Christmastime Cowboy Read online

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LIAM HAD AMPLE time to think about his little confessional with Sabrina over the next few days and the long weekend brought about by the Thanksgiving holiday. He also had ample time to think about what it had been like to have her soft, beautiful skin beneath his fingers, to think about how tight and hot she had been when he had slid inside of her.

  That was the problem with the conversation they’d had out at the winery. It had erased so much of that anger he’d felt when he had torn out of her driveway like a bat out of... Well, that damned conversation... It was difficult for him to focus on it now.

  And much easier to focus on how hot their night together had been. Well, it wasn’t even a night, really. It was an hour of really, really good sex, followed by a screaming match that he was pretty sure had been due between the two of them, but had come at a terrible time.

  But now, all he could think about was the sex.

  And he kept thinking about it at inopportune times, like when he was supposed to be milking cows, and his brothers were standing in very close proximity, far too in tune to his distraction for his liking.

  “What’s going on with you?” Finn asked. “You’re more cranky than usual.”

  “Not cranky.” He scowled, adjusting the pressure on one of the milking machines.

  “Right,” Cain said, straightening and grabbing hold of a pitchfork. “You normally stare at the backside of a cow like you want to punch it.”

  “Actually, I kind of do. You guys have accused me of being merry sunshine more than once.”

  “This is different,” Finn said, maddeningly sure of himself. Maddeningly correct.

  “I’m antsy,” he said honestly. “I want to get moving on the tasting room. We have to get it done before the Victorian Christmas festivities get kicked off.”

  “I thought Christmas was your goal.”

  “Well, we’ve upgraded. We want to take advantage of the influx of people that are going to be coming through town for this.”

  “And it has nothing to do with your pretty blonde counterpart? Because nobody is stopping you from going down and doing work.”

  “It’s Copper Ridge,” he said drily. “It’s not like any of the places I need to get supplies from are going to be open. It may shock you to learn that the Farm and Garden is not having a Black Friday sale.”

  “Well,” Finn said, “damn. I was hoping to get a killer deal on azalea flats.”

  “Sorry about your azaleas,” Liam said, his tone dry.

  “I don’t think you mean that.”

  “I fucking don’t,” Liam responded. “But anyway, that’s all. Antsy.”

  “Does that have anything to do with why you looked like you wanted to crawl out of your skin over Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “No, that had everything to do with the fact that it was the first time I’ve had Thanksgiving dinner in...I don’t know. Alex and I maybe had Thanksgiving twice growing up? And that was just if our grandma decided to do something. And forced my mom to bring us.”

  He had found an excuse to go back to New York over Thanksgiving the year before. Really, he’d had to put some things with his old house in order, and sell some of his old things that he had decided he wasn’t going to ever have brought to Copper Ridge. But, he had also lied about some personal plans. There was no reason he had to go back then, except that he had felt an underlying discomfort at the thought of being there.

  This year, no good excuse had popped into his head. Plus, he was in the middle of dealing with the tasting room stuff.

  Finn and Cain looked at him like he had grown a second head. He shrugged. “What?”

  “I didn’t realize,” Finn said.

  “Why would you? I don’t like to talk about this bullshit. I know Alex doesn’t. Alex probably had better Thanksgiving events in the army than I’ve had in my adult years. But that’s my choice.”

  “What did you do for Thanksgiving when you lived in New York?”

  “The same thing I did anytime I had a day off. Picked up some woman. Although, admittedly, if I was picking up a woman on Thanksgiving night she was probably a more dysfunctional woman than usual. But no more dysfunctional than me.”

  “You never hung out with friends?”

  “I didn’t have friends. I mean, not those kinds of friends. Not the kind that put the word friends somewhere in the name of the holiday and have jaunty get-togethers full of board games and butter. I just have the kind of friends that went out drinking and competed for different accounts at work. And would probably have poisoned my drink to make sure I didn’t get the accounts if they’d had the opportunity.”

  “Awesome,” Finn said. “That sounds super well-adjusted.”

  “Says you,” Liam said. “Who was not necessarily the most well-adjusted when we arrived in town a little over a year ago.”

  “I still had Thanksgiving,” Finn said. “Lane has always made Thanksgiving dinner for me. She used to make it for a group of friends, and Grandpa. So, toward the end there he just preferred if I brought him a plate, rather than making him join in on anything.”

  “I have Violet,” Cain said. “We’ve always done holidays. Can’t skip them when you have a kid, even when you want to. Most especially not after Kathleen left us, because I had to make everything normal. So, I had to learn to cook. After which I immediately learned to order Thanksgiving dinner in advance from a local restaurant.”

  “Fine. I’m the only cheerless, soulless one.”

  It had been strange, all of them sitting around the table like that. All of them together. Though the food had been good. And that he had definitely appreciated. He always did.

  “You should have told Lane that was basically your first Thanksgiving. She probably would have done something extravagant.”

  “Four different kinds of stuffing wasn’t extravagant?” Liam asked.

