Page 1 of Cowboy's Christmas Wife

ONE

Daryl hated silence: it was always so damn loud. He sat in the bank manager’s office, waiting for her to arrive so that they could have their scheduled meeting, and the ticks from the clock on her desk practically echoed off the walls. Beyond that, he could hear the muffled goings-on from the bank. Nothing concrete or clear. Daryl would catch just the tone of a voice or a half-word. Nothing for him to really focus on, to distract him from his racing thoughts. God, he needed this to go well. He really, really needed it to.

Finally, after a small eternity, the door clicked open. He started to stand up, but the hefty woman who came through the door motioned for him to sit again. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” the bank manager, Marla Braden, said as she slid around him and behind her desk. Marla had big, brown eyes and a dainty nose that both nearly disappeared behind thick, dark glasses. He nearly groaned aloud when he saw them: she only ever had bad news when she wore those glasses.She wears them for the effect, he thought grumpily. “Mr. Rivers, thank you for coming into town for this meeting. Now, what you wish to discuss is an extension on your loan, correct?” She looked over the edge of her glasses at him.

Shame burned in his gut, and he fought not to crush his Stetson in his hands. He’d taken the hat off when he’d been shown to the office: his Mama had taught him to be polite, after all. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

She clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Looking here,” she said, indicating her computer, “you’re already past due on payments as it is.”

“Yes, I know, but—” How could he explain this—explain what the ranch meant to him and his family? It was all he had left of his parents. He and his siblings had lost their mom to a fast-progressing cancer eight years ago, when Daryl was just nineteen. Their dad had followed her four years later from a sudden, massive heart attack, and then it had just been him and his siblings, on their own. With Daryl as the one to inherit the ranch. To inherit the responsibility. To inherit the legacy—with the expectation that he’d keep it going. His gut curdled with shame at the thought of how he’d let his parents down.

“We got a bit behind,” he told her lamely, “but we’re doing our best to get caught back up. We just need more time.”

Marla clicked her tongue again. “You’re more than a bit behind, Mr. Rivers,” she said in a voice that was almost apologetic but was also patronizing. “When you took out the mortgage, it was with the intention of using the money to fund a side business, yes? In…” she consulted the paperwork in front of her, “leatherwork, I believe?”

“Yes, that’s right. It…it’s always been a hobby of mine, you see, and I thought I could turn it into something that I could put my own stamp on.” Something that was just his. Because he loved the ranch, but he’d also loved the idea of starting something new and fresh. Something that really let him express himself.

“And it didn’t go well, I assume?”

He couldn’t stop himself from bristling a little. “Actually, it really took off,” he countered. “Everybody loved my work.” Which was nothing more than the truth. When it came to leatherworking, he knew exactly what he was doing.

Unfortunately, when it came to scheduling and bookkeeping, he didn’t have a clue. He’d been so excited by all of the interest that he’d taken on too many projects. And he hadn’t done a very good job of keeping track of them. Late deliveries had started piling up, with customers demanding discounts to compensate for the delay and others canceling projects into which he’d already invested time and money. The business got more and more expensive for him to run, plus his reputation took a major hit.

And in all that snarled mess…some mortgage payments got missed.

“I’m sorry,” Marla said, sounding very stern and no-nonsense, “but if the past payments aren’t caught up by the end of the year, I’m afraid the bank will have to foreclose.”

Her words socked him in the gut: Daryl could barely pull in a breath.What am I going to tell Kyle and Georgina? They’re going to kill me. His sister might have been the oldest of them, but Daryl was the one who was supposed to take care of the ranch. He shook himself out of his mental castigation when he realized that Marla was staring at him, obviously waiting for some kind of reply or plea or something. He thanked her for her time, stood, and put his Stetson back onto his head. Despite the chaos in his brain—what he was going to say to his siblings, how they could come up with the money, etc.—Daryl left the bank doing his best to look calm and collected. No one needed to know that his stomach was twisting itself into knots or that there was a twanging pain forming behind his eye.

