Western Kisses – Old West Christmas Romances (Boxed Set) (14 page)

And then she heard a knock.

With a start, she hopped out of bed, pulled on a gown to be at least presentable, and charged into the living room to an audience of three clucking chickens, one confused dog, and her father with a huge grin on his face.

“I made breakfast!” he said. “Hope you’re hungry. We got eggs, biscuits, and I even pulled out some of that canned sausage and made patties.”

Lottie smiled and sat down, but in the back of her mind, all she saw was Colton.

“And,” Will said upon seeing her sullen face. “I can tell that this isn’t exactly what you had in mind when he ran out here in such a hurry.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that I keep thinking about Colton and worrying about his safety. I still can’t believe he’d do anything like shooting someone. It’s just... a gunfighter. It’s so unbelievable after all the politeness and manners he showed.”

William shook his head and spooned up some eggs, sat a fat little sausage on top, and set the plate down in front of his daughter. “You’ve nothing to apologize for,” he said. “If he’s a man true to his word, we’ll hear from him before long anyway, and then maybe you can get some satisfaction as to his character. But, for what it’s worth,” he paused to take a sip of his almost oily, black coffee before continuing. “I’ve never met a gunfighter who could write a letter quite as eloquent as the one you’re liable to starve before giving up.”

She laughed at his teasing, and immediately felt a bit of relief.

“I think it’s just the weather,” she said, with a little hope in her voice. “When he came, I was lonely and bored and missing you, so it was just the perfect time. Then all that strange business with the Ranger and all, it was—”

“I know,” her father said, patting her hand. “I remember when your mother and I first met. I pined for her like the world was going to end if I couldn’t court her. It was different of course, but I spent hours every day wishing against wish that somehow we’d end up sharing vows.”

He’d never talked about her mother much, especially not about how they met, but as she listened, Lottie realized that her father was very, very much in love even after all these years.

“What was it like?” she asked him as she took a bit of her breakfast. “Oh, this is actually good!”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Of course it’s good! I didn’t spend those years as a trail cook for nothin’, you know.”

“I’m sorry—” she cut herself off as soon as he let his eyes twinkle. “Oh you! You and the teasing! I was sure I’d somehow hurt your grizzled old feelings.”

“And now she calls me grizzled and old. What wound won’t this daughter of mine prod?”

They laughed for a moment, but when Lottie repeated her question about her mother, the tone went suddenly serious again. William chewed slowly, swallowed, and took a drink.

He leveled his eyes at her, and seemed to concentrate on a far-off point on the horizon, staring straight through Lottie to that point, wherever it was. “It was a long time ago. But, I still remember every single bit of it. I don’t... well,” he took a deep breath. “You know I’ve never told you all this, and if I’m being honest it’s because it still hurts. A lot.”

“I know pa,” Lottie said, patting the back of his hand, which William had unconsciously set atop the table. “If it’s too much, then—”

He shook his head and wiped a little grease off his mustache. “She’s as much your mother as she was my wife. You deserve to know her.”

Just his saying that was enough to raise a lump in Lottie’s throat, but she managed to keep herself quiet as her father spoke.

“It was about thirty years ago when we met,” he leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes. He painted a picture of a vibrant little town and portrayed her mother as the beauty that sparked the emotions of every teenaged boy in, as her father told it, the entire state of Virginia. She’d heard plenty of stories about his hometown, which was a farm town a day’s ride from Richmond, but never these particular tales.

“She was... well, you’ve seen that old picture of us. Your mother was a vision. Golden hair, just like yours, big, open eyes,” he paused, eyes flicking back and forth behind his lids. “But it wasn’t just how she looked. She had such a pure soul, such an open, beautiful innocence about her, and she was sharp as anything. Neither of us was exactly poor, but neither of us wealthy, you know. But she had books. I remember sitting there, after we’d begun to court, with her father and her mother in the front room of their farmhouse and just being dazzled by the things they discussed.”

“Like what?” Lottie was enthralled. He’d always said she gotten her love of the written word from her mother.

