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

“Them?”

“You said you heard three shots. More’n likely there’s more than one of them.”

“What do you think they want?”

“You. The money you’re carrying in that cloth belt around your waist. And the rest, the gold that Colonel Clarke insisted I carry in the bottom of my saddlebag.”

Her breath caught. “How do you know where I keep my money?”

“Felt it last night when I—”

“When you what?” she demanded.

“When I laid my arm over your middle. You were moaning some in your sleep. Thought you were scared.”

Suzannah stared at him. Was that a touch of color under his tan? It was. It surely was. The man was blushing!

Her insides went all squishy. The last thing she would have expected from this taciturn, hard-bitten man was concern for her feelings. She had discovered something about Brand Wyler, something she felt certain he worked hard to keep hidden. The man had a softer side. Wonder of wonders, Major Wyler wasn’t all hurry-it-up and don’t-ask-questions—the man was actually capable of human feelings.

“And,” she said hesitantly, “you were going to protect me, is that it?”

“Still am.”

Tears stung under her eyelids. No one had ever said that to her, promised they would protect her, even during the worst of the war years. Not even her fiancé.

“Very well, Brand. Do whatever you think best. I will try hard to keep up.”

They rode down into the dry, cold valley and swung a wide arc to the north, pushing the horses hard. Suzannah was as good as her word. She managed to keep up with him, how he didn’t know, since she was such an inexperienced horsewoman. But with each passing mile his respect for her grew. Sure was a fast learner. Either that or she’d be half-dead by the time he called a halt.

Brand knew exactly where he wanted to be when they cut back to the trail, a rock-strewn flat-topped hill he’d often used for reconnaissance. From the top he could see for miles in any direction, screened from view by a dribble of granite boulders. Clarke’s Castle, he called it. And it was still a good twenty miles ahead of them.

They stopped only once to refill the canteens. By the time both winded horses clattered up the mountainside, the wind was chilling the back of his neck and his mouth was so dry he couldn’t work up enough moisture to spit.

He rode on, pushing the black straight up the incline. Behind him he could hear Suzannah’s harsh breathing. It sounded more like sobbing, but she was hanging on. Warmth bloomed under his breastbone. She was one helluva woman.

Her horse stumbled, and he shot a glance behind him. Her braid had come loose and strands of wheat-colored hair straggled around her face. Under the hat brim her face looked dead white with exhaustion. But damn, she kneed that mare as if she’d been riding up mountains all her life. For a gently bred Southern belle, she sure was surprising.

At the top of his castle lookout, he dismounted and waited for her. When she came into view she was bent over the saddle horn, gasping for air, and his throat closed up tight. He grabbed his canteen, unscrewed the cap and sloshed some water into his palm. Then he kicked her boot out of the stirrup and stood up on the metal bar to reach her.

“Look up,” he commanded.

She lifted her head and he slathered his wet hand over her face and around the back of her neck. He thought about the front of her neck, where her shirt gapped open, but decided against it.

“Better?”

She nodded. He held his canteen to her lips and suppressed a smile. No Southern lady ever gulped water like she was doing now. Finally she handed the container back to him and dragged the back of her hand across her mouth. The gesture was so unladylike it made him want to cheer.

He stepped down from the stirrup and reached up for her. With a hoarse sigh she tipped sideways into his arms, and he carried her to the cluster of sheltering boulders on the rim and settled her on the ground with her back against a flat rock. He unsaddled the horses, dropped the saddles and both saddlebags next to her, grabbed a double handful of dry grass, and wiped the animals down. Then he hand-fed them some oats.

Before he could join her, she surprised him.

“Can you see them anywhere?” She was still winded, but she managed to huff out the question.

He grabbed the canteen and moved to the lip of the plateau. Not a sign of a horse or a rider, not even a telltale puff of dust. Thank the Lord for that; at the moment he could use some food. And some rest.

“No sign of anyone,” he said. But as he ate the jerky he sliced off, he kept one eye on the valley below them.

Suzannah gobbled down the rounds of jerky as fast as he could pare them off. Last night he’d thought she didn’t much like it, but she was sure wolfing it down now. Again he had to smile. Was it possible that if you scratched the surface of an over-refined Southern belle you might find a human being?

