Cowboy Under the Mistletoe (14 page)

Today, she and the man she loved walked along the sandy bank together, stepping over driftwood, content to be alone, holding hands while they talked about everything and nothing. The most important subject hovered like a horsefly waiting to sting. So they pretended to be a normal couple, in love, and planning for the future. Or at least Allison did. If Jake was too quiet at times, she understood. They’d never revisited her declaration, that she would leave Gabriel’s Crossing when he did. She’d tried once to bring up the topic, but he’d sidestepped the issue. He was afraid for her, she knew, still insisting he would never take her away from her beloved family.

If she didn’t know he loved her, she’d be hurt. But he worried about her, about how leaving her family would affect her. Allison was mature enough to know it would.

So she clung to each day they had together, praying it wouldn’t be the last. Praying that when the time came, she’d have the courage to go with him, and that he would let her.

A ragged old rowboat lay on its belly on the riverbank. Jake gave the wooden structure a nudge with his boot. “Let’s take a ride.”

“Are you crazy?” She rubbed the chill from her upper arms and danced a little on the sand. “That old thing’s been here forever. It probably leaks.”

“I’m a bull rider. Crazy is my middle name.” He flipped the small craft upright and found two splintered oars beneath. “What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“We could sink!” But she was already helping him push the boat into the shallows.

“I’ll save you.”

Like he’d done before.

“Remember the time we were all down here fishing and you fell in?” she asked. “You flailed around like a one-legged frog.”

He laughed, a free, delighted sound that warmed her bones. She loved to hear him laugh.

“How do you remember those things?”

“A woman in love remembers everything.”

“When you were ten?”

She stuck out her tongue. “Well, okay, I have a great memory.”

The boat splashed into the water and bobbed there. Allison held the thin, muddy tie rope while Jake searched for leaks. “Looks sound to me.”

“Like you’re a boat expert.”

“Hey, careful, little girl. You’re insulting a man who once owned a twenty-foot bass boat.”

“Really?”

“What? You thought all I could do was ride bulls and horses?”

“Of course not. You’re a really good kisser, too.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “Do you still have a boat? We could go fishing sometime.”

“Nope. Sold it and bought a bull.” He gestured toward the quiet river. “But we can go fishing here and now.”

“We don’t have any fishing rods.”

“This is the Red River. Catfish.” He held up both hands and wiggled his fingers. “Noodling.”

“I’m not sticking my arm in a catfish’s mouth!”

He laughed. “Had you going for a minute, didn’t I?”

She whopped his shoulder. “Get in the boat, cowboy, before I push you in the river.”

He stepped onto the flat bottom boat, wobbling a little until he found his balance, and then reached back to help her inside. They settled side by side on one of the two bench boards dividing the boat horizontally. Jake took up both oars, though one was chipped and broken, and pushed away from the bank.

They floated along, barely moving on the gentle current, leaving wide, concentric ripples in their wake. On the water, the air felt cooler and they snuggled together, grinning at the perfect excuse to be close.

“No leaks.”

“So far.” Allison wrapped her hands around his upper arm and leaned her cheek against his jacket.

Here on the river, alone without the censure of family, she felt such joy. She wanted to discuss their future, to dream of the life they’d have together. Here, on the river in an abandoned rowboat, anything seemed possible.

That Sunday night at her house had changed everything. Now that she knew he loved her, they’d find a way.

“Being with you makes me so happy,” she said. Beneath her palms his biceps flexed with every sweep of oar. He tilted his face toward hers, ignoring the direction his oar sent the boat. She saw the worry in his green eyes mixed and mingled with the love.

Other than a few ducks waddling on the shore in search for food, they were the only beings for miles around. Thick trees, though essentially bare, blocked the river from the narrow road where they’d parked the truck before walking down the well-trod path to the sandy shore.

She wanted Jake to say she made him happy, too, but instantly felt childish at the thought. She knew she made him happy. It was there in his laughter, in the tenderness of his hand at the nape of her neck, in the way he perched his cowboy hat on her head and snapped photo after photo with his cell phone. As if he wanted to preserve every moment with her.

