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

by Jenna Kernan

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  I splashed water at him, but he didn’t even flinch, so I turned, gritted my teeth and swam to the deepest part of the pool. Gale did not move a single inch.

  I gazed up at the specks of brilliant blue sky glimpsed through the tree branches and wondered what Aunt Carrie would do about a man like Gale.

  Nothing. I could hear her voice as clearly as if she were floating beside me. Do nothing. Pretend it does not matter. Go home and forget him.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Gale

  She came out of the river looking like a frozen water nymph, her hair straggling out of the bun at her neck and her wet skin glistening. I shut my eyes and turned away.

  “I’m going to lie in the sun to dry my underclothes,” she called.

  “Yeah.” I packed up the picnic basket, folded up the blanket and waited, grinding my jaw to keep from looking at her. How long did it take for a scrap of lacy drawers and a camisole to dry on a winter day? An hour? Two?

  I knew I’d never make it.

  All of a sudden I saw the humor in the situation. Didn’t exactly make me laugh, but my tight jaw began to relax and my aroused body settled down a bit.

  Or it would eventually. Before it did I worked up a pretty good ache in my groin, and Lilah sure wasn’t helping matters. I couldn’t let myself get close to her.

  I couldn’t live without her.

  Dammit, I wish I’d stayed in Idaho.

  While I paced up and down with my eyes focused anywhere but on her, she dried off and put her clothes back on, pulled on her boots and mounted her horse.

  Hallelujah. Maybe I could heave my swollen privates into the saddle and make it back to the ranch before I hauled her off into the trees and did what I was aching to do.

  I focused on the trail, the grass, the spindly little trilliums fighting for life in the shade, anything to keep from watching Lilah’s body move with the motion of her horse. I kept thinking that underneath that riding skirt was just a single layer of white muslin. One single layer.

  God help me. I tried not to think about it. Right before we emerged from the trees I lost it, dragged her off the mare onto my lap and kissed her like tomorrow was a century away. She tasted of chocolate, and her skin smelled so sweet it made my mouth water.

  “When we get back to the ranch,” I said against her lips, “get Juan to drive you home. I don’t trust myself.”

  She mmm-hmmed, but her voice was drowsy. I prayed to God she heard me. I set her back in Lady’s saddle and we just looked at each other. What I saw in her eyes was understanding and quietness, and underneath that was banked passion. What she saw in mine, I don’t know. Desperation, maybe. Raw hunger.

  It turned out she wasn’t going back to town. She was staying overnight at the ranch. I kept my jaw clenched all through supper and the front-porch antics of Jase and Skip after dessert, but finally I couldn’t take anymore. I set off across the meadow for the safety of my cabin.

  Fat lot of good that did me, with Lilah’s portrait staring me in the face and no whiskey left in the bottle.

  By midnight I’d had all I could stand.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Lilah

  Gale was quiet all through supper, through Consuelo’s cherry pie and coffee and then brandy on the porch while my body sang with wanting him. I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I stayed up as late as possible. Even after Gale went off to his cabin and Charlie and Alice went upstairs to their bedroom, I sat and rocked back and forth in the porch swing and tried and tried to stop thinking about him.

  A fat silvery moon rose and set, and at last I climbed up to my third-floor guest room and crawled under the sheet.

  My eyelids simply would not stay closed. After an hour I gave up and lay awake, staring up at the wallpapered ceiling in the darkness.

  I must have drifted off to sleep, but I jolted awake when the door to my room silently opened and a shadow moved to the bed.

  “Move over,” Gale whispered. I heard his heavy leather belt drop to the rug, and then he slid his body next to mine and reached for me.

  “Don’t say anything,” he murmured. “I make a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month as ranch foreman, and that’s not enough to support a wife. Just let me love you.”

  We were quiet after that. He touched me all over and kissed me everywhere, even places I had only imagined in my dreams, and it went on and on until we were both breathing hard and nothing mattered any longer.

  At the end he whispered in my ear. “I love you, Lilah. And I can’t do a damn thing about it.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This is all I want.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  I had plenty of money, even more now that my stories were starting to sell. But I knew Gale would never, never accept help from me. I couldn’t offer him a single penny because he would be too proud to take it. Why are men so pigheaded?

  Toward morning he said something else. “The hardest thing I’ve ever done is to be in love with you and walk away.” That just plain made me cry.

  Juan drove me back to town before breakfast. Nothing was the same. Nothing would ever be the same.

  * * *

  To keep my mind off Gale I baked Christmas cookies, dozens of them—white-winged angels and fat Santas with a dot of red-current jelly for a nose. I baked and cried and baked some more, and in between batches I wrote.

  I sold two more stories, and I stopped Charlie on his way into town one morning and sent word to Alice, hoping she would tell Gale about my success.

  I thought a lot about Aunt Carrie. I couldn’t bring myself to lie to Gale, so when my courses came I stopped Alice on her way out of town one day and sent a short note to him.