He glanced over at her. Not just any human being, he amended, but Suzannah Cumberland.

Chapter Eight

Brand watched the sun sink behind the far-off hills, looking like a fat orange balloon too weary to stay aloft. He closed his eyelids for a few moments and opened them to a sky tinged with purple, and then gold and orange.

“Be dark soon,” he said. Suzannah nodded tiredly and slid farther down on her bedroll. Pretty soon he’d have to tell her what he’d decided. But not yet. Let her enjoy the sunset.

But she surprised him again. “You’re leaving, aren’t you?” She sounded resigned but not frightened, and that made him wonder. Maybe she was just too exhausted to care.

“Yeah. I’m seeing smoke below us. Campfire, most likely. Gonna ride down and investigate.”

“Now? At night?”

“Yes, now. I’d be seen in daylight.”

“How long will you be gone?”

She didn’t ask how long she would be all alone up here, and that raised his eyebrows some more. She could sure surprise him.

“Depends on what I find, whether it’s someone following us or someone else. Suzannah, you ever fire a pistol?”

She popped up on one elbow. “No. Papa would never let me near any of his firearms.”

“Not even during the war, when the Northern army came through?”

“Yankees, you mean,” she said, her voice hardening. “No, not even then. Mama and Hattie kept a loaded rifle in the closet under the staircase, so we felt safe enough. And John...”

“That’s your intended?”

“Yes. John offered to lend me a revolver when he left, but by then the war was all over.”

“Did he teach you how to fire it?”

“No, he didn’t. He was there only two days, and then...then he was gone.”

Brand bit back a snort. “Two days! You agreed to marry a man after knowing him only two days?”

“Well, yes, I did. I grant you it was a very brief courtship, but...you see, there weren’t a great number of eligible men left after the war, and...and Mama never let me forget I was approaching spinsterhood. I guess I let myself get swept off my feet.”

“How old is spinsterhood, Suzannah?”

She hesitated. “I will be twenty-four in June.”

Annoyance tightened his jaw muscles. Two days! Forty-eight hours and he’d managed to leave with her heart in his pocket? This John must be some fast-talking stud. How had the man swept a woman like Suzannah off her feet in just two days?

He decided he didn’t like John Whatever His Name Was one bit. And he was annoyed as hell at her for being swept.

Forget it, Wyler. Her heart and her spinsterhood are none of your concern.

He scrabbled in his saddlebag for his extra revolver. “Suzannah, I’m gonna show you how to shoot this.” He laid it on her blanket. “Be careful. It’s loaded.”

She stared at it, then gazed up at him. “Why?”

“Because I don’t want to leave you alone up here without some way to protect yourself.”

“Why not take me with you?”

“No. Too dangerous. I don’t know who’s down there.” He scooted over close to her. “Sit up.”

She shook off her blanket and sat cross-legged beside him. He lifted the Colt and positioned her hands around the butt.

“Hold it up steady, but don’t put your finger on the trigger until you’re ready to fire. That’s it. Now, sight down the barrel.”

The weapon wobbled in her grip. “It’s heavy,” she said.

Brand blew out a breath. “That’s all, ‘it’s heavy’? Not ‘I don’t want to do this’ or ‘Don’t go and leave me’ or anything a million other women would say in this situation?” He shook his head in disbelief.

“I don’t guess I am a million other women, Brand.”

“Yeah.” He forced his attention back to the weapon in her hands. “Yes, it’s heavy. That’s why you need both hands. Don’t try to do some fancy quick-draw maneuver—you’ll shoot yourself in the foot.”

“Brand?” She looked into his face, her green eyes widening.

“What?” Now she was gonna cry or beg him not to go.

“When I fire it, will it kick back?”

Whoa. Why the South had lost the war with women like this at home was beyond him. His regard for Suzannah Cumberland flared once again into grudging admiration.

“Yeah, it’ll jerk some. Don’t let it scare you, just grip it tight.” He saw her knuckles whiten as she tightened her grasp on his Colt.

“Brand?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

He just plain didn’t know what to say to that. He was so damn proud of her he wanted to pat her shoulder or shake her hand or something. Hell, he wanted to kiss her.

He squashed that thought and got to his feet. “Suzannah, you gonna be all right up here?”