“Well the scriptures of course, but we all read that. The things her family discussed – history books, Shakespeare’s plays, Plato, Voltaire, and even our own President Jefferson who hadn’t been long in the ground – it was all so perplexing to a simple country boy like myself. You know, her mother and father traveled a great deal before they settled down in Virginia, so they had a different way of seeing the world.”

His eyes misted over, but a smile dominated William’s face. “She was something special. There’s no question about that. And my word but was she ever kind and gentle, but at the same time, she wasn’t the sort to take an insult lying down. I remember, not long after we were married, but before we moved out this way, one of her mother’s friends insulted her for marrying a bumpkin like me.”

“Surely not,” Lottie said with a bit of a gasp. “How awful!”

“Well, in honesty it didn’t bother me much since it was, by all definition true. I got the best end of the deal. But, the way your mother laid into that woman, I’d never seen such a thing. She put every single fancy word she knew, and a whole lot that were decidedly less than fancy, to such beautiful use that at the end of it, that woman sat back in her chair and didn’t say another word the rest of the night.”

The feet of Will’s chair hit the floor one after another, and he let out a long, rueful laugh that ended with him having to dab at his eyes with his napkin. “Anyway,” he said. “That was your mother. It’s been so long since she left us that time gets all jumbled up and confused in my old head, but I’ve never stopped loving her. Not for a moment.”

Silence fell over the two of them and they both absently chewed at food and drank their coffee slowly. There was meaning to the quiet.

After the dishes were cleaned and Lottie settled in for a few minutes scribbling in her journal, another knock at the door momentarily broke her attention, but remembering the alarm and then the subsequent disappointment from earlier, she remained seated, deciding it was probably just a branch falling from the weight of snow.

Only when her father opened the door, let out a whistle and said, “I’ll be damned!” that Lottie shot to her feet and ran, as fast as she’d ever run, down the hall.

“Colton!” she almost shrieked. “You came back!”

“Well,” he said as he shook her father’s hand. “I figured with the winter setting in so early that you two might like a third hand to help out around these parts.”

She could hardly control herself, but her father filled the breathless silence.

“If you’re half as hard a worker as you are good a writer, you’re welcome to stay. William Wright,” he said, grasping the young man’s hand again and shaking. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Lottie took a step forward, almost lunging into Colton’s arms, but stopped herself. Instead, she extended her hand, which he took and turned over before pressing it to his lips. “You’ve no idea how nice it is to see a friendly face.”

And then, to Lottie’s surprise, Colton wrapped her up, and held her tight. “It’s good to see that smile,” he said.

Will cleared his throat.

For a moment, he seemed embarrassed at how he’d behaved, but a second later he said, “That’s right, very sorry sir, two friendly faces.” He flashed the grin that stole her heart two months before. “I hate to be forward, but you wouldn’t happen to have any of them biscuits, would you?”

Lottie didn’t remember the last time she’d seen quite a grin on her father’s face.

~*~

“I’m not sure how much longer this weather will hold before we really need to buckle down,” Will said. “You certainly swing that axe well, Colton. Isn’t the first time you’ve swung one, huh?”

“No,” Colton flexed himself tight, struck the thick hunk of wood in front of him and wiped his forehead with a bared forearm. “No sir, it isn’t. Built myself a cabin or two. Though, I have to admit that this,” he sucked a breath and chopped again. “This weather is a little more pleasant than doing such a thing in the San Antonio heat.”

“Cabin, you said? Nice land down there?”

“Oh sure,” Colton said. “Never known anything quite so beautiful. Rolling hills, couple of rivers. It’s the people that make the place though, I’ve always thought.”

“I’d love to see it,” Lottie said as she bent to gather the chopped logs and arranged them on a sled to wait for transport. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been more than – what would you say pa? A couple of hours ride?”

“Couple hours’ ride seems about right. Since you were a babe, anyway. Back then, we were all around the panhandle before we settled.” William set his sledgehammer to the side, and leaned against the barn.

Ernie, Colton’s squat, mottled horse, stuck his head through the barn’s window to accept a nose rub.

The three of them quieted for a time, working away at their tasks. Colton chopped, Lottie arranged, and William drove stakes into the ground meant to hold lengths of sheet or net to keep snow from piling up around the house.

