellow cheese, I wondered why I didn’t just hire a man from town to hang the wallpaper? But the answer was so obvious I had to laugh. After Aunt Carrie’s cautionary tales, I wanted no man inside my private space, for any reason. So I would cope on my own.

  After lunch I finished up the wallpapering and began to paint the downstairs, starting with the front parlor. The paint I’d selected from Ness’s mercantile was a creamy yellow, which I liked because it reminded me of the daffodils that bloomed each spring in Mama’s garden.

  By midafternoon my shoulders ached, but I pressed onward, loaded up my paintbrush and carefully painted around the door molding and the window frames. The paint smell made me dizzy and a bit headachy, but I resolved I would finish at least one wall before I collapsed. I had just restirred the paint when I heard a rhythmic pounding coming from my front yard. I climbed down from the ladder and looked out the window.

  A cowboy was bent over my decimated fence, hammering nails into the pickets. His back was toward me, but I guessed it was one of the ranch hands Mr. McBurney had promised to send. The afternoon sun was simply broiling, and a damp patch of perspiration showed on the back of the man’s shirt.

  I kept on painting, and he kept on hammering. By teatime my neck felt as if a carriage wheel had rolled over it, so I rescued the pitcher of lemonade from the cooler, poured a tall glass and gulped it down.

  Never had anything tasted so good! I sank down at the kitchen table and laid my head on my folded arms. I had one more yellow wall to paint in the parlor, but I wasn’t at all sure I could drag my aching body back to work.

  Another glass of lemonade and an aspirin powder gave me courage. On my way back to the parlor, I passed by the front window and glanced out at the man still laboring over the fence pickets. By now the sweaty spot on the back of his shirt was platter-size.

  Poor fellow, working away on orders from that slave-driving foreman, Mr. McBurney. I set my brush in the paint bucket, poured him a glass of lemonade and took it outside.

  “Would you like a glass of—?”

  “Sure would, whatever it is.” He rose and turned to face me.

  “Oh,” I blurted out. “It’s you!”

  He pushed his hat back with his thumb. “Who’d you expect?”

  “I expected your ranch hand. You said you would send one of your ranch hands to fix the fence.”

  “Sorry. All the hands are busy down at the rail yard.” Without shifting his gaze from mine, he reached out and lifted the lemonade glass out of my hand.

  “This for me?” The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. He brought the glass to his lips and gulped half of it down.

  “I thought you would be too busy bossing around your ranch hands to bother with my fence.”

  “‘Bossing around’?” He polished off the rest of the lemonade. “You think I work a crew of slaves, is that it?”

  I could not think of one sensible thing to say, so I kept silent. When I didn’t respond, he grinned and went on.

  “I don’t ‘boss’ them around with a bullwhip. Ranch hands get paid like everybody else.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “No, you don’t, ma’am. I can tell by that little frown between your eyes.”

  I hadn’t realized I was frowning. Or that he was watching my face that closely. I found myself watching his face as well, especially his eyes. I was embarrassingly aware of his green eyes. I felt my cheeks grow hot.

  “I did not mean to be insulting, Mr. McBurney.”

  He handed back the empty glass. “You hangin’ more wallpaper?”

  “What? Why would you think that?”

  “Your hair.” He brushed a finger over the tendrils of hair straggling onto my face. “Looks kinda spotted.”

  “I’ve been painting the walls of my parlor.”

  “Yellow, right? Nice color for a parlor. You like to paint?”

  I had to laugh at that. “I have no choice, unless I want to live with dingy gray walls.”

  He looked at me for a long moment, and then he smiled. The man’s mouth was beautiful, his lips well formed and...well, curved into a smile like that, they were most attractive.

  Mercy! My belly flipped up into a slow somersault and my cheeks grew even warmer. Never in my entire life had I admired a man’s mouth. I felt as if I were thirteen years old!

  “What about the fence?” he asked.

  “What about it?”

  “You want it white? Yellow?”

