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

by Jenna Kernan

“Would you like to see the new wallpaper I finished upstairs?”

  That came out of nowhere, and it was a few seconds before I could talk. “Sure.”

  She led the way. All I could think about was that no man wearing a pink apron could seduce a woman, no matter how bare her toes were or how her hips swayed in front of him while she climbed up a staircase.

  The first door we came to was closed. Must be her bedroom. I wanted to know what it looked like in the worst way. Were the walls yellow? Blue? What color was the quilt on the bed? How big was the bed? And on and on until I thought I’d choke.

  “This,” she said, pausing in the second doorway, “is my office. It’s where I work.” She gestured at a huge walnut desk facing the windows. A black typing machine sat on top and notebooks were scattered around like lily pads on a pond. A vase of pencils perched next to the typewriter. The wastebasket beside the desk overflowed with crumpled-up balls of paper.

  “You work? What do you work at?”

  She hesitated half a second, and I figured she’d had some hassle over what she worked at.

  “I...um...I am a writer.”

  That knocked my socks clean off. I’m sure my jaw dropped because she gave me an odd, shy little glance and blushed a pretty rose color.

  She caught me looking at her, and she said, “Close your mouth, Gale.”

  “A writer?”

  “Does that shock you?”

  “Yes. No! Hell, I don’t know. I never met a lady writer before. What do you write?”

  This time she waited so long to answer I felt my equilibrium begin to tilt.

  “I write...stories,” she said.

  “For a newspaper back East?” I guessed.

  She shook her head. “For myself.”

  I was beginning to understand. In fact, I understood much, much more than she could ever know. I wasn’t about to ask what kind of stories.

  She led the way back downstairs in silence so thick you could have heard an ant cross the floor. In the kitchen she picked up a silver-plated clock. “We have forty minutes before supper. I want you to teach me how to play poker.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Lilah

  I discovered that I loved playing poker! It was a challenge to bluff when I had nothing but a pair of fours. Perhaps my flair for duplicity came from Aunt Carrie, but I surely hoped I would meet a better end than she had.

  We played for what Gale called “truths.” The winner could ask a question which the loser had to answer truthfully. Unlike Aunt Carrie, I answered all my forfeited truths honestly. Fortunately, I won the first hand I was dealt.

  “What is Texas like?” was my first question.

  “Big. Raw. Surprising,” he answered.

  He won the next hand, and I had to confess why I had never learned to ride.

  “Don’t they have horses in Philadelphia?”

  “Oh, yes. And riding clubs and hunts and equestrienne balls and...” And so much more I did not wish to remember.

  The man did not give up easily. “How come?” he pursued. “What’s wrong with clubs and hunts and balls?”

  With the loss of my next hand I knew I was trapped. I looked everywhere but at Gale, sitting across the kitchen table from me in that ridiculous pink apron, but he stared at me and waited as if he had nothing better to do than pry painful answers out of me.

  I could hear Aunt Carrie’s voice. Lie.

  “Lilah?” His green eyes held mine, and I knew I could not lie. There was something open and unstudied about Gale McBurney that made it impossible for me to deceive him.

  “I...I find it difficult to...talk to people. I am quite shy.”

  “You’re talkin’ to me,” he pointed out.

  “Yes, I am. Reluctantly.”

  He didn’t say a word, just smiled and shuffled the cards and dealt out another hand.

  Thank the Lord I won with two queens to his pair of eights. “My turn,” I gloated. “Tell me about your father.”

  “Big,” he said. Then he added, “Raw. Surprising.”

  “But that is exactly what you said about Texas,” I protested.

  “Yeah. They’re the same.”

  It was my turn to stare at him. “Your father is...surprising?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I left Texas.”

  A thousand more questions popped into my head, but Gale glanced away to the clock, folded his cards back into the deck and stood up. “Potatoes are about done.”

  I laughed. “I don’t believe that for one minute. You just don’t want to talk about your father.”

  “Damn right. You don’t get another question until you win another hand.” He snaked a potato out of the oven, squeezed it experimentally and slid it back onto the rack. Then he removed the iron rounds over the firebox and settled that broiler thing right over the coals.

  I watched him. Maybe cooking wasn’t so difficult. It had annoyed me that Mama’s cook had always shooed me out of the kitchen. I wanted to know how to do things. Even at eleven years old, I had wanted to be independent.

  Gale’s question startled me. “Got a couple of sharp knives?”

  “In the drawer. I’ll get them.”

  “Put the plates on, too,” he ordered. “And that little crock of butter.”

  Within five minutes the meat was sputtering as the grease dripped onto the hot coals, and the kitchen began to smell heavenly. Gale forked over the steaks and gestured for me to sit down at the table. He split the potatoes in two, slathered the halves with butter and slid them onto the plates, followed by the sizzling steaks.

  Then he untied the pink apron and sat down across from me. I was almost sorry about the apron. He looked so out of place in ruffled gingham it was somehow endearing.

  But he certainly wasn’t out of place in a kitchen. I had never eaten such a perfectly grilled piece of beef, not even at the fancy restaurant Mama favored in downtown Philadelphia.

