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

by Jenna Kernan

God, in for a penny, in for a...

  I tramped back up the steps, pulled her close and let myself enjoy her mouth until my privates ached.

  Big mistake. Big, damn mistake.

  Oh, hell no, it wasn’t. It was big, damn wonderful.

  Chapter Nine

  Lilah

  Never in my life had I been kissed like that. It went on and on, his mouth questioning, questioning, while my body trembled. I never wanted it to end.

  Eventually he did end it, though I could tell he didn’t want to because his breathing was even more ragged than mine. That made me feel wonderful, knowing that being close to me, touching me with his mouth unsettled him as much as it did me.

  I had a fleeting memory of Adrian Borrey back in Philadelphia, how dry and flat his lips had felt, and in a flash I saw both the deceit and the hilarity of writing my love stories when I knew next to nothing about the subject.

  When I opened my eyes Mr. McBurney, Gale, was striding through the front gate, and while I watched he pulled himself up onto the horse he’d tethered to the fence post and rode off into the dark.

  I must have stood there on my front porch a good ten minutes after the hoofbeats faded away, and all that time I kept asking myself what had just happened. Crickets scraped in the yard. The slight breeze was soft on my skin, and I could smell the heady sweet perfume of the damask rose on the trellis in the side yard. My breasts felt swollen and achy.

  My mind felt addled and at the same time dazzlingly clear, as if I had just gulped down a mouthful of stars. I walked back into the house, climbed the stairs and lay down on my bed fully clothed and stared up at the ceiling.

  An hour passed, then two. I could still feel the delicious pressure of Gale’s mouth on mine, smell the sweat-spicy scent of his skin.

  Dear God in heaven, I have missed so much of life.

  Chapter Ten

  Gale

  I got back to my cabin around three in the morning, feeling like I’d had too many slugs of whiskey. At five o’clock I hauled myself out of bed, pulled on my jeans and stumbled down to the ranch house for breakfast. My head ached like it did that time I cracked it on a tree limb rescuing Mrs. Kingman’s cat, but damned if I could stop grinning.

  Jase and Skip were bleary-eyed, hunched over their coffee mugs with their gazes fixed on the basket of biscuits Consuelo set on the table in front of Charlie. Juan was hungover, maybe for the first time in his seventeen years, and he paid no attention to anyone. But Ernesto studied me with his sharp black eyes and pursed his lips.

  Charlie reached for a biscuit. “Soon as you finish eatin’, Gale, I’ve got twelve horses waitin’ for you in the corral.”

  The boss was in a hurry to deliver the animals to the army post at Fort Hall, and he expected me to hustle because another twenty-five horses were waiting in the holding pen.

  Jase and Skip groaned. Ernesto gave me a thumbs-up.

  By noon I’d spent more time on the ground in the corral than in the saddle. I was covered with dust and my shoulder hurt where I’d smacked into the fence on one of my unplanned trips off the back of an ornery stallion. When the dinner gong clanged, I staggered over to the horse trough and dunked my head in.

  Didn’t help much. When I came up for air, Juan handed me a towel, but he looked at me funny. “You okay, amigo?”

  “Mostly.”

  “Too much beer?”

  Too much something for sure, but it wasn’t beer. And it wasn’t meant for Juan’s ears.

  The fried chicken and mashed potatoes Consuelo laid out on the big dining table helped some, but back in the corral that afternoon things went from bad to very bad.

  “¿Qué pasa?” Ernesto said after one really spectacular fall. “Not like you.”

  I shrugged off his concern and worked the last four mustangs as if there was no tomorrow. Except there would be tomorrow, and another one after that, and on and on until the job was done and all the horses were being trailed east to the army post. Skip and Juan usually drove the herd; that’d give me a breather.

  But it didn’t help that I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about Lilah Cornwell’s bare toes and the feel of her soft mouth under mine.

  Chapter Eleven

  Lilah

  For the next two weeks I watched my seedbeds like a hawk eyeing a nest of baby chicks. It was now May, and day by day the air grew more balmy and springlike, but the ground remained just that: flat, dry ground. I could see nothing that hinted of a single leaf or a flower.

