Читать книгу Midnight Faith - Gena Dalton - Страница 10

All he had to do was simply not think of Cait as a woman.

Impatiently Clint popped the shine cloth across the toe of his right boot one more time, put that foot to the floor and set his left one up onto the woven-bark footstool. It was stupid that he’d ever even noticed that she was a woman, anyhow.

She was his brother’s wife—widow or not—for heaven’s sake! She was forward and stubborn and she had no tact whatsoever in any situation. He didn’t have the slightest interest in her.

Except, of course, as to how her cockeyed school was going to impact his ranch operations. He popped the cloth in the air and then pulled it vigorously across his already-shiny left boot.

He snorted. Her staying out of everybody’s way and using only the old outdoor pen was nothing but a pipe dream. Just let the temperature go above a hundred, let the wind blow dust in their eyes at forty miles an hour, and Caitlin and her little-rich-girl clients would be cluttering up the indoor arena from one end to the other. They’d turn the whole place upside down and probably drive his trainers so crazy they’d quit.

And that kind of trouble he did not need—especially not now, when he was making so many decisions about the ranch and its future. He absolutely would not lose two top trainers who were winning at all the big shows and bringing attention and dollars to the ranch.

What he would do was find a way to get Cait’s silly school off this ranch and to another location as soon as humanly possible. He’d talk to Bobbie Ann and start pushing for that just as soon as Christmas was over.

He could see his face in his boot, so he threw the rag back into the wooden box and went to wash his hands before he touched his white shirt. It was time to go downstairs and get on with this poor excuse for a Christmas Eve. Dad, John and Monte all being absent was an unbearable thought, especially for the late-night hot-chocolate family time, and Caitlin’s presence was the icing on the cake. As if he didn’t have enough to think about!

All he wanted was to get this Christmas over with.

Tonight he would simply look at Caitlin as a sister-in-law, exactly as he did Darcy, Jackson’s new wife. That was the one bright spot of the past year—Jackson’s sudden marriage and his gradual rejoining of the human race.

Clint tucked in his shirt, went to the armoire for a belt, selected the saddle-tan one that matched the boots, put a buckle on it and threaded it through the loops of his pants. It would serve Caitlin right, pushy as she was, if he did convince Bobbie Ann that this riding school business was a bad idea. He had a ranch to run, he was responsible for everything that happened on it, he didn’t have time to deal with the trouble Caitlin was bound to bring to it and he didn’t owe her the time of day.

He hooked the buckle, gave his hair one last, quick swipe with the brush and headed for the door. Well, if he were perfectly honest, he did owe Cait an apology. That crack he’d made about family traditions had been cruel and he hated the sharp pain it had brought to her big dark eyes.

Least said, soonest forgotten, though. No sense in bringing it up and hurting her feelings all over again.

He strode across his room and out into the hallway, glancing toward the guest rooms on that wing. Cait had slept all day, Bobbie Ann had said—not that he’d asked about her—and he’d heard that before breakfast, even, Manuel had asked her for instructions so his crew could feed her horses and take care of them for her.

Poor Manuel. Evidently he was as goofy as all men were about the tall, black-haired, long-legged horsewoman with the million-dollar smile. He’d probably hire a couple more stable hands just to wait on her hand and foot.

He started down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Manuel had said her horses were good, sound stock but not world-class. Said half of them weren’t tall enough to compete in English classes, which was Cait’s specialty over at Roy’s.

That right there made him wonder what she was really up to. Maybe she was planning a horse-trading business here on his ranch, where all the chores were done efficiently and on schedule and any problems would be taken care of by him and Manuel.

Which, come to think of it, would explain her smiling at him this morning and teasing him and saying let’s not fight, when they had never been in the same room in their lives when they didn’t fuss and wrangle about something. That must be it.

All Cait wanted from him was free rent at an efficiently run stable.

