A Texas Kind of Christmas

by Jodi Thomas

  Eugenie started to rise, then sat back down again. “But I don’t know where he is or how to reach him.”

  Sarah smiled. “Rafe rode in this morning to see if we had any pie left over from last night’s ball.”

  For the first time since the ball, Eugenie felt a moment of hope.

  “He agreed to wait until we got your decision.”

  Eugenie looked into their two faces, both sympathetic and encouraging.

  Eugenie rose. “He may send me back.”

  Sarah laughed. “I doubt it, but you are welcome here if he does. Now let’s get you changed.” Sarah loaned Eugenie a Western riding habit, while Lilly packed a small valise, with a dress, rolled tight, undergarments, and some toiletries. She tucked Kent’s Texas on the very top.

  * * *

  “It’s a good forty minutes,” Rafe warned, “but the only horse I have is Asher’s. If you’re willin’, we can pick her up at the farrier’s.”

  “Asher left town without Trudy?”

  “She needed her hooves trimmed. But, what with the ball bringing in so many travelers, the farrier was too busy to take care of her right away.” Rafe looked sheepish. “It’s a bit of luck, actually. Other than Trudy, there’s not a horse to be rented at any price within fifty miles.”

  It was a test of her grit and her desire.

  Using her hand, she measured the distance between the sun and the horizon. Only an hour of daylight remained before a moonless night. He might send her away. That would be his right. And she would face it, if he did.

  But she refused to think about how awkward his rejection would be: her with no horse to return to town, and him with only a small cabin for her to stay in overnight. Better to think only of her apology and to plan her words. If nothing else, she needed him to hear how very sorry she was and how much she loved him.

  She’d been wrong to think she could settle for a useful life in a rural English village. Perhaps before she’d met him, but not now. Now she’d seen the challenge of a life on the prairies. Now she’d always be missing him. Him. Not Garrand Kent.

  “I can manage. Trudy and I are old friends.” Once decided, she refused to be afraid.

  Rafe smiled, then pointed their way to the farrier.

  * * *

  A natural storyteller like his brothers, Rafe entertained her as they traveled. First he told her stories of the ciboleros who hunted buffalo on the Llano Estacado, far into Comanche territory, then of his adventures with Asher, John, and Ben in the Rangers. His stories made the time pass quickly.

  “Here we are.” Rafe gestured toward the narrow path of beaten-down snow in front of them.

  “Here?” She looked around, hoping to see evidence of Asher’s cabin. But all that she could see was a grove of leafless trees. As Asher and John had taught her, she identified the trees from their bark: peaches and pecans. But from her own experience as an estate manager, she could tell that the trees, though dormant, were healthy.

  “Those should provide good yields in the spring.” It comforted her to think that she might have something useful to offer, if Asher would let her stay.

  “We hope so. Eva’s promised us peach-pecan pies, if we harvest enough fruit. Last year, we only had enough for cookies.”

  Rafe had the same understated sense of humor as his brother. But she’d learned how to respond.

  “Well, pies are just like cookies, only bigger.”

  Rafe laughed out loud. “When Asher came home last night angry as a bear, I was pretty sure you were the right woman for him. Now I’m certain. Come along: the cabin’s this way.”

  They turned in among the barren trees and rode until she could see the beginnings of a structure, set back into a low-rising hill.

  “Whoa, Trudy.” She pulled back on the reins, stunned.

  “When Asher built the cabin, he nestled it into that hill. He didn’t want anyone to see it from a distance,” Rafe explained. “But after he finished the building, the hill wasn’t tall enough, so he carted load after load of rocks and dirt up to the top. We ridiculed him something awful.”

  Asher’s cabin wasn’t a cabin at all. It was a house. A two-story rock house with small windows on the upper floor and larger ones on the bottom. It wasn’t anything like the dog-trot house he’d originally built that Eva and her family now occupied. This was the home of a wealthy landowner.

  Fancy was the word Ware had used. She should have listened.

  For a moment she was angry. He’d lied to her. He wasn’t some no-account small rancher.

