Christmastime Cowboy Read online

  Her friendliness was beginning to slip. And he waited. For something else. For something to get thrown at him. It didn’t happen.

  “That I do. Take these,” he said, handing her the folder that he was holding on to. He made sure their fingers didn’t touch this time. “And we’ll talk next week.”

  Then he turned and walked away from her, and resisted the strong impulse to turn back and get one more glance at her. It wasn’t the first time he had resisted that.

  He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Liam walked out of the tasting room Sabrina let out a breath that had been killing her to keep in. A breath that contained about a thousand insults and recriminations. And more than a few very colorful swear word combinations. A breath that nearly cut her throat, because it was full of so many sharp and terrible things.

  She lifted her hands to her face and realized that they were shaking. It had been thirteen years. Why did he still affect her like this? Maybe, just maybe, if she had ever found a man that made her feel even half of what Liam did it wouldn’t be so bad dealing with him. The feelings wouldn’t be so strong.

  But she hadn’t. So, that supposition was basically moot.

  Everything that had been beautiful about him then had only magnified in intensity since. That square jaw more firm. Gold-tipped hair she wanted to run her fingers through. Green eyes that seemed to see directly inside her.

  The worst part was the tattoos. He’d had about three when he’d been nineteen. Now, they covered both of his arms, and she had the strongest urge to make them as familiar to her as the original tattoos had been. To memorize each and every detail about them.

  The tree was the one that really caught her attention. The Celtic knots, she knew, were likely a nod to Irish heritage, but the tree—whose branches she could see stretching down from his shoulder—she was curious about what that meant.

  “And you are spending too much time thinking about him,” she admonished herself.

  She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. She should just focus on congratulating herself for saying nothing stupid. Well, except the thing about the can opener. So, she had almost said nothing stupid. But at least it hadn’t been specific. At least she hadn’t cried and demanded answers for the night he had completely laid waste to her every feeling.

  So, that was that.

  “How did it go?”

  Sabrina turned and saw her sister-in-law, Lindy, come in. People would be forgiven for thinking that she and Lindy were actually biological sisters. In fact, they looked much more alike than Sabrina and her younger sister, Beatrix, did.

  Like Sabrina, Lindy had long, straight blond hair. Bea had freckles all over her face and a wild riot of reddish brown curls that resisted taming almost as strongly as the youngest Leighton child herself did.

  That was another thing Sabrina and Lindy had in common. They were predominantly tame. At least, they kept things as together as they possibly could on the surface.

  “Fine.”

  “You didn’t savage him with a cheese knife?”

  “Lindy,” Sabrina said, “please. This is dry-clean only.” She waved her hand up and down, indicating her dress.

  “I don’t know what your whole issue is with him...”

  Because no one spoke of it. Lindy had married her brother after the unpleasantness. It was no secret that Sabrina and her father were estranged—even if it was a brittle, quiet estrangement. But unless Damien had told Lindy the details—and Sabrina doubted he knew all of them—her sister-in-law wouldn’t know the whole story.

  “I don’t have an issue with him,” Sabrina said. “I knew him thirteen years ago. That has nothing to do with now. It has nothing to do with this new venture for the winery. Which I am on board with 100 percent.” It was true. She was.

  There had been no question about whether or not she was going to side with Damien or Lindy in the divorce. And unfortunately, what Damien had done necessitated picking sides. Though, more accurately, the ensuing legal battle over the winery had been the major thing that necessitated taking sides.

  It had been a simple thing in Sabrina’s mind. Her relationship with her father was so difficult already that aligning herself with Lindy had really only confirmed more of what he thought of her anyway.

  Part of her understood her parents’ reactions to all of this. She did. In their minds, Grassroots was theirs. But they had foolishly given the entire thing to their oldest son, not considering their daughters at all. And then, said son had gotten married, and they had drafted a prenup designed only to protect him. Of course, that prenup, with its clause about infidelity, had backfired on Damien, not on Lindy.

  Yes. Sabrina had a hard time feeling sorry for her older brother or her parents.

  “Well,” Lindy said. “That’s good to hear.”

  She could tell that Lindy didn’t believe her. But, whatever. “It’s going to be fine. I’m looking forward to this.” That was also true. Mostly. She was looking forward to expanding the winery. Looking forward to helping build the winery, and making it into something that was truly theirs. So that her parents could no longer shout recriminations about Lindy stealing something from the Leighton family.

  Eventually, they would have made the winery so much more successful that most of it would be theirs.

  And if her own issues with her parents were tangled up in all of this, then...that was just how it was.

  “Looking forward to what?” Lindy’s brother, Dane, came into the room, a grin on his handsome face. A grin that had likely melted even the iciest of women into puddles. For her part, Sabrina was immune to him. He was like a brother to her.

  He was only back at the winery to offer Lindy support during his off-season. Sabrina could tell that he was more than a little antsy to get out of here about now. Shockingly, handing out small samples of cheese was not in his wheelhouse.

  “The new tasting room venture,” Sabrina said, doing her best to make sure that her words sounded light. It was starting to feel a little bit crowded in here. She needed a chance to have a post-Liam comedown. Which was impossible to do with Lindy and Dane looking at her so intently.

