Midnight Faith

It was the novelty of it, he decided as he danced with Faylene. Simple novelty was the reason she was getting so much attention from everyone.

Why, he, himself couldn’t help but watch Cait in spite of a firm resolution not to give her so much as a glance more than the cool one she’d given him.

No one at the party had ever seen her in a dress before. Few of them, if any, had ever seen her at a social function.

It was the men, as always, who were most fascinated.

Those two young Carmack kids were sticking with her, but several others had joined them, vying for her attention to their jokes and stories. Clint set his jaw and guided Faylene in the opposite direction.

“That Cait’s a knockout, isn’t she?” his aunt said.

Faylene was nearly as good as Bobbie Ann in reading a man’s mind in a New York minute.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Half the men here can’t see anything but her and the other half are the old codgers with failing eyesight.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

His lack of response didn’t discourage her one bit.

“She’s exotic, that’s one reason,” she said, “besides being so drop-dead striking in every way. You know what I think makes her so interesting?”

That brought his gaze straight to her sharp blue one, so like his mother’s. Faylene indulged herself in one gleam of triumph before she answered the question in his look.

“She’s different from other women because she gives no quarter.”

He looked at her.

“Like the old Texas Rangers?”

“Exactly.”

“She’s from Chicago, Faylie.”

She ignored his little sally.

“Everything about Cait proclaims it,” she said seriously. “The look in her eye, the way she walks, the way she keeps her head in her business all the time. No man can resist a challenge like that.”

“Hmpf.”

Faylene went right on.

“A man gets one chance with Cait,” she said. “One.”

A strange, sharp feeling, like a warning, pierced him.

“One’s enough when he gets the rough side of her tongue.”

“Cait’s a direct-talking woman,” she said. “Y’all are just used to us Texas women sugarcoating everything for you.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You and Bobbie Ann are the champion sugarcoaters of all time. Steel magnolias is more like it.”

“Well, we all have our own styles,” his diminutive aunt said sweetly as she looked up at him with a beatific smile. “I, for one, admire a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. Cait’s bound to be a world-class horsewoman and she will be.”

“What’ve you heard about that?”

Maybe Bobbie Ann had talked to her sister about Cait’s silly riding school. Maybe he could get some ammunition here to stop it.

But no. Faylene had her own ideas about what was important information.

“You can see she’s Black Irish,” she said in a reproving tone. “Same as your great-grandpa Murphy—except his eyes were blue. But his hair was midnight-black, just like Cait’s.”

“So, Jackson must look like him,” Clint said, hoping to get her off the subject of Cait.

At least until this endless waltz could be over. Didn’t Delia’s arms ever get tired of that fiddle?

“You look like your great-grandpa, too,” Faylene said. “Tall and black-haired and handsome as can be. Your eyes are different, though—gray as mist instead of blue.” She smiled as if he needed comfort. “That’s why I used Jackson for an example instead of you.” He returned her smile. She was his favorite aunt. “Ooh,” she said, “I can’t wait until Jackson and Darcy get here! I still could just spank them for having that tiny wedding in the old chapel instead of letting us throw them a great big one. There’s five hundred people with their feelings hurt….”

But he couldn’t let well enough be. He’d distracted her and now he had to bring her back.

One of the young men appeared to be asking Cait to dance. She was shaking her head and smiling a refusal.

“What does being Black Irish have to do with being a world-class horsewoman?”

Faylene flashed him an incredulous look.

“The Irish have an affinity for horses, you know that. Their emotions and their spirits run deep and they have a strong connection with things unseen.”

Clint had to grin at her seriousness.

“The Comanches had a connection with horses,” he said.

“Same with them,” Faylene said promptly. “Close to the earth—the Comanches and the Irish.”

“Giving no quarter, like the Texas Rangers.”

“Right!”

She beamed at him.

He laughed and hugged her as Delia’s fiddle finally sang out the last note.

“Thanks for the dance and the information, too, Auntie Fay,” he said.

“Any time, lovey.”

Then the question on his mind came off his tongue of its own accord.