  I had to laugh. “I cannot imagine a picket fence painted yellow.”

  The shoulders under the blue work shirt lifted in a brief, eloquent shrug. “I can.”

  “The townspeople will think I’m crazy.”

  “You care what the townspeople think?”

  “Well, no, I suppose not. But I am new in town. I don’t want people to think I am eccentric.”

  “You mean like old-maid eccentric? I mean no disrespect, ma’am, but you’ve got a far piece to go on that score.”

  “What score?” I heard myself ask. “Old maid or eccentric?”

  “Both.” He handed me the lemonade glass. “Me, I like colors.”

  “Then you choose the color, Mr. McBurney.”

  He tried hard to curb his grin. He had beautiful teeth, too, straight and white against his tanned skin.

  “Okay. S’long as you promise not to make me repaint it if you don’t like it.”

  “Very well, I promise.” I turned toward the porch.

  “Hey, Miss Cornwell?”

  I glanced back at him. “Yes?”

  “Name’s Gale. Gale McBurney.”

  Chapter Four

  Gale

  I had the new pickets nailed in place and the whole fence standing upright by suppertime. I even reinforced the wobbly fence post. Tomorrow I’d slap on a coat of paint. I knew I could send out Skip or Jase, but I wanted to do it myself, partly because I looked forward to picking out the color. And partly, I guess, because I wanted to spend more time in the vicinity of Miss Cornwell.

  Lilah, she said her name was. Damn pretty name.

  Damn pretty woman.

  Before I rode back to the ranch, I stopped in at Ness’s mercantile to pick out some paint. Carl didn’t much like my choice, but little Edith did. I could tell by the enthusiastic bobbing of her head. That kid had good color sense.

  I dropped off the two-gallon cans of paint just inside Miss Cornwell’s repaired gate and whistled all the way home. Missed supper at the ranch house again, but I had some bacon and leftover corn bread at my cabin.

  I couldn’t sleep for the second night in a row, so I rolled off my cot, chunked up the fire and started a new drawing. Couldn’t quite get her chin right, but tomorrow I’d take a closer look.

  Chapter Five

  Lilah

  Orange! He’s painting my fence orange? I leaped out of the chair and upended my toast onto the kitchen floor, marmalade side down. While I scrubbed off the sticky jam I could hear him whistling out by the front fence. “The Blue Danube” waltz? Unusual choice for a cowboy/ranch foreman.

  My first impulse was to storm outside, but then I reminded myself I had let him choose the color, so it served me right. Mama always said I was too impulsive.

  By lunchtime I couldn’t stand it any longer and stepped out onto the front porch.

  “Good morning, Mr. McBurney.”

  “Gale,” he reminded me without looking up. “Like the color?”

  “It’s, well, unusual,” I allowed. “It’s sort of a peachy-orange-sherbety shade.”

  He rocked back on his heels and sent me a look from under his battered wide-brimmed hat. It shaded his eyes, which looked even more green, exactly the color of a fresh Christmas wreath made of
fir fronds.

  He sent me a frown. “‘Sherbety’? What’s that?”

  “You know, like ice cream, only made with ice.”

  “You mean that Persian stuff?”

  “Yes. They call it sorbet.”

  He thumbed his hat back and sent me that smile again. “Sounds seductive.”

  I stopped breathing. Seductive? Did he really say that?

  He did. I know he did because his eyes had that crinkly look in the corners, and he wouldn’t meet my gaze. The man knew exactly what he’d said.

  Chapter Six

  Gale

  That night at the supper table I got ribbed but good, not just by the vaqueros, Ernesto and Juan, but by Jase and Skip, and even Consuelo, the ranch cook.

  “Where you been past two days, Señor Gale? Ees she pretty?”

  “Yeah, Gale,” said Skip. “Tell us all about it.”

  Jase poked the younger man’s arm. “Ya mean ‘her,’ doncha, Skip?”

