The Last Christmas Cowboy Page 7

  It made Rose wonder how much Iris had pushed down so that she could be the mature one. The one that took care of things.

  “Color me shocked,” Ryder said. “I figured you’d storm out of the bar and tell Rose where to shove it.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” Iris said.

  She wouldn’t. That was the thing. Rose would. Pansy would. Ryder would. Iris wouldn’t.

  But surely Iris wouldn’t let Rose run over her, either. They were sisters, and Iris could tell her whatever she needed to. Anyway, she didn’t have to send the recipe to him.

  “Elliott,” Emmett said from his end of the table. “Is he the guy that does the water stuff? He came by the school a few weeks ago to install a new system. I dunno, something about expanding and needing more... I quit paying attention.”

  Emmett went to school on the Dalton ranch. The Daltons were West’s family. His other set of half siblings. Apparently, Hank Dalton had bastard children littered around the country. West was one of them, and had only connected with his family a year or so earlier. But it had all worked out in the end, since his half brother Gabe had started a school for troubled youth, and his half brother from the other side, Emmett, was a little bit of a troubled youth.

  “Yes,” Rose confirmed. “That’s him.”

  Emmett snorted. “Okay.” West elbowed him. “Sorry,” the kid said.

  “Can we stop talking about it now?” Iris asked. “I would much rather plan parade things. We only have a couple of weeks.”

  So they discussed parade business. And it wasn’t until dinner was all finished and Rose had gone up to bed that she realized it was Logan who had jumped in and made sure she had something to do that she was excited about.

  That made her think of his eyes again.

  His eyes. And all the things he’d said to her earlier.

  She didn’t want to lose this bet.

  Just considering losing the bet had her feeling...wrong.

  She stripped off her clothes and walked into the bathroom that connected to her room, turning the shower on. She had never been half so grateful to wash the day off her body and she couldn’t quite say why. Except that there was a general, strange electrical current running beneath her skin and she couldn’t figure out the source.

  So she did about the best thing she could think of. She didn’t think about it at all. She scrubbed herself clean, got dressed and flung her tired, battered body into bed.

  And if her dreams were full of blue, she chose not to remember them when she woke up.

  CHAPTER SIX

  NOT ONLY HAD he gotten himself roped into this whole parade thing, but thanks to the fact he hadn’t been able to stop himself from jumping in to save Rose from disappointment, he also had to attend a planning meeting. He could think of nothing he would like less.

  Well, at this point he could think of a few things.

  It had been a hell of a week.

  When he pulled into the parking lot of the community center, all he could think was that it was going to continue to be a hell of a week. He was allergic to stuff like this. Small-town politics and everything that went with them. People fighting to climb the social ladder of Gold Valley, which was a stepladder if he was being generous.

  Add in Christmas and it was a potluck of hell.

  And those people would collide with people like Pansy, who actually did things for the community for reasons other than their own self-aggrandizement, and all he would get was sad off-brand chocolate sandwich cookies and watered-down punch for the effort.

  He pushed the door to the modest hall open and found all the folding chairs occupied already. He moved across the white-and-gray linoleum, standing toward the back.

  The door opened not long after, and Rose scurried in. She looked around, and came to the same conclusion he did—that there was nowhere to sit—and then her eyes connected with his.

  He was used to the tightening in his gut when she looked at him. He had to be.

  But after the dance, the bet...

  The idiot things he’d said to her about all she didn’t know.

  It was sharper now. Keener.

  Which was all he needed considering it had been sharp enough before.

  She waved at him, then tiptoed over to the table at the back, pouring two cups of punch while the woman that he didn’t recognize continued to talk. She joined him against the back wall, handing him some punch.

  He lifted it in mock salute, and she smiled.

  They’d spent the whole day together, out in the field. There was just something about her out of context sometimes. Hell, there was something about her in context. He couldn’t pretend otherwise.

  Overall, the meeting was pretty boring, and didn’t pertain to them. Then it was time for Barbara to take the floor.

  “We have a few new submissions for space after the Christmas parade.” She looked around the room, and it made him feel like he was in trouble. She reminded him of a particularly laser-focused teacher he’d once had who had always acted like he was up to no good.

  In fairness, he had been.

  But he wasn’t now, neither was he a kid. The effect was still the same.

  “Including,” she continued, “a stall with baking activities, which gives me concerns regarding legality and the health department. A blacksmith demonstration, which could definitely be a fire hazard, and jewelry making.”

  All of that felt a bit pointed, and whatever Pansy had said about Barbara being fine with her being in her new position, he had to wonder if that was true.

  “I feel like all of this needs to come under further review,” she said. “We can’t just go making changes to format simply because someone is in a new position and they are looking to leave their stamp on things.”

  He could feel Rose bristling beside him. “Don’t do anything,” he said, his voice low. “You know Pansy can handle herself.”

  “I will open the floor for discussion,” Barbara said.

