The Last Christmas Cowboy Read online

  She waited to see if he would ask if it had anything to do with what had happened between them last night. It didn’t. Except, it was definitely part of why she felt weird this morning. She was sure of that. But she wasn’t going to bring it up. She refused. It was up to him. He was the one who had...

  She remembered that she had picked up a soda can and thrown it at his back.

  Okay. She’d acted a little bit strange. And he had escalated it. But he was the one who had touched her. And that was the reason why her skin felt particularly prickly this morning. So, she felt like it was up to him to address that.

  Instead, he took a sip of his coffee, while patting her horse on the rump. That the gesture felt pointed, particularly when his electric blue eyes met with hers, was likely her problem.

  Or maybe it wasn’t.

  But either way, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to discuss any of it.

  As they finished their coffee, mounted their horses and headed up toward the creek, Rose kept her eyes on his broad shoulders and back.

  He was a brilliant horseman. She had always admired the way that he worked with animals. Today, though, the way that she looked at his movements, his body, felt different.

  When he angled the horse, she noticed the way his hands gripped the reins. She knew how rough they were now. Because he had touched her face, her neck. Her collarbone. Yes, she had to catalog specifically every part he had put his hands on. It seemed important.

  They were strong, too. The way he guided his horse with very little movement at all spoke of not only his strength, but his connection with the animal. With the very land itself. Because he seemed to know each dip and hollow in the path, in the hills, like he had a map written on his heart.

  She understood. Because the same map was written on hers.

  Because no matter how difficult the memories here at Hope Springs Ranch could be, those memories were the stuff of what she was. What had made her. And what sustained her now.

  When his fingers moved slightly over the reins, she felt an answering whisper against her skin. A deep, low pressure between her thighs.

  She jerked her eyes away from him, and forced herself to look at the view around her. That was the problem with all of this raw, natural beauty being quite so familiar. Yes, sometimes the clouds were spectacular, or the sun would break through in a particularly magnificent way, raining down golden glory. But often, it was easy for her to not look at all. And easy for her to get distracted.

  By Logan’s hands apparently.

  But there was plenty to look at, even now, before the sun made an appearance. The air around them was a deep purple, the mountains a striking silhouette. The moon was still there, pale and fat, hanging on to its last moments.

  And it still wasn’t as compelling as Logan’s hands.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” he said.

  “I’m not quiet,” she said.

  But the feeling of speaking was a little bit foreign, because she had barely spoken twenty words in his presence, and she realized how ridiculous her objection was as soon as she made it.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “My parents.” She went back to the earlier truth, not the present one.

  A strange thing that it was easier to admit that than to admit that she was twisted up inside over what had happened the night before.

  Either admission would’ve been true. But contrary to...every other moment in her life, talking about her parents felt preferable to talking about the other thing she was thinking of.

  He understood, though.

  And somehow, even in all the confusion between them, they still had that.

  “What’s got you thinking about them?”

  “It’s silly,” she said. “I just remembered... This morning I remembered my mom and I bringing coffee to my dad. I had forgotten we used to do that. It’s weird. Because I brought those same coffee cups and that same kettle outside for us a hundred times. And I haven’t thought of that. But this morning I did. I don’t know.”

  “It’s not silly,” he said.

  “Memories for me are really few and far between. I was just a kid when they died.”

  “Yeah. But you know, they say all that formative years stuff is really important. So it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t very many, or that you were young. It mattered. It was important.”

  “Yeah. I just... I don’t know why I was thinking of it today.”

  Something shifted inside of her, a companion to the shifting that had occurred yesterday. The answer to the question she wasn’t asking.

  Why was she thinking of it?

  Because of the shifting. Because of the changing.

  She gritted her teeth, grateful that Logan wasn’t looking at her.

  Grateful that he couldn’t see the shifting.

  “Do you remember my mom?”

  The question was asked with a rough voice that made her heart twist.

  He never talked about his mother. Not specifically. They all carried a shared grief. They didn’t have to talk about it. But he didn’t share memories. And when Christmas came around he retreated into himself, and he offered no explanations.

  No one ever pushed, but she’d always suspected, always known that something about this time of year cut sharper and harder for him. She’d attributed it to his Christmas memories being different than theirs.

  They were missing their parents at Christmas, it was true. But Christmas had been in the same house, with their siblings, and so that remained.

  Logan’s Christmases had been in another house, with only his mother. And maybe for him Christmas without her was so removed from Christmas with her he couldn’t ever have it with enough joy to balance out the grief.

  But he never offered, and she never asked.

  She didn’t know why he was offering it now.

  “Yes,” she said slowly.