  “Oh, right. That’s going well?”

  “Well, it’s getting started,” she said to Dane.

  Those thoughts swirled around in her head, caused tension to mount in her chest, a hard little ball of anger and meanness that she couldn’t quite shake. Didn’t really want to.

  “I guess that’s good news,” Dane said, rocking back on his heels.

  Lindy and Damien had been married long enough that Dane felt like family to Sabrina too. He’d been in her life for ten years, and he really did feel like a brother to her. In some ways, more than Damien did. Even more so now as it was difficult to reconcile with a brother that had betrayed someone she cared for so much.

  “Great news,” Lindy said brightly. “It’s exactly what we need. More forward motion. More... More.”

  “Until you have a swimming pool full of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck?” Dane asked.

  Lindy narrowed her eyes. “This has nothing to do with money. It’s about making the winery successful. And okay, it has a little bit to do with money, because I do like food. And having a roof over my head.”

  “And sticking it to your asshole ex by living underneath the roof that used to be over his head?” Dane grinned.

  The corner of Lindy’s mouth quirked upward, and Sabrina could clearly see the resemblance between her and Dane. “It’s not unpleasant.” She cleared her throat. “I really want the goal to be that we have this tasting room up and ready to go for the Christmas festivities this year.”

  “That is...awfully quick, Lin,” Dane said.

  “Sure,” Lindy said, waving a hand. “But it isn’t like we’re a start-up. It�
�s just a new, extended showroom. And with the plans that Lydia West has for Christmas this year, we can’t afford to not be open. It’s going to be a whole Victorian Christmas celebration this year with carolers and chestnuts roasting on...well, probably not open fires because of safety. But we need to be there with hot mulled wine and cheeses and goodwill toward men!”

  “Did you want to add world peace too?” Dane asked. “Because with all that you might as well.”

  Dane wasn’t wrong. It was a very tall order. But they knew exactly what they wanted the showroom to have, and they already had stock at the winery. They would just be moving some of it to town. So it might be tricky, but not impossible.

  And suddenly Sabrina wanted it all to work, and work well. If for no other reason than to prove to Liam that she was not at all the seventeen-year-old girl whose world he’d wrecked all those years ago.

  Sabrina had to admit she envied the tangible ways in which Lindy was able to get revenge on Damien. Of course, her relationship with Liam wasn’t anything like a ten-year marriage ended by infidelity. She gritted her teeth. And she did her best not to think about Liam. About the past. Because it hurt. Every damn time it hurt. It didn’t matter if it should or not.

  Didn’t matter if it was something she should be over. It was stuck there, a thorn in her heart that she wasn’t sure how to remove. If she could have figured that out, she would have done it a long time ago.

  At least, for a while, she hadn’t thought about him all the time.

  She had tried to date. She’d really tried when she’d been working in Gold Valley and had been exposed to men she hadn’t known as well at school in Copper Ridge. But it just hadn’t worked. Inevitably, there would be comparisons between the way Liam made her feel and the way those guys made her feel. Which was... Well, there was no comparison, really.

  But now that he was back in town, now that she sometimes just happened to run into him, it was different. It was harder not to think about him. Him and the grand disaster that had happened after. The way it had ruined her relationship with her father. And that thorn in her heart constantly felt like it was being worked in deeper.

  That first time she had run into Liam when he had come back...

  She had walked into Ace’s bar, ready to have a drink with Lindy after a long day of work, and he had been there. She hadn’t even questioned whether or not it was him. He looked different, older, deep grooves bracketing the side of his mouth, lines around his eyes.

  His chest was broader, thicker. And there had been tattoos covering the whole of his arms. But it was Liam. It was most definitely Liam, and before her brain had been able to process it, her body had gone into a full-scale episode.

  Her heart had nearly lurched into her throat, her pulse racing and then echoing between her thighs, an immediate reminder of how it had always been to be near him. A tragic confirmation that her memory had not blown those feelings out of proportion.

  Because, after enough years of unexciting good-night kisses and attempts at physical relationships that hadn’t gone any further than a man putting his hand up her shirt while sitting on his couch, she had started to wonder if she had really ever felt anything close to the intensity that she’d associated with Liam. For sure, she had started to think, her memory had exaggerated it, and was actively sabotaging her now.

  But such hopeful notions had been demolished when she had seen him again.

  And with that attraction had come anger. Because how dare he? How dare he show up in her part of Oregon again, after abandoning her the way that he had. How dare he come back to Copper Ridge and invade her space like this? He was supposed to stay away.

  Mostly, she was angry that he had the nerve to come back even sexier than he’d been before. If there was any justice in the world he would have lost his hair, gotten a beer gut and had his face eaten off by a roving band of rabid foxes. Yeah, those things combined might have worked together to make Liam Donnelly less appealing to her.

  But there were never any rabid roving foxes around when you needed them.

  The door to the winery tasting room opened again, and in walked her sister, Beatrix, who was holding a large cardboard box that she was staring down into worriedly. Her hair was sticking out at odd angles, a leaf attached to one of the wayward curls.

