A Christmas Wish: Dane (3 page)

Dane didn’t know why he did it. Maybe it was the adrenaline. Or maybe he was feeling adventurous. But the snowball left his hand before he could pull it back
, and it hit the target he’d been aiming for. Right in the middle of Charlotte’s chest.

“Why not?” Dane taunted. “You’re both
MacKenzies.”

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed and Riley hooted with laughter. “I guess
we know whose side she’s on,” he said. “Better run for cover.”

Dane wasn’t stupid, so he did exactly that.
The look on Jayden’s face when he’d called him a MacKenzie hadn’t gone past Dane’s notice. It had been surprise and a yearning that broke Dane’s heart. Thomas had been right. The boy wanted family whether he knew it or not.

He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake, but he grabbed Jayden by the arm and pulled him to the barricade Riley had set up for their team.

“MacKenzies always look out for each other,” Dane explained after he’d gotten them both hidden just in time to avoid an onslaught of snowballs. Jayden looked at him solemnly but nodded, scooping up his own snow. Dane showed him how to pack it tightly so it wouldn’t fall apart before it made contact.

“Go for it, kid. If you act like you’re hurt
, Thomas will come out to help you and you can get him good. It’ll only work once though, so make it count.”

Jayden nodded and
smiled and Dane’s lips curved in an identical grin. For once they were in perfect harmony.

A couple of hours later everyone was dry and warm. Hot chocolate had made the rounds and the gifts Charlotte and Jayden had brought with them managed to find their way under the tree with the multitude of other brightly wrapped presents.

Charlotte
had noticed Jayden sneaking peeks under the tree like any normal nine-year-old boy to see if any had his name on them, but he didn’t want anyone to suspect he was looking. The male pride, even at such a young age, was a fragile thing.

Dane’s
younger cousins—Cade, Grant, and Darcy—had shown up just as the snowball fight had finished, and they’d all three been disappointed they’d missed out on the fun.

Belonging to a family like
the MacKenzies would definitely take some getting used to. There was never a quiet moment and no one had any problem sticking their noses into someone else’s business. Charlotte had already been asked point blank a couple of times when she was going to finally make an honest man out of Dane.

She wished she had an answer.

There was nothing she wanted more than to spend her life with Dane. Her mechanic shop was doing well and she loved her work. She had an amazing son who was well adjusted and had a wicked sense of humor she found great pleasure in. And she had the child growing inside of her that she’d kept to herself because she worried how Dane and Jayden would both react to the news. There was more to consider than just a wedding. There were too many hearts involved, and she felt like she was being pulled in too many directions.

She placed her hand on her stomach protectively. When Dane had come back into her life
, the lust between them had been stronger than ever, and they’d forgotten to use protection in their haste to connect again. It had only been good luck and bad timing that had kept her from getting pregnant those first times together. She’d immediately gone on the pill once she’d started using her head to think with, instead of the part of her that saw Dane and wanted to devour him whole.

But fate had a way of lending a hand
when it was least expected, and despite the precautions, they’d managed to make another child. She wasn’t afraid to admit she was scared. She remembered what it was like to go through the last pregnancy—alone and unsure of how to even be a mother.

And then she’d held that sweet baby in her arms for the first time, and there was nothing in her life t
hat was more important. She’d had so much anger at Dane, though he hadn’t known about the baby at the time, but she vowed she’d be the best mother she could be. And her pride kept her for asking for help or calling on the MacKenzies to track down Dane when things got difficult. And boy, did things get difficult.

Charlotte didn’t know how or why she and Dane had managed to reconnect—the love between them
was as strong as ever—but she was grateful. She was also older and wiser than she’d been when he’d left, and she knew if he’d stayed things would have fallen apart between them. They hadn’t been ready. And she didn’t regret her choice to raise Jayden on her own. She’d made a life for the both of them. A good life. Getting the chance to love Dane again was just an added bonus.

Now s
he and Jayden had an instant family, and it was a little overwhelming. It had been just the two of them for so long, and they weren’t used to families like this one. Hell, she wasn’t sure if there even
was
another family like this one. But one look at the way Jayden seemed to blossom around his uncles told her it was the right decision. He needed that male influence, and as much as she hated to admit it, that was a bond she couldn’t give him.

