A Cowboy's Christmas Wedding

“It must have been hard,” Saedra found herself saying, “what you went through.”

It broke her heart to see the pain on Rana’s face. “Harder for my dad.” Saedra saw the girl take a deep breath before meeting her gaze. “I was out of it for the first few months. They had me on a lot of medication. But my dad...” She shook her head. “He had to take care of...everything.”

She’d missed her mom’s funeral. Alana had told her that, too. Poor Rana had been bed bound for months. Cabe had made all the arrangements. He’d had Alana for support, the two of them grieving together, but it’d been a horrible time, Alana had admitted. No wonder Cabe was such a curmudgeon.

“And now here we are.” She touched the girl’s arm lightly. “Planning a wedding.”

The smile returned, although not as brightly. “It’s going to be fun.”

Fun.

That’s what the Jensens needed, Alana thought. Fun. They were both stuck in the past. Oh, sure, they appeared to have moved on, what with starting New Horizons Ranch and opening their home to strangers, but their pain was still there, bubbling beneath the surface. It tugged at Alana’s heartstrings and she vowed to do whatever she could to help them both.

“You know what I think?”

Rana’s gaze hooked her own. “What?”

“I think we need to decorate the house for Christmas.”

“Oh, no. We couldn’t do that. My dad, he wouldn’t—”

“Approve,” Alana finished for her. “I know.” Just as she knew she had to tread carefully, too. “But how would you feel if the house was decorated?”

Rana’s smile brightened again. “I would love it.” She seemed almost ashamed to admit it, though. “I miss Christmas.”

She was still a child for all her outward appearance. A teenager, yes, but still young enough to be excited about presents and stockings and Christmas cheer.

“We should do it,” Saedra said.

“My dad—”

“Leave him to me.”

Fun.

They needed it bad, and she was just the person to show them how it was done.

* * *

HE MANAGED TO avoid Saedra the next day, which wasn’t hard to accomplish with guests in residence. All it took was the offer of a guided hunt and one of his best customers, a dealership owner from the city, leaped at the chance. Cabe leaped at the opportunity to leave the ranch.

He was gone all day. When he returned later that afternoon, it was to note every light in his house ablaze and the sound of music thumping through the window.

“Damn.”

He thought about turning around. There was always work to do in the barn. He could sweep out the feed room or rearrange the saddles, maybe muck some stalls.

His empty belly put a stop to such thoughts. It was his house and he’d be damned if he allowed a woman to scare him out of it.

The music coming from his study nearly deafened him, Cabe counseling himself to take it easy on Rana. Sometimes he forgot that she was a teenager and that blaring music at unhealthy levels was a rite of passage.

But it wasn’t Rana who was playing the music.

He drew up short in the doorway as Saedra glanced up, a smile unfurling across her face like the petals on a flower. She was seated behind his desk, a fuzzy off-white sweater with a cowl neckline hugging a body that belonged in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Her long blond hair hung loose around her shoulders as she swung the chair from side to side. She half closed the screen of the laptop Rana must have allowed her to borrow.

“There you are,” she said, but she had to yell to be heard. “I was wondering when you’d get back.”

“Here I am,” he repeated back faintly. The truth was, the sight of her sitting there had completely poleaxed him.

“How was the great safari?”

He was so befuddled he heard himself ask, “Safari?”

“Your big-game hunt.” She fashioned a pistol out of her fingers, mimicked the sound of a gun. “Bag any big ones?” The pistol morphed into an antler at the side of her head, her other hand joining the first, fingers splayed. “Eight pointers.”

He glanced at the stereo, though if he were honest with himself he did so to prevent her from seeing a smile, although why he wanted to keep his grin to himself he had no idea. “Can we turn that down?”

“That,” she said over the pounding beat, “is our homework assignment for the night.”

Why did he have a feeling he wouldn’t like what she had to say?

“We need to choose music for the wedding.”

“Can’t Alana and Trent choose their own music?”

She tossed him a single shake of her head. “I suppose they could, but I would bet that between the two of us we can do a pretty good job. You know Alana like the back of your hand and I know Trent. Ergo, we can do it ourselves.”

When he straightened away from the stereo, the music blissfully silenced, he caught sight of something else. Stacked on a table near one of the bookcases were pink boxes, the kind one found in bakeries and doughnut shops.

“That’s our other task.” She pointed, giving him an impish smile. “You’re going to help me choose a wedding cake.”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

He shook his head in case she had really missed his meaning. “I haven’t eaten today. The last thing I need is sugar.” And loud music, but he kept the last to himself.

