A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas

CHAPTER TWO

GRANT FELT LIKE the biggest asshole curmudgeon on the planet. Not that that was a new feeling for him necessarily. But he resented the fact that he had to show this girl around the ranch, and he shouldn’t. Really, he should be proud of the fact that Wyatt and Lindy were using what they had to give her a shot at digging out of the bad pit she seemed to find herself in.

But Grant didn’t have a hell of a lot of altruism left inside of him.

If they had done it without putting her in his jurisdiction, he might have been able to muster a little bit up. As it was, not so much.

“Come on, McKenna Tate,” he said, turning and walking out of the dining area, trusting that she was going to follow him. The sound of her footsteps behind him indicated that she had.

“Where are we going?”

“I expect that you’re going to want to get a look around the place. And that you’d probably like to see where you’re going to be sleeping.”

He would have to pull up the ledger to see which cabins were available, but that would be easy enough. It wasn’t that any of this was difficult. It was all getting rolled into his daily responsibilities, after all. Wasn’t extra. Not really.

But a mother hen he was not. Not even on a good day. And after the awful sleep he’d gotten, today was not a very good day.

“It doesn’t really matter if I like it or not,” she fired back. “I don’t have any other options.”

“I’m not here for this tough-girl thing you’re doing,” he said, stopping and turning to face her. “My brother is doing a damn nice thing for you. If you have to pretend that you don’t care, you can stay quiet. Otherwise, feel free to add commentary.”

Her expression went from defiant to subdued, softening slightly. Well. Apparently, she did have feelings. And wasn’t made entirely of prickles and spite.

He pushed open the front door and the two of them walked out of the house. She stayed silent, her boots loud on the steps as they made their way down to the driveway. Grant paused and looked around, always surprised at how the place looked. New, and somehow the same all at once. The cabins around the main house had been restored, each one with its own flower bed and carefully manicured walk that led up to the front door.

The entire property was refreshed. The barns painted, the hiking trails into the woods cleared.

The bones remained. The foundation. The earth. Same as it had always been.

He didn’t know if he took comfort in that or not.

He didn’t know if he took comfort in anything, really.

He just kept on living.

To do anything else would be a damn insult to Lindsay.

“Let’s walk up this way,” he said. “I’m going to show you the barn, and then we’ll walk out to the cabin you’ll be staying in. Hitting all the highlights on the way.”

His companion was much quieter than she’d been, but he imagined snapping at her had done its job. He wasn’t sorry about the silence. Having to make stupid small talk was the only thing that was worse than dealing with comforting strangers over his grief.

He led her down a gravel drive that took them to the big red barn, the one that the guests liked to see, not the one that housed the equipment. But this one had hay bales, and was a fun place to hang out and drink coffee. And really, that was its primary function. They had dinners in it, and sometimes small events.

And by they, he meant the ranch. Because he didn’t get anywhere near social engagements of that kind.

For his part, Grant preferred to do demonstrations with the animals. And any sort of behind-the-scenes work that needed doing. Things that didn’t require talking. Just another reason this little babysitting job wasn’t to his liking.

“This is like... Like ranches you see on TV,” she said, looking around the barn.

Grant turned around and he couldn’t stop the kick he felt in his chest when he got a look at the expression on McKenna’s face. It was like something had released inside her, all the tightness in her face gone slack. Her mouth had dropped open slightly, her brown eyes wide as she took in the sight of the large red structure, and the backdrop of dark green mountains dusted with pure white snow behind.

Suddenly, the place didn’t look so familiar. For one small moment he saw it for the first time, right along with her.

He was a tired man. Down to his bones. He hadn’t felt a moment of wonder in longer than he could recall. There was nothing new here. Nothing new in him.

But right then it felt like the world stopped turning, just for a second, and in that space, between his last breath and his next heartbeat, he forgot everything but the beauty around him.

And it seemed new.

But then the world moved again, and that feeling was gone.

“It’s nice,” he said, clearing his throat and charging on through to the inside of the barn.

He turned to make sure that McKenna was with him, and she was, almost hunched forward, looking around them with a strange mix of trepidation and wonder.

“Have you not been in a barn before?”

“No,” she said.

“I thought you’d done all the manual labor there was to do. There’s a lot of it to be done in barns, McKenna, let me tell you.”

“Clearly I’ve done all the city-type varieties of manual labor.”

“Have you spent most of your time living in the city?” He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t care.

“Not exclusively,” she said. “I’ve lived in my fair share of medium-size towns. It’s just that nobody was inviting me to go hang out on the ranch. I didn’t get asked to a lot of hoedowns.” She shrugged. “Or much of anything.”

He knew that a lot of people would feel sorry for her. He didn’t. She was standing in front of him healthy and on two legs. Life was tough, but it was a hell of a lot tougher when you were dead.