“Hey, d
o you know anything about cooking hams?” Darcy asked.

Dane’s cousin was a freshman in college, and she’d learned to hold her own in a family of all males. She, her brother Cade, and Cooper all looked so much alike with their black hair and blue eyes that it always seemed to her like Cooper had
been sent home with the wrong side of the family.

“I know you’re supposed to take that plastic thing out of the middle before you stick it in the oven,” Charlotte said, grinning.

Darcy was brilliant. Just not in the kitchen. The burnt cookies in the little red tin she’d brought over were testament to that.

“Cade told me I was supposed to leave t
he plastic thing in so the ham didn’t collapse.”

Charlotte bit the inside of her lip to keep from laughing out loud and she caught Cade’s eye
in time to see him grin and head back out of the kitchen to avoid Darcy’s wrath. She showed Darcy how to fix the ham, and they’d just put it in the oven when there was a big crash in the family room.

She slammed the
oven door shut and went running along with everyone else. Riley was sprawled on the floor with a cut on his temple and a heavy book in his lap. A large pedestal sat in two pieces next to him and a Nerf football lay beside it, obviously the culprit. By the guilty looks on Jayden and Riley’s face, they were both to blame for the accident.

“Were you playing football in the house?” she asked, her eyes narrowed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Jayden answered. “But we weren’t running.” His look was hopeful, as if that particular rule they didn’t break made it any better.

“It’s my fault,” Riley said, touching the gash at his temple. “
It was my idea to play.”

“That doesn’t mean Jayden doesn’t need to be responsible for his own actions when
he makes bad choices.”

Jayden hung his head, and Charlotte immediately wanted to back down, especially when everyone was staring at them.
She hated being the bad guy, and even more so when there were witnesses to judge her parenting skills.

“Your mom’s right,” Dane said
, taking a step forward. “I’m not saying MacKenzies don’t make their fair share of mistakes. But we always own up to them and apologize. Then hopefully the next time you’re faced with the same choice you make the right decision.”

Dane
patted Jayden on the shoulder, and Charlotte winced as he moved out of Dane’s reach. It was time she had a talk with him about cutting Dane a break. Dane was doing the best he could, and she wasn’t going to be able to hide the baby she was carrying for too much longer. She was amazed Dane hadn’t figured it out already. Her breasts were larger and much more sensitive than they’d been before. If they’d been living together, the morning sickness definitely would have given her away.

Thomas
found bandages and disinfectant and came back into the room. He probably kept them close by if this kind of thing was a standard occurrence. She’d been around the MacKenzies enough in the past few months to know they got into their fair share of accidents that involved bloodshed. 

“I’m sorry I broke your stand thing for your book,” Jayden
mumbled.

“You and I can do penance in the kitchen by doing the dishes,” Riley said. “It’ll be a workout getting all the burnt stuff off the pans.”

“Hey, I take offense to that,” Darcy said.

Jayden snickered appreciatively
, and Riley winced as Thomas doctored the cut on his head. Dane walked over to get the book that had toppled off the stand and into Riley’s hands. It looked old and the pages were edged with gold. It was hardbound in scarred brown leather and it had a wide leather strap with a bronze buckle that kept it closed.

“No damage done here
at least,” Dane said, “So we can all live another day.”

“What is it?” Jayden couldn’t help but ask, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“It’s the MacKenzie Family Bible. It belonged to my great-great grandfather. He was a US Marshal. That’s his badge and rifle in the case over there, along with his picture.”

“Did he shoot a lot of people?” Jayden asked excitedly.

Dane looked up at Charlotte with raised brows and she shrugged. He’d started the story and he’d have to be the one to finish it.

“Not a lot
of people. But he did shoot his own brother.”

Everyone
got really quiet, and Charlotte had to admit, even her curiosity was piqued after that bombshell was dropped.

“His own brother? I thought you said
MacKenzies watched out for each other.”

