A Cowboy's Christmas Wedding

That hadn’t gone well at all. Actually, she’d been expecting to have the place done by the time he came home. Just her luck that he would pop in before she could even start.

A few moments later she heard his footsteps again and then the slamming of the front door.

“What’d he say?”

She jumped—again.

“All I heard was the booming of his feet,” Rana said.

“I think China heard the booming of his feet.”

“What’d he say?”

“To put the decorations back.”

She noticed the girl’s John Deere pajamas, the green-colored fabric sporting yellow tractor logos. She looked so much like her dad it was uncanny, but she had a different nose, likely taking after her mother in that respect. It was a tiny little stub of a thing that made her look younger than her years, especially with her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

“You going to do it?”

“Should I?”

Rana’s gaze caught on the boxes, her eyes going dull. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

Saedra put her arms around the girl. “It isn’t your fault, hon. Not at all. Your dad needs to get over his big, bad self.”

“He can be such a grump at times,” the teenager muttered.

The words so closely echoed Saedra’s own thoughts that she smiled. “It’s okay. I can put them back.”

“No. Don’t.”

Saedra drew back, surprised to see the determination in the teenager’s face. She looked mature beyond her years all of sudden.

“He’s wrong.” She motioned to the boxes. “Hiding mom’s decorations... It’s gone on long enough.” She lifted her chin. “My mom would never have wanted us to ignore Christmas.”

* * *

HE COULDN’T BELIEVE the woman’s audacity.

Cabe mashed the pedal of his four-wheel drive vehicle, gravel kicking up by the tires of the trucklike ATV, the winter wind prickling his skin.

Who did she think she was?

His wheels kicked right. He took his foot off the gas, refusing to kill himself because Saedra had crossed the line. The tall pines around him cast triangular patterns on the ground, the air beneath the canopy of needles chilling him to the bone. From the seat next to him he retrieved a pair of leather gloves, taking care to pull them on while navigating the half-mile-long road that led to the cabins. The drive should have soothed him. Usually, the sweeping meadows and the groves of trees reminded him of what he had to be grateful for. Sure, he might have lost his brother and his wife, but he still had Rana—that was a miracle all on its own.

Christmas decorations. After he specifically told her he didn’t decorate.

The pathway swept to the right, the road sweeping down a small hill. The vista ahead should have calmed him down, too, with the Pit River to his right, eight cabins on his left, one right next to another, and beyond all that, more meadows and pasture and mountains in the distance. He lived in a part of California that was rarely seen. Far to the north, near the Nevada border, the Pacific Rim’s volcanic legacy was evident in the cone-shaped mountaintops, many of them dormant volcanoes, all of them in the distance.

He had to drop off supplies to one of his guests, an attorney from the Bay Area and a man Cabe didn’t particularly care for. During yesterday’s hunt all the man had cared about was “bagging the big one.” He’d damn near shot another hunter in his eagerness. Thank God Cabe had stopped him in the nick of time.

“Just the man I wanted to see.”

Cabe turned away from the bed of the John Deere Mule, a package of four-ply toilet paper in his arms, in time to spy the dark-haired attorney on the front porch of the cabin. All of the cabins had porches. All of them were made out of logs, too, the attorney—Stewart was his name—having called them quaint even though they were big enough to house a family of four.

“My toilet paper.” The man reached for the bag of four-ply Cabe had made a special trip into town to fetch. “Thanks.”

“No problem.” He was used to dealing with guests like Stewart, although they more frequently arrived with hunting season. They were men who were masters of their own universe back in town. They seemed to think that meant they could be in charge out in the wilderness, too, but they learned quickly that wasn’t the case. Usually. Stewart had laughed when Cabe had told him he’d almost shot another hunter. That hadn’t endeared him to Cabe at all.

“Anything else I can get you?”

Stewart smiled a greasy, oily smile that reminded Cabe of an infomercial salesman. “Yeah, the phone number of that blonde staying with you.” He set the package of toilet paper down. “I hear she’s single.”

Cabe’s jaw popped he clenched his teeth down so hard. “Yeah?” He rested his hands on his hips. “Who’d you hear that from?”

“Your daughter.”

He would have to have a little talk with Rana about revealing information to their guests. “I think she’s seeing someone.”

Me.

The ridiculousness of the thought sent his mood plummeting even further.

“Yeah? Any way to find out for sure?”

It was rare for Cabe to dislike a guest this much, but he’d really started to despise Stewart and his pushy ways. The man probably thought a woman like Saedra would jump at the chance to date a big-time attorney from the city. Then again, maybe he should give the guy Saedra’s number anyway. He’d learn for himself that she wasn’t into city slickers.

And how do you know that?

“But I’ll tell her you asked.”

“Great.”

He left before he said something he might regret, like “piss off,” which was ridiculous because what did he care if Saedra dated one of his guests? It was none of his business.

Refusing to think about it anymore, Cabe busied himself in ranch duties and then, later, paperwork in his office. The number of calls they’d received in recent weeks was astounding, thanks, no doubt, to Trent Anderson. The media had picked up on the professional team roper’s miraculous recovery, and the role New Horizons Ranch had played in his health. It’d been nonstop ever since. At this rate Cabe could build ten more cabins and still be full-up, if he had the staff.

He was so deep in his thoughts of expansion that he turned and hung up his hat and his jacket on a coat rack by the front door of his house before noticing the transformation.

“Son of a—”

Poinsettias covered every surface, their red leaves splayed in every direction, their yellow centers difficult to discern among the rich foliage. Green garland that looked like pine needles wrapped around the staircase railing. The table by the front door where he usually tossed his car keys was covered in faux-snow fabric, a miniature Christmas village twinkling and moving and glowing as if inhabited by tiny people, music coming from somewhere. Hell, it even smelled like Christmas.

Then he spotted it. A snow globe with a carousel horse inside. It sat in the middle of the mantel to his right, in the same spot Kimberly used to put it.

Cabe stepped back.

“Do you like it?”