Western Kisses – Old West Christmas Romances (Boxed Set) (18 page)

“I will,” Colton said with a smile. His easy grin was back. “I promise.”

~*~

“You two must’ve had quite a talk,” Lottie said with a smirk when Colton finally emerged from the house.

He blushed slightly, or so she thought. “It was nothing,” he said, “just some man talk.”

“Oh, so ‘man talk’ it is, then?” Lottie laughed and deposited her broom against the side of the house. “What is it that you’ve brought me out into this growing winter for?”

“I remember something you said when I first came around.”

“Before or after I tried to kill you?”

“After,” he said with a laugh. “Though not terribly long, as I recall it.”

She let out a low humming sound. “It’s been too long,” she said, searching her memories. “Oh! Are you talking about Ernie?”

In a flash, Lottie remembered that she told him her desire to learn to properly ride a horse.

His answer was a smile that absolutely entranced Lottie as he closed the distance and took her hand. His fingers were warm, secure, and powerful around hers. Everything she’d ever wanted, though she only realized it when she met Colton.

“Come on,” he said. “I promised your father I’d have you back by dark, but we’ve still got plenty of time until then.”

The hours from late morning until the haze of dusk finally began to threaten their riding light went by as fast as anything Lottie ever remembered. Somehow, Ernie seemed just as calm and gentle as Colton, as patient and as loving. He trotted slowly when he was commanded, then quicker, and finally galloped at full speed just so long as she was relaxed on his back. At the slightest tension, he calmed and slowed until she was ready to go again.

All across the parts of the farm still untouched by snow, Colton urged his horse back and forth, never leaving Lottie’s side until she begged him to let her ride free.

When they finally stopped, out of deference to the impending darkness and the rapidly dropping temperature more than fatigue, Lottie brushed Ernie down with Colton watching.

“He likes you,” he said.

“He does? How do you know?”

“Easy,” he smiled and drew near, putting his arm gently around Lottie’s waist. “He didn’t throw you off.”

All the way back to the house, the two of them laughed and smiled, neither of them willing to let the other catch the longing glances, but also not willing to stop looking.

“Lottie,” Colton said as they neared the door, and the end of their time alone. “I, uh, there’s something I want to tell you.”

“Well get it out, Colton, I’m just about to freeze to death.”

He stared at her, studying her face. He couldn’t help it; whenever the two of them were together, he smiled more than he ever had in his life. “I’ve never felt like this before,” he said. “I don’t even know what
this
really is, if that makes any sense.”

She huddled against him and put her face against his chest. The soft thudding of his heart somehow made her feel physically warmer. “I think I know what you’re talking about,” she said softly.

Colton opened his mouth again right when they heard William shuffling around inside the house. “Lottie, I—”

She put her finger to his lips. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

In one quick, smooth motion, she stood on her tip toes, pecked a kiss on his bottom lip, which was as high up as she could get, and pushed open the door.

When the snow finally came and didn’t let up, it came hard. Ten days of unrelenting ice and bracing winds swept the panhandle, and kept Lottie, her father, and Colton, cooped up along with Rolf and the three chickens.

Without fail, every morning and every night just before sunset, Lottie went out, saying she needed to get some air, brush the horses and check their blankets. Each time she went, she bundled herself up into an almost absurd wad of down cloaks, shawls, scarves, long-johns and leathers to keep the wind off herself as best she could.

“You can leave them for one night,” Colton protested over a cup of warmed-over coffee. “I know you like them, but Lottie, it is cold enough out there that you might really catch your death.”

“Oh Colton,” she said. “Don’t worry so much about me. I’ve been doing this for most of my life.”

Colton looked over at William, who nodded. “She has. Used to drive me just crazy too, but then she kept doing it without permission, sneaking off into the cold and doing whatever she did that eventually I had to realize she probably wasn’t going to freeze to death.”

Lottie smiled proudly. “See?”

Colton let out a heavy sigh. “Well why don’t I go with you? I can’t stand the idea of you out there freezing.

