Mistletoe Mayhem: Clean Historical Western Cowboy Romance Novel (Dawson Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

              Her chin rose and her delicate nostrils flared.  She was offended over being accused of cowardice, but he was right.  Why should she let the naysayers win or get in the way of loving Joey?  And how she loved him!  He was so handsome, kind, and sweet.  She knew that a lot of people wouldn’t believe how tender and thoughtful he could be.  He was always bringing her little things like candy or a new quartz rock because he knew how much she liked their sparkle.

              He was the only boy she’d ever been with, but she doubted that any other could ever be a more intense lover than him.  Their attraction was potent and unstoppable.  They were always careful, neither of them wanting a baby at that point in their lives.  Knowing that he was waiting for an answer, she looked into his hazel eyes that appeared mint-green in the dim moonlight.  Like his sister, Emily, he was a younger version of his father.  His strong jaw and well-muscled body created a hunger inside her that she knew would never be quenched.

              Rising up on her knees, Snow Song pressed her lips to his, encircling his neck and pulling him close.  His response was swift and passionate.  Then he broke away from her.

              “Does this mean what I think it does?  Are you ready for people to know about us?”

              “Yes, I’m ready,” she said, smiling.

              Joey wanted to shout for joy, but he kissed her instead before pulling away again.  “I have to ask your daddy for permission to court you first.  I’ll ask him right away tomorrow.  I love you so much and I won’t let anyone say anything bad.  I’ll take on the whole town if I have to.  You’ll see.”

              Just as his lips were about to claim hers, a deep voice asked, “Why wait?  Why not ask me right now?”

              Joey froze.  “Did you hear that?  Please tell me it was just my imagination,” he whispered.

              “I wish I could,” she whispered back.

              Quickly putting distance between them, Joey stood up.  Although his heart pounded with fear, Joey was determined to face Raven with bravery, knowing how much the Lakota admired it in the face of adversity.

              “All right.  I will,” he said, meeting Raven’s eyes.  “I love your daughter very much, more than anything in this world.  I would do anything for her—fight anyone for her, even you, if that’s what it took.  I would’ve already asked you, but she didn’t want anyone to know about us because of all the tensions about race right now.  So I honored her wishes and didn’t say anything.  But I want everything to be out in the open now and to court her properly.  I’ll always treat her with respect and love.  Will you let me court Snow Song?”

              Raven’s gaze moved from Joey to Snow Song and he saw love and hope in her eyes.  His heart softened slightly, remembering what it had been like when he and his wife, Zoe, had been courting.  However, he’d heard Joey say that they’d been intimate and this was very serious to him, as it was to many parents.

              “You took Snow Song’s virginity.”  It wasn’t a question.

              Snow Song gasped.  “Pa!  That’s none of your business.”

              “Wrong, daughter.  It is.  A man should never do that unless he is married to the woman, or at least intends to marry her,” Raven said.

              “Stop it!” Snow Song said through gritted teeth.  “Just stop it!”

              Raven didn’t often become angry, but he did now.  “It is my right as a father to look out for you!  You have given something to him that you shouldn’t have.  He says he loves you, but there is no guarantee, no assurance that he will stay with you.  He has been with other girls the whole time he has been seeing you, however long that is.  He is just like his father that way.”

              Incensed, Joey walked right up to Raven and actually poked his chest.  “Now you listen to me, Mr. Dwyer.  I’ve only been with one girl before Snow Song and it was only one time.  Seeing those other girls was just an act so that people didn’t suspect I was seeing Snow Song. 

              “And don’t you insult my father.  He taught us boys to treat women with more respect than he did.  He taught us to be better men than he was when he was younger.  I can’t speak for my brothers, but I’m a one-woman man.”

              Raven was impressed by his courage and the direct way Joey looked into his eyes.  He might not have picked up Joe’s Southern accent the way Emily had, but Joey’s manner of speaking was much like Joe’s.  He liked that Joey was protective of Snow Song and also of his father, for whom he had great respect and affection.  Raven’s statements had only been a test to see how Joey would react.

Years ago, Joe had adopted Raven so he’d be eligible for land ownership.  It wasn’t meant to establish a father-son relationship, rather it represented sponsorship and great friendship.  Raven had taken Joe’s last name out of gratitude for Joe selling the camp land to the tribe. 

Whether Snow Song liked it or not, Raven planned to secure her future.  “I’m glad to hear that.  Then you have no reservations about marrying her,” he said, further testing Joey.

              Snow Song let out a frustrated noise.  “Don’t talk about me as though I’m not here!  That’s between me and Joey!”

              Joey rose to Raven’s challenge, knowing that he was questioning his commitment to Snow Song.  “No reservations whatsoever, sir.”

              Raven hadn’t expected that and one of his brows arched in surprise.

              “Joey, don’t let him intimidate you!  He’s just being a bully.”

              Joey smiled at her.  “No, he’s being a father, that’s all.  He’s not intimidating me.  He’s just lookin’ out for his little girl, honey.  If I had no intention of marrying you, I’d say so.  You know me; I say what I feel.”

              “We’re too young,” Snow Song said.  “Besides, this isn’t how I want to be proposed to!”

              Raven felt badly about that, but he knew from the physical way he’d seen the two of them interact that they weren’t going to stop that side of their relationship.  The only way that would be curtailed is if they were constantly under watchful eyes, and even then, they would find a way to be together. 

His daughter was tricky and brave—a bad combination for a parent to have in a teenaged child.  Even he, a trained warrior, hadn’t known she had left the house.  Maybe he was getting soft.  Of course, she’d been raised Lakota so moving silently had been ingrained in her.