  “Believe me, she could have gone further.”

  “I believe it. But I didn’t really have any desire to make your pregnant wife work harder.”

  If there was one thing he knew for sure, it was that if Lane had had any idea about his lack of experience with family togetherness and holidays, it was that she would have bent over backward to make him feel initiated.

  And he really wasn’t comfortable with that. With anybody making a big deal out of him. Not when he hadn’t earned it, anyway. Work stuff was different. He worked hard, and he expected rewards for that. But this whole just being a family and wanting to be together thing was strange.

  He was learning where his brothers were concerned. But he was kind of just figuring out how to navigate the broader family. The women that his brothers had brought into it. And how domestic it all felt.

  Domesticity was his nightmare.

  The only real relief was the fact that he could extricate himself from it. Was the fact that he himself wasn’t permanently entrenched in it.

  “So you guys never had Thanksgiving?” Cain asked. “Did you have Christmas?”

  “Not always,” he said, shrugging.

  “Neither of you have ever mentioned this.”

  “Look,” he said. “It just wasn’t that big of a deal. Anyway, we didn’t have the money for holidays like that.”

  “I guess I always figured,” Finn began, “that because you had Dad maybe you guys were a little better off. Financially, I know not emotionally.”

  “Whatever,” Liam said. “We probably were. Emotionally. Maybe even financially, I don’t know. It never seems right to complain about it.”

  “Sounds to me like you damn well should complain,” Finn said.

  Liam let out a long, slow breath. “Let’s just milk some damn cows.”

  “Or we can finish having the damn conversation,” Cain said. He leaned the pitchfork up again
st the wall and stood there, looking at Liam far too closely.

  Liam had been the older brother in his household. He was the one that took care of his little brother. He was the one that shouldered everything. It was strange to be put in the position where that wasn’t the case anymore. Where he had two older brothers looking at him, concerned, looking like they wanted to go out and draw some blood on his behalf.

  It did some strange shit to his insides. He wasn’t sure if he liked it or not.

  “Our dad sucked,” Liam said simply. “Whether he was there or not. Whether by virtue of his presence or his absence. I’m sure he’s off sucking somewhere right now. There’s no reunion on earth that’s going to change it. There’s no apology he could offer to any of you that would change the fact that he’s just an awful human being. Trust me. I lived with him. All he did was drink, screw around with women, and baby his motorcycle like it was the child he actually cared about.”

  “Believe me,” Finn said, “I have never harbored a secret fantasy of reconnecting with our dad. The little that I saw of him in my life was enough.”

  “That’s for the best,” Liam responded.

  “What about your mom?”

  He shrugged. “She didn’t want us.”

  Finn and Cain exchanged glances. “Well, join that club,” Cain said.

  “That’s the thing. I don’t have the monopoly on messed up here. It’s never seemed like there was any point in giving you guys a rundown on what Alex and I experienced when we were growing up, because I know it wasn’t any better for you. I know it doesn’t matter that we had Dad and you didn’t. It doesn’t matter... None of it does. It sucked for all of us, and here we are, doing better. Making better. End of story.”

  “Yeah, why do I get the feeling that that’s not really the end of the story?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t know. Because you’re suspicious?”

  Finn shrugged. “Maybe I am. But, the fact remains that while my childhood was pretty bad, I had Thanksgiving and Christmas. At least, until my mom left me.”

  “Well,” Cain said. “In fairness, after that you came to live with Grandpa. He gave you Christmas, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” Finn said. “Even Grandpa.”

  “What did you get for a gift?” Liam asked, unable to imagine his grandfather wrapping anything in a bow, or being sentimental at all. The old man had loved them, which was more than he could say for pretty much anyone else they were genetically related to. But the old man had not been sentimental.

  “Boot socks,” Finn said. “And one time boots.”

  “Well, warm feet is something next to Christmas cheer, anyway,” Liam said.

  “Hell yeah,” Finn replied. “Especially when you have to be out in the frost Christmas morning taking care of animals.”

  “Well,” Liam said. “There you have it. Winner of most functional of all of our childhoods by far. The man who got boots for Christmas morning so that he could more comfortably do his chores.”

  Finn laughed. “I don’t mind it. This is what I love to do. This job. I love working on the ranch. It doesn’t matter to me if it was an unconventional life. It makes me happy. It’s the reason I’m here. It’s the reason I know Lane.”

  He had to admire his brother’s certainty. Liam had yet to figure out how to be anything close to grateful for his upbringing. It was the reason that he... Well, it was the reason that he had a gigantic chip on his shoulder. Sabrina’s father was the reason he had gone to school. And his brothers were the reason he was back here. His grandfather was the reason.

  His mother was the reason he was about half a million dollars poorer. Because he’d felt completely bound to proving her wrong about him.

  But he didn’t have that blessed assurance that Finn seemed to have that the broken road he’d been walking on had been leading somewhere better.

  All he had was sore feet.

  “Yeah, well, I’m happy for you and your perspective.”