Even if that were true, though, it didn’t excuse him for not helping her unload and get her horses settled. He felt ashamed every time he thought about that—he would’ve extended the courtesy to anybody else in the world, since none of the hands had come to work yet.

He had never shown anyone such a lack of hospitality.

What was it about Cait that made him behave like a stranger to himself?

What was it about Cait that made him obsess about her every time he saw her?

Cait hardly knew the woman who looked back at her from the mirror.

She wore a skirt, for one thing, a very feminine, clingy, black velvet skirt cut with a bell flare at the below-calf hem, and with it, a white silk blouse that had cost as much as a good work saddle. Never in her entire life had she owned such an expensive garment. She still could not believe she had bought it.

Or that the moment she’d tried it on at that expensive shop in Dallas, she’d thought of Clint. Had imagined Clint seeing her in it.

Tears stung her eyes at her own foolishness, but she forced herself to blink them away and meet her own gaze.

“Face reality,” she told her reflection.

She hadn’t survived this long without knowing how to do that.

Lifting her chin, she looked it right in the eye: Clint might be attracted to her, too—maybe—but what he also felt for her was scorn.

And she was not accepting any scorn tonight.

Tonight was Christmas Eve. She was invited to a family celebration. Of her family.

For the four months of her marriage to John, the two of them had lived on the ranch in a small house about two miles away from headquarters. They had come back from their elopement in time for New Year’s Eve and she’d been in the family for Easter that year, but this was her first Christmas.

Tears stung her eyes. How could she ever have believed it would be a true Christmas without John?

If she had gone with him to Mexico instead of doing her job for Roy, would it have saved him—as Clint believed it would?

Dear Lord, I hope I wasn’t the cause of his dying. Please help me know, once again, that I wasn’t.

Most of the time she clung to the assurance she’d achieved through hours of prayer after the very first time she’d heard that theory, which was by accidentally overhearing a conversation between Clint and Jackson at John’s funeral. Today, though, Clint’s accusation had shaken her.

Her heart beat faster. She tightened the combs holding the mass of her hair on top of her head and pulled at the tendrils curling along her neck.

John was gone. Nothing could bring him back. He would not want her to be sad and mourn for him when she should be happy. He would want her to help make his family happy, too.

Deliberately she set her mind to that goal.

It would be a storybook Christmas—family and friends, a huge tree with ornaments that had been in the family for years and years, a festive dinner, gifts, traditions and singing. They would have hot chocolate late, right before they went up to bed. After the old family friends and their Christmas guests came and then left after appetizers and drinks and a dance or two, after the family dinner was over and they’d all sat around telling stories and singing carols and after they’d opened one gift apiece. She would be here for all of it because she was one of the family.

Eagerly she turned and went out into the hallway, savoring the spacious, secure feeling of the old stone house around her. Closing the door of her room behind her, she leaned back against it for a moment, just taking in the scents and sounds of the house before she saw anyone else.

This was the most wonderful house she’d ever been in. The center of it was old, a classic, two-story Texas Hill Country farmhouse squarely built of big, rectangular chunks of limestone carved more than a hundred years earlier out of the dusty land itself. It had the typical wooden porches front and back, and wings on either end of the old house, which had been added on fifty years later.

When those wings were built, the once-small oldest rooms in the center had been converted into a couple of huge ones—the great room and the dining room. The part of the kitchen that held the fireplace also had been in the original house. There were nooks and crannies in these rooms and huge rough-cedar posts and beams bearing the weight of the second floor. All the rooms had high ceilings and wide windows and ceiling fans and the solid feel of a home that had its roots deep in the ground.

She looked up and down the hall of this bedroom wing. Old Man Clint, John’s grandfather, had believed every bedroom should have the south breeze or the east breeze or both if possible, so this east wing was family bedrooms and guest rooms, while the west one held a pool room, music room, saddle room, library and spaces for Bobbie Ann’s sewing and other activities.

