The Last Christmas Cowboy Read online

  “Well, do you want to push him?”

  “Kind of. But I don’t know what would happen if I did. When he wants sex?”

  “He’s a man. If he kissed you, he wants sex.”

  “Is that how it was with West?”

  Pansy scrunched up her face. “I don’t really want to talk about my sex life with West.”

  “Please. I’m desperate. You told me... I mean, you told all of us when you slept with him. So can’t you just... Can’t I use your knowledge to my benefit, please?”

  “I’ll try,” Pansy said. “But if it gets too awkward I’m going to have to tap out.”

  “Fine. I’ll try not to be awkward.” Rose had always been fairly forthright, while Pansy was a bit more guarded. Rose would have cheerily taken every detail her sister wanted to give. Because that was how you learned, after all. It just made good sense to share when you had something interesting to share.

  “What do you need to know?”

  “It’s good, right? I mean, sex. It’s fun?”

  “I don’t know if fun is the right word,” Pansy said. “I mean, it can be. But it can also be...intense. It can make you feel connected to somebody in a way that you might not want to be. You know, you’re talking to someone who figured she’d have a little bit of a wild time with the bad boy and ended up engaged to him. So maybe I’m not the best person for this discussion.”

  “You’re the only person I have,” Rose said. “And, okay, that actually is helpful. So, I know the two of you ended up falling in love. But you did want to just have fun with him. And it was fun.”

  “Yes. I guess. On the most basic physical level. Yes.”

  “What made you decide to...to do it?”

  “I didn’t exactly decide,” Pansy said. Her cheeks turned bright red. “The first time just kind of happened. So did the second time. It kind of just kept happening. But West is just... I don’t know. He’s a whole thing.”

  Her sister did not sound unhappy about the fact that her fiancé was a whole thing.

  “I think I might have to decide,” Rose said. “I think I might have to... I think I might have to push him. But I’m not sure if I want to. How do I know if I want to?”

  “If you don’t know if you want to, then don’t.”

  “It’s not that... It’s the consequences. I just... I don’t know how I would go back to...”

  “Who is it?” Pansy asked.

  There was a sudden sharpness to her sister’s eyes. A sudden stillness to her body that made Rose suspect Pansy might have a decent idea who the person was.

  “If I tell you, you have to promise not say anything.”

  “Rose...”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Fine,” Pansy said. “I promise.”

  “It’s Logan. He kissed me. He kissed me, and I liked it. But he infuriates me. And, he’s not going to... I mean, it could never be a long-term thing with him, right?”

  “Rose...”

  “It’s okay. I don’t want it to be, I’m just saying I get that...with how things are the fact it would have to end would make things complicated. But I keep thinking if I’m going to learn something about sex...”

  “Sleeping with a guy who is practically your brother is maybe not the best place to start.”

  The words caught Rose off guard. Because she had caught Ryder and Sammy making out and had immediately recoiled in horror and accused them of practically being related. It was funny to hear somebody else say it to her.

  “He’s not, though,” she said. “My brother. That’s the thing.”

  “He lives at Hope Springs. He’s there on every holiday. You work with him every day.”

  “I know,” Rose said.

  “If he breaks your heart...”

  “He won’t,” Rose said.

  “You don’t know that,” Pansy said. “Because you can’t actually know how you’re going to feel until you actually... Until you actually do it. And then it will be too late.”

  “I wish I could talk to Sammy,” Rose said. “Obviously she knew how to have sex without catching feelings.”

  “You could talk to Sammy, but she would tell Ryder, and he would kill Logan before you ever got a chance to touch him.”

  “I know,” Rose said. “And isn’t that part of the problem? This town is so small and everyone is so protective of me. Even Logan. He wants me. I know he does. But he wants to protect me from himself, which is basically the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s not dumb,” Pansy said. “It’s responsible. Because he understands what all of this could make you feel. And you don’t. My advice...” Pansy sighed heavily. “My advice is to listen to him. Because he knows what he can give.”

  Rose frowned. “Didn’t West...”

  Right as she said that, the door to the office opened. She turned, and her eyes collided with electric blue. Something twisted in her stomach, and then her brain caught up with what she was seeing. It was West. Her sister’s fiancé. But for a moment, she had seen that blue and all she had thought was... Logan.

  She had thought before that the two men’s eye color was similar, but it had never impacted her like this. Obviously.

  Her cheeks heated, getting prickly.

  “You guys talking about me?” West asked.

  “No,” Pansy said. “Everything isn’t about you.” She got up from her desk and moved past Rose, where she was still sitting resolutely.

  West wrapped his arms around her sister, kissing her passionately. And Rose felt...prickly.

  “I didn’t realize it was going to be a table for three,” West said.

  “It’s not,” Pansy said cheerfully. “Rose was just going.”

  “She didn’t look like she was going.”