“Why do you think she married John?”

Faylene narrowed her blue eyes and stared up at him.

“Nobody but Cait knows that, sugar,” she said. “Whatever I’d say about it would only be speculation.”

Clint grinned.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to push you into speculation,” he said dryly, “since everything else you’ve told me tonight has been ironclad fact.”

“That’s exactly right,” she said, twinkling at him.

Then she patted him on the arm and hurried off, waving at Jim Prescott. Suddenly she stopped and looked back.

“Sometime she might tell you herself, sweetie,” she said.

Oh, sure. Sometime when he and Cait became best buddies.

Immediately, without so much as a glance toward Cait and her admirers, he started looking for Larry. The reason Cait had married John was totally immaterial to him and he had no idea why he’d asked that question out loud.

He didn’t even want to know. All he wanted was to make the Rocking M the premier breeding station in the reining-horse industry, and in the meantime come up with new stallions to take over the cutting-and pleasure-horse market, too.

And he also wanted to make some waves with his cattle. Might as well dream big. He was the oldest brother, and he’d always been the most responsible one, so perhaps the whole ranch was meant to fall on his shoulders. Jackson was the next oldest, and he was here on the Rocking M and, in time, might come to share the burden.

Monte, the third one born, had always been the wildest, and John, the baby brother, had always been the gentlest, the kindest, the best. Maybe it was true that the good die young.

Maybe it was true that even if both of them were still here, neither would want to make the ranch his main concern for all his life. He, Clint, would just have to accept life the way it was.

Maybe if he made his challenges big enough, and took big enough risks to try to meet them, he’d forget all about this lonely funk he was in, and the ridiculous riding school, too.

The whole time he was visiting with Larry, though, he couldn’t keep from glancing around for Cait from time to time. Just out of curiosity as to how she was handling herself. She did finally escape from the younger men but, just as she tried to slip out into the kitchen, his grandfather’s old friend Mac Torrance caught up with her. Clearly he was asking her to dance but she refused him, too.

Finally he and Larry sealed the deal to book his three best mares and Clint moved on to visit with some other guests. The next thing he knew, the band was playing a fast song, LydaAnn and her friend Janie were starting a line dance and Cait had disappeared.

The noise level in the room rose another notch. At least it sounded like a merry Christmas Eve on the Rocking M, in spite of all the sadness of the year just past.

Bobbie Ann came by with a fresh platter of tortilla chips and her famous salsa dip.

“You’d better go get in that line and dance,” she said. “Or your sisters will be on your case.”

“I danced with Faylene. That’s enough dancing for tonight.”

“Delia and LydaAnn are trying so hard to make this be Christmas, Clint,” she said, frowning. “Help ’em out all you can.”

Irritation stabbed through him.

“I’ve been working this crowd like a politician,” he snapped. “What more do they want?”

“How about a smile?” she said. “I’d like to see one of those from you, myself.”

Thoroughly annoyed, he glanced away.

And there was Cait, standing alone in the book-lined alcove that held the Remington sculpture, thumbing through a book she’d opened on the table.

“Now, there’s a family member—according to you, Ma,” he said. “Why don’t you go tell her to do her duty and get out there in line?”

Bobbie Ann gazed at him thoughtfully.

“She even refused to dance with poor old Mac,” Clint groused. “It embarrassed him. And she hasn’t talked to anyone but those kids with the Carmacks.”

“I’m thinking this is all a bit overwhelming for Cait,” his mother said softly. “Don’t you think so? What with her background and all?”

Shame hit him again, like a fist to the gut. When it came to Cait, he was just piling up the guilt.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Standing there so still, looking down at that book so intently, she held her head at a vulnerable angle. The soft light limned her beautiful neck and shoulders, shadow fell across her face. She studied that book without moving a muscle.

“She isn’t accustomed to big social gatherings,” Bobbie Ann said softly. “Our Cait is a bit of a loner.”

Our Cait. Clint didn’t even challenge that. He was too busy trying to fend off the unnameable feelings washing through him as he looked at this Cait he’d never seen before.