  Logan’s mom had sandy-blond hair, and green eyes. She’d had an easy smile, and a soft voice. Rose remembered, because it was so easy to tell the difference between her mother, who had a low, loud tone and a robust laugh that echoed through the house, and Jane Heath whose voice was like a whisper with a song in it, and whose laugh had a quiet burr in it.

  “She was sweet,” Rose said. “And I remember that she made cookies. That was kind of her thing. When you guys would come over for dinner, she would always bring cookies.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She did.” The roughness in his voice scraped against her heart.

  His shoulders moved up and down, a heavy breath causing the motion.

  Maybe if he had something of his mother at Christmas it would be different for him? Those cookies. She’d always made cookies at Christmas.

  “Do you have the recipe for her cookies?” she asked.

  “Maybe,” he said. “I have quite a lot of her things that I haven’t really... I had it all put in storage. Except for a few pictures and knickknacks, those I have in the house. But you know, I moved in with you all after she died, and there was nowhere really to put the things. We were renting the house. So it’s all in boxes in one of the barns, and I never really wanted to go through it.”

  “We should see if we can find them. You know, not so I can cook them, but I bet Iris and Sammy would do a good job.”

  He was silent for a long time. “That seems wrong somehow.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just that... She’s gone. So, seems fair enough that I don’t get to have her cookies ever again.”

  Her heart twisted. She saw him more clearly in that moment. And it hurt.

  “Well, it won’t be the same,” she pointed out. “It’s just that it might make you feel a little bit closer to her. How could that be a bad thing? Seems like something she would have liked.”

  That was another thing
she remembered. That Logan’s mom had loved him. That she had been proud of him.

  So proud. It had been obvious, even to a little kid. But she had understood, even then, that he had a very special bond with his mother. She had her mom and dad. He had her.

  “Logan,” she said slowly. “That must’ve destroyed you. To lose her. I’m sorry about what I said last night.” It didn’t matter now. That he hadn’t been the one to bring it up. It didn’t matter because what she’d said to him had been unforgivably cruel.

  She’d been cruel the last twenty-four hours and she didn’t like it. As if her personal pain meant she was somehow given a pass for being mean to other people. She didn’t know why she was being like that.

  Except that her heart had been a mess for the past few months. All the change. All the...moving on.

  But it wasn’t an excuse.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “It does. I should never have taken something that... You do understand. You understand exactly what I’ve been through. And even more, and different because the two of you...because she was your whole family. You lost your whole family.” She felt tears pushing against her eyes and she blinked them back. She didn’t cry. And she certainly didn’t deserve to cry now. She’d hurt Logan. She couldn’t make it about her own pain. “To take something that personal to both of us and use it just because I was mad was borderline unforgivable.”

  “We’ve known each other too long to be doing unforgivable things to each other,” Logan said. “I think it’s all forgivable at this point. Don’t worry about it.”

  When they arrived at the pasture, the cows were milling about and the sun was coming up over the mountains. Then it was time to work. It was a small group of cattle, so it didn’t take a whole lot of manpower to drive them a quarter of the way across the ranch. But it did burn off the cold.

  What it didn’t do was distract her enough to make her quit looking at Logan. It was like driving by the scene of a car accident. Knowing that you shouldn’t indulge yourself, the very worst part of you, and look at potential horror and tragedy, but too curious to stop yourself.

  That part of her kept on looking at him. To see if it was any different to watch him drive cattle now than it had been before last night.

  But it was different. When he eased that horse into a gallop, urging him on as they dogged those cows, keeping them in formation. The way his strong thighs held him in the saddle, the way every muscle in his body worked together as one... It was captivating.

  And it was annoying the hell out of her.

  And he wasn’t going to say anything. Not about any of it. She’d felt bad, genuinely awful, for some of what she’d done yesterday.

  But he’d touched her.

  And he’d changed something. And he was acting like he hadn’t.

  When they finished, she was sweaty under her coat and her face was freezing cold.

  They dismounted, and Logan let out a hard breath. She could see it in the air. “It is just not warming up today,” he said.

  “Fine by me,” she said, defiantly wiping at her runny nose, refusing to behave any differently just because everything inside of her felt different.

  “You look grumpy, Rosie,” he said.

  That caused her to scowl deeply. “I’m not grumpy.”

  “You look grumpy.”

  “Well, you don’t know everything, Logan. Not even a little bit.”

  “I think you need to get some lunch, so that you quit being such a crab.”

  “I’m not a crab,” she muttered, making her way toward the house.

  Logan followed. And when she got inside it became clear that none of the...stuff between them was going to be defused by the presence of anyone else. Because nobody else was home. All the good it did her to live in a house full of people if none of them could show up when she needed them.

  She stopped into the kitchen and jerked the fridge open, digging around for leftovers. She found a container full of the stew they’d had the other night. She got it out, and ignored the sound of Logan shuffling around in the fridge behind her.