  With a knowing grin Skip unfolded his long legs and slid his lanky body down in his chair. “Yeah. Tell us about ‘her.’”

  “Bueno,” said Juan and Ernesto together. Juan reached out to pinch Consuelo’s ample posterior, but she adroitly sidestepped his seeking fingers.

  Only Charlie Kingman, owner of the Rocking K, kept his tongue from flapping, and maybe that was because of Consuelo’s beef stew. He was shoveling it in as if there wasn’t gonna be a tomorrow.

  After the hoorah died down some and the boys were chin deep in Consuelo’s brandy-apple pie, Charlie caught my eye and lifted one silvery eyebrow. I stared right back at him, but inside I was squirming.

  Just because I’d started Skip and Jase on breaking the new mustangs Ernesto and his nephew had brought in, everybody thought I must have a girl in town who was more important than a few wild horses. Everybody except Mrs. Kingman. Alice said nothing, just studied the dabs of orange paint on the backs of my hands and sent me a slow smile.

  “I visited the dressmaker in town this afternoon,” she said casually to her husband. She sat up straighter so he could admire her new shirtwaist. “Do you like it?”

  From the opposite end of the big walnut table Charlie gave her a slow once-over, and I could see he liked it because he grunted and his cheeks turned pink. Old codger was still male, wasn’t he?

  I knew then that Alice had figured out where I’d been all day. Nobody, not even an Irish cowboy, has orange freckles all over his arms. They wouldn’t scrub off when I washed up at the pump, even when I used a fingernail brush.

  Skip and Jase sure razzed me about breaking those mustangs. “Kinda a five-man job, if you get my drift,” Skip drawled.

  “Kinda hard with just us four.”

  Charlie leaned back in his chair and gestured to Consuelo for more coffee. “About that string of horses, Gale.”

  Jase snorted. “Horses! I’d wager the man’s got his eye on a pretty little—”

  “Have some more pie, Jason,” Alice Kingman interrupted.

  “Yeah,” I said real low. “Fill your mouth with something other than idle talk.”

  Consuelo did her part, too. “More coffee?” She managed to accidentally touch the hot coffeepot to Jase’s meaty hand, and when he jerked it away he knocked over his cup.

  “Now look what you make me do!” the plump Mexican woman complained. “All today I spend ironing clean tablecloth, and now must wash all over again. Ay-yi-yi!” She rapped her knuckles on top of Jase’s shaggy blond head. “You behave!”

  When he wasn’t looking, she sent me a wink.

  “What about those mustangs?” I asked Charlie. “You want ’em green broke or saddle ready?”

  “Saddle ready. They’re goin’ to the army at Fort Hall.”

  I nodded. That oughta keep me workin’ hard all day and sore all night for weeks. No time to admire my orange fence.

  Or anything else. Unless...

  “I’m turnin’ in, Charlie.” At his nod, I stood up and tipped my head at his wife. “Mrs. Kingman.”

  I fully intended to head straight for the cabin I’d been given as part of my wages as foreman, but halfway across the meadow I changed my mind. The Lord loves a fool, I guess, because nobody saw me saddle up my gelding and leave the ranch.

  Chapter Seven

  Lilah

  I yanked the paper out of the typewriter, crumpled it into a big, crunchy ball and added it to the pile in the wastebasket by my desk. I’d been writing steadily ever since my supper of scrambled eggs and biscuits, but my story just wasn’t coming.

  I lifted my head when an odd sound drifted through the open window, an irregular chuff-chuff, followed by a pause. What on earth? I raised the sash and peered out. There was just enough moonlight to see a dark shape hunched over close to the ground by my new front fence.

  I slid the sash up, and the figure froze.

  I kept a small Colt pistol in my top desk drawer, and now I grabbed it and started down the stairs with the gun in my right hand, clinging to the banister with my left. I eased the front door open, pulled back the hammer on the gun and stepped out onto the porch.

  “Hold it right there, whoever you are!” I sounded braver than I felt. At least I hoped I did.