Finally she felt his gaze. She glanced up and looked straight at him for a fleeting moment, acknowledging his existence with the most noncommittal of looks and for the barest fraction of a heartbeat in time.

Much as she had done when she first came into the room.

This time it stabbed him even deeper.

Then she looked at Bobbie Ann and smiled before she went back to slowly turning the pages.

“Let her be,” Bobbie Ann murmured. “She likes to see the pictures of the family.”

Only then did he notice that the large-paged book was not a picture book of Western art. It was one of the big leather photo albums embossed with the Rocking M brand that held the history of the McMahans.

Cait sat on the floor in the shadow of the huge Christmas tree and reached out to touch the papiermâché cowboy ornament. He was twirling his red rope above his head in a perfect, huge loop. He was so old that the gold thread he was supposed to hang by from the center of his hat had worn in two and he stood bowlegged on a thick branch instead.

“I’ll be very careful not to knock you off balance,” she whispered.

No one was around to hear her, though. Almost all the guests had gone and Delia and her band had finished playing.

It was almost time for the family dinner.

But was she really one of the family? John was gone.

“John was one of the good guys, too,” she told the cowboy. “He was the very best.”

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them while she stared at the tree. Maybe she’d just stay here and not go to dinner. At this moment she had no desire to eat.

The John McMahan Memorial School of Horsemanship.

That would look good over the gate to the arena. Or over the door of the barn.

She had loved John with all her heart. From the very first minute they’d met, two strangers sharing a table to eat pizza from a cart in the trade show at the Quarter Horse Congress, he had treated her as if she were a princess. John had been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever dated.

He’d been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever known.

His blue eyes had twinkled when he talked to her and his brown hair had lifted and fallen in the wind. Gently. John was a gentle man and a gentleman and she had loved him with her heart and soul.

She had never loved a man until she loved John.

But it was his big brother Clint who stirred her blood now.

Cait closed her eyes and pushed the feelings away—the feelings that tried to take her breath every time she even thought of Clint. She didn’t know how to name them and she didn’t even want to try.

All she knew for sure was that John had wanted her here, with his family. In his family.

Clint did not.

But she wouldn’t think about Clint.

She drew in a deep breath of the wonderful, spicy smell of the tree. She looked up. It must be nine feet tall.

A storybook tree. For a storybook Christmas.

“Mer-ry Christ-mas! And to your mama and daddy, too!”

It was Bobbie Ann’s voice, floating in from outside where she was saying goodbye to the last of the guests.

“Tell them we’re so sorry they didn’t feel up to coming with you all. I’ll be over to see them soon.”

John had told her that all the guests on Christmas Eve who came to the Rocking M with their guests were from families who’d been friends with the McMahans since the Comanches had signed a treaty with the first German settlers. The only treaty between Native Americans and Americans that had never been broken.

“Well,” John had said, laughing, “actually it was between Native Americans and Texans. Maybe that’s why.”

She couldn’t even imagine families who had known each other for so many years, for generations. Families who had grown and multiplied and become intertwined with all the others. Families who had lived in one county for a hundred and fifty years.

When her grandparents couldn’t even stay in the same country. When her parents couldn’t even keep the three of them together or stay in the same apartment for half a year.

John was gone.

Clint was here.

And she was here, in his home, with the first horses she had ever owned and the first important job that God had ever given her. The most important dream she’d ever set out to fulfill.

Clint wanted her gone.

Lord? You brought me here, didn’t You? Isn’t this where You meant for me to be? Maybe I was wrong about Clint. But isn’t this where You sent me to make a mark for You?

Chapter Three

Clint showed the Tollivers to the door when they got ready to leave, and stood on the porch talking to them for a minute. Then, as soon as they said their last goodbyes, he headed for the barn.

“Hey,” James Tolliver yelled as he wheeled his Escalade around the circle drive, “need some help with the chores?”

“No, thanks.”

Clint waved him off and kept going. If he didn’t get a few minutes alone, he was going to smother. And if he was checking the horses, his mother couldn’t fuss at him about neglecting his duties as host. After all, she was the one who had insisted on giving every hand on the Rocking M the evening off for Christmas Eve.