“I will be perfectly all right. Well—” she gave a little laugh “—maybe not ‘perfectly,’ but all right enough.” She laid the Colt down and gingerly shoved it under her saddlebag.

Brand picked up his saddle and moved to the large boulder where he’d picketed the horses. With his back to her he checked his revolver, grabbed the gelding’s reins and hauled himself up into the saddle.

Suzannah crawled out of her bedroll and stood watching him, a half resigned, half pensive look on her face. Looking down at her, something began to crack inside his chest. He picked up the reins, then tossed them down and dismounted.

He reached her in two long strides, grasped her shoulders and kissed her. Hard. God forgive him, he wanted to do it again, and for a lot longer, but he forced himself to release her and remounted without looking at her.

He reined the horse away, and when he glanced back she was standing motionless right where he’d left her, the fingers of one hand covering her lips.

The knot in his chest cracked all the way open.

* * *

He kissed me! And it was wonderful, heart-thumpingly, stupendously wonderful! No man had ever kissed her like that, not even John.

She watched his horse disappear down the steep hillside and still she did not move. She was trembling all over, and then she was crying, and then... Oh, she simply couldn’t think straight.

But why did he do that? Why?

Slowly she walked back to her bedroll, absentmindedly patted the saddlebag where she’d hidden Brand’s revolver and stretched out on top of the blanket. In another hour the stars would come out.

She would lie here quietly and wait. And try not to think about what had just happened.

* * *

He saw the campfire glow from a long way off and slowed his horse to a walk. When he got close enough, he dismounted, tied the black to a cottonwood tree and started off on foot.

It didn’t take long. There were three men. He could take two easy, but three, he didn’t know for sure. He drew his revolver, held it down close to his thigh and moved into the circle of firelight.

Chapter Nine

“Gentlemen.”

“What the—?” The heavyset man facing Brand across the fire leaped to his feet. “Who the hell are you?”

“Name’s Brandon Wyler. And you?”

One of the other men twisted on the log he sat on and surveyed Brand with hard black eyes. His matted hair hung past the open neck of a grimy shirt, and Brand couldn’t help noticing his necklace of elk’s teeth. The third man, younger than his companions, looked downright skinny and his blond hair hung in greasy-looking strands past his fuzzy chin.

Silence.

He kept his revolver trained on the heavy one. “Talk to me,” Brand snapped. “What are you doin’ out here in the middle of nowhere?”

“H-hunting,” the blond kid answered. He didn’t sound too sure. “That—that’s right, isn’t it, Jim?”

“Shut up, Granger.”

“Hunting what?” Brand pursued.

The heavyset man propped his pudgy hands on his hips. “What’s it to you, mister?”

“Nothin’ much. I’m hunting, too. Didn’t want my horse to scare your quarry away.” He paused long enough to take a look at the silent third man. Round-shouldered, dark-skinned, with a drooping black mustache.

“I’m chasin’ after a woman,” Brand continued. “Following her, actually. Pretty. Blond hair. Came out from Missouri with a wagon train, but I lost track of her after Fort Hall. Colonel there told me she picked up a guide and started south to Texas. That’s where I’m headed. You run across her?”

“Nope,” Fatso said quickly. “Uh, how come you’re tryin’ to find her?”

“Money. She’s carrying a lot of cash and she owes me for a horse I sold her.” He watched the three men look at each other, then at him.

“Texas, huh?” Fatso said.

“Yeah. Hired a guide, like I said. Lost track of them a couple days ago, but I figure I can pick up their trail. Used to live halfway between here and Texas, so I know the trails. Maybe you fellas could use some company?” Brand carefully made a show of putting his gun away.

Again the men exchanged glances, and Brand knew they’d taken the bait. Already the skinny kid was edging toward a saddled pinto at the edge of their camp.

But Fatso pinned Brand with small, hostile eyes that were too close together. “We don’t want company, mister. Why don’t you just ride on outta here?”

“Sure thing. Maybe I’ll see you fellas on the trail.”

“Don’t look too hard. Like I said, we don’t want company.”

Brand faked anger. “Hey, I don’t want you hornin’ in on my quarry. Don’t want to share the goods with anybody, know what I mean?”

“Sure do. Now, turn around, mister, and vamoose.”