  Where were my nasturtiums? My black-eyed Susans? All these years I had clamored to be on my own, free to pursue whatever path I wished, and now I was proving inept. Even a weed would be gratifying.

  Every morning I dribbled the remains of my wash water onto the dirt under which I prayed a seed or two would be sprouting, and hoped no passerby would judge my mental faculties deficient for watering a sunbaked patch of bare earth.

  Trips to the mercantile for soap or potatoes or thread were an agony. With each visit little Edith Ness looked at me expectantly, and I had to shake my head. No sprouts yet. No seedlings. No flowers.

  I had not confessed to Edith that it was not I who had replanted the garden but Gale McBurney. Perhaps it didn’t matter whether saint or sinner poked a shriveled seed into the dry ground. What mattered was that I was now the faithful custodian of God’s promised bounty.

  Eventually anyway.

  One morning as I slopped my scant cupful of water onto the bare flower bed, a trim little horse and buggy pulled to a stop in front of the fence and a well-dressed woman in a bright calico skirt and matching shirtwaist leaned out.

  “That fence of yours is a most unusual color.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I know.”

  “Did you intend for it to be orange?”

  “Um...well, no. It just happened.” I couldn’t admit that it was Gale McBurney who had painted it orange.

  She bobbed her graying head. “My name is Alice Kingman. My husband, Charlie, owns the Rocking K ranch.” She rested the buggy whip at her side.

  Heavens! Mrs. Kingman was well-known in town. She would surely say something to the townspeople about my outlandish fence, and then the whole story about who had painted it and why would come tumbling out.

  I managed to smile. “How do you do, Mrs. Kingman. I am Lilah Cornwell.”

  “New in town, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you around before.”

  “I traveled from Philadelphia a few months ago.”

  “I’ve often wondered about this old place,” she said. “It must have needed some work.”

  “And some furniture,” I added with a laugh. “My aunt left the house to me, but I don’t think she ever lived here. It needed everything.”

  “Ah.”

  “For the first month I ate off tin plates and slept on the floor.”

  “Ah,” she said again. She looked me over with intelligent gray-blue eyes. “You must come out to the ranch for Sunday dinner.”

  My heart almost stopped. “Oh, no, I couldn’t. Thank you, but—”

  “Why couldn’t you?”

  There were a thousand reasons why I couldn’t. For one, Gale McBurney was foreman at the Kingman ranch, and he had kissed me so thoroughly I hadn’t slept soundly for two weeks. I simply couldn’t face him again. That memory took care of excuses two and three and four as to why I could not appear at the Kingman ranch.

  “Oh, I—I wouldn’t want to impose.”

  “Nonsense.” She picked up her whip. “I’ll send one of the ranch hands with the buggy to drive you out. Four o’clock Sunday. And mind you plan to stay over.”

  For the rest of the day I was in a nervous flutter. Did Alice Kingman know about Gale? What should I wear to dinner at a ranch? I had brought exactly three dresses su
itable for church or a social, but I hadn’t attended church since I was twelve, and the thought of a social of any kind made me physically ill. Perhaps that was why Aunt Carrie had willed me this house far off in the West; she had always known how shy I was.

  I would much rather talk to flowers than people. And there were people at the Rocking K ranch. Especially Gale McBurney.

  Chapter Twelve

  Gale

  It was a good two weeks before I got most of the wild mustangs saddle broke. By the last day, I ached all over and thought maybe I’d cracked a rib. As we washed up for supper, Jase started to tease me.

  “You goin’ into town tonight, Gale?”

  “Nope. Don’t want to even look at a saddle. Hurt too much.”

  “Hell, it’s Saturday night! Oughta be dancin’ at the Golden Partridge. I hear there’s a new girl in town, Lilah something.”

  My fists clenched of their own accord. Keep your damn hands off her.

  “I don’t think she’s the kind to be hangin’ out at the Golden Partridge,” I managed to say.