He had to get away from her. And from his sisters, who were trying to make it be Christmas. They had worried about holiday celebrations for two years now, ever since Dad had died of a sudden heart attack.

He had to get away from them.

He had to get away from everybody.

He had to get away from Cait.

The truth of it shocked him. He surely wasn’t leaving the house to avoid Cait.

But he was, and that brought an ironic grin to his lips. Cait wasn’t exactly chasing him around the Christmas tree.

And he couldn’t say that he blamed her.

Once inside the refuge of the big barn, he walked slowly down the aisle, looking into the stalls on each side, checking to see that no one was looking colicky and no one was out of water. Halfway down the show-horse side, he heard footsteps behind him.

Uneven footsteps. Finally. Jackson was here. Clint stopped and turned around.

“Well, it’s about time you showed up!”

He ought to be angry with his tardy brother, but these days it was hard to be anything but glad whenever he saw him. Since he’d met Darcy and married her, it was as if the real Jackson had come back to life.

“Did you miss me, big brother?”

It was still a shock to get a response from Jackson, much less a cheerful one, after being accustomed to him staying locked in his own gloomy, reclusive little world for months and months after his terrible wreck.

“I could use a little help keeping the festivities going,” Clint said in the same light tone. “Right now I’m in trouble for refusing to line dance.”

“Then let me at ’em,” Jackson said. “I’ll dance ’em right into the ground.”

His limping gait brought him nearer, and Clint saw that he not only had a wide grin on his face, he had a twinkle in his eyes.

“I’m gonna go get the thermometer,” he said. “I think you’ve got a fever.”

“I do,” Jackson said. “A fever named Darcy.”

Clint threw back his head and laughed and laughed, which made him feel much better all of a sudden.

“You’re over the edge, man, you’re downright besotted. I never thought I’d see you in such a pitiful shape.”

Jackson turned his hands—his bare hands—palms up.

“What can I say? I’m all hers. I live to please her.”

“Hey, hey, get a grip,” Clint said, grabbing his arm in mock panic. “Be sure not to tell her that!”

Jackson just grinned at him and Clint grinned back. Then he got serious and searched his face.

“No foolin’, Jackson,” he said. “You think she loves you as much as you love her?”

Still smiling, Jackson nodded.

“I know she does.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. By the way she acts. By what she says.”

When Clint just stared at him without saying any more, Jackson nailed him with a sharp look.

“How come you wanna know? You fallin’ for somebody?”

He thought for a minute, then snapped his fingers as best he could.

“Lorrie Nolan! I heard you took her to Hugo’s for breakfast the other day!”

Clint snorted.

“Are you and Lorrie…”

“No!”

“She’d be a good match for you—she’s got a mind of her own.”

“Yeah. A mind to be a McMahan.”

Clint turned and started past the last half of the stalls.

“Check ’em on that side for me, will ya?” he said.

“Yeah. And you tell me what you’re talkin’ about, then, if it’s not you and Lorrie.”

Clint shrugged.

“Women in general, I guess,” he said. “When they act like a different person than they ever did before, how d’you know which one’s real?”

Then he snapped his jaw shut. He wasn’t saying any more, no matter what, because this whole conversation was nothing but a stupid waste of breath. Jackson couldn’t be a bit of help, anyhow, blindly in love with Darcy as he was.

But Jackson was silent, thinking about it.

“Well,” he drawled at last, “I’d say, Clint, ol’ bro, if she’s actin’ like she never did before, she might have changed her mind. She may be trying to tell you somethin’.”

By the time he and Jackson got to the house, only the immediate family, which included various relatives of Bobbie Ann’s, was left. At least the evening was passing.

Everybody was standing around talking in the dining room or going in and out of it, bringing in food and lighting candles, and Aunt Faylene was at the sideboard taking the cover off one of her famous cakes. She turned and smiled at them as they walked in.

“My favorite nephews,” she proclaimed. “I want a hug.”