“You’ll probably end up at a few. Depending on how long you stay. My sister-in-law has grand plans for some big-ass Christmas party over at her winery. So.”

Her expression went soft, and then shuttered again. “I doubt I’ll be here through Christmas.”

“Don’t make me waste time training you. I don’t mind if you skip out before Christmas, but you better do the work you say you’re going to do. Understand?”

“You’re grumpy,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I am.”

“Most people don’t like being called grumpy,” she said.

“Well, I told you I wasn’t going to deal with your tough-girl act, so I suppose as long as we’re being honest, I have to take that one on the chin.”

“So this is what you do,” she said, following him out of the barn as he led them both down the path that would take them a long way to the mess hall, and would give her a good sense of the size of the property. “I mean, you’re a professional... Cowboy.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Did you always know you wanted to be a cowboy?”

“No,” he said.

There had been a time when all he had wanted was to get the hell away from the ranch. From his dad. From everything familiar. When he had wanted to escape and start over. Get out of Gold Valley. He hadn’t cared what he did or where he went. The only thing driving him had been anger.

And then he met Lindsay. And all he’d wanted was to make her happy.

All he’d wanted was to be a good husband.

A good man.

Because she knew he could be, and if Lindsay believed it, he wanted to make it real.

“When did you decide you wanted to be a cowboy?”

“When did you decide to become an interrogator for the police?”

“I’m curious,” she said. “First of all, I don’t get to talk to very many people. Or I haven’t talked to anyone in a while. I’ve been by myself for a couple of weeks. Second of all, I really don’t meet very many people like you.”

“Grumpy assholes?”

“Cowboys,” she said. “Assholes are par for the course, at least in my experience. Though not very many that are so aware of what they are.”

“I didn’t really decide to do it,” he said. “My brother decided to revitalize the ranch. I hated my job.”

“What did you do?”

“I worked in the office for the power company.”

“Well... That does sound boring.”

“It is. Pays well. Retirement. Benefits. All that.”

“I bet this doesn’t.”

“Yep,” he agreed.

She stopped talking for a while as they walked on the trail that wound down toward the river. The smell of the frigid water filtered through the heavy, damp scent of pine around them, the sound of the rushing rapids a comforting whisper beneath the wind in the trees. She had that look on her face again. That one that made his own eyes feel new.

He wasn’t sure that he liked that.

Wasn’t sure he liked at all that this stranger had the power to affect anything in him.

The path they were on led to the back of the mess hall, to the outdoor seating area that had a good view of the river. Even though it was just the beginning of November, his sister-in-law had put up white Christmas lights around the perimeter. Because, she said, winter was dark and any cheer was welcome. And she had also argued that white lights were not necessarily holiday specific.

She had argued these things with Wyatt, Bennett, Bennett’s wife, Kaylee, and the youngest Dodge, Jamie.

She had not argued it with Grant.

Because Grant didn’t care.

He wasn’t going to waste a moment of damned breath arguing about the appropriate date to string lights.

In the end, he’d been the one to put them up.

Somehow, he’d been the deciding vote, since he was seen as neutral ground in some ways.

Funny, he wasn’t sure he considered himself neutral. Just apathetic about pretty much anything that didn’t involve alcohol.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He liked to ride horses. In some ways, he thought that this endeavor at the Get Out of Dodge ranch had saved him. Sitting behind that desk had been a slow path to hell. When he’d been working at the power company still, his only solace really had been drinking.

He had spent so many years ignoring the way that other men his age lived their lives. Had spent so many years pushing down the kinds of appetites men his age had. Had honed his entire focus onto his wife. Not on the things they didn’t have, but on what they did have.

Their small, perfect house down in town, within walking distance of all the cute little shops that she loved so much. Cozy dinners in on the nights when she felt like eating. And sometimes, Ensure shakes on the couch with a movie on when she didn’t.

On those kinds of nights he waited until she went to bed, then heated up a TV dinner after she fell asleep. Not because he was hiding the fact that he was eating. She wouldn’t want him to do that. He just didn’t like to remind her of anything she might be missing.

He’d stripped his life down to the essentials because he didn’t want to be out living a life that Lindsay couldn’t. There was no one on earth he could talk to about it. And anyway, he spent as much time as possible talking to Lindsay when she had been alive.

The problem was, after she’d died, after he’d clawed his way out of the initial fog of grief, what he’d found on the other side was that he didn’t exactly know how to live anymore. Not like a normal person. He didn’t have a confidant, didn’t know how to talk to anyone about it.

And there had been so many things he had mentally put a blockade around. Things he couldn’t do. Things he couldn’t have.

Hell, staying at his job was a prime example.

He didn’t love it. Not even a little. But when Lindsay had been alive it had been a necessity. He’d needed that exact amount of money to keep up payments on their house. Had needed that specific kind of job so he had the kind of health insurance required to pay for her extensive treatments.