“I thought of that.” She got up from her seat. “Before Rana left for her friend’s house, I made dinner. Fried chicken. One of my other specialties. Go ahead and eat.”

“Rana went to a friend’s?”

She nodded.

He suddenly felt as though he lost ten pints of blood. “We’re alone?”

She made scary fingers. “Yes,” she said in what sounded like a Russian accent. “But I promise not to drink your blood.”

He blinked, blood having come out sounding like blah-ud. He almost smiled again.

“When will she be back?”

“She was hoping to spend the night. Said she’d call you later on.”

No. That wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t spending a night under the same roof as Saedra Robbins. Alone. Just the thought did something to his body that he’d rather not think about.

“Actually, I have to go out tonight.”

“No, you don’t.”

He about did a double take.

“I had Rana check your schedule. You don’t have anything planned.”

“Rana’s not my social director.”

“No, but she said you always check in with her. Always.”

Busted. “Something came up.”

“What?”

None of your business. That’s what he wanted to shout. “I need to do some paperwork in my office.” He quickly pointed toward the front door. “The one in the barn.”

Her face lit up. It was amazing what happened to her eyes when that happened. They practically sparkled. “Okay, good. I can finish downloading the music while you finish up your work.”

If he protested any more, he’d end up sounding like a jerk. “Fine.”

And that didn’t sound jerklike?

He silenced himself by leaving. He wasn’t really lying. Not really. He always had paperwork to do, but she insisted on sending him off with a plate full of chicken. Once his belly was full, it was hard to resist the urge to hide in his office for the rest of the night, but a beep on his phone, followed by a voice announcing, “I’m done,” preempted the notion. Someone had taught her to use the intercom system. Great.

He took his time walking down the steps that ran alongside the back wall of the feed room. The smell of sweetened oats filled his nose, and the quiet nickering of horses soothed his frayed nerves. The twelve-stall barn was only a couple of years old, built when they opened the ranch to visitors, and it housed the horses they used for their therapy program. Fluorescent lights hung from the middle of the barn aisle. Horse heads popped up one by one as he walked by. They’d installed an arena off the front, and to his left and out back behind the barn stretched acres and acres of pasture, but for now he headed right and toward the pathway that led to his house. Through the tall pines he could make out his study light, and above that, Rana’s bedroom light. She must have left it on. Darn kid. One of these days he was going to make her pay the power bill.

That sweater of Saedra’s really did hug her every curve. He had occasion to notice the moment he walked in the door, since the woman all but bounded out of the kitchen and into the foyer. What the sweater didn’t cover, skintight black leggings did, the ends tucked into lamb’s fleece and brown suede boots.

“I hope you like sweets.”

Only if she was on the menu.

He winced. She didn’t seem to notice—she was too busy motioning toward the kitchen and the pink boxes, which she’d moved onto the bar-height kitchen table. “I thought we could listen to the music I downloaded earlier while you do some tasting.”

“Terrific.”

He couldn’t have sounded more sarcastic if he tried. He knew that. Told himself to lighten up a bit. He’d morphed into some kind of computer program that went into nasty default mode whenever she stood near.

“Okay, here we go.” His tone of voice didn’t appear to get her down. If anything, she seemed to perk up even more, even waved her iPod at him. “Let me just plug this into the player I brought down earlier.” She spun toward a long counter that separated the kitchen from his family room. Two seconds later the soft voice of Clint Black filled the room. She turned back to him with a smile. “You like that?”

“I think it’s more important that Trent and Alana like it.”

“I know, but Trent loves this song, and I just wondered if Alana might like it, too.”

“If it’s country, she’ll like it.”

“Perfect.” She patted the back of a bar stool. “Now sit.”

He cocked his head. “Just cut me a slice and I’ll taste.”

“Nope.” She opened one of the pink boxes. “We’re going to have some fun while you do this.”

“Fun?”

When she faced him again, long blond hair shimmering, she seemed on the verge of a laugh. “Yes. You remember what fun is, don’t you?”

“Of course.” What kind of person did she think he was? “I just don’t see what it has to do with tasting cake.”

“It turns out there’s a plethora of bakers in the area. Most of them were kind enough to whip something up for me today given the short notice, so I need you to tell me which of the six cakes you like.”

“Six?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve already made my choice. Now it’s your turn.”

He scouted the table. “Where’s a fork?”

“Oh, no. I don’t want you to see who’s made what in case you know these people. I want only the best for Alana and Trent.”

“What? You think I’d choose a cake because it’s someone I know?”

“You might play favorites, and so I’m going to blindfold you.”

He gaped, but only for a moment. “You’re out of your mind.”