  “She was,” Pansy said.

  Then she stretched up on her toes and whispered in his ear.

  “Good to see you, Rose. We’ll catch you later,” he said.

  Rose watched her sister and her future brother-in-law retreating quickly, and became more and more angry. It was clear to her that they were off to do some kind of amorous nonsense. After she had given Rose a puritanical lecture.

  And she hadn’t even given her the chance to finish her sentence.

  West had been very clear about what he could and couldn’t offer, too. It didn’t seem fair that Pansy would tell her she needed to listen to what Logan had said when Pansy herself clearly hadn’t listened when West had warned her off.

  The problem was... The problem was... She just didn’t know if she wanted to take the step.

  She felt increasingly sorry for herself, sitting there with a sandwich in her hands that wasn’t hers. She had gotten mustard on it, because Pansy liked mustard. And she didn’t. So here she was with a sandwich she couldn’t even eat. And she hadn’t liked the advice she had gotten. Not at all.

  It would have been better if Pansy would have told her to go for it so Rose could have argued against that.

  Instead, she felt sullen and rebellious, and on the verge of making a decision that might compromise everything she was. Everything her life was made out of.

  Maybe that was dramatic.

  It was one kiss, after all.

  It was one kiss, and she could let it go.

  But it had opened up a flood of thoughts and ideas inside of her that she never had before.

  Being near Logan was like being near a furnace, and avoiding him was a feat that took complicated dance steps given the way their lives were arranged.

  Maybe if she did nothing it would fade. Maybe if she did nothing she would be able to regroup and go back to the way things were. But the problem was she doubted it.

  It will be worse if you kiss him again.

  Or if she slept with him.

  She looked around her sister’s office. At
all the things that Pansy had achieved.

  A career. A fiancé.

  Rose swallowed hard. For the first time, she felt genuinely left behind.

  She hadn’t felt that way. She had focused on the fact that Iris might feel left behind. That she might feel alone in the aftermath of her siblings finding love. Especially as an older sister.

  And Rose had resolutely not thought of herself.

  Because it wasn’t even fair of her to feel it yet. Not when Iris wasn’t...solved.

  Stupidly, sitting there in a plastic chair, holding a sandwich, with her sister’s achievements plastered on the wall in front of her, and their father’s before her, she wanted to cry.

  Rose was proud of herself. Of the work she did on the ranch. She was. That wasn’t even it.

  She just felt the same. And changed all at once.

  She didn’t know how those two things went together. But they did. Because Rose, Rose herself, was in the exact same place she had been a week ago. But she felt entirely different. Nothing had changed, and it was the change in her that made her feel so painfully aware of that.

  That made her feel so unsatisfied.

  So...sad.

  She didn’t like it. She avoided this. Avoided thinking about herself and what she wanted and what she didn’t have.

  She wanted to talk to Logan about it, and she couldn’t.

  Because that kiss had not only taken her peace of mind, it had taken her confidant from her, too. It had taken a lot of things from her. She couldn’t talk to Sammy. She couldn’t talk to Iris.

  She couldn’t pretend that she wasn’t curious about all the things she had never explored.

  Couldn’t pretend that she was just waiting around until she found a man she was attracted to.

  There was one. But he frightened her. Or at least, what might happen frightened her.

  Talking to Pansy hadn’t gotten her any closer to a decision.

  She pushed herself out of the chair and walked back out of the station. She meandered outside and walked down the sidewalk, making her way toward Main Street.

  The redbrick buildings were festooned with Christmas decorations. Dark green bows wrapped around support beams and balcony railings. White Christmas lights draped over everything. Red ribbons tied around wreaths that hung on doors, and the big tree already set up in its place, awaiting the parade, and the Christmas tree lighting that would happen afterward.

  There was a familiarity to it that usually gave her a sense of comfort. But not today. Today it made her ache. Because it was another thing that was the same while the inside of her, the things that made up who she was, felt entirely different.

  It was like the town was trying to goad her. A resolute monument to the fact that while she might feel different, she wouldn’t be brave enough to do different.

  She would come to the parade on Saturday, she would do her demonstration with Logan. They would pretend that nothing had ever happened.

  It would be the same. The same, the same.

  And maybe someday she would coordinate the parade. She would be Barbara Niedermayer. Bitter and angry and demanding that things stay the same because the sameness of the town might make her feel not so ashamed of the sameness in herself.

  And a young impetuous person might call her out for being so inflexible. And that person would get told off because Rose was an object of pity, and everyone should know and respect that.

  That cut Rose down to her heart. That she’d been the one to hurt Barbara, maybe. That her words might have caused her pain.

  When she wasn’t...

  Better. She’d gone around recklessly causing harm and wherever it came from... Why did she think she was better than Barbara?

  She thought she might be on the same path anyway.