When she was gone, he hadn’t needed the job. Not anymore.

But he’d stayed in it. For years longer than he needed to. Had stayed in the house, too.

Routine, as much as anything else.

Sometimes he’d even had those chocolate meal-replacement shakes with a shot of whiskey for dinner because he’d missed them.

Realizing he was stuck, realizing that he didn’t have to live that way anymore, had been the first realization on the other side of that initial punch of grief.

That was when he’d started boxing things up. Returning some items to Lindsay’s parents, keeping just two things for himself.

Her wedding ring set and the country Christmas snowman, carved from wood that she had insisted on setting out every holiday season. He’d hated it. Had given her a hard time about how god-awful it was. Made from knotty wood, with wire arms, and strange, knitted mitten hands. He thought the thing was everything that was wrong with a holiday craft bazaar.

In the end, of course, it had been one of the things he hadn’t been able to part with.

It lived in a box up in his closet, but he had it.

The rings he kept on a chain around his neck, along with his. Hidden under his shirt, but there all the same.

It had been three years before he’d taken his own ring off his finger. He hadn’t done it for a specific reason. Not really. It was just that at some point he realized he was putting on a wedding ring every morning, and he wasn’t married.

That was when he’d added it to the chain that had her rings.

The chain seemed right.

He wasn’t married. But it was impossible not to carry that marriage with him.

It had shaped him. Changed him.

Even if there was no reason for him to live like she was still here.

Sometime after deciding to put the house up for sale, while he was still working at the power company, his drinking had gotten worse. Mostly, because he didn’t know what else to do with himself. He’d gone from one box to another.

And it was only Wyatt deciding to make some changes on the ranch that had really pulled him out of that dark, well-worn routine he’d found himself in.

His older brother had saved his life.

Damned if he’d ever tell him that, but it was the truth.

“Is this where you...eat?”

It took him a moment to realize he’d been standing there in complete silence while McKenna poked around the deck.

“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes we eat in the mess hall. Because it’s a little bit more centrally located than the main house. Though, when we have guests, not as much.”

“Do you have guests right now?”

He nodded. “Some. So, if we eat inside, we just make sure to avoid mealtimes. Though the appearance of ranch hands adds to the experience, I guess.”

“I would think a lot of the women would pay extra for you guys to come wandering through.” She smirked, her expression taking on an impish quality he hadn’t seen before.

He didn’t know quite what to make of that. He supposed she was saying he was good-looking.

He didn’t know why.

And he didn’t know how to feel about it, either.

“I’ll suggest Wyatt and Bennett pencil being living props into their schedule.”

“Not you?” she asked.

He shifted, feeling uncomfortable. “I think I might scare them away.”

She shrugged. “Some women dig the asshole thing.”

He cleared his throat. “I’ll make a note of that.”

He pushed open the back door, led her into the dining hall. No one was in the large room. There were rows of vacant tables and benches, all clean and ready for the next meal.

Two large dispensers of coffee from Sugar Cup were set up on a long, bright blue table that was pushed up against the back wall, along with fixings for cider, hot chocolate and tea. In exchange for sending people on to the coffeehouse, they provided the ranch with coffee. And as far as Grant was concerned, it was a pretty good deal. An employee brought out fresh urns in the morning, and picked them up in the afternoon.

Caffeine that he didn’t have to make was about the best thing he could imagine.

Except for possibly a self-refilling whiskey bottle.

“You can get coffee here in the morning,” he said. “That’s what most of us do. Wyatt and Lindy have coffee at their place, but most of the ranch hands come here.”

“Am I a...ranch hand?” she asked.

“I guess so,” he said.

The corner of her mouth tilted up, a dimple denting her cheek. “How funny.”

“Mostly, you’ll be doing chores in here, or housekeeping type stuff. Not a whole lot of heavy lifting.”

She lifted her arms, which were slim like the rest of her. “For the best.”

“Come with me, I’ll show you to your cabin.”

They walked down a long dirt road that led away from the guest cabins. Not all of the Get Out of Dodge staff lived on the property, but depending on weather or projects that were happening, it was convenient to have the lodging.

This particular little house was set far away from most of the main buildings, nestled into the trees.

It was small, with a tidy porch and a red door. It was near one of the ponds, providing a nice view from all angles. The mountains at the back, the water out the front.

He found himself looking back at her, to see if she had that look on her face again. She did. A little bit of wonder. A whole lot of awe.

“Is this it?”

“Yes,” he said.

He imagined that was an opening for witty banter of some kind. But he honestly couldn’t be bothered. He didn’t have enough experience with that kind of thing.

He walked her up to the door and punched in a code. “Four three six,” he said. “That will get you in. I’ll write it down for you.”

He pushed open the door, and held it for her. Her expression went blank as they walked inside. Like the rest of the cabins, this one had been furnished with all new stuff.