Brand pivoted and headed for his horse. Behind him he heard Fatso’s voice. “Granger, Jim, saddle up! We’re ridin’ out.”

Good riddance, he thought. He could hardly wait to get back to Suzannah. But just as he stuffed his boot into the stirrup, he heard the sound of a gun cocking and then the roar of its discharge. A bullet slammed into him. White-hot pain tore through his right shoulder and he sucked in his breath.

“Got ’im,” someone shouted. “He won’t be botherin’ us anymore.”

He had to mount, but he couldn’t grab the saddle horn and haul himself up by brute strength. He had to get back to the top of Clarke’s Castle and Suzannah. He gritted his teeth and reached up again.

* * *

Someone is coming. Suzannah listened for a moment, then jolted upright and fished under her saddlebag for the revolver. Lifting it in both hands, she pointed the barrel toward the noise, careful not to touch her finger to the trigger.

What was it, an animal? A wolf? The hair on the back of her neck rose. Could it be a bear? Did bears live on hilltops?

The sound came closer. Her mare shifted nervously, and Suzannah held her breath. Could she aim accurately in the dark? Even if she did, could she kill anything?

A horse! She heard hoofbeats, moving slowly, just beyond the boulders. Very slow hoofbeats, and... Oh, God. She tried to control her shaking hands, slipped off the safety and slid her forefinger over the trigger.

And then she heard something odd, someone whistling through his teeth—“Oh, Susanna.”

“Brand?”

“Yeah,” came a tired voice.

She was on her feet and running as his head appeared over the rocks. “Brand!”

“Suzannah,” he rasped. “For God’s sake, put the gun down.”

She tossed it onto the ground and kept moving toward him.

“Gotta help me down, Suzannah. My shoulder’s hurt.” He dropped the reins, brought his leg over the saddle horn and reached down to her with one arm. With a groan he latched on to her extended hands and slid to the ground.

He staggered, and she grabbed him around the waist. “Easy, easy,” he panted. “Don’t bump my arm.”

“Which arm?”

“Right. It’s my shoulder, really. Gunshot.”

She cried out, then clapped her free hand over her mouth.

“Walk me over to my bedroll, will you?”

Step by halting step she guided him the twenty feet to his blankets, and he dropped to his knees. “Think you could unsaddle my horse?”

After some fumbling she figured out how to loosen the cinch under the animal’s belly and dragged off the saddle. She staggered under the weight.

“Make some coffee, will you?” he called.

“I thought you were afraid of smoke being seen.”

“Dig a fire pit. Use the shovel tied on my horse. Scoop down about ten inches.”

Brand watched his ladylike lady dig what had to be the first hole she’d made in the earth since making mud pies when she was a girl. She followed his instructions, and when the coffee was bubbling over on her scrabbled-together fire, he asked for the final thing he needed.

“Look in my saddlebag for my whiskey flask and some linen for bandages. And the jerky,” he added. “All of a sudden I’m damn hungry.”

Her relief was so obvious he had to laugh. “You cannot be at death’s door if you are hungry,” she quipped.

“Coffee ’bout ready?”

“After I tend to your shoulder.” She found the bandages and the whiskey and settled beside him. “Lean forward.”

She stripped off his bloody shirt while he clenched his jaw. She peered at him. “Do you want some whiskey?”

“No. Save it for...just save it.”

“There doesn’t seem to be very much blood,” she said.

“Bullet must have gone clean through.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Like a son of a— Yeah, it hurts.”

She twisted her hands together. “What should I do now?”

“Pour the whiskey over it.”

She uncorked the flask, clamped her teeth together and dribbled the contents over his bloody shoulder while he hissed in his breath and swore.

“Such language!” she remarked when his fist released her shirt-sleeve.

Brand closed his eyes while she rustled around the camp getting out mugs for the coffee. “Any whiskey left?”

“Yes. But save some for me, please.”

For her! Lord save them, the trail to Oregon was corrupting his Southern belle. He heard the coffee dribble out of the pot and, still keeping his eyes closed, he reached for a mug. It was hot and strong and so full of grounds he ended up chewing most of the first mouthful, but he didn’t say a word, just gulped down swallow after swallow while she unfolded his pocketknife and did her best to saw off rounds of jerky.