  That future was bleak. And right now, it felt like a very real possibility. But the alternative was to potentially upend the life that she knew. The life that she loved.

  Rose already knew life didn’t come with guarantees. She already knew there was no safety. No guarantee it would all work out in the end. Because she’d lost her parents. The source of all the security she’d felt as a child.

  She already knew that sometimes in life a change, an event, was heavy enough to ruin everything. That sometimes things couldn’t be fixed or repaired. That some things were permanent.

  And that was just the way it was.

  Even seeing the future as grim as it might be, Rose felt like she might be too afraid to do anything about it.

  Because at least that future was one she could see.

  A future that stretched past kissing Logan again...

  She couldn’t see that. She didn’t know what might happen. She didn’t know who she would be on the other side. That frightened her.

  She stopped on the street corner, and a troop of carolers wearing Victorian dress exited the kitchen store, singing gaily about silver bells, right as a frigid wind picked up and wrapped itself around Rose.

  She stood there while the music filtered through her, while the wind chilled her to the bone.

  And she had to look at herself the way those carolers might see her. Pale and large-eyed and frozen there in her tracks.

  Not a tough cowgirl. Not a bold, bright force who tried to bring cheer and goodness to the people around her.

  But a frightened animal ready to race back into her burrow at the first sign of trouble. A woman who got overly involved in the lives of the people around her so that she didn’t have to deal with her own.

  A girl who felt tender and bruised because she feared she might have a crush on a man who had the power to devastate her.

  But the carolers weren’t looking at her. They were just singing.

  The town rolled on, as it always had.

  It was only Rose who felt changed.

  And there was no one who could help her with the decision she needed to make about what she was going to do next.

  Because nobody else would ever understand what she was feeling now.

  It was a choice she had to make for herself.

  To run away, to be afraid, or to be new.

  She was afraid she didn’t have the courage to be new.

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT WAS A fairly miserable day for a parade. Gray clouds had collected in the sky, rolling one over the other creating a patchwork of color that ranged from mist to the color of a donkey’s muzzle. The sky promised to break open later, and Logan only hoped that it would wait until after the event.

  Or not.

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if the whole thing got rained out and that meant he could go to the bar and drink. Instead of firing up the forge and trying to work alongside Rose.

  The last few days had been what Logan imagined torture might be like. Like sensory deprivation. Or being kept thirsty, with a big glass of water right in front of you, just out of reach.

  Yeah. He imagined it was like that.

  He should never have touched her. But then, he knew that. He had known it then, and he had still done it.

  He might have known it, but what he hadn’t done was think ahead. Hadn’t thought past the moment when his mouth might touch hers. He had wondered what it would be like. Had—for all the years before this one—told himself that he couldn’t ever let it happen. But then he did.

  He’d done all this warning himself, all this self-flagellating for finding her attractive. But he had never thought to where it might leave him if he got to the place where he acted on the attraction.

  So now here he was.

  It was hell.

  Because a kiss was one thing, but his body wanted more, and there was no way he could ever...

  Rose was innocent.

  I’ve never been kissed before.

  Her words echoed inside and he closed his e
yes for a moment. Trying to breathe past the temptation.

  He wasn’t in a position to be the first.

  The thought of that sent a kick of arousal through his body and he gritted his teeth. Called himself ten kinds of son of a bitch. Though, it wasn’t the first time. It still hadn’t stopped him from kissing her, so he didn’t know why he was bothering with the castigation.

  It hadn’t kept him from committing that first most deadly sin.

  Volunteers had set their booth up, and because of that, Logan had managed to avoid Rose so far for this endeavor. And he had a bit of time before he had to be there yet. The parade itself was about to begin, and he didn’t need to sit out on the street and watch it.

  He’d had to park way off Main, up by the little patch of grass and playground that had been put in about ten years ago. He walked down the hill toward Main, and saw all of the parade participants lining up and getting ready.

  He never went to the Christmas parade, so he hadn’t seen the spectacle before.

  Girl Scouts, dance troupes, bagpipe players, ROTC, the garden club and the Rotary. The equine drill team from Gold Valley High, a classic car club with members who had clearly come in from surrounding areas, all being facilitated by the local church youth group, who were raising money to go to Disneyland.

  Logan had never been part of groups like this growing up. He and his mom had been a two-man team and that was all he’d needed. He had never played sports, hadn’t taken his enthusiasm for adrenaline and riding to the rodeo like Jake and Colt had. Hadn’t ever been part of the church, though after his mom died he’d gone to midnight mass with the Daniels, because they went, and he tended to do what they did.

  He wondered what it would be like, to be part of a strange community like this one, bonded together by a common interest. They were bonded together by tragedy.

  It was a timely reminder, he thought, as he continued to walk down the sidewalk, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He was part of the Daniels family because they had lost together. But he wasn’t bonded to them by blood. Rose was.