  At twenty-two, Beatrix sometimes seemed much younger than that, and occasionally much older. She was a strange, somewhat solitary creature who defied any and all expectation, and was a source of incredible frustration for their parents.

  Sabrina had spent a great many years trying to be exactly what her parents wanted her to be. Beatrix had never even tried. And somehow Bea wasn’t the one their father wouldn’t speak directly to.

  Not that she could hold it against Bea. No one could hold anything against Bea.

  “What do you have in the box, Bea?” Dane asked.

  “Herons,” Beatrix responded. “Green herons. They got kicked out of their nest.”

  Lindy’s forehead wrinkled. “Beatrix, could you not bring wildlife into the dining room? We have food in here.”

  “I just wanted to see if you had an extra dropper. I have one, but I can’t find the other one.”

  “I don’t think I have a dropper in my dining room,” Lindy said.

  “The kind you use for medicine,” Beatrix pressed.

  “Yes,” Lindy said, “I actually did understand what you meant.”

  Beatrix looked fully bemused by the idea that Lindy did not have a dropper readily at her disposal.

  “Okay. I guess I’m going to have to go down to town.” Which, Sabrina knew, Beatrix didn’t like to do.

  “I have to go down later,” Dane said. “I’ll get one for you, Bea.”

  Beatrix brightened, and her cheeks turned slightly pink. “Thank you.”

  Sabrina occasionally worried that Beatrix did not see Dane as a brother, which was fair enough, since he wasn’t even actually their brother-in-law. But Dane was not the kind of guy for a sweet girl like her, and anyway he was far too old for her. About ten years and a whole other lifetime of experience.

  She would worry more than occasionally if she thought that Dane returned Beatrix’s feelings at all. Fortunately, his attitude toward her was entirely appropriate. He saw her as a younger sister, as he should.

  But that didn’t seem to change the fact that Beatrix’s entire face illuminated whenever he spoke to her.

  “Come on, I’ll help you find a safe place for your herons so you can stick close to them today.” Beatrix followed Dane out of the tasting room, leaving Lindy and Sabrina alone.

  Lindy didn’t say anything, but she did lift one eyebrow. Sabrina had a feeling she wasn’t the only one who had observed Beatrix’s response to Dane.

  In some ways, it hurt Sabrina to see it. She had to accept the fact that she might actually be projecting. Because there had been one summer when she had followed a man around like that. Looked at him like the sun rose and fell on his broad shoulders.

  And she had confided in him. Her hopes, her dreams. Her secret fears. And they hadn’t mattered to him at all.

  In the end he had made a fool out of her.

  She looked at Lindy again, and noticed that her sister-in-law had some fresh lines on her pretty face. She had to wonder if she was having similar thoughts right now too.

  “Good thing we know better,” Lindy said finally. “Huh?”

  Sabrina laughed, and even she thought she sounded a little bit bitter. “I suppose so.”

  But that was the thing, she did know better. It was the one good thing about everything that had happened with Liam all those years ago. She had trusted her heart’s wants. Fully. Completely.

  And no matter how her body might react to him now, she had learned her lesson.

  She would not be making that mistake again. Ever.
/>
  CHAPTER TWO

  BY THE TIME Liam pulled back into the Laughing Irish Ranch he was feeling pretty good about the venture with Grassroots. As far as he could tell Lindy was a good businesswoman, and she had something to prove, which would help fuel the fire.

  Liam wasn’t immune to the need to prove things. He’d come back to town and swung by Jamison Leighton’s lake house—which had turned out to be a home built near a man-made lake, in a neighborhood along with about twenty other homes, not a cabin set in the pristine wilderness, and it was splitting hairs to notice, but Liam did, because he was pissed and willing to be petty—to write the old man a check. To pay him back, with interest, for the money he’d gotten to leave in the first place.

  The look on his face had been worth the trip out to Copper Ridge all on its own.

  He pulled up in front of his family’s ranch house and his truck skidded to a stop, the fine coating of ice over the gravel making traction a bit of an issue. He got out and looked up to see his brother Finn standing by the porch smiling, a gold wedding band gleaming on his left hand.

  Liam had never seen anyone so happy to be tied down. Except for maybe his older brother Cain, and his younger brother, Alex. They were pretty damn happy to be tied down too.

  Liam was...well, kind of ambivalent about all the romance he was surrounded with at all times.

  Alex and Clara had moved to her ranch, though Alex continued to work at the Laughing Irish. Cain and his wife, Alison, and Cain’s daughter, Violet, lived in another house on the property that Cain had refurbished for them out of an old barn.

  Which left Liam, Finn and Finn’s wife, Lane, in the main house.

  It wasn’t really bad. Lane was a fantastic cook, and Liam got all the benefits of having a wife without actually having to have one. Well, except for the sex.

  Not that he wanted to have sex with his brother’s wife. Even Liam Donnelly had his limits.

  “How did it go?” Finn asked.

  Of the four of them, Finn had been at the ranch the longest. He had worked with their grandfather from the time he was sixteen years old. The place was in his blood. And this expansion both excited him and made him nervous. Mostly, Liam felt like Finn wanted to kill him with his bare hands.