  Then she began to laugh. Rafe looked at her with concern.

  But she waved it away.

  She would have done the same thing. Had done the same thing.

  He hadn’t wanted her to know he was a man of means, that he didn’t need the proceeds of the book, because he’d wanted her to love him for himself, not his money.

  She’d had the same problem; she could understand.

  And how could he have told her, once she believed him poor, that he wasn’t? When she’d tried to explain her own circumstances, she’d failed miserably.

  But how could she convince him to give her—to give them—another chance?

  “Rafe!” Ware raced out the door, then stopped. His eyes widened when he saw Eugenie.

  Rafe motioned “don’t tell” with his hand.

  Ware yelled back into the house, “Rafe’s back with Trudy. I’ll help him with the horses.”

  Eugenie dismounted, and Ware flung his arms around her, saying “Barn’s this way.”

  She followed, grateful for a little more time to compose herself.

  Just as Asher’s house wasn’t a cabin, the barn wasn’t a shed.

  Though her grandfather had employed plenty of grooms, Eugenie had always found caring for her mount peaceful. She let the old motions—combing, brushing, and drying—soothe her. Then, following Rafe’s lead, she covered Trudy’s back with straw then a blanket. They led the horses to their stalls. Past the horse stalls, she could see the outlines of a carriage, the side still punched through from the tornado.

  “Ready to meet the bear in his cave?” Rafe teased.

  She nodded, reminding herself that she had less to lose by trying and everything to gain. “I’ll follow you. But I want to enter on my own.”

  Rafe nodded understandingly and directed the boy to the house. Eugenie followed close behind, wanting her approach to be covered by Rafe’s and Ware’s. It wouldn’t do for Asher or one of his hands to think she was an intruder.

  She stepped onto the porch, breathing in deeply. Rafe left the door slightly ajar for her.

  Then, gathering all her courage, she pulled the door open and stepped into the room. It was already a boisterous party.

  The table looked like Texas—or at least the Texas she’d learned to see with Asher.

  Asher was seated at the head of the table. At his right and left hands were his brothers, Rafe and John. Next to them was Ben Payne, his brother-at-arms, and Payne’s family, Eva and Ware. At Ware’s feet was the black puppy Asher had promised him for finishing the cattle drive. At the other end were a half dozen men, Asher’s hands on the ranch.

  The table itself was covered with food: meats and root vegetables, corn and spoon bread, a pot of a Creole dish Eugenie recognized from her time in Jefferson as red beans and rice. Several pies waited on the sideboard.

  Eugenie looked from the pies to Rafe, and the Ranger gave her a wink. The pies had been a diversion to give her one last chance to reconcile with Asher. And she was grateful.

  The ranch hands looked her over, “sizing her up,” as she’d heard it called, and she lifted her chin to meet their gaze as an equal.

  Asher rose slowly, but his eyes never left her. “You came.”

  “I was invited. And a lady never ignores an invitation.”

  “Is that the only reason?” He stepped away from the table toward her.

  She looked around the room; all eyes were watching her. “No, no, it’s not. I should h
ave trusted you. I should have believed you.” She paused; no one was moving. She wasn’t certain anyone was even breathing. One of the cowhands held his fork suspended halfway to his mouth.

  She stepped toward Asher. Letting the rest of the room melt away, she focused her gaze only on him. “I love you—all the parts of you. I opened your book, and I became infatuated with your mind, your witty observations, your understanding of this land and its people. I thought that all I had to do was come here, walk down the street, and somehow I would know you, and, stranger still, you would know me. Yet I didn’t.”

  She breathed deeply and continued. “Instead I fell in love with a handsome Ranger, with a heart as big as this state and whose table welcomes everyone, even an odd Englishwoman. I’m sorry I never saw that Garrand Kent and Asher Graham were the same man, until you told me. Can you forgive me?”

  He stepped forward, and then she was in his arms.

  Seeing Asher’s welcome, the men nodded and returned to their food, ignoring the couple, as Asher led Eugenie out onto the wide porch.