He left the bank with his head held high—and ran directly into a woman on the sidewalk. She let out a little yelping swear and clutched at the baby wrapped and settled against her chest. “Shit, I’m sorry,” he said and reached out to help steady the woman and feeling a fresh pang of guilt. He should have been paying attention to where he was going: what if he had knocked her down? “Really,” he said, “I’m so—” He took her in for the first time: wide, familiar green eyes, silky-looking blonde hair that she had pulled into a messy knot atop her head, and a cupid’s bow mouth that used to haunt his dreams. “Laura Jo?”

Laura Sanders—no, it’s Longbottom now, he thought with a scoff—looked up at him for the first time, and her frown morphed into a hesitant smile. “Daryl,” she said. Her eyes flicked up and down, taking him all in. “Well, look at you.” She whistled, and although he knew that she was teasing, his stomach boiled with bashfulness and male pride. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever. How long has it been?”

Daryl knew the answer to her question, but he made a show out of considering it. “Since graduating college,” he said finally. “Though we didn’t really see much of each other senior year, did we?”

Her smile dimmed a bit. “That’s right,” she said. “You and I kind of fell out of touch after I met Clark.”

Junior year, they’d gotten close. Close enough that Daryl had built up the courage to ask her out. He had planned to at the start of senior year, but she’d come back to school from summer break gushing about Clark—an up-and-comer at her grandfather’s company who she’d met while interning there over the summer. They’d gotten married shortly after she graduated, and Daryl had been relegated to being a Facebook friend. He’d snoozed her after a couple dozen “my life is so great with my husband” posts. He hadn’t even known that she’d had a baby. He readjusted his Stetson. “It has been a minute,” he said.

Laura nodded. “So how are you?”

His first instinct was to tell her that everything was just fine, but there was something about the hollowed look in her eyes and the hesitant smile that made him choose honesty. “I may have just lost my family’s ranch.”

Laura’s mouth dropped into an “o” of surprise, and then she checked her watch. “I’ve got a meeting later on—but I’ve got some time until then,” she said. “In the meantime, how about you come with me and Lily for some banana splits?”

Daryl winced. While spending more time with Laura never seemed like a bad thing, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be good company. “I don’t know, Laura Jo.”

She pushed a loose tendril of blond hair behind her ear. “Please?” she asked. “Banana splits always made things better, remember? Just like when we were kids. And from the sounds of things, I think we could both use a pick-me-up.” She looped an arm through his and deftly turned him in the direction that she had been pointed.

He could never deny her anything, and as they began walking down the sidewalk toward Maple Scoops—the town’s kitschy ice cream parlor—Daryl realized that he still couldn’t. “Are you visiting your parents’ plot?” he asked. Like him, Laura’s parents resided in the Windy Creek Memorial Park, though she’d lost them sooner—to a car accident when he and Laura were both twelve. That was when she’d moved away to live with her grandfather in Denver. As far as he knew, she hadn’t been back since. The Sanders had a plot not too far from his own parents, and Daryl had weeded around their stones on occasion. He found it sad that no one came to visit them.

Her face twisted. “No,” she said. “I haven’t been able to go there just yet.” She patted the baby’s back lightly: the little girl was dozing against her mother’s chest, but he kept getting a peep of blue eyes when she would blink and look around. “I’m going to take Lily soon,” she said, and it sounded like a promise she was making to herself.

“How long are you visiting for?” he asked. Then, “Is Clark with you?”

Laura’s nose wrinkled in what looked like distaste. “No,” she said. “We’re over.”

Daryl wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he let the conversation drop until they reached Maple Scoops. He pushed open the door, and the scent of warm sugar rushed over him. The ice cream parlor had opened when they were kids back in the late nineties, but the owners had wanted it to look like it dated back to the fifties, so it had a large wooden counter where customers could order old-fashioned shakes and malts, and the tables and chairs were styled to look like antiques. It wasn’t as popular as the local diner, but that’s what made it so special to Daryl. It had been their spot. They went to the counter and waited for the older man, who was drying glasses, to look at them. “What’ll be, folks?” he asked.

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