  But I realized I really didn’t know the first thing about Lilah Cornwell except that I’d swear she didn’t wear a corset, and when I kissed her she tasted so sweet I got hard.

  I knew she hung her own wallpaper and had painted her parlor by herself and that she liked flowers, but that was all. The thought of Skip or Jase or anybody else laying a hand on her made my gut knot up.

  After supper I limped across the meadow to my cabin, heated water and scrubbed off three layers of dirt and sweat, then saddled my gelding and hauled my aching ass up onto his back. All the way into town I kept thinking what a fool a man could be.

  An hour later I stumbled into the saloon and found Jase and Skip sprawled at a table, nursing what looked like one beer too many.

  Skip lifted his glass in my direction. “Thought you weren’t comin’, Gale.”

  “I thought so, too.”

  “Beer?”

  “Nah. My head already aches.”

  Jase squinted at me. “What didja come for, then?”

  Hell if I knew.

  Wrong. I did know. I had come to make sure no randy cowboy laid a finger on Lilah Cornwell.

  I scanned the entire room, including every couple stomping around on the dance floor. Should have saved myself the trip; Lilah wasn’t here.

  Well, shoot’s sake. I was too keyed up to stay at the saloon and too tired and sore to do anything else but ride back to the ranch and hit the sack.

  On the way out of town, I passed Lilah’s orange-sherbet picket fence, and I tried real hard not to look up at the house. There was a light on upstairs, and I tried not to look at that, either. I felt better knowing she wasn’t at the dance, but I sure wanted to see her.

  Hell’s bells, I couldn’t come calling in the middle of the night. I couldn’t toss pebbles against her bedroom window like a lovesick kid, either. She’d think I was way out of line.

  On the other hand, I’d already strayed so far out of line the night I kissed her I wondered if I’d ever be able to face her again.

  I gigged my heels into the horse’s flanks and moved on down the road.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lilah

  By Sunday afternoon I had worried myself into a kerfuffle that would have made Aunt Carrie laugh. Just pretend you are someone else, she would say when I confessed my uncertainties. Lie a little.

  Oh, dear aunt, don’t lecture me. Lying is what got you killed.

  I decided on my yellow dimity with the tiny pearl buttons all the way to the hem. I’d given up trying to lace myself into the corsets I’d packed in my trunk, but I felt woefully unfashionable without one. I did wear my prettiest hat, a wide-brimmed straw with a yellow ribbon, and by the time I had secured my flyaway tendrils into a neat bun at my neck, I heard a horse and buggy roll to a stop in front of the house.

  A handsome older man, dark skinned with gray streaks in his longish black hair, sat in the shiny vehicle.

  “Buenas tardes, señorita.” He climbed down and tipped his hat, then walked through the gate and lifted my portmanteau out of my hand.

  “Good afternoon,” I managed as he nestled my tapestry bag on the buggy floor.

  “I am Ernesto Tapia,” he explained. He gave me a wide grin. “And you are Señorita Cornwell. Boss lady send me to bring. I am honored.”

  As I moved down the walkway, I came to a dead stop and stared at my feet. A pale green fuzz covered the ground. My seedlings were sprouting! It was all I could do not to drop to my knees and kiss each one of them.

  Reluctantly I stepped out through the gate, and with a twinkly-eyed look in his dark eyes, Ernesto handed me into the buggy and we were off.

  The countryside beyond my little house grew greener and more lush with each passing mile. I couldn’t take my eyes off the graceful trees that towered beside the road, or the broad swaths of open fields dotted with red-and-yellow wildflowers. Ernesto drove in silence, but each time I exclaimed over some patch of red daisy-like blooms or a bush covered with tiny white flowers, he chuckled and explained what they were. Mayweed and yarrow.

  Finally the wide gate to the ranch loomed. Ernesto climbed down to unlatch it and drive the buggy on through, and I gazed about in awe.

