The Last Christmas Cowboy Read online

  And if he did anything to hurt her, he would be the one out on his ass. And he didn’t have anything else. Anyone else.

  His soul was bound up in Hope Springs Ranch, his years of work. A lot of his money went back into the place, just like Ryder. He owned a portion of it, it was true, and he could always sell it back to Ryder and make his own way if it came down to it.

  But he built his life around that place, around that family.

  He’d decided a long time ago that biological family didn’t matter. He’d gotten used to tuning out the biological family he knew he had in town. It had been a little more difficult over the past few months, sure. But he told himself, over and over again there was no point getting wound up about it.

  He had a lot of things he was trying not to get wound up about right now. Instead of heading straight to the parade route, straight down to the booth, where he feared Rose might already be, he pushed open the scarred black door to Sugar Cup and walked into the rustic coffee shop.

  It was all roughhewn wood, aged barn floors and a chalkboard menu, with a chandelier hanging down from the ceiling. It was somewhere at the intersection between practical café and avocado toast. He had to admit, he didn’t really mind the avocado toast, considering they still served coffee the way he liked it.

  The usual barista wasn’t around, so the cook, a large, broad man with a beard, and his hair tied up in what a person might be tempted to call a man bun, but wouldn’t considering who it was attached to, took the order.

  The door opened, and in scampered a petite figure, clasping her hands in front of her, rubbing them together, obviously to ease the chill.

  Damn that Rose Daniels. She had the exact same solution for avoiding him that he’d had for avoiding her.

  She saw him. And he could see that she was strongly considering scurrying right back out, and not even pretending that she wasn’t hiding from him. Then she didn’t, God knew why. He watched as the same steel came into her eye that he’d seen a dozen or so times before. When she was approaching a particularly recalcitrant horse, or dealing with a frightening bull that she had to get moved, scary or not.

  Yeah, Rose Daniels was about to approach him the way she did every problem animal. Filled with piss and vinegar and damn well certain she would get her way.

  “What are you having?” he asked, figuring the best way to deal with her was to pivot.

  Because again, he’d seen this before.

  Come at Rose head-on and she’d lock horns with you till one or both of you was tuckered out. Regardless of the fact that she didn’t have horns, and occasionally her foe did. Sidestep, though, and sometimes you could catch her off her guard.

  “Coffee,” she said.

  “Nothing peppermint? ’Tis the season.”

  “Keep your girly drinks,” she said.

  “Now, Rose, we both know you don’t mean that, because you like your coffee with enough sugar to send a unicorn on a hallucinogenic bender.”

  “Fine,” she said, scowling. “Peppermint mocha.”

  “I’m buying.”

  “Why?”

  “To be nice.”

  Her eyes glittered like beetles. “Why are you being nice?”

  “Can’t I be nice?”

  “No,” she said definitively. Certainly.

  “Watch me.”

  He turned to the counter and ordered from man-bun-not-a-man-bun again.

  “Let’s have a seat,” he said.

  “I was going to watch the parade,” she responded, the inherent stubbornness and her tone telling him that that was not in fact what she had been intending to do, but she had changed her mind upon seeing him there.

  “Were you?”

  “It’s cold,” she said, rubbing at the end of her nose.

  And he found that kind of thing just so damned cute it made him question everything that he was. For as long as he could remember, he’d liked the look of women. He liked the look of most of them, but he had to admit a certain fondness for the kind of girl who put on a pair of tight jeans and lip gloss, her hair teased to make her a little closer to Jesus. He liked them cowgirl pretty, with rhinestones and a little bit of flash.

  Rose was a cowgirl, it was true. The kind with dirt under her nails and holes in her jeans that had come with wear and tear, rather than purchased that way from the store. She was also cute. And he would have said that cute really wasn’t his thing. Shiny, flashy, curvy, sparkly. Not cute.

  But with Rose, he appreciated the cuteness. Like when she tried to warm her own nose.

  Though appreciating Rose’s cuteness was a lot like appreciating the cuteness of a badger. Sure, it was fuzzy. Relatively small. But if you got right up close to it, it might mess you up. And think nothing of it.

  “I know,” he said. “You don’t like to be cold.”

  Silence stretched between them, tense as anything. All he could think of was wrapping her up in his arms, opening up his jacket and letting her burrow against his chest.

  Okay, that was some shit. It was one thing to have sexual fantasies about her. It was quite another to have some kind of domestic, cozy fantasy about giving her his body heat.

  But the way that her cheeks turned pink he had to wonder if she was thinking the same thing.

  This was a problem. Looking at her and knowing that her thoughts might mirror his own. Looking at her and being pretty damn sure she felt the same thing.

  For a long while he’d been pretty damn sure she didn’t.

  But then they had kissed.

  “No,” she said finally. “I don’t.”

  “Peppermint mocha,” the guy called out Rose’s drink.

  “So, I don’t actually believe you were going to go watch the parade,” he said, picking up the cup and handing it to her.