              She could become pregnant no matter how careful they were, if at all.  He didn’t want his daughter to marry because she’d gotten in trouble.  He wanted her to marry for love, the same way he and Zoe had.

              “She’s right about that,” Joey said.  “That sort of thing should be left to the beau.  Besides, you haven’t even given me permission to court her, let alone marry her.”

              Raven couldn’t stay completely serious in the face of Joey’s disarming smile.  His mouth curved upwards as he thought about what his father would do.  If Black Fox had taught him anything over the years, it was to not rush to judgement and to give stressful situations careful consideration before acting.  This was a decision that Zoe and he should make together.  “Come back tomorrow night at seven and bring your parents.  We’ll discuss this then.”

              “Yes, sir.  I’ll do that.  Thank you for not saying no right away,” Joey said. 

He quickly kissed Snow Song’s cheek and ran off, throwing a devilish grin back at them before disappearing from sight.  Snow Song glared at Raven before walking away angrily.  Raven sighed and waited a moment before following her to their house.

*****

              Sawyer hopped up the steps with his crutches onto his grandparents’ front porch and opened the door.  “Hi, Grandma.”

              “Oh, Sawyer,” she said, smiling.  “Let me help you with the door.”  Once she’d assisted him inside, she kissed his cheek.  “How are you feeling today?”

              “Bored.  Everyone is busy or in town.”

              Sympathy shone in her blue eyes.  “In other words, you’re desperate for some company and since I’m the only one around …”

              Sawyer smiled at her unsaid meaning.  “No, I’m not desperate.  Actually, it’s nice to have a little time alone with you.  Feel like making cookies?”

              Tessa laughed.  “We always had the best time doing that, didn’t we?”

              “We’d get flour all over the kitchen, but we made the best cookies,” Sawyer said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

              “Yes, we did,” Tessa agreed.  “Well, as you can see, I’m knee deep in all of this.”  She waved her hands around at piles of pictures, journals, and other papers that littered the table and counters.

              Sawyer picked up a journal and opened it.  The handwriting inside said it belonged to Marcus.  “What are you doing?”

              “Well, at our library meeting last week, we decided to create a historical society since Dawson doesn’t have one.  We’ve been collecting all sorts of things over the last couple of years, but we’re finally getting serious about doing something with it,” she said.

              Sawyer saw something he could do while he was laid up and said, “I’ll help organize it.  There has to be tons of history here.  We’ll have to put it in chronological order as best we can.  We’ll have to cross-reference it all so that certain events in the journals and these other papers that coincided can be put together.”

              Tessa’s eyes sparkled with amusement.  “You sound just like D.J.  He’s always been such a stickler about that sort of thing.”

              “Who do you think taught me?”

              “Let me run this idea by you.  I don’t want all of this made into some crusty, dry book that nobody will ever want to read.  I want it to be dramatic and exciting.  I want the history of Dawson to come alive for the people who read it a hundred or so years from now,” she said.  “I think it should be a novel—but factual, of course.”

              Sawyer looked around at the mountain of material.  “There’s no way all of this can be put into just one book.  It’s still going to be a history book of sorts, Grandma.”

              “Not if it’s done correctly.”

              As a famous novelist, Tessa’s mind worked more in the fictional realm, but she always tried to research subjects thoroughly to have the most accurate depictions possible. 

              “I’m not following you.”

              “What if whoever writes about us all did it in novel form?  Told our history through stories that are true?  I mean, there will have to be a certain amount of creative license taken, but if the meat of the stories is true, then the history of Dawson will be preserved in a unique, entertaining way that people will enjoy reading,” she explained.

              Sawyer warmed to the idea.  “I see what you’re saying.  That would be great.  Aren’t you going to write it?”

              She laughed.  “Goodness, no.  I simply don’t have the time a project of this magnitude would require.  My time is taken up between the library and helping at the Literacy Center.  And now the Historical Society.”

              “Well, I can’t write it.  I’m great with a camera and I can write pretty good captions and short articles, but I don’t have the kind of talent and skill it’s gonna take to do something like that,” Sawyer said.  “But the least we can do is organize it as much as possible so that whoever does write it will have an easier time of it.  That part I’m good at.”

              “Excellent!  I accept your help.  Your grandfather tried, but it just isn’t his area of expertise.  He would look at a picture and start to reminisce about the subject matter, which was actually very entertaining and informative,” Tessa said.

              “Grandma!  I should conduct interviews doing that!  Do you know how much more information we could get doing that?”  Sawyer became very excited.  “I’ll just show people a picture and have them tell me about it.”

              Tessa grabbed his forearm.  “That’s a splendid idea!  I’ll make us some lunch and we’ll dig in organizing this and then you can start doing that.”

              Sawyer said, “I’ve got the time since I can’t do any ranch work or travel around taking pictures for the paper.  It’s a worthy project, too.”

              “I’m so glad you came over right now.  Of course, I’m always happy to see you and we’ve all missed you so much,” she said.  “Well, how does ham and bean soup sound?  I made a fresh loaf of bread this morning and there’s some apple pie left from yesterday.”

              “Sounds great,” Sawyer said. 

              They spent the whole afternoon sorting the pictures into groups of the same subject matter, making lists, and organizing all of the various journals into chronological order.  Sawyer said that he would pick up some photo albums to put the pictures in because it would make it easier to transport them in an organized fashion.  So engrossed were they in their work that they didn’t realize that five o’clock had come, the usual time that all of the ranchers quit for the day.

              They heard Dean and Sunny, his and Tessa’s youngest child, come up onto the porch, laughing about something.