Dreaming Of A Western Christmas: His Christmas Belle / The Cowboy of Christmas Past / Snowbound with the Cowboy

“Brand...”

“Don’t talk,” he whispered against her lips. He kissed her again, and then again, each time inviting. Enticing. This is glorious. Unbelievable.

Surely she was dreaming! His hand cradled her head and his mouth...his mouth was so insistent, so delicious on hers. Was this how a man and a woman felt when...when...?

She pulled away but hung mere inches from his mouth, listening to their breathing. His heart beat against her palm and she wondered if he could feel hers fluttering against his chest.

“I’m not sorry I did that,” he said at last.

I am not sorry, either, she sang inside. Not sorry at all.

With a wry smile he let his hand fall to his side. “Must be dreamin’,” he breathed.

Dreaming, yes, that was it. She had to be dreaming.

“No more whiskey for either one of us,” she managed. Then she realized she had not had a single, solitary drop of liquor. Nevertheless, she still felt intoxicated.

And now she understood what the Indians meant by “strong medicine.”

* * *

Brand woke near dawn to find Suzannah snuggled close to him, her head tucked between his chin and his good shoulder, her small hands folded under her chin. His heartbeat thundered against his ribs and he fought to keep his arm by his side and not wrap it around her sleeping form.

He sure wasn’t thinking clearly when it came to this woman. She made him feel more off balance than he could ever remember, and sure as God made green grass and peach trees, he didn’t need this complicating his life.

But he drifted off to sleep smelling her hair and remembering the feel of her mouth under his.

In the morning he eased his aching body away from her and packed up everything one-handed, trying to keep his eyes off her sleeping form. He managed to make coffee before she woke up, and when she finally did open her eyes he busied himself with saddling both horses.

She didn’t say a word while she downed her mug of coffee. Wouldn’t look at him, either. Guess he’d overstepped last night. Sure would like to overstep again, but they had about six days of riding ahead of them, and at the end he’d have to hand her over to another man. Smart thing would be to keep his hands off her.

She braided up her hair like she always did, settled her hat on her head and pulled it so low he couldn’t see much of her face. Then she walked to her mare, stuck her foot in the stirrup and pulled herself up into the saddle. She sat waiting while he slung both saddlebags on their mounts and kicked dirt over the fire.

He moved out in the lead and tried not to think about another week on the trail with her. Looked like it’d be a long, long day today. Quiet, too.

That lasted until the sun told him it was around ten o’clock and, even though they’d ridden side by side for the past three hours, she still hadn’t said a word. It was hell trying to figure out a woman, especially this woman. She was delicate and tough, and both smart and dumb; her head was stuck so deep in the sand over this John of hers she’d be ninety before she wised up.

Each time they stopped to rest and water the horses, Brand kept a sharp eye out for a telltale puff of dust behind them. None showed, and he’d seen no sign of another living soul. His shoulder ached, and the longer he rode the stiffer it got. He tried to work his arm back and forth every hour or so and prayed it would heal clean. Last thing she’d need was a guide with a fever and a bum arm.

By late afternoon Suzannah still hadn’t spoken a single word, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He pulled air into his lungs and twisted to look at her.

“Sure wish you’d say something.”

“Very well.” Her voice reminded him of his mother’s primroses, all neat and proper with nary a petal out of place. “Do you think we are still being followed?” she asked.

“Nope. I gulled them into turning south, heading for Texas. Forgot to tell you last night.”

“How did you accomplish that?”

“Told ’em a bunch of lies.”

“How many were there?”

“Lies? Or men?”

She sniffed. “Men, of course.”

“Three.”

They rode across a valley and up into some green foothills, following a good-size stream. Dusk started to fall.

Brand unsheathed his rifle. “I’m going hunting. Try to get a rabbit or a grouse. Keep riding and stay on the trail.”

She said nothing, and he loped away into the trees. An hour later he caught up to her, a fat rabbit hanging off his saddle horn.

“I did not hear a gunshot,” she remarked.

“Used a snare. A shot might be heard.”

He picked a campsite sheltered by larch trees where the creek they’d been following widened. Suzannah dismounted, stretched her aching back muscles and studied the stream. She was hot and tired and sticky with perspiration.

“I’m going to take a bath.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Why not? I cannot stop thinking about how good that cool water would feel, and I could wash my hair and rinse out my shirt and—”

“No.”

“Brand, be reasonable. No one is following us—you said so yourself.”

He tramped up and down beside the stream and finally turned to face her. “I want you where I can see you.”

“That,” she replied, “would be highly improper.”