  Mama wrote, asking me to come back to Philadelphia for Christmas. I wrote back and said no, and I lied about the reason. She would never understand wanting to live near a man who could not marry me.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Gale

  “Ya know what, Gale? Sure seems funny that Lilah’s never visited all these weeks, don’t it?”

  We were mending the corral fence, and as usual Jase couldn’t keep his mouth shut. “Maybe she’s busy, Jase.”

  “Thought she liked us. You anyway.”

  I pounded in a nail. “Guess you thought wrong.” I shut my mind down as best I could, and eventually Jase drifted back to the barn and let me finish the fence alone.

  I’d just stretched the last section of barbwire when Alice drove up in the buggy.

  “Gale, I want you to take something into town for me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Lilah

  From my upstairs bedroom window I heard Gale’s voice on the front porch, calling my name. “Lilah? Lilah, answer me!”

  My heart all but stopped. I had never before heard him use that tone of voice. What was wrong? Was it Alice? Charlie?

  “Gale? I’m coming.” I rushed down the stairs in my dressing gown, still hearing his shouts.

  “Hurry up!”

  He stood there with a bushy, fragrant fir tree balanced on one shoulder. Snow dusted his hat and the collar of his sheepskin jacket.

  “Christmas tree,” he announced. “Where d’ya want it?”

  “In the front parlor,” I said, gasping. “Right in front of the window.”

  “Gonna decorate it?”

  “Oh, I left all the tinsel and ornaments back in Philadelphia.”

  “Out here we use popcorn balls and strings of cranberries, stuff like that. Even paper cutouts to look like snowflakes.”

  He set the tree down where I pointed and snaked off his hat with a puff of snow dust. “I’ll help with the popcorn balls. Alice has a good recipe.”

  Then
he made a hasty retreat. I opened my mouth to ask about the popcorn balls, but he was already riding off.

  I spent all the next day stringing cranberries and making lacy paper snowflakes. The whole house smelled like a Christmas tree, and I smiled and smiled when Gale came that evening to help me make popcorn balls.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Gale

  After we rolled the popcorn balls and hung them up on the branches, we walked out to the front porch to admire the decorated tree. “Look!” Lilah shouted. “It’s snowing!”

  The white flakes sifted down, frosting her hair. Before I could stop her she skedaddled off the porch and spun in a circle like a kid, opening her mouth wide to catch snowflakes on her tongue. I wanted to kiss her so bad I fought to keep my hands jammed in my pockets.

  The whole world felt peaceful as everything turned white and silent. “You had snow in Philadelphia, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, but it was nothing like this. The trees are so beautiful with their branches all white and sparkly, and look! The road looks like a wide path of soft white silk.”

  “And your flowers are getting covered up,” I said. “All lumpy like little fat dolls dancing across your front yard.”

  All at once she froze. “Gale, listen!” She rushed to the front fence and cocked her head. “Carolers!”

  Faint voices floated on the snowy air. “God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay...”

  “Oh,” she breathed. “How lovely.”

  “Yeah.” But I was looking at her, not at the crowd of singers moving along the road.

  She dashed into the kitchen, where I heard a clatter of dishes. When I got there she was loading up a platter with some of the Christmas cookies she’d baked.

  “Schoolkids,” I explained. “They do it every Christmas.”

  She turned toward me and I saw tears in her eyes. She gave me a shaky smile. “Christmas always makes me cry.”

  The singers drew closer. “O, come, all ye faithful...”

  Lilah grabbed the platter of cookies and scooted out the front door. I heard oohs and aahs and a lot of laughter, and then the voices resumed singing and moved on down the road. “We three kings of Orient are...”

  The music drifted off until there was nothing left but the sound of our breathing, and I knew I had to get out of there. I was coming undone. I left her without even kissing her, and I regretted it all the way back to the ranch.

  * * *

  Alice kept sending me into town on errands—pick up some needles from the mercantile and bring more raisins and another ten-pound bag of brown sugar. All the store windows had rows of little kids gazing at displays of toy trains and dolls and bows and arrows. I waded through them, made my purchases and carefully avoided slowing down when I came to Lilah’s orange fence on my way out of town.

  Consuelo outdid herself baking apple and mince pies, but I wasn’t hungry. Skip and Jase and Juan ate like starving Indians, laughing and joking and telling tall tales like they always did. I didn’t say much, just wasn’t in the mood to celebrate.

  By Christmas Eve I couldn’t stand it any longer, and I left the dining table and headed across the frosty meadow to my cabin. Before I’d gone ten yards, Alice flagged me down.

  Oh, no, not another damned errand in town.

  “Gale, a letter came for you. I picked it up at the mercantile when I was in town.”

  “Not from Texas, I hope.”

  “No. From...” She peered at the envelope. “Chicago.”