“Come here and I’ll
tell you about it,” Dane said, heading over to the coffee table and kneeling down. He unlatched the buckle of the Bible and everyone waited until Jayden took his spot next to Dane. And then they moved in to surround them. Charlotte was swept right along with them and found a spot in front of the fireplace to listen.

The
pages were paper thin and yellowed with age, and Dane handled them delicately as he flipped to the section he was looking for. A folded square of brown parchment stuck up from the pages and Dane smiled as he held it up.

“You guys remember this?” he said to his brothers.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that,” Cooper said. “Mom must have put it back in. I don’t think we’ve opened that Bible since she died.”

“What is it?” Jayden asked.

“It’s a treasure map,” Dane said, enjoying the excited gasp that escaped his son’s lips. He’d felt the same way when he’d been a boy, and the map had provided hours and hours of entertainment for him and his brothers. “But I should probably start at the beginning. You see, Cole MacKenzie settled the land where this house is and the five hundred acres around us back in the 1800s.

“
Cole was a lawman, like I told you, and he’s the one who started this ranch, running cattle all the way down to Texas and back and raising horses. He built a little log cabin a few miles from here, on the west side of the lake back in the trees. The original MacKenzie homestead.

“Cole was a good man. But his brother was something else
entirely. Riley was an outlaw.”

“Whoa!” Jayden said
and then he turned to his uncle. “You were named after an outlaw?”

“So it would appear,” Riley said.

“Cool. What happened?”

Dane wiped his hand over his mouth to hide his grin. He hadn’t seen the kid this excited since he’d been back home, and he’d do almost anything to keep that look on his face.

“No one really knows what happened between Riley and Cole. We only have the stories that have been passed down through the generations, and who knows what might have been lost along the way. What we do know is that Riley supposedly robbed a convoy of gold headed to one of the local banks. Riley was the leader of the Silver Creek Bandits. They robbed banks all over the country for almost ten years and no one ever caught them.”

“Except for Cole, right?”

Dane nodded. “That’s one of the reasons he was appointed as US Marshal. They figured if anyone knew how to catch Riley MacKenzie, it would be his own brother.”

“Did Cole really hunt down his own brother? That just doesn’t seem right.”

“I’m not sure we’ll ever know the real story behind it.”

“You should do research. You’re
a journalist, right? Mom says you traveled all over the place and wrote stories about different things that happened. This would be just like that, only about your own family.”

Dane looked at him in surprise and wondered why he’d never thought of it before. He was in the perfect position to do exactly that. “Good idea. Maybe I’ll draft you as research assistant.”

He caught Charlotte’s quick smile and lost his train of thought before he remembered what he was going to say. “The only information we have at the moment is what my Grandpa MacKenzie told us. He said that Riley turned on the Silver Creek Bandits and killed them all so the gold would be his and he wouldn’t have to share.

“
And despite the fact that Cole was the US Marshal, it wasn’t him who hunted Riley down. It was the other way around. Riley showed up on Cole’s doorstep one afternoon out of the blue, but Cole was out with the horses and his wife was at home alone.

“She was pregnant with their first child and he didn’t like to leave her alone for long periods of time, so
Cole came home and found his brother there, and his first thought was for his wife and unborn child. He’d already been through hell and back to keep her safe, and his love for her was greater than the love he had for his brother. So Cole gunned Riley down, right there on the porch.”

“
Geez. That’s harsh. What happened to the gold?”

“Well, that’s the part that gets a little hazy. As Riley lay there dying
, he told Cole where he hid the gold. And before he drew his last breath, he apologized for all the sins he’d committed and asked for forgiveness. Grandpa MacKenzie remembered hearing Cole tell him the story when he was just a little boy. Cole was Grandpa MacKenzie’s grandfather,” Dane said by way of explanation when Jayden looked confused.

“And
Grandpa MacKenzie said Cole always got misty-eyed whenever he told that last part of the story. He regretted having to pull the trigger until his dying day. But he said he would have done it again in a heartbeat, because his wife was the love of his life and he wouldn’t have been whole without her. MacKenzies only love once, you know.”