“Maybe so, but it’s also highly safe. Take it or leave it.”

“What will you be doing?”

“Setting up camp. Tending the horses. Dressing out that rabbit for supper. I don’t want you too far out of sight.”

She considered his words, then fixed her gaze on him and considered the man who spoke them. He wasn’t exactly honorable; after all, he’d kissed her twice without asking permission. But he was honest, and she trusted him.

“Very well,” she agreed at last. She dug a bar of soap wrapped in tinfoil out of her saddlebag and unfolded a clean shirt. Green this time. She was sick of the red plaid and it was beginning to get dirty again. And anyway, if she washed it out and put it back on wet, he would look at her in that same hot way he’d done before. She surmised, somewhat shocked, that a wet shirt plastered to her skin must reveal her nipples.

She found a spot where the creek bank gradually shelved off into the water and was screened by a leafy bush. She turned to see where Brand was.

She could just see the top of his head as he moved around camp, and he was not looking at her. She unbuttoned her shirt and shrugged it off, then realized she had no towel. Well, she would simply have to air-dry.

Submerging her body in the rippling water felt heavenly, even if it was ice-cold! She lolled and rubbed the soap over her skin and lolled some more before she rinsed off the bubbles. Then she unwound her braid and washed her hair. She soused the red plaid shirt up and down in the creek, tossed it over a bush, and waved her arms in the air to dry her skin.

A delicious, stomach-rumbling smell drifted from the camp. Meat! Thank heavens, supper would be not jerky but rabbit. She moved her arms faster.

* * *

Working slowly with only one hand, Brand spitted the cut-up rabbit pieces, arranged them over the coals and stood up. A flash of something pale caught his attention and he narrowed his eyes. Jehoshaphat, it was Suzannah. Naked. Her arms outstretched, her face tipped up toward the disappearing sun. Her back was to him.

His mouth went dry. She was so beautiful it made his throat ache. She was one hundred percent female perfection from the flare of her hips to her knobby spine to her slim shoulders. All perfection. Her hair was loose and maybe damp the way it clung to her neck and upper back in little straggly curls.

Turn away, Wyler. Turn around.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t turn around.

When he opened them she was buttoning up a green shirt and shaking the wet hair out of her eyes. He groaned out loud. Five days to go. Five days of trying not to look at her, smell her. Touch her. Four days of riding side by side during the day and sleeping next to her all night.

And he was plumb out of whiskey.

When she returned to camp he made a decision. “Watch the rabbit, will you? I’m goin’ for a swim.”

“It’s too shallow to swim,” she said at his back.

He didn’t answer, just walked straight into the cold water and lay down in the creek. Even the icy water didn’t cool him off.

He stood up, took off his clothes and lay back down.

“Do you want my bar of soap?” she called.

“No.”

“It’s scented with lavender.”

“Keep it. And stay away from the creek.”

When he finally dragged himself back to camp, his boots were squishy and the wet garments he’d wrestled back on dripped water wherever he stood. With a silent curse he dug out a clean shirt and headed back to the creek, washed out his dirty shirt and socks and his drawers, and tossed them over the bush next to Suzannah’s red shirt. By the time he returned to camp his nerves were steadier.

Suzannah gave the spitted rabbit another quarter turn and set the coffeepot close to the fire. She’d watched Brand make coffee, and now she knew how to finish off the brew by dumping in a cup of cold water before pouring it. For some reason knowing how to do this buoyed her spirits. Every army wife must know such things, she supposed. Now she was one step closer to being just that, an army wife.

Brand tramped back into camp, his dark hair looking damp and unruly and his jeans soaking wet.

“Did you bathe?”

“Not exactly,” he said dryly.

She gazed up at him. “Well, what, exactly?”

That made him laugh. The sound sent a shiver up the back of her neck. She liked this man. Even if he lacked the manners to ask permission before kissing her, she liked him.

John had asked permission, but, well, it wasn’t the same. Oh, bother! Properly raised women were not supposed to enjoy such intimacies.

But you enjoyed it with Brand, Suzannah. Admit it. You enjoyed it so much it frightened you. You even wanted more.

Hush up! She could not allow herself to think such wayward thoughts. Instead she busied herself rummaging in his saddlebag for the tin plates and the spoon they shared for supper.

Brand squatted next to her at the fire pit and poked a finger at the rabbit. “It’s done. You hungry?”

He needn’t have asked. She wolfed down two nicely browned pieces and when she looked longingly at a third, he chuckled. “For someone as slim as, um, slim as you are, you sure have a good appetite.”

“Riding all day makes me hungry, I guess.”