But what Cait loved most was not the space—although it amazed her every time she walked through it—it was the old, settled, secure atmosphere created by the worn oak floors, the square Mexican tiles of the kitchen, the leather furniture that had been there since the house was built, the Navajo rugs on the floors and the walls, the wood worn smooth by much use and many hands, the gorgeous Western paintings and sculptures that had gradually come into the house over the years and now looked as if they’d been born there.

This family had not moved out in the night when the rent was due. This family had not splintered into pieces and sent its children to live with the first relatives who would grudgingly take them.

The long, deep nap that had erased her tiredness had left her senses all open and vulnerable. She trembled as she breathed in the cedar smell of the greenery Bobbie Ann had wrapped around the banister railing of the stairs. There was a strong scent of spices, too, because every few feet a bundle of cinnamon sticks and oranges studded with whole nutmegs were tied into the cedar with a big red bow.

A marvelous Christmas that she’d never forget. That’s what John had promised her. And that’s what he would want her to have.

She started walking down the hall, and passed Clint’s room. The door stood ajar, the light was out. He was already downstairs.

Fine. Let him be anywhere he wanted. She didn’t have to talk to him. She wasn’t accepting any scorn tonight.

Slowly she walked down the stairs, humming along with the song floating up from below. John had said that his sister Delia’s band always played for the dancing. Right now, though, it was a lone guitar playing “White Christmas.”

Well, there was no chance of snow in the Hill Country tonight, but Cait didn’t care. She didn’t even need it. In fact, she didn’t want it. It would only remind her of the miserable Christmases of her childhood.

Chatter and laughter rose, then, to drown out the guitar and to fill the whole downstairs. The doorbell rang again as Cait reached the first floor. And she could smell chili. Chili and tamales were the McMahan tradition on Christmas Eve.

Company was the other McMahan tradition. There were six or seven families who had all been friends for generations, and they and any Christmas guests of theirs came to the Rocking M for appetizers and drinks before dinner on Christmas Eve. Probably, in the next two hours, at least a hundred people would come and go from this house.

LydaAnn’s trilling laugh sounded above the din of greetings called out by a dozen different voices. Bobbie Ann demanded that all the guests take off their coats and stay awhile.

Christmas had arrived at the Rocking M.

Cait lingered at the bottom of the stairs, kicking out so she could see her new, custom-made-in-Dallas-by-Matteo black boots. Matteo had created the design just for her: red roses and green, twining vines, carved to have layers and layers of petals and stems, plus white butterflies, all of it inlaid and stitched to perfection.

Western boots with the old traditional high, slanted heels and pointed toes. She could have spent less and gotten a great new pair of English riding boots, which she truly needed, but then she wouldn’t feel so much like a Texan, would she?

She grinned at her own silliness and started down the hall toward the huge living room full of people. Maybe no one would notice when she came in and she could just wander around and enjoy the tree and not have to make too much small talk.

“Cait! My goodness! What a gorgeous blouse!”

Bobbie Ann was coming out of the living room with her arms full of wraps and jackets of the guests. Cait went to help her.

“And those boots! Oh! I have to see them. Hold up your skirt!”

“It’s all your fault, Bobbie Ann,” Cait said. “You’ve been telling me to indulge myself, so I did.”

Bobbie Ann’s bright blue eyes looked her over from top to toe.

“You done good, girl,” she said, with an approving smile. “You look wonderful tonight.”

She let Cait take half her load and led the way toward the master suite.

“I bought this blouse, these boots and seven head of horses,” Cait said. “Did I indulge myself enough?”

Bobbie Ann gave her husky chuckle.

“No, but it’s a start,” she said. “I’ll take you shopping after Christmas and we’ll buy you a wardrobe for spring.”

“I don’t want any more clothes,” Cait said quickly, although the very thought made her yearn to do it. “And I won’t have time, anyhow. As soon as I finish working for Roy every day, I’ll have to rush over here and protect my school—Clint is furious at the very idea of it.”

