Christmastime Cowboy

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 (#ubbe947aa-eeb1-52ef-9e56-32bab7e8d982)

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.

If Finn had his way, he would essentially keep the status quo. But between Lane and Liam he’d encountered a constant push for change. For growth.

He knew that Finn hated that. But Liam was good at it. He was good at start-ups. He was good in investments. And, if the expansion of the Laughing Irish went to hell, he had a shit-ton of money to back it all up.

Money that just kind of sat there now. Money that didn’t seem to mean anything or accomplish anything. He didn’t have much else to offer. He had capital. Which, when you were kind of an asshole, was always the smart thing to lead with.

“It went well. I’m going to be working with Sabrina Leighton on the project.”

He started to walk past Finn up the porch and into the house, then turned and caught sight of his brother’s expression. It was just a little too hard. A little too insightful. “Did you have a comment, Finn?”

“I have a lot of comments. But because I’m not entirely sure what went down with you and Sabrina—or really, what went on in your life at any point when you weren’t on the ranch—it’s tough for me to pare it down to the most effective one.”

“Good. You’re easier to deal with when you’re at a loss for words.” Liam let out a breath. “I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a history with Sabrina. I do, in that she hates me.” It wasn’t that he didn’t know why. And, no matter how committed he was to the denial of having led her on, he did have to admit at least to himself that he hadn’t been neutral about her.

No matter what she’d thought, when he’d left he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t regret the way he’d done it either. She might be mad at him, and he could even understand that. But it had been the right thing to do. The fact that she was still angry at him thirteen years later for about the most honorable damn thing he had ever done didn’t really seem fair.

Honorable and self-serving, maybe. But the honor was definitely present.

“And you’re going to be able to work with her in spite of that history?” Finn asked.

“I don’t think it’s the history you think it is. When I worked for Grassroots she was seventeen, Finn. I never slept with her. She got her hopes up that I would. That’s it.”

“So she turns and runs the other direction every time she sees you coming because she had a crush on you thirteen years ago? That’s it?”

Liam gritted his teeth and spread his hands. “That’s about the size of it. Apparently, I’m ruinous to women even when I don’t have sex with them.”

“I feel like you meant that to sound badass, but mostly, I just think it’s true.”