Sometimes that scared her, but they’d talked of the future, too. They both wanted a big family and a simple lifestyle. Jake would have a ranch, and in her spare time she’d plan weddings. And if the topic of their own special day never quite arose, Allison didn’t worry. Much.

Jake loved her, and in the estimation of great philosophers and poets, but especially in her heart, love conquered all.

Didn’t it?

* * *

On Thanksgiving Day, cheerful noise and generalized chaos reigned in the Buchanon household. The twins had invited their latest girlfriends. Jayla brought a guy none of them had ever seen before, and Brady arrived with a family he’d been helping to add to the five people their mother had invited, all with nowhere else to go for the holiday. The smells of turkey and sage and pecan pie had the noncooking parties roaming in and out of the kitchen like prowling wolves.

Allison savored the warmth of family more than ever this holiday, wondering if she’d be here for the next one. By the time the dishes were cleared and the crowd had settled in for the traditional football game, she was eager to head to the Hamilton house.

Alone in the kitchen with her mother while the other women checked the house for last-minute dishes and messes, she said quietly, “I’m going home, Mom.”

Her mother turned from putting a pie in the refrigerator, her hazel eyes understanding. “Home? Or to Jake’s?”

Her mother’s tone held no censure, for which Allison was grateful. “Their dinner is tonight. I told Jake I’d help cook. I’m going, Mama.” Regardless.

A beat passed while her mother studied her, and then Karen handed over a foil-covered pan. “Take this. Jake always liked my pecan pie.”

The lump in Allison’s throat melted into tears she swallowed. “I love you, Mama.”

But she loved Jake Hamilton, too.

* * *

Later than night, full of roast hen, Stove Top stuffing and Mama’s pie, Allison and Jake put up a Christmas tree in the front window of the Hamilton house. The artificial pine had been in storage so long they’d had to clean off cobwebs first, but once the lights were on the dust was forgotten.

Cooking dinner together had been fun. Decorating the tree together was even more so. Allison couldn’t help dreaming that someday the tree would be their own.

Miss Pat bossed from her chair, which Jake had dubbed the queen’s throne, but despite her sass, the older woman had grown quietly nostalgic at the appearance of certain ornaments.

“My mother—that’d be your great-grandma—gave us that little red wagon the year your daddy was born,” she said. “His name is engraved on the bottom.”

Reverently, Jake turned the ornament in his hand. “I wish I remembered him better. All I remember is how sick he was.”

“You were the apple of his eye.”

Allison’s chest ached as she listened to the exchange between grandson and grandmother, aware they shared a sorrow she couldn’t understand. Her family had always been there for her, completely intact, alive and well, and her memories ran deeper than the river.

She felt almost ashamed of how perfect her world had been.

Jake hung the ornament on a limb and reached into the tattered cardboard box for another. She joined him, and soon the melancholy moment passed. When the tree was decorated and the lights blinked a rainbow of colors, she helped Miss Pat to bed, pleased when Jake’s grandmother did most of the work herself.

She was on the mend.

When Allison returned to the living room, Jake sat cross-legged on the floor in front the tree, cups of cocoa on a nearby table. She sat down beside him.

“Will you help me with my tree tomorrow?” she asked.

“Need my expertise, huh?”

“Something like that. I put up a real tree. They’re harder.”

“Wouldn’t know. Never had one.”

“Don’t you put one up in your trailer?”

“No. What’s the point? If I’m home at all, I’m the only one there.”

“That’s sad. I’m the only one in my duplex, but I’ll have a tree.”

“You have someone to share it with.”

The loneliness in that statement struck her. Jake, for nine years, alone in his trailer at Christmas.

He must have read her expression because he said, “Don’t feel sorry for me, Allison. I’m not lonely. I’m not sad. I’m usually working at Christmas. No big deal.”

It was a big deal to her. And this year, he was home, and she’d see to it that he had the best Christmas ever.

* * *

Thanksgiving had filled him in more places than his belly. He’d loved every minute with Allison. Like a dry sponge, he wanted to soak her up, to hold on for the ride and pray the eight-second buzzer never came. He knew he was being foolish, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He should let her go now and get it over with.