“Clint needs a distraction,” Bobbie Ann said calmly. “He’s trying to work himself to death. Anything new is good for him.”

They dumped the coats on the bed and Bobbie Ann turned to Cait with open arms.

“Oh, Cait, I’m so glad you’re here,” she said.

Cait’s heart leapt as they hugged. Clint might not want her here, but his mother truly did.

“I’m glad, too,” she said. “Thanks for asking me for Christmas, Bobbie Ann.”

“Thanks for coming.”

Bobbie Ann stepped back and looked up into her eyes.

“I couldn’t have borne it if you’d refused my invitation, Cait,” she said. “You’re all I have left of John.”

She took Cait’s hand and led her toward the festivities then, but Cait’s heart had dropped into her new boots. Was that the only reason Bobbie Ann wanted her there? Did she not love her for herself at all?

Clint stood in front of the fireplace talking to Pete Kirkland—well, listening to him would be more like it—and wondering how soon he could get away to circulate among the other guests. Delia’s band was playing, a lot of people were dancing and he needed to dance with Aunt Faylene because that had been their own private Christmas Eve ritual since he was ten years old.

He also needed to be sure he had a good visit with Larry Matheson, because he was talking about breeding a couple of his best champion mares to the Rocking M’s new young cutting stallion, Trader Doc Bar. Larry was nothing if not stylish and a leader in the industry, and his enthusiastic support of the stallion could fill the stud’s book for next year and mark him as the up-and-coming best in the business. It was worth far more than any paid advertising ever could be.

One thing he did not need to do was apologize to Cait. That would only encourage her to settle in here with her horses.

He tried to covertly glance at his watch. It already felt as if this evening had lasted a year.

Fortunately, just when he thought he couldn’t stay in one spot any longer, the doorbell rang and he excused himself from Pete to go to answer it. His parents’ lifetime friends, the Carmacks, and the twenty-two guests they were having for Christmas this year poured in through the door.

Lorena Carmack laughed as she kissed Clint’s cheek.

“They swarmed on us this time,” she said. “Aren’t you glad this tradition is only bring all your own guests for appetizers and drinks and not for dinner, too?”

“Ma’s made enough chili for everybody in Texas,” Clint said hospitably. “Y’all should stay.”

“Truly spoken like a man,” she said. “We can tell you’re not the one arranging the place settings, Clint dear.”

He ushered them into the already-crowded great room and was in the middle of introductions all around when Bobbie Ann called to him. He looked up…and saw Cait.

All the music and the talk faded away beneath the roaring of his own blood in his head.

Cait was beautiful. He had been wrong about that.

He had never seen her in a skirt, and this one fell over her body like a sunrise coming over the land, touching here and there and then sliding away. She was all softness, all creamy skin and white silk and black velvet. She didn’t seem like Cait at all.

She seemed like a stranger.

Except for her unmistakable presence, the way she held herself and the way she moved that drew the eye of everyone in the room. She still had that distinctive, long-strided walk that said, I know where I’m going and nobody’d better get in my way.

The eternal challenge of her was the same. Except for an added one—the tumbled mass of black curls piled high on top of her head made a man want to take out the pins and run his hands through her hair.

Her eyes looked like black velvet—like her skirt.

Finally they rested on him. Just for an instant.

“Cait, honey, you know the Carmacks, don’t you?” Bobbie Ann said, and she and Lorena began the introductions all over again.

Cait spoke to everyone in the group except him. No one else noticed. Two of the young men in the group—he thought they were Carmack grandsons—monopolized her as soon as they could.

And then she was gone, drifting away with those boys after a pat on the arm from Bobbie Ann, who was shepherding the Carmack group toward the tables full of food.

Clint just stood there for a long minute, looking after her. Then, mercifully, Aunt Faylene came to claim him.