Hell, it was nicer than his place.

Small, but nice.

“Think this will work for you?”

She blinked several times in rapid succession. “Yes,” she said, her voice sounding a little bit tight. “Yes, this is fine.”

“Are you okay?”

“Are you really letting me stay here?”

“Yes,” he said. “Though, to be real technical about it, Wyatt is letting you stay here. He’s in charge. I’m just a shareholder, so to speak.”

“But I mean... You’re letting me stay here for... Nothing?”

“For work.”

She sucked in one side of her cheek, looking away from him. “I don’t have to sleep with you or anything, that’s what I’m asking.”

Heat shot down his spine, pooling in his gut. The shock of her bringing up sex, and the fact that he might be looking to trade lodging for it, caught him off guard.

“Hell, no,” he said, the denial vehement and easy.

She lifted her hands. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be offensive. But you know, women on their own have to look out for these things. Most situations that seem too good to be true are. And most of the situations I’ve been in that were too good to be true fell apart because... Some guy expected a form of payment I wasn’t that interested in.”

“That’s not going to happen here,” he said.

She took a deep breath, clasping her hands together and looking around. “Okay. So, when do I need to start work?”

“You said you’ve worked in housekeeping at a hotel?”

“Yeah. I’ve done that a ton of times. Hotels, motels. You name it. I’ve cleaned it.”

“Okay, make the rounds on the cabins today. The supplies are in the mess hall, where we just came from. You can start in a few hours. Get some rest.”

She nodded. “I don’t... I don’t really have much in the way of—”

“Toiletries should be in the bathroom. You can use the washer and dryer in Wyatt and Lindy’s place.”

He hadn’t verified that with his brother and sister-in-law, but he figured if they were going to start giving homes to strays he could give their washer and dryer.

“So.” She looked at him. “Is he your younger brother?”

“Who?”

“Wyatt.”

“No. I’m his younger brother.”

She made a musing sound. “You seem older than him.”

He had to laugh at that. He probably did. “No.”

“You have other brothers?”

“One,” he said. “And kind of a surrogate brother. And a younger sister. She’s around. If you need anything, and you see the girl with dark hair, that’s Jamie. She’ll be happy to help out.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“You’re welcome. I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

He lifted his hand, brushing his fingertips against the brim of his hat, and their eyes caught and held. She was pretty. He wasn’t sure if he’d realized that yet. Well, he noticed she was pretty in that way he tended to find women pretty. They were female—he liked that, and he generally liked looking at them.

But McKenna Tate was something more. With her large brown eyes and delicate, pointed chin. Her dark hair was tangled, but still glossy, hanging around her face in a wild mane. And her mouth...

Pale pink with a deep curve at the center of the top lip, the lower one round and full.

He felt...hungry.

Dammit all. That wasn’t new. Not really. But he wasn’t used to that hunger hitting hard and specific, with a woman standing right in front of him.

General craving he was used to. It was part of him. Part of his life. Wanting sex and not having it was printed on his DNA.

This was specific. Sharp and focused.

He didn’t want a mouth.

He wanted that mouth.

Those lips.

Hell. No.

He forced himself to turn away. It was that or do something stupid he couldn’t take back. Dammit, he wasn’t one for guilt or pity but the woman had asked him outright if she was going to end up owing him anything and now he was staring at her lips like a sex-starved beast.

Because he was.

He walked out the front door without saying anything, taking in a deep breath of the cold early-morning air. Hoping it would do something to jolt him. To get rid of the deep, dark need that was coursing through his veins, ten times more potent than any alcohol.

He had work to do, and he was going to focus on that.

And he wasn’t going to give one more thought to McKenna Tate’s mouth.

CHAPTER THREE

MCKENNA EMERGED FROM the cabin a few hours later feeling strangely numb. Like she might be wandering through an alternate dimension and wasn’t quite connected to her body. The cabin was so cute and neat, and she had felt weird putting her old, threadbare clothes away in the solid wood chest of drawers. Like they might dissolve the pretty cedar.

She wished that she had something warmer than what she was wearing, but her spare few items were what they were. And only what she could fit into a backpack.

A free promo phone she got on a pay-as-you-go plan, pajamas, two pairs of pants, two shirts, one pair of boots, some scattered and nearly used-up toiletries.

There were no warmer clothes in her possession at all. So she went ahead and braved the chilly afternoon, which didn’t seem like it was going to thaw at all, judging by the textured gray of the sky.

She followed Grant’s instructions and found the cleaning materials, then went to the first cabin and knocked. No one answered so she used the code he had provided for her to get inside. It was laid out similarly to her cabin, and she found cleaning it was a lot more fun than cleaning usually was. Mostly because she was used to cleaning whatever terrible apartment she lived in, or gross hotel rooms that were never going to lose the general film of seedy filth no matter how much elbow grease McKenna applied.