Yes, he loved her. But he’d lost enough people who were supposed to love him to know an emotion wasn’t enough. His mama had proved as much long before the Buchanons had turned their backs.

So, he spent his days working for Manny, but as soon as the clock struck five, he started obsessing about Allison. Was she home from work? Would she enjoy a movie or a burger? Would she rather hang out at home or maybe take another drive down by the river?

He marked the last idea off his list.

Their last trips to the river had been dangerous. He’d kissed her too many times until he’d seriously considered a dip in the cold river to bring him to his senses. Neither of them could afford for things to get out of hand.

Allison. His whole world had turned in on that one little person with the big brown eyes and flyaway hair.

Since Thanksgiving his mood swung from joy to despair. Joy that she loved him. Despair that they would never work out.

As much as Jake liked the idea, he wouldn’t take her with him. They would probably be ecstatically happy for a while in the full bloom of love, but eventually, she’d miss her home, her job, her loved ones. She’d grow to resent the man who’d taken her away from everything that mattered. If her family was broken like his, maybe they’d have a chance, but the Buchanons were different—a powerful, connected whole made stronger by the sum of its individual members. Allison was a link in that chain and she’d crumble without the rest.

He’d interviewed an older widow from elder services who, like his grandmother, could no longer afford to live alone. She seemed eager to move in with Granny Pat and the invisible Ralph, eager to be a companion and helpmate in exchange for a roof over her head. Jake hadn’t told the woman about the mortgage. Saw no need. He was going to pay it one way or the other.

Granny wasn’t too keen on live-in help, but she would come around. With Flo on hand as watchdog and general rabble-rouser, Granny Pat had come further in a couple of months than in all the months in rehab.

“I don’t need some old woman living in my house.”

“Melba’s younger than you are, Granny Pat.”

“What about my trip to Mexico? I don’t have to take her along, do I?”

“She can keep the home fires burning while you’re gone.”

“You sure are eager to get away from your old grandma.”

He knelt beside her chair. Her feet stuck straight out in front of her on the recliner, fuzzy slippers dangling on her skinny white heels. In a lot of ways his tiny grandmother reminded him of Allison. Strong, sassy, small as a child and with the heart of a lioness.

“You know that’s not true. If life had turned out differently, I’d never leave. I’d buy land here, close to you, and raise my bulls.”

“Always running away. Like your mama. If things get tough, you run.”

His hackles rose, shocked by the accusation. “I’m not running away.” And he was nothing like his mama. “My being here causes problems. I hurt the Buchanons. They shouldn’t have to look at me if they don’t want to.”

“What about Allison?”

Some of the starch leaked out of him. Allison. His biggest problem. “She’ll get hurt the most if I stick around, and a man has to make a living. I can’t do that here.”

“She’ll be hurt if you leave. Money comes and goes. Love’s the only thing that lasts.”

Now she was a philosopher.

“A responsible man does what’s right regardless of what he wants.” He was tired of this conversation. Tired of arguing with her and himself and Allison. Tired of trying to squeeze pennies, of dodging Buchanons, of tossing and turning half the night trying to solve the unsolvable.

No matter what his grandmother thought, sometimes a man had to cut his losses and leave the table.

“I’m sorry, Granny P., but the invitation to live with me is still open.”

“And I still say no. You’re not there half the time. At least here I have friends and neighbors to break up the monotony.” She patted his head the way she had when he’d been a lonely, confused little boy clinging to her apron and wondering why his mama had left him. “I’ll be fine. You don’t get much finer than dancing the samba on the beaches of Mexico.”

Jake’s mouth twitched. “The samba?”

“Flo’s teaching me, and if you’re not real careful, I’ll come back from Mexico with a new grandpa for you.”

“What about Ralph?”

“Jacob Hamilton, you know good and well Ralph is as dead as a hammer.”

Jake leaned back on his bootheels and laughed until he tumbled onto his backside. The fall tickled Granny so much she fell into a coughing fit that left her breathless. But the twinkle in her eye told Jake she was going to be fine without him.