  The house was huge, painted a blinding white that glowed in the late-afternoon sun, and its windows looked out from all three floors. A scarlet rose twined around the front-porch posts and drooped over the lattice. Beside the house, green fields stretched away to a rusty red barn and a series of sturdy-looking pole fences. Corrals, I guessed. Inside one enclosure milled the most beautiful horses I had ever seen, all colors and some even in two colors.

  “Criollos,” Ernesto said. “Wild.”

  I knew exactly how they must feel.

  Mrs. Kingman appeared on the front porch, dressed in a simple skirt of dark blue denim and a white very plain shirtwaist with a cameo at her throat.

  “Welcome!” she called.

  Ernesto handed me out of the buggy, and Mrs. Kingman came down the broad wooden steps, her hands outstretched.

  “Heavens, my dear, you look wide-eyed. Have you seen a wolf? Or a bear?”

  “This is a very beautiful country, Mrs. Kingman,” I managed. “I expect I am, well, bowled over. Everything is so big!”

  She laughed. “Do call me Alice, remember?” She motioned for Ernesto to set my portmanteau on the porch. Just as the Mexican drove away toward the barn, the front door opened and a tall, rangy man with silver hair that brushed his shirt collar stepped out. He had very blue eyes, and when they lit on me they widened.

  “This is my husband, Charlie,” Alice said. “Meet Miss Lilah Cornwell, from Philadelphia.”

  Mr. Kingman engulfed my hand in both of his and tipped his head toward his wife. “Gonna be interesting, Allie. Real interesting.”

  Interesting? Whatever did he mean? Inside, my stomach knotted.

  Alice showed me to a lovely bedroom on the second floor where I laid my hat on the quilted bedcover, unpacked my few things and washed my hands and face. A gong clanged long and loud, and I surmised that was the call to dinner.

  I gulped a deep breath of air and steeled myself to go downstairs and make conversation.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gale

  Along about dinnertime Charlie strode out to the pump, where the hands were lined up to wash and took me aside. “Got a surprise for you, Gale.”

  “Yeah? Couldn’t be another herd of mustangs, could it?”

  “Nope.”

  That was a relief. My shoulder was still so sore it ached when I put on my shirt in the morning, and my cracked rib hurt if I forgot and leaned up against a fence.

  The boss looked kinda funny, the way he gets right around Ali
ce’s birthday. Probably a present for her, maybe a new horse he’d want me to gentle.

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s inside.”

  “Consuelo’s fried chicken?” I guessed. “Chocolate cake?”

  Charlie just grinned.

  I was the last person to enter the dining room, and right away I noticed an extra chair had been set directly across from me. Everybody else noticed it, too. Ernesto was the only hand not whispering about it.

  Oh, no. It had to be Alice’s spinster aunt. Charlie knew I hated the old woman, and Charlie always liked playing jokes.

  Damn the man.

  I heard the rustle of petticoats coming down the staircase and I gritted my teeth and swore under my breath.

  But it couldn’t have been Alice’s maiden aunt, because one by one Jase and then Skip and then Juan and Ernesto jolted to their feet. Suspicious, I dragged myself upright, too. Ernesto pulled out the empty chair, and then the wearer of the petticoats appeared.

  Lilah Cornwell slid into place and I about swallowed my tongue.

  Double damn the man.

  The ranch hands just stood there, mouths gaping open, until Alice murmured, “At ease, gentlemen,” and they dropped into their chairs.

  Lilah didn’t look up right away, and that gave me a split second to compose myself. My God, she was beautiful. In that yellow dress she looked like a ruffled lemon drop. Some of her dark red hair had pulled out of the bun at her neck and curled across her temples and her cheeks in little swirls that made my mouth water.

  I sure hoped my mouth wasn’t hanging open like Skip’s and Jase’s. Oh, what in hell was she doing here?

  Alice explained it, along with the introductions. “This is Miss Cornwell,” she announced. “I have invited her to dinner.”

  Alice went around the table introducing everyone, and by the time she got to me I thought I’d pretty much recovered.

  Lilah smiled and nodded at all the boys, and when Alice mentioned me, Lilah glanced up and blushed. I couldn’t have said a word anyway, so I just nodded.