A Cowboy Christmas Miracle (Burnt Boot, Texas Book 4) (18 page)

“I’m buying that ranch, and the bet is called off. I gave Tanner the money and warned him about bragging,” Declan said.

Quaid removed his cowboy hat and combed his thick, blond hair with his fingertips before he resettled it. “I know y’all were doing some sneaking around. How far did it go?”

Declan pushed past him and carried the two suitcases to the truck.

Quaid followed him and opened the back door to the club-cab truck. “What did Uncle Russell say?”

“That I had to follow my heart and that he wished to hell he’d followed his own advice years ago. And that he can’t wait to retire and move away from River Bend himself.”

Quaid followed Declan back into the house when he returned. “Talk will have it that you left River Bend for a Gallagher.”

“I’m leaving River Bend because I want my own place, not because of Betsy,” he declared. “I’ve got some boxes of books. Want to help me carry them down?”

“Sure. Granny won’t even mind if I help you since she’s mad at you. There is a weird feeling in the air. She’s mad at you, and yet she’s lording it over Naomi, telling everyone that her Brennan grandson is going to win the battle against Naomi Gallagher’s granddaughter.”

Quaid stacked one box on top of the other and said, “I thought you said there were books in here. This feels like lead or concrete.”

“Just books,” Declan said.

“Does it seem strange at all to be leaving?”

“Little bit, but it’s not much different than when I went to college.”

“But that time, you came home every weekend.”

Declan grabbed the last duffel bag and followed Quaid down the steps. “When I buy this ranch, maybe you’ll decide to defect and join me.”

“Not me. I’ve got a place of my own even if it is affiliated with Wild Horse. I like where I am just fine,” Quaid said. “And I would not work with Betsy Gallagher for two weeks for a chance to buy a front seat in heaven. That woman is evil. I’m glad you gave Tanner the money and called off the bet.”

“Oh, so you think I couldn’t get her into bed or couldn’t sweet-talk her into falling in love with me? Thanks for the vote of confidence there.” Declan swung the duffel bag into the back of the truck and took the top box of books from the stack.

“Not that you couldn’t. I’m just glad you didn’t. See you Thursday night at the bar for poker?” Quaid asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it. Tanner’s got some money I need to win back.” Declan grinned. “Come on over to the bunkhouse and visit if you get bored in the evenings.”

“Thanks for the invite, but until Betsy is off that ranch, I’m not settin’ foot on it,” Quaid said.

Declan was surprised when he found the bunkhouse in decent shape. The two yellow pups raced in ahead of him, sniffed out every corner, chased a small mouse out of the kitchen, and played with it until it was dead. Declan turned around slowly, taking in the whole place a section at a time.

Two sets of bunk beds were shoved up against one side of the room. A zippered plastic bag holding bedding and a pillow was placed in the middle of each bed. The brown-and-orange-plaid sofa facing the fireplace was probably forty years old, but it was still in good shape and comfortable. Wood was to the left of the stone fireplace, and Declan hoped the whole time he started the fire that the chimney wasn’t clogged up with bird nests or other debris.

“Well, how about that?” he said as the pups flopped down in front of the fire and the smoke spiraled up like it was supposed to do.

One puppy put his paw on Declan’s thigh and whined, so he rolled back on his butt and took time to pet both dogs. “Y’all going to be bunkhouse boys? Will you let me know when you want to go outside?”

The other puppy yipped and Declan took that as a yes. He fished his phone out of his hip pocket and took a picture of them to send to Betsy, then realized he didn’t have her number. Well, he’d sure remedy that tomorrow, because now that they were on the same ranch, they could text and call whenever they wanted.

It was well past midnight when he stretched out on a bed in a strange place where every noise got his attention. It didn’t matter if it was a scrub oak branch brushing against the window of the bunkhouse or a coyote singing a lonesome song off in the distance or even one of the pups whining in his sleep beside the fire—Declan couldn’t sleep.

The moon, with glimmering stars all around it, hanging out there in the distance, captured his attention. He’d seen Betsy’s pink truck parked in front of the house when he drove back onto the property, so evidently she’d moved into the spare bedroom. Was she looking at the same moon? Was she wondering what she’d done? Or was there a big weight lifted off her shoulders?

* * *

Betsy’s new room was about half the size of the one she had in her parents’ house, which was smaller than the one at the big house. She did not have her own bathroom but would be sharing one with Lottie, and it was even smaller than her private bath at home.

Her things were unpacked, and she had played a game of cards with Lottie before the woman said it was time for the nighttime snack she always had before bedtime. By nine o’clock, Betsy could hear her new roommate snoring loudly in the room across the hall.