It all went quicker with Colton, and not just because of his muscles. Every so often, as they toiled away, Lottie looked over at him, at once amazed and calmed at the man she saw – the only person who ever promised to return then actually
did it
.

“Why did you come back?” she finally asked. “Surely you had somewhere better to go than all the way out here with winter bearing down.”

Swelling his chest with breath, Colton thumped his axe into the block of wood he used as a stand. He placed his hands on his hips, stretching his back as the handle of his axe wobbled.

“I said I would, didn’t I?”

Unbeknownst to either Lottie or Colton, Will had stopped pounding his stakes and looked in their direction with that same beaming smile from earlier. As he watched the two of them banter away, thoughts of his own youth ran through his mind; thoughts of the games he used to play, trying to get Lottie’s mother to pay him some mind.

“Well yes,” she answered, “but that’s no—”

He interrupted her with a smile and a hand on her shoulder that made Lottie visibly tremble, but only barely. “When I say something, it
does
have a meaning. I made the mistake of lying to someone I care about more than once. I’ll not do it again. Not...”

She touched his hand when he looked as though something caught in his mind. “Are you okay?” Lottie asked Colton softly.

He shook his head. “Sorry, got a little carried away with some memories. Anyway, what I meant to say is that I don’t do those sorts of things anymore. I’ve hurt people I didn’t want to hurt.”

Lottie studied his face for a moment, but Colton kept his mouth closed. Though he met her eyes with his, his gaze was far away. The whole of him seemed distant, but he didn’t make any move to say more.

A quick glance over to her father told Lottie to leave it alone, though she wanted nothing more than to prod him for a little more. After all, what sort of pain could someone like Colton have underneath that shimmering grin? Turning her eyes to the ground and staring at the toes of her boots, Lottie just squeezed his arm and stayed still.

Desperate for something to say that might ease his mood, she ran a thousand ideas through her mind, but he seemed so perturbed that she was too uneasy.

What do I even know of this man?
Why do I feel like this if not for simple loneliness being pushed aside by a visitor? If anyone else had come, would I feel the same about them?

She pinched up her brow.

“I wanted to get away,” he said suddenly.

“Wh – what’s that?” Lottie replied. “Get away?”

Colton nodded. He retook her gaze, then looked to the ground and dug his boot into the ground before kicking a picked-out clump of red dirt off to the side.

“Yeah, I uh,” he trailed off, looking everywhere but at her face.

“Does this have anything to do with what your uncle said?”

Colton turned his face to hers and cocked an eyebrow. “My uncle?”

“Ranger Grant,” Lottie said. “He came through directly after you did. Looking for you. Although it took him a good deal of circulating to finally arrive at your name.” She giggled softly. “I only recognized that he was talking about you by his description of Ernie. You say you weren’t going to lie anymore, but you lied about where you came from. I only learned the truth from your letter.”

Realization dawned on Colton’s face.

“I did, huh,” he pursed his lips. “It’s easier than telling the truth. That’s what got me started down this path in the first place.”

Lottie’s gaze was soft, but she wasn’t going to back down, no matter what kind of glances her father shot her way. There was too much at stake, she knew, for her to just take what he said at face value, especially when he kept saying things that ended up false.

“I can tell you’re a good man, Colton. And,” she stammered slightly to regain his attention when Colton turned to the side out of unease. “And you certainly didn’t lie to me about anything but where you came from. I never asked if you were a gunfighter, so you didn’t lie about that.”

“Gunfighter?” Colton said with a hollow, distant voice. “My uncle said that?”

Lottie nodded, suddenly afraid that she’d gone too far too soon. She had to remind herself that this man was sharing their home. “You don’t want to hurt anyone, do you Colton?”

“No,” he shook his head. “And I never did. Never meant to hurt anyone. And I won’t hurt you. Things are different now,” he said.

“Getting away?” she asked again.

“I needed to get away from who I used to be.” He grabbed the axe off the ground beside his foot. “I’m not proud of everything I’ve done, Lottie,” he said. “But I’m not going to let that ruin what could be.”