  I studied the envelope. The return address read “Strellan Gallery, Chicago.”

  I ripped it open so fast it tore off one corner and unfolded the single sheet of heavy bond.

  “Dear Mr. McBurney, we are pleased...”

  A bank draft fluttered to the ground. I scooped it up and read the amount. Twelve thousand dollars? God, twelve thousand dollars?

  I kissed Alice, raced for the barn where I threw a saddle up on Randy and headed straight for town.

  Chapter Forty

  Lilah

  I was just admiring my beautiful popcorn-ball-and-cranberry-strung Christmas tree in the front parlor when I heard Gale’s voice.

  “Lilah! Lilah!”

  His horse clattered up outside the gate, and the next thing I knew he had burst onto the front porch, breathing hard, and dragged me into his arms.

  “Gale! What is it?”

  He just stared at me for a moment. “I’ve gotta ask you something.”

  “Yes? Whatever is the matter?”

  He lifted me off my feet and swung me twice around in a circle. Out in her front yard covering up her roses next door, old Mrs. Hinckley gasped and dropped her spectacles.

  He set me on my feet, sucked in a big breath and blew it out. “How’d you like to sell this house?”

  “Sell it? To whom?”

  “To me.”

  “Gale, you have a cabin out at the ranch. What do you need with this house?”

  “I don’t need it, by myself. But we do.”

  I caught my breath. “Gale, stop. You make a hundred and thirty-five dollars a month, you told me so yourself. You can’t afford to buy this house.”

  “Yes, I can. I sold one of my paintings. Did you know I paint pictures? Anyway, I sold one. For twelve thousand dollars!”

  He stopped suddenly. “Unless you don’t want to marry me. Do you? I mean, will you? Marry me?”

  “But—”

  “Sell your house to me, Lilah. That way I can support you.”

  “But you work for the Rocking K.”

  “Not anymore. My cabin’s not big enough for the two of us. We need room for you to write. And for me to paint. I can sure as hell support a wife on twelve thousand dollars. And that’s for just one painting! God, I can hardly believe it.”

  I stared at him. “Gale, you’re bubbling like a little boy with a new toy.”

  “That painting was a portrait of you, Lilah. And I just finished a second one.”

  “I know.”

  His green eyes widened. “How could you know?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  “Alice,” he murmured. “She shipped that painting to the gallery in Chicago and—”

  “Gale.”

  “And she must have—”

  “Gale?”

  “Yeah? Lilah, let’s get married right away. Today.”

  I circled my arms around his neck, stretched up on tiptoe and kissed him very, very thoroughly. Mrs. Hinckley dropped her spectacles a second time.

  “Take me to bed, Gale.”

  “Huh? But what about getting married today?”

  I kissed him again. “Today is Christmas Eve. We can get married tomorrow.”

  “Don’t know if I can wait,” he whispered near my ear.

  Suddenly I felt as if I could fly, just spread my wings and soar up off the porch and over the town and look down on the snow-blanketed roofs and wish that everyone in the world could be as happy as I was. And all it took was one kiss from Gale McBurney and another whisper in my ear before we wound our arms around each other and stumbled upstairs to my bedroom, where we gave thanks for laughter and for love.

  And for being with each other.

  Epilogue

  For weeks following the wedding of Lilah Cornwell and Gale McBurney, the entire county talked about the event.

  Whitey Poletti, the barber, strolled around dressed in a spangly Venice boatman’s costume, playing Italian love songs on his well-used accordion. The Ness twins, Edith and Noralee, somehow convinced sawmill owner Ike Bruhn to construct them each a pair of eight-foot stilts, and the girls cavorted about tossing paper flowers down on the assembled guests.

  A heavily masked clown juggl
ed Alice Kingman’s best china dinner plates, at one point tossing six in the air at the same time, whereupon Alice had to sit down and fan herself. The guests all wondered who it was, and to this day, no one knows for sure.

  Musicians who usually performed at barn dances, a fiddle, two guitars, a banjo and a washtub bass, played the “Wedding March,” accompanied by a children’s chorus of comb-and-tissue-paper kazoos.

  And when Gale and Lilah stood hand in hand before Reverend Pollock and repeated their vows, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

  After the ceremony, waltzes and polkas reverberated through the church hall until long past midnight, when Gale lifted his bride into his arms, white lace gown and all, and strode out the door and down the snowy street to the house with the orange picket fence.

  * * * * *

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Historical.

  You dream of wicked rakes, gorgeous Highlanders, muscled Viking warriors and rugged Wild West cowboys from another era. Harlequin Historical has them all! Emotionally intense stories set across many time periods.

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  ISBN-13: 9781460340820

  WILD WEST CHRISTMAS

  Copyright © 2014 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:

  A FAMILY FOR THE RANCHER

  Copyright © 2014 by Jeannette H. Monaco

  DANCE WITH A COWBOY

  Copyright © 2014 by Kathryn Albright