She picked up a book and tried to read, but not even the hot, steamy castle romance could keep her attention. At a few minutes until ten, she finally put her earbuds in and listened to Christmas music by country artists. Some of them made her giggle, a few put a tear in her eye, and all of them reminded her in some way of Declan.

At midnight, she sat up in the bed and stared out the window at the moon and stars. It was the first clear night in a long time, and they looked so beautiful hanging there like ornaments on a tree. Lottie had said they would be decorating the house and trimming the Christmas tree tomorrow. That meant when Betsy bought the house, it would already be beautiful for Christmas morning.

She could see the bunkhouse down there, backed up into a small copse of naked scrub oak trees. The moonlight put a sparkle in the snow and the roof. She wondered if Declan was sleeping or if he was as antsy as she was in a new place. Was he sitting up in bed, looking out the window at the same moon? He really was a romantic soul in spite of his rough cowboy exterior. Underneath all that was a sweet, gentle man who had stolen her heart.

“Whoa,” she whispered. “Stop right there. My heart is still mine, and no one is stealing it, not when this ranch is riding on me keeping a steady head and a firm purpose.”

“Forget hanky-panky rules,” Declan declared on Wednesday evening as he and Betsy finished cleaning the tack room. “We weren’t following Gallagher and Brennan rules, and we’re out of sight of anyone.”

Betsy dropped the broom and wrapped her arms around his neck. She rolled up on her toes and her eyes fluttered shut. “I’ve wanted to kiss you all day.”

“Oh, honey, every time you moved today, I imagined what we could be doing instead of cleaning up this tack room.”

Her fingers whipped off his stocking cap and tangled up in his hair. One of his hands rested gently on her cheekbone, the heel of his palm tilting her chin up to his lips; the other cupped her butt and pressed her closer to him.

“It’s been a month since Sunday,” she said between kisses.

“Six months,” he drawled. “Bunkhouse is warmer than this place, and Lottie is at the store.”

“She’s been gone fifteen minutes already, and if she catches us together in the bunkhouse, believe me, she won’t think we were in there reading the Bible.”

He shifted an errant strand of red hair back behind her ear and kissed the lobe, moving down to the soft, sensitive spot on her neck. “We are adults, Betsy. We should be able to go to bed with each other if we want.”

She traced his lips with her forefinger. “How bad do you want this ranch? Enough to forget about the bunkhouse and lock the tack room door?”

“It’s already locked.” He backed her up against the rough wooden table.

She quickly undid his belt buckle and smiled when she saw that he was “going cowboy,” as they called it in Texas. Things would have been much easier if she’d been wearing a skirt that would simply flip up, but it was a different story with jeans.

However, he quickly moved them and her underpants down to her boots, and she was naked except for socks from the waist down. Then, with a wiggle and a hop, she wrapped her legs around him.

“Much better than that cold table against my butt,” she whispered.

Without losing his grip on her, he whipped a horse blanket from a nail, flipped it out onto the floor, and laid her down on it. With her legs still wrapped firmly around his waist, it just took one firm thrust, and they were rocking together and neither of them felt one bit cold.

“I feel like a teenager,” she murmured against his neck.

“I’m addicted to you, Betsy Gallagher.”

“Just Betsy. On this ranch I’m just Betsy.” She pulled his lips to hers.

It was fast, furious, and intense, and she thought she heard him say her name, but the way her ears were ringing, he could have been calling the cows in for feeding time. She went limp, dropping her legs and panting for her next breath.

“Who needs words?” he asked.

“Right,” she managed to get out before she inhaled deeply.

“You do have a window in your bedroom. You could sneak out and come down to the bunkhouse to see me after Lottie is asleep,” he said as he rolled over and sucked air when his bare butt hit the cold floor.

“Or you could come see me.” She twisted away from him and grabbed for her clothes.

“We make too much noise to do this in the house.”

They both froze when they heard Lottie yelling at the puppies. “Only a couple of nights and Declan has spoiled you. You’ll never make good cow dogs the way he’s letting you sleep in the bunkhouse. All you’ll ever be is a couple of big, old, overgrown pets.”

Declan was a blur as he jerked his jeans up, got things put to rights, and unlocked the door. Betsy made sure all her hair was stuffed under the stocking hat, checked to make sure her boots were on the right feet, and grabbed the broom. When Lottie pushed the door open, two puppies ran in ahead of her, and she continued to fuss at them.

“You are ruining these mongrels, Declan Brennan. But I guess that’s your problem if you buy this place or Betsy’s if she does. I got to admit, I ain’t seen this barn look like this since the day it was built. Next owner is going to appreciate it being all clean and ready for next year’s hay crop. Tell me, now, will either of you put up small bales, or are you both into them big, round ones?”