“No, no, I’ll hear nothing of it. Going out and brushing them is how I relax of an evening. You drink that oily coffee,” she laughed, “and I tend the horses. You and pa have yourselves a nice talk about whatever it is that men discuss when the womenfolk leave a home, and I’ll be back this side of an hour.”

Before anyone else could protest, Lottie pushed out into the blowing cold and snugged her hood down on her cheeks to shield herself from the wind’s bite. At the same time, she pulled out the string of pouches that she’d stuffed inside her coat and slung it over her shoulder.

She gave the horses a quick brush, paying special attention to Ernie’s ears because he made the funniest chortling noise when she rubbed them, and then was back out in the cold. She’d already picked over the two closest farms for cured meat, canned foods, and whatever else there was to find, and even had a pleasant surprise when she happened upon a small stock of sugar and flour that would make a delicious Christmas bread. It was time to range farther afield though. The Jenkins farm, the last of the ones she intended to scavenge, was almost two miles away.

Under any sort of normal circumstance, such a trip was out of the question. But, with Colton in the house, she wanted to make something special for him and for her father. Something they’d both remember. And, her current menu of canned foods, cured beef and pork, and a section of bacon and beans still lacked.

Irma Jenkins was a jelly maker of some slight, county-wide renown. Lottie hoped that if she made her way to the farm, she might be able to scrounge up some preserves, some jellies, and whatever else might still be in the cellar. One good thing about the intense weather of the panhandle is that everyone stored their food in deep cellars that held their temperature. As long as no wandering animals got inside – and that was almost unheard of – anything properly saved lasted for an eternity.

Crunching through the snow, the going was harder than she imagined. What she thought to be a short journey stretched on and on until she began to wonder if there was any way she’d get back at all, much less in the hour she’d given herself.

“Just a little further,” she urged herself, gritting her teeth against another painful gust that froze her lips and the tip of her nose. “Little bit more, and then on the way back the wind will be behind me. Won’t be anywhere near as cold, at the least.”

Onward she trudged, sticking to the places with the thinnest snow, which luckily tended to be along the shrub trees sprinkled around the roadsides, which also worked to block out a little bit of the wind.

Just as soon as the Jenkins’s fence came into view, Lottie took a deep breath and wiped the beaded sweat off her forehead with a gloved hand before it could freeze to her skin. Taking a deep breath, she struggled around the last curve in the road, and almost fell to her knees when she saw the Jenkins’s farmhouse.

Without blocking nets, there was a drift reaching almost to the roof, completely covering the house’s front door. The chimney sticking stumpy and short out the top of the house was topped over with another, smaller drift that looked to have fallen down inside. She couldn’t imagine what sort of condition the interior of the house might be in, and breathed a silent sigh of relief that what she sought wasn’t in there.

She just had to find the cellar.

Vague memories took her around back of the house.

“Oh... oh, no,” she said. “Which one is it?”

Snowdrifts dotted the land behind the house, almost all the same size. Without knowing where to look, finding the cellar would take her around the entire perimeter of the property, which she knew she’d never be able to accomplish.

For a moment, a mixture of despair and confusion threatened to overwhelm Lottie. She shivered, she shook, but then her thoughts turned to the look that Colton and pa would have on their faces if she managed to cook them a beautiful meal. After so many months of nothing but the same biscuits, tiny shreds of ham, and occasional eggs that she and her father and Colton had eaten, they would be speechless.

With a grin on her face, despite the pain that burned in her cheeks and the frigid cold that stiffened her fingers, Lottie trekked to the first snow drift. The lump of white stood was of a height with her, and big enough around that she could imagine it hiding a cellar entrance.

She scrabbled at the drift with her hands at first, but even with the gloves on, the snow quickly soaked through to her fingers and, chilling her so deeply she couldn’t continue.

What am I going to do? Stick my foot through it?

As she gazed around in the dying yellow of the late afternoon sun, she caught a glimpse of a long-dead tree half-covered in snow. She broke off a branch.