It was the novelty of it, he decided as he danced with Faylene. Simple novelty was the reason she was getting so much attention from everyone.

Why, he, himself couldn’t help but watch Cait in spite of a firm resolution not to give her so much as a glance more than the cool one she’d given him.

No one at the party had ever seen her in a dress before. Few of them, if any, had ever seen her at a social function.

It was the men, as always, who were most fascinated.

Those two young Carmack kids were sticking with her, but several others had joined them, vying for her attention to their jokes and stories. Clint set his jaw and guided Faylene in the opposite direction.

“That Cait’s a knockout, isn’t she?” his aunt said.

Faylene was nearly as good as Bobbie Ann in reading a man’s mind in a New York minute.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Half the men here can’t see anything but her and the other half are the old codgers with failing eyesight.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

His lack of response didn’t discourage her one bit.

“She’s exotic, that’s one reason,” she said, “besides being so drop-dead striking in every way. You know what I think makes her so interesting?”

That brought his gaze straight to her sharp blue one, so like his mother’s. Faylene indulged herself in one gleam of triumph before she answered the question in his look.

“She’s different from other women because she gives no quarter.”

He looked at her.

“Like the old Texas Rangers?”

“Exactly.”

“She’s from Chicago, Faylie.”

She ignored his little sally.

“Everything about Cait proclaims it,” she said seriously. “The look in her eye, the way she walks, the way she keeps her head in her business all the time. No man can resist a challenge like that.”

“Hmpf.”

Faylene went right on.

“A man gets one chance with Cait,” she said. “One.”

A strange, sharp feeling, like a warning, pierced him.

“One’s enough when he gets the rough side of her tongue.”

“Cait’s a direct-talking woman,” she said. “Y’all are just used to us Texas women sugarcoating everything for you.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “You and Bobbie Ann are the champion sugarcoaters of all time. Steel magnolias is more like it.”

“Well, we all have our own styles,” his diminutive aunt said sweetly as she looked up at him with a beatific smile. “I, for one, admire a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. Cait’s bound to be a world-class horsewoman and she will be.”

“What’ve you heard about that?”

Maybe Bobbie Ann had talked to her sister about Cait’s silly riding school. Maybe he could get some ammunition here to stop it.

But no. Faylene had her own ideas about what was important information.

“You can see she’s Black Irish,” she said in a reproving tone. “Same as your great-grandpa Murphy—except his eyes were blue. But his hair was midnight-black, just like Cait’s.”

“So, Jackson must look like him,” Clint said, hoping to get her off the subject of Cait.

At least until this endless waltz could be over. Didn’t Delia’s arms ever get tired of that fiddle?

“You look like your great-grandpa, too,” Faylene said. “Tall and black-haired and handsome as can be. Your eyes are different, though—gray as mist instead of blue.” She smiled as if he needed comfort. “That’s why I used Jackson for an example instead of you.” He returned her smile. She was his favorite aunt. “Ooh,” she said, “I can’t wait until Jackson and Darcy get here! I still could just spank them for having that tiny wedding in the old chapel instead of letting us throw them a great big one. There’s five hundred people with their feelings hurt….”

But he couldn’t let well enough be. He’d distracted her and now he had to bring her back.

One of the young men appeared to be asking Cait to dance. She was shaking her head and smiling a refusal.

“What does being Black Irish have to do with being a world-class horsewoman?”

Faylene flashed him an incredulous look.

“The Irish have an affinity for horses, you know that. Their emotions and their spirits run deep and they have a strong connection with things unseen.”

Clint had to grin at her seriousness.

“The Comanches had a connection with horses,” he said.

“Same with them,” Faylene said promptly. “Close to the earth—the Comanches and the Irish.”

“Giving no quarter, like the Texas Rangers.”

“Right!”

She beamed at him.

He laughed and hugged her as Delia’s fiddle finally sang out the last note.

“Thanks for the dance and the information, too, Auntie Fay,” he said.