Betsy leaned on the broom. “I like both small and round. Round ones are nice for winter feed, so you don’t have to go to the pasture twice a day. But the small ones are good for feeding inside the barn.”

“Declan?” Lottie asked.

“Same as what Betsy said. Is this a test?”

Lottie propped her hands on her hips. “It was, but y’all didn’t help a bit. It’s a tie goin’ into tomorrow’s business. But right now, supper is ready to put on the table. I made a pot roast and hot rolls. Folks work hard, they need sustenance. So put the broom away and come on to the house. And don’t let those pups in the back door. They ain’t comin’ in my house. If you want dogs in your house when you buy it, if you buy it, then that’s your business, but long as I’m the owner, they are stayin’ outside.”

She rattled on and on as she walked away.

When they couldn’t hear her voice anymore, their eyes caught across the room and high color filled Betsy’s cheeks. “Five minutes earlier, and we’d have been caught.”

“I didn’t know women still knew how to blush.” He grinned as she crossed the room, picked her up, and swung her around.

She giggled. “Well, we near got caught quite literally with our britches down around our ankles.”

“Promise you’ll come to the bunkhouse?”

“Maybe tomorrow night, after we decorate for Christmas. My heart isn’t going to stop thumping until midnight,” she said.

“Because we almost got caught or the sex was that good?” He planted a kiss on her forehead.

“Both,” she said honestly.

Thursday morning, Betsy awoke with a smile on her face after a beautiful dream about Declan. Along with the aroma of sausage and coffee, the dull sound of a conversation going on in the kitchen wafted through the door into her bedroom. She sat up, pushed the covers back, and dressed quickly. One glance out the window made her glad that she was working inside the house for most of the day.

Big snowflakes floated silently from the gray skies that morning. A couple of inches had covered what had been left from the weekend blast, and Burnt Boot was a winter wonderland again.

Declan was setting the table, and Lottie was talking nonstop as usual when Betsy padded to the kitchen in her socks. Her hair was pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck, and she didn’t have a bit of makeup on her face, so the light sprinkling of freckles across her nose shined like bits of coal out there in the snow-covered ground.

“Good morning, beautiful,” Declan whispered as she passed him.

She slid a wink his way and made a beeline for the coffeepot. “Do I smell biscuits and sausage gravy?”

“You got a good nose. Break those eggs into the bowl right there and whip them up. Gravy is about thickened up, and it’s time to get the eggs scrambled. And there’s a little pan of cinnamon rolls in the oven for breakfast dessert. Me and my Leland always liked to have dessert at every meal. I’ve missed having him to talk to this last year, so I’m glad you kids are staying with me these next two weeks. It won’t be so lonely leaving the ranch in good hands, and it gives me someone to talk to. Put just a dab of milk in those eggs so they’ll be fluffy. Nobody likes old, flat eggs.” Lottie always used fifty words where five would do fine.

The doctor said that Leland Miller died from a heart attack, but Betsy wondered if Lottie hadn’t talked him to death. Suddenly, the job of decorating the house for Christmas with Lottie underfoot didn’t seem nearly as exciting as it had when she first awoke that morning.

“Okay, butter is warmed just right. Pour them eggs in this skillet and I’ll put the rest of breakfast on the table. Time we get that done, the eggs will be ready and you can just set them in the skillet to keep them warm. Cast iron cools down right slow, so it will keep them from going cold. Leland loved his eggs for breakfast, but he hated to eat them after they’d got cold.”

Betsy followed orders and hoped that she was passing more tests than Declan because, every day, she wanted the ranch more and more. Lottie sat at the head of the table on one end and Declan had a place at the other end. That put Betsy on the side, where Declan could reach under the table and squeeze her knee or run the toe of his foot up her leg. She could imagine his touch on her skin as surely as if they were back in the hotel room—or the tack room.

“The decorations are all stored down in the bunkhouse,” Lottie was saying when Betsy finally turned off the vision of Declan in all his naked splendor with her body next to his and started listening again, “so I suppose I can trust you two to go together down there and load them in the truck and bring them up to the house. I store them in the closet, and that’s all there is in it, so it won’t be hard to locate. And you know the rules. Any hanky-panky goes on, and I’ll sell this place to one of the O’Donnell cousins. I hear that there’s another one coming up here to spend Christmas with Sawyer and Jill and maybe get hired on over at Fiddle Creek. I swear to God on the Good Book that them O’Donnells are going to take Burnt Boot plumb over. I bet you could kick any mesquite bush between here and Galveston and a dozen O’Donnells would come runnin’ out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Declan smiled.