  She took it from him, and their fingers brushed.

  He felt the impact of the touch all the way down to his cock.

  “Well, maybe I am now.”

  “To avoid me?”

  “You’re not supposed to say anything about that,” she said.

  “I’m not?”

  “No,” she said, taking a sip of her mocha. “We’re pretending it’s not happening.”

  “It has to get talked about eventually.”

  “Does it? You’re the man—aren’t you supposed to advocate for us never talking about feelings or anything of the kind?”

  “We work together. We are about to do this blacksmithing demonstration together. How long do you suppose we can feasibly pretend that this isn’t happening? That we are not acting like we can’t be in the same room? I mean, that’s the whole point of never doing it again. Making sure we can be in the same room.”

  Suddenly, a little sliver of suspicion lodged itself beneath his skin. “Are you doing this on purpose?”

  “Am I doing what on purpose?”

  “Are you trying to prove your point? Your whole...thing about how we could do it. By making it impossible now?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t have the ability to be that manipulative. Not when I’m in the middle of...intense confusion.”

  “It doesn’t need to be like this,” he said, not having any idea if it actually did have to be like this or not. Because he sure as hell didn’t feel normal. He had slept with... He didn’t even know how many women. One kiss with one woman should not be messing with his head to this degree. Or to any degree.

  He was tempted to apologize, but when he went to open his mouth, he was sure that it wasn’t an apology that was going to come out at all. But then the door opened, and in walked Pansy, hand in hand with her fiancé.

  West Caldwell.

  He didn’t put a lot of thought into West. At least, not beyond his relationship with Pansy. He liked the guy. And if he had some weird feelings of envy wrapped up in who he was, he just ignored t
hose, too.

  “Hi,” Pansy said, looking between the two of them.

  There was something in that expression, pleasant though it was, that made his stomach twist into a knot.

  Pansy knew.

  He didn’t know how he was so certain, only that he was.

  “Hi,” he returned.

  West grinned, and Logan felt a shift inside of him.

  “Howdy,” he said.

  For some reason, he could feel a keenness to Rose’s gaze just then. He didn’t need that much study from the Daniels women. It was strange. Pansy was glaring at him to figure out what his intentions were toward her sister, and he didn’t know what the hell Rose was trying to see.

  “Were you headed out to watch the parade?”

  “No,” he said. “Rosie wanted to get warm before we had to go stand out and do the demonstration.”

  “Before you went and stood by a forge,” Pansy said.

  “Put the interrogation away, Officer,” Rose said. “We’re having coffee.”

  “Police chief,” Pansy said. “Not officer.”

  “So touchy,” Rose responded.

  “Yeah, but she’s mean,” West said. “So you don’t want to anger her.”

  “Please,” Rose said. “I was born angering her. I will die angering her.”

  “Yeah,” Pansy said. “You might want to revisit the wording there. Or you may die irritating me a little bit sooner than you counted on.”

  “As charming as this is,” Logan said, “I just want to drink my coffee in peace.”

  “I don’t think we’re allowed to do anything in peace with the Daniels women around.”

  He was uncomfortable with that comment, and the parallels that West was drawing, on multiple levels.

  “Do you want my wrath, too?” Pansy asked, giving her fiancé the beady eye.

  “Never,” he said.

  “We’re going to go watch the parade,” Pansy said.

  West ordered their drinks—just coffee—which came up immediately. “See you after,” West said.

  He could still feel Rose looking at him while the two of them walked out of the coffee shop.

  “You told her, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “I had to talk to somebody.”

  “She looks like she would cheerfully gut me.”

  Rose ignored that. “I need to ask you something,” she said, looking down at her mocha, and then back up at him.

  “Do you think we should maybe move away from the counter?”

  “Sure,” she said, taking a few steps away, and sitting at one of the two-person tables against the wall. “So, does this work?”

  “Sure,” he said, feeling skeptical about her intentions.

  “I need to know. Is Hank Dalton your father?”

  * * *

  SHE HADN’T BEEN SURE, until she had seen West standing there across from him and had put the pieces of it all together. The way that West’s blue eyes had impacted her so much when he had walked into the police station the other day. The way they stood. The way they smiled.

  They weren’t identical. But there was a resemblance.

  And if she knew one thing about Hank Dalton it was that he did have children constantly coming out of the woodwork. A daughter had shown up a couple of years ago, and had ended up married to one of the Dodge brothers, a widower who hadn’t seemed interested in any sort of happiness until McKenna had come to town.

  Then of course there was West.

  And it seemed feasible that there would be more. Because why wouldn’t there be.

  “I don’t have a father,” he said, his face suddenly becoming that implacable granite, which she was learning was his retreat.

  “Sorry, Logan, but you and I both know you can’t give me that. I do know where babies come from.”

  “It’s true. As far as anything matters, it’s true. My mother did everything for me. She taught me to throw a baseball. She taught me to do my own laundry. She taught me to sew so I could fix my own damn socks, and she taught me to drive a stick shift. She’s the one who bought me condoms and told me to treat my girlfriends with care. And my father... My father didn’t give her anything. He hurt her horribly. I would never... I would never betray her memory by speaking his name.”