  A voice cut through the darkness. “It’s all right, Miss Cornwell. It’s me, Gale McBurney.”

  The strength drained from my body. “Could you not have knocked on the door?” I snapped. I hated sounding so waspish, but now I was shaking, and that made me mad. I detest being frightened.

  “What on earth are you doing out there?” I winced at my tone.

  “Planting nasturtiums.”

  “Whaaat?” My knees were feeling quite wobbly.

  “And black-eyed Susans. Edith Ness told me that’s what you bought before, so I thought I’d...”

  He stepped into the faint lamplight spilling out the front door. In his hand was a trowel, my trowel, if I wasn’t mistaken, and on his face was the ghost of one of those unsettling smiles. But now I was so angry I was immune.

  “...replant your flower seeds,” he finished.

  “At this time of night? Mr. McBurney, it’s past midnight.”

  “Yeah, I know. But it’s the only time I have, so I figured I’d better get it done tonight.”

  Chapter Eight

  Gale

  I straightened up real quick when I saw that little pistol in her hand. She had it aimed straight at me. “That thing loaded?”

  “Yes, it most certainly is.”

  “Mind pointing it somewhere else?”

  She didn’t answer for way too long, and I started to sweat. Then I noticed her bare toes peeking out from under her dark skirt. Part of me went cold and still as I studied them.

  The rest of me went as hot as July at noon.

  She still hadn’t lowered the gun. “Miss Cornwell?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Uh, Miss Cornwell? Lilah?”

  She jerked her gun hand down against her skirt and sent me a questioning look. “Did you plant any baby’s breath?”

  I was still staring at her bare toes, I guess, because she repeated the question.

  “Baby’s breath? What’s that?”

  “Gypsophila. It’s a flower. I had planted baby’s breath seeds.”

  So, I thought irrationally, there would be more planting to do on some other night. First chance I got between breaking a new bunch of wild mustangs and making another stop at the mercantile.

  “Guess I missed that baby’s whatever, Miss...Lilah.” Damn, I loved the flavor of her name in my mouth. “But I got the other seeds planted just fine. Kinda spread them around some. Flowers in straight lines aren’t too interesting.”

  “What would you know about flower garden
s?” She worked her lower lip between her teeth, and right away things inside my gut moved from July straight into August.

  “Look, Miss—Lilah. I’ll make you a wager. If you don’t like your garden when the flowers bloom, I’ll dig it up and start over.”

  “No, you won’t,” she said. “It will be too late in the season to start over.”

  “Does that mean you’ll leave it planted like it is? Or that you’ll be replacing me?”

  “I am quite sure you have your hands full with your ranch job.”

  “That’s a fact, ma’am. Lilah. Right now we’re breaking horses.”

  “Well, then?”

  I couldn’t answer a ‘well, then’ question, so I dropped the trowel I’d found in the shed off her back porch and moved up the walk toward her. When I reached the bottom porch step I stopped and looked up.

  “I want to come back.” I said it flat out. I watched her tongue slip out and wet her lower lip and it was all I could do to keep from groaning out loud.

  “You have no reason to come back,” she said.

  “I know. I want to anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not real sure, to be honest. Outside of the obvious.”

  Her eyebrows went up. Funny how dark they were, not red, like her hair. Dark like...hawk wings.

  “The obvious? What, pray tell, is ‘the obvious’?”

  I couldn’t answer that without saying too much and getting myself in a whole passel of trouble. So I just climbed the three steps to where she stood, lifted the Colt out of her hand and brushed my lips against her cheek.

  I stood there for a full minute with my heart bulupping under my breastbone, waiting for I didn’t know what. Then I went right for the passel of trouble—hooked one hand around the back of her neck and tipped her chin up with one finger.

  “Lilah?”

  She didn’t make a sound, so I kissed her.

  She still said nothing, so I backtracked off the porch and turned to go.

  Then I made a mistake. I spun back around, and she was still standing there, not moving and not saying a word.