“Any time, lovey.”

Then the question on his mind came off his tongue of its own accord.

“Why do you think she married John?”

Faylene narrowed her blue eyes and stared up at him.

“Nobody but Cait knows that, sugar,” she said. “Whatever I’d say about it would only be speculation.”

Clint grinned.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to push you into speculation,” he said dryly, “since everything else you’ve told me tonight has been ironclad fact.”

“That’s exactly right,” she said, twinkling at him.

Then she patted him on the arm and hurried off, waving at Jim Prescott. Suddenly she stopped and looked back.

“Sometime she might tell you herself, sweetie,” she said.

Oh, sure. Sometime when he and Cait became best buddies.

Immediately, without so much as a glance toward Cait and her admirers, he started looking for Larry. The reason Cait had married John was totally immaterial to him and he had no idea why he’d asked that question out loud.

He didn’t even want to know. All he wanted was to make the Rocking M the premier breeding station in the reining-horse industry, and in the meantime come up with new stallions to take over the cutting-and pleasure-horse market, too.

And he also wanted to make some waves with his cattle. Might as well dream big. He was the oldest brother, and he’d always been the most responsible one, so perhaps the whole ranch was meant to fall on his shoulders. Jackson was the next oldest, and he was here on the Rocking M and, in time, might come to share the burden.

Monte, the third one born, had always been the wildest, and John, the baby brother, had always been the gentlest, the kindest, the best. Maybe it was true that the good die young.

Maybe it was true that even if both of them were still here, neither would want to make the ranch his main concern for all his life. He, Clint, would just have to accept life the way it was.

Maybe if he made his challenges big enough, and took big enough risks to try to meet them, he’d forget all about this lonely funk he was in, and the ridiculous riding school, too.

The whole time he was visiting with Larry, though, he couldn’t keep from glancing around for Cait from time to time. Just out of curiosity as to how she was handling herself. She did finally escape from the younger men but, just as she tried to slip out into the kitchen, his grandfather’s old friend Mac Torrance caught up with her. Clearly he was asking her to dance but she refused him, too.

Finally he and Larry sealed the deal to book his three best mares and Clint moved on to visit with some other guests. The next thing he knew, the band was playing a fast song, LydaAnn and her friend Janie were starting a line dance and Cait had disappeared.

The noise level in the room rose another notch. At least it sounded like a merry Christmas Eve on the Rocking M, in spite of all the sadness of the year just past.

Bobbie Ann came by with a fresh platter of tortilla chips and her famous salsa dip.

“You’d better go get in that line and dance,” she said. “Or your sisters will be on your case.”

“I danced with Faylene. That’s enough dancing for tonight.”

“Delia and LydaAnn are trying so hard to make this be Christmas, Clint,” she said, frowning. “Help ’em out all you can.”

Irritation stabbed through him.

“I’ve been working this crowd like a politician,” he snapped. “What more do they want?”

“How about a smile?” she said. “I’d like to see one of those from you, myself.”

Thoroughly annoyed, he glanced away.

And there was Cait, standing alone in the book-lined alcove that held the Remington sculpture, thumbing through a book she’d opened on the table.

“Now, there’s a family member—according to you, Ma,” he said. “Why don’t you go tell her to do her duty and get out there in line?”

Bobbie Ann gazed at him thoughtfully.

“She even refused to dance with poor old Mac,” Clint groused. “It embarrassed him. And she hasn’t talked to anyone but those kids with the Carmacks.”

“I’m thinking this is all a bit overwhelming for Cait,” his mother said softly. “Don’t you think so? What with her background and all?”

Shame hit him again, like a fist to the gut. When it came to Cait, he was just piling up the guilt.

But he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Standing there so still, looking down at that book so intently, she held her head at a vulnerable angle. The soft light limned her beautiful neck and shoulders, shadow fell across her face. She studied that book without moving a muscle.