“Hay,” she said with an exasperated voice when she stuck her stick into the first snow drift and worked through the drift deep enough to see half-rotten, yellow straw poke out. “Wish I’d come down here during the fall. Could’ve used this.”

One after another, she went between the drifts, scratching through the snow. And one after another, she found either bales of hay or chopped wood.

She knew that she needed to start back home sooner than later if she was going to make it before full dark. Looking up, she searched for the moon.
Maybe if it’s bright enough, I’ll have some extra time
.

The silver disc hung low on the horizon. Low and close and fat, it seemed like maybe this was to be her saving grace. Silently she thanked whoever was listening for the moon, and scratched away at two more piles, still finding nothing.

Aching, sore, freezing cold and almost despairing, she leaned against the bare spot in the snow she wiped off the most recent pile of hay.

“There must be some way to... hum,” Lottie mused into the dark and kicked a toe-full of snow up into the air.

The white flakes stopped for a time, and the orange of pre-dusk settled in. Low on the horizon, the sun looked warm and comfortable, though that didn’t do much to give Lottie any comfort. Gazing back at the house, something glinted vaguely behind a pile of snow against the back of the Jenkins house. Lottie approached at poked at it with her stick.

“Metal,” she said softly.

She thunked the stick against the door a couple more times. “Feels different... sounds...”

A million thoughts ran through her mind. What if the cellar was
inside
the house? What if she’d just wasted a half hour, possibly more, of time she desperately needed? She shook her head back and forth. It was almost too much, too unbelievable. She didn’t know anyone who had an indoor cellar, but then again, she’d never actually been inside the Jenkins house.

She approached the door and grasped the handle, turning it and hoping for the best.

“Of course it’s locked,” she grunted. “Well, not much choice, I suppose. And I doubt the Jenkins will be too upset with me, out there in Oklahoma.”

She cleared a small place for her feet on the porch and pushed her shoulder hard against the door. The thin metal gave more than the door at her house, but the pin and chain lock held. She tried to lever it with her stick, but when the branch started to crack, she gave up on that.

Daylight bounced off the snow. The last of the red sun bled along the horizon, and she knew that soon there would be none left. Whatever she did, whether it was to succeed or to quit, Lottie needed to do it quickly.

With gritted teeth, she slammed her shoulder into the door one more time, bending it a bit more, but still finding no give at all in whatever it was keeping it closed. Another shoulder butt made it creak, and a fourth gave her enough room to shove her branch inside to hold the bent flap open.

Sticking her hand behind the door, she immediately felt the heaviness of the air, almost oppressive, in the closed up interior. Twisting her wrist around in either direction, Lottie groped for the lock, but didn’t have quite enough room to maneuver. She did manage to feel what it
was
though – a thin chain – that kept her out.

She thought about her father, and then she thought about Colton. The way his arms felt around her, the way his lips tasted when he’d chanced a kiss.

And then Lottie turned back to the door, shoved her branch inside and wedged it against the chain lock. “I’m not... giving up...” she strained. Her stick cracked slightly. It wasn’t going to hold on much longer, but with the shoving and the twisting, she’d managed to bend the door back just a little more.

Lottie squeezed her arm through the opening and braced her log, pushing it harder against the chain.

If the stick shattered, she was hopeless. A vision of her arm getting caught when the door sprang back haunted her, but she blinked her eyes, clenching them tight for a moment.

“No,” she whispered, steeling herself. “I’m not going to be afraid. I’m not going to...”

She let out a heavy grunt, sucked a deep breath and pushed harder. The chain groaned. The door slid backwards slightly more.

Her stick cracked in two, splitting right down the middle, but not before she managed to get her fingers around the freezing cold metal of the chain. Bracing herself against one of the rails on the Jenkins’s back porch, she groaned with every ounce of energy she had left.

When she heard the chain creak and then pop, phantom pains shot through her hand, and she pulled it away just in time to crash through the door and land heavy on her shoulder. If she’d left her hand out just a second longer, she realized as she stood, it would have been caught on a bookshelf that was pushed near the door.