His foot made its way from her ankle up the outside of her thigh, and she shivered.

“Is it too cold in here, Betsy? Leland liked it cool. Said that breathing hot air wasn’t good for a body, and I was in the kitchen with the oven on half the time, so I was plenty warm, but if it’s too cold, I could throw another log on the fire or jack up the central heat a little. Don’t like to use it no more than I have to since it is more expensive than burning logs.”

Betsy reached over and patted Lottie’s veined hand. “I’m just fine. A goose walked over my grave and made me shiver.”

Lottie’s eyes sparkled. “Leland used to say that. Declan, you’d best have another helping of biscuits and gravy.”

“It’s a fine breakfast, Miz Lottie, but I couldn’t hold another bite. I have to save room for breakfast dessert.”

“Well, fizzle! I nearly forgot that the cinnamon rolls were in the oven.” Lottie jumped up and grabbed a hot pad on her way to the stove.

“Lottie said an
F
word,” Declan whispered.

“She did not,” Betsy argued.

“She said fizzle and that is creative cussin’. Are you going to tell her?”

Betsy shook her head. “No, sir. It might be a test, and I’m not sayin’ a word if she yells the
F
bomb in the middle of church on Sunday morning. I’m not losing a single point.”

“And here they are, fresh from the oven. If we don’t eat them all right now, we’ll take a break about ten o’clock and have a snack with a cup of coffee. Betsy, you can serve us up one each while I refill coffee cups. My Leland’s favorite breakfast dessert was cinnamon rolls, and we always had them the day we decorated the house for Christmas. So, sweetheart”—she looked up at the ceiling—“I’m thinkin’ of you today. Don’t walk up to them pearly gates too fast. I’ll be along to join you before long, and we’ll talk to Saint Peter together.”

Betsy’s eyes misted, but she kept the tears at bay. That’s what she wanted, after she bought the ranch—a love that endured on past this life and into eternity.

“These are delicious,” Declan said.

“Leland thought so. I usually make up a little pan full and put them in the fridge when I make hot rolls for supper. That way they’re ready to pop in the oven the next morning while we’re having breakfast and we can eat them hot. We was married fifty-four years, and even after a year of being without him, I really miss my Leland,” she said wistfully. “But like I said, it’s good that y’all are here the last two weeks of my time in Burnt Boot.”

“I want what you and your Leland had—a love that lasts years with a woman I can work with on this ranch,” Declan said.

“Well, honey, it takes two to make what we had. I hope you find it,” she said.

* * *

The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the fast-falling snow, so Declan drove the old truck slowly down to the bunkhouse. A patchwork quilt covered the bench seat, because the original fabric was worn and had holes in it. The heater worked half speed at best, and not at all on such a short distance. The headliner had long since been ripped away, leaving bare metal showing, and the radio hadn’t worked in years. But the engine purred away like a kitten.

“Reckon we could call in both families and they’d come help us like they did at the bar when we decorated?” he asked Betsy.

“I doubt it very much. Anyone who sets foot on the Double L would have a hell of a time explaining it to our grandmothers,” she answered. “Speaking of that, if you get the ranch, are you renaming it?”

“I haven’t decided. How about you?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. It’s been the Double L for more than fifty years. Be a shame to change it.”

He backed the truck up as close to the bunkhouse porch as he could get it, and they both bailed out at the same time. By the time she reached the door, he had opened it and was standing to one side.

“Welcome, darlin’, to my humble abode. It’s not the mansion at River Bend, but there’s no one in here that will shoot you on the spot.”

She stopped right inside the door and stomped the snow off her boots, onto the inside doormat. He came in behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his cold face in her hair.

“You smell like warm coconut and cold snow,” he whispered.

She whipped around and pressed her body close to his. “Kiss me, cowboy.”

He kicked the door shut with his boot heel right after two puppies raced inside, shook the snow from their fur, and headed straight for the rug in front of the fireplace. He didn’t notice or care what the dogs did. He’d wanted to kiss her since she’d walked into the kitchen that morning with sleep still in her eyes.

Her lips tasted sweet, like cinnamon with a hint of coffee, and he could have stood there forever kissing her and feeling her body next to his, but she pulled away.

“I do believe that was hanky-panky, and you can bet your sweet, sexy ass that Lottie looked at the clock when we left. I bet if we’re not back in twenty minutes, she will blast through that door to see what we’re doing,” Betsy said.

“I looked that up in the dictionary.” He followed her to the closet and groaned.

“What?”

“Hanky-panky. I looked it up in the dictionary.”

