A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas

He would have to pull up the ledger to see which cabins were available, but that would be easy enough. It wasn’t that any of this was difficult. It was all getting rolled into his daily responsibilities, after all. Wasn’t extra. Not really.

But a mother hen he was not. Not even on a good day. And after the awful sleep he’d gotten, today was not a very good day.

“It doesn’t really matter if I like it or not,” she fired back. “I don’t have any other options.”

“I’m not here for this tough-girl thing you’re doing,” he said, stopping and turning to face her. “My brother is doing a damn nice thing for you. If you have to pretend that you don’t care, you can stay quiet. Otherwise, feel free to add commentary.”

Her expression went from defiant to subdued, softening slightly. Well. Apparently, she did have feelings. And wasn’t made entirely of prickles and spite.

He pushed open the front door and the two of them walked out of the house. She stayed silent, her boots loud on the steps as they made their way down to the driveway. Grant paused and looked around, always surprised at how the place looked. New, and somehow the same all at once. The cabins around the main house had been restored, each one with its own flower bed and carefully manicured walk that led up to the front door.

The entire property was refreshed. The barns painted, the hiking trails into the woods cleared.

The bones remained. The foundation. The earth. Same as it had always been.

He didn’t know if he took comfort in that or not.

He didn’t know if he took comfort in anything, really.

He just kept on living.

To do anything else would be a damn insult to Lindsay.

“Let’s walk up this way,” he said. “I’m going to show you the barn, and then we’ll walk out to the cabin you’ll be staying in. Hitting all the highlights on the way.”

His companion was much quieter than she’d been, but he imagined snapping at her had done its job. He wasn’t sorry about the silence. Having to make stupid small talk was the only thing that was worse than dealing with comforting strangers over his grief.

He led her down a gravel drive that took them to the big red barn, the one that the guests liked to see, not the one that housed the equipment. But this one had hay bales, and was a fun place to hang out and drink coffee. And really, that was its primary function. They had dinners in it, and sometimes small events.

And by they, he meant the ranch. Because he didn’t get anywhere near social engagements of that kind.

For his part, Grant preferred to do demonstrations with the animals. And any sort of behind-the-scenes work that needed doing. Things that didn’t require talking. Just another reason this little babysitting job wasn’t to his liking.

“This is like... Like ranches you see on TV,” she said, looking around the barn.

Grant turned around and he couldn’t stop the kick he felt in his chest when he got a look at the expression on McKenna’s face. It was like something had released inside her, all the tightness in her face gone slack. Her mouth had dropped open slightly, her brown eyes wide as she took in the sight of the large red structure, and the backdrop of dark green mountains dusted with pure white snow behind.

Suddenly, the place didn’t look so familiar. For one small moment he saw it for the first time, right along with her.

He was a tired man. Down to his bones. He hadn’t felt a moment of wonder in longer than he could recall. There was nothing new here. Nothing new in him.

But right then it felt like the world stopped turning, just for a second, and in that space, between his last breath and his next heartbeat, he forgot everything but the beauty around him.

And it seemed new.

But then the world moved again, and that feeling was gone.

“It’s nice,” he said, clearing his throat and charging on through to the inside of the barn.

He turned to make sure that McKenna was with him, and she was, almost hunched forward, looking around them with a strange mix of trepidation and wonder.

“Have you not been in a barn before?”

“No,” she said.

“I thought you’d done all the manual labor there was to do. There’s a lot of it to be done in barns, McKenna, let me tell you.”

“Clearly I’ve done all the city-type varieties of manual labor.”

“Have you spent most of your time living in the city?” He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t care.

“Not exclusively,” she said. “I’ve lived in my fair share of medium-size towns. It’s just that nobody was inviting me to go hang out on the ranch. I didn’t get asked to a lot of hoedowns.” She shrugged. “Or much of anything.”

He knew that a lot of people would feel sorry for her. He didn’t. She was standing in front of him healthy and on two legs. Life was tough, but it was a hell of a lot tougher when you were dead.

“You’ll probably end up at a few. Depending on how long you stay. My sister-in-law has grand plans for some big-ass Christmas party over at her winery. So.”

Her expression went soft, and then shuttered again. “I doubt I’ll be here through Christmas.”

“Don’t make me waste time training you. I don’t mind if you skip out before Christmas, but you better do the work you say you’re going to do. Understand?”

“You’re grumpy,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I am.”

“Most people don’t like being called grumpy,” she said.

“Well, I told you I wasn’t going to deal with your tough-girl act, so I suppose as long as we’re being honest, I have to take that one on the chin.”

“So this is what you do,” she said, following him out of the barn as he led them both down the path that would take them a long way to the mess hall, and would give her a good sense of the size of the property. “I mean, you’re a professional... Cowboy.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Did you always know you wanted to be a cowboy?”

“No,” he said.

There had been a time when all he had wanted was to get the hell away from the ranch. From his dad. From everything familiar. When he had wanted to escape and start over. Get out of Gold Valley. He hadn’t cared what he did or where he went. The only thing driving him had been anger.

And then he met Lindsay. And all he’d wanted was to make her happy.

All he’d wanted was to be a good husband.

A good man.

Because she knew he could be, and if Lindsay believed it, he wanted to make it real.

“When did you decide you wanted to be a cowboy?”