  “I don’t think there will be any more of a problem with my sister’s booth than there would be with a general bake sale table,” Pansy said, “if that helps with your concerns there.”

  “I have a food handlers’ card.”

  That bit of information came from Iris, and while it wasn’t a shock to anyone in the room, considering it wasn’t a particularly huge revelation, it was definitely a surprise to him, and he could tell by the way that Rose’s body jolted it was a surprise to her, too.

  “Well,” Barbara said, “that is something to consider. Though we are going to have to look into the cleanliness of the preparation. We need a station so that children can wash their hands.”

  “We can figure all of that out,” Pansy said, keeping her voice even.

  The way that Barbara moved on after that made Logan wonder if it actually wasn’t personal. If the woman was just a stickler, and that there were no exceptions made at all. And every new idea was going to come under scrutiny, no matter who it came from.

  “Now, the blacksmithing booth,” she said. “I don’t know about that. It seems like a serious safety hazard, and we’re definitely going to have to clear it with our insurance.”

  That was a fair enough point. He could tell by the tension in Rose’s posture that she did not agree.

  “As for the jewelry,” she said, “we might have too much competition with the local shops, and we need to be very careful not to step on the toes of people who are grandfathered in to the booths.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Dana, the woman who owned Willow Creek, where most of the town’s jewelry was sold. “I sell some of Sammy’s designs in the store. And any demonstration that she does could only benefit me.”

  “It will be brought under advisement,” Barbara said, clearly unmoved.

  And that was when he felt Rose reach the end of her tether. “What I wonder,”
she said, “is if you keep shooting down other people’s ideas so that no one will realize you don’t have any.”

  Barbara’s face went red. “Well,” she sputtered. She was speechless, which was the first time anyone in the room had seen it.

  A nervous giggle swept the crowd.

  “I’m just saying. You know what they say. Those who can’t do, plan or something like that?”

  For the first time ever, Barbara Niedermayer didn’t seem to have anything to say. And in fact, she said nothing else. She simply walked down from her position at the front of the room and took a seat.

  An uncomfortable wave went through the room and Dana got up and started managing the meeting, speaking quickly and relaying the rest of the information as fast as possible. Logan looked over at Rose, who was leaning against the back wall, her arms crossed, her expression defiant.

  As soon as the meeting was over and people began to disperse, he grabbed her arm and dragged her out the back door. “What the hell was that?”

  “She’s insufferable,” Rose said. “I’m sick of her taking shots at my family. And Emmett is included in my family. I have a bad taste in my mouth from that already.”

  “She’s one of those people,” he said. “She means well, but she can’t be flexible. She doesn’t have friends, she doesn’t have a family support system the way that you do.”

  She crossed her arms and looked up at him like he’d betrayed everything they were. “So I’m supposed to feel sorry for her?”

  She was being...not as good as she could be. Or not as good as he gave her credit for anyway. To him, she was...bright and irrepressible but never mean. And Barbara might be difficult, but in the end she was a woman abandoned by a husband, whose son had abandoned her too, and Logan hated that.

  It scraped against all his own feelings about his mother, and no, Barbara wasn’t like his mother. Not even close. But his mom had been judged and she’d felt ostracized. And maybe Barbara was just...reacting to what she thought the town might give her back if she didn’t lead with judgment of her own.

  He knew what it looked like when women were left hurt and vulnerable. Victims of the choices men made, and scorned more than the ones that abandoned them ever would be.

  He’d thought Rose would have the compassion to understand, too.

  “Yes,” he said. “You should. She doesn’t have anyone. You should give her some level of sympathy, a little bit of grace, dammit.”

  “Suddenly you’re the expert on how to treat people?”

  “At least in a room full of people, you should have the good sense to be kind to somebody who isn’t working with as much as you are. Her husband is gone. He left her while their son spiraled into addiction. And you know that. So does everyone in that room. Doing things for the town is all she’s got. Badly done, Rose.”

  He didn’t know why it bothered him so much. Didn’t know why everything about her was getting under his skin the way that it was now. But he couldn’t stand to look at her. Not at this moment. So he turned and he walked away, leaving her there with no further explanation.

  * * *

  ROSE FELT WOUNDED. Scraped raw and even worse... Guilty. It wasn’t fair. Barbara Niedermayer had deserved that. And what she had done wasn’t that mean. She needed to be taken down a peg or two, and Rose had done it.

  His face, his disapproval. It made her chest burn with humiliation.

  Logan was often... Well, he was bossy like an older brother. He gave her a bad time. He told her she didn’t know what she was doing or thinking, in that way an older sibling with a superiority complex might.

  But this was different.

  This wasn’t him looking at her like a kid and claiming greater experience. He wasn’t pretending to be long-suffering. He wasn’t picking on her just to irritate her.

  He’d looked at her like...like... It was disappointment and anger all in one and somehow it seemed to take down a wall between them.