“And what did it say in there? I believe I have a damn good idea, but give it to me in technical terms. Holy smoke, Declan, there is a pickup load of decorations here. She must have the house like that one in the movie I saw when I was a kid.”

“The Griswolds’ house?”

“That’s the one, and tell me the definition.”

“According to the dictionary it is”—he pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket and read—“hanky-panky is ‘frivolous and slightly indecent sexual activity.’ Kissing is not a sexual activity so we haven’t broken a rule.”

“Today.” She giggled. “Can’t testify about yesterday, but so far today, we’ve not indulged in hanky-panky.”

“And by the time we get all this up in the house and on the house, we’ll be too tired,” he said.

“Speak for yourself,” she said. “But wait, you have a poker game tonight, after we do all this.”

“I’d forgotten. I’ll try to get out of the game before midnight if you’ll be waiting on me right there on that bed.” He pointed through a door into his bedroom.

“At which time rules, like piecrust, will be broken?” She picked up the top box and headed outside.

“I certainly hope so,” Declan said.

* * *

The boxes were unloaded in the kitchen, and Lottie danced around giving orders. The first thing they were going to do was put up the tree, and from the weather report Lottie’d gotten on the radio while they were gone, the snow was supposed to let up right at noon. So the inside of the house would be first, and then Betsy and Declan could take care of the outside decorations.

“Oh, it’s going to be lovely for our last year here, Leland. I hope you are looking down from heaven and liking everything we’re doing. Oh, we need Christmas music,” she said.

She opened the top of an old stereo system with a turntable and removed a stack of vinyl records from behind a door on one side. “We’ll each choose one. These were mine and Leland’s favorites.”

It was no surprise that they were all country music, all older artists, and that most of them had several artists on one record. When they’d all picked one, Lottie put them on the turntable and music filled the small house. More than a little bit scratchy and a lot of twangy guitar and whining fiddles, it made Betsy think of the old holiday movies she liked to watch every year.

Declan removed the artificial tree from the box held together with both masking and duct tape. “Looks like this has been around for a while.”

“Forty years. Them first years we went out in the woods and cut a tree, and every year my Leland would take sick during the holidays. Took me a while to figure out it wasn’t the weather but that damned cedar tree, so I saved up my egg money all year and bought that one, and he didn’t get sick no more. Y’all might do well to remember this, whichever one of you gets the place, that there is a little part of the land in the back forty corner that I have to fight the cedar on. I keep them brush hogged off every spring, but if you don’t take care of them, they’ll take over the place.”

“I’ll remember. We had to fight those damned things at Wild Horse more than the mesquite,” Betsy said.

Lottie shook her finger at Betsy. “One more cuss word and the contest won’t be tied no more. This is your warning.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Betsy said.

Lottie declared that the tree had to sit in front of the big window overlooking the front lawn. “That way, it can be seen when folks drive down the lane, while they’re out lookin’ at the lights. Me and my Leland, we got a big kick out of driving around and seein’ what everybody else was fixin’ up for the holidays.”

The house phone rang and she threw up her palms. “Y’all go on and get it all fixed and ready while I answer this. I hope that it’s not Verdie. She’ll keep me talking for hours. That woman talks more than anyone I ever knew.”

Betsy rolled her eyes toward Declan, who stifled a chuckle and handed Betsy an armload of artificial tree limbs to stick into the metal tree trunk he’d set up.

“I think these go in the bottom, since they are longer. I’ll do the top ones,” he said.

Lottie was in the kitchen on a corded wall phone, out of sight, so when Betsy bent over to put the very bottom limbs on the tree, his hand cupped her bottom and gave it a gentle squeeze. She jumped like she’d been shot and glanced in the direction of Lottie’s voice.

Declan’s arms went around her, and he kissed her long, hard, and passionately. She forgot where she was, what she was doing, and the stakes if they got caught in Lottie’s living room, for God’s sake, and clung to him after the kiss ended. Then reality hit, and she took a step back, stumbled over the coffee table, and fell backward onto the sofa.

“Are you crazy?” she whispered.

“Couldn’t resist, and besides, she can’t see through walls. So are you inviting me to make out with you on that big, old, soft sofa?”

“Hell no! And if you tell on me for cussin’, I’ll file sexual harassment charges on you with Lottie for touching my butt,” she teased. “And we’d best have that tree ready for decorations before she gets back.”

He extended a hand and pulled up her to a standing position, tipped up her chin, looked deeply into her eyes, and kissed her on the tip of the nose. “This is the ugliest tree I’ve ever seen. The only hope it has is if we completely cover it up with decorations.”