“Come on.”

She couldn’t be serious.

He glanced at the cake in question. “Just pull them out of the boxes so I can’t tell which one came from which store.”

She seemed startled by his suggestion. She, too, glanced at the boxes before turning back to him with a frown. “What’s the fun in that?” And she sounded so disappointed it was almost comical. “C’mon.” She tipped her head sideways and gave him a look meant to charm him into cooperating. “You need to loosen up. Even Rana thought it was a good idea.”

“Then I suggest you play pin the tail on the cake batter with Rana.”

She plopped down in the chair next to him, and if he were honest with himself, he could admit to feeling just a little bad about spoiling her mood. Just a little.

“Okay, fine. Open your mouth.”

“Excuse me?”

She picked up a fork, opened one of the boxes, then stabbed a piece of cake. “Open.”

“I’m not three years old.”

“Of course not, but you’re still going to do a blind taste test. Well, sort of blind. Here. Open.”

She adopted such a look of ferocious determination that he found himself opening his mouth despite himself. Sugar and lemon and vanilla filled his mouth. Cabe suddenly felt self-conscious as he chewed.

“Tastes like cake.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Her left brow lifted. “Well?”

“I guess it’s okay.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Wow. What a ringing endorsement. Okay. Next.”

Before she could stuff another forkful in his mouth, he lifted a hand. “Why don’t you and Rana just decide?”

“Because you’re a part of this wedding, too, and with Trent and Alana not here, we’re it. So, open.”

Once again, he did as instructed even though a voice inside his head told him to put his foot down. Utter nonsense.

But the piece of cake she fed him was good.

“Oooh. You like that one, don’t you?”

“Wait,” he said through a mouth full of white cake with some kind of strawberry frosting that was so good he wanted another bite. “What makes you think I like it?”

She reached for another box. “You’re like a newspaper. I can read the headlines from a mile away. Here’s another one.”

How the hell did she do it? How had she gotten him to eat—almost literally—out of her hand, and why was he fighting so hard to keep his face free of expression as he tasted the next piece?

“You don’t like that one, either. Okay. Next.”

“What?” He swallowed. Actually, he almost gagged. Ugh. Nasty, greasy frosting. “You didn’t even give me time to taste it.”

“I could tell the minute your mouth closed, and I don’t blame you for disliking that one. I didn’t like it, either.”

“Ah,” he muttered. “So you’re the one that’s biased. See. You should just decide for me.”

“I’m not biased. Some of the cakes I really liked and other ones I didn’t. Rana, too. You’re the tiebreaker.”

She held up the fork again. He eyed the piece she was about to feed him. After that last one, he should be more cautious.

“I’m not a big fan of cream fillings,” he admitted, eyeing the white cake and white frosting.

“Me, neither, but taste it just the same. You might be surprised.”

But she missed, her other hand instantly lifting to help push the cake into his mouth, her fingers grazing his lips.

He nearly gasped.

Zapped by an electric fence, that was what it felt like. As if a million joules of energy stole his breath away. He froze.

“Well?”

His taste buds failed to function, too. So did his heart. And his lungs.

“Good,” he managed to mumble.

“Just good?”

It took every ounce of control not to jerk away. Not to jump to his feet and dash away.

“I like the strawberry one better.”

She nodded. He sat there.

What the hell was that?

But he knew. That was more than mere sexual attraction. That was want. That was need. That was trouble.

Chapter Five

He bolted.

That was the only way to describe what happened after he tasted the last piece of cake. The man didn’t even have the common decency to listen to the music she’d downloaded, just offered a flip, “Have Rana do it.”

She’d touched him. And it had freaked him out.

She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told him she could read his face, so as she climbed into bed that night, she brought up the memory of his face and reexamined every angle.

Instant awareness. Physical attraction. Desire.

It’d been all there, plain as day, and it had taken her completely by surprise as the reason for his animosity became patently clear.

He liked her. Liked liked her. As in he wanted her in his bed.

The thought made her giggle like a schoolgirl, and she rolled onto her side, causing Ramses to let out a mew of protest.

“Oh, stop it,” she warned the cat. “You know you want to cuddle with me.”

The cat started purring, but only after Saedra stroked his back. Silly cat. Typical male. Complain, complain, when really, deep inside, they wanted attention. That was Cabe’s problem, too. She wondered if he was in his own bed, below her, thinking about her.

Of course he was.

That made her giggle some more. It wasn’t funny, though, she sternly told herself. The man had issues. Major, major issues that would make him horrible boyfriend material.

She should ignore him.