They gave her hugs and listened to her chatter for a minute, then she said, very low, “Any word from Monte?”

“Not that I know of,” Clint said.

“You’d know,” she said, her lips tightening. “Poor Bobbie Ann’d be walking on air if he’d called.”

Her gaze went to her sister, just coming in from the kitchen with a huge crock of chili. Clint went to help her with it.

“Places, everyone,” she called. “Time for dinner.”

Clint set the crock in the middle of the long table and glanced around.

“Where’s Cait?” he said.

No one knew.

“I’ll get her,” he said, and left the room.

First she wouldn’t dance, then she wouldn’t mingle and now she wouldn’t come to dinner. What was she doing, anyhow? Bobbie Ann didn’t need another worry, nor another absentee right now. He would say something to Cait. If she was going to accept an invitation, then she had an obligation…

The sight of her stopped him in his tracks.

She sat beside the Christmas tree with her knees drawn up and her arms wrapped around them, staring at it as if she were a little girl. Lost in its magic.

As he watched, she lifted one hand and fingered the glass bead on the simple necklace at her throat. She was gone someplace else, that was for sure. Dinner at the Rocking M was the furthest thing from her mind right now.

A thought came, unbidden. Was she thinking about John? Remembering times with him? Had they shared a mighty love like Darcy and Jackson’s seemed to be?

His gut told him no. Darcy and Jackson were a matched pair. Anybody could spend five minutes with them and know that. John and Cait had been a whole different story.

She laid her head against her knees for a long moment, then lifted it and looked up at the angel at the top of the tree. The white profile of her face and throat was so pure and beautiful it made him swallow hard.

Slowly he walked across the room. She didn’t even hear his boot heels on the tiled floor. He reached the circle of light made by the tree and looked down at her sitting in its shadow.

“Cait?”

She started as if he’d waked her from sleep. A quick flash of fear crossed her face, then surprise. Was that a sheen of tears in her eyes?

It moved him. Against his will.

It made him want to protect her, somehow. Which was a laughable thought, for sure.

What was she afraid of? The Caitlin he knew wasn’t scared of anything.

“Dinner’s ready.”

Cait wanted to get up. She really did. But Clint was so close she could smell his aftershave.

His gray eyes were so intense they seared her skin.

The heat rose up in her neck and her entire body tilted to feverish.

Just like early this morning when she’d walked in on him riding that colt.

Just like the moment, dear Lord help her, that she’d looked at him across the back of the black horse and told him, “Christmas Eve gift.”

“Time for dinner,” he said, as if she spoke a foreign language and he should try another phrase to convey the same information.

But she was frozen there, despite the blood pulsing through her veins hot enough to melt her.

He took a step closer, as if to see what was wrong, and for one instant she thought he was going to hold out his hand to help her up. For that same instant, she was ready to reach for it.

But he kept his hands at his sides.

“We’d better get in there,” he said, in a tone so neutral she couldn’t find his feelings in it, “or else Jackson will eat up all the tamales.”

Her pulse was pounding so hard she was afraid he’d hear it and she stood still for a moment the instant she was on her feet. Trying to slow the blood in her veins. Trying to deepen the breaths in her body.

Even in that split second, though, while they stood near enough to touch, a deeper thrill went surging through her, the thrill of his closeness, the warm scent of him and the look in his eyes that tightened the unspoken tension that invariably vibrated between them. She cleared her throat and tried to speak normally.

“So,” she managed to say in her coolest tone, “is that another family tradition I don’t know? Last one to the table gets no tamales?”

He did have the grace to let her see his chagrin.

But he didn’t apologize. Actually, she couldn’t imagine Clint apologizing to her. Not for speaking his mind about his strong, true feelings that she didn’t belong here.

She had to remember that. He thought she didn’t belong here. He didn’t want her here, no matter how gallantly he’d called her to dinner. He was the host, she was the guest.

Of his mother.

She walked past and left him to follow as she headed toward the rest of the family gathering around the table in the dining room. Delia’s voice came to her clearly as she and Clint approached the door.