  “Got any wine?” Gale asked after his first bite.

  I retrieved the bottle I’d purchased at the mercantile and kept in the bottom cabinet and set out two water glasses.

  “Kinda big, aren’t they?” he said with a grin. “Never figured you for a drinkin’ woman.”

  “I drink wine only when I have a cough. I mix it with honey.”

  “Must be pretty healthy, then. This bottle’s never been opened.” He twisted the cork out and sloshed some into my glass. And his.

  “What’ll we drink to?” The corners of his eyes crinkled.

  I had not the foggiest notion. I couldn’t propose a toast to my not having to visit the Rocking K again, could I? I lifted my glass.

  “To not having to learn to ride.”

  Gale choked on his wine. When he stopped coughing and caught his breath, he gave me a long, puzzled look.

  Chapter Twenty

  Gale

  “How come you don’t want to ride? Is it the horse? Being out at the ranch? Me?”

  “Of course it’s not you.” She said that right away, so I felt better. A lot better. Matter of fact I felt so good I gulped down the rest of my glass without thinking. Then her tongue came out and licked a drop of wine off her upper lip.

  I forgot the other two reasons why she might not want to ride a horse. I thought about snagging that frilly apron and dropping it across my lap, but then I realized Lilah couldn’t see what was happening to me underneath the table.

  “It is difficult for me, being at the ranch,” she said at last. “Having to talk to people.”

  “You seemed to do okay when you came to dinner that time. With Alice and all.”

  “With Alice, yes. The ‘and all’ I could not really manage. Perhaps you didn’t notice how quiet I was.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.
I thought it was me. You know, seeing me again after...”

  Hell, I couldn’t say that. The word kiss would flood the air between us with too much unspoken feeling. I wanted to eat supper with her, not send her off upstairs in a huff.

  She studied the butter crock. “Well, I admit it was awkward. After a while I began to wonder if—”

  I stopped her just in time. “Don’t go there, Lilah. Just let it be.”

  She licked her lips again and I thought I was gonna explode. “Gale, there is one thing I do want to say.”

  “Okay. I’m listenin’.”

  “If I do want to learn to ride, could it be just you who would teach me?”

  “Well, it could be, sure. But why?” I held my breath.

  “Because I would have to talk with Jason or Skip, or even Mr. Kingman. With you, I don’t have to.”

  I just looked at her sitting there across from me with her cheeks flushed from the wine and her lips like ripe raspberries. She doesn’t have to talk to me? Hell yes, she has to talk to me!

  I didn’t want to startle her, or scare her, but I sure wanted her to know that. It wasn’t just the taste of her mouth under mine, or the ache in my groin when I admired her backside or spied her bare toes. It was more than that.

  As a matter of honest fact, it was so much more than that it kinda set me back on my heels. She didn’t know anything about me, really. What the hell would she do when she found out?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lilah

  Something was closing down inside Gale. I could see it as clearly as if he’d written it out on one of my parlor walls. But I had no idea what it was.

  He would not have invited himself to supper if he did not like me, would he? Or if my kiss had been so inept that he would never want another?

  Of course, there were things I was hiding, too. And all at once it struck me funny, the two of us dancing around each other like youngsters at our first ball, studiously trying not to look at each other. Trying hard not to like each other.

  I deduced that liking me was some sort of a threat to him. But why? Aunt Carrie would know. Aunt Carrie had understood men because she knew them so well, had dealt with them under difficult circumstances where they had to rely on each other. Trust each other.

  But, Lilah Marie Cornwell, you are not Aunt Carrie.

  I supposed when it came to men I would have to live and learn, as Mama always said. I only hoped I would survive. Aunt Carrie had not.

  I heated water to wash the plates and silverware while Gale cut up tiny morsels of leftover steak for Mollie and took them in his cupped palm out to the front porch, where I’d set her basket before supper. He did not come back.

  I washed the plates and dried them and put them away in the walnut hutch, then set the coffeepot on the stove. Even if Gale had slipped away, I wanted to sit in the lawn swing with Mollie on my lap and admire my garden in the moonlight.

  My flower bed was turning into a most intriguing mélange of colors and patterns; the beds were not separated, as Mama’s gardens always were, but mixed together all which-a-way, like one of those Impressionistic paintings Mama had brought back from Paris where the paint all washed together in a riot of hues. If my orange fence was causing talk around town, my haphazard swirly carpet of flowers would bring the gossip to a crescendo.

  Just imagine, being the subject of gossip not because of a relationship with the opposite sex, but because of the indiscriminate mating of red nasturtiums and golden-yellow black-eyed Susans!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gale

  I could see she had something on her mind when she pushed open the screen door and came out on the porch. I could see it in the way she held her shoulders. She settled at the far end of the lawn swing, reached over and lifted her orange cat out of my lap and sat petting it without saying a word. Real quick it got hard to watch her hands like that, stroking that ball of fur slow and gentle-like, back and forth, back and forth, and not in any kind of hurry.