That’s what she told herself as she continued to pet Ramses. Now that she knew he suffered from severe sexual frustration, maybe she should cut him some slack, too. It’d been months since she’d had a sexual partner herself. Actually, more like a year. Who had time for relationships when you ran a successful business like her Buckaroo Barbecue, or his New Horizons Ranch? It was only recently that she’d had time to even think about the opposite sex, and then only in terms of what Trent might like for a wedding present. If she were honest with herself, she could do with some good, old-fashioned sex herself, but not with Cabe.

Why not with Cabe?

Stupid, ridiculous thought, she told herself, her eyes drifting closed. Her subconscious picked up on her thoughts about Cabe and ran with it. She dreamed that night: her fantasies featured a dark-haired man with sideburns and a toned upper body that, in her dreams at least, felt as soft as silk yet was as hard as iron.

“This is not good,” she told Ramses as she dressed the next morning. The cat sat on the windowsill, cleaning himself in a patch of sunlight, and completely ignoring her. “Not that you care.”

Rana must have still been asleep, since Saedra encountered only silence as she made her way downstairs. The girl was on Christmas vacation until after the wedding. At least the teenager could serve as a buffer. This morning Saedra needed to call the rental place in Reno. And then there was the issue of Christmas and the decorations, which Rana had told her were stored in the attic. As luck would have it, the entrance was right by her room, through what looked like a pantry door next to the stairwell. Might as well see what they had. The wedding would be on Christmas Day and she planned to do it up right. It wouldn’t be a winter wedding without them.

Saedra marveled when she opened the trapdoor. It wasn’t really an attic space, but more like a room. Skylights illuminated a crawl space big enough for someone to stand in and wide enough to fit a bed and a dresser. To her left were blue plastic tubs labeled Christmas, Fall, Spring, Summer... Saedra having no doubt they were decorations. To her right were bags of what looked like clothes.

Creeping forward, she peered inside one of them, taking a step back when she realized what they were.

His wife’s clothes. Bags and bags of them.

Her stomach curdled with sadness as she looked around, imagining the pain Cabe and Rana must have gone through as they’d bagged up not just Kimberly’s things, but Brayden’s things, as well. Sure, she’d lost Dustin last year, but he’d been a friend, nothing like losing a wife and a brother on the same day.

“No wonder you’re such a mess,” she told a Cabe that was nowhere in sight.

Amazing that Rana hadn’t been more affected. Alana had told her the girl suffered from horrible nightmares. It was one of the reasons Alana had insisted she and Trent would spend their summers at New Horizons Ranch. Cabe had coped as well as could be expected, Alana had also told her, but clearly his scars ran deep, too. It’d been years since his wife’s death. Years. Clearly, he still wasn’t over it.

Maybe she could change all that. Maybe what this place needed was her, someone who had lost her parents at a young age, but who had gone on to survive despite her grief. Yes, she’d ended up with a twisted sense of humor. Maybe even a macabre sense of humor, but she’d learned the hard way that death was a part of life. It sucked, but if you didn’t move on, it would bring you down.

Like Cabe.

So. Taking a deep breath, she turned toward the boxes. In for a penny, in for a pound. Rana had given her the go-ahead. That was good enough for Saedra. Cabe might not like it, but he’d learn to deal.

An hour later she stood in the middle of Cabe’s study, scanning the open tubs of Christmas decorations and wondering where to start.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She jumped.

“Get the hell away from that stuff.”

She’d known this wouldn’t be easy, but she actually felt the blood drain from her face at Cabe’s tone of voice.

“Hey, Cabe.”

Smile.

Beneath his black cowboy hat his blue eyes blazed. He wore a brown Carhartt jacket and matching pants tucked into leather hunting boots, and Saedra thought he couldn’t look more masculine—and more furious—if he tried.

Smile bigger.

But it was hard not to blanch. Even beneath his jacket she could tell his shoulders were as tightly stretched as a bow.

Dear me.

“Put. Those. Back.”

She glanced down at the boxes. “The Christmas decorations? Why?”

Pretending innocence was not the correct thing to do. That became apparent the moment the words slid from her mouth because, if he’d looked furious before, he appeared positively enraged now.

“You know damn well why.”

Yes, she did.

“But we need these to decorate for the wedding.”

“No, you don’t.” His jaw ticked all the way up to his sideburns.

The smile on her face slowly wilted. “But if we don’t use Christmas decorations, people might think it strange.”

“Get them out of here.”

He spun on his heel. Saedra’s spine chose that moment to collapse. A few seconds later, she heard his footsteps on the stairway. Boom. Boom. Boom.

“Oh, dear.”

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.