  “Logan...”

  “The man who fathered me didn’t want me. He broke up with my mom when she wanted more and she tried calling, but she was always blocked by his wife. And one time she banded together with some other women who had his kids, went to see him. His wife blocked them then too, said he didn’t want the kids. Offered a payout, and she took it because she wanted me to have something. But it was too little too late, Rose. She died so soon after she got that money. After all those years of working and working...”

  “So he is your father. Because if he weren’t it would be easy to just say no.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Logan,” she breathed. “West is your half brother. You didn’t say anything. He’s been here... He’s been here all this time and you haven’t said anything. You could have started building a relationship with him.”

  “I have a relationship with him. He’s marrying a woman who is practically a sister to me. So, he’ll be like a brother to me anyway.”

  “Don’t give me that. You haven’t gotten close to him. Not at all. I mean, you’re cordial to him, but I haven’t noticed... That’s deliberate. It’s deliberate because he is your half brother and you don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Rose,” he said, his tone full of warning. “Do not meddle in this. This is not just you trying to match your sister up with someone. This is my life. I swear to God if you get your hands in this...”

  “What? What will you do if I get my hands in this?”

  “Just don’t,” he said.

  “Don’t. That’s your answer to everything. Just don’t, Rose. Don’t do anything. Don’t push you. Just be a manageable farmhand. What? Do you look at my ass and then say the rosary to try and atone? Everything is fine as long as I don’t come near you? And then you can sit back and brood in your feelings about how you feel about West. But did you think about how he might feel? He came here looking for family. Basically, you get to know everything, and decide exactly how all your interactions are going to go. You know what? It’s bullshit, Logan. You’re a coward.”

  “Talk about bullshit, honey,” he said. “You think that you get to make demands of me at your leisure just because you had a revelation about who West is to me. Well, it’s not news to me. I get it. And I get that my decision to have nothing—and I mean nothing—to do with Hank Dalton, or any of the rest of the Daltons impacts on him. I get it. You don’t think I thought it through? You’re talking to me like I might not have made my decisions for my own reasons. But I did. You can be damn certain of that.”

  “I’m sure you did,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe you would be so... That you would be so stubborn. So callous... I mean, what’s the point? Your mother is gone, Logan. And I don’t think she would’ve wanted you to turn away from the family that you have left.”

  “You don’t know what the hell my mother would’ve wanted. You don’t know how bad Hank Dalton hurt her. I do. He was married, Rose. He had no intention of ever leaving his wife. My mom...she would cry at night. She loved him. She missed him. She also couldn’t risk anyone in town knowing. I could never let any of them know, Rose, I wouldn’t betray her like that. Then people would know she’d been with a married man and she was so ashamed. And Hank? Where’s his shame? When it comes to Hank, he’s that kind of man. It means nothing to him. It cost him nothing. He runs around hurting his wife, hurting other women. He doesn’t care.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know what Hank does or doesn’t care about...”

  “His infidelity is pretty damne
d infamous, Rose.”

  “Yes, but West has gotten close with Hank. Maybe he has changed. I’m sure that...”

  “I know a little bit about all of it from West. Because he’s talked about it. He still doesn’t sound like anyone I want to know. And I don’t want to get involved with someone, anyone, who would treat my mother the way that he did.”

  “But maybe he wouldn’t now.”

  “Doesn’t matter. That’s the thing. You have to treat people right. The whole time you’re alive, because then they might die. You might die. And you don’t have any time to make up for it. And if I were to go to him now...my mom was proud, Rose. He broke up with her, he told her he didn’t want to be with her and only later she found out she was pregnant with me. She didn’t ask him for a damn thing until she had to. She hated that she violated her own moral code, getting involved with a married man and hoping he’d leave his wife and kids for her. You can’t know how much it hurt her. But I do. I remember how she punished herself. Never dated, never let herself find love. I remember how afraid she was people might realize I was a Dalton. Might judge her the way she judged herself.”

  “I understand that, Logan, I do. But West...he didn’t do this to your mom. If life is so short, then maybe you should make a relationship with your brothers. With your sister. There are so many Daltons, you have... You have this whole family.”

  “I had my mom. She was my family. And now I have your family,” he said. “They’ve been there for me. That’s the most important thing.”

  She looked at him, at the hurt written so clearly across his face. And she wondered if there was more. “Why didn’t Hank come for you?”

  “I don’t know, but I wouldn’t have gone with him anyway.”

  “He didn’t come for you.”

  “No. He damn well didn’t. But don’t think for one second that matters to me. It doesn’t. I wouldn’t have gone with that bastard anyway. I would rather have been with you all. With Ryder. I owe him big. It’s why I worked the ranch. It’s why...”

  “Why you won’t touch me.”

  “You’re a little brat, Rose, that’s why I won’t touch you.”