  The sun was setting over the fruit trees, its colors a brilliant orange, purple, pink, and blue. They faced the sky together, looking out over Asher’s land.

  “They say that the stars on a Texas night light the sky from east to west,” Asher whispered in her hair.

  “You read your book.” She looked into his face, searching for any sign of anger. She found nothing but peace.

  “I needed to discover what I said.” He shrugged. After a moment he continued, “But I say that nothing in Texas is brighter than the light in my love’s eyes.”

  “That’s not in the book.”

  “It should be. Next book I write, I’ll put it in, and you can read it back to me every time we ride across Texas.”

  “Your love?”

  “My love. I made the light in your eyes go out a bit at the dance. But I was wrong. Because I want nothing more than to see your face, to hear your voice, and to hold your hand for the rest of my days.”

  “You forgot kisses.” She pressed her palm to his cheek.

  “A man should never forget kisses.” He placed a kiss on her forehead, then on the top of her nose, then firmly on her lips.

  “I could stand here with you every night and never grow tired of this.” She nestled into him.

  “But will this be enough for you?” Asher wrapped his arms around her. “This land, this people. You’ve seen Dallas: it’s growing, but it’s not Jefferson or Galveston, and it will take more than our lifetimes for it to rival London.”

  “Will you be by my side?” she asked, still facing the sunset, not daring to look at his face. “If you will, it will be enough.”

  He turned her to face him, whispering into her hair, “As long as day follows night, as long as the wind blows on the Texas plains, as long as the sun shines bright in the heavens, I will love you.”

  “And I you,” she promised.

  Their kiss was long and gentle. And one turned to two, and two to three, until she couldn’t count anymore.

  At the end of that long kiss, side by side, hands clasped, they looked out over the plains. And as far as the eye could see, the world was before them.

  Historical Notes: Dallas, Sarah Cockrell,

  and the St. Nicholas Hotel

  We hadn’t heard of Sarah Horton Cockrell (1819–1892) or her St. Nicholas Hotel before we began this anthology. And that’s a shame.

  On the frontier, a town could thrive or fail depending on a single event or person. Take for example the city of Jefferson (where Rachael’s story opens): navigation so far inland was made possible by a giant log jam, and when the Army Corps of Engineers destroyed that jam in 1870, it also destroyed Jefferson’s trade. Similarly, the 1858 killing of Sarah’s husband, Alexander (1820–1858) could have signaled disaster for Dallas, a town not yet fifteen years old, with roughly 400 residents.

  John Neely Bryan had staked his 1841 claim for the city at the low-water crossing of the Trinity River and built a ferry. In 1850, in a hotly contested election, Dallas had been named the county seat, and Bryan sold his remaining interest in the town in 1852, to the Cockrells, who used the revenue from the ferry to establish other enterprises.

  Dallas beckoned settlers with ample water (from the forks of the Trinity River and natural springs) and a rich black soil that supported cattle, horses, sheep, and mules. The city drew its populace from many cultures: African-American, Belgian, Canadian, English, French, German, Mexican, Swiss, Tejano and Texian, along with those Native peoples who had not been relocated. Those peoples who remained in Texas—if not specifically in Dallas—included the Cherokee, Anadarko, Tonkawa, and the widely feared Comanche. (For a more comprehensive listing of Texas’s Native peoples, see the annotated 1846 map on Rachael Miles’s website: rachaelmiles.com.) The region grew barley, corn, oats, rye, wheat, sweet potatoes, and peaches; and the woods were replete with ash, cottonwood, elm, spotted oak, and post oak.

  But Dallas’s prosperity rested heavily on the Cockrells’ industries—a ferry, freighting business, brickyard, lumberyard, sawmill, grist mill, and downtown building rented out to other businesses. The Cockrells also built the first wooden bridge across the river, connecting Dallas to those communities on the west side of the river. So, in 1858, when Alexander was shot eight times by a man who owed him money, the many Dallas residents reliant on the Cockrells’ enterprises, particularly those associated with Alexander’s grand hotel project, held their breath.

