A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas

And that was: more than her current situation.

It didn’t matter what these people thought of her.

It mattered if they turned out to be psychotic killers, though. But she really did have a pocket knife.

And okay, she knew that wasn’t the deadliest of weapons. But she had sat outside a self-defense class one time and had heard the woman talking about how the element of surprise was generally on your side when you were a woman. It was about the only thing on your side, so you had to use it. They didn’t expect you to fight back.

McKenna Tate had been fighting back for her entire life. She wouldn’t stop now.

And she supposed that right there was the point of that hope inside her chest she often resented. It had brought her this far. Made her feel determined. It was what kept shame and hopelessness from taking over.

As long as she never let it get out of hand, it was what kept her going.

She walked slowly up the front steps and stood next to the man. She came up to the top of his shoulder. Just barely. He was so tall. And yeah, now that she was a little bit more awake, and it was a little bit lighter out, she could see... Definitely as beautiful as she had first thought. If not more so.

She turned her face back to the door in front of her.

Her new friend knocked, and they waited.

The man that answered the door was nearly as tall as the man at her side, and just as good-looking. Though in a different way. He had that easy manner about him, a charm that the other man did not have.

She didn’t trust charm.

“Hi,” she said. “I was told there would be breakfast.”

The new man looked at the other man, and then back at her. “Wyatt Dodge,” he said, sticking out his hand.

“McKenna Tate,” she responded, grasping it with her own.

Of all the ways she had envisioned being caught by the owners of the property, she hadn’t imagined this.

And then she realized that she still didn’t know the name of the man who had found her in the cabin. The beautiful one. The one who looked like he might not remember what a joke was, much less have a whole store of them like Wyatt Dodge probably did.

She looked at him, and he looked at her out of the corner of his eye, but didn’t offer a name.

“Come on in,” Wyatt said, still eyeing his brother speculatively.

She took him up on his invitation.

The inside of the house was even more beautiful than the outside. Rustic, but incredibly comfortable. Cozy. She suddenly became aware of how cold her nose and cheeks had been when they began to warm up.

She looked to the left of the entryway and saw that there was a fire in a rock fireplace. She wanted to go sit in front of it. She wanted to press her face against it.

But then, she also smelled food. Bacon.

She’d had many a disagreement with the man upstairs over quite a few of the circumstances in her life, but right about now she was feeling much friendlier to him. She sent up a prayer of thanks.

If anything could surprise the divine, McKenna Tate being thankful might do it.

“My wife, Lindy, is in the kitchen,” Wyatt said.

“Not cooking,” a voice rang out from the next room. “Just waiting for the bacon to be done.”

He gestured that direction and McKenna followed the directive, walking into the beautiful kitchen, to see an equally beautiful blonde woman sitting at a small breakfast table. Her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, her manner elegant even though she was wearing sweats.

“I’m cooking, technically,” Wyatt said. “It’s part of the agreement.”

“Agreement?” McKenna asked.

“Yes, I agreed to marry him and move from my winery to his ranch. But only if he cooked me breakfast at least four days a week. The other three days I get a pastry from the coffee place in town.”

McKenna’s stomach tightened. Jealousy. She was as familiar with that as she was with hunger, and right now she felt nearly overtaken by both.

Not because she wanted the man cooking the bacon, specifically. Just that it would be nice to have an arrangement like that in general. Someone who cared. Someone who would vow to cook bacon four days a week just so you would marry him.

She couldn’t imagine someone caring like that.

“What are you doing on my property, McKenna Tate?” Wyatt asked, turning toward the stove and getting bacon and some scrambled eggs out of a pan, putting them on a plate and setting them down on the table. She eyed them hungrily.

“Have a seat,” he said.

She hesitantly did as he said, sitting next to his lovely wife, and feeling every inch the bedraggled urchin that she was. “Eat.”

Her man said that.

Not that he was her man, just that he was the one that had woken her up, and she still didn’t know his name. And on principle, she wasn’t going to ask.

Still, she obeyed.

“Coffee?” Lindy asked.

“Yes, please,” she said, trying her best to eat slow, and feeling like she was going to end up failing the moment the salty, savory bacon touched her tongue. She was ravenous. She hadn’t let herself realize just how much.

“What were you doing?” Lindy asked, her voice soft.

“I just needed a place to sleep. I’m new to Gold Valley... I decided to move here,” she said. She wasn’t going to get into the whole thing about looking for her family. Not that she believed they were going to have some tearful reunion. She wasn’t that stupid. Life didn’t work that way.

Her mother, who had given birth to her, had walked away without a backward glance. A father who’d probably never even met her, maybe didn’t even know about her? Why would he want anything to do with her?

The very thought of it, of putting herself in front of him and risking a rejection, made her feel...

It didn’t matter. From what she had found out about the Daltons, they were well-off. Famous rodeo riders and owners of a massive plot of land just on the outskirts of town.

Surely they would be able to spare a little seed money to keep her off the streets. And they’d probably be happy to fling some money at her to get rid of her, anyway.

She didn’t need a family. She’d been just fine without one all this time.

What she needed was something a lot more practical than that. A shovel to dig herself out of the hole she was in.