“Got berries for dessert,” he remarked.

Her eyebrows went up. “Berries?”

“Wild blackberries. Picked ’em while you were...picked ’em earlier.” He’d picked them to occupy his mind and keep his hands busy while she was splashing in the creek. Females didn’t realize what the sound of a woman taking a bath did to a man.

Chapter Eleven

Brand popped a handful of fat, juicy berries into his mouth and grinned at Suzannah. “You ever pick blackberries when you were a kid?”

“No, I never have. We, um, had servants who gathered our food for us.”

“You ever wonder whether you might have missed a lot, growing up so protected?”

“No, I never wondered that before,” she said, her tone thoughtful. “Now I am wondering why I didn’t.”

“Ever sneak cookies? Climb trees? Run away from home?”

Suzannah wished he wouldn’t look at her that way, his gray eyes wide and unbelieving. “No, I never did any of those things. Did you?”

He crammed another palm full of blackberries into his mouth. She ate hers carefully, one by one, and licked her fingers. In a way she envied his gusto.

“Yeah, I did all that, and more. Guess you might say I didn’t have your fancy upbringing.”

“Where did you grow up, Brand?”

“Before I lit out from home or after?”

She blinked. “Before. Where were you born?”

“Philadelphia. Wrong side of town, though. When I left I ended up in Ohio, and then I joined the Union Army.”

“Did you...did you ever fight in South Carolina?”

“Nope. But I fought everywhere else—Vicksburg, Bull Run, Chancellorsville. War is a bloody, awful business. Glad it’s over.”

She studied his face but saw no bitterness, only resignation. “Yes, the war was truly terrible. After it was over it was worse for the South, so many of our boys killed or wounded. Over half the men of Roseboro never came home.”

“And one night your father just up and invited a Yankee officer to a ball at your plantation?”

“Well, yes, he did. Papa said the fighting was over and now we should all try to get along with each other. It wasn’t a ball like we had before the war, though, with an orchestra and everything. After the war we tried to keep our spirits up, and we could still dance a Virginia reel.”

“Bet he regretted it when you left home to follow your Yankee officer out west.”

“Papa never knew. He died in a riding accident only a month after meeting John. Mama pitched a fit, though. It was hard to leave her so soon after Papa’s death, but John was so insistent, I...did what he said.”

Brand chased the last blackberry around and around on his plate. “I came out west to fight Indians.”

“You must have been successful since you were promoted to major.”

“Not so much. Like I said, war is pretty awful. After it was over, I scouted for Colonel Clarke for a while.”

“And then?”

“Then I got to like some of the Indians better than my own men, so I mustered out. Doesn’t pay to see your enemies as human beings sometimes.”

“On the contrary, I think it always pays to do so.”

He laughed softly. “You mean ‘love your neighbor’ kind of thing?”

“Yes, exactly. I am quite sure my John feels the same.”

“But you don’t know,” he said, his voice hard. “Bet you never got around to discussing it.”

“Well, no, we never did,” she said in a small voice.

“And now you’re goin’ all the way out to Oregon to marry this man you never discussed anything with.” It wasn’t a question. It came out sounding like an accusation.

“Yes, I am. I am going to Oregon to marry him, and don’t you dare say one more thing about it!”

He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the fire. “Suzannah, I have to tell you I think you’re makin’ a big mistake.”

She clenched her teeth. “You listen to me, Brand Wyler. There is more to a relationship than...well, than kisses.”

“Yeah.” He looked straight at her, his face set. “But that’s a good start. If they’re good kisses, that’s an important indication of something.”

“That is shallow and superficial. Just because something feels good doesn’t mean it is good.” Lordy, how straitlaced and prim she sounded.

He did not look away. “What’s wrong with feeling good?”

Suzannah swallowed. She wished he would look somewhere else. She knew her cheeks were flushing; her whole face felt hot. “Nothing is wrong with it, I guess. But that is not how I was raised. I was brought up to expect that a man would have high regard for my person and my breeding and my good name. One false step and a girl could be ruined.”

“You mean,” he said dryly, keeping his eyes on her face, “that your reputation as a respectable virgin would be compromised.”

“Yes, exactly. That is what happened to your sister, was it not?”

“Not exactly. This scoundrel, Jack something, took advantage of Marcy. He promised to marry her, then he never showed up for the wedding. She wrote me about it, said she was devastated.”

“Poor girl,” Suzannah murmured. “Poor, foolish girl.”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Brand, why are we talking about all this? I know my fiancé is an honorable man. Furthermore, I know exactly what I am doing.”