  Sarah had always been her husband’s amanuensis and adviser, but with his death, the management of their holdings fell to her. Most expected her to sell and move back to Virginia. But she didn’t. Instead, Sarah—a thirty-eight-year-old widow with five small children—became an entrepreneur in her own right. Her first act: finishing her husband’s last project, the luxurious St. Nicholas Hotel.

  A three-story brick building that commanded the town square, the St. Nicholas stood at the northeast corner of Dallas’s main streets, Commerce and Broadway. Lavishly furnished, the St. Nicholas boasted a giant crystal chandelier, elaborate kerosene lighting, and a grand piano, along with other luxuries imported from Shreveport, Houston, and New Orleans. Both its July inaugural ball and the Christmas ball drew visitors from across the state. Engraved invitations were sent by special messenger, since the mail coach only came to Dallas somewhat irregularly. We drew our descriptions of the ball from the contemporary notices in the Dallas Herald newspaper (available at The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu) and from Vivian Castleberry’s 1994 Daughters of Dallas and 2004 Sarah—the Bridge Builder. We hope our stories give Sarah’s hotel life once more.

  By 1860, almost 2,000 settlers called Dallas home, including many former La Réunion colonists. Even so, Dallas was far from populous, coming in a distant ninth in the list of Texas’s ten most populated cities. San Antonio (8,235) and Galveston (7,307) headed that list, followed by Houston (4,845), Marshall (4,000), New Braunfels (3,500), Austin (3,490), Brownsville (2,734), and Sulphur Springs (2,500). Sarah’s St. Nicholas was home to forty-three residents, including Sarah and her children Aurelia, Frank, and Alex. Doctors, lawyers, merchants, craftsmen, they came from sixteen states, including Maine and New York, and six countries. The editor of the Dallas Herald and his printers made their homes there. In the 1860 census, Sarah valued her real estate as worth $78,500 and her personal property at $13,525.

  But the St. Nicholas was fated to have a short life. In July 1860, in 105-degree heat, sulphur matches at the W. W. Peak & Brothers Drug store spontaneously caught fire, reducing most of Dallas to ashes. Even so, the city—and Sarah—refused to concede.

  Sarah, having lost much of her fortune in the fire, went on to make her own history. She became, in 1860, the first woman to testify before the Texas legislature, winning the right to build an iron bridge across the Trinity; she opened it in 1872. She built the first steam-powered mill and donated land to the Methodist church and to the city for a park (later Dealey Plaza).
Her second hotel, the St. Charles (later renamed the Dallas Hotel), was still standing in 1967 when it was razed for the J. F. K. cenotaph.

  At her death, Sarah Horton Cockrell owned a quarter of Dallas.

  With millions of books in print, Jodi Thomas is both a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than fifty novels and more than a dozen novellas. Her stories travel through the past and present days of Texas and draw readers from around the world.

  Jodi has been inducted into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. With five RITAs to her credit, along with National Readers’ Choice Awards and Booksellers’ Best Awards, Thomas has proven her skill as a master storyteller.

  When not working on a novel, Thomas enjoys traveling with her husband, renovating a historic home, and “checking up” on their grown sons and four grandchildren.

  THE VALENTINE’S CURSE

  As a Yankee in Texas two years after the Civil War, cowboy Broderick Monroe is given the jobs no one else wants to do—including keeping company with the cursed Widow Allen at the annual Valentine’s Day dance thrown by his boss’s wife.

  After losing two husbands to the war, Valerie Allen has become a local pariah. Rumor has it that if a man touches her, he’ll be dead by morning. But Brody believes in curses about as much as he believes in love.

  One secret embrace in the moonlight leads Valerie to think she has found a kindred spirit, but fate—and the curse—aren’t done with her yet....

  ONE TEXAS NIGHT

  Hank Harris wasn’t even looking for a woman when he ended up with a wife. Aggie is exactly who he needs as a business partner—if only she weren’t so damn beautiful and spirited—and in his bed....

  Rowdy Darnell was born to be wild, and Laurel Hayes knows she shouldn’t get involved with him—but oh, how he can kiss....