“She isn’t accustomed to big social gatherings,” Bobbie Ann said softly. “Our Cait is a bit of a loner.”

Our Cait. Clint didn’t even challenge that. He was too busy trying to fend off the unnameable feelings washing through him as he looked at this Cait he’d never seen before.

Finally she felt his gaze. She glanced up and looked straight at him for a fleeting moment, acknowledging his existence with the most noncommittal of looks and for the barest fraction of a heartbeat in time.

Much as she had done when she first came into the room.

This time it stabbed him even deeper.

Then she looked at Bobbie Ann and smiled before she went back to slowly turning the pages.

“Let her be,” Bobbie Ann murmured. “She likes to see the pictures of the family.”

Only then did he notice that the large-paged book was not a picture book of Western art. It was one of the big leather photo albums embossed with the Rocking M brand that held the history of the McMahans.

Cait sat on the floor in the shadow of the huge Christmas tree and reached out to touch the papiermâché cowboy ornament. He was twirling his red rope above his head in a perfect, huge loop. He was so old that the gold thread he was supposed to hang by from the center of his hat had worn in two and he stood bowlegged on a thick branch instead.

“I’ll be very careful not to knock you off balance,” she whispered.

No one was around to hear her, though. Almost all the guests had gone and Delia and her band had finished playing.

It was almost time for the family dinner.

But was she really one of the family? John was gone.

“John was one of the good guys, too,” she told the cowboy. “He was the very best.”

She drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them while she stared at the tree. Maybe she’d just stay here and not go to dinner. At this moment she had no desire to eat.

The John McMahan Memorial School of Horsemanship.

That would look good over the gate to the arena. Or over the door of the barn.

She had loved John with all her heart. From the very first minute they’d met, two strangers sharing a table to eat pizza from a cart in the trade show at the Quarter Horse Congress, he had treated her as if she were a princess. John had been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever dated.

He’d been nicer to her than any other man she’d ever known.

His blue eyes had twinkled when he talked to her and his brown hair had lifted and fallen in the wind. Gently. John was a gentle man and a gentleman and she had loved him with her heart and soul.

She had never loved a man until she loved John.

But it was his big brother Clint who stirred her blood now.

Cait closed her eyes and pushed the feelings away—the feelings that tried to take her breath every time she even thought of Clint. She didn’t know how to name them and she didn’t even want to try.

All she knew for sure was that John had wanted her here, with his family. In his family.

Clint did not.

But she wouldn’t think about Clint.

She drew in a deep breath of the wonderful, spicy smell of the tree. She looked up. It must be nine feet tall.

A storybook tree. For a storybook Christmas.

“Mer-ry Christ-mas! And to your mama and daddy, too!”

It was Bobbie Ann’s voice, floating in from outside where she was saying goodbye to the last of the guests.

“Tell them we’re so sorry they didn’t feel up to coming with you all. I’ll be over to see them soon.”

John had told her that all the guests on Christmas Eve who came to the Rocking M with their guests were from families who’d been friends with the McMahans since the Comanches had signed a treaty with the first German settlers. The only treaty between Native Americans and Americans that had never been broken.

“Well,” John had said, laughing, “actually it was between Native Americans and Texans. Maybe that’s why.”

She couldn’t even imagine families who had known each other for so many years, for generations. Families who had grown and multiplied and become intertwined with all the others. Families who had lived in one county for a hundred and fifty years.

When her grandparents couldn’t even stay in the same country. When her parents couldn’t even keep the three of them together or stay in the same apartment for half a year.

John was gone.

Clint was here.

And she was here, in his home, with the first horses she had ever owned and the first important job that God had ever given her. The most important dream she’d ever set out to fulfill.

Clint wanted her gone.

Lord? You brought me here, didn’t You? Isn’t this where You meant for me to be? Maybe I was wrong about Clint. But isn’t this where You sent me to make a mark for You?