Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(12)

She had not.

Jake chuckled. “I imagine he does.”

They got out of the truck, and Callie’s boots sank into the muck. It was drizzly and gray so she hadn’t expected the ground to be so soft.

“Rained a hell of a lot yesterday,” he said. “I expect the clouds are going to roll in a little bit later. But I’m always thankful for a clear fall morning. A chance to see the sun. By the time we get through to December we’re not going to see it at all.”

“Well, it’s already colder than a witch’s teat in Lone Rock, so I don’t mind.”

His expression turned serious. “I always wondered how cold exactly that was.”

“Cold,” she answered. “This is downright balmy.” She let out a long, slow breath. “It gets really cold in Lone Rock around Christmastime. Dumps a whole bunch of snow. The ranch looks beautiful, though. And there’s a whole bunch of cabins on the property. Basically, every time the family decides to upgrade houses they just keep the last one. It’s hundreds of acres, so there’s cabins enough for every member of my family when they decide to come to stay. Lots of space. In the main house... My mom gets a huge Christmas tree. Puts it in the living room. The ceilings are twenty feet high, so she’s got a tree that complements it. That’s another thing she loves that I’ve never been that into. But I’ll tell you, I might not like doing the decorating, but I love the way it looks.”

“Okay,” he said, his tone letting her know he was good and suspicious.

“You really ought to see it sometime,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m not really into that sort of thing.”

“What? Christmas?”

“Yeah. I mean, I go to my family’s place for Christmas. It’s our tradition. And if it wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t go. But I always show up. I always do the thing.”

“Right.”

He had a family Christmas tradition. Well, what was she going to do with that?

“But you like Thanksgiving.”

“It’s a giant meal. And frankly, that’s how I see Christmas, too.”

“What was Christmas like when you were a kid?”

Another thing they’d never talked about before and now it seemed important because she wanted him to come with her to her parents’ house and...

What if Christmas was awful for him?

She’d been so focused on what she wanted, on what she needed, that she hadn’t really considered him as a person. She’d thought of him as a solution.

“I mean, you don’t have to tell me. I just...”

He laughed. “Same as it is for anybody. I... I, well, I wanted presents. That was about all it meant to me. Then I lost my parents and I realized how much more it was about my family all being together, going to Mass and all that.”

“Mass?”

“Oh, my dad was very Catholic. Very. It was a big part of our lives growing up.”

She hadn’t known about that, either. “And now?”

“Didn’t work for him, did it?” he asked.

“I see.”

“There’s not much to see. It just is what it is. They were here, they’re gone now. Christmas changed for me. I mean, I always liked it with the cousins. But then, we spent Christmas together before, too.”

“Have you spent every Christmas with them? That is, every year even since they left?”

“No,” he said.

That made her feel a little bit better.

“I have spent a few Christmases lost in whiskey instead of family. Now I try to make it back to avoid that.”

She had never really been all that conscious of the age gap between them, but something about the way he said that made her feel every bit of the seven years that separated them. She had certainly never lost a Christmas to alcohol.

Though maybe that was more life experience than it was age.

She still felt guilty about telling him what she needed from him. In light of everything. So she figured she would wait until she had put in a little bit of labor.

They got to work, getting out big rolls of fencing and stretching it across the posts that were already put into the ground. It was sweaty work, even though it wasn’t all that warm in spite of the sun. She began to get clammy beneath her jacket, and a couple of times she lost hold of the barbed wire, and got what would’ve been a big old gouge in her hands if not for her gloves.

And finally, when they sat down with lunch—which consisted of half a sandwich that he gave her out of his own box since she hadn’t brought anything—she looked up at him. The moisture from the ground soaked through her jeans, but she didn’t much care. And he didn’t seem to mind, either. He was sitting there with his knees up, his forearms propped on the top of them. His cowboy hat shaded his eyes, and the glare from the sun highlighted whiskers on his chin, showing that he hadn’t shaved that morning. His face was familiar. Not only that, the shape of him was familiar. Her whole life was cowboys. And Jake was one of the most important cowboys in it. But for some reason, that moment felt like a piece of time that had been pushed slightly sideways, and as a result, the way he looked felt slightly sideways, too.

His familiarity.

It just seemed... It seemed different. And something about the shape of him seemed new. Like she was noticing the squareness of his jaw for the first time. The way his upper lip curved, and the strength and straightness in his... His nose of all things. It was a strange way to think about a nose. He was a well-formed man. Like a big hunk of clay that had been shaped by a master sculptor. It was no mystery why he had endorsement deals coming out of his ears. Why he was used in advertisements for Wrangler jeans and work boots. For whiskey and barbecue grills. A strange sort of longing filled her, and she could only attach envy to it. Envy that he was... Everything that a man with his set of dreams needed to be. That he was so strong, so broad. So striking. And that all of those things worked for him, and not against him the way her particular makeup seemed to do.