“Open your mouth,” she ordered. She laid a piece of the salty-tasting dried meat on his tongue. He chewed it up and swallowed it down. His shoulder throbbed like a son of a gun, but he tried not to think about it. Instead, he closed his eyes and thought about Suzannah while she fed him sips of coffee and more jerky as if she’d done it all her life.

“You know something, Suzannah?”

“I know a great many things, Brand. I was very well educated when I was a girl. Papa had acres of books. What would you like to know?”

“Nothing that’s in any book,” he growled. “I wanted to say that, fancy education or not, you are one extraordinary woman.”

“Oh, I do hope so. I do want to make John a good wife.”

He snapped his lids open. “Hand me the whiskey.”

But three slugs of the liquor didn’t take away the sour taste of John’s name on her lips. He listened to her pouring coffee for herself and slicing off more rounds of jerky and wondered why the whiskey wasn’t working.

“How do you know you really want to marry this man?” he heard himself say. “You’ve only known him for two days.”

“I just know. John was so dashing and so personable, and attentive and, well, flattering...with such fine manners. I just know.”

For some reason her words made him mad. “That’s what it takes to get a girl like you, huh? Fancy manners and flattery?”

Her mouth dropped open.

“I have—” He sucked in a breath. “I had a younger sister. She fell in love with some damn flashy army officer who was just toying with her. He left her at the altar, and—” he swallowed over the rock in his throat “—she, uh, she drowned herself.”

Her face changed. “Oh, Brand, what a terrible thing.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s why I believe in long engagements. Gives a couple of lovers time to get to know each other.”

She was silent for a long minute. “You think I am foolish, do you not?”

“I think... Doesn’t matter what I think.”

“Yes, it does. Tell me.”

He began playing with his pocketknife, turning it over and over in his hand and rubbing his thumb over the smooth handle.

“Seems to me like a man and a woman have two choices. They can fall into bed with each other and damn the consequences. Or they can do what men and women do to spend time together—takin’ walks by the river and dancin’ with each other and goin’ on picnics and all those things. Then they can—”

“Fall into bed with each other,” she supplied.

His laugh stuttered into the quiet.

“It is the same in the end, is it not?” Her voice told him he should drop the subject, but something inside him wouldn’t let it go.

“Might not be the same, no. Might be that if she looked hard enough at a man she’d see something in him that should warn her off.”

“And you wish your sister had done just that.”

Brand looked past her hunched shoulder into the soft darkness. “Yeah. If she had, she’d be alive today. If I ever meet up with the bastard who destroyed her, I’m going to kill him.”

She hesitated. “What good will that do?”

“It’d get him off the face of the earth, for one thing. And it might make me feel better about my sister.”

Suzannah said nothing. After a while she refilled his coffee and then her own and sat sipping it slowly. He watched her slim, delicate fingers cradle the tin mug. An army wife? He didn’t think so. Even an officer’s wife, like the colonel’s lady, Violet McLeod got pretty well ground down between sandstorms and Indian skirmishes and God knew what else out here in the West.

“There’s precious little to compensate a gently reared woman at an army post,” he said carefully.

“There is her husband,” Suzannah insisted. “There is always the love of her husband.”

What the hell, her mind was made up. She didn’t want to see the danger staring her in the face. And anyway, what difference did it make if she wanted to throw her life away out in Oregon? But it ate at him just the same.

Something he said must have whanged into her because she sat looking down at him for a long time, her eyes troubled. Slowly he reached up and touched her shoulder, spread his fingers against her warmth and drew her down to him.

His lips grazed her forehead, moved to her cheek and then hovered a scant inch from her mouth.

“Suzannah,” he murmured. “Don’t do it, Suzannah. Don’t marry him.”

Chapter Ten

If she lived to be a hundred, Suzannah would never understand her feelings at this moment. Brand slipped his hand behind her neck and tugged her down until his mouth met hers. His lips were warm and firm and gentle with restraint, but she could feel his wanting. She tasted salt and coffee and hunger, such a deep hunger that her breath stopped.

He made a sound in his throat and wound his fingers into her hair. Colors danced under her closed eyelids, like starbursts, and she felt his heartbeat grow ragged. What is happening?