  “All that money and you haven’t bought yourself any perspective yet?” Finn asked.

  Liam shook his head. “No, I am neck-deep in cow shit instead.”

  “Well, I’ve found a lot of perspective in piles of cow shit,” Cain said. “So maybe if you keep shoveling you’ll find some of your own.”

  He doubted it. In fact, he felt a lot further from perspective than he normally did. Mostly, he felt... Well, he didn’t know. And that was a helluva thing for a man who had been certain of his path in life for a long damn time.

  From the moment he had been given that money, the moment he had discovered that he could go to college, he had been certain about where he was going.

  It was a damned lie to say he had left Copper Ridge and not looked back. As Sabrina had pointed out to him, with a good solid punch to the middle of the spine, he had the past permanently on his skin.

  But he had wanted what was in front of him bad enough not to care about what he left behind.

  Something about coming back here had screwed everything up.

  Or maybe it wasn’t here. Maybe it was just Sabrina. Because when it came to her he was caught between knowing that it was the right thing to never touch her again, and being desperate to get his hands on her again.

  He wasn’t used to contradicting himself, to not being certain. He doubted any amount of cow patties was going to solve that.

  “Maybe,” he said. Because he knew it was the only way for the conversation to end.

  Because this was what older brothers did. He knew that well enough. It was what he had done when Alex had come back from dealing with Clara looking all heartbroken. When he had given advice on things he didn’t know anything about. Because he had felt compelled to because wasn’t that what older brothers were supposed to do? Protect, advise.

  No matter what they knew or didn’t know.

  “Better keep shoveling,” Finn said, clapping him on the back.

  He looked at his brothers, who were smiling at him. And he knew that they weren’t going to be able to advise him on any of this; more than that, he didn’t want them to.

  But it was nice to know they cared. It was a weird feeling. But it was nice.

  And right about now he would settle for nice, since he sure as hell wasn’t going to get satisfied.

  * * *

  SABRINA HAD BEEN correct about Christmas lights on the main street of Copper Ridge. The day after Thanksgiving they were all strung up in blazing glory, twinkling on the borders of each and every building, evergreen boughs with deep red bows hanging low beneath the eaves.

  There was a woman standing in front of the large picture window at The Grind, drawing a design in white, red and green. A scripture and a wreath, it looked like.

  Sabrina went inside the coffee shop and saw that the specials had been changed from pumpkin spice to drinks based with eggnog and nutmeg. She could not condone anything created with eggnog. But she did order a vanilla nutmeg latte to get herself feeling a bit more seasonal before she continued on down the sidewalk toward the tasting room.

  The tables and chairs, and the display case were being delivered today, and she was going down to open it up in preparation. And she really hoped, perhaps unfairly, that Liam would decide he didn’t need to be there for any of this.

  They hadn’t seen each other in close to a week, and she had to admit the distance was fairly welcome. Even though she had missed him like her heart was being clawed at the entire time. Which meant the distance was even more welcome as a result. She didn’t want to miss him. She didn’t want to feel anything. Nothing, nothing at all.

  Sadly, she kept dreaming of him at night. Hot, sexy dreams full of all the things she now knew what happened between men and women. Yes, she had known. But it had been gauzy. It had been impersonal. It had not been hot, sweaty and very real. Had not ma
de her ache between her thighs, or caused her to wake up slick and unsatisfied.

  Awful. It was all awful.

  She took a sip of her latte, which was decidedly not awful, and unlocked the front door to the tasting room, breathing out a long, slow breath as she surveyed the surroundings.

  It was such a gorgeous little gem of a shop, and now that she had fully released her anger at the fact that Liam had been right about it, she could completely enjoy it.

  She loved the way that the ornate moldings encased the windows, the way the original glass had a slight wave to it. Loved the wood floor, imperfect but all the more beautiful for it.

  It was rooted in the history of the town, in the Gold Rush–era buildings.

  Yes, it was all very peaceful. Without Liam standing in the middle of it.

  A pickup truck pulled up to the curb in front of the little building and she rushed to prop the door open. She greeted the deliveryman and made light conversation with him as he brought the tables and chairs inside. He left them all laid out in the middle of the room and Sabrina took her invoice and wished him well.

  She rocked back on her heels and surveyed her surroundings. Now she just had to get everything placed.

  But thinking about that, about the discussion she had had with Liam about where the different tables and chairs could go, just brought to mind kissing him on the floor of the tasting room later.

  Brought to mind kissing him. And then brought to mind what it had been like to do more with him. To get naked with him.

  He was her only experience with sex, that one time her only frame of reference.

  The horrifying thought that overtook her was that she was never going to be able to think about sex without thinking of Liam Donnelly.

  She had set out to solve something, and instead she had perhaps broken it even further.

  She growled, and kicked the leg of one of the chairs. It made a rough, skipping sound and she panicked, moving it quickly and looking down at that precious wooden floor. Thank God she hadn’t scuffed it.

  She needed to get herself together. Needed to stop acting like a baby. Freaking out about everything.