  She had a kind of faraway look on her face, and she kept staring over at the flowers I’d planted for her. They looked real pretty, all mixed up like that, like a Persian carpet I’d seen once in my daddy’s front parlor.

  I sure wanted to ask what she was thinking, but I figured if it was any of my business she’d tell me. And if it wasn’t, maybe she’d tell me anyway. Don’t know why I thought that; guess I wanted it to be true.

  My stomach was getting all knotted up just being close to her, smelling her hair and the scent of her skin. She didn’t have to say a single word to keep me interested. To be honest, I was more than interested. And when I realized that, my heart kicked like an unbroke stallion.

  Must be it was time for me to go. But just when I made that decision she said something that took all the vinegar out of me.

  “I write love stories.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know, stories about handsome heroes and beautiful girls.”

  I swallowed twice. “You get any of these stories published?”

  “No, not yet. I send them out, but I don’t receive much encouragement.”

  “How come? Aren’t they any good?”

  “No, not very.” She looked at me kinda funny.

  “Why not? What’s wrong with them?”

  She was quiet for so long I thought maybe she’d decided not to answer. Then she opened her mouth and blew me out of the corral again.

  “The truth is that I don’t know much about it. What makes a love story, I mean.”

  Whoa. It was my turn to be quiet. Couldn’t think for a minute, I guess. Everyone on God’s earth knows about love, don’t they?

  “Lilah, are you saying you haven’t had much, uh, experience?”

  She nodded, but she kept her head down, staring at her cat, and I couldn’t see her eyes.

  “I’m gonna tell you a secret,” I said. “You know all those dime novels about cowboys and bank robbers and sheriffs? They’re mostly made up. Anybody that knows diddly about life out here in the West knows what’s printed in those books isn’t real.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Gale. Those stories feel true. The reader is convinced because of the setting and the details. Gunfights and train wrecks are easier to imagine.”

  “So maybe...” Aw, hell, for sure that wasn’t an invitation to take her upstairs and do some research. That’d be the dumbest thing since ginger beer. Instead I sucked in my breath and asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I wanted you to know what I wrote about.”

  “Why? You think it matters to me what you write? You think I’m gonna look at you any different because you write love stories?”

  “I thought you would think it was frivolous. My mother thinks it is.”

  “Well, I sure ain’t your mother.”

  “No. And I thank the Lord for that.”

  I had to laugh at her words, and then she laughed, and before I knew what I was doing I leaned over and kissed her. Damn near squashed her cat, but it was worth it.

  She tasted like wine, and I couldn’t get enough of her. Couldn’t get close enough to her either, with that cat between us. Maybe that was a good thing. I was starting to ache so bad I wasn’t sure how I was gonna mount my horse and ride the six miles back to the ranch.

  I shouldn’t have worried. She didn’t move an inch to make it easier for me to get any closer, so I figured she’d had enough of a randy cowboy with a lot of giddy-yap and no manners. I got to my feet and walked to the edge of the porch.

  “I’d best say good-night, Lilah. Thanks for havin’ supper with me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lilah

  He hesitated at the top step, his broad shoulders hunched over a bit, both his hands jammed in his back pockets.

>   “Gale?”

  He half turned toward me, but he kept his hands where they were. “Yeah?”

  “I liked the steaks. I liked playing poker with you.”

  I brushed Mollie off my lap, stood up and took three steps to where he stood. “But most of all, I like that you listened to me.”

  I stretched up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. He didn’t move, didn’t say a word, just stood there looking at me. I stepped back, but he caught me, bent his head and covered my mouth with his.

  His kiss was long and deep and very thorough, so thorough that my knees turned to jelly as his lips moved on mine. A hot, delicious light bloomed inside my body. Never, never had I felt anything so exquisite.

  After a long time he lifted his head. “Gotta stop this,” he murmured.

  “No, don’t.” My automatic protest shocked me.

  “Yes, dammit.” He curved his fingers around my shoulders and moved me away from him. His hands were shaking.

  My heart was fluttering like a hummingbird’s wings. I watched him snag his wide-brimmed gray hat off the porch railing and tramp off behind the house where he had tied up his horse. I waited, scarcely able to draw breath.

  Finally he appeared, the reins held loosely in his hand and his hat tipped low.

  “I’m not gonna apologize,” he said from the shadows. His voice was low and careful. “Won’t happen again.”

  I felt like weeping. I wanted it to happen again. And I wanted to tell him that.

  But of course I couldn’t. No lady told a man what she really wanted.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Gale

  I talked Charlie into letting me ride out to round up another herd of mustangs for delivery to Fort Hall. I took Ernesto with me. The Mexican was good at finding wild horses and rounding them up, and even better, he didn’t flap his tongue like Jase or Skip. Didn’t think I could stand any more words in my head than the ones already rattling around in there.

  We rode hard and worked ourselves to exhaustion, and that suited me just fine. At the end of long, dusty days in the saddle I hunkered down by the campfire, nursing a full cup of Ernesto’s double-boiled coffee and my empty helping of good sense when it came to Lilah Cornwell. It was getting cold now as fall got closer, but even sleeping right next to the campfire, I was hot all night.