“Like hell you do.” He stood up suddenly and paced around the camp with his hands jammed in his back pockets. Finally he stopped in front of her.

“Suzannah, I think you have to know a man, really know him, before you decide to spend your life with him. I think you have to like that man, and I think you have to like that man’s kisses...and I think you have to feel like you want more than that.”

She jumped to her feet and confronted him, hands on her hips. “Well! I do not care one whit what you think, Brandon Wyler. So let that be an end to it.”

Brand stood eye to eye with her. She was good and mad now, but he didn’t care. He wished someone had talked some sense into Marcy; to his dying day he’d regret that he hadn’t been there to do that. Maybe she wouldn’t have paid any attention, kinda like Suzannah was doing now, digging in her heels and refusing to listen. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t let it alone.

And maybe it’s more than that.

He pivoted on one heel and gazed out across the hills, now glowing purple as the sun sank in the west. He couldn’t figure out how this overprotected slip of a woman from a South he never wanted to see again could raise his hackles so fast. She was stubborn and argumentative and so damn convinced she was right it set his teeth on edge.

Ah, hell, why should he care?

He didn’t, really. Or at least he told himself he didn’t. But he sure couldn’t ignore what had happened to him when he’d kissed her. Something inside his chest swelled up until it hurt, and the next thing he knew he felt as though he was flying.

“Time to turn in,” he barked. Without glancing at her, he unrolled his blanket, positioned his saddle at his head and shucked his boots. She marched around camp for a good quarter of an hour, then spread her bedroll about as far away from him as she could get.

Better that way, he acknowledged. He didn’t want to see her curled up in a ball with just the top of her blond head peeking out, or hear those little sighs she made in her sleep, or smell the violet scent of her hair.

Long after the fire burned down to a handful of faint orange coals, he lay awake calculating not how many days it would take them to reach Fort Klamath, but how many hours.

And every one, one too many.

Chapter Twelve

Shortly after dawn Suzannah felt something hard poke her derriere. She ignored it, and a moment later it poked again.

“Wake up,” Brand ordered.

She groaned and snuggled deeper under her blanket.

Something metallic clanked beside her and she inhaled the pungent smell of frying meat. Opening one eyelid, she saw a tin plate loaded with slices of steaming-hot jerky and two fat, fluffy biscuits. Beside it sat a brimming mug of hot coffee.

She propped up on one elbow and leaned over to sniff the meat.

“It’s fried,” Brand explained from the other side of the fire. “Maybe not as good as bacon, but we don’t have any bacon.”

She reached for a slice, gobbled it along with one of the biscuits and washed it all down with a swallow of coffee. Despite all his maddening male know-it-all faults, she had to admit Brand made excellent coffee, now that she’d come to like it.

“Get up,” he ordered. “Got to get goin’ before the sun’s up.”

Had she ever known a more annoying man? He was all nag-nag-nag and push-push-push, and she was heartily sick of it.

“Let me alone,” she protested.

“Can’t. You want to get to Fort Klamath, and I want to—”

He broke off, but she knew what he’d been about to say. He wanted to be rid of her. The feeling was most certainly mutual.

“Suzannah...”

“Oh, very well,” she said. “Do stop badgering me, Brand. You’re worse than Mama at her most officious moments.”

His dark eyebrows went up. “Your momma bossed you around?”

“Well, she tried to. I don’t guess I ‘bossed’ very well.”

His laugh surprised her. Brand might be an overbearing bully, but at least he had a nice laugh—rich and rumbly.

She dragged herself upright, stuffed her feet into her boots and noticed that her blisters no longer hurt. Then she slipped three more slices of fried jerky past her lips and devoured another biscuit. Besides coffee, Brand made very fine biscuits.

She supposed that, being an army wife, she must learn to cook, but somehow the prospect was daunting. She hadn’t thought to pack one of Hattie’s receipt books, but frying slices of jerky couldn’t be too difficult, could it?

Brand appeared to be in a real fizz to be on their way. He packed up both bedrolls, fed the horses and hovered at her elbow while she finished the last of her biscuits. Before she swallowed the remains of her coffee, he tramped off to the creek to wash the tin plates, then packed them into his saddlebag.

She had to scramble to fit in her necessary morning stop and splash cold water on her face before Brand herded her over to the mare.

“Want a boost up?” he asked.

“No, I do not. Why are you in such an all-fired hurry this morning?”

“No reason.” He wouldn’t look at her, so she knew he was lying. Something was wrong. Her heart skipped some beats.

She pulled herself up into her saddle and shot him a look. “We are not being followed, are we?”

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