  On his side, he was the protector. On her side, the impetuous one that pushed and cajoled him and reluctantly made him smile.

  That look... It had been something else and it burned her down in her soul.

  She pushed it away because anger was easier.

  How dare he? How dare he treat her like this? He wasn’t perfect. He might think he was, all high-and-mighty and certain of attraction and teeth.

  He didn’t know everything. And he didn’t get to tell her how to behave.

  When she got into the car with Iris, she was still fuming. And of course, Logan had taken off immediately after scolding her like she was a child. He was such an absolute ass.

  “Are you all right?” Iris asked.

  “No,” she muttered.

  “I don’t remember you ever losing your temper like that before,” she said softly, the words a gentle introduction to the subject, but Rose could sense there was more emotion beneath her sister’s words.

  “I always lose my temper,” Rose said. “I’m plainspoken. I say it like it is. The fact that anybody was surprised by that today is not my problem.”

  “You’re often plainspoken, but you don’t usually embarrass people.”

  She gritted her teeth. “Are you going to lecture me, too?”

  “Who else lectured you?”

  “Never mind,” Rose said. She didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to reflect on the impression his fingers had left on her arm, and the way his eyes had burned into her as he’d read her the riot act.

  “Fine,” Iris said. “Don’t talk to me. Maybe you should talk to Logan.”

  Her head whipped around. “What?”

  “Well, he’s the one that you usually go to when you need to discuss something. And obviously something is going on with you.”

  “Nothing is going on with me. It’s too bad Elliott wasn’t at the meeting.”

  “Yes,” Iris persisted. “Something is going on with you. I can tell because you don’t want to talk about it. You so profoundly don’t want to talk about it that you changed the subject to Elliott. I’m almost tempted to think that the real reason you’re trying to set me up with him is because you need distracting from something that concerns you.”

  “I...” Rose sputtered. “I do not. Nothing is different with me. Nothing.”

  Silence settled in the car.

  “Is that the problem?” Iris asked gently.

  “No,” Rose said. “Why would that be a problem?”

  “It is for me sometimes. Nothing is different with me, either. And that’s hard. I’m so happy for Ryder and Sammy, and I’m happy for Pansy and West. But I’m a little bit sad for me.”

  In the middle of her misery, Rose felt slightly validated. Because she’d just known Iris wasn’t happy. She knew it. “We’ve all been one thing for so long,” Rose said softly. “It shifting like this is weird. Good, but weird.”

  “Yeah,” Iris agreed.

  “Do you think...do you think if you hadn’t had to take care of me your life would be different?” Rose asked, the question sticking in her throat.

  “Our lives would have been different if that plane hadn’t crashed,” Iris said. “Us being there for each other wasn’t the bad part. I was fourteen, and it felt like everything good in the whole world was gone when we lost Mom and Dad. But there was you, Rose. You were good. Don’t feel bad about me taking care of you. I don’t.”

  Rose blinked back tears. She swallowed hard, but her throat felt tight, and she couldn’t maneuver around the lump that had settled there.

  “Just trust me,” Rose said. “I’m fine.”

  “The problem, Rose,” Iris said, “is that I’m not totally sure you would know if you weren’t.”

  That dug underneath Rose’s skin. And she decided to go ahead and be done with the conversation because there was really nowhere else for it to go.

 
When she tumbled out of the car, Iris started walking toward the house, but Rose didn’t want to. She was too keyed up, and she needed to do something to clear her head.

  “I’m going to the barn,” she said.

  Maybe she would go for a ride. Or maybe she would...clean a stall. Hope that it was a little bit dirty so that she had something to do.

  She was not looking for Logan. She wanted to avoid Logan. He was actively being a jerk to her, and there was no reason for her to talk to him.

  What her sister had said about how he was the person she talked to stuck in her craw, especially now.

  * * *

  ROSE GROWLED AROUND the barn for a while, raking dirt that didn’t need to be raked and digging through shavings that were just fine.

  She tried not to think of Logan.

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, leaning against the shovel she was holding. The way he had looked at her. Those electric blue eyes.

  Badly done.

  She couldn’t remember ever being scolded like that in her life.

  She was twenty-three years old, and he was scolding her like she was a child. It was what he always did. In fact, it was what he had been doing for weeks now. Questioning everything she said, everything she did. Where did he get off?

  Where did he get off being right?

  The way he’d been lately...he’d been filled with lectures. And he had danced with her.

  And he had disapproved of her in such a deep and horrible way tonight. Like he was above reproach. Like he was some beacon of kindness and goodness to the people of the community.

  Not that he was a bad guy. He wasn’t. He was nice, and he had always been nice to work with and be around. Until recently. It was hard now, and she didn’t know why. She didn’t know why lately talking to him was like walking through the woods, trying to work her way through a thicket full of thorns.

  That brought her right back.

  To sitting with him and eating sandwiches. To those eyes clashing with hers as he said it.

  You’re talking about someone being inside you, Rose.