  “Is there enough stew for—”

  “No,” she said, cutting him off. “I’m hungry.”

  “That’s not very nice.”

  “Maybe I’m not very nice.”

  She let the rest of the unspoken words in that sentence remain unspoken. And she waited yet again for him to acknowledge her feelings. Her feelings which were his fault. That she kept noticing his shoulders, his thighs, his hands.

  He didn’t.

  She fulminated while she heated the stew. Then she looked up, and their eyes met. It was there. She could see it. Reflected back at her as if he had spoken. He wasn’t oblivious. He was just pretending to be.

  All of the things she thought he was ignoring...

  Well, he was ignoring them. But he was doing it very deliberately.

  She could sense it in the expression on his face, in the way he held himself.

  She was desperate to figure out if he saw her differently, too. If today had been upside down for him. If it was something altogether new and wild. If maybe he wasn’t talking about it because it had rearranged something in him the way that it had with her.

  But she was too afraid to ask. Because there was no... She didn’t even know what she would want if he said yes.

  She didn’t know what this meant. This close study of him, and the way he looked at her. There was a question inside of her, and she had a feeling that he was the only one who knew the answer.

  She also had a feeling he wasn’t going to give it.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she dug at it, pulling it out. She frowned, not recognizing the number. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Rose,” came a somewhat familiar voice. “This is Elliott.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Elliott.”

  “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

  “No,” she said, getting a little bit of broth on her finger, and absently licking it. She looked over at Logan, who immediately looked the other direction. Her stomach clenched tight.

  “The Christmas parade is coming up.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I know all about that. I’m doing a booth. I mean, assuming I haven’t got myself removed from the position.”

  “Oh. Right, because of Barbara.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Anyway. Yes, I know exactly when the Christmas parade is.”

  “I know you’re going to be busy for part of it, but not the whole time, right?”

  “No,” she said. “We’re going to be doing a pretty basic blacksmithing demonstration, and that will just be after the parade. So, I won’t be busy the whole time.”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to go with me.”

  The air pressed itself out of her lungs. She didn’t even know what to say to that. Her mind was like a shiny blank slate, and she had no idea how to respond.

  “To go with you,” she repeated.

  She could feel Logan respond to that. She didn’t even have to look at him to know that he had tensed up. It was the way that he was. The way that he radiated that sort of thing. She did look over then, and saw that he was doing exactly what she had thought he might be.

  Did other people know when he reacted to things like that? Or was it only her?

  It couldn’t be.

  It had to be something anyone could see. It didn’t make any sense otherwise.

  She blinked, totally derailed.

  “Yes. As my date.”

  Her stomach sank, and suddenly she didn’t want to eat. She didn’t want stew or anything else. This was the first time she’d ever been asked on a date in her life. Coming from a man she’d been pushing toward her sister, a man she’d made her sister...like and be excited about. While she was being stared at by the man who’d told her s
o. The man who had taken her expectations of the world and herself and everything and turned them upside down.

  It was horrible. Utterly, uniquely, horrible.

  “Your date. I... Elliott, I thought you liked Iris?”

  “What? Iris?” He sounded so incredulous. So incredulous that it made her want to eat the stew so she could throw it up.

  “Yes, Iris. I introduced you to her. I thought that you would like her.”

  “You introduced me to your friend Logan too, but I didn’t think you wanted me to go on a date with him.”

  “I...” She had. She had absolutely introduced him to Logan. But she had thought that it was obvious. And she had been so sure that he was interested in Iris. “You texted her to get her sourdough recipe,” she said, as if that invalidated everything else he had said.

  “Because you thought that I should have it. It was because of you.”

  “I... I am so sorry if I did anything to make you think that I was interested in you like that. I’m just not.”

  The silence coming from across the kitchen was as deafening as if Logan had dropped and shattered a bowl.

  “You asked me to meet you at the bar,” he said. “I thought you were asking me out.”

  She wanted to stamp and protest and say that it wasn’t a very fair assumption since it was Iris he had been in contact with ever since.

  “You called Iris,” she said, and it sounded so very lame.

  “To talk about you.”

  But there was no use arguing. He was saying that he liked her. And what was she supposed to do with that? How was she supposed to argue?

  She wanted to argue, she just didn’t know if there was any way to... Any way to do it. Because it wasn’t like she could tell him that he was wrong about how he was feeling. She wanted to, but even she had to acknowledge that was a little bit ridiculous.

  “I wasn’t,” she said. “I only ever wanted to... I just thought you would be good with my sister. That’s all.”

  “I see,” he said. “Well, I would be lying if I said that wasn’t disappointing. Now that you